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Is the “Right to Choose” Absolute? by Gerald R. McDermott

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

Gerald McDermott is Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School. He is the editor of The New Christian Zionism and author of Israel Matters.II

If there is agreement that a life is human, the individual’s right to choose is not final. The state has a responsibility to protect innocent life.
In other words, the decision in Roe v. Wade declares that the individual right to choose abortion is not absolute, but that there are times when the state can interfere in order to promote “its interest in the potentiality of human life.”

Imagine you are driving on a foggy night and you see a dark figure ahead. It could be a fallen branch. It might even be a little deer, or, God forbid, a little child. Do you keep on driving full speed and crash through it, or put on the brakes? If you think it might be a human person, either dead or alive, what should you do?

Most of us would say that even if we are uncertain, we should stop and check. We should give the benefit of the doubt to something that might be human, and, if it is, treat it with care.

I am sure that most everyone would stop and do everything he or she could to protect anything that might be human. But a recent article for Gatestone suggests that society has no obligation to interfere with a woman who chooses to get an abortion. The article concedes that question of when life begins is complex, and suggests that after the first trimester the question becomes more difficult. But it fails to distinguish between early and late abortions. The author criticizes “anti-abortion right-to-life advocates” who say that the state should sometimes step in:

“They do not want any woman to have the right to choose abortion for herself. They want to have the state choose for her — to deny her the right to choose between giving birth to an unwanted child and having an abortion.”

According to the article, the question comes down to who should make decisions about life and death — the pregnant woman or the “impersonal state.” Of course, conservatives agree that in most cases there should be individual freedom, particularly when it comes to very personal choices about pregnancy and children. But while conservatives differ on public policy for abortions in the first trimester and in cases of incest and rape (which according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute total less than one percent), they agree with some liberals that the state should protect life in the last trimester. Perhaps a majority of liberals, however, would say the state should never intervene on abortion, even when the baby is healthy and viable in the last trimester.

Liberals and conservatives generally agree that the state must intervene to protect innocent human life when it is threatened, and so should prosecute and punish murderers who take the lives of innocent children or adults. So, the individual’s right to choose to protect or end a life is not absolute. If there is agreement that a life is human, the individual’s right to choose is not final. The state has a responsibility to protect innocent life.

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Words That May Never Be Heeded By Paul Gottfried

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

A certain hyperbole and obscuring of the full truth are seen as necessary to advance the kind of society that progressives want us to embrace.

Fred Reed, a talented commentator and former Marine who now lives in Mexico, recently posted a gutsy piece about all the achievements that white people should be proud of. Fred admits that whites, like other races, have committed their share of outrages; nonetheless, he also calls attention to their past and present attainments in the arts and sciences, and their respect for the ideal of freedom. Fred also predicts that if anyone comes up with a cure for cancer, this too will likely emanate from the mind of a white scientist or else from the talented descendant of someone who came here from the Far East.

Fred is clearly responding to the predominantly white Millennials who are protesting “white privilege” and screaming that “Black Lives Matter,” but presumably not white ones. If only “white college students” and the smug leftist media and professoriate who influence them could be reminded of what they owe to a predominantly white civilization, then perhaps they would take a more favorable view of their ancestors and kinsmen!

Fat chance of that happening, for more than one reason. One, the pitifully little concerning the Western past that has entered the consciousness of the average “white college student” is filtered through the multicultural left. It usually enters the student’s mind in this and no other way Fred’s corrections will not likely change the balance of power in our educational system or in our cultural industry. I recall that by the time I retired from teaching college after forty years, the only “cultural facts” that students entering a Western Civilization class could provide are that “Islam is a religion of peace” and “diversity is strength.” And perhaps it isn’t necessary for these products of our educational system to know more about the Western past to navigate through life. Their low opinion about their inherited civilization may actually bring academic and social benefit. It may be already part of a new shared culture. For most of our young, there may be little incentive to search beyond the clichés that Fred sets out to refute.

Two, and perhaps even more significantly, those whom Fred is trying to reach have no sense of belonging to a civilization that reaches back into the distant past. Their frame of reference is shaped by others who are living in a one-dimensional present. These young people, as far as I can tell, think that they know one thing for sure about the past: bad white dudes ran it. And we’re well rid of those times. Of course, those whose minds Fred hopes to change have no idea of their cultural debt to long dead males like Euclid, Dante, Bach, Newton, etc. But, even more relevant, they don’t see themselves as standing in any line of descent, culturally or physically, going back to the artistic, religious, and intellectual giants of the past. In fact, it’s doubtful that they even know much about their families, whatever their race, going back for more than one generation.

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European Establishment Tries New Election Tactic: Full Embrace of the EU To counter rising nationalist parties, French and German candidates mount vigorous defense of the EU and its single currency, a switch that will be tested in French presidential elections this weekend By Stacy Meichtry and Anton Troianovski

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

When French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month, the conversation turned to a question bedeviling Europe’s political establishment. How could they halt the rising tide of nationalism across the Continent?

Mr. Macron, who is fighting right-wing euroskeptic Marine Le Pen for the lead in Sunday’s election for France’s top office, had an answer. He said the European Union needed more integration, not less.

For years, mainstream leaders, faced with a rising populist movement, relied on a strategy of containment. That involved ignoring its rhetoric, dismissing demands to dismantle the EU as a recipe for turmoil, and at times mimicking its language. The limits of that approach have been laid bare by Britain’s decision to leave the EU, Ms. Le Pen’s rise in France, and recently the surge of a euroskeptic French candidate on the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

With elections in France this weekend and in Germany later this year, pro-EU forces are adopting a new approach: a full-throated defense of the economic bloc and its place in their countries’ future.

The shift is embodied by Mr. Macron, who has defined himself in opposition to Ms. Le Pen, figuratively wrapping himself in the blue and gold-starred EU flag she would remove from government buildings.

“Our fight for fraternity will be our fight for Europe,” Mr. Macron told a February rally in Lyon organized across town from where Ms. Le Pen was declaring her candidacy. “Europe! Europe!” the crowd of thousands chanted.

Where Ms. Le Pen wants to reinforce France’s national borders, Mr. Macron says the solution to its terrorism fears is to bolster the frontiers of the EU. She wants a more independent defense policy for France; he wants tighter military coordination across the bloc.

And where Ms. Le Pen sees the euro as the root of France’s economic woes, Mr. Macron touts the EU’s single market as the key to French prosperity. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Visit White House May 3 During visit, Trump plans to reaffirm commitment to Israeli-Palestinian peace deal By Rebecca Ballhaus see note please

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

That didn’t take long did it…..? Back to the idiocy of a two state dissolution of Israel…..rsk
WASHINGTON—Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on May 3, the White House said Wednesday.

Mr. Trump will use the visit to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to reaching a peace deal in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in a briefing Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already visited the White House earlier this year. During a joint news conference, Mr. Trump abandoned Washington’s decades-old push for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, saying the two sides should determine for themselves whether separate states are necessary for peace and hinting at a broader approach to Mideast discord. He also asked Mr. Netanyahu to “hold back on settlements for a little bit.” Mr. Netanyahu declined to agree to that.

Following Mr. Trump’s remarks, Mr. Abbas didn’t acknowledge the shift, and said he would continue to work with the U.S. administration on establishing two states. He also called on Israel to heed Mr. Trump’s call to hold back on settlements.

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Tuition-Free College Is Nothing More Than a Political Ploy New York’s plan makes no sense except as a way for Gov. Cuomo to pitch Iowa voters ahead of 2020.By Allysia Finley

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo rolled out a plan last week to give free tuition to middle-class students attending the state’s public colleges. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were quick to praise Mr. Cuomo’s political ploy, whose true target isn’t New Yorkers but Democratic voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The governor presents himself as a champion of the middle class, but it has been fleeing the state in droves due to the lack of jobs and high cost of living. More than 191,000 New Yorkers decamped last year for other states, 43,000 of them to Florida alone. About three-quarters of the state’s counties have lost population since 2010, when Mr. Cuomo was elected. The New York City area continues to grow thanks largely to an influx of foreign immigrants.

Alas, the plan for tuition-free college merely redistributes income while giving the middle class little actual help. In fact, many of the scheme’s putative beneficiaries may be harmed.

Consider the terms and conditions for the state scholarship. To qualify, students must come from families earning less than $100,000 ($125,000 by 2019)—and they must attend school full-time and graduate on time. The State University of New York estimates that about a fifth of its undergraduates would be eligible. A mere 2% of students at the City University of New York would qualify—in part because of low graduation rates, just 5% for full-time students at CUNY’s York College.

There are also claw-back provisions. At the end of each year, scholarship recipients who don’t complete 30 credits—a full course load for two semesters—could lose their grant award for that second semester and get stuck taking out loans to pay back the state.

Students also have to commit to living and working in New York after they graduate for as many years as they receive the scholarship. If they leave the state, the grant turns into a loan. This kind of indentured servitude could keep young graduates from pursuing higher-paying employment elsewhere.

Scholarship recipients also won’t save as much money as they might think. Annual tuition for in-state students at SUNY community colleges is roughly $4,370. The figure for the state’s public four-year schools is about $6,470. Low-income students can get federal Pell grants of up to $5,920 a year. New York’s Tuition Assistance Program, which covers students whose families earn less than $80,000, can further reduce tuition by $500 to $5,000 each year.

In other words, many middle-class students already are paying little to nothing for tuition. Students who receive Gov. Cuomo’s scholarships, however, would still have to pay for room and board, which SUNY estimates will run between $10,000 and $13,000 a year.

Mr. Cuomo says the plan will cost state taxpayers a mere $163 million by 2019. Yet hundreds of millions more in federal student aid may flow to public colleges because of increased enrollment, which may be one of the governor’s unstated goals. Since 2010, enrollment at SUNY community colleges has fallen on average by about 12%. Between 2011 and 2015, enrollment dropped by 8% at SUNY Buffalo State and 18% at Erie Community College.

Promising free tuition could steer more students to public schools from private ones. The Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities in New York estimates Gov. Cuomo’s plan would boost enrollment at public colleges by 116,000 while reducing the head count at nonprofit schools by 11%. The declines would be particularly acute at small, less selective colleges. For-profit schools would be pinched, too.

According to the commission’s analysis, the plan would shift $1.4 billion away from nonprofit colleges, resulting in 45,000 job losses. Compensating jobs would be created at public schools, but dislocations would invariably occur. “Once this is out there and implemented, possibly some of the more precarious institutions will go under,” Gary Olson, president of Daemen College, told Inside Higher Ed. “And what that will do is cause millions of dollars of lost economic impact on the local community where the college is located.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Scientists Take a Stand Against Academic Boycotts of Israel How can scholars reconcile opposition to the Trump travel ban with blacklists aimed at the Jewish state? By Ruth R. Wisse

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

More than 100 Boston-area researchers in health care and life sciences released a statement April 13 in defense of “the liberal ideals which have shaped our democracy” and in support of “the free flow of ideas and information” that is central to their work. Why affirm something so obvious? To stop academic blacklisting by the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement, which targets Israeli universities and scholars.

Attempts to isolate Israel and its educational institutions aren’t new. In 1945 the Arab League declared that all Arab institutions and individuals must “refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products of manufactured goods.” The original boycott soon extended to entities that traded with Israel. This did great economic and political damage until the U.S. Congress in 1977 prohibited American companies from cooperating with it, as some were doing. Only U.S. prohibition of the prohibition had the force to guarantee free international trade.

In 2002, a group of professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were among the first academics to advocate divesting from Israel. Two years later the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was founded with the explicit purpose of isolating Israeli academics and institutions. Its goal was to deny Israeli scholars access to scholarly conferences, journals and employment opportunities. The boycott also includes keeping unwelcome speakers and information from campus to maintain Israel as the permanent object of blame.

The campaign’s efforts paid off in the U.S., where the American Studies Association and the National Women’s Studies Association approved boycotts in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Academic associations that have so far voted such resolutions down—the American Anthropological Association, Modern Language Association and American Historical Association—introduce new ones every year. Only through a concerted effort by school administration can universities remain free spaces. Jewish students should not be expected to bear the full brunt of attack by those who import the Arab-Muslim war against Israel into the American campus.

Researchers in science and medicine have a special interest in opposing a boycott that tries to destroy the benefits of shared ideas and knowledge. Although people in the sciences do not normally issue collective political statements, signatories of the recent letter cite the collaboration of Israeli scientists in lifesaving treatments as reason enough to protest the blacklist. Their statement condemns boycotts that contravene core democratic values and threaten “the free flow of information and ideas,” which functions as “the lifeblood of the academic world.”

The Boston group’s aim is similar to those of recent academic protests against President Trump’s temporary travel ban. A friend-of-the-court brief filed by 17 universities affirms that students from the six suspect countries could have much to contribute by “making scientific discoveries, starting businesses, and creating works of literature and art that redound to the benefit of others” far beyond university campuses.

If universities are willing to fight the government’s travel ban against students from Muslim-majority countries, why are members of their faculties fighting to prevent exchange with academic counterparts in the Jewish homeland? American academics ought to entertain pluralistic and multicultural perspectives and refrain from cutting themselves off from those with whom they disagree. Universities cannot pretend to be protecting the free flow of information while their faculty members try to prevent interaction with the most dynamic academic center in the Middle East.

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French Political Roulette The radical right and left square off against two centrist reformers.

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

Europe continues its rousing election year on Sunday with a first round of the French presidential contest that will decide if the center can hold or a blood-and-soil nationalist will square off against a throwback socialist. What could go wrong?

For months the smart money thought the first round would set up a final match pitting Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front against a reform-minded centrist. That could still happen if the other leading finisher is François Fillon, the nominee of the center-right Republicans who touts a free-market platform; or center-left, independent Emmanuel Macron, who doesn’t go as far as Mr. Fillon but still promises to reform labor and tax laws. Either would be favored against Ms. Le Pen in a runoff.

But suddenly the two reformers might be surpassed by far-left independent Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is telling the French they can grow richer by working less and spend more by earning less. He’d cut the work week to 32 hours from 35, cut the retirement age to 60 from 66, prevent companies that have laid off workers from paying dividends, and ignore European Union limits on fiscal deficits. On foreign policy he is anti-American, anti-NATO and pro-Vladimir Putin, and he has written a book subtitled “The German Poison,” which should make for pleasant summits in Berlin.

Ms. Le Pen is hoping to vindicate her long-running effort to transform her father’s National Front into a respectable party. Her views on Europe, America, Russia and the state role in the French economy are distinguishable from Mr. Mélenchon’s only by nuances.

The National Front’s toxic history of anti-Semitism and its hostility to minorities and immigrants has traditionally put a ceiling on Ms. Le Pen’s vote, especially on the left. But that might not hold if Mr. Mélenchon doesn’t make it to the final round and his supporters must choose between Ms. Le Pen and one of the centrists.

Mr. Fillon’s agenda comes closest to what France needs to revive its stagnant economy, notwithstanding his affinity for Mr. Putin’s Russia. He promises to balance the budget within five years, cut €100 billion ($106.72 billion) in spending, slash the corporate-tax rate to 25% from nearly 35%, end the 35-hour work week and liberalize labor laws to encourage hiring. All of this is a hard sell in France at any time, but Mr. Fillon’s credibility has been compromised by news that he put family members on the public payroll.

Mr. Macron’s reforms don’t go as far as Mr. Fillon’s, but he’d also cut the corporate-tax rate to 25%, reform the work week and reduce labor-related taxes for entrepreneurs. But the 39-year-old has never held elected office and failed to sell this program to the National Assembly when current Socialist President François Hollande made him economy minister.

All four major candidates are polling at around 20%, but Mr. Mélenchon has momentum and the highest personal favorability. A Le Pen-Mélenchon finale would be a political shock to markets and perhaps to the future of the EU and eurozone. The best result would be for one or both centrists to make it through, but the fact that both could lose to the radicals is an indictment of the main political parties.

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A Trump Alliance Strategy Mattis and McMaster learned in Iraq that if you make allies, you should keep them. Dan Henninger

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

After 59 Tomahawk missiles landed on a Syrian airfield, followed by the dropping of a 21,600-pound bomb on Islamic State’s hideouts in Afghanistan, the world has begun to ask: What is Donald Trump’s foreign policy? And so the search begins by pressing what Mr. Trump has done so far against various foreign-policy templates. Is he a neoconservative, a Scowcroftian realist or a babe in the woods?

We know this is a fool’s errand. There will be no Trump Doctrine anytime soon, and that’s fine. The Obama Doctrine, whatever it was, left his successor a steep climb in the Middle East and Asia. It is difficult to find doctrinal solutions for issues that everyone calls “a mess.” It is possible, though, to see the shape of an emerging strategy.

The place to look for that strategy is inside the minds of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Mr. Mattis said something that jumped out at the time. He called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “the most successful military alliance probably in modern history, maybe ever.”

This was in notable contradistinction to the view of his president that NATO was obsolete. Then last week, after meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, President Trump said of the alliance: “I said it was obsolete. It’s no longer obsolete.”

Let’s set aside the obligatory sniggering over such a remark and try to see a president moving toward the outlines of a foreign policy that, for a president who likes to keep it simple, may be described with one word: allies.

NATO emerged as a formal alliance after World War II. Less formally, the U.S. struck alliances with other nations to base troops and ships, as in the Persian Gulf.

After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, foreign-policy thinkers began to debate the proper role of the U.S. as the world’s only superpower. Liberals argued that maintaining the U.S. at the apex of this alliance system was, well, obsolete. Instead the U.S. should act more like a co-equal partner with our allies, including international institutions such as the United Nations.

The idea of a flatter alliance structure, or leading from behind, came to life with the Obama presidency. It doesn’t work.

If indeed Jim Mattis and H.R. McMaster are the architects of an emerging Trump foreign policy, their most formative experiences, in Iraq, may shape that policy. CONTINUE AT SITE

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A Predictable BDS Win at Tufts Andrea Levin

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

News that Tufts University was the latest to join an ignominious list of schools at which student governments have voted to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel prompted yet another round of shock and calls for action from parents and alumni.

In a particularly obnoxious move, Tufts’ Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter engineered the vote to occur just before Passover, thus blindsiding many Jewish defenders of Israel who had already headed home for the holiday. Those individuals were told to submit questions via Google if they couldn’t attend the proceedings.

The balloting — undertaken in notably secretive style, with photos and recordings prohibited to conceal the identities of individual delegates and their votes — wasn’t even close. Seventeen students voted in favor, with six against and eight abstentions.

With the vote, these Tufts students opted for punishing Israel — for allegedly being an apartheid regime — and called on several corporations to end their economic activity with the Jewish state.

Israel, of course, is flourishing economically — and not a single American college or university has acted on the recommendations of radicalized student governments to boycott the Jewish state. And the apartheid smear is a trope of global anti-Israel propagandists, which is belied by the realities of Israel’s diverse, democratic and progressive society.

But fairminded people are right to be dismayed by the bigoted BDS attacks against Israel, and their potential to poison the academic community with lies about the Jewish state. Therefore, defeating these attacks is important.

A key question is why such measures succeed on some campuses, but fail on many others — or never come up at all on the roughly 4,000 US college and university campuses. There have been (according to the AMCHA Initiative’s documentation) just over 100 such measures introduced in total over the last five years on 54 separate campuses, with slightly fewer than half passing.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

‘Can you hear me now?’ Trump team voices credible threat of force Charles Lipson

Posted By on April 20th, 2017

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he is founding director of PIPES, the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security.

The United States has fundamentally changed its strategy toward North Korea and its growing nuclear threat. Why? Why switch to a policy that carries such profound risks?

The short answer is that the Trump administration fears that waiting is even riskier. Previous administrations have tried to wait, relying on mid-sized deals sweetened with small bribes. Those won’t work anymore. They probably never did since the Kim family regime always cheated. Now, the Trump administration has made a basic reassessment. Their calculation: Time is on North Korea’s side, not ours. Temporizing only magnifies the dangers.

That is why the Korean Crisis has reemerged. In the short-term, the Trump administration decided to force the issue. In the long-term, it was North Korea’s steady progress on nuclear weapons and long-range missiles that brought it on.

A New Administration, a New Policy

The new policy was announced on March 17, when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said simply, “Let me be very clear, the policy of strategic patience has ended…All options are on the table.” Blunt and clear. The Trump administration would not continue the policies that had failed Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama and would, within a few years, bring the United States’ biggest cities within reach of North Korean nuclear missiles.

This week, Vice President Pence reiterated the new policy during his visit to South Korea: “If China is unable to deal with North Korea, the United States and our allies will.” He looked as somber and resolute as his statement. President Trump has made similar comments and made them repeatedly. This is policy, not personal whim.

Equally important, President Trump has started to restore America’s reputation for resolve, backed by credible military threats. This reputation was in tatters after eight years of President Obama’s hesitation, hollow threats and military decay.