Beyond Obama: Advice To The Next President Bret Stephens

How shall we rate the state of the world? Take a look around — from Islamic State atrocities in Sinai and Paris, to the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan, to China’s efforts to control the South China Sea, to Russia’s intervention in Syria, to the stabbing intifada in Israel.
You might be reminded of the classic exchange in Woody Allen’s movie Play It Again, Sam. The scene takes place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Allen spots an exotic-looking brunette staring intently at an abstract painting. Plucking up his courage, he sidles up to her and asks: “That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it. What does it say to you?”

In an accented, bored-sounding voice, she answers: “It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.”
“What are you doing Saturday night?” Allen asks.

“Committing suicide.”

“How about Friday night?”

So there we are. How do we move forward? Let me begin by offering a few thoughts on how we got here. And then allow me to play National Security Adviser to the next president and offer some ideas for how best to conduct US future foreign policy.

GERALD WALPIN: ON THE SUPREME COURT AND THE CONSTITUTION

FOR A GREAT GUIDE TO THE SUPREMES AND THE CONSTITUTION….READ:

The Supreme Court vs. The Constitution:By Gerald Walpin

They’re on a “rampage,” writes Gerald Walpin, one of the country’s top litigators, in his astonishing new book, The Supreme Court Vs. The Constitution.

And it takes just five of them to lay waste to the rights of 300 million Americans.

A mostly bare majority of justices of the United States Supreme Court, the only judicial body enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, have spent recent decades reversing, revoking and rescinding the fundamental guarantees of that sacred document to the people of America.

They’ve freed thousands of murderers, rewritten sound and time-tested laws, crippled religious liberty, enabled the spread of pornography and immorality. They have ignored the letter and spirit of the Constitution and its amendments in grabbing power that rightfully belongs to the Executive and Legislative branches, the states − and, ultimately, the people.

Gerald Walpin, who prosecuted criminals and pursued crooked bureaucrats as a federal Inspector General nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and, many years before, as a top prosecutor for the Department Of Justice in New York, dramatically sets out the deliberate push by a bare majority of Supreme Court justices to usurp the role of our country’s elected lawmakers and executives.

The justices time and again seize the rightful authority of those we elect to represent us, and with unchallengeable arrogance undermine the “inalienable rights” that long have made the United States the world’s brightest beacon of freedom, democracy, and personal security.

Why Judicial Supremacy Isn’t Compatible with Constitutional Supremacy From the September 21, 2015, issue of NR By Ramesh Ponnuru

A pro-choice voter in New Hampshire had a question for John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, who was making the rounds as a presidential candidate: Would he “respect” Roe v. Wade even though he is a pro-lifer? Kasich answered, “Obviously, it’s the law of the land now, and we live with the law of the land.”

Whether he knew it or not, Kasich had wandered into a debate over the courts, one in which some of the other presidential candidates are also participants. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has denounced “judicial tyranny.” When five justices ruled that the Constitution requires governments to recognize same-sex marriage, he scoffed that the Supreme Court was not “the Supreme Being.”

It’s an often-heated debate. Huckabee’s side says that the courts have established a “judicial supremacy” at odds with the actual constitutional design; the other side says that people like Huckabee are threatening the rule of law. Both sides have some reasonable points, and both could profit from conducting the debate at a lower level of abstraction.

The Constitution Is Clear: Congress Should Legislate, Not the Administrative State By George Will —

As the administrative state distorts America’s constitutional architecture, Clarence Thomas becomes America’s indispensable constitutionalist. Now in his 25th year on the Supreme Court, he is urging the judicial branch to limit the legislative branch’s practice of delegating its power to the executive branch.

In four opinions in 112 days between March 9 and June 29, Thomas indicted the increasing incoherence of the Court’s separation-of-powers jurisprudence. This subject is central to today’s argument between constitutionalists and progressives. The former favor and the latter oppose holding Congress to its responsibilities and restricting executive discretion.

“The Constitution,” Thomas notes, “does not vest the federal government with an undifferentiated ‘governmental power.’” It vests three distinguishable types of power in three different branches. The Court, Thomas says, has the “judicial duty” to enforce the Vesting Clauses as absolute and exclusive by policing the branches’ boundaries.

Republicans Must Save the Cities If Rahm Emanuel is the best the Democrats have . . . By Kevin D. Williamson

A Chicago police officer has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager who was wielding a knife and who had PCP in his system. Chicago authorities apparently went to some trouble to sweep the case under the rug: A $5 million settlement to his family already had been approved; the officer wasn’t charged until nearly a year after the fact; a police-camera video of the shooting was suppressed for more than a year, until an FOIA lawsuit forced its release.

Chicago is a city under impeccably progressive governance. Its mayor is Rahm Emanuel, former right hand to President Barack Obama. So in response to the shooting of a young black hooligan by a police officer in one of the nation’s most corrupt cities and the dodgy handling of that by the city’s Democratic mayor, we have a thousand protesters harassing shoppers and blocking retailers’ entrances down on the Magnificent Mile, wherein is found Neiman Marcus and Cartier.

It takes a special kind of nose to detect the connection between Cartier shoppers, police shootings of young black criminals elsewhere in Chicago, and the municipal maladministration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but such a nose has the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who can sniff out a payday with the reliability of a French hog hunting truffles. Our friends in the community-organizing racket — whether from Chicago’s South Side or the campus of Yale — are a remarkably consistent bunch: Whatever the real or perceived social problem, the answer is the same: Write a very large check that eventually will make its way into the pockets of such people and organizations as those that organize these protests.

In Eastern Europe, More Fences Rising By Michael Walsh

They say it’s to ensure an orderly flow of “migrants” through the country, but let’s see what happens when the shoving begins:

A government spokesman says Macedonia has started to erect a fence on its southern border with neighboring Greece in order to prevent illegal crossings and to channel the flow of migrants through the official checkpoint. Aleksandar Gjorgjiev told The Associated Press that Macedonia has begun “all technical operations for channeling the migrant flow to official checkpoints in order to ensure humane treatment and to register the migrants.”

Gjorgjiev said “the border will remain open and all migrants from the war-affected zones will be allowed to enter.” He added that “the dynamic and the structure of the migrants flow has been determined in accordance with EU demands and (those of) the countries of the Balkan route.”

With All Eyes on ISIS, Iran ‘Drills’ Israel’s Destruction By P. David Hornik ****

“Paramilitary forces from Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard have held a war game simulating the capture of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israeli control,” the Associated Press reports.

…thousands of members of the Basij, the paramilitary unit of the Guard, participated in Friday’s exercise outside the holy city of Qom in central Iran.

The symbolic operations were backed up by Guard helicopters, drones and Tucano planes that bombed hypothetical enemy positions before ground troops captured the replica of the mosque set up at the top of a mountain….

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Guard’s aerospace division, said his force deployed Shahed-129, or Witness-129, drones during the war games. The drone, unveiled in 2013, has a range of 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles), a 24-hour nonstop flight capability and can carry eight bombs or missiles.

AP then informs us that it’s not really anything to worry about:

Even so, the exercise appeared to be largely for show. Iranian commanders have not said how they would be able to deploy large numbers of forces against Israel, located 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away, or overcome Israel’s powerful and technologically advanced military.

Actually, there are ways that they can do that. One is to use the immense windfall they stand to reap from last July’s nuclear deal, in the form of lifted sanctions and boosted trade and oil sales, to build up their capabilities. Another is to create a land bridge westward to the Mediterranean, something they’re striving to do at all times.

And another is to rely on the Western preoccupation with the Islamic State, and increasing tendency to treat Iran as a strategic ally and stabilizing force, to keep pursuing their plans relatively untrammeled.

Ehud Yaari, a veteran Israeli Middle East analyst, takes Iran’s aims seriously enough that he devoted a long analysis to them called “How Iran Plans to Destroy Israel.” “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” Yaari notes, “has been committed for the past 36 years to a doctrine aimed at wiping Israel off the map. Statements to this effect still pour out of Tehran almost daily.”

Islam, rape, and the fate of Western women By Carol Brown

Muslim men rape non-Muslim women (and girls) in disproportionately high numbers in countries with growing Muslim minority populations. Rape of infidel women is part of Islamic law and Islamic tradition. As such, it’s been going on for centuries.

This article is about the current threat Muslim rapists pose to non-Muslim women. In order to keep this article to a reasonable length, the focus is on the rape epidemic in Europe, but suffice it to say rape jihad is a gruesome reality the world over.

Perhaps there is no European country where rape has reached epidemic proportions as it has in Sweden, a country now known as the “rape capital” of Europe. Sweden ranks Number 2 on the global list of rape countries. From 1975 to present, rape in Sweden has increased 1472%. Based on this model, it is now projected that one in four Swedish women (and sometimes little girls) will be raped. Rape of men and boys is also on the rise.

Making this nightmarish situation worse, the authorities hide what’s going on, make outlandish excuses for it, and/or side with the rapists. Dhimmitude has taken hold. Few, if any, will state the truth: that the majority of rapes in Sweden are committed by Muslim males.

Of note, a large number of Muslim rapists are under the age of 18 and, if brought to “justice,” receive exceedingly light sentences (even lighter than the absurd non-punishment adults receive) because they are considered juveniles. And so they are released back onto the streets in a flash. To commit more rape. Related to this issue is the fact that many Muslim men in Sweden are classified as “unaccompanied children” when they arrive.

Is America on Its Way to Fascism? By Eileen F. Toplansky

In his 1954 book entitled Today’s Isms: Communism, Fascism, Socialism, Capitalism, Dr. William Ebenstein cogently describes the various “isms” that continue to convulse the world

As personal liberty is eroded in this country and Americans are uninformed about the “violence and terror of totalitarian communism and fascism,” a reflection of Ebenstein’s ideas is very much warranted.

When countering whether fascism is a threat to democratic nations, Ebenstein maintains that “the danger in a democracy like the United States is not outright fascism … but the insidious and unnoticed corroding of democratic habits[.]” Consider the burgeoning growth of intolerance against dissenting ideas that permeates so many American universities.

Ebenstein maintains that “the danger of not recognizing this pre-fascist attitude is that, should it become full fledged fascism (as it well might in an economic depression or in some other disaster of the sort that periodically shakes men’s faith in democracy) recognition of it as a threat may come too late for those whose earlier judgment was too lenient.” That so many people cannot see the inherent danger of a Bernie Sanders is disturbing. Matthew Vadum has written:

Surviving an imminent ice age By S. Fred Singer

Solar observers predict a “Little Ice Age (LIA)” to arrive before 2100. While expert economists confirm that a modestly warmer climate benefits both health and human prosperity, a colder climate generally spells more sickness and poses real danger to agricultural yields—with consequent famines and mass starvation. These calamities can be overcome – through adequate and timely preparation of energy supplies, water projects, and croplands.

There is some urgency in preparing now for the possibility of such a cold period, similar to the LIA that prevailed off and on during 1400-1800 AD. It is likely then that tropical regions will end up as the major sources of food and be called upon to supply the rest of the world.

Short-term energy (till 2100):

No foreseeable problem; known reserves of fossil fuels appear to be adequate – even with a world population peaking at around 9 billion

Long-term energy (till 3000 AD and beyond):

No real problem, if nuclear technology is encouraged to commercialize the use of inert Uranium-238 and Thorium through “breeder reactors” — especially Molten-Salt-cooled fast-neutron Reactors (MSR) and perhaps hybrid fusion-fission. Pure fusion reactors, if perfected, could provide a useful back-up technology