RUTHFULLY YOURS

Herbert London President, London Center for Policy Research

When Klemens Von Metternich, 19th century Austrian diplomat extraordinaire, thought about European stability, he walked a tightrope between the Tsar’s goals with those of Napoleon. He had Austria serve as an “impartial mediator” in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and at the same time promising to throw Austria’s weight against Napoleon. This pretense of neutrality was maintained until 1813 when Napoleon was increasingly pressed by his adversaries.

At the Congress of Vienna, Metternich balanced Russian, French, Polish and Austrian and even emerging German interests. It was an artful effort that his admirers contend inspired a century of relative peace. Henry Kissinger, who wrote about and studied Metternich’s diplomacy, applied the Metternichian strategy with the outreach to China during the Cold War a gesture that, some argue, led to the fall of the Soviet Union.

I agree with most of this except for a “Kasich/Rubio” ticket…… and the possibility of a dark horse emerging from a brokered convention. Romney is yesterday, much as I admire him, and Kasich is bland and boring……so far I am rooting for Marco Rubio…..rsk

Jim Gilmore, George Pataki, and Rick Perry are capable former governors with limited support who will (or should) soon withdraw. (Memo to Rick Perry’s $17 million Super PACs: Deploy the funds on targeted U.S. Senate races next year.) Governor Bobby Jindal is brainy but comes across as an esoteric policy wonk. Staying for the endgame will not help him win the vice-presidential nomination. Persistent Lindsey Graham is a colorful senator who has no chance. The media might even stop covering his attacks on Trump. Repeat candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum are effective speakers and appealing personalities; both are born-again populists who appeal to working-class constituencies, but it’s still mostly religious conservatives who favor them, and many evangelicals are now leaning toward Ben Carson. The over-the-top jailing of clerk Kim Davis for not issuing a same-sex marriage license is appalling and will enhance Huckabee’s appeal — for a while. But even an Iowa win for Huckabee is uncertain, and if he did win there, it might not provide needed momentum.

Rand Paul showed early promise with new ideas and impressive outreach to the young and to non-whites, but he peaked at his announcement. His foreign-policy views often seem incoherent. Besides, his father Ron Paul has been sabotaging Rand’s campaign, blaming the Paris terrorist attack on French policy in Algeria six decades ago and urging the Iran nuclear deal. Look for Rand to continue attacking Trump as an unreconstructed crony capitalist. Eventually, Rand will run for reelection to the U.S. Senate. Other candidates could take lessons from Rand Paul on reaching way beyond the base.

Governor Scott Walker’s opening blunder — comparing union goons in Wisconsin to ISIS terrorists — has defined his campaign of rhetorical inelegance. He seems like a lightweight, with his frequent “big, bold agenda” sound bites and his repetitious “won three elections in four years in a blue state” political-action-committee jargon. Conservative stalwarts wanted an accomplished governor this time, but Walker, with an outstanding record, comes across as anemic and politically off. When the Supreme Court narrowly ruled against traditional marriage, he should have pivoted to the issue of religious freedom for bakers and florists under siege. Instead, he called for a nonsensical constitutional amendment to overturn the court’s decision. In this first debate, he departed from many of his pro-life colleagues and said he would prohibit abortion without an exemption for the life of the mother. He could be unelectable in a general election.

The appearance of German bombers in the skies over London during the afternoon of September 7, 1940 heralded a tactical shift in Hitler’s attempt to subdue Great Britain. During the previous two months, the Luftwaffe had targeted RAF airfields and radar stations for destruction in preparation for the German invasion of the island. With invasion plans put on hold and eventually scrapped, Hitler turned his attention to destroying London in an attempt to demoralize the population and force the British to come to terms. At around 4:00 PM on that September day, 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters blasted London until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second group of raiders commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning.

This was the beginning of the Blitz – a period of intense bombing of London and other cities that continued until the following May. For the next consecutive 57 days, London was bombed either during the day or night. Fires consumed many portions of the city. Residents sought shelter wherever they could find it – many fleeing to the Underground stations that sheltered as many as 177,000 people during the night. In the worst single incident, 450 were killed when a bomb destroyed a school being used as an air raid shelter. Londoners and the world were introduced to a new weapon of terror and destruction in the arsenal of twentieth century warfare. The Blitz ended on May 11, 1941 when Hitler called off the raids in order to move his bombers east in preparation for Germany’s invasion of Russia.

‘This . . . is London.” With those words, delivered in a measured, baritone voice, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow began his radio broadcasts during England’s great hour of peril. No man risked more to alert Americans, and the world, to the human drama of Britain’s existential struggle during the horrific months, in 1940, of the London Blitz. “You burned the city of London in our houses,” said one admirer, “and we felt the flames that burned it.”

Less than a year after its invasion of Poland in September 1939, Nazi Germany subdued nearly all of continental Europe. France capitulated in a matter of weeks. The United States, asleep in isolationism, seemed indifferent to Europe’s fate. England stood alone when, on September 7, 1940, Hitler ordered a massive air assault on London, hoping to force Great Britain to sue for peace. Three hundred fifty bombers, supported by over 600 fighter planes, rained down hell.

For 57 consecutive nights, Londoners endured the worst the Luftwaffe could deliver: nights of fire and terror that killed or injured tens of thousands, left many more homeless, and reduced much of the city to ash and rubble. Through it all Murrow was there, reporting from rooftops, bomb shelters, and burned-out homes and businesses. His crisp and vivid descriptions of the suffering — and courage — of a city under siege captivated millions and set the gold standard for broadcast journalism.

Never has Western culture seemed so all-powerful.

Look at the 30 top-ranked universities in the world; they are all American, British, or European — albeit these rankings are based largely on the excellence of their science, engineering, medicine, and computer departments rather than their English and sociology departments.

The American West Coast changed the world’s daily lifestyle with Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo.

The worldwide reach of schlock American pop culture is frightening. Hollywood psychodramas, rap vulgarity, reality TV, crude body tattooing and piercing, and the sorry, unhinged Miley Cyrus find their way up the Nile and around Cape Horn.

The United States, even with recent defense cuts, has more conventional military power than nearly the rest of the globe combined. American oil entrepreneurs have changed the global energy calculus.

Millions flee their homes to enter Europe — not Russia, China, or India. Ten percent of Mexico lives in the United States. Polls in Mexico suggest that half the remaining Mexican population would prefer to head north into the U.S., a nation to which, polls also suggest, they of course are hostile.

This is CNN.

In the post-civil rights era of the last half-century, a number of black triumphalist slogans and movements have come and gone.

“Black is beautiful” was an informal self-help attitude that sought to encourage blacks not to emulate so-called arbitrary constructs of white majority aesthetics, but instead to rediscover a natural black essence — from Afros to Ebonics and Kwanzaa — that need not be discouraged.

“Black power!” was a more assertive, political, and collective strain of “black pride.” It unfortunately descended from legitimate efforts to organize blacks collectively into an effective political force (e.g., the resulting “black caucus” in Congress) and finally into the violence and incoherence of the Black Panthers and other nihilistic violent groups, whose chauvinism was fueled by their own versions of abject racism. It too is now forgotten.

In the 1990s came a more informal angst characterized by the slogan “It’s a black thing. You wouldn’t understand.” This fad sought, in in-your-face style, to remind non-black America, but especially its white majority, that there was an exceptionalism in African-American popular culture that could never really be emulated or adopted in any genuine manner by non-African American wannabes — much less co-opted by naïve do-gooders or conniving profiteers. It was a separatist idea that assumed society’s reciprocal standard did not apply to itself.

Now there comes “Black Lives Matter,” a movement that argues that reckless law enforcement habitually shoots and kills black suspects in disproportionate fashion and due to racist motives — a crime spree that is supposedly empowered by the general neglect of the white population.

Facts Go Begging in Oxfam Fundraising

Feeding the hungry is a laudable goal, no doubt about it, but filling the bowls of the Third World’s poor is but a minor aspect of the organisation’s agenda. Hobbling development, decrying capitalism and fighting global warming seem more pressing priorities.
I’ve had a mail-out from Oxfam Australia asking for $75 to help “Tereza” grow a garden in the Mozambique desert so she can feed her baby and three children. Tereza tells me, “The little ones may cry because they don’t know that I don’t have money. They just carry on crying.”

I’d cough up (maybe) if I wasn’t so annoyed about Oxfam using donations to finance its attacks on Australia’s coal and petroleum industries, under the rubric of global warming scariness. Also, my bovine scatology detector is vibrating about this “Tereza” lady in Mozambique. “Right now, she’s raising an axe above her head, wielding it with the kind of strength that mothers show when their children’s lives are in danger,” Oxfam says, I assume rhetorically.

Reading on, it becomes unclear whether my $75 would “save her children’s lives” (third para) or actually, nourish “a mum like Tereza” (p2) or indeed, “Tereza’s neighbour Marta” who suffers agonising hunger (p2).

“As a supporter of our work, I know you already know what that means, Mr Thomas,” writes Dr Helen Szoke, Oxfam Australia chief executive. Actually I’m not an Oxfam supporter. Who knows how came to be on the charity’s mailing list, with a 27-digit identifier no less?

Through adroit marketing like the “Tereza” campaign, Oxfam raised $52m last year from the public, up $9.5m in the previous year. The Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade kicked in an additional $23m, oblivious to Oxfam’s anti-export agenda.

“But closing our eyes to the connections between the anti-Semitic and apocalyptic roots of both Hitler’s Nazi movement and the phenomonenon of the Islamic State serves no useful purpose. On the contrary, Tony Abbott’s deep moral sense that the Nazis and the Islamic State are somehow cut from the same evil cloth – notwithstanding their obvious differences – should not be lightly dismissed, if not out of respect for the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, then for the sake of the six million Jews who presently dwell in the State of Israel.”

Where would we be without the smart alecks of the press stretching and embroidering the words of a PM they detest in order to convict him of things he didn’t say and doesn’t mean? As demonstrated by the latest eruption of misrepresentation and confected outrage, a lot better off.

The leftist journalists’ narrative is that Tony Abbott might be prime minister but he is not as cerebral or scholarly as the leftist journalist. The latest mocking of the PM for equating the Islamic State with the Nazis is a case in point. What Tony Abbott said was this:

“The Nazis did terrible evil but they had a sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it”.

This is such an incontrovertible truth that I have no idea why anyone would contest it. Thus, Holocaust deniers exploit the fact the Nazis covered their genocidal tracks at almost every turn in order to give credence to their “case”. Because the Nazis were relatively furtive in their evil endeavour, we must rely on an overwhelming convergence of evidence, rather than 100 percent, slam-dunk proof to corroborate the claim that 6 million Jewish people were slaughtered during the time of the Holocaust. That’s not Tony Abbott claiming that or this writer saying that – that’s the teaching staff at the education wing of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.

The left loathes the concept of IQ — especially the claim that it helps to determine socio-economic status, rather than vice versa — because of a near-religious attachment to the idea that man is a piece of clay that can be moulded into any shape by society
In 1958, my father, Michael Young, published a short book called The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2023: An Essay on Education and Equality. It purported to be a paper written by a sociologist in 2034 about the transformation of Britain from a feudal society in which people’s social position and level of income were largely determined by the socio-economic status of their parents into a modern Shangri-La in which status is based solely on merit. He invented the word meritocracy to describe this principle for allocating wealth and prestige and the new society it gave rise to.

The essay begins with the introduction of open examinations for entry into the civil service in the 1870s—hailed as “the beginning of the modern era”—and continues to discuss real events up until the late 1950s, at which point it veers off into fantasy, describing the emergence of a fully-fledged meritocracy in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. In spite of being semi-fictional, the book is clearly intended to be prophetic—or, rather, a warning. Like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), The Rise of the Meritocracy is a dystopian satire that identifies various aspects of the contemporary world and describes a future they might lead to if left unchallenged. Michael was particularly concerned about the introduction of the 11+ by Britain’s wartime coalition government in 1944, an intelligence test that was used to determine which children should go to grammar schools (the top 15 per cent) and which to secondary moderns and technical schools (the remaining 85 per cent). It wasn’t just the sorting of children into sheep and goats at the age of eleven that my father objected to. As a socialist, he disapproved of equality of opportunity on the grounds that it gave the appearance of fairness to the massive inequalities created by capitalism. He feared that the meritocratic principle would help to legitimise the pyramid-like structure of British society.

The former commissioner says the mayor won City Hall by propagating a false narrative that the police were discriminating by race.

Is New York under “progressive” Mayor Bill de Blasio descending into the scarifying old days of rampant murder and rape, with homeless people using the streets as toilets and Times Square reverting to a casbah of hustlers and worse? Or are the ingenious tabloids with their startling front pages of urinating vagrants and topless painted ladies stampeding New Yorkers into a false sense of insecurity?

Ray Kelly, the Irish bulldog who served as police commissioner longer than any top cop in New York City history, diplomatically doesn’t commit himself on that question in “Vigilance.” But that’s about the only law-enforcement issue he sidesteps in this blunt, proudly unapologetic memoir.

Mugged in Central Park as a third-grader, Mr. Kelly has spent a half-century protecting Americans, first as a Marine officer, then as a New York cop with two stints as a federal security official in the mix. He is a champion of imaginative and aggressive policing, especially the tactic known as “stop-and-frisk,” which has become a flash point in the current furor over police conduct in New York and around the country.

Mr. Kelly has indelible memories of the bad old days. His first stint as police commissioner came in the waning months of David Dinkins’s term as New York’s first (and so far only) African-American mayor. Fueled by the crack plague, murders in New York hit 2,245 in 1990—three times the toll in 1967. With Mr. Kelly devising the strategy, City Hall found the money for more cops, changed tactics and the crime wave began to ebb.