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December 2015

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Jews and Other Poles: By Ruth Wisse

By on December 22nd, 2015

Poland offered Jews some of the best conditions they ever experienced in exile—until it didn’t. How are Poles dealing with that history today?

Poland! It’s one of those words capable of causing a rift between otherwise perfectly compatible Jewish minds. When I mention an upcoming trip to Warsaw, a friend says: “How can you be going there?! I would never set foot in that place!” On my return, reporting on the country’s warming attitudes toward Jews to another friend who was born and spent her childhood there, she stops me: “I don’t want to hear any more.” I had forgotten for a moment that Polish neighbors had killed her father.

There is no way of simplifying or ironing out the relation of Jews to Poland, Poland to Jews, each to their common history. It is a fact that Poland offered Jews some of the best conditions they ever experienced in exile. Even if one discounts the saying, “Poland was heaven for the nobles, hell for the peasants, and paradise for the Jews,” it is plain that the last-named did enjoy unusual opportunities in the country—until they didn’t. A Failed Brotherhood is how the scholars Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal titled their book on Poles’and Jews’ perceptions of each other, leaving open the question of which of the two words deserves greater emphasis.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

EFFECTIVE INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAW VITAL TO NAT’L SECURITY MICHAEL CUTLER

By on December 22nd, 2015

For decades, discussions about the failures of the immigration system focused almost exclusively on securing our southwest border but ignored not only the legal entry system, but the solution to the failures of both the legal and illegal means by which aliens – including terrorists and transnational criminals – enter the United States: the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the U.S.

Let’s be blunt. There is no way to prevent all illegal entries of aliens. Our nation’s southwest border is 1,900 miles long, and the border that separates the U.S. from Canada is more than 5,000 miles long. Our coastline runs approximately 95,000 miles.
border

The vetting process conducted by consular officials who issue visas will always suffer failures. The Visa Waiver Program further erodes the ability to vet aliens who enter the U.S.

Finally, politicians and journalists now are acknowledging that failures of the immigration system are not limited to the millions of illegal aliens in the U.S. but that there is a threat posed by aliens who were admitted through the legal process, but not adequately vetted. In fact, the 9/11 Commission noted that the great majority of terrorists entered the U.S. through international airports.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Catastrophic Failure: A Review, Part II Edward Cline

By on December 22nd, 2015

Rather than prosecute a genuine War on Terror, our leadership would rather wear a blindfold and play “Pin the tail on the donkey,” the donkey being anything but Islam.

“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”
Page 7, Explanatory Memorandum, 1991, Muslim Brotherhood

I noted in Part I of this review that the “Islamophobia” of Americans is more the enemy recognized by our “defenders” than is the actual enemy, Islam, the enemy that cannot be named. Within that purgatory of purposeless analytical bean-counting and sand-sifting is a startling and craven ignorance of the actual enemy, enforced by post-modern, left-wing politically correct thought and speech, while the Muslim Brotherhood and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) stymie any meaningful investigation and intelligence analysis by determining definitions and “red lines” and the language employed in the War on Terror.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Belief and Foreign Policy Matter By Herbert London

By on December 22nd, 2015

In his magnificent book, The Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk cites five cities which have given us our rich heritage and from which we have created an exceptional civilization: Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, London and Philadelphia. Kirk offers a philosophically panoramic view. From Jerusalem came the order of the soul and leading a purposeful life. From Athens emerged the order of mind and how one ought to live. From Rome came an understanding of personal virtue. From London, our concepts of common law, private property and constitutional order were formulated. And from Philadelphia emerged the protection of individual rights and the understanding of liberty within a framework of law.

Each of these spheres of understanding built on the previous era culminating in a culture called the West. Truths were not invented but discovered over the course of time. And if we are to flourish, we must tend to the roots of these powerful ideas and replenish them.

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