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June 2021

The Faded Flag A portent of the dangers that lie ahead for our exceptional nation. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/faded-flag-bruce-thornton/

When I put out my flag for Memorial Day, I noticed how faded it was. At a time when we honor those who died defending our country and its freedom, this year my faded flag seems a portent of the dangers that lie ahead for our exceptional nation.

Nations decline the way one of Hemingway’s characters went broke: slowly, then all at once. In just four months, the Biden administration’s policy proposals, executive orders, and “woke” rhetoric suggest that we will continue to draw ever closer to that moment of “all at once.”

Many signs of decline have been evident for decades, punctuated by brief moments of revival. The Sixties and Seventies were a low point in our national morale, a time when the “best lacked all conviction, and the worst were filled with passionate intensity.” The protests over the war in Vietnam, the riots and terrorist bombings, the specious Watergate scandal, the oil crisis, economic stagflation, and the general assault on traditional virtue, faith, and morality––the Nietzschean “revaluation of all values”––  culminated in the presidency of Jimmy Carter with its rhetoric of doubt and retreat evident in his inaugural address. There he mourned the nation’s “recent mistakes,” counseled us not “to dwell on remembered glory,” asserted our country’s “recognized limits,” and preached that it “could only do its best.” He reprised these defeatist sentiments later in the “crisis of confidence” speech.

But Carter’s one term of failures––particularly his feeble and appeasing response to the Iranian Revolution, the violent occupation of our embassy in Tehran, and the taking hostage of its staff–– was followed by Ronald Reagan and his “morning in America” confidence and optimism. Reagan revitalized the economy, and his actions signaled to the world and our Soviet rival that the “crisis of confidence” was over, and America had recovered its nerve. He brought moral clarity to the Cold War by rejecting détente and coexistence, and stated instead, “We win, they lose.” A few years after he left office, the Soviet Union was relegated to the “dustbin of history” the Soviets had predicted for the democratic West.

In the Roaring Nineties that followed, however, the anti-American left was still tramping on its “long march through the institutions.” Many of today’s toxic ideas like “cancel culture” and “systemic racism” were incubated during those years in the universities, whence they infected public schools, entertainment, and the Democrat Party. More immediately dangerous, the extravagant optimism of the “end of history,” the triumph of liberal democracy over Soviet communism, reinforced the idea of a “New World Order,” the transnational, multilateral “rules-based international order” that presumably would transcend the parochial, and dangerous, interests and passions of diverse sovereign nation-states.

Time For An Honest ‘Kitchen Table’ Discussion Over Federal Spending And National Debt Lew Uhler, Peter Ferrara and Joseph Yocca

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/01/we-need-an-honest-kitchen-table-discussion-over-federal-spending-and-national-debt/

America is gripped with numerous problems induced by Biden and Co.: New Middle East wars; gas shortages; overrun borders, and; displaced pipeline workers, to name a few. But right up front remains the specter of government spending, out-of-control debt, and rising inflation.

Much like millions of American families who gather at their kitchen tables to consider money and budget issues, America desperately needs a national, honest, and relevant discourse of how our politicians are managing our taxpayer budget and spending, and national debt.

At the American family level, of course, spending more than you bring home is cause for grave concern. Upon the first signs of trouble, ordinary people must adjust or face ever-growing severe economic troubles. Why shouldn’t the same sober, honest economic review apply to our federal, state, and local government spending?

After all, governments don’t actually produce the revenue they spend. They take that productivity from real Americans, off real kitchen tables. And that fact has profound consequences for the American family and our economic future.

For instance, the recent Biden $1.9 trillion bailout spending bill will cost the average family of four in America almost $15,000. That’s right, the $1,400 per family “Covid Relief” check from Uncle Sam will cost you $13,600 in higher taxes and more debt. Meanwhile, we pay the unemployed more to stay home than return to vital small businesses and the productive sector.

A Truly Fraudulent Presidency

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/01/this-isnt-the-man-voters-put-in-the-white-house/

Earlier in Joe Biden’s presidency, we wondered if his wife Jill was running the White House, and in effect the country. It’s still not out of the question, but it’s beginning to look more like Chief of Staff Ron Klain, unelected and not confirmed by the Senate, is the real president. This should make all Americans uncomfortable.

Klain, who was the vice president’s chief of staff when Biden held that office, has been called “the man executing Biden’s mission” (which seems to be carrying out the Cloward-Piven model that advocates manufacturing a political and economic crisis so that politicians can accrue more power in order to fix it, and use that power to kill off capitalism). He’s also been called Biden’s “co-pilot and fixer.” 

Yes, those descriptions could be used to define the chief of staff for any president of any party. There are times, however, and this appears to be one of them, when a chief of staff wields too much authority.

Klain is no statesman. He’s a confirmed “political animal.” Anyone who thinks that’s a benign label that could be applied to any Washington operative, consider that the Democrats are doing their best to transform America from a civil society into a political society, where government intervention into private affairs is the rule rather than the rare and unwanted exception.

While the Washington press corps and much of the U.S. media are playing the role of Biden’s publicists, the London Times reports, in what has to be an accidental indictment of the White House arrangement, that Klain is “the driving force behind the actual president,” an “operator who knows the business of government inside out.” The reporter who wrote the story, one Sarah Baxter, wants readers to meet “President Klain,” who also happens to be Biden’s “brain.”

The Texas Voting Melodrama Joe Biden says it’s ‘an assault on democracy.’ The facts say otherwise.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-texas-voting-melodrama-11622495406?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

As the Texas legislative session drew near its end Sunday, lawmakers appeared set to pass a bill overhauling the state’s elections, until Democrats did one final maneuver: They snuck out of the building. “Members, take your key and leave the chamber discreetly,” a Democratic leader in the state House told his caucus in a 10:35 p.m. text message.

The extraordinary move deprived the House of a quorum, killing the bill for now, at the cost of undermining the legislative process. But what do you expect after months of Democratic alarms about “voter suppression”? President Biden on Saturday called the Texas plan “un-American” and “part of an assault on democracy.” At least this time he didn’t say it’s worse than Jim Crow, which was the political bomb he lobbed at Georgia’s bill.

The reality is more prosaic. To start with the controversial, the 67-page bill would roll back Covid-19 innovations like Harris County’s drive-through voting and 24-hour voting. Those options were used disproportionately last year by black and Hispanic residents. But when did emergency procedures amid a 100-year pandemic suddenly become the new baseline? It’s hardly crazy to think polling-place shenanigans might be more likely at 3 a.m.

The bill says that on the last Sunday of early voting, polling places may not open until 1 p.m. This is a political mistake, at minimum, in that it’s being spun as an attack on black churches that have a “souls to the polls” tradition. One lawmaker supporting the bill argued: “Those election workers want to go to church, too.” But some people take care of their religious obligations on Saturdays, and in any event Texas repealed most of its blue laws in 1985. Lawmakers would be wise to drop this provision.

Under the bill, Texas would still offer some two weeks of early voting. Mr. Biden’s beloved Delaware won’t have any early voting until 2022, when it will get 10 days. The Texas bill would also raise minimum hours. In the final week, counties with 100,000 people must currently open their “main” polling place 12 hours on weekdays and five hours on Sunday. That population threshold would drop to 30,000, and six hours would be mandated on Sunday.

Diplomats Abase America The State Department is supposed to advance U.S. interests and burnish the country’s image abroad. By Dave Seminara

https://www.wsj.com/articles/diplomats-abase-america-11622494456?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

American diplomats take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. A foreign-service officer’s job is to advance American interests. But officials are now asking diplomats to function as social-justice warriors to the detriment of the country’s image abroad, as revealed by a leaked State Department cable encouraging embassies and consulates to fly Black Lives Matter flags.

Nearly 20 years ago, when I was sworn in as a foreign-service officer by Secretary of State Colin Powell, he said: “The most important of all the jobs that we are sending you out to do is to take with you the value system of the American people.” BLM’s values are shared by only half the country, if that, according to a recent USA Today/Ipsos poll. Another USA Today survey indicated that only 18% of Americans and 28% of blacks support the group’s signature goal, defunding the police.

Yet from reading the State Department’s May 21 cable, you’d think the country is in lockstep agreement. The cable asserts that protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing “sparked a movement to confront systems perpetuating deep-seated inequities rooted in colonialism and the oppression of racial, tribal, ethnic, and other minority communities.” It continues: “Mr. Floyd’s murder prompted an international outcry to seek racial justice and equity by dismantling systemic racism and eradicating police brutality affecting communities of color, most acutely, people of African descent.” The missive asserted that federal law allows diplomats to “engage in BLM-related activity while on duty or in the workplace” but not to combine such advocacy with “political activity.”

That’s doublespeak. BLM activity is political advocacy. The group’s co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors is a self-described Marxist. Until recently, BLM’s website called on “comrades” to make efforts at “dismantling cisgender privilege and heteronormative thinking” and “disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.”

Twilight of the Netanyahu Era? Israel may get a new government, but don’t expect a left turn.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/twilight-of-the-netanyahu-era-11622495465?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Western democracies produce all manner of governments: Left- or right-wing, centrist, populist. But the new government taking shape in Israel defies categorization. If negotiations go through as planned, Israel could soon be led by a religious-nationalist Prime Minister backed by a centrist dealmaker, with the support of Arab and leftist parties.

American liberals will surely celebrate the departure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has come to symbolize the Democratic Party’s rift with Israel over the last decade. But it would be a mistake to interpret it as a rejection of Israel’s rightward political and security direction, which the new government is likely to maintain.

***

The unusual coalition is coming together after Israelis went to the polls four times since 2019, most recently this March. Though his security policies had wide support, Mr. Netanyahu—who has been Prime Minister since 2009—was unable to form a majority coalition from among Israel’s 13 fractious parties.

The conventional wisdom this month said Hamas had given Mr. Netanyahu a new political lease on life by launching its rocket assault on Israel, elevating the security issue that built Mr. Netanyahu’s career. Yet a week after the fighting stopped, Naftali Bennett of the conservative Yamina party announced that he would accept an offer from the centrist Yair Lapid to form a government without Mr. Netanyahu. Under the agreement, Mr. Bennett will be Prime Minister immediately, with Mr. Lapid taking over in 2023, if the government lasts that long.

Racist Mayor: Lori Lightfoot Another Democrat carries the Left’s torch of hate. John Perazzo

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/racist-mayor-lori-lightfoot-john-perazzo/

Shortly after 9 p.m. on the night of May 24, a 17-year-old black youth named Keyshawn Williams was standing on a sidewalk along Chicago’s South Oakley Boulevard when someone in a silver BMW opened fire and killed him in a drive-by shooting.

The night before that, a 25-year-old African American named Ladell Arnold was riding in a vehicle along West Flournoy Street in Chicago at 7:10 p.m. when he was shot and killed by a nearby gunman.

The night before that, a 46-year-old black man named Johnnie Williams was standing on a sidewalk along Chicago’s South Michigan Avenue at 7:30 p.m. when some people riding in two passing vehicles shot him dead while also wounding two others.

And at 11:50 p.m. the night before that, a 15-year-old black boy named Dajon Gater was on the front porch of a West Lexington Street house in Chicago, when two armed males approached and killed him with a gunshot to the head.

Like four tiny grains of sand among many thousands in an hourglass, the names of these four dead victims blend imperceptibly into the long list of African Americans whose lives in recent years have been snuffed out by other blacks in the killing field known as Chicago. During the past 12 months alone, more than 820 people have been victims of homicide in The Windy City. And most of them were blacks killed by other blacks.  

Of course, you’ve never before heard of any of the four individuals cited above – nor will you ever come across their names again – for the simple reason that none of their deaths can be traced to the actions of a white police officer – or to the actions of any white person at all, for that matter. Thus, there will be no Black Lives Matter protest marches held in their honor; no $25,000 celebrity-funded golden caskets eternally encasing their bodies in the grave; and no gaggle of reporters or “civil rights leaders” repeatedly recounting, with pained and pious countenances, the tragic stories of how these four individuals died, far too young, in America’s third largest city. No, the only words publicly memorializing these four people will be the names etched silently on their tombstones.

The chief political executive of the hell hole called Chicago is Lori Lightfoot, the latest in an unbroken, 90-year line of exclusively Democrat mayors extending all the way back to 1931. Under Lightfoot’s stewardship, homicides in Chicago increased by an astonishing 40 percent from 2019 to 2020 – a pattern that was seen in a host of Democrat-run cities after George Floyd’s death a year ago. And Chicago’s stratospheric homicide rate has continued well into 2021.