RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Obama has been traveling around the country touting the robustness of the nation’s economy during his two terms. You might call it the Wishful Thinking Tour.

“From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5% annually,” Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Since 2000, it has grown at half that rate — 1.76%. Even in the years since the bottom of the great recession in 2009, which should have been a time of fast catch-up growth, the economy has only grown at 2%.”

A Wall Street Journal editorial on February 5 provides context to that slow economic growth: “The overriding problem continues to be a lack of business confidence and investment, which leads to slower growth, which gives the U.S. economy a lower margin for absorbing growth shocks from around the world.”

But the crisis in business confidence and investment is only a symptom. The underlying disease is the panoply of anti-innovation policies, actions, and attitudes of the Obama administration. Obama’s White House has been an outlier — to the high side — in the number of “economically significant” regulations (those that are expected to cost Americans $100 million or more annually) it has added. According to Daniel Pérez, of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University, “As of the end of January 2016, Obama had 393, with 12 months remaining in his administration,” and the most recent of the administration’s “unified agendas,” released last November, indicated that more than 2,000 regulations are in the pipeline, of which 144 are deemed economically significant, a new record.

The regulations cut a huge swath through the American economy. They include labeling requirements for pet food, new test procedures for battery chargers, mandated paid sick leave for contractors, and speed governors for trucks, and a host of new rules that will limit energy consumption and increase the price of household appliances.

This month will mark the 49th anniversary of the Six-Day War, fought between June 5 and 10, 1967 by Israel against the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It was a war intended to annihilate Israel as stated clearly by Gamal Abdul Nasser in 1965: “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand; we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.” His threats were echoed by then Syrian Minister of Defense Hafez al Assad who was to become Syria’s President: “Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united. As a military man, I believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”

In their jihadist agenda they received the blessings of the entire Arab world. President Abdur Rahman Aref of Iraq exulted: “The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear — to wipe Israel off the map.”

King Hussein of Jordan, the pluckier papa of the present King Abdullah, was repeatedly asked by Israel’s leaders to stay out of the war, but anxious to shore up his standing in the Arab League he signed a defense pact with Egypt and joined the war against Israel. As a result, he lost control of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The rest is history. Israel won a decisive victory, inspiring pride and confidence in Diaspora Jews, respect and admiration from military and defense experts throughout the world, and resolve among dissidents in the Soviet Union who organized a powerful army of “refuseniks.”

The 1967 war was won in battle but lost in the war of words. Israel’s media and leaders immediately referred to Judea and Samaria as “occupied territory,” and its Arab inhabitants as “Palestinians.”

After defeat, the Arabs and their protagonists replaced the emphasis on refugees with a myth of victimization under “occupation” by Israel. The media, academics, and politicians bought into the lies and “occupation” is now the buzzword for the morally degenerate boycott and divest movements ostensibly seeking “justice” for the Palestinian Arabs.

In fact, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were under illegal occupation from 1949 until 1967. Jordan’s rule was recognized only by Pakistan and England. In further contravention of international law which decreed that Jerusalem would be an open city, the Arabs trashed Jewish shrines, forbade access to Jews and limited access to Christian churches and shrines. Arabs built settlements throughout the area, but they made sure that the “refugee camps” were maintained in squalor as poster boys for anti-Israel propaganda.

There was no outcry about this illegal occupation, not even from the Palestine Liberation Organization which was formed in 1963 out of an alphabet soup of splinter terrorist groups who all adhered to one main principle of the Palestine National Charter, namely, the destruction of Israel, every inch of which was considered then and now as “occupied.”

The “occupied” Arabs of the West Bank enjoy basic freedoms unavailable to them in any Arab nations.

They might do well to consider some of the “justice” perpetrated on the Arabs by other Arabs.

Widely known as “the skeptical environmentalist,” Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg has been vilified for his views on climate change. In this documentary, a companion to his book of the same name, Lomborg expounds on his opinion that the earth is not facing an imminent environmental catastrophe, contrary to the prevailing opinion of the scientific community. The filmmakers follow him as he travels the planet sharing his views in a series of interviews and lectures.

Cool It is a groundbreaking book that transformed the debate about global warming by offering a fresh perspective based on human needs as well as environmental concerns. Sundance ward winning director Ondi Timoner filmed a documentary with the same name based on the book and following Bjorn Lomborg for almost a year.

Conservative social commentator and Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos is waging an epic battle against the insidious attack on free speech that is occurring across college campuses throughout the United States. The latest spectacle occurred at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), that bastion of a particular brand of progressive fascism characteristic of the new Left. This past week, UCLA’s College Republicans invited Yiannopoulos to give a talk on campus, one of many stops on Yiannopoulos’ “Dangerous Faggot Tour,” which has taken direct aim at university totalitarianism. Yiannopoulos, who is gay, is no stranger to controversy, espousing views that some regard as anti-feminist. This has made him a target of the radical Left, and particularly, of radical feminists who view him as one of their chief antagonists.

When students and the guest speaker arrived at the Broad Art Building where the Yiannopoulos event was to be held, they were greeted by protestors holding pro-feminist signs who physically blocked the entranceway. Campus police were dispatched and ushered guests in through alternative backdoor entrances, but the feminists caught wind of it and attempted to block these entrances as well, causing fights to break out. Once inside, Yiannopoulos’s address was interrupted by radicals who were ultimately removed by police. The event was further marred by anonymous bomb threats forcing police to evacuate the building.

One of the anti-Yiannopoulos protestors, who affixed black duct tape over her mouth, held a sign that read, “When you use your ‘First Amendment Right’ to spread hate and exclusion, you are silencing people and communities, not promoting ‘freedom of speech.’” That sentiment is typical of the mindset of the radical Left who believe that the concept of freedom of speech extends only to speech vetted for use in “safe spaces.” The radical Left has adopted techniques employed by assorted despots and autocrats to silence speech that they disapprove of.

The above incident is not unique and is occurring with alarming frequency. What is even more disconcerting is that on some occasions, student protestors and faculty members are working in tandem to disrupt scheduled events. Perhaps most troubling is that police who are dispatched to the area are often instructed to do nothing resulting in the event’s complete shutdown, thus making the university complicit in the suppression of free speech.

The Obama administration is rapidly accelerating its admission and resettlement of Syrian refugees. The administration is well on its way to meeting its target of taking 10,000 Syrians into the country by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30th. In the first five months of 2016, 2,099 Syrian refugees have been admitted, compared with 2,192 for the whole of 2015, according to a report by CNS News. However, only a very tiny percentage are Christians, a beleaguered minority who are facing genocide in their home country. The Obama administration is immorally discriminating against Christian Syrian refugees.

“Out of the 2,099 Syrian refugees admitted so far this year, six (0.28 percent) are Christians,” CNS reported. Ten (0.3 percent) are Yazidis. Over 99 percent are Muslims. And the trend line is worsening as the year progresses. Last month, only two Christians (0.19 percent) were admitted compared to 1,035 Muslims.

Christians are estimated to have made up approximately ten percent of the total Syrian population at the outset of the conflict in Syria, according to the CIA Factbook. As Christians have come under attack by both the regime and jihadist groups, including ISIS, the Christian population in Syria has declined.

Patrick Sookhdeo, the founder and international director of the charity group the Barnabas Fund, which has worked to rescue Syrian Christians, said: “In Aleppo, to give you one illustration, there used to be 400,000 Christians four years ago. Today there may be between 45,000 and 65,000.”

Yet, according to data compiled by the U.S. State Department Refugee Processing Center, only 47 Syrian Christians have been admitted to the United States in all that time – slightly over 1 percent of the total number of Syrian refugees admitted. The current rate of Christian admissions is running far below even that miniscule level.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”