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BOOKS

THE SOROS AGENDA BY RACHEL EHRENFELD

There has been a spate of columns and commentary on the elusive George Soros. Even his son Alexander,  is listed as a celebrity, flush with a 20 billion dollars allowance from his dad to continue the turpitude of the Soros agenda.

 Here is what the Honorable Michael Mukasey has to say about Rachel Ehrenfeld’s superb book.

“Rachel Ehrenfeld here has undertaken an ambitious project – to sketch the sprawling agenda of a billionaire who has called the United States “the main obstacle to a stable and just world.”  She shows how he has used his resources to undermine this country’s justice system, its sovereignty, and its social cohesion. The only other country on which George Soros arguably has inflicted comparable damage is Israel.  Although Soros was born Jewish, he has done more to spread anti-Israel propaganda than anyone on the face of the earth, according to a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and has cynically used his Jewish birth to hurl promiscuous accusations of anti-Semitism at anyone who dares to criticize him.  In this wide-ranging description of what Soros does through the ironically named Open Society Foundation, Ehrenfeld describes not only the multi-faceted malign conduct of George Soros, but also the obstacles he puts in the way of anyone who would expose the financial underpinnings of his various organizations.  Rachel Ehrenfeld brings skill and passion to present a damning indictment of a dangerous man. ”

*Michael B. Mukasey served as Attorney General of the United States from 2007 to 2009, and as a U.S. District Judge from 1988 to 2006. 

Barack Obama’s True Legacy And how he continues to “fundamentally transform” America. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/barack-obamas-true-legacy/

On the cusp of the 2008 presidential election, then-candidate Barack Obama galvanized an ecstatic crowd at Missouri University by claiming that he and his supporters were “five days from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Not making America great again, but fundamentally transforming her. This unsettling vow, from the man who would later declare that American exceptionalism was no more valid than British or Greek exceptionalism, promised not restoration, but revolution. It made clear that his incoming administration intended to toss the greatest country in the world onto the trash heap of history to make way for a Progressive utopia centered on social justice and on the dismantling of American power.

Obama’s threat took two presidential terms to gather momentum; former President Trump temporarily stalled its course, but then Obama managed to get a shot at a third term in 2020 – vicariously through his former Vice President Joe Biden. Under the decrepit figurehead Biden, Obama and his muses Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett could accelerate the fundamental change he promised. Indeed, it has been cascading to fruition so rapidly that one is reminded of a Hemingway character’s explanation about how he went bankrupt: “Gradually, then suddenly.”

The Biden administration is already securing its place in history as the most disastrous American presidency to date. In less than two-and-a-half years, the angry Divider-in-Chief Biden has presided over more domestic and foreign policy debacles than Barack Obama could ever have hoped for. As General Michael Flynn catalogs in the foreword to a brand new book titled Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America, our nation now faces

chronic unemployment and inflation, a border crisis, grave threats to our constitutional liberties, increased violence and lawlessness from the leftist groups Antifa and Black Lives Matter, a weakening dollar, the emboldening of our enemies worldwide, and even worse on the horizon… This is the world Barack Obama has made. This is his legacy.

Book Launch: Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser

The highly anticipated book, Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, curated and authored by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, will launch on May 21 at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.

This book is unique and long overdue. It is a thought-provoking work which analyzes and documents the failure of American Jewish leadership to effectively confront the ideological and physical onslaught that many in the Jewish community are experiencing. The contributing writers describe and explain the failure of Jewish leaders to stop the ongoing demonization and defamation of Jews and Israel in the media, on college campuses, in high schools, and even Congress.

This failure is scandalous, and reminiscent of Jewish leadership inactions during the Holocaust. It is due to several factors, but primarily a lack of understanding of the emerging threats and a deficit of courage. Too often Jewish leaders seem more loyal to a progressive ideology than to the safety of Jews.

The book sheds light on the importance of leadership and the crucial role which Jewish leadership must play to defend and protect American Jewry during a time of growing hostility.

Jacobs, Goldwasser, and a distinguished group of contributing authors — Alan Dershowitz, Mort Klein, Caroline Glick, Richard Landes, Jonathan Tobin, and Thane Rosenbaum among them — skillfully analyze the ideological onslaughts and physical threats that have become all too common. The authors delve into the pervasive presence of anti-Semitism in numerous spheres of American society, from news media to educational institutions, religious organizations, and, more recently, from political leaders.

Mike Pompeo’s Conservative Internationalism Daryl McCann

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/05/pompeos-conservative-internationalism/

The coherent and successful foreign policy Ronald Reagan pursued from 1981 to 1989 might be referred to, at least in retrospect, as “conservative internationalism”. The American political scientist Henry R. Nau, in Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (2013), argues that conservative internationalism features the best aspects of the three main US foreign policy traditions—liberal internationalism, realism or realpolitik, and nationalism—and in doing so creates a fourth, often overlooked, tradition. Conservative internationalism, according to Nau, aims to promote freedom no less than does liberal internationalism, augment diplomatic outreach with military superiority as does realpolitik, and maintain national sovereignty as per anti-globalist patriotism. Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA, and Secretary of State from 2018 to 2021, makes the case in Never Give an Inch that the Trump administration, sometimes despite Trump himself, followed a conservative internationalist path and that its “peace through strength” attitude mostly worked.

Conservative internationalism, so defined, was the mainstay of US foreign policy for most of the Cold War years. There were exceptions. One of them was the realpolitik of Nixon and Kissinger bringing Beijing in from the cold in 1972 as leverage against the Kremlin. Nonetheless, it was the imprudence of liberal internationalism that explains why our power elites in the West thereafter downplayed Beijing’s imperial ambitions. Trump vociferously disputed the long-accepted Washington (plus Wall Street, the mainstream, academia, Hollywood and so on) consensus that Sino-American relations were a win-win for both sides. In Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), Trump fired off this broadside at Beijing:

They have destroyed entire industries by utilizing low-wage workers, cost us tens of thousands of jobs, spied on our businesses, stolen our technology, and have manipulated and devalued their currency, which makes importing our goods more expensive—and sometimes, impossible.

Writings: Commentary from Jack Engelhard the Voice of America’s Conscience   

A new book from Jack Engelhard, brilliant friend and fellow Zionist.rsk

Legendary American novelist Jack Engelhard is equally regarded for his high standard of journalism, which for many years appeared as Op-ed columns in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and also in such publications as The New York Times. Today he enjoys a large worldwide following for his columns that appear on the popular Israeli news/opinion website Arutz Sheva/Israelnationalnews, English edition. There he is recognized for his discerning eye on politics and culture in both the United States and Israel, where he has served as an American volunteer in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). In Writings Engelhard pulls no punches in this collection of columns about the political climate here and abroad that affects people worldwide. He is our conscience of today, pointing out distortions and corruption of our government and leaders. He is never afraid to tell us the truth no matter how difficult it is to face.

Bruce Bawer’s ‘The Victims’ Revolution’ Buy it. Read it. Share it. Act on it. by Danusha V. Goska

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bruce-bawers-the-victims-revolution/

EXCERPT:

Book-length works have tackled the decline of American education. A standout is James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose’s 2020 bestseller, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody.

The single best book I’ve read so far on this topic is Bruce Bawer’s The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Birth of Woke Ideology. The book was first published in 2012; it’s been rereleased because it is desperately needed right now. My review in brief: buy this book, read it, share it, and act on it.

Revolution is the product of a highly intelligent mind, a dogged researcher, and a passionate soul who cares deeply about the future and wants to do what he can to affect that future in a positive way. Bawer is an award-winning writer. His prose is easy to read and quote-worthy. While Lindsay and Pluckrose emphasize theories, rendering their book a cold and dry read, Bawer emphasizes people. You meet real students in his book, the students whose minds are reduced to mush by Woke education. The polish of Bawer’s prose and the flesh-and-blood humanity of his approach do not in any way lessen the books’ intellectual rigor. As I read, I deeply admired Bawer’s scholarly research. He is clearly fascinated by his topic and he pursued Woke education not just in the dusty pages of dead French perverts, but also in young people’s minds and hearts, and in consideration of America’s future.

Bawer is systematic, passionate, and wide-ranging, an awesome combo. He introduces the reader to big names of foundational theorists, and also to almost comical student writing from Woke courses. He reviews historical events, and then brings the reader up to date with visits to classrooms and conferences. Reading this book hurt. I cried. But I’m really glad I read it, and I want others to read it as well.

Bawer devotes chapters to Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, Chicano Studies, and a chapter that addresses several other “studies” including Fat Studies and Disability Studies. Readers must understand that Bawer’s evisceration of these departments is by no means an expression of hostility to blacks, women, homosexuals, Mexicans, fat or handicapped people. Bawer is himself gay, and he has written significant works in support of equal rights for homosexuals.

ISRAEL: LIKE ALL OTHER NATIONS? ELLIOT KAUFMAN

https://www.city-journal.org/article/like-all-other-nations

Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment, by Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler (Cambridge, 300 pp., $39.99)

It is one of the great stories. Exiled from their land but never ceasing during 2,000 years of persecution to pray for their return, the People of the Book became free and sovereign in the Land of Israel, 75 years ago today.

Now, either the theme song from “Exodus” begins to play, or I tell you that Leon Uris’s story isn’t the only one, and, like countless American Jews before me, I wring my hands over the sins of a remarkably liberal nationalism in a benighted part of the world.

We expect one story or the other and are tired of both. That’s why Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Zigler’s Israel’s Declaration of Independence is a breath of fresh air. Alternating between close textual analysis, thoughtful reflection, and brisk narrative history, the book tells the one story about the creation of Israel that I never saw coming: a comedy.

Rogachevsky, an assistant professor at Yeshiva University’s Straus Center, and Zigler, an investor and economist of unusually humane learning, tell the story straight, as befits a serious work of scholarship. But expect to laugh while you learn; this is history as a comedy of errors.

Prelude: it’s May 1948, the British Mandate for Palestine is ending, Arab attacks are trending toward war, and Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion is determined to declare independence. But what to say? The task of drafting a declaration fell to Pinchas Rosen, who would become Israel’s first justice minister. Like any senior lawyer worth his salt, Rosen immediately dumped the assignment on the junior man in the office, the British-trained Mordechai Beham. Given only the vaguest of instructions, Beham set out to fulfill his duty to the nation.

Act one: Beham plagiarizes Thomas Jefferson. The first draft of the Israeli Declaration—written in English, embarrassingly—would include such masterstrokes as “inalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” with the Israeli government “deriving its just power from the consent of the governed.” It’s the kind of language that might have complicated those arms shipments from Czechoslovakia in the subsequent War of Independence.

Triumph of Race Over Merit Bringing all of us down – and fast. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/triumph-of-race-over-merit/

In The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture, Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal, painted a grim picture of the damage done by university administrators desperate to diversify their student bodies at all costs. Identity studies programs, MacDonald made clear, exist not only because of the desire of progressive professors to promote postmodern ideology, but also because such courses, which involve little more than complaining about purported oppression and parroting inane jargon, are far easier for underqualified students to wrap their minds around than something serious and useful. In the same way, the introduction of “critical race studies” provides a handy route through law school for black kids who’d never be able to negotiate a traditional legal curriculum.

Of course, low-achieving black and Latino applicants also get admissions preferences – which in the long term aren’t really good for them, since those for whom the bar has been lowered invariably fall behind. One of the more frustrating aspects of this rank injustice is that Asians, who effectively get punished for being smart, working hard, and earning high test scores, have a right to kick up holy hell but rarely do, while many blacks and Latinos who get special treatment – not just affirmative action, but scholarships and other benefits – can’t stop raging about racism.

The Diversity Delusion came out in 2019. On May 25 of the following year, a thug named George Floyd died during an unpleasant encounter with the Minneapolis police, and pretty soon everything MacDonald wrote about in The Diversity Delusion got even worse. Suddenly it was all about race: America had stepped into the looking glass and entered the harebrained world of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, whose strange new road rules – and their dire consequences – are the subject of MacDonald’s new book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.

How Strong Is the Power of American Capitalism? By Rainer Zitelmann

https://pjmedia.com/columns/rainerzitelmann/2023/04/24/how-strong-is-the-power-of-american-capitalism-n1690018

David Brooks wrote an article on “The Power of American Capitalism” in the New York Times on April 20, 2023. As someone who wrote a book called The Power of Capitalism a few years ago, I welcome the sentiment: capitalism is stronger than ever, despite all the doomsayers. Brooks cites a report published by The Economist on American economic performance over the last three decades. Using an avalanche of evidence and data, the main thrust of the article is that far from declining, American capitalism is dominant and accelerating. Brooks cites a host of facts, including:

Back in 1990, for example, America’s gross domestic product per capita was nearly neck and neck with that of Europe and Japan. But by 2022, the U.S. had raced ahead.

In 1990, the U.S. economy accounted for 40 percent of the nominal G.D.P. of the G7 nations. By 2022, the U.S. accounted for 58 percent.

In 1990, American income per person was 24 percent higher than the income per person in Western Europe. Today, it is about 30 percent higher…

In 1990, the U.S. economy accounted for about 25 percent of global G.D.P. In 2022 it still accounted for roughly 25 percent, The Economist found.

This is good news indeed. But what should be added is that much of America’s economic growth has only been possible because of the spread of capitalism around the world in the decades from 1990 to 2020. Developments in China, in particular, where unprecedented growth has been achieved since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms began in the early 1980s, have also boosted growth in the United States. Contrary to the widespread perception in the U.S. that unequal trade with China is to blame for many of America’s woes, capitalist globalization has also significantly benefited American companies operating around the world. When countries like China, Vietnam, and India grow, it does not hurt the U.S.  America benefits too.

‘Spying on the Reich’ Review: Reading Hitler’s Mind For intelligence agencies in Britain and other European countries, uncovering Nazi plans meant penetrating one man’s intentions. By Stephen Budiansky

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spying-on-the-reich-book-review-reading-hitlers-mind-6445464b?mod=article_inline

Struggling to divine Germany’s intentions in the midst of the Sudeten crisis in 1938, the British ambassador in Berlin, Nevile Henderson, put his finger on the fundamental point that had flummoxed conventional intelligence-gathering efforts against the Nazi government. “It is impossible to know anything for certain,” he reported to London, “in a regime where all depends on the will of a single individual whom one does not see.” The terrifying repressions of a total police state made the most innocuous efforts at penetrating the German regime’s secrets arduous and dangerous; no one seemed to know for certain who Hitler’s chief advisers were; and even those intimates were frequently caught off guard by the führer’s last-minute changes of mind, guided as much by instinct and temperament as any rational calculation. His decision to reoccupy the Rhineland in 1936 was made just two weeks before issuing the order to march. “We needed the secrets of a country,” recalled Czechoslovakia’s spy chief, “where people spoke in whispers.”

Grab a Copy

Spying on the Reich: The Cold War Against Hitler

In early 1939, as the world stood on the brink of war, British intelligence officials were deluged by so many contradictory rumors—Hitler was merely bluffing; Hitler would attack the East first; Hitler would begin the war within two weeks in a barrage of bombs and poison gas on London—that Britain’s chief of naval intelligence, Adm. John Godfrey, observed, “Whatever happened, someone could say ‘I told you so.’ ”