RUTHFULLY YOURS

Just for the record….Randy Forbes is a strong supporter of Israel and ranked -6 by the American Arab Institute….rsk
The images from earlier this year are still appalling: ten American sailors, on their knees with their hands behind their head, held at gunpoint aboard a broken-down patrol boat by paramilitary forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The capture and detainment of those ten U.S. Navy sailors on January 12, 2016, came at the start of a year in which America’s foreign policy has been at a crossroads. In the State of the Union address he delivered the very next day, President Obama spoke of living in a time of extraordinary change, with the international system led by the United States under growing strain. In his speech, the president conceded that we are living in increasingly dangerous times but dismissed “all the rhetoric about . . . our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker” as “political hot air.” With humiliating footage of our captured sailors still playing on the news, however, it was hard to deny that our nation faces a number of worrisome problems.

Around the world, we see a number of threatening actors — nation-states and other groups alike — with growing capabilities and diminished regard for international laws and norms. Iran’s illegal detainment of ten U.S. sailors was only the latest malicious action by a rogue regime that continues to brazenly support terrorism, develop and test ballistic missiles, and threaten oil exports from the Gulf. ISIS remains uncontained, and from remote villages in Pakistan to the cultural capitals of Europe, extremists have been successfully plotting and executing horrific terrorist attacks. Putin has annexed Ukraine, buzzed our ships and airplanes, threatened our NATO allies, and elevated Russian submarine activity and nuclear saber-rattling to Cold War levels. In Asia, China is amassing military power and slowly but steadily securing de facto control of the nearby seas, while North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons and delivery systems that can reach the United States.

Who cares if Bush pere et fils will skip the convention? They can sup with James Baker and their Saudi pals instead and sulk over the findings of Saudi complicity in 9/11 that incriminates the Bushies.Message to the GOP…..Trump won in a democratic process of primaries. Now the question is who is worse Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton? Ben Weingarten has some suggestions for thinking it through.
5 CRITICAL QUESTIONS UNDECIDED CONSERVATIVES MUST ASK TRUMP

By: Benjamin Weingarten

– See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/05/5-critical-questions-undecided-conservatives-must-ask-trump#sthash.3sapmDUv.dpuf

To conservatives shell-shocked at the jarring conclusion of the Republican Primary and those in despair over the prospect of a Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton general election, many are struggling with the same Hobson’s choice ironically lamented by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in reference to the options in the GOP field.

There are several questions those of us dedicated to advancing individual liberty, private property rights, the rule of law and a Kirkpatrickian defense must consider in the coming days and weeks. We must decide whether or not we can in good faith pull the lever for a candidate anathema to many of us personally and antithetical to us politically and ideologically.

Before we begin, let us stipulate that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be an extension of the Obama years – that is, an utter disaster for the country. None of the below questions are meant to imply that any Republican or conservative should make the unconscionable decision to vote for the pox on the body politic that is Hillary. But they are meant to serve as a framework for determining whether – given the stakes of growing existential threats and the dominance of regressive progressivism – we can in good faith vote for a lesser of two potential evils, or should give no sanction to any potential evil at all.

The following are five critical questions with which undecided conservative voters must grapple:

Can we in good conscience vote for someone who is not only left on most issues but is personally petty, narcissistic and arguably sociopathic, and who engenders the support of a percentage of fans who are truly detestable and who will be used to smear the conservative movement more broadly?

Trump has argued for, among other things, touchback amnesty, socialized medicine, tariffs that will increase the costs of goods for Americans, liberal use of eminent domain if it means more tax revenue, commitment to maintaining the welfare state generally and entitlement status quo specifically, opening up libel laws as a means of threatening the press (thereby chilling free speech), openness to job-killing minimum wage increases, retrenchment from America’s leadership role abroad while increasing spending on public works projects at home, “neutrality” vis-à-vis Israel versus the Arabs, continued support of Planned Parenthood and a host of other positions at odds with core conservative principles. He has undeniably shown himself to be an egotistical, dishonest philanderer prone to bullying and rashness. Many of these character defects are celebrated by his most rabid fans on social media, some of whom truly are the neo-Nazis and white supremacist caricatures that the Left loves to paint genuine conservatives as being. The invocation of “America First,” meant to troll #NeverTrump folks while tickling his most bigoted supporters should not have been lost on anyone. It is unfair to judge a person by the fans they attract, but Trump’s strongman utterings and praise for Vladimir Putin are clearly intended to stir up fans with whom no conservative would ever want to associate or be associated. Moreover, Trump’s apparent encouragement of violence and intimidation lends further credence to an inaccurate image of conservatives. Plenty of flawed human beings may make great presidents, but Trump presents a unique combination of problems substantively and stylistically. Holding your nose for Trump is qualitatively different than holding your nose for Romney or McCain.
If Trump’s administration was to discredit conservatism, would that do more damage to the cause than a Hillary presidency?

WHY I RAN FOR SENATE

***No, I’m not a career politician. (I had never run for anything until being elected to the U.S. Senate fifteen months ago, and I ran precisely because I actually want to make America great again.)
***No, I’m not a lawyer who has never created a job. (I was a business guy before becoming a college president in my hometown.)
***No, I’m not part of the Establishment. (Sheesh, I had attack ads by the lobbyist class run against me while I was on a bus tour doing 16 months of townhalls across Nebraska. Why? Precisely because I was not the preferred candidate of Washington.)
***No, I’m not concerned about political job security. (The very first thing I did upon being sworn in in January 2015 was to introduce a constitutional amendment for term limits – this didn’t exactly endear me to my new colleagues.)
***No, I’m not for open borders. (The very first official trip I took in the Senate was to observe and condemn how laughably porous the Texas/Mexican border is. See 70 tweets from @bensasse in February 2015.)
***No, I’m not a “squishy,” feel-good, grow-government moderate. (I have the 4th most-conservative voting record in the Senate: https://www.conservativereview.com/members/benjamin-sasse/ http://www.heritageactionscorecard.com/membe…/member/S001197 )

In my very first speech to the Senate, I told my colleagues that “The people despise us all.” This institution needs to get to work, not on the lobbyists’ priorities, but on the people’s: https://youtu.be/zQMoB4aUn04?t=3m8s

Now, to the question at hand: Will I pledge to vote for just any “Republican” nominee over Hillary Clinton?

Let’s begin by rejecting naïve purists: Politics has no angels. Politics is not about creating heaven on earth. Politics is simply about preserving a framework for ordered liberty – so that free people can find meaning and happiness not in politics but in their families, their neighborhoods, their work.

POLITICAL PARTIES

Now, let’s talk about political parties: parties are just tools to enact the things that we believe. Political parties are not families; they are not religions; they are not nations – they are often not even on the level of sports loyalties. They are just tools. I was not born Republican. I chose this party, for as long as it is useful.

If our Party is no longer working for the things we believe in – like defending the sanctity of life, stopping ObamaCare, protecting the Second Amendment, etc. – then people of good conscience should stop supporting that party until it is reformed.

VOTING

Now, let’s talk about voting: Voting is usually just about choosing the lesser evil of the most viable candidates.

“Usually…” But not always. Certain moments are larger. They cause us to explicitly ask: Who are we as a people? What does the way we vote here say about our shared identity? What is actually the president’s job?

THE PRESIDENT’S CORE CALLING

The president’s job is not about just mindlessly shouting the word “strong” – as if Vladimir Putin, who has been strongly bombing civilian populations in Syria the last month, is somehow a model for the American presidency. No, the president’s core calling is to “Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution.”

Before we ever get into any technical policy fights – about pipelines, or marginal tax rates, or term limits, or Medicare reimbursement codes – America is first and fundamentally about a shared Constitutional creed. America is exceptional, because she is at her heart a big, bold truth claim about human dignity, natural rights, and self-control – and therefore necessarily about limited rather than limitless government.

THE MEANING OF AMERICA

America is the most exceptional nation in the history of the world because our Constitution is the best political document that’s ever been written. It said something different than almost any other government had said before: Most governments before said that might makes right, that government decides what our rights are and that the people are just dependent subjects. Our Founders said that God gives us rights by nature, and that government is not the author or source of our rights. Government is just our shared project to secure those rights.

Government exists only because the world is fallen, and some people want to take your property, your liberty, and your life. Government is tasked with securing a framework for ordered liberty where “we the people” can in our communities voluntarily build something great together for our kids and grandkids. That’s America. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of speech – the First Amendment is the heartbeat of the American Constitution, of the American idea itself.

I had a terse conversation with a Brahman from Boston who started the conversation with:….”You could not possibly vote for Trump….” Now, I am no fan of Trump….in fact, I despise him, but I find it amusing that the woman voted for Ted Kennedy- a plagiarist, a liar, a criminal, a philanderer, and a serial harasser of women. Remember the Kennedy-Dodd “sandwich?” Ted and his pal Chris Dodd, while they were Senators once kept a waitress in a diner pinned between them and fondled her until they were separated by force and threats to call the police. And both of those distinguished legislators actually tried to run for president.

She ended the conversation by warning: ” You and the GOP and your conservatives are finished.” Now there’s an overstatement. The old GOP is the Gone Old Party-but I have great faith in the talent of many Republican legislators, and in the next few months I hope to highlight them. One of my favorites is Senator Benjamin Eric “Ben” Sasse Of Nebraska…. a college professor, an intellectual, and a true conservative.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cop-on-the-global-beat-1462400073

“Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era” By Michael Mandelbaum

Overstatement is the bane of scholarship about government. When political scientists study history, they want to do more than simply record and understand what happened: They aim to discover rules of behavior, based on the belief that political science is actually science.

In the 19th century, various theorists claimed to have discovered history’s key. Karl Marx famously said it was class conflict. Others said it was race. These ideas threw some useful light on history, but they were oversold. In the 20th century, the realpolitik school of foreign affairs stressed that nations act to increase their military and economic power. That’s a valuable insight as far as it goes, but the “realists” often overstate their case by belittling the role of ideology in world affairs. Likewise, the generally correct observation that democratic nations tend not to fight wars against one another is often embellished by democratic-peace theorists into a categorical proposition that such nations never clash.

Now, along comes an eminent foreign policy scholar, Michael Mandelbaum of Johns Hopkins University, with a thesis about how nation-building missions became America’s chief post-Cold War foreign activity, despite failure after failure. As a generalization, there’s much merit in the thesis. But the author carries it too far.

Mr. Mandelbaum’s book, “Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era” is, first, a story—a well-told, lucid, thoughtful survey of world affairs. I take issue with points throughout, but any student of the last quarter century would be well served to read this volume. CONTINUE AT SITE

European opposition to the right of Jewish people to live in Israel amounts to “chutzpah with blood in it,” an award-winning British journalist and novelist declared in a recent BBCinterview.

In conversation with correspondent Chris Cook for a “Newsnight” film on anti-Zionism, antisemitism and Israel — which aired April 29 — Jacobson condemned the continued audacity of certain Europeans in telling Jews they have no claims or rights to Israel.

Jacobson said:

When I hear people in European cultures attacking Zionism, I think, ‘What a nerve.’ We [Europe] kick you out, we say, ‘Go to hell and we don’t care where you go.’ And you’re lucky if you’re kicked out. You’re lucky if you get out. And then we [Jews] go somewhere. We go to what for a long time was considered home and what in the Jewish imagination has been home for a few thousands years. And this begs many questions I accept about the indigenous population [in Israel]. I accept all that. But the idea that we [Europe] would then say to the Jews, ‘Get the hell out of here,’ and now we’re going to tell you where you can go? I mean there’s a Jewish word for that. That’s chutzpah. That’s chutzpah with blood in it.

During the interview, Jacobson explained his understanding of Zionism and said that the Left in Britain must reeducate itself on core Zionist ideology. “Zionism was a liberation movement. It wasn’t a movement of oppression. It wasn’t a movement of colonialism,” he said. “It was the beginning of a Europe-wide movement of liberation of the Jews from themselves…and some of the [European] countries.” This movement of liberation among Jews began “long before the Holocaust” and “the Holocaust just then confirmed the need for that,” Jacobson said.

Commenting on the antisemitism scandal currently plaguing Britain’s Labour party — specifically comments made by Labour MP Naz Shah calling for Israel to be relocated to America — Jacobson said he would like to hear more officials renounce antisemitic views and reeducate themselves. Remarks like those of Shah, Jacobson said, remind Jews of the importance of Zionism.

“The reason why Jews get so upset when they hear Zionism denounced is because for a Jew, for most Jews, it still is a liberation movement and not only in the mind,” he stated. Reflecting on 1930s Europe, Jacobson said, “Where were Jews going to go? They were being kicked out everywhere… ‘Go to your own country,’ they were told. Okay. And now they’re in their own country and now get out of that. And now Naz Shah says, ‘Get out of your own country and go to America.’ Not only do we remember Zionism for the liberation movement it was, it’s a liberation movement still.”

While Jacobson readily admitted he wasn’t brought up a Zionist, he said, “I was just brought up to believe whatever you think about Israel, don’t forget you might need it one day. There isn’t a Jew living — no, there are very few Jews living — that won’t feel in some way or another that they might need it one day.”

Watch highlights of Jacobson’s interview below:

Well, the polls are in and – not to put too fine a point on it – President Obama has bombed. Last week, disregarding the convention that heads of government don’t intervene directly in the internal elections of friendly states, the president came to London to tell us to vote to stay in the European Union. He didn’t hint or suggest or imply. He told us bluntly that, if we left the EU, we’d go “to the back of the queue” when it came to signing trade deals with Washington.

How did Britain react? Not for the first time, there was a divergence between what the pundits and politicians thought, and what everyone else thought. The journalists in the handsome Foreign Office salon where Mr. Obama made his remarks instantly concluded that he had won the referendum for the Euro-enthusiasts. David Cameron’s aides began to brief that it was all over bar the applause, that they would storm to victory by 60-40 or more.

The next day’s newspapers unanimously predicted a further swing to the Remain side, which had already been enjoying a bit of a bounce. Then, one after another, the numbers started to come in. Of the four opinion surveys that have been published at the time of writing, two put the Remain side slightly ahead, and two put Leave slightly ahead; but all four show a swing to Leave. Ordinary people, it seems, don’t like being told what to do by foreign politicians – even popular ones.

Oh yes: President Obama is popular in Britain. I realize that saying so will irk some American conservatives. Believe me, I have been through the same thing in reverse. For years, American friends, including many who were in no sense on the Left, would tell me, “Aw, man, I love that guy Blair.” To many Brits – indeed, to foreigners generally – Obama is still the telegenic mixed-race candidate who opposed the Iraq war. Nothing he has said or done since has really registered.

But, although people admire Obama, they hate being hectored. The president’s choice of vocabulary – when is the last time you heard an American say “back of the queue”? – made Brits wonder whether he was reciting lines drawn up in Downing Street. In other words, they suspected that David Cameron was using foreign leaders to bully and threaten his own country.

For the past 25 years, arms control has been a key driving force behind how many Americans view our relationship with Russia. In that period the two countries have agreed to the START I, Moscow, and New Start nuclear weapons agreements that has successfully reduced the strategic warhead arsenals on both sides by over 90%.

But relations between Moscow and Washington are not good and since the 2010 New Start agreement, the Russians have flatly rejected discussions of further reductions in nuclear weapons. The Russians have also stopped cooperation under the Nunn-Lugar agreement, named after two US Senators that put together a program to safeguard and eliminate nuclear material and warheads in the former Soviet Union subsequent to the end of the Cold War. Other agreements between the two countries have also been put on ice by Russian President Putin’s government.

At a seminar on Capitol Hill on April 20, 2016, two distinguished experts-Steve Blank of the American Foreign Policy Council and Mark Schneider of the National Institute of Public Policy-spoke about the need to refocus our relationship with Russia away from arms control and more towards managing an increasingly troublesome and dangerous relationship. A key part of that strategy must be the full modernization of our nuclear deterrent, they both emphasized.

Most worrisome said the two experts was Russia’s massive build-up of new nuclear weapons, including three new classes of land based missiles, a new submarine launched ballistic missile, and a new stealthy strategic bomber and accompanying air launched cruise missile including a hypersonic variant. This build-up will be almost completely completed by 2021-2 prior to the United States fielding a single modern element of its own strategic nuclear deterrent which is the oldest ever.

Brace yourselves! Tomorrow will elicit caterwauling tears from the left, the Eurotrash, and politicians and pundits. Even in bonny England, which contributed so mightily to the extermination of the Jews by closing the gates of Palestine in 1939, there will be a lot of tut-tutting. And, I predict, those nations which participated in the infamous Evian Conference of 1938 at which only the Dominican Republic offered to take desperate Jewish immigrants, will puff their chests and pontificate against racism and genocide.
Well, spare me. During the Holocaust one in every three Jews in the world were killed. The rough total of victims is 6,000,000 souls. Only three years after the end of World War 2, Israel became a state. It is a democracy with advanced institutions, with start-ups, tech companies and scientific and medical advances that contribute to the health and advancement of the entire world.
And today, 6.333,000 Jews live in Israel…..the largest Jewish population in the world- and growing, thanks to the rampant anti-Semitism in Europe.
Only unconditional support for Israel- its moral, historical, religious, and legitimate rights- is the correct tribute to the Holocaust victims who died with the words “Hear Oh Israel” in their last moment.
rsk

Lafcadio Hearn is a writer unusually hard to classify, certainly in terms of the conventional, institutionalised categories of genealogy, geography or language. Hearn could be claimed as a major American, Japanese, Irish or Greek author, or all of these at once, as well as being a notable translator into English of French, Japanese and Chinese.

Long before globalisation became a word in common use and “world literature” was established as a field of academic study, Hearn was a genuine writer-without-borders, making him a singular figure from the past who is our contemporary, or perhaps the future. He ranged widely, and wherever he went in the world he transformed it into text. A true literary adventurer, Lafcadio Hearn lived, and travelled, by the word. It seems he could have lived anywhere and written about anything.

Born in 1850 in the Ionian Islands to a Greek mother and Irish father, Hearn grew up mostly in Ireland, France and England and lived his adult life in parts of the world which were much more remote from one other in physical terms and in shared understanding than is the case today. Among Anglophone writers, Hearn was even more widely travelled than the likes of Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson and, for that matter, Mark Twain, who met Hearn in New Orleans in 1882 and with whom he toured.

In the English-speaking world, Hearn today perhaps is best known as a member of the generation of writers—another was George Washington Cable—that put New Orleans on the literary map. Hearn lived in the city for a decade before settling in Japan, where he was to spend the rest of his life, becoming a citizen and taking a Japanese name in 1895. Today, Yakumo Koizumi, as Hearn became known, is regarded as the nearest thing to a major Japanese writer that a non-native could have become.

Before his arrival in New Orleans in 1877 Hearn wrote extensively about places as various as Martinique, China and the United States. While working as a journalist in Cincinnati in the early 1870s, Hearn married a former slave, Aletha Foley, in defiance of the law at that time in Ohio forbidding so-called miscegenation, and lived illegally with her and her child from a previous relationship. The union, the revelation of which resulted in Hearn being fired from his job at the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer on the grounds of “deplorable moral habits”, ended in separation after three years.

Many years later, in 1891, while living in Japan, Hearn married a much younger woman, the daughter of a samurai family in Matsue. The couple had a son and a daughter. Hearn died in Tokyo in 1904 at the age of fifty-four.

There are permanent memorials to Hearn in four countries: Greece, Ireland, Japan and the United States. A museum at his birthplace in Lefkada opened in 2014, the same year that the Lafcadio Hearn Gardens opened in County Waterford. In Japan, a Lafcadio Hearn Memorial Museum maintained in his former residence in Kumamoto attracts around 150,000 visitors a year, according to the museum website.

There is also a house in New Orleans in Cleveland Avenue not far from the St Louis Cemetery, a nineteenth-century townhouse in a now isolated spot in what I was told by locals, when I expressed a wish to visit it, is a tricky part of town on the fringe of the CBD. The Lafcadio Hearn House, in which Hearn took a room (though it is not known for sure which he occupied), was added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 2006 after recognition of its significance by the City Council of New Orleans in 2004. (The Cleveland Avenue house was saved from destruction and restored by Pat Swilling, a property developer and former linebacker for the New Orleans Saints NFL team who became a Louisiana state legislator after retiring from professional football. Only in New Orleans.)