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Repeal the Budget Control Act The ‘sequester’ hasn’t reduced spending, but it has crippled the military’s ability to plan. by Tom Cotton

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

Mr. Cotton, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Arkansas.

‘We need Congress to do its job,” President Trump said Saturday at the commissioning ceremony for the USS Gerald R. Ford. “Pass the budget that provides for higher, stable and predictable funding levels for our military needs that our fighting men and women deserve.”

The president is right, but what’s standing in the way is the Budget Control Act of 2011. So why don’t we repeal it already?

In retrospect, the Budget Control Act of 2011 was ill-conceived from the start. Rather than attack America’s spending problem at its root, the law only clipped a few stray leaves off the branches. In the early Obama years, the federal deficit spiraled out of control, reaching $1.4 trillion in 2009 before settling in around $1.3 trillion for the next two years. Entitlement programs—which, combined with interest payments on the national debt, make up two-thirds of federal spending—are the key driver of our long-term debt challenges.

But President Obama refused to address this problem and instead made a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner —neither of whom is in office today—to squeeze some savings from the remaining one-third of the budget, what’s called “discretionary” spending.

The BCA put budget caps on discretionary spending for 10 years, ending in 2021, and established a 12-member congressional “supercommittee” to find at least $1.2 trillion in additional savings over that same 10-year window. The law stipulated that should the committee fail, there would be an across-the-board cut, or “sequester,” to keep spending below the caps. Half the savings would come from the defense budget and half from nondefense spending, meaning the military would absorb 50% of the cuts, even though it accounts for only about 16% of all spending.

The BCA proved flawed in execution as well. To everyone’s dismay and no one’s surprise, the supercommittee deadlocked. In 2013, a sequester took effect, though the cuts in overall spending were short-lived.

It’s true that after the BCA became law, there was a modest decline in federal spending: from $3.6 trillion in 2011 to $3.5 trillion in 2012 and $3.4 trillion in 2013. But this diet proved as short-lived as most others. By 2015, federal spending was back to $3.6 trillion, and it’s been growing ever since.

Why? Because in 2013 and again two years later, Congress raised the BCA’s budget caps. We already know how 2017 will end. In September, Congress will pass what’s known as a continuing resolution, which essentially freezes spending at last year’s levels. Later in the fall, congressional leaders will meet behind closed doors to write a two-year budget deal that again raises the BCA caps. In December, Congress will pass a massive omnibus spending bill with all sorts of not-so-goodies slipped in undetected. Then, in December 2018, there’ll be another omnibus, and the cycle will likely repeat in 2019-20.

How do we know? Because that’s exactly what Congress did in 2013-14 and in 2015-16.

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Trump’s Sessions Abuse His demand that his AG prosecute Clinton crosses a red line.

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

Donald Trump won’t let even success intrude on his presidential ego, so naturally he couldn’t let the Senate’s health-care victory stand as the story of Tuesday. Instead he continued to demean Jeff Sessions, and in the process he is harming himself, alienating allies, and crossing dangerous legal and political lines.

For a week President Trump has waged an unseemly campaign against his own Attorney General, telling the New York Times he wished he’d never hired him, unleashing a tweet storm that has accused Mr. Sessions of being “beleaguered” and “weak.”

Mr. Trump is clearly frustrated that the Russia collusion story is engulfing his own family. But that frustration has now taken a darker turn. This humiliation campaign is clearly aimed at forcing a Sessions resignation. Any Cabinet appointee serves at a President’s pleasure, but the deeply troubling aspect of this exercise is Mr. Trump’s hardly veiled intention: the commencement of a criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton by the Department of Justice and the firing of special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

On Tuesday morning Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Sessions “has taken a very weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes. ” This might play well with the red-meat crowd in Mr. Trump’s Twitterverse, but Sen. Lindsey Graham was explicit and correct in describing the legal line Mr. Trump had crossed.

“Prosecutorial decisions should be based on applying facts to the law without hint of political motivation,” Sen. Graham said. “To do otherwise is to run away from the long-standing American tradition of separating the law from politics regardless of party.” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis also came to Mr. Sessions’ defense, citing his “unwavering commitment to the rule of law,” and Sen. Richard Shelby called him “a man of integrity.”

We will put the problem more bluntly. Mr. Trump’s suggestion that his Attorney General prosecute his defeated opponent is the kind of crude political retribution one expects in Erdogan’s Turkey or Duterte’s Philippines.

Mr. Sessions had no way of knowing when he accepted the AG job that the Russia probe would become the firestorm it has, or that his belated memory of brief, public meetings with the Russian ambassador in 2016 would require his recusal from supervising the probe. He was right to step back once the facts were out, not the least to shelter the Trump Administration from any suspicion of a politicized investigation.

If Mr. Trump wants someone to blame for the existence of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, he can pick up a mirror. That open-ended probe is the direct result of Mr. Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey months into his Russia investigation and then tweet that Mr. Comey should hope there are no Oval Office tapes of their meeting. That threat forced Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel.

As a candidate, Mr. Trump thought he could say anything and get away with it, and most often he did. A sitting President is not a one-man show. He needs allies in politics and allies to govern. Mr. Trump’s treatment of Jeff Sessions makes clear that he will desert both at peril to his Presidency.

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Restoring the Republic Means Reimposing ‘Regular Order’By Angelo Codevilla

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

The Republican congressional leadership’s failure to repeal Obamacare has led to suggestions that, perhaps, they should have approached their task through “regular order.” Since Congress has not operated under “regular order” at all since 2006, and with decreasing frequency in the decades before that, younger readers, especially, may be excused for not knowing what these procedures are. Far from being arcane ephemera, they are the indispensable catalyst that makes American government responsible to the people. Casting aside “regular order” was essential to the rise of the unaccountable administrative state and the near-sovereignty of party leaders, lobbyists, and bureaucrats.https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/23/restoring-republic-means-reimposing-regular-order/

Herewith, a summary of what “regular order” means, what purpose it once served, why and how it was shunned, and of what has ensued.

More than a half century ago, Daniel Berman’s college-level text, A Bill Becomes a Law, the template for K-12 civics courses, described more or less how Congress had operated since the 1790s. Bills introduced in House or Senate would be sent to the relevant committee, and thence to the proper sub-committee. The ones thought worthy—including those funding the federal government’s operations—would be the subject of public hearings.

The committees’ partisan majorities and minorities would try to stage manage the hearings to make the best case for the outcomes they desired on each point. In the process, public support would strengthen or wane for particular items and approaches. Then, each subcommittee’s public “mark up” of its portion of the bill would reflect the members’ votes and compromises on each item.

Once the several subcommittee products had made their way to the full committee, the same process would repeat. Votes on contested items, and on the whole bill, would end the full committee’s “mark up” and send the bill to be scheduled for action on the House or Senate floor.

Just to get to this point, every element of every bill had to be exposed to public scrutiny. Senators or congressmen on the committees offered amendments and had to vote on the record for each part of the bill. On the House floor, amendments would be limited. But in the Senate, there could be—and often were—“amendments by way of substitution.” By the time the “yeas and nays” were tallied on the final bill, just about all members had had as much of a crack at it as they wanted. The final product would be the result of countless compromises “on the record.”

In 2017, it is useful to recall that this process used to apply to each and every government activity that required a dollar from the U.S. treasury, each and every year. For the past 11 years, however, all the money drawn from the treasury have come from single “continuing resolutions” (CRs) or “omnibus” bills, drafted in secret by “leadership” staffers, executive branch officials, and lobbyists, on which there have been no hearings and which few members have ever read, and on which few if any amendments have been allowed. These “Cromnibuses,” served up as the government runs out of spending authority, end up being passed by the majority party’s near unanimity.

While this is consistent with the Constitution’s words, “no money shall be drawn from the treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law,” it wholly reverses their intent. Individual congressmen and senators are cut out of the legislative process. The voters can no longer hold each accountable. When Republican leaders make common cause with the Democratic Party against Republicans who won’t go along, whom they accuse of “shutting down the government,” they create a bipartisan ruling party. That makes both parties equally responsible, and ensures that changing your vote from D to R or R to D won’t make a difference.

Senators and congressmen abandoned regular order because it hinders their craving for power and flight from responsibility. Voters elect them to vote accountably on important matters. But since such matters are almost inevitably divisive, they do their utmost to avoid voting on them.

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My Response to Bret Stephens Do your colleagues at the New York Times believe in the moral superiority of the West? By Dennis Prager

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

Bret Stephens devoted his New York Times column last week to admonishing me for my tweet of two weeks ago and critiquing my follow-up column last week explaining the tweet.

The tweet reads: “The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.”

As he wrote the column as a “Dear Dennis” letter to me, I will respond in kind.

Dear Bret:

I’ll try to respond to the most salient arguments you made. I’ll begin with one of the most troubling.

“Wiser conservatives — and I count you among them, Dennis — also know that when we speak of ‘the West,’ what we’re talking about is a particular strain within it. Marx and Lenin, after all, are also part of the Western tradition, as are Heidegger and Hitler.”

I was taken aback that such a serious thinker could write that nihilist Communists and nihilist Nazis are all “part of the Western tradition.”

That’s what the vast majority of professors in the social sciences teach: There’s nothing morally superior about Western civilization — it’s as much about Hitler and Lenin as it is about Moses and Jefferson. And, anyway, Moses never existed and Jefferson was a slaveholding rapist. Among those professors’ students are virtually all those who dominate the Western news media.

Am I wrong? Do you think that your colleagues at the Times or the Washington Post or Le Monde or the BBC believe in the moral superiority of the West?

Of course they don’t. Most believe in multiculturalism — the doctrine that all cultures are equal — and it is therefore nothing more than white racism to hold that Western civilization is superior. Didn’t nearly all of your (non-conservative) colleagues who commented on President Trump’s speech in Warsaw call it a dog whistle to white supremacists?

On those grounds alone, my tweet was accurate.

I am surprised that anyone — especially you — thinks that Putin’s Russia poses a greater threat to the survival of Western civilization than does the Western Left. No external force can destroy a civilization — especially one as powerful and wealthy as the West — as effectively as an internal one. The Western Left (not Western liberals) is such a force. Western liberals always adored the West: FDR, for example, repeatedly spoke about defending not only Western civilization but also “Christian civilization.”

I was also stunned by this comment: “I’m not sure that Justin Trudeau declaring there is ‘no core identity, no mainstream in Canada’ counts as a Spenglerian moment in the story of Western decline.”

The prime minister of Canada announces with pride that his country has no core identity, and you don’t think that counts as an example of a declining civilization?

Another upsetting passage: “To suggest that Vladimir Putin is a distant nuisance but Maggie Haberman or David Sanger is an existential threat to our civilization isn’t seeing things plain, to put it mildly.”

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The Korean Games of Thrones The time for pious American lectures is over. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

North Korea

North Korea seeks respect on the cheap — and attention and cash — that it cannot win the old-fashioned way by the long, hard work of achieving a dynamic economy or an influential culture.

Over the last quarter-century, it has proved that feigned madness and the road to nuclear weapons (Pakistan is another good example) provide a shortcut to all three goals: It is now feared, in the news, and likely to receive another round of Western danegeld.

Setting off a bomb (as opposed to merely bragging that it soon will do so) seems to stave off a Western-style preemption of the sort that eventually liquidated Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi.

Unlike both Iraq and Libya, North Korea had two other indemnity policies that so far have ruled out Western preemption: 1) a nuclear neighboring patron like China, and 2) a nihilistic conventional artillery and missile arsenal aimed at a nearby rich Westernized South Korea. An outmoded, conventional, short-ranged asset would be largely irrelevant in most military landscapes, but it is not when based just 35 miles from Seoul (which exchanged hands five times from the beginning to end of the Korean War). Consequently, the unpredictability of Beijing and the possibility of an attack within hours on Seoul — which would end up like Dresden in 1945 — enhanced North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal.

What then is North Korea’s ultimate objective?

Most obviously, a permanent landscape of crisis, in which it can periodically test a more sophisticated bomb than the last, threaten to incinerate a Western city, and launch a missile into Western airspace. If done symphonically, periodic “crises” are then created, envoys pour into the region, the U.N. goes into panic mode, the EU weighs in, “wise men” meet, China is jawboned — and a brand-new, revised, updated, and superior aid “package” is delivered, with stern warnings not to try the con again.

Thus the latest Korean Caligula gets global attention, his praetorian guard are assured of their continued privilege, and China offers its Cheshire smile to signal that Armageddon is avoided.

This shakedown can continue indefinitely — or at least until too many other countries (see Iran) emulate North Korea and too many players make the game too expensive and too dangerous. Or it can continue until a true breakthrough in missile defense nullifies all North Korean offensive capability, or until China sees the growing costs outweighing its heretofore undeniable benefits.

China

As a rule, China finds it worthwhile to exploit anything that proves unsettling to Washington, that ties down American conventional troops and strategic assets in Asia and the Pacific, and that can potentially create problems in Asian democracies. China clearly enjoys the subterranean tensions among Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

China plays the proverbial no-good neighbor (I’ve known one or two) who cuts loose the tether on his pit bull, soon hears a commotion in your environs, wanders over to your farm to express both shock and regret that his man-biter “somehow” got loose, sort of apologizes, and then, once you get the message, leashes the crazed dog and trots home — until he seeks even greater chaos next time.

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Jerusalem’s Security Visionary The Temple Mount crisis obscures Major General Yoram Halevy’s cutting-edge counterterror tactics and his impressive results. Judith Miller

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

On July 14, for the first time in decades, Israel closed the Temple Mount, a site holy to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, on a Friday—Islam’s holy day. The move was made after three Arab Israelis opened fire at the site, killing two Israeli policemen. The Muslim terrorists, Israeli citizens who had used automatic weapons that they apparently carried in a knapsack to the Temple Mount and hid at the holy site prior to the attack, were tracked down and killed by Israeli police. By Sunday, July 16, the Temple Mount had reopened, with temporary metal detectors and cameras in place to screen worshipers.

While Israelis initially considered the installation of magnometers and cameras a non-controversial step aimed at boosting security for all who pray at the site, others—Palestinian, Jordanian, and Muslim— condemned what they called Israel’s effort to change the site’s political status and consolidate control. The ensuing protests have left six dead in Israel— three Palestinian protesters and three Israeli settlers who were stabbed to death in their homes. On Monday evening, Israelis and Arab officials edged closer to a deal to resolve the crisis.

The recent spate of violence is a grim reminder of age-old tensions—and yet, in Israel, an increasingly rare one. In a region beset by war and political turmoil, Israel—and its capital—have remained relatively calm. That’s thanks in part to radical changes in counterterrorism policing led by Major General Yoram Halevy, 54, commander of the Israeli Police’s Jerusalem district. One of the force’s most experienced officers, Halevy has for the past 17 months overseen the police’s counterterrorism mission in Jerusalem, including the roughly 5,000 members of the Israeli Police and Border Police operating in the city.

In an interview only days before the Temple Mount attack, he discussed some of his reforms publicly for the first time and explained why he thinks they are reducing both violence and civilian tolerance of it.

The numbers are impressive. In 2015, there were 33 stabbings in the city; this year, until the latest violence, there have been just six. In 2015, Jerusalem reported six deaths due to deliberate car-rammings; this year, one person has died in such incidents. While 43 terrorist attacks occurred in the city in 2015, only eight so far have taken place in 2017. Within the past year, stone-throwing incidents have dropped by 15 percent. Despite the Temple Mount attack, “these are dramatic reductions,” Halevy said.

Such a record under the most challenging of circumstances holds potentially valuable lessons for other cities targeted by terror. “Anyone can chase down and arrest terrorists. That’s the easy part,” said Halevy, the Jerusalem-born son of Iraqi Jews who speaks fluent Arabic and worked undercover for the police in the Palestinian community for several years. “Denying terrorists the civilian support they crave and need to operate is a far tougher challenge.”

The most effective way of defusing Palestinian hatred of the Israelis who, in their view, occupy their capital and country is to “empower the silent civilian majority which is sick and tired of the violence, but afraid to say so.” This, Halevy told me through a translator, though he speaks some English, is his overarching goal.

Few cities are as tempting a terrorist target as Jerusalem. Fought over for centuries, destroyed at least twice, besieged some 23 times, and recaptured 44 times, Jerusalem is the heart of the modern struggle between two peoples who claim the same land. The city remains demographically divided between Israelis concentrated in the west and Palestinians in the east. But it has not been physically split since the 1967 war, when Israel wrested control of East Jerusalem from Jordan, which still helps administer sensitive holy sites like the Temple Mount. As such, Jerusalem has been the scene of persistent protests, strikes, and terrorist attacks—even as 10 million tourists visit each year.

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Palestinians: Abbas’s Security Doubletalk by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

So, who is taking Abbas’s threats to suspend security cooperation with Israel seriously? Not Israel, not the Americans, and certainly not many Palestinians. Abbas is caught between two bad places — both of his very own making. On the one hand, he knows that security cooperation with Israel is his only insurance policy to remain in power and alive. On the other hand, Abbas is acutely aware of his status among many Palestinians, who would be more than happy to replace him with someone more… to their taste.

Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj’s message was directed to the Israeli public with the goal of pressuring the Israeli government and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cave in to Palestinian threats and remove the metal detectors. This is why Faraj chose an Israeli journalist who is known to be sympathetic to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. Faraj and his boss — Abbas — wanted to scare the Israeli public and turn them against Netanyahu by telling them that Palestinians will stop security coordination with Israel unless the metal detectors were removed.

Abbas is still playing his old game. Out of one side of his mouth he claimed a desire for a peaceful solution to the metal detectors crisis, and out of the other side, he egged his people on to murder more and more Israelis. As it turns out, whether security coordination is “sacred” or “suspended,” Abbas is in it for one person only: himself.

The conflicting reports emerging from Ramallah concerning security coordination with Israel serve as yet another reminder of the Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders’ astounding hypocrisy.

Israel, for its part, has brushed aside reports about a suspension of the security coordination with the Palestinian Authority as yet another Abbas gimmick.

It is far from lost on Mahmoud Abbas and his PA that such security coordination is what stands between a very hungry Hamas and Abbas served up on toast for breakfast.

In the past, Abbas has rightly and reasonably described security coordination with Israel as “sacred,” saying he will never succumb to pressure from Hamas and many Palestinians to stop working with Israel in the West Bank.

“I wish to say this openly – security coordination (with Israel) is sacred and will continue regardless of our political differences,” Abbas declared in 2014.

Abbas’s statement came amid reports that Israeli intelligence had thwarted a Hamas assassination plot against him in 2014.

Security coordination is indeed sacred for the Palestinian Authority president — not to mention his family members and senior officials, who without such cooperation would also be dead, imprisoned or forced into exile. Abbas has yet to recover from the nightmare of 2007, when Hamas brought about the collapse of his Palestinian Authority and violently seized control over the Gaza Strip. The last thing Abbas wants is a recurrence of that horrific scenario; thousands of his police officers and Fatah loyalists were severely humiliated, and many either lynched in public, thrown off the high floors of buildings, imprisoned, or forced either to surrender or flee to Israel and Egypt.

The latest fiasco pertaining to the issue of security coordination with Israel began on July 21, when Abbas announced his decision to “freeze contacts with the occupation state (Israel) on all levels.” Abbas’s announcement came during a meeting of Palestinian leaders in Ramallah to discuss the crisis surrounding Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This decision came in response to a shooting attack on July 14 carried out by three Arab Israelis that resulted in the murder of two Israeli police officers.

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Norway’s Political Elites Cheer for Islam by Fjordman

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

If current levels of immigration continue, native Norwegians will be a minority in their own country within a few decades. In some parts of inner city Oslo, they are already a minority.

Ethnic Norwegians living in these areas are called “infidel whore.” Many feel as if they are strangers in what once was their own country. Yet the politicians and mass media are not interested. The ruling elites are far more interested in cases of alleged “Islamophobia” or “white racism.”

A report commissioned by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) suggested in early 2017 that the Muslim Brotherhood is secretly leading Islamic groups in building a parallel society in Sweden by infiltrating organizations and political parties in the country.

Ramadan is supposed to be an Islamic holy month of fasting. In reality, as one is thought to be doubly rewarded in paradise for deeds “fighting corruption” during Ramadan, it is a month of “jihad and victories.”

It therefore nearly always leads to an increase in jihad violence in different parts of the world.

Breitbart News counted at least 1,620 people killed by militant Muslims during Ramadan in 2017. Most of these were killed in Muslim-majority countries. However, deadly Islamic terrorist attacks also hit Western cities such as London.

When dealing with Muslim terror, it can be useful to separate it into two different, categories: Big Terror and Little Terror. Big Terror includes mass casualty attacks such as suicide bombings. Little Terror includes other forms of violence and harassment, such as torching cars, that have a negative impact on daily life. Both forms of terror are intended to spread fear.

France suffers from tens of thousands of car fires every year. Sweden, which has the highest number of Muslim immigrants in Scandinavia, also has the highest number of car fires. In the Muslim-dominated Swedish city of Malmö, cars are now torched on a nearly daily basis.

In June 2017 during Ramadan, dozens of instances of wheel-tampering were reported in different police districts in Denmark. In all cases, the lug nuts that secure the wheels of a car had been loosened. One motorist was driving along when he heard an odd noise. Shortly afterward, his left front wheel appeared in front of the car and rolled off into a field. The car ended up in a ditch; the man, in a hospital. The police have so far been unable to find the perpetrators. They have been advising all motorists thoroughly to check their lug nuts before starting their car.

In June 2017, Oslo, Norway, experienced a significant number of car fires within a few weeks. Officially, the police claimed they could see no connection between these fires, which spiked during Ramadan and mainly took place in Muslim-dominated areas. Anonymous sources claimed that a group of young immigrant men – who had apparently been complicit in the burnings — had shouted: “We’re going to make Malmö!”

If current levels of immigration continue, native Norwegians will be a minority in their own country within a few decades. In some parts of inner-city Oslo, they are already a minority. The author Halvor Fosli, in 2015, published a book in which he interviewed ethnic Norwegians living in those areas. They are called “infidel whore.” Many feel as if they are strangers in what once was their own country. Yet the politicians and mass media are not interested. The ruling elites are far more interested in cases of alleged “Islamophobia” or “white racism.”

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Jared Kushner Rebuts Fake News Accounts of his Contacts with Russians Detailed public statement contrasts with sketchy news reports based on anonymous sources. Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

Innuendos and wild speculation passing as “objective” reporting, based on leaks from anonymous sources, have become the stock in trade of the fake media. Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has been one of the principal targets of the media campaign to discredit the Trump administration. Silent for months in the face of mounting speculation of his possible role in alleged collusion of the Trump campaign with Russia, Kushner has finally sought to set the record straight. This week he is meeting with congressional staffers and lawmakers to discuss in detail his activities during the campaign and transition periods, particularly his contacts with Russian officials.

In a statement issued ahead of his closed-door interview with Senate intelligence committee staffers, Kushner said, “I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government. I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.” He provided details on several contacts he had with Russians during his father-in-law’s campaign and transition, none of which he deemed to be improper.

Kushner’s statement provides valuable context to the meetings in which he participated. He pointed out that during the course of the campaign, he had contacts with people from approximately 15 countries, noting that he “must have received thousands of calls, letters and emails from people looking to talk or meet on a variety of issues and topics, including hundreds from outside the United States.” Russia was one of those countries.

Kushner recalled his first contact with Russia’s ambassador to the United States as having occurred at the Washington, D.C. Mayflower Hotel in April 2016. His father-in-law, then-candidate Donald Trump, was giving a major foreign policy speech.

Some in the media have sought to portray Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ own brief encounter with the Russian ambassador to the United States at the Mayflower Hotel as something more sinister than it really was. NBC breathlessly reported last month that Kushner too was involved in the encounter, along with then-candidate Donald Trump. Citing “multiple” anonymous sources, NBC said they were part of “a small gathering with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak and other diplomats at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.” NBC further characterized this gathering as “some sort of private encounter.”

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Western Values Are Superior The idea of the sacredness of the individual is rare in human history — and worth defending. Walter Williams

Posted By on July 25th, 2017

Here’s part of President Donald Trump’s speech in Poland: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

After this speech, which was warmly received by Poles, the president encountered predictable criticism. Most of the criticism reflected gross ignorance and dishonesty.

One example of that ignorance was penned in the Atlantic magazine by Peter Beinart, a contributing editor and associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York. Beinart said, “Donald Trump referred 10 times to ‘the West’ and five times to ‘our civilization.’ His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means.” He added, “The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white.”

Intellectual elites argue that different cultures and their values are morally equivalent. That’s ludicrous. Western culture and values are superior to all others. I have a few questions for those who’d claim that such a statement is untrue or smacks of racism and Eurocentrism. Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan; is it morally equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limitations placed on women, such as prohibitions on driving, employment and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning. Thieves face the punishment of having their hands severed. Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in some countries. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to Western values?

During his speech, Trump asked several vital questions. “Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” There’s no question that the West has the military might to protect itself. The question is whether we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation.

Much of the Muslim world is at war with Western civilization. Islamists’ use multiculturalism as a foot in the door to attack Western and Christian values from the inside. Much of that attack has its roots on college campuses among the intellectual elite who indoctrinate our youth. Multiculturalism has not yet done the damage in the U.S. that it has in Western European countries — such as England, France and Germany — but it’s on its way.

My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell reveals some of the problem. He says, “Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard themselves as far superior to the ‘infidels’ of the West, while everything they see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise.” Sowell adds, “Nowhere have whole peoples seen their situation reversed more visibly or more painfully than the peoples of the Islamic world.” Few people, such as Persians and Arabs, once at the top of civilization, accept their reversals of fortune gracefully. Moreover, they don’t blame themselves and their culture. They blame the West.

By the way, one need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. One just has to accept the sanctity of the individual above all else.