Trump’s Lust for Respect Makes National Unity Implausible

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“For many years,” Donald Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon, “our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!”

As persuasive as the ALL CAPS are, I have my doubts.

Put aside Trump’s specific shortcomings for the moment. The presidency has become ill-suited to the task of unifying the country, because the presidency has become the biggest prize and totem in the culture war. Like the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in England, if one side controls the throne, it is seen as an insult and threat to the other. And whoever holds the throne is seen as a kind of personal Protector of the Realm.

The political parties have been utterly complicit in the process. Exploiting social media and other technologies, Republicans and Democrats shape their messages around the assumption that they — and they alone — have legitimate ownership of America’s authentic best self. That’s why whichever party is out of power promises to “take back America” — as if the other side were foreign invaders.

Barack Obama was elected in 2008 in no small part to fulfill the promise of his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address: to banish the slicing and dicing of America into Red States and Blue States. (Read more from “Trump’s Lust for Respect Makes National Unity Implausible” HERE)

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Are You Really More Prejudiced Than You Think?

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How prejudiced are you? Wait — don’t answer, you’ll get it wrong. You’re more prejudiced than you think. You have implicit, automatic associations between gender and certain career tracks. You prefer lighter skin tones. You don’t know how much your biases influence you every day, but you can take a test that will tell you the dark truth about yourself.

It’s called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT. Harvard University has been running “Project Implicit” since 1998, testing people’s hidden attitudes toward gender, race and ethnicity. Millions have taken the test. It comes in several versions, it only takes about ten minutes, and it’s worth giving it a try to see what makes it such a big deal.

The Enormous Influence of the IAT

A big deal it certainly is. Scary, too. President Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has prepared a white paper telling us,

Research demonstrates that most people hold unconscious, implicit assumptions that influence their judgments and perceptions of others. Implicit bias manifests in expectations or assumptions about physical or social characteristics dictated by stereotypes that are based on a person’s race, gender, age, or ethnicity.

Sounds pretty scientific — who could argue with language like that? And the effects are grim:

People who intend to be fair, and believe they are egalitarian, apply biases unintentionally. Some behaviors that result from implicit bias manifest in actions, and others are embodied in the absence of action; either can reduce the quality of the workforce and create an unfair and destructive environment.

The IAT’s influence has been enormous:

It’s been used to explain why people have doubted Barack Obama was truly American.

It’s also been used to explain why minorities are treated differently in the courtroom: “There is no reason to presume attorney exceptionalism in terms of implicit biases.… If this is right, there is plenty of reason to be concerned about how these biases might play out in practice.” The same paper raised a strong warning about implicit biases among judges.

It’s been used to explain “Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men”; for as we are told, “An impressive body of psychological research suggests that the men who killed Brown and Martin need not have been conscious, overt racists to do what they did.” Time magazine adds, “That’s little comfort to the grieving families of the growing list of victims — and no good at all to the young men who have been lost. But it at least might help us understand how we came to such tragedy.”

We’re all rotten scoundrels, the IAT tells us. Well, maybe not all of us. Chris Mooney, writing in the Washington Post points fingers at one group in particular: “whites are biased and they don’t even know it.”

The IAT Should be stunning, But Isn’t

But what is this “clear evidence of implicit bias,” anyway? Turns out there’s probably nothing there, according to a January 5 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Nothing. It’s lousy science.

Researchers from three universities reviewed almost 500 studies across 20 years and found there was very little evidence that the biases supposedly measured in the IAT have anything to do with behavior. The findings, says one co-author of their 2016 review article, “should be stunning.”

I chose the words “supposedly measured” advisedly. As psychologist Hart Blanton explained in an interview with the Chronicle,

It’s possible to be labeled “moderately biased” on your first test and “slightly biased” on the next. …”The IAT isn’t even predicting the IAT two weeks later,” Blanton says. “How can a test predict behavior if it can’t even predict itself?”

In grad school they taught me no measurement could be more useful (“valid”) than it is reliable; and reliability has to do with how consistently it measures. A yardstick is both valid and reliable for measuring distances up to three feet — unless it’s made by marking inches off on a long rubber band.

That would be worthless, not because it lacks the right kind of measurement, and not even because you couldn’t get lucky with it and land on the right answer sometimes. It’s because you’d get a different answer every time, with no way of knowing which one was right, if any. That’s what Blanton says is going on with the IAT.

If May Look Like Science, But It Still Isn’t Necessarily Science

Naturally, the Project Implicit team thinks they’re producing real science. They could be right — there’s still room for debate — but this latest review casts considerable doubt on it (not for the first time, by the way). Nevertheless the White House tells us with unabashed assurance, “Research demonstrates that most people hold unconscious, implicit assumptions that influence their judgments and perceptions of others.”

I could cite other research — there’s plenty — demonstrating that people are often too quick to trust whatever looks like science to them. The IAT has all the right bells and whistles, and an impressive list of Ph.D.s on its supporting team. So if it says you’re a bigot, you’re a bigot, right?

Wrong. From the 2016 review paper: “We found little evidence that changes in implicit bias mediate [have anything detectable to do with] changes in explicit bias or behavior.” And what difference does it make if some test — completely divorced from real human relationships — says you’re unconsciously biased? What counts is how you actually treat other people. Apparently the IAT doesn’t have much to tell us a thing about that.

But still it shows why cops shoot blacks, doesn’t it? No, wrong again:

Despite clear evidence of implicit bias against Black suspects, officers were slower to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White suspects, and they were less likely to shoot unarmed Black suspects than unarmed White suspects.

Explicit Biases In Operation

Here’s the real lesson. Forget implicit biases. Think explicit ones instead. We don’t need teams of Ph.D.s and arcane tests to expose them. They’re right out in the open. One of them is liberals’ belief that discrimination is the root of all evil; and if you’re not displaying discrimination on the surface, it must be there anyway, especially if you’re white — And we’re gonna dig it out of you, you bigot, you!

I can’t prove it, but I can’t help wondering whether that sentiment explains the IAT’s huge popularity and interest. Never mind its poor record for reliability: it supports the liberals’ narrative of inequality and discrimination.

By Their Fruits

Prying into the unconscious may be an interesting pastime, except it’s way too easy to fool ourselves into thinking we know what’s there when we don’t. God knows what’s going on deep inside everyone’s hearts. For the rest of us, the better rule is, “You will know them by their fruits.” (For more from the author of “Trump’s Lust for Respect Makes National Unity Implausible” please click HERE)

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Obama Told US ‘Elections Have Consequences.’ Here’s One Way to Reverse His Liberal Legacy.

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“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”

These were the infamous words President Barack Obama used to scold congressional Republicans just three days after his inauguration in 2009, foreshadowing how he would approach policymaking for the next eight years.

Rather than listening to and trying to work with Republicans, Obama governed through brute force—with his “pen and phone” more often than with the consent of Congress—guided by the dictates of his progressive ideology rather than the interests of the American people.

In virtually every policy area—from health care and immigration to the deployment of American troops and the accession to new international treaties—Obama ignored those who dared to dissent from his agenda and used whatever means necessary to accomplish his goals.

The result is a precarious legacy burdened by a host of deeply unpopular and highly controversial policies, many of which can be repealed, replaced, rolled back, and otherwise reformed by the new Republican majorities in Congress.

But Republicans should take care to avoid adopting the same high-handed, condescending governing style exhibited by Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

Instead of ignoring the concerns and preferences of the American people—and their elected officials at the state and local level—we should listen to and learn from them.

Rather than forcing diverse communities to abide by inflexible, burdensome rules and regulations devised by federal bureaucrats in Washington, we should empower local decision-makers to find solutions that address the unique needs of their families, neighborhoods, and businesses.

One of the areas of federal policy most in need of local empowerment is housing.

For instance, in 2015, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which requires cities and towns across the country to audit their local housing policies.

If any aspect of a community’s housing and demographic patterns fails to meet the department’s expansive definition of “fair housing” under the fair housing rule, the local government must submit a plan to reorganize the community’s housing practices according to the preferences and priorities of the department’s bureaucrats.

Failure to comply will result in the department withholding Community Development Block Grants, federal grant money that local officials have traditionally been free to use as they see fit.

Proponents of the fair housing rule claim the rule establishes a collaborative process, with local government officials in the driver’s seat while the bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development merely provide “support” and “guidance.”

But the track record of the fair housing rule proves the opposite.

Many local housing officials from across the country, including in Utah, have told the same story: The costs of complying with the fair housing rule stretch their already thin resources, add hundreds of hours of bureaucratic paperwork to their workloads, and eliminate their autonomy to determine the best ways to provide adequate low-cost housing to their community.

To provide some measure of relief to local public housing authorities, a group of Republicans in Congress has supported legislation to restrict the department from using federal funds to implement the fair housing rule.

The Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act is the latest iteration of this legislation, which I joined Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., to introduce last week.

For the past 18 months, with Obama holding the executive veto pen and unwilling to believe that his policies are unpopular, there was very little chance this bill would be signed into law.

But on Jan. 20, when Donald Trump is sworn into office, that will change, and I will do everything in my power to ensure its swift passage.

After all, elections have consequences. (For more from the author of “Obama Told US ‘Elections Have Consequences.’ Here’s One Way to Reverse His Liberal Legacy.” please click HERE)

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Why America Needs to Know What Tillerson Thinks about Refugees

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Given that Rex Tillerson is the first secretary of State nominee with absolutely no political or military experience, we have no clue where he stands on many critical geopolitical issues. After this week’s hearing, which was almost completely consumed with Russia and random Democrat priorities, he is still very much a blank slate, including on the all-important issue of refugees.

One of the most important issues within the purview of the secretary of State is refugee resettlement in general and the UN’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in particular. Although the secretary of DHS is widely viewed as the point-man on the issue of immigration, the secretary of State is the gatekeeper. The State Department works with the UN to identify the pool of refugees and bring them to our shores.

A secretary of State who has his priorities straight would serve as a positive influence on Trump and urge him to shut down or curtail the program in the face of pressure from the global elites. On the other hand, a secretary of State who subscribes to the views of James Baker, Condi Rice, Bob Corker, and Robert Gates — all strong backers of Tillerson — could serve as a major negative influence on the president-elect.

With all the negative energy that will inevitably swarm Trump on behalf of Islamic refugee resettlement, a secretary of State with anything short of a full-throated opposition to this program will become a problem in the long run.

With the Obama administration working closely with the UN to “expedite” the selection process of Syrian refugees, Obama has flooded our shores with a record number of individuals who are impossible to vet, on top of the thousands of others from Somalia, Iraq, and Burma. Where does Tillerson stand on the surge center set up in Amman, Jordan? Will he shut it down?

Nobody will have more influence on forcing reforms to the UNHCR program or ending it altogether than the secretary of State. And that program must end, or we must withdraw from it. A recent Center for Immigration Studies analysis of a “UNHCR Projected Global Resettlement Needs” report demonstrates that not only is the refugee program a ruse for socially transforming America, but it also doesn’t even address the neediest individuals and is therefore counterintuitive to humanitarian goals. “Contrary to UNCHR and U.S. official claims, it is not necessarily the most vulnerable and urgent cases that are being submitted for resettlement,” writes CIS’ Nayla Rush.

The U.S. has already spent $5.6 billion on humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees, is the largest donor to the UNHCR (which also promotes the Palestinian political jihad), and is by far the largest recipient of refugees under this program in the world:

unhcr table 1

As Nayla Rush observes, despite the tremendous cost, the security risks, and cultural transformation of settling America with the Islamic world, millions of refugees are still left out in the cold anyway. It will never be enough because the entire system is not designed to address the core problem. It would be 12 times cheaper to resettle them in the Arab world — closer to their homes with the goal of eventually returning home. Unfortunately, the UN would rather transform America, even if it is counterintuitive to its own stated goals.

In addition to handling refugee resettlement, the State Department oversees the issuance of most visas. What is particularly concerning is the rapid increase in foreign students from the Middle East. Last year, the State Department admitted roughly 1.2 million foreign students with roughly 157,000 coming from predominantly Muslim countries. This is a gaping security hole because they are predominantly young males who are coming straight from the Middle East and, unlike legal permanent residents, have no plans to establish a family or even attempt to share in the future of this country. We are literally recruiting from the subsection of the world that is most prone to subscribing to strict Sharia and Islamic supremacism, from those that have the zeal and energy to act on callings from ISIS and other terror groups.

Shouldn’t we have some idea as to where Rex Tillerson stands on the refugee program and some of our visa programs? The secretary of State is the most important Cabinet official as it relates to the security aspects of immigration. In addition, Nikki Haley as ambassador to the UN, which is also a Cabinet-level position, will have tremendous influence over our policies related to international migration. There are certainly no signs that she has fundamentally changed her views on mass migration from the Middle East.

The point is we can’t merely hope for change on immigration; we have to ensure and demand it. While repeal of Obamacare has unfortunately turned out to be needlessly complex and uncertain, the repeal of refugee resettlement is very straightforward and does not require any complicated legislation. It would be nice if we had a sense of where this administration is headed. Radio silence on these issues seldom portends a strong change in a conservative direction. (For more from the author of “Why America Needs to Know What Tillerson Thinks about Refugees” please click HERE)

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What Obama’s Farewell Speech Revealed about His Plans for YOUR Future

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In Obama’s farewell address, he rekindled his lifelong effort to reinvigorate leftist activism, provided hints and direction for more concentrated efforts, and directed leftists as to how to go about bringing “change.”

In November I wrote two pieces here and here, that had to do with community organizing on the constitutional conservative side, to counter the obvious organizational superiority of the Left. With Obama free to take up his previous tasks with rockstar status and an extremely distraught Left, he will have the fuel to launch highly motivated leftists in every town. We must be there too.

Obama began his speech describing his beginning as a community organizer in Chicago, saying, “I began working with church groups in the shadows of closed steel mills.” His start was a direct copy of Saul Alinsky’s start to begin to radically change the minds and hearts of people through agitation.

Writing about Hillary Clinton’s ties with Saul Alinsky over the summer, I quoted Alinsky when he argued community organizer must be:

… dedicated to changing the character of life of a particular community [and] has an initial function of serving as an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions… to provide a channel into which they can pour their frustration of the past; to create a mechanism which can drain off underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. When those who represent the status quo label you [i.e. the community organizer] as an ‘agitator’ they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function–to agitate to the point of conflict.

That’s what the Left calls “community organizing.” Rubbing raw resentment and anger to the point of conflict. It is what we as Americans have been subject to during Obama’s presidency, and what has provided much of the strain we all see in the nation.

And Obama is certainly dedicated to that end. His farewell speech sought to re-dedicate his most loyal followers.

Obama called upon the Left to organize many times in his speech, including, but not limited to, these statements:

“… change only happens when ordinary people get involved, get engaged, and come together to demand it.”

“We, the People, through the instrument of our democracy, can form a more perfect union.”

“… we must forge a new social compact”

“All of us have more work to do.”

“All of us, regardless of party, should throw ourselves into the task of rebuilding our democratic institutions.”

“And all of this depends on our participation; on each of us accepting the responsibility of citizenship, regardless of which way the pendulum of power swings.”

“We, the people, give it power – with our participation, and the choices we make.”

“So you see, that’s what our democracy demands. It needs you.”

“If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the Internet, try talking with one of them in real life.”

“If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clipboard, get some signatures and run for office yourself.”

“Show up. Dive in. Stay at it.”

“I am asking you to believe, not in my ability to bring about change, but in yours.”

“To believe that you can make a difference, to hitch your wagon to something bigger than yourselves.”

Obama’s not going anywhere.

So many have complained that Trump was butting in on Obama’s presidency, causing a dual presidency. But now the shoe is on the other foot, and leftists are outright ignoring the greatness of the Constitution’s Electoral College, calling Trump “illegitimate,” and continuing to follow Obama as their president, blowing up the rule of law in their altered reality.

But Obama didn’t just call on his followers to organize. He issued directives for his community organizers while using the founding principles we all believe in: “self-government,” and “that we are all created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

But Obama and his followers do not believe those principles. If they believed in self-government, they would put stock in themselves and God instead of the government. If they believed that we are all created equal, they wouldn’t continue to agitate one man against another while focusing on our differences. If they believed we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights such as life, they would be pro-life instead of pro-abortion. If they believed in Liberty, they wouldn’t engage in coercion as they did with Obamacare, and so on.

Laced throughout the speech, Obama focused leftist agitators on:

Guaranteed college education

Increased unionization

Increased welfare

Higher taxation

Continued class warfare

Radical racialization

Forced employment policies

The false flag of anthropogenic global warming

Abortion as a human right

Fighting against voter ID laws

Overturning Citizens United v Federal Elections Committee

Redistricting

Contrary to Obama’s litany of “worthy causes,” constitutional conservatives must be able to articulate the proper disposition of the Constitution as it is dragged through the mud with the Left’s unending destruction of it. We need a counter to the Alinskyites.

President Obama gave all of us a list of things to do, and it matters because he is telling us that his side will be out there in force giving the people a destructive worldview. We will see more agitating, marching, demonstrating, and rioting, but that is not the beginnings of their conspiracies.

All too often, we ignore how the Left is able to change minds and hearts. They do it by influencing our churches, our neighborhoods, our culture, our schools, and our government at local, state, and federal levels. They are directed to by their president. Constitutional conservatives must stop playing catch-up with the Left or act as spectators, giving opinions that identify what is going wrong without providing the proper way to make it go right. We can’t just complain about how the Left changes our culture. We have to be there to nip it all in the bud, and provide the corrected version of the Left’s historically inaccurate and intellectually lazy homework. (For more from the author of “What Obama’s Farewell Speech Revealed about His Plans for YOUR Future” please click HERE)

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Religious Freedom under President-Elect Trump

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As we commemorate Religious Freedom Day 2017, on January 16th, we mark a year of much change and a season of much opportunity for religious freedom.

President-Elect Trump’s surprise win can be credited in part to widespread (and unforeseen) angst over eight years of an Obama administration that has increasingly meddled in individual lives and liberty. In the area of religious freedom, the federal government has picked and chosen which religious freedom claims to advance and which to ignore. While the administration has disproportionately highlighted Muslim religious rights, it has failed to defend the rights of Christians — both overseas and at home. It also only supports religious freedom claims when they do not interfere with its pet causes of promoting abortion and LGBT policies. Such selectivity and bias destroys the integrity of any religious freedom policy; unfortunately, our federal government has done exactly that.

President-Elect Trump now has an opportunity to restore the credibility of U.S. religious freedom policy, at home and abroad, by addressing these incongruities. He can do this with two simple policy adjustments:

Protect religious freedom equally for everyone. Justice is blind, and the same law must be applied neutrally and fairly to everyone, regardless of their religion, and regardless of the circumstances. Some claims will succeed and others will fail under our religious freedom laws — they have always functioned this way. The key is that all are entitled to a fair shot. Yet by prioritizing some and deprioritizing others in its policy, the Obama administration has unfairly influenced the race out of the starting gate. This approach has been incredibly destructive to the morale of anyone who cares about religious freedom. The new president can do much good merely by taking the approach that all religious claims deserve to be treated equally by the government, regardless of the faith of the individual and the context in which the claim is raised.

Protect robust religious exercise, not a stifled and limited notion of the idea advanced by the Obama administration and championed by losing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Under the Obama administration’s view, religious freedom only applies fully within “houses of worship,” not to one’s place of business or anywhere else. Yet this is neither true under our laws nor faithful to our history. Religious freedom includes the ability to exercise one’s religious beliefs in all spheres of life; indeed, this is reflected domestically in our First Amendment and internationally in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite what the Obama administration would wish, religious freedom simply doesn’t exist when the Little Sisters are forced by the government to violate their consciences by helping provide abortion-causing drugs to their employees — as the administration tried to force them to do. These nuns did not have religious freedom under the administration’s proposals, despite what the government tried to claim. This must be corrected.

Policy changes in these two areas apply to our international religious freedom efforts as well. The Obama administration has failed to properly prioritize religious freedom in our international affairs, and has abandoned our historical role as a strong religious freedom and human rights defender around the world. President-Elect Trump has an opportunity to change this, and re-engage the United States on this critical issue worldwide by defending the right of all to freely choose and live out their beliefs. Marginalized peoples around the world often look to the United States for help when they are persecuted because of their religion, and we should be there for them. A proper understanding of religious freedom demands that it be defended for all, at home and abroad.

This proper understanding of religious freedom has been dangerously eroded over the past eight years. President-Elect Trump has an opportunity to lead in restoring it, and the above two steps would be a start. (For more from the author of “Religious Freedom under President-Elect Trump” please click HERE)

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Who’s the Real Threat to the West: Putin or the EU?

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Vladimir Putin is far from a saint. No Russian leader can really be one and rule for long. (The principled democratic socialist Alexander Kerensky lasted just a few months in 1917.) The political history of Russia is tragic for complex historical reasons. If you want to understand that great but troubled country, undertake some extensive reading. A short list would include:

Richard Pipes’ magisterial Russia Under the Old Regime,
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s The Romanovs,
Dominic Lieven’s The End of Tsarist Russia, and
Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s brilliant series of historical novels, The Red Wheel.

You need not delve into Russia’s history to ask yourself: Does it really serve America or the West to cast Russia as our permanent enemy, as Senate anti-Russia hawks John McCain and Lindsey Graham insist to the point of obsession?

Don’t forget that these two pro-immigration globalists were among the leading champions of our invasion and occupation of Iraq. If they’d had their way in Syria, U.S. planes would have been risking dogfights with Russian jets, all to help al Qaeda’s Islamist allies conquer the country and repress a million Christian Syrians. The “moderate Syrian rebels” were merely a fig leaf, with no more presence or power than Iraqi “moderates” and “democrats” had in 2003. Remember neocon savior Ahmed Chalabi? Iraqis don’t.

Who Threatens Our Vital Interests in Europe More: Putin or Merkel?

What vital interests of ours does Russia threaten? Yes, it invaded Crimea, to take back disputed territory full of Russian speakers that was only transferred to Ukraine in the 1950s. Russia has violated the sovereignty of Ukraine, which was part of Russia since before the U.S. annexed Texas. As I said back in 1992, Ukraine should have secured its independence permanently by holding on to the nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviets. But Bill Clinton convinced Kiev to trade those vital safeguards for a piece of American paper. As sympathetic as we should be to the people of Ukraine, who suffered their own Holocaust at the hands of the Soviet government in the 1930s terror famine, the battle over the border between Ukraine and Russia is none of America’s business.

Those who’d make it our business are busybodies, globalist utopians who dream of imposing their own ideological solutions on other countries — meddling in elections from Israel to Armenia, provoking resentment against America all around the world, then huffing and puffing with outrage because Russia may have helped leak authentic, damning emails about Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Just how long do they think that the U.S. can pretend it knows how to manage and police the entire world, before we suffer some push back? We don’t even know if Russia was trying to swing the election from Clinton — who looked unbeatable to most Americans in the know — or simply to weaken and humiliate her before she got into office. Putin may get more than he bargained for: a president who is much tougher, more nationalistic, and free of financial and personal ties to the Saudis, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

What Russia Wants

Russia craves excessive influence over the Baltic states, which rightly won their independence in the 90s, but which we brought into NATO, taking advantage of Russia’s post-Communist chaos to create a tripwire for possible nuclear war right on its doorstep. Step back for a moment, and put yourself in Russia’s shoes. Imagine if during the Civil War, while we fought for our survival, Great Britain had recruited Mexico as its military ally, even stationing troops and ships there. When we got back on our feet, we would have rightly resented that. I don’t think that President U.S. Grant would have let that stand for long.

Russia violates human rights, and Putin persecutes his critics, it’s true. But how sincere are critics of Russia on these subjects who breeze past far worse offenses in countries like Saudi Arabia, China, and Turkey? When McCain and Graham start demanding that the Saudis stop torturing rape victims, that China stop forcing women to have abortions, and that Turkey release hundreds of dissident journalists from prison, then and only then should we listen to their complaints about Vladimir Putin. (To Marco Rubio’s credit, in his Senate grilling of Trump nominee Rex Tillerson, he did survey Saudi abuses.)

The EU Wants to Silence Its Patriotic Critics

What Putin really threatens is not so much NATO as the EU — because he funnels money to patriotic parties across the Continent that oppose the oligarchs in Brussels, who are stealing sovereignty from voters, trying to impose legal abortion and gay marriage on Catholic countries from Poland to Ireland, and encouraging the mass colonization of Europe by Jew-hating Islamists of military age whom Turkey ships across the porous southern EU border.

The real threat to the West comes not from the economically stalled, oil-dependent Russia, with its shrinking demography and limited regional ambitions. The EU itself is the greatest danger to our allies in Europe, and hence to America. Its reckless embrace of a single currency, its destruction of internal borders, its suicidal acceptance of limitless Muslim refugees — these are acts of sabotage that Putin’s secret service could never dream of pulling off. The EU has gravely weakened major NATO countries such as France, Germany, and Britain — filling them with potential terrorists and endangering their banking systems. Smaller, poorer EU countries like Greece and Italy suffer the twin assaults of German austerity measures, and Angela Merkel’s delusional refugee policies.

The only hope for those Western nations is that their patriotic parties succeed in wresting power from sterile, aging elites, and restoring in each a healthy regard for its national interests — as Britain began to display with its embrace of Brexit, and the U.S. did by electing Donald Trump. If those parties do succeed, they won’t be Putin’s puppets, any more than Trump will be. But they will see as he sees that we have far graver threats facing us than border conflicts on the Dnieper.

We face a mass colonization of the cradle of Western civilization by millions of real or potential religious fanatics, tied to Saudi fundamentalism by a thousand financial strings. The polity responsible for imposing that threat on the West is the Soviet European Union, and its thousands of unelected apparatchiks. When that monstrosity collapses, there won’t be a Berlin Wall we can dismantle, but perhaps patriotic Westerners can converge on its headquarters in Brussels with sledgehammers and pickaxes, in the spirit of 1989. (Read more from “Who’s the Real Threat to the West: Putin or the EU?” HERE)

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When the ‘Enlightened’ Left Doesn’t Get Its Way, Expect Riots and Death Threats

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After many hours of hard work, I’ve put together an exhaustive list of the prominent celebrities who chose not to perform at President Obama’s inaugural ceremonies in 2009 and 2013 because they were threatened with death, boycotts or ostracism. The grand total, to my knowledge, is zero, despite the right’s deep antipathy of Barack Obama.

But when it comes to the inauguration of Donald Trump, Andrea Bocelli, the wonderfully gifted, blind operatic tenor, has decided not to perform, despite being a friend of the president-elect. And reports indicate that it was not just because he was threatened with a boycott; rather, it was because of death threats that his security team deemed too serious to ignore.

Broadway star Jennifer Holliday has also dropped out of the inaugural festivities after being branded an “Uncle Tom.” (I thought Uncle Tom’s were male, by definition.) Claiming she didn’t realize that performing at the inauguration would be interpreted as supporting the president (really?), she wrote, “My only choice must now be to stand with the LGBT community and to state unequivocally that I will not perform for the welcome concert or for any of the inauguration festivities.”

Ironically, Trump offended some of his most conservative supporters by having his openly gay friend Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, speak at the Republican National Convention, while Thiel remains a key member of Trump’s transition team.

Trump also proudly held up a gay flag at one of his rallies, celebrating LGBT’s for Trump, and he recently picked Anthony Scaramucci, a self-described “gay rights activist,” for a senior advisory role.

In fact, it was Scaramucci, as a member of the president-elect’s transition team, who started the rumor that Trump would be “the first American president in U.S. history that enters the White House with a pro-gay-rights stance. Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mall for the inauguration.” (Fran Curtis, John’s spokesman immediately denied this report to the New York Times, stating, “Incorrect. He will NOT be performing.”)

It appears that the vast majority of LGBT leaders are not impressed. Standing with Trump means standing against them, and those who stand against them must be punished.

Other celebrities also declined invitations, apparently without any outside pressure being put on them, with John Legend explaining to the BBC:

Creative people tend to reject bigotry and hate. … We tend to be more liberal-minded. When we see somebody that’s preaching division and hate and bigotry, it’s unlikely that he’ll get a lot of creative people that want to be associated with him.

Ah yes, the tolerance and enlightenment of the creative left!

I fully understand that President-elect Trump continues to be a divisive figure, most recently attacking Congressman John Lewis, a Civil Rights icon, for saying that he did not believe Trump was a “legitimate” president because of Russian hacking of the election. Even some Republican leaders spoke up on Lewis’s behalf, while his constituents, who also felt slighted, lashed out at Trump as well.

And I fully understand that many on the left think the absolute worst about Trump, as if he was another Hitler about to rise to power, genuinely believing their own, nearly-hysterical rhetoric. Leading the way in the hysteria are the Hollywood elites, among whom Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner said he has a harder time being a political conservative than being transgender.

But having hysterical reactions to an incoming (or current) president is just as characteristic of the right as it is the left. For the last 8 years, I have heard every kind of crazy conspiracy theory about Barack Obama, including the claim that he is a secretly-gay, Muslim member of the Illuminati who is being groomed for his ultimate role as the antichrist. (Some of you reading this are saying in reply, “But he is!”)

My issue is with the reaction of the so-called “tolerant and enlightened” left, the same left that, we are told, tends “to reject bigotry and hate,” yet goes on violent looting riots when it doesn’t get its way and launches death threats against celebrities who associate in any way with Trump.

I’m aware that people burned effigies of Obama after his election, while a liberal scholar writing on The Hill argues that demonstrators “aren’t protesting [Trump] because he is a white male. These protests are because of the bigotry his campaign has emboldened and the fear of discrimination his presidency has the capacity to perpetuate.”

But that underscores the very point I’m making. Those allegedly protesting bigotry, hatred and discrimination are themselves engaging in those very things, with some Hollywood elites leading the way with their over-the-top, anti-Trump rhetoric.

It is the hypocrisy of the left, not its rejection of Trump, that is galling. (For more from the author of “The Synagogues Are Burning Again in Germany” please click HERE)

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Harsanyi: The Comforting Fictions of Obama’s Farewell Speech

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Watching President Barack Obama’s soaring 2008 Democratic National Convention speech in Denver, I never imagined the kind of turmoil his presidency would incite. Almost everything has changed in the subsequent years, and yet his farewell speech to the nation was brimming with the same brand of haughty lecturing.

Obama loves to conflate progressivism and patriotism, pitting the forces of decency and empathy — his own — against the self-serving profiteers and meddling reactionaries who stand in the way. All of it is swathed in phony optimism.

The president’s central case for government’s existence rests on the notion of the state being society’s moral center, engine of prosperity, and arbiter of fairness. Obama speaks of government as a theocrat might speak of church, and his fans return the favor by treating him like a pope. This was true in 2008. And it’s true now. Just check out liberal Twitterdom.

And for the most part, nothing is his fault.

“When Congress is dysfunctional,” Obama explained, “we should draw our districts to encourage politicians to cater to common sense and not rigid extremes.” For the president, a dysfunctional Congress is a Congress unwilling to pass progressive legislation. That is not the definition of dysfunctional, I’m afraid. Nor is it the definition of extreme.

There is nothing in the Constitution instructing legislators to acquiesce to the president. In the near future, the Republican Congress will be passing tons of legislation, and I can assure you neither Obama nor his many fans in the media will be celebrating the fact that Congress is finally “getting stuff done” or “doing its job.” Progress will no longer be measured in the number of bills signed.

And it shouldn’t be. After all, if voters were displeased with the way legislators treated Obama’s agenda, they had the ability to replace these obstinate lawmakers with more cooperative ones. They did not. That’s because gridlock was created by a party that fooled itself into believing it could rule unilaterally. Also, after Democrats passed their massive health care law — and certainly, there were other reasons — Republicans kept expanding their majorities, and not only in Congress.

Americans voted for equilibrium in Washington, D.C. Congress was working exactly as it was intended. And it has nothing to do with gerrymandering or voter suppression or fake news or any of the other excuses liberals keep concocting to explain their troubles.

Moreover, the idea that Congress is catering to some “rigid extremes” because elected officials oppose policies that were passed in 2010 might be the prevailing opinion on the Left, but it has no basis in reality. Republican positions — like them or not — are well within the boundaries of normal American attitudes. Most of them were mainstream liberal positions not that long ago.

That brings me to this nugget: In his farewell address, Obama warned, “Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted” (Because we don’t talk about politics enough, apparently!) and urged Americans to help rebuild “our democratic institutions.”

Our democracy isn’t in trouble. We just had an election, in which every citizen permitted to vote — and motivated — could do so. Our Electoral College, part of a broader system that most fairly embodies the will of voters in the nation’s 50 states, also worked exactly as intended.

Maybe Obama means we must rebuild our belief in the separation of powers and the Constitution, since his administration displayed far more creativity in executive power than it ever did in attempting to build coalitions to pass legislation.

He regularly ignored norms of governance, consistently losing cases before the Supreme Court, entering into international agreements without the Senate, creating immigration policy for millions without Congress and using the administrative state to legislate environmental policies that couldn’t even pass when Democrats controlled both houses. Those abuses were not normal.

Obama offered Americans a revisionist history of his entire presidency, casting himself as a resilient truth-teller and champion of democracy. The reality is quite different. (For more from the author of “Harsanyi: The Comforting Fictions of Obama’s Farewell Speech” please click HERE)

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6 Issues That Should Dominate Trump’s Foreign Policy Agenda

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The American people elected Donald Trump to exact conservative change here at home, thus his focus on his domestic agenda.

But when the focus does turn to foreign policy, he and the GOP also need to show that they heard the voters! President Obama’s election demonstrated voters’ disgust for adventures abroad. Similarly, President-elect Trump’s indicated that voters do not want to see the United States kicked around.

Here are some priorities to help the new administration color inside voters’ lines:

1. Radical Islam, radical Islam, radical Islam

Fighting that insipid ideology is Trump’s lodestar. When Tip O’Neill coined the phrase “all politics is local” he did not have in mind Islamists in Orlando, but that does not mean it does not apply.

2. The South China Sea.

President Obama delegated our security interests there to the UN. The result should be no mystery. Rebuilding our standing will require steadfast leadership, more than just economic threats, and new alliances, not just a show of force. Doing just the latter will bring out China’s fishing boat navy. Voters will not tolerate shooting them; nor will they accept our Navy being run off … so the new administration must avoid policies that present that binary choice.

Reversing China’s eight-year shopping spree will take time, so Trump should set expectations accordingly.

3. Iran.

Trump must rebuild our regional containment system. Wrecking Obama’s naive nuclear deal is not enough. That means reconstituting our regional alliances, undermining Iran’s radical Islamic ideology, ripping out Hezbollah root and branch around the globe, and learning to love Iraq (the invasion and regime change happened almost 14 years ago in our rearview mirror. We must stop treating it as untouchable).

4. Spread the pain.

President George W. Bush launched the multilateral Six-Party Talks in 2003 in response to North Korea’s bad behavior. This diplomatic exploratory surgery gifted North Korea a large stage on which to act out. Importantly, it also meant the U.S. owned the issue, giving countries like China and Russia leverage over us.

When North Korea acts up again, ask first how to get it off the U.S. docket. Convincing China to own the response is smart statecraft, and sounds like a negotiation worthy of Donald Trump.

Likewise, allies can provide in-kind burden sharing. For example, with American support, the Balts, Georgia, Ukraine, etc., can keep Putin busy.

Trump must keep this in mind as the multitude of rogue states vies for his attention. Already, Russia, a country that should be in our peripheral vision, inspires a national freak-out.

5. Israel.

Do not just stymie immoral UN behavior; bring the pain to Turtle Bay. Of course, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. And, for the love of God, the Oslo Process, ongoing since 1993 (actually, since the 1979 Camp David Accords), will never — never —work. Settlements do not prevent peace.

Palestinian Islamic extremism does. Target Iran’s sponsorship of groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Push for Arab recognition of Israel. Help alleviate our ally’s existential security threats. Only then can peace happen.

6. Reform our sclerotic national security structure.

Create a credible diplomatic option so that our statecraft choices go beyond shooting, sharply worded demarches, and sanctions. It will make the above possible.

Fix our broken State Department. Create a political warfare capability. Get our intelligence community out of the business of running its own military so it can back to doing what it does best: spying.

Successfully tackling this impossibly long list will require that the government relearn what used to be part of our statecraft muscle memory: applying leverage. Diplomacy is not about negotiations. It is about presenting other countries with choices and then using leverage so that they make the decisions we want.

Success also requires that American foreign policy once again reflects American exceptionalism. Americans value not just where we live but how. That has practical implications. For example, most of our allies reflect our values, and our values are non-negotiable.

Defense of our values requires a muscular internationalism. That does not imply the active use of the military. Ronald Reagan never invaded a country larger than Grenada, and he protected our values just fine. But simply drawing inward like Obama leaves our values and allies vulnerable. Ask Israel.

Conservatives need the Trump administration to succeed at the list I outlined. Voters elected him to fulfill fundamental, conservative goals (which the above are), and they gave the GOP both houses of Congress to help.

The GOP has not had conservative foreign policy since the 1980s. On top of that, throw decades lazy post-Cold War strategic thinking and the fact that Obama did not focus on any of these goals (constructively). Moreover, we have never tried to combat radical Islam, and it has been a threat since 1979. Conservatives have a UUGE task ahead of them. I hope they understand that. (For more from the author of “6 Issues That Should Dominate Trump’s Foreign Policy Agenda” please click HERE)

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