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CULTURE-WARS UPDATE! “Muslims in Britain should be able to live under Sharia, says top judge.” Read entire news.telegraph post here.

We have long been convinced that the center-right can win all sorts of tactical legislative and administrative victories - - but that if we lose the bigger culture war, we are, in terms of the survivability of our freedom and way of life, “dead men walking.”

Many of our brethren still confuse multiculturalism with some kind of National Geographic-like tour of different countries, costumes, and cuisine - - - perhaps a “broadening” experience but with little or no political significance.

Not so. Multiculturalism or more accurately Cultural Marxism is a coherent and toxic weapon against our civilization. Click here to see Bill Lind’s historical expose which he prepared for the Free Congress Foundation.

Yesterday Thomas Sowell in his “Does Patriotism Matter” gave us chapter and verse on why the culture wars are deadly serious:

“In France, after the First World War, the teachers’ unions launched a systematic purge of textbooks, in order to promote internationalism and pacifism.

Books that depicted the courage and self-sacrifice of soldiers who had defended France against the German invaders were called ‘bellicose’ books to be banished from the schools.

Textbook publishers caved in to the power of the teachers’ unions, rather than lose a large market for their books. History books were sharply revised to conform to internationalism and pacifism.

The once epic story of the French soldiers’ heroic defense against the German invaders at Verdun, despite the massive casualties suffered by the French, was now transformed into a story of horrible suffering by all soldiers at Verdun– French and German alike.

In short, soldiers once depicted as national heroes were now depicted as victims– and just like victims in other nations’ armies.

Children were bombarded with stories on the horrors of war. In some schools, children whose fathers had been killed during the war were asked to speak to the class and many of these children– as well as some of their classmates and teachers– broke down in tears.

Dr. Sowell points out that this cultural rot was a major factor in the unexpected collapse in 1940 of the up-to-then highly respected French Army. As for today, Hoover Institute Senior Fellow Sowell explains:

“Most Americans today are unaware of how much our schools have followed in the footsteps of the French schools of the 1920s and 1930s, or how much our intellectuals have become citizens of the world instead of American patriots.

Our media are busy verbally transforming American combat troops from heroes into victims, just as the French intelligentsia did– with the added twist of calling this ’supporting the troops.’”

Click here to read the entire Sowell post.

Consider Dr. Sowell’s warnings when listening to the so-called Main Steam Media (MSM), or talking to the arbiters of public instruction, or conferring with elected officials - - - even with those ostensibly on the center-right. Fortunately our very fine volunteer armed forces do not see themselves among the victims, but prefer to keep the enemy in this unenviable category. But the disconnect between the culture of our fighting men and women around the world, and the regnant elite culture is bound to have serious repercussions soon.

Tomorrow, however, let us follow John Adam’s advice here for our Independence Day!

“It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance; it ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

Conservatives throughout America are frustrated with the by now widely recognized Establishment barriers to increasing energy supply, and with gross Establishment permissiveness toward illegal aliens and laxity in securing our borders. Less well known, but quite dangerous, are Establishment indifference or encouragement of multi-culturalism here and here and here, and Establishment nurturing of the expansion of the administrative state here and here and here and here.

But let’s leave consideration of these domestic issues for a few minutes. We all live in a very dangerous world where many other governments and movements are, to put it charitably, uncomfortable with our freedom and prosperity. Because we live in such a dangerous world, the following three recent articles by well-known center-right figures are especially troubling.

Ambassador John Bolton wrote in last Monday’s Wall Street Journal about “The Tragic End of Bush’s North Korea Policy” here:

“With much fanfare and choreography, but little substance, the administration has accepted a North Korean ‘declaration’ about its nuclear program that is narrowly limited, incomplete and almost certainly dishonest in material respects. In exchange, President Bush personally declared that North Korea is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism or an enemy of the United States. In a final flourish, North Korea has undertaken a reverse Potemkin Village act, destroying the antiquated cooling tower of the antiquated Yongbyon reactor.
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In the waning days of American presidencies, this theater is the stuff of legacy.But for many erstwhile administration supporters, this is a moment of genuine political poignancy. Nothing can erase the ineffable sadness of an American presidency, like this one, in total intellectual collapse.”

Former Reagan defense aide Richard Perle last week had a parallel critique in his “Coalition of the Ineffectual” here:

“Building multilateral coalitions entails compromise: to entice countries to join, to keep them on board, to order priorities, to achieve consensus on an action plan. Sometimes the compromises are worth it because the coalition goes on to achieve an objective that we could not possibly have achieved alone. Sometimes they are not, as when members are unwilling or unable to take effective measures and our own freedom of action is encumbered–or worse, when satisfaction at having created a multilateral coalition becomes a substitute for achieving our objective. That is the case as the united multilateral coalition ‘confronts’ Iran.

One can argue whether we alone can prevent an ‘unforgivable betrayal of future generations,’ as President Bush has put it. But the way to develop strategy for doing that begins by recognizing that the multilateral approach is failing. Seven and a half years after denouncing Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a hapless president and his coalition can only look on while the Iranians rush to the finish line.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Also last week, conservative dean Paul Weyrich wrote here about a crucial need in passive defense against a potentially nation-disabling attack from an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP).

The U. S. EMP Commission puts the threat in a nutshell here:

“Briefly, a single nuclear weapon exploded at high altitude above the United States will interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetic field to produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) radiating down to the Earth and additionally create electrical currents in the Earth. EMP effects are both direct and indirect. The former are due to electromagnetic ’shocking’ of electronics and stressing of electrical systems, and the latter arise from the damage that ’shocked’—upset, damaged, and destroyed—electronics controls then inflict on the systems in which they are embedded. The indirect effects can be even more severe than the direct effects. The electromagnetic fields produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics, and information systems upon which American society depends. Their effects on dependent systems and infrastructures could be sufficient to qualify as catastrophic to the Nation.”

Maryland Representative Roscoe Bartlett has been the point man here in calling public and governmental attention to the EMP threat. Dr. Bartlett writes:

“Terrorists, rogue states, China or Russia could acquire—or in some cases already have—the capability to devastate our critical infrastructures, on a scale far greater than Hurricane Katrina, according to the congressional EMP Commission that I established.”
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“The Commission further concluded that EMP attack is one of the few ways that terrorists or state actors could inflict such catastrophic damage on the United States that the U.S. would cease to exist as a military superpower and as a modern society.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Free Congress CEO Weyrich urged here:

“America needs a plan to carry out the systematic recovery of key infrastructures. We must demonstrate the will and ability to recover from any attack. Toward that end we need a special team which frequently reports to Congress. We need to define the responsibilities of the Federal, state and local governments. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) needs to develop a plan for the country in conjunction with local governments and the Pentagon needs a clear plan to keep the Armed Forces functioning in the event of an attack. DHS must establish a senior leadership position with the accountability, authority and appropriate resources to defend against the most serious threats. Graham says that an EMP attack is a credible, potentially catastrophic threat to the United States. He says that the U.S. strategy should balance prevention, preparation, protection and recovery.” (Underscoring Forum’s.)

Click here to read the public version of the EMP Commission report.

Click here to read Representative Bartlett’s take on a projected “$34 - $770 Billion Blow to the Baltimore-Washington, DC – Richmond Economy from EMP Attack.”

It is not only the Obama Left that longs for a vacation from history, mostly for ideological reasons. We mean, of course, a vacation from the continuing necessity of maintaining sufficient, well trained and equipped forces that can be prudently projected around the globe both to defend ourselves and to keep world commerce safe on the sea lanes, commerce on which everyone’s well-being depends.

During the course of his two terms, the president’s style was not, in plain words and week-in and week-out, to name and spell out the jihadist security threat. Americans did not get regular, blunt progress reports about the president’s road map. The course of our struggle with the jihadists included (and includes) not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Iran and hostile elements in Saudi Arabia. It extends around the world and to our own homes. Partly from the failure of candid presidential guidance, there are otherwise well-intentioned voters on the Right likely seeking an escape from history as well.

Of course, no matter how adequate the military resources, without political will and clarity of vision, no White House can effectively meet the constitutional duty to “provide for the common defense.”

Yesterday, on NRO, free-market paladin Larry Kudlow reported here

“First, the president will continue his strong push on energy deregulation to open up the offshore outer continental shelf, ANWR, and the shale fields. When asked if he would revoke the executive order moratorium on drilling, he said he was thinking about it. When asked whether he would give a prime-time nationally televised speech on the subject, he said he would think about that too.” [Underscoring Forum’s.]

The Institute for Energy Research here explains below the executive and legislative bans on offshore drilling. Click here for the entire IER release.

“Mr. Bush, Tear Up That Offshore Drilling Ban”
IER Calls on Bush to Tear Up Moratorium on Offshore Drilling

“Two federal bans keep the U.S. from producing its vast offshore energy resources. The Executive Moratorium was instituted in 1990 and is set to expire in 2012, but can be eliminated by the president at any time. The Congressional Moratorium comes in the form of an annual appropriations rider in Congress. It expires every year and must be renewed annually by a vote in the Congress. Neither have the force of permanent law.”

Last month, Michelle Malkin had this to report on repealing the legislative moratorium on drilling here:

“GOP Rep. John Peterson of Pennsylvania offered an amendment a year ago to permit offshore natural gas drilling. It was defeated 196-233 by do-nothing Democrats now panicked over high gas prices and forecasts of declining energy supplies from non-OPEC nations. Peterson is pushing his amendment again today before a House Appropriations subcommittee, but it’s another uphill battle.”

*****

The Senate and the White House, kowtowing to California and Florida electoral interests, actually oppose the measure. So does Barack Obama. McCain is straddling with a ‘let the states decide whether to drill . . . .’”

And then here:

“GOP Rep. John Peterson’s latest bid to lift domestic offshore drilling restrictions, which I blogged earlier today here, was killed this afternoon by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment. It was a straight, party line vote.”

The most optimistic take on Mr. Kudlow’s report is that the president could be coming to a better mind on removing the executive offshore drilling ban. Perhaps he will also pressure Congress to remove their appropriations roadblock to offshore drilling.

Maryland and Virginia readers can see who their House Appropriations Committee members are here.

UPDATES! McCain Campaign responds here to NRO on “My top priority.” | “McCain veers from record to woo Hispanics. Immigration stance called pandering,” declares the headline on Steven Dinan’s article in today’s Washington Times here. Apart from the verbal jousting between candidates reflected in these posts, thoughtful conservatives will recognize that, in their hearts, both the incumbent Republican president and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee yearn for an immigration policy well out of step with the views of many Americans of both parties. As scholar and author Mark Krikorian points out, the Arizona senator is “an ideological multiculturalist.” Kirkorian’s post here is well worth reading in its entirety.

Thanks to vigilant eyes at NRO.

Byron York’s posts here

“My Top Priority Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow” [Byron York]

John McCain at his appearance this morning before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials:

QUESTION: As the next president of the United States of America, will comprehensive immigration reform, and not just enforcement, be one of your top policy priorities in your first 100 days in office?

MCCAIN: It will be my top priority yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

and here

“I’ll Go Back At It” [Byron York]

John McCain, from an interview with the Las Vegas Sun:

I haven’t won on every issue. I didn’t win on immigration reform, but I’ll go back at it. And I’m glad I did it.

remind us that the senior senator from Arizona is unswerving on expanding immigration.

On July 14 here, Mr. McCain will speak at the national convention of La Raza in San Diego here.

In the meantime, we can get the flavor of the senator’s current immigration thinking from a McCain campaign press release of today here attacking senator Obama for “work[ing] to kill the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform compromise last year.” It is hard to see where senator McCain’s approach to amnesty and immigration expansion has substantially changed from that time. But perhaps all will be revealed at the La Raza convention.

At least one far-sighted Maryland Republican county leader has already been questioning the traditional loyalty that elected Maryland Republicans demand merely by virtue of their incumbency - regardless of their actual voting and policy record on key issues like taxes and spending and regulation.

While the current Maryland Democrat governor has a jaw-dropping record here in state taxing and spending and regulation, elected Republicans had already reinforced the taxing and spending groundwork (albeit more modestly) under their former governor. Instead of trying to reform the Maryland system when they had the executive power, they simply oiled it - - “going along to get along.”

In Virginia, where the Republican Party grip on its own machinery has traditionally been much tighter, delegate Bob Marshall’s near win here of the U.S. Senate nomination at the May 31 Republican Convention - from a late start and with little money - evidenced strong dissatisfaction with Party’s indifference to their grass roots. And the incumbent Virginia Republican Party chairman was also replaced here by a substantial vote.

Today Virginia activists question machine-like demands that local Republican committees limit themselves to providing cheering sections and campaign volunteers: a kind of corvee to work the precincts while local committee members are to stay at the back of the bus when it comes to policy.

Mr. Marshall, however, ran on issues; he had already broken out of the Party mindmeld through his successful (unexpectedly, among Party regulars) constitutional litigation here wiping out the taxing authority of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. Marshall’s was a major victory for taxpayers won by a strong-values candidate.

Now governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina (who survived in 2006 when many other Republicans were defeated) is again getting the priorities right, and walking the right talk.

Common Sense’s Paul Jacobs has the story here:

“Still Cage-Rattling

June 26, 2008

Even in his second term as South Carolina’s governor, Mark Sanford continues to flout the political establishment’s typical way of doing things.

A former congressmen who pledged to limit his tenure to three terms max, Sanford was one of a number of self-limiters in the Congress who showed that keeping one’s word does not amount to a political death sentence. You get the idea of his level of commitment from both the title and content of a book he wrote some years ago, The Trust Committed to Me.

Sanford’s fiscal conservatism is a tough sell wherever political incumbents just want to spend, spend, spend taxpayers’ money. So the governor doesn’t always use his political clout on behalf of incumbents who share his party affiliation but not his principles.

Sanford recently endorsed the candidacy of Ed Rumsey, who is challenging Bill Sandifer for a South Carolina House seat. This was the third time in recent weeks Sanford had endorsed a GOP challenger over a GOP incumbent. This angers Republicans who prioritize partisanship over sound policy.

Governor Sanford has a different idea. He and Sandifer are at odds over the issue of bloated spending. The governor wants to increase the chances that his vetoes will be upheld, instead of routinely overridden.

Sanford’s politics may stir up a ruckus, but, as he puts it, ’seats don’t belong to individual members. It is not a franchise one gets to own.’

[Forum’s underscoring throughout.]

That’s common sense — and so’s this! I’m Paul Jacob.

Click here to listen to an MP3 audio file of this episode.”

The Forum editors strongly recommend to all Maryland and Virginia conservatives participating in this Leadership Institute re-energizing family festival: especially this year, and especially in these troubled political times.

Here is the website; below are the details from the Leadership Institute:

“The Leadership Institute, in conjunction with generous conservative sponsors, invites you to attend

The 36th Annual Conservative Fourth of July Soirée
Bull Run Park - Centreville, VA
July 4, 2008
12PM – 5PM

UPDATE June 26! “The State Department is Not Doing Its Duty” charges Representative Frank Wolf in a June 24 letter here highlighted in an Investigative Project on Terrorism column here “State Dept. Stands Alone on Virginia Saudi School.” How much already spreading press notice (now by Andrew McCarthy on NRO here) and Congressional vexation will be required to move Dr. Rice? Perhaps Representative Wolf’s appropriations panel can bring her to a better mind.

Yesterday’s Washington Post (below) tells us of a new turn of events concerning the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, which last May 19 couldn’t move quickly enough to renew the lease of public property to the Islamic Saudi Academy.

Security and religious-freedom advocates had wanted the Academy’s curricula independently scrutinized. (For background click here.) But Board members vied with each other at the May 19 meeting to belittle the concerns these advocates raised. Most recently, however, the Fairfax Board of Supervisors released a letter Monday to the Secretary of State requesting guidance on the whole leasing matter. Continue Reading »

Senator John McCain’s (apparently “under construction”) energy policy is causing some strains among center-right voices.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker is more hopeful, however, in his post “McCain’s Energy Policy.”

“A basic tension is at work whenever McCain talks about energy policy. He wants oil to be cheaper so that Americans’ budgets will not be pinched and our economy won’t go into the ditch; hence his call for drilling in the outer continental shelf and elsewhere. Producing more oil and reducing its price will, of course, result in more oil consumption, and more CO2 emissions.

This is where McCain runs into trouble. He has bought into the anthropogenic global warming myth, so he has to advocate less CO2 emission, not more. Hence his call for the government to subsidize technologies that use less, or no, oil, and his advocacy of a ‘cap and trade’ system for CO2. McCain’s energy policies are fundamentally in conflict.” Click here for entire post.

On the other hand, junk-science buster and CEI Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy has lost some patience. Yesterday in his email “The High Cost of McCarbonomics,” Milloy declared: Continue Reading »

Gas prices and energy understandably dominate today’s domestic political stage.

But we can’t take a summer off from history - - - and the Iranian regime appears as immediately dangerous as was the German regime in the summer of 1939.

Today’s Wall Street Journal gives us chapter and verse on the failure of our diplomacy:

As for the U.S., December’s publication of a misleading National Intelligence Estimate that claimed Iran had halted nuclear weaponization signaled America’s own lack of seriousness toward Iranian ambitions. Barack Obama is leading in the Presidential polls and portrays as a virtue his promise to negotiate with Iran “without precondition” – i.e., without insisting that Tehran stop enriching uranium. All the while Iran continues to enrich, installing thousands of additional centrifuges of increasingly more sophisticated design while it buries key facilities underground.
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The tragic paradox of the past six years is that the diplomatic and intelligence evasions offered in the name of avoiding war with Iran have done the most to bring us close to this brink.

Read the entire WSJ analysis here.

The Other Team is not, moreover, letting up in their effort to weaken America. Continue Reading »

Caroline B. Glick, Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad, Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, Ltd, 2008.

Reviewed by Susan Freis Falknor

Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post through these articles penned over the past half-decade shows us “a running chronicle of the world war that no one will acknowledge” but yet is “the defining feature of our times.”

Glick, born and schooled (Columbia and Harvard) in the United States, went to Israel in 1991, served as an officer in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and was assistant foreign policy advisor to then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Covering the national political beat in a time and place where the biggest issue is jihad, Glick uncovers both appalling realities and terrible future possibilities. Yet she never loses what former director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, in his foreword to this book, calls her “gumption.”

Anchored in both countries, Glick is in a good position to interpret Israel to American conservatives. This book is bound to increase the popularity she already enjoys through her Internet column (http://www.carolineglick.com/e/).

Glick poignantly sets out the vulnerabilities of Israel—not just threats from its genocidal, soon-to-be nuclear-armed neighbors in the Middle East—but also internally, from its own liberal politicians and their allies in the leftist media, academia, and judiciary.

These internal forces largely promote the enemy’s talking points, disseminate and normalize disinformation, and weaken key protective institutions such as the free press, the military, and the role of religion in public life. She explains:

“As each day passes, the governments, formal and informal legal apparatus, and media of free society show themselves to be less and less capable of contending with the information operations conducted against their societies by subversive forces seeking their destruction.”

Here are just a few of the more memorable points in Glick’s wide-ranging commentary.

• The vacillation of America. On one hand – the US is Israel’s “only friend.” On the other hand – the United States has long followed a de facto policy of “allowing Israel to beat Arab aggressors militarily but forcing it to lose the war politically.” Our State Department buys into the peace process and the two-state solution, while the US chattering classes follow Europe in its resurgence of anti-Zionism. Nonetheless, the special relationship persists: “The US and Israel are still far ahead of the rest of the world in coming to grips with reality just by recognizing that there is a war to begin with.”

• Old Europe’s gambit. “There is a direct connection between Europe’s anti-Semitism and its anti-Americanism,” writes Glick. “If Israel, the archetype of the nation state, is accepted as a rogue nation, then the US will hardly be able to argue with Europe’s self-proclaimed right to interfere in its own internal debates about issues like the death penalty, abortion rights, genetically modified crops or global warming. Europe will have proven its point. According to the European logic, America, after abandoning Israel, will have been brought to heel.” (Underscoring is BRF’s.)
  

• The religious Jewish community and the weakening of the army. In a May 2006 column, Glick writes about internal reaction to the government’s expulsions of Jewish settlers and the “brutal police-commanded evacuations of protestors at Amona.” These events took a toll in “decreased motivation and ruined morale” of many in the IDF, evidenced by falling reenlistment rates. The traditional Jewish religious community, which makes up 15% of the population, provides 30% of IDF’s combat soldiers and accounts for 39% of soldiers killed in action. The IDF response was to “limit the recruitment of religious soldiers.” The end result, fears Glick: the IDF will “degrade its fighting capabilities by rejecting its best soldiers and recruits; it will be transformed into a force charged not with defending against its enemies but with defending the government against its political opponents.” (Underscoring is BRF’s.)

For these insights alone, reading Shackled Warrior is essential.

This internal weakening of Israel is a harbinger of what our chattering classes plan for the U. S.

And as Glick praises both the American soldiers with whom she was an embedded journalist in the last Iraq campaign, she also reminds American conservative bloggers that they “have become a critical component of the free world’s defense in the current war.”