Stopping Riots

            Belgium is a small country divided almost exactly in half along ethnic, cultural, and linguistic lines. To the north are the Dutch-speaking Flemish, and to the south the French-speaking Walloons. The University of Louvain is located just above the dividing line on the Flemish side, but when I went to school there in the early 60s, the university had two mirrored halves, with every course taught in both Dutch and French.

            That didn’t stop the students from rioting against each other. Every fall the two sides traditionally held mock battles, often by pulling cobble stones out of the main avenue and erecting barricades behind which they tossed rotten tomatoes and insults at each other. The city got tired of this one day and paved over the avenue. But that didn’t stop the rioting. So, the university solved the problem once and for all by moving the French-speaking half to a new campus south of the dividing line. End of riots.

            If only such a resolution could be applied to UC Berkeley and other bastions of leftist thought. Aren’t we all getting tired of videos showing hooded rioters setting fires and breaking windows, spurred on by students denying the freedom of speech to conservative invitees who are bound to violate the students’ right not to be offended?

            To end this nonsense, one might cynically propose that Berkeley be paved over. Of course, it would be far more desirable to offset the school’s liberal indoctrination of malleable students by adding conservative teachers to balance a faculty that overwhelmingly identifies with the left. But this balance is highly unlikely with administrators whose preferred solution to conflict is to offer their snowflakes safe spaces stocked with chocolate bars and coloring books to salve their offended sensibilities.

            Maybe Berkeley could hitch a ride with the Oakland Raiders and move to Las Vegas, beyond the influence of the People’s Republic of California.

           

           

An Unhealthy Debate

            One of the biggest differences between our political parties these days is in their unity or lack of it. For example, Republicans promised to repeal and replace ObamaCare, but they can’t agree on how to do it because the many factions within the party seem to place their narrow interests before the good of the country. Democrats, on the other hand, are almost monolithic; they have fashioned a tight bond based on a single factor, i.e., opposing President Trump on every issue. That is not good for the country either.

            The healthcare debacle is symptomatic of what ails this democracy. But it wasn’t always so. Back in the 80s, ideological opposites Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan managed to compromise on a tax reform bill that raised us out of Jimmy Carter’s malaise into the most vibrant period of economic growth in my lifetime. Such cooperation appears to be impossible with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi browbeating their colleagues in the Senate and the House into a unified resistance to the President’s every move.

            Democrats, of course, are supported by a mainstream media that can find little to cheer in the President’s first 100 days in office. When the country and the world applauded Trump’s bombing of Syria and dropping the MOAB on ISIS tunnels, even then the media’s reluctant praise read like constipated rhetoric.

            Symptomatic of what ails a Democratic party that has not gotten over losing the elections is the unending stream of consistently negative comments from Nancy Theodore in my local paper. I have looked in vain through her lengthy diatribes against President Trump for anything positive, anything constructive. Why can she not acknowledge that there has been good news on jobs, on immigration, on energy, on reversing job-killing regulations, on foreign relations? If she does not agree, where are her ideas for improving our economy, for improving healthcare, for shrinking the size of the federal government, for controlling illegal immigration? In view of its repeated disasters at the polls, what exactly does she think the Democratic party has to do to regain the confidence of the American people in its ability to govern?

            Debate is healthy. But not when one side denies that the other can ever have a valid point.

In the Face of Evil

            It’s refreshing to see how many of President Trump’s detractors approve his punishment of Syria for the gassing of it citizens. Countries around the world that had become inured to Obama’s reliance on toothless negotiations to combat evil are now applauding our re-emergence as a world leader.

            Russia, of course, has sent a destroyer to the Mediterranean to punctuate its verbal condemnation of the U.S. missile attack. But they can’t protest too loudly, in view of their collaboration with President Assad in his continued campaign of genocide against his own people. There is even evidence that Russia abetted Assad not only in the drone supervision of the chemical attack, but also in the bombing of the hospital treating the victims, ostensibly to destroy the evidence of the execrable act.

            At home, even Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the President’s implacable enemies in Congress, have cheered Mr. Trump’s decisive action. Some, like the isolationist Rand Paul, would have preferred a declaration of war from Congress. But this myopic midget’s reading of the Constitution ignores a long history of presidential action in similar circumstances, not to mention that prior approval would have defeated the effectiveness of our military response. To quote Stephen Carter, “Clinging to the long-dead notion that Congress must first declare war might be comforting, but it has nothing to do with reality.”

            Perhaps these developments will give relentless critics of President Trump a reason to recognize, at least in this instance, that he is acting in the best interests of our national security. And in the best interests of humanity in the face of evil.