Monuments, Idiots, and Antifa

            I was glad to read in our local paper last week that our elected leaders will not push for the removal of Civil War monuments in Hertford (NC). Perquimans County Commissioner Kyle Jones was right when he said that monuments are not what’s driving America’s problems. Their presence, he suggested, is no more the cause of racism than their removal would solve it. Happily, common sense prevails in our small town.

            It was not so long ago that we were treated to scenes of ISIS fanatics destroying precious monuments and artifacts in Palmyra, in a senseless, symbolic destruction of ancient Mesopotamian history. How different is that from the idiots who think that erasing links to the past by toppling statues of Confederate generals is a justified way to exact punishment for racism in this country?  

            The kids in Durham who tore down, kicked, stomped, and spat on a memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers may have thought they were protesting neo-Nazis, the KKK, and President Trump. In reality, they were demonstrating their ignorance of history. They were morons.

            Much more dangerous were the Antifa rioters who wielded clubs in Charlottesville as they had in protests against conservative speakers in Berkeley and other academic institutions. The white supremacists in Charlottesville may have been racists, but the Antifa thugs were not fighting racism: their ultimate objective is the destruction of the values and institutions that define America.

            Antifa is a violent, radical, hard-left organization of revolutionaries looking to tear down this country. It urges destruction of property, violence against police, and all-out anarchy. Its black-clad and masked cowards are the ones who threaten America, not the idiots like the ones in Durham. I wouldn’t worry about these kids: one of these days there’s a chance they may grow up and acquire some common sense. But do worry if they join the masked men in black.

Barcelona Is Not Charlottesville

            Last Thursday a terrorist plowed his van into a crowded street in Barcelona, killing 13 and injuring over 100. CNN correspondent Jim Sciutto, in his in-depth report on the tragedy, suggested that the terrorist, who used a vehicle to kill innocent people, was a copycat of the madman who killed a young woman when he drove his car into protesters in Charlottesville a few days earlier. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer concurred: “There will be questions about copycats….They used the same killing device, a vehicle.”

            I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read about this. How could any respectable journalist make such an absurd connection? How could Sciutto and Blitzer conveniently forget the massacres in Nice, Berlin, London, and many other cities in which terrorists have used vehicles to massacre bystanders? The connection between these atrocities and Barcelona is radical Islamic terrorism. The common denominator is ISIS, not white supremacists or neo-Nazis.

            What is evident—and outrageous—is that CNN has used a non-existent link between Charlottesville and Barcelona to promote its leftist agenda. It is nothing less than shameless propaganda. Let’s not forget that our mainstream media has beaten to death President Trump’s response to Charlottesville. The President deserved the criticism, but he doesn’t deserve the implied connection to Barcelona.

            If there are any copycats in this sordid business, they reside in a biased media that will do anything to damage the President. It is high time for all fair-minded people to echo Boston lawyer Joseph Welsh’s question of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, “Have you no sense of decency?” Indeed, Messrs. Sciutto and Blitzer and your copycats in the media, “Have you no sense of decency?”

Cuba and Venezuela

           

           It’s almost impossible to stay focused on a single news story these days, because there seems to be an explosion of new stories every day. Russia is big one day, then North Korea, then Isis. At home, our Texter-in Chief moves from immigration to transgenders, to health care, to tax reform, and whatever else pops into his mind at 3 o’clock in the morning. If that’s not enough we have the story of James Damore getting fired by Google eclipsed by the more gruesome story of a car plowing into protesters in Charlottesville.

            Mentioned only in passing is one story that I believe will produce many headlines in the weeks and months to come. And that is the story of what is happening in Venezuela, and what may happen if the United States tries to affect a regime change there.

            Let’s remember that Venezuela is in our backyard. And let’s remember that ever since America adopted the Monroe Doctrine as national policy, the United States has used this policy to justify armed intervention in Cuba, Panama, and Grenada. It may very well do so again in Venezuela.

            There is very good reason for the U.S. to be concerned with Venezuela. With its economy in shambles and its people starving, President Maduro has moved to establish a dictatorship and is meeting protestors with brutal force. He has been able to do this because of the full support of Cuba, which for years has been infiltrating Venezuela’s social and educational institutions and is now in control of its military. Let’s not kid ourselves: Cuba is de facto in charge of the Venezuelan government. Maduro is no more than Cuba’s puppet.

            There’s more than the fate of Venezuela at stake here. Cuba has already sunk its fangs into Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua and is looking to control all of Latin America. That’s why Cuba’s ambitions must be stopped in Venezuela. President Trump’s generals know this and are formulating plans for military intervention in that country.

            Stay tuned. This may be the next big story, one that puts all the others on the back page.           

Leakers and Publishers

            Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats held a press conference last week to announce that the Department of Justice is tripling its efforts to identify and prosecute leakers of classified and sensitive information. Stopping leakers, they said, was necessary to protect our national security and to tell the leakers, whatever their motivation ,to Stop It.

            Fine. Let’s throw those criminal leakers in jail. But I have a question: if leaking classified and sensitive information to the press is a criminal act, why wouldn’t printing that information not also constitute a criminal act? If a journalist prints leaked information that damages the security of the United States, why shouldn’t that journalist be as liable to criminal prosecution as the leaker?

            The answer, we assume, is that the journalist is protected by the Constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press. Now, a journalist can be sued for libel if he intentionally publishes false information that he knows is false. But if what he publishes happens to be factual, irrespective of the damage its release might cause, he would be protected by the First Amendment. But should that amount to blanket immunity from prosecution?

            The Justice Department has always been reluctant to force journalists to reveal their sources. But Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein refused last week to rule out the possibility that journalists would be prosecuted for publishing information obtained through criminal leaks. This at least suggests that the Department of Justice is considering it.

            I think that leaks have become so numerous and so damaging to the nation’s security, that the Justice Department will be forced at some point to prosecute the publishers of the leaked information. If that happens, it would challenge the Supreme Court to reexamine the Constitution on the very meaning of Freedom of the Press.

            I think it’s time for that to happen.

A Lot of Maybes

            On any given day it is possible to scan the nation’s major newspapers and find a virtual thesaurus of derogatory terms applied to President Trump. In just one such exercise I found: impetuous, brash, naïve, crude, sniveling, whiny, shrill, weak, self-pitying, and finger-pointing drama queen. And these were from a Republican.

            Of course, his opponents were worse: sadistic, paranoid, demeaning, humiliating, obsessed, mean, cruel, vindictive, cynical, impulsive, inept, immodest, and the all-too-familiar sexist pig. The list goes on, even without quoting Maxine Waters and others who have called for Trump’s impeachment.

            This gross disrespect points to a President Trump who has become isolated by his ill-conceived decisions and unrestrained communications. He has enough enemies who thoroughly despise him; he doesn’t need to antagonize his friends and loyal supporters. He began his presidency by surrounding himself with very good people. Now Spicer and Priebus are gone, Sessions is mortally wounded, Tillerson is rumored to be on the verge of quitting, as is Price, and his defense chiefs are wondering what’s next after being undercut by the President on transgender policy?

            We can forgive President Trump for his political inexperience; we can put up with his strutting braggadocio; we can survive his poor judgment on major domestic issues. But we should be extremely concerned about his dangerous lack of self-control in an increasingly dangerous world. Russia, Iran, and North Korea grew in strength and in contempt for America as a result of Obama’s whimpering withdrawal from the world stage. Is a maladroit and impetuous leader what we need to meet the challenges this country now faces?

            All is not lost. Maybe the appointment of General John Kelly as the new Chief-of-Staff will bring order and discipline to the chaotic White House. Maybe congressional Republicans will rise from the ashes of their humiliating defeat on healthcare to pass meaningful legislation on tax reform. Maybe China will finally realize that an unrestrained North Korea is not in their best interest. Maybe Donald Trump will concede that he is not as cool and tough and smart as he thought he was.

            That’s a lot of maybes.

Red Sox and Republicans

            I was born and raised only forty miles from Boston’s Fenway Park. Naturally, I became a Red Sox fan. During those early years, the Yankees always seemed to beat the Red Sox and win the World Series. I grew to hate them.

            After college, I was an immature idealist with liberal convictions. I even voted for Lyndon Johnson. But after realizing that his Great Society was doing more harm than good and was really a vote-buying scam, I became a Republican. Like the old saying says, “If you aren’t a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re older, you have no head.”

            The parallel between this year’s Red Sox and Republican politicians is uncanny. After a slow start, the Red Sox began to play well and rose to the top of the division by the All-Star break. The Republicans, all but doomed by pollsters, captured both houses of Congress and the Presidency in the last elections and found themselves in a commanding position to reshape the country, and they actually got off to a good start. But since the All-Star break, the punchless Red Sox have surrendered the lead back to the Yankees, while In Washington, Congressional Republicans have proven that they cannot govern. Worse, the chaos in a White House presided over by a clueless pretender is making any course correction improbable if not impossible.

            Here’s what has to happen. The Red Sox need to start winning again, and they won’t do that until they start swinging bats that don’t have holes in them. The Republicans need to start winning again, too. With healthcare reform dead in the water, tax reform has become an imperative. And winning again won’t happen—not for the Red Sox nor for the Republicans— unless they work as a team.

            To win their division the Red Sox shouldn’t count on the Yankees losing. And for the Republicans to deliver on their promises, they shouldn’t expect any help from the obstructionist Democrats. In both cases someone has to step up to the plate and carry the team. Who will that be?

Three Freedoms

            Celebrations on the 4^th of July bring back memories, one of them from half a lifetime ago when I was asked to give the commencement address at my local school district’s graduation ceremony. I took advantage of this special honor to deliver a simple message to the graduates: cherish and protect the freedom this great nation has given you. At the same time, I cautioned the students to protect freedom from abuse. I think if I were to give a commencement address today, I might repeat the same message, because I see our Constitutional freedoms under assault today in ways I could not have imagined 40 years ago.

            Freedom of religion is under attack by secularists who mock people of faith whose lives are guided by their belief in a Supreme Being rather than by “enlightened” principles embraced by the favored elite. Ironically, many of these same secularists scream Islamophobia at those who oppose the extreme ideology of radical Muslims.

            Freedom of the press is eroding from within at the hands of those who use its protection to report and opine dishonestly to advance a biased agenda. This is not new; the press has been used for political propaganda since the founding of our republic. Today’s abuse of this freedom, however, is much worse. The irresponsible and cowardly use of unnamed sources and leaks, and the repetition of known falsehoods by a press almost uniformly dedicated to the removal of a sitting president it despises, is far more corrosive of this freedom.

            Freedom of speech is probably in greatest jeopardy. It is denied to Conservative speakers at campuses radicalized by Leftist professors and governed by administrators more concerned with offense to the sensitivities of their snowflakes than with the benefits of vigorous debate. Outside ivy-covered walls, “victimized” groups appropriate loaded words like sexist, racist, homophobe, and fascist to deny the very expression of contrary opinion.

            “These are the times that try men’s souls,” said the great patriot Thomas Paine of our fight for independence. If he were alive today, I’m sure he would recognize the growing threats to our precious freedoms and challenge us to fight those who would destroy them. As we celebrate this Independence Day, we should all think about what we are willing to fight for.