How Will America Hold Together?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Thursday, June 27, 2013

By A.D. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections.

Yet Rome endured as a global power for three more centuries. What held it together?

A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the Numidian, the Iberian and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain were available to millions throughout the Mediterranean.

As long as the sea was free of pirates, thieves cleared from the roads, and merchants allowed to profit, few cared whether the lawless Caracalla or the unhinged Elagabalus was emperor in distant Rome.

Something likewise both depressing and encouraging is happening to the United States. Few Americans seem to worry that our present leaders have lied to or misled the Congress and the American people without consequences.

Most young people cannot distinguish the First Amendment from the Fourth Amendment -- and do not worry that they cannot. Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln are mere names of grammar schools but otherwise unidentifiable to most.

Separatism is believed to bring dividends. Here in California, universities conduct separate graduation ceremonies predicated on race -- sometimes difficult given the increasingly mixed ancestry of Americans.

As in Rome, there is a vast disconnect between elites and the people. Almost half of America receives some sort of public assistance, and another half pays no federal income tax. About one-seventh of Americans are on food stamps.

Yet housing prices in elite enclaves -- Manhattan, Cambridge, Santa Monica, Palo Alto -- are soaring. The wealthy like to cocoon themselves in Roman-like villas, safe from the real-life ramifications of their own utopian ideology.

The government and the media do their best to spread the ideals of radical egalitarianism while avoiding offense to anyone. There is no official war on terror or against radical Islamism. Instead, in "overseas contingency operations" we fight "man-caused disasters" while at home dealing with "workplace violence."

In news stories that involve crimes with divisive racial themes, the media frequently paper over information about the perpetrators. But that noble restraint only seems to incite readers. In reckless fashion they often post the most inflammatory online comments about such liberal censorship. Officially, America celebrates diversity; privately, America is fragmenting into racial, political and ideological camps.

So why is the United States not experiencing something like the rioting in Turkey or Brazil, or the murder of thousands in Mexico? How are we able to avoid the bloody chaos in Syria, the harsh dictatorships of Russia and China, the implosion of Egypt or the economic hopelessness now endemic in Southern Europe?

About half of America and many of its institutions operate as they always have. Cal-Tech and MIT are still serious. Neither interjects race, class and gender studies into its engineering or physics curricula. Most in the IRS, unlike some of their bosses, are not corrupt. For the well driller, the power plant operator and the wheat farmer, the lies in Washington are still mostly an abstraction.

Get up at 5:30 a.m. and you'll see that most of the nation's urban freeways are jammed with hard-working commuters. Every day they go to work, support their families, pay their taxes and avoid arrest -- so that millions of others do not have to do the same. The U.S. military still more closely resembles our heroes from World War II than the culture of the Kardashians.

Like diverse imperial Roman citizens, we are united in some fashion by shared popular tastes and mass consumerism. The cell phones and cars of the poor offer more computing power and better transportation than the aristocracy enjoyed just 20 years ago.

Youth of all races and backgrounds in lockstep fiddle with their cell phones as they walk about. Jeans are an unspoken American uniform -- both for the Wall Street grandees and the homeless on the sidewalks. Left, right, liberal, conservative, professor and ditch digger have similar-looking Facebook accounts.

If Rome quieted the people with public spectacles and cheap grain from the provinces, so too Americans of all classes keep glued to favorite video games and reality-TV shows. Fast food is both cheap and tasty. All that for now is preferable to rioting and revolt.

Like Rome, America apparently can coast for a long time on the fumes of its wonderful political heritage and economic dynamism -- even if both are little understood or appreciated by most who still benefit from them.

Obama to U.S. Military: Stand Down

By Scottie Hughes

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Fires raged throughout the consulate and nearby CIA annex. In a solitary corner of the compound, the American flag lay torn, singed and soiled. Inside, Christopher Stephens struggled for his last breath of air. He could hear shouts and gunfire outside. None of that, however, was from his comrades.

There would be no help on the night of September 11, 2012.That was because the U.S. military was given the order from Washington to “stand down.”

In closed door hearings on Capitol Hill today, Congress will ask military commanders with responsibility for forces in and around Benghazi who exactly relayed that order and why. But a closer look at this administration’s record reveals that standing down is a recurring theme. It is an implicit order that is given to the military every day in the Obama administration. It is part of a decade-long dream by the left to neuter our military and ensure that they are no longer able to be the shock troops for a nation that they believe is at the root of the world’s ills.

From Vietnam to Iraq, the left believes the military is an instrument for killing civilians and committing war crimes. The Left long has demonstrated an animus to America’s military. During the Vietnam War, left-wing activists bombed draft boards, threw blood on the Pentagon, and dug graves in the yards of public officials to protest what they saw as the depravity of America’s fighting force. In the Carter and Clinton administrations, this animus was heightened. President Clinton, for example, faced a stunning backlash over his attempt to allow gays to serve openly in the military, earning a rebuke from military leaders. Clinton, who never served in uniform, had a tense relationship with the military at best.

In Barack Obama, the left has a champion of the Blame-America-First worldview, and a closer look at his defense policies from military sequestration to gays in the military to women in combat reveals how openly he has embraced the politics of standing down. The goal is nothing less than eroding the mission and values of the strongest military in the world and forever reducing its capabilities.

Why, you might ask, would our President wish for this fate? Shouldn’t the Commander in Chief’s first priority be to preserve the leading military superpower in the world? Not if your allegiance is to a progressive doctrine and your associates and advisors throughout life have instilled in you an animosity for the U.S. military.

Over the last five years, Americans have seen the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Obama Pentagon officials have taken the next step by by hosting events like this past week’s Gay Pride Day at the Pentagon and initializing gay sensitivity training in the Marine Corps.

We have watched the longstanding tradition of keeping women off of the front lines of combat erased and wartime rules of engagement changed in the name of “gender equality.”

Under the umbrella of political correctness, our military was forced to open their arms to radical Islamists who call our military infidels and sworn enemies. Such as in the case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and the Ft. Hood shooting as well as in the case of Ft. Campbell’s PFC Naser Jason Addo, who was convicted of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction to blow up a restaurant filled with troops.

Other policies have been put in place to discourage the best from enlisting and becoming commissioned officers. ROTC programs have come under assault at top colleges. Military branches like the Navy are being told they'll have to reduce their tuition assistance programs.

“Sequestration” and the cutting of hundreds of billions of dollars from the defense budget, an idea that was hatched inside the Obama White House, is proving devastating the military’s readiness and morale. Training exercises are being canceled. Ships are being mothballed and aircraft taken out of service.

All of this while our military is being demonized by pop culture. In 2011, well known rap artist Soulja Boy released a video which included the words “F*** the troops,” and Psy a Korean music artist whose fame came to him in America for his song Gangnam Style, released a song promoting the killing of American Soldiers.

Hollywood has also done a great job of villainizing our military men and women with the making of movies like Jarhead, Three Kings, and the upcoming release of The Invisible War, a documentary that aims to put a spotlight on sexual assault in the military.

The ultimate goal is clear -- to neuter America’s military as an effective fighting machine and encourage the development of a global “peacekeeping” force. This is in keeping with the Harvard-Bill Ayers-Ivory Tower distrust and hostility to the American military and preference for a “multipolar” world. The result is an America unable and unwilling to defend its own borders and threats to its people. The war on the military is real. And with eight years with Barack Obama as Commander in Chief, the damage may well prove irreversible.

The United States of...France

By Rich Galen

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

It's now official -- America is the France of the 21st century.

France was a big power in the 18th and 19th Centuries. The French were pretty much in a constant state of war what with everything from the Seven Years' War, to the French and Indian Wars, to the American Revolution, to the Napoleonic Wars.

Then came the 20th Century when World War I, mostly fought on French soil, led to their preemptive surrender in World War II.

Since then, although the French still claim to be a world power, we all know that they're a shell of their former glory.

The United States, under President Obama, is looking more and more like France each day.

We're still the world's foremost superpower as of yet, but Barack Obama is responsible for the most dramatic decrease in a nation's standing since Alderaan was blown up by the Death Star in 1977 (Earth date).

The Edward Snowden debacle is the latest in a string of embarrassments, miscalculations by the Obama Administration -- it verges on plain incompetence.

As I type this, the entire Russian government is openly mocking the United States.

The National Journal's Michael Hirsh wrote that Putin's behavior over Snowden is in line with his positions on:

Syria (with Putin backing Bashar al-Assad against the rebels), Iran (where Moscow opposes too-stringent sanctions and is building a reactor), and missile defense (where Putin pressured President Obama to retreat from a missile-defense system, angering Poland and the Czech Republic).

Prior to arriving at the Transit Lounge in Moscow, Snowden was in Hong Kong, where senior members of the Chinese government were busily staring at their shoelaces as he left his hotel, traveled across Hong Kong, went to the airport, bought a ticket, made his way through Chinese immigration (even though his U.S. passport had been canceled), got on a plane and flew non-stop to Moscow.

The Times of India wrote that, while the Obama Administration was stomping its feet and holding its breath over Snowden, in China the "government-controlled media [was] describing him as an 'idealist' and a 'hero.'"

Anyone can have a rough patch with Russian and Chinese dictators, but how about the Obama Administration's excellent work in dealing with the Taliban? The Administration announced it was planning to open direct talks with the Taliban at their brand new office in Qatar.

Hamid Karzai, current thug atop the Afghan food chain, immediately flew into a frenzy and declared he was not only opposed to the U.S. meeting with the Taliban but was stopping his own negotiations with the U.S. on which military forces would be allowed to remain in Afghanistan after 2014. This is known as a Status of Forces (SOFA) agreement.

The Taliban, to show their good faith, immediately went out and attacked a convoy, killing at least one NATO soldier. It also attacked and killed nine tourists in Pakistan, including one American. And to round out the week of goodwill, they launched an attack in central Kabul in which, according to the New York Times, they employed:

"Two land cruisers similar to those used by international soldiers here, fake badges and vehicle passes, which allowed at least one to get inside the heavily guarded area, according to Kabul's deputy police chief."

This is the way the Taliban wants to prep the conference table for negotiations with Obama.

The fact is, there's no longer much of a downside for foreign leaders to embarrass the President of the United States.

Call Rosetta Stone -- it's high time we all learned French.

The GOP's Immigration Tussle

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

I don't know how Democrats do it

The immigration reform proposal wending its way through the Senate is tearing the Republican Party to pieces. Poor Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), once the golden boy of the Tea Party and the conservative movement, is being treated like a guy who wants to leave a gang but must submit to a group beating first.

But Rubio is simply the latest javelin catcher in the right's immigration Olympiad. Attention will soon shift to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). House conservatives are poised to block out the sun with arrows aimed at him if he moves the bill without a majority of GOP support.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce just released a TV ad campaign to promote immigration reform that features Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), even though Paul has come out against the legislation because it doesn't include his border security requirements. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board -- always a passionate supporter of maximizing immigration -- seems on the verge of a collective aneurysm as it deals with what it sees as a Republican Party giving in to nativist madness.

By comparison, while the GOP increasingly looks like the fight scene in the movie "Anchorman," the Democrats under New York Sen. Charles Schumer's leadership look like Snow White's dwarfs, whistling while they work.

It helps that President Obama is staying out of it, but even so, Democrats have managed to keep nearly everyone in line. The most vocal critic on the left has been Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who plausibly argues that the bill will disproportionately hurt the unskilled and undereducated poor.

But his support was bought with a $1.5 billion youth jobs program buried in the new 1,190-page revised bill, which senators had a whopping 72 hours to read before Monday's vote.

Still, Sanders' complaint -- and his abdication -- raises interesting issues. One reason the Democrats are having an easier time is that their stakeholders can cut deals and the constituencies will go along. Organized labor will get its carve-outs from the Democrats, as will business groups eager to work on a bipartisan basis.

Contrary to popular perception, the GOP is the far more populist and grass-roots party these days, and the troops are not in a mood to follow orders.

Democrats are usually the ones decrying the pernicious global trends hampering prosperity for the working poor and middle class. And yet, their biggest priority is a bill that will accelerate those trends.

Last week, when the Congressional Budget Office issued a report that the immigration bill would increase GNP per capita by 0.2 percent and slightly reduce the deficit in 20 years, Democrats hailed it as a vindication.

It fell to Republicans to note that the same CBO report assumed the legislation would reduce immigration by a mere 25 percent and would very modestly reduce average wages in the first decade. Schumer has been selling the bill as a way to make illegal immigration "a thing of the past." A 25 percent reduction doesn't sound like the dustbin of history to me.

Liberal wonks raced to defend the bill on the wage issue by noting that average wages wouldn't necessarily go down for existing workers. (If 10 people make $100 a day, and you add an 11th who makes $50 a day, the average goes down even if everyone's wages don't.) But arguing about how much wages will or won't go down is a far cry from claiming wages will go up.

Polling shows that there's a huge amount of consensus about what to do on immigration. If people here illegally meet strict requirements -- pay back taxes, a fine, etc. -- support for a path to citizenship is high, even among Republicans. Without those requirements, it plummets.

The same goes for border security. Convince people that this is a one-time thing and not a replay of the amnesty under Ronald Reagan, and most conservatives are eager to put this issue behind us.

The hitch is that the right is just not in a trusting mood. They feel, with ample justification, that Washington, including the GOP, has been betraying them -- by accident or on purpose -- for too long. I can understand that completely. What baffles me is why rank-and-file Democrats don't feel the same way.

Played Out: the Liberal Racists' "Uncle Tom" Card

By Michelle Malkin

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Meet Ryan Patrick Winkler. He's a 37-year-old liberal Minnesota state legislator with a B.A. in history from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School. He's also a coward, a bigot, a liar and a textbook example of plantation progressivism.

On Tuesday, Winkler took to Twitter to rant about the Supreme Court's decision to strike down an onerous section of the Voting Rights Act. The 5-4 ruling overturned an unconstitutional requirement that states win federal preclearance approval of any changes to their election laws and procedures. Winkler fumed: "VRA majority is four accomplices to race discrimination and one Uncle Thomas."

This Ivy League-trained public official and attorney relied on smug bigotry to make his case against a Supreme Court justice who happens to be black. "Uncle Thomas" wasn't a typo. Denigration was the goal, not an accident. It was a knowing, deliberate smear.

After being called out by conservative social media users for his cheap attack on Clarence Thomas, Winkler then revealed his true color: yellow. He deleted the tweet (captured for posterity at my Twitter curation site, twitchy.com) and pleaded ignorance.

"I did not understand 'Uncle Tom' as a racist term, and there seems to be some debate about it. I do apologize for it, however," he sniveled. "I didn't think it was offensive to suggest that Justice Thomas should be even more concerned about racial discrimination than colleagues," he protested.

Holding a black man to a different intellectual standard based on his skin color. Accusing a non-white conservative of collectivist race traitorism. Employing one of the most infamous, overused epithets against minority conservatives in the Democratic lexicon. "Apologizing," but disclaiming responsibility. Sorry ... that he got caught.

Just another day at the left-wing racist office.

Rabid liberal elitists expect and demand that we swallow their left-wing political orthodoxy whole and never question. When we don't yield, their racist and sexist diatribes against us are unmatched. My IQ, free will, skin color, eye shape, name, authenticity and integrity have been routinely ridiculed or questioned for more than two decades because I happen to be an unapologetic brown female free-market conservative. My Twitter account biography jokingly includes the moniker "Oriental Auntie-Tom" -- just one of thousands of slurs hurled at me by libs allergic to diversity of thought -- for a reason. It's a way to hold up an unflinching mirror at the holier-than-thou NoH8 haters and laugh.

We conservatives "of color" are way past anger about the Uncle Tom/Aunt Tomasina attacks. We're reviled by the left for our "betrayal" of our supposed tribes -- accused of being Uncle Toms, Aunt Tomasinas, House N*ggas, puppets of the White Man, Oreos, Sambos, lawn jockeys, coconuts, bananas, sellouts and whores. This is how the left's racial and ethnic tribalists have always rolled. But their insults are not bullets. They are badges of honor. The Uncle Tom card has been played out.

Of course Winkler didn't think it was offensive. Smarty-pants liberal racists never think they're being racist. In their own sanctimonious minds, progressives of pallor can never be guilty of bigotry toward minority conservatives. Ignorance is strength. Slurs are compliments. Intolerance is tolerance.

And when all else fails, left-wing prejudice is always just a well-intended joke. (PBS commentator Julianne Malveaux's death wish for Justice Thomas set the standard: "I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. ... He is an absolutely reprehensible person.")

Back in her day, before the advent of democratizing social media, Malveaux and her elitist PBS friends could get away with such vile bile. But liberal crabs in the bucket, viciously trying to drag dissenters "of color" down, can no longer engage in hit-and-run with impunity. Conservatives on Twitter have changed the dynamic in an underappreciated, revolutionary way. The pushback against liberal political bigotry is bigger, stronger and swifter than it's ever been.

You can delete, but you cannot hide.