Hamas v. Israel, Redux.

I wrote this 10 years ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Strife in the Gaza continues, as Hamas and Israel try to convince the rest of the world that the other side is the bad guy. Now, anyone that has been paying attention knows that the real existential threat to the US is Islam. And not just the US, but western civilization itself is threatened as islam continues its march through the middle-east, murdering, raping, torturing, and pillaging as it goes. And the virus has spread. Boko Haram is on a tear through Nigeria, the MLF is doing their thing in the Philippines, and likewise around the globe. Almost every violent conflict currently raging in the world can be laid at the feet of islam and its adherents.

But let us make no mistake, Israel is no saint. As a matter of fact, they are decidedly hostile to the US. The only reason I back them over Hamas is to even things up. Truth be told, I’ll back the underdog until they become the favorite, then I’ll switch alliance. When my enemies are fighting, I’ll stand back and toss them weapons.

So I’m on the side of Israel right now, but only because they are less likely to behead me and burn down my church. The Israeli’s hate us, but at least they try to hide it. For example, they have spied on us since before there was an Israel. They have attacked us. They have given our technology to our enemies. And they are unapologetic about it. For example, we all remember the USS Liberty incident, right?

The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War.  The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members, wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula.

It was reminiscent of the “Lavon Affair.” Israeli agents recruited Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

Arnon Milchan not only spied for Israel, but promoted the apartheid regime in South Africa in exchange for it helping Israel acquire uranium for its nuclear program.

Aviem Sella. While pursuing a PhD, Sella recruited Jonathan Pollard to spy for Israel. The US indicted Pollard on espionage charges in 1987. Pollard’s Israeli handlers were granted immunity from prosecution in the United States in exchange for cooperation after Pollard’s arrest. Sella’s role, however, was unknown at the time and the Israelis were not forthcoming about his involvement. For this reason, Sella was not given immunity by the US when his role was uncovered. Israel then refused to extradite Sella for questioning.

Jonathan Pollard delivered over 1000 classified documents to Israel for which he was well paid. Included in those documents were the names of over 150 US agents in the Mideast, who were eventually “turned” into agents for Israel. But by far the most egregious damage done by Pollard was to steal classified documents relating to the US Nuclear Deterrent relative to the USSR and send them to Israel. According to sources in the US State Department, Israel then turned around and traded those stolen nuclear secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas from the USSR to Israel.

Then there were the Rosenbergs, and the rest, including Harry Gold, Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant, William Perl and Morton Sobell, who all sold our burgeoning atomic program to the Soviet Union.

1965 Israel apparently illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, “US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.”)

In 1970, while working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

In 1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

In 1985 The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

In 1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, is indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).

In 1987 April 24 Wall Street Journal headline: “Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won’t be Explored in Detail by Panels.”

In 1992 The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc’s top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

In1992 Stephen Bryen was caught offering confidential documents to Israel.

In 1993. The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forces the city to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

In 1996 An Office of Naval Intelligence document, “Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare” reported that “US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology.” Jane’s Defense Weekly (2/28/96) noted that “until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China.” The report noted that this “represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation.” (Flight International, 3/13/96)

In 1997 Israeli agents place a tap on Monica Lewinsky’s phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. At the same time, the FBI’s hunt for “Mega” is called off.

In 2002 police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to “deliver furniture.” The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were “false positives” by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous. Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

And none of this is unusual for the Israelis. They spy on us, conduct clandestine anti-US operations, openly aid our enemies, and generally behave more like adversaries than allies. It would serve us well to remember that Israel’s interests are not always contiguous or coterminous with ours, and in some cases are directly opposed to our interests. It would serve us, too, to remember the dictum of Kissinger, that “countries don’t have friends, they have interests.” Perhaps we should realize that Israel’s interests aren’t ours, and Israel is certainly not our friend.

Roe v. Wade, redux and Au Revoir?

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

There are three separate, but important, trains of opinion on the leak of an early draft opinion in this case that purports to overturn Roe v. Wade. The first is that the leak imperils the Court’s ability to do it’s business outside the maelstrom of public ruction on any particular issue. The second is that the overturning of Roe v. Wade is Armageddon for every other personal decision making ability anyone has. The third is a failure to have read and understood that very leak- almost as if ignorance were a prerequisite to having a public platform. It is not surprising, I would think, to anyone that the media is wrong on all three counts.

The leak, however damaging it may be to whomever, is really an internal matter for the Court to deal with. With nine people of varying opinions, backgrounds, political views, and educations, I doubt anyone would expect unanimity in anything. What is important, however, is the ability of the justices, and by extension the clerks who work for them, to trust each other. This trust takes different forms, but signal among them is the secrecy with which deliberation proceed. The leaker, whoever he or she is, has damaged that trust. Who knows what the outcome of that will be.

As far as overturning Roe signaling the end of miscegenation and homosexual marriage, the pearl-clutching and drama is overblown. Eric Swallwell, a congressperson from California tweeted out that this decision, embryonic as it might be, signaled the end of inter-racial marriage in America. Various hosts on CNN and liberal media types were quick to jump on the same bandwagon, waxing tremulously at the mere thought. As many learned law professors have pointed out, nothing could be further from the truth. There are different areas of the law that protect gay rights and inter-racial marriage that have nothing to do with Roe. Same goes for access to contraceptives.

The draft, and I emphasize the word draft, is an excoriation of Roe based on the legal and historical reasons for the original decision. The draft itself is value-neutral, taking neither a pro-abortion nor anti-abortion stance. What it does take is a thorough historical approach to abortion and the laws regarding it, from the 14th Century onward. Roe claimed that abortion was a historic part of American liberty, and had been accepted throughout our history. It also purported to find the right to an abortion in penumbras emanating from the right to privacy. The draft opinion corrects the historical record, as well as the legal record, and proceeds to eviscerate Roe on purely legal grounds. This isn’t an outlier opinion. Even the late RBG was unimpressed by the legal reasoning in Roe.

The point is, I suppose, that I doubt that very few commentators who are opining on how horrible this draft is have even read it, and fewer still are equipped to understand it. Harry A. Blackmun, who wrote the opinion in Roe, a year later described it as “one of the worst mistakes in the court’s history or one of its great decisions.” As the draft makes clear, I think he was right about it being a mistake.

Biden et. al: Creeping Fascism

I have been seeing more and more stories about parents annoyed by various and sundry school board policies in various counties across the country. The latest imbroglio is over Joe Biden’s directive to the Justice Department to have the FBI investigate any parents they deem to be too aggressive in their protests against school board members. This, despite numerous promises by Biden that he would not ever direct the DOJ to investigate or prosecute any matter. Numerous times on the campaign trail, Biden promised a completely independent Justice Department.
It is, perhaps, a tempest in a teapot, given the FBI’s inability to successfully investigate damn near anything.
It is time to remind parents that they are the masters of the school board, and not its serfs. As far as I know, local school boards are all elected positions. So my advice to these parents is simple. Vote every singles school board member out. None of this “my guy is OK, your guy is terrible” nonsense. Make them all disappear. Each and every one.
This will have at least two salutary effects. First, it will get rid of those that the parents consider miscreants and malfeasors. Second, and more important, it will serve notice that school board members are employees and not rulers. And continue the policy oh wholesale removals until they get the message.
There is also a second issue with this whole FBI/DOJ thing. All during the Trump years, we were bombarded with the idea that Trump was a nascent dictator, just waiting for the opportunity to grab power. But, oddly enough, he never directed the DOJ to investigate Maxine Waters for calling for harassment against administration members. But Biden has.
It gets boring, after a while, to point out Democrat hypocrisy. It is, at this point, just low-hanging fruit; the democrats face no scrutiny from the media on those issues anyway. But it is instructive to remind people that the only dictators-in-waiting that America has managed have both been democrats. Huey Long and FDR were certainly not republicans.
And in up to the minute news, calls are going out from the left to give government the power to censor social media. It is sort of funny to see republican talking heads defend Facebook’s freedom of speech after the last 6 years. I would weep no tears to see Facebook disappear. Or Instagram or Tik-tok. What is less funny is the immediate turn of the left to fascism. Censorship and investigating troublesome people. We live in dangerous times.

Biden’s Disastrous Pandemic Plan

I read Joe Biden’s plan for dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic. I’m trying to figure out how much it will cost, but so much of it is amorphous and platitudes. But let’s take a look. The following is from Joe’s website. He plans to:

Double the number of drive-through testing sites. Cost: unknown.

Invest in next-generation testing, including at home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude. Cost: unknown.

Stand up a Pandemic Testing Board like Roosevelt’s War Production Board. It’s how we produced tanks, planes, uniforms, and supplies in record time, and it’s how we can produce and distribute tens of millions of tests. Cost: unknown.

Establish a U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps to mobilize at least 100,000 Americans across the country with support from trusted local organizations in communities most at risk to perform culturally competent approaches to contact tracing and protecting at-risk populations. Cost: at least, according to my back of the envelope calculations, 10 Billion.

Fully use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of masks, face shields, and other PPE so that the national supply of personal protective equipment exceeds demand. Cost: who knows?

Establish a renewable fund for state and local governments to help prevent budget shortfalls, which may cause states to face steep cuts to teachers and first responders. Cost: ?

Call on Congress to pass an emergency package to ensure schools have the additional resources they need to adapt effectively to COVID-19. Cost: ? But since they are likely to close, I can’t see the need for more money.

Provide a “restart package” that helps small businesses cover the costs of operating safely, including things like plexiglass and PPE. Cost: More.

Invest $25 billion in a vaccine manufacturing and distribution plan that will guarantee it gets to every American, cost-free. Cost: 25 Billion.

Establish a COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force, At the end of this health crisis, it will transition to a permanent Infectious Disease Racial Disparities Task Force. Cost: Aside from common sense, whatever graft needs to be doled out.

Immediately restore the White House National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, Cost: more.

Re-launch and strengthen U.S. Agency for International Development’s pathogen-tracking program called PREDICT. Cost: even more.

Expand the number of CDC’s deployed disease detectives. Cost: More and more.
And aside from costs that would have shocked Adlai Stevenson, he plans to require

Every American to wear a mask when they are around people outside their household

Every Governor to make that mandatory in their state

Local authorities to also make it mandatory to buttress their state orders.

Why has the press failed to ask Joe the questions about costs? Perhaps they know that the great unwashed would get incensed. So in addition to the costs of 100 billion or so, we will be forced to mask up all the time, all the places. At least we can take them off at home. This plan is a disaster, and anyone who thinks Biden is all there, isn’t.

Biden: Racist, Sexist, Pedophile.

Racist: a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

Sexist: characterized by or showing prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

Joe Biden, the putative presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, has made it clear that his choice of Vice-President candidate will be a black woman. Kamal Harris, Susan Rice, and Val Demings, among others, have all been mentioned.

It strikes me that in addition to being a pedophile, Biden is both a racist and a sexist. Here’s why. As the above definitions make clear, discrimination on the basis of sex and race are the hallmarks of racism and sexism.

Discrimination, by itself, is absolutely a good thing. It is discriminating to prefer Mozart to Justin Bieber. It is discriminating to prefer Veuve Cliquot to Cold Duck. In these cases, and others like them, recognizing that one is better than the other is discriminating. However, it is discriminating on a rational basis. There is no rational person that believes that Bieber is better thabn Beethoven, or that Dom Perignon is better than Andre.

There are, in those cases, rational and explainable reasons to suggest that one is better than, and preferable to, the other.

Now we come to Biden. Joe Biden will have us believe that a woman is better than a man, simply by virtue of being a woman. Why else would he be adamant about having a candidate with two x genes? Does he believe that women are intrinsically superior to men? If so, that would make him, de facto, a sexist.

Biden is also insistent on his choice being a black woman. Leaving the sex out of it, we are faced with the same conundrums that we face dealing with sex. Does Joe believe that black people are superior to white people? Why else would he be clear about picking a black VP candidate? It seems that would make Joe a racist.

Joe would certainly never choose Condoleeza Rice as his VP candidate, although she is both black and female. Clearly, he is pandering. Unless, of course, he truly believes that blackness and sex are entirely fungible, and that one black person is the same as any other, or that one woman is the same as any other. Treating people as members of a group, indistinguishable from one another, is the very basis of racism and sexism. Not all women are the same, nor or all blacks. I thought Spike Lee taught us that in “School Daze.”

Being dispassionate about it, what is clear is that Joe is merely an opportunist. He will say or do anything to get elected. He says whatever will make the current audience happy. I am, however, sick and tired of hearing him described as Catholic. Biden is a Catholic in the sense that I am a Martian. He has heard of the Church, and I have heard of Mars. His Catholicism ends there.

Two Americas

There is a commercial on some channel, I don’t remember which, that has a South African comedian named Trevor Noah saying that the right to protest is “what America is all about.” It struck an off-note with me for a couple of reasons. First, having someone from the home of Winnie Mandela and the ANC, not to mention “necklacing, tell me what America is all about is just a little too presumptuous. Second, he’s a comedian, not a historian, so I doubt he has a firm grasp on America. And C, how man could relate to other: I’m tired of hearing people tell me that America is all about this one thing, or that one thing, and none of them seem to get close.
The way I see it, there are 2 Americas. There is the America the country; the fifty erstwhile independent and sovereign states. That America will, generally speaking, always exist. There will be changes, there always have been. The fifty states are just administrative boundaries now; you can thank Abraham Lincoln for that. But the country is bigger than it was 200 years ago, so there’s that. America the country will endure, but not as we know it. It will, it seems, devolve into a tyranny of some sort.
Then there is the other America, the America the idea. It was laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is an idea of freedom, and a belief that man could govern himself. It is a set of laws about how man could relate to others: his neighbors, his state, his country, and the world. It is an idea for building the highest state that mankind can achieve; a freedom to be fully realized, a freedom to go or stay, say or not say, pray as you wished or not at all.
That America is under threat. There are forces at work actively trying to destroy America the idea. Attacks on people for what they say or don’t say, where they go or can’t go, what they do or don’t do. We see it every night on the news; our cities burning, our citizens being beaten and killed, areas where we are told to stay out of. BLM, BAMN, Antifa. They all seek to destroy. Destroy history, destroy America, destroy freedom. They may, in the end, be successful. I hope not, and I’ll do my best to prevent it, but history is not sanguine about longevity of the American experiment.
But while America the country may fundamentally change from the land of the free into a statist totalitarianism, America the idea will survive. Like C.S. Lewis’ Logres, gathers in a handful of people in a small farmhouse, America the idea will survive. The Bible tells us that the Church is wherever two or more of you gather. America the idea is wherever the idea is held and cherished.
There will always be true patriots. Not the knucklehead in camouflage, or the street thugs that yell at each other over police lines. Real patriots, people who believe that God destined man to be free, and love the ideals that our Constitution enshrined. It may be only a handful. It maybe that one of the fifty states secedes to become a new shining city on a hill. It may only be two people in a basement somewhere, avoiding the evrprying eyes of Big Brother, but America the Idea will survive.

Death by Cops, in black and white

Let’s talk about social justice and how horrible the black man is treated by the police. According to the website Statista,(https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/) in 2017, 457 white people were shot to death by police. The same year, 223 black people. In 2018, 399 whites fatally shot, 209 blacks. 2019, 370 whites, 235 blacks. So far in 202, 172 whites and 88 blacks have been killed in police shootings.

However, blacks make up only 13% of Americans. Clearly, they’re being killed by racist cops at a significantly higher rate than whites. Or are they?

Let’s take a look at crime rates by race.

Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations.
Blacks commit around 70 percent of black-white interracial homicides.

In 2018, the last year for which complete numbers are readily available, blacks committed 27% of all criminal offenses.

Blacks committed 53% of all murders.

Blacks committed 54% of all robberies, 34% of all aggravated assaults, 30% of all thefts, 25% of all arson, 32% of all simple assaults, 29% of all vandalism, 43% of weapons violations, and overall, 38% of all violent crimes.

Give that blacks commit crimes at a rate significantly higher than their proportion of the citizenry, it only seems rational to expect that their confrontations with police would be higher, as would fatal results. In fact, it would seem that correcting for the race of criminals and the rates of shootings, the cops are killing white people at a disproportionate rate.

But I know, that doesn’t fit the narrative.

What else doesn’t fit the white-man-racist narrative?

The number of blacks killed by blacks. A staggering 2,570 — the overwhelming majority male.
One might conclude that the systemic racism in America is perpetrated by blacks. Homicide is the 7^th leading cause of death in the black population. It doesn’t break the top ten among whites.

Oh, and just to put things in perspective, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

A Reasonable Gun Control Proposal

In 2000, the Department of Transportation threatened states with the loss of highway funding unless the states lowered the blood alcohol concentration level needed to convict someone of DUI to .08. In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States. If we were, as a nation, serious about DUI deaths, we would take steps to eliminate the problem, and not just nibble at the corners. There are countries where the limit is zero.

Like DUIs, the problem we face with guns is solvable. It just requires that we stop nibbling around the edges, and take serious, decisive action. To that end, I have developed a plan to do away with gun deaths in America. Not just mass shootings, but all gun deaths. It might be a little unpalatable at first, but as gun deaths disappear, acceptance will increase.

The first step is is simple. Repeal the posse comitatus act. It is largely ignored anyway, and people are used to seeing uniformed military, albeit National Guard, in the cities. This would allow the military to enforce civilian laws, which would increase the government’s policing power significantly.

The next part is a little more difficult, but there are no insurmountable problems. Repeal the first, second, fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments, or at least the following parts of them:

The portions of the first amendment that need to be eliminated are the parts about freedom of speech, and press, the right of the people to assemble, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. We can’t have any public dissent about my plan.

The entire second amendment would have to go.

The fourth amendment would have to be gutted, eliminating all the protections against unreasonable searches.

The fifth would need to go, at least the parts about self-incrimination and due process.

The sixth amendment would have to go entirely.

Now, this could be done by Congress and the State legislatures, but that might take an awful long time. In the alternative, the President could declare a national emergency, and suspend the Constitution and declare martial law.

Now comes the fun part of my plan.

All companies making arms and ammunition are nationalized, restricted to making weapons for the police and military only.

Send the military and police door-to-door, searching for and confiscating weapons. Anyone who objects gets arrested. Anyone who forcibly resists gets shot. The cops confiscate all weapons, ammunition, reloading equipment, and any small scale machinist equipment that could be used to produce guns. Any books about gunsmithing get burned. PCs that may hold gun information get destroyed. All brass and lead are confiscated. Anything that could conceivably be used to create guns is confiscated by the state.

We have a rough idea of the number of guns in civilian hands. Enough of an idea that we can estimate how close we are to the complete elimination of private gun ownership.

Of course, this state of affairs must remain permanent. First, government never voluntarily gives up power, and second, the only way to remain-gun free is to continue the martial law search-and-confiscate program.

After a few years, the people will get used to this new world of ours, and they won’t even mind being serfs of their masters. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?

 

White, or Western Christendom?

Along the Gila River in the southwestern US, there is a group of caves in the cliffs. According to the National Park Service, “For thousands of years, groups of nomadic people used the caves of the Gila River as temporary shelter. In the late 1200’s, people of the Mogollon Culture decided it would be a good place to call home. They built rooms, crafted pottery and raised children in the cliff dwellings for about twenty years.”

In the century prior to the 1200s, work began in Paris. In 1153, to be precise, workers began building the cathedral of Notre Dame. I am not positive, but I do not believe the builders lived in caves.

Likewise, in the 15^th century, Incan aborigines built the legendary city of Machu Picchu. Famed for its buildings made of rocks, without using mortar, it is a popular travel destination today.

Two hundred years earlier, construction began on Westminster Abbey, in London. It is still used today, although mostly for ceremonial purposes.

Today, a few days after the shootings in ElPaso and Dayton where 34 people were killed, the US is all atwitter over the “rise” of White Supremacy. Before getting too deep into that, let’s look at a couple of numbers to put the shootings into perspective. Courtesy of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, we are reminded that in the same span of 48 hours,500 people were killed by medical mistakes, 300 were killed by the flu virus, and 250 by their own hand. Tyson points out that it appears the public is galvanized more by spectacle than facts.

White supremacist groups are a long-standing feature of America and its politics. Starting with the pro-slavery Democratic Party, the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Movement, and on through the Klan and modern groups with the word “aryan” in their names, there has always been a xenophobic minority of American railing against foreigners. And when those groups turn violent, they are dealt with. The Democrats, for example, have finally disavowed the Klan, much the same way that the right has disavowed the Birchers and the Nazis.

While these groups make up a tiny, almost statistically insignificant portion of America, when they become violent, they can do horrendous things. The deranged ElPaso shooter was worried about a “Mexican invasion.” The Dayton shooter appears to have been a left-wing supporter of Elizabeth Warren and, at least, a self-proclaimed member of Antifa. Both are examples of the fringe extremists that populate the political landscape.

It is ,of course, important to stamp out such extremism, whether Antifa, white supremacist movements, Islamic jihadis, and the other assorted violent kooks, we must keep in mind that throwing out the baby with the bathwater is rarely a good idea.

The American experiment in republican government is based onWestern European Christendom. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment produced not only Notre Dame, but also the Declaration of Independence. Western Christendom gave us Rembrant and Carravagio, and the Constitution. It was Western Christendom that “discovered” America, and mapped it. It was Western Christendom that built Harvard, Yale, and the idea of an educated citizenry.

While Western Christendom is often reviled as a culture of dead white men, it is also the culture that has built America into what it is today: a largely color-blind, race-blind, sex-blind culture where people break the law to enter, and hardly anyone leaves.

It is quite alright to be a supporter of Western Christendom without being a racist. Dr. King, after all, was a product and a supporter of Western Christendom.

Impeach Trump!

Speaker Pelosi says she wants to see President Trump behind bars. “I don’t want to see him impeached. I want to see him in prison” the speaker told a group of senior Democrats. That’s the part of Pelosi’s statement that is getting all the attention — the second part. The Speaker started out by saying, “I don’t want to see him impeached.”

Jerry Nadler, of course, disagrees. He wants to impeach Trump, as do Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and some others of the progressive, socialist, destroy-America crowd in Congress. Nadler hasn’t pushed hard for impeachment, other than in press briefings, because he knows it’s a non-starter. So does Pelosi. But by yammering and bleating for it, they dog-whistle their base of malcontents and haters. Nadler, Pelosi, et al get to virtue-signal about their Trump derangement without ever being forced to do anything about it.

There are about 41 Democrats who hold seats in districts won by Trump in 2016. There are presently about 59 Democrats who are calling for the president’s impeachment. They are, in philosophical terms, disjoint sets. Those 41 representatives don’t want to mention the word “impeachment” since they calculate their careers on being blue in a red district. The 59 impeachment advocates are, for the most part, in districts where “a glass of water would win, if it had a D in front of it,” to quote the Speaker.

So, to end this constant noise about something that will never happen, I have a solution. Prompt the one Republican representative (yes, there is one) who wants to see Trump impeached to introduce articles of impeachment. Make a big show of partnering with the intellectually disabled left, like Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings, and Jerry Nadler, and introduce articles. Make them, in essence, put up or shut up.

Pelosi will do her best to prevent the articles from ever seeing the floor, knowing there is no way the Senate would ever convict. The 41 and 59 representatives mentioned above will be forced to publicly either signal their approval or disapproval of the articles. Nadler will be forced to admit defeat, and his committee will have to move on to, perhaps, actual work.

It is time to force the hand of the lunatic noisemakers in the House that seem to have taken over the Democrat party. After a public failure of impeachment, we will finally be able to move on with the res publica.