There is a mountain of information and ideas here. I will need some time to consider it. But there is one point I can disagree with now. You deride the growing sentiment of isolationism in Republicans. This has an honourable pedigree. It was Washington that warned us against foreign entanglements. It was Adams (I believe) who said that America is a friend of liberty everywhere, but a guardian only of our own.
1 Like
Also, what’s being expressed by some Republicans now is better termed as “non-interventionism” than isolationism. Being open to peaceful exchanges of trade, etc., but not getting entangled in foreign wars.
But our government does the exact opposite.
For example, if we had simply continued Trump’s policy of NOT funneling money to Iran and Hamas and any other terrorists, it would have gone a long way in preventing this attack by Hamas on Israel.
Instead, they fund the terrorists, then act surprised when it happens, and pledge to support Israel in the coming war. (From which they profit, as in Afghanistan.)
Similarly, instead of minding our own business, our government intervened in the political affairs of Ukraine, staging a “color revolution” to oust their leader and installing one we wanted, which just exacerbated the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, leading to war. (From which they profit.)
Our liberty is threatened on every front from within and without. How do we guard against ideological entanglements eroding the constitution framework of our nation and destroying the institutions which protect our lives, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness? Where were the guardians of liberty over the last 50 years? What can they do now that half the voting population is so entangled with the politics of social justice that have made the defense of liberty into a hate-crime and our military into a gender-affirming health-care provider and rainbow safe zone, apologetic for its killing mission, and all too ready to proclaim its deficiencies and demonstrate its incompetence.
The “honourable pedigree” of avoiding foreign entanglements has not prevented America from becoming a superpower. Its nuclear power policy frames geopolitics. America’s nuclear power inextricably entangles America with foreign nations. That entanglement comprises the entire post-war, Cold War and post-Cold War international geopolitical structure. The current wars in Ukraine and Israel, as I’ve said, are the results of America’s (Obama’s) sui-policidal attempts to remove itself from its entanglements. The Budapest Memorandum (1994) and the Oslo Accords (1993) were both agreements reached while America was deluding itself that nuclear disarmament was the over-arching geopolitical goal and that post-Soviet Russia (and its terrorist proxies) would honor START (beginning in 1991) nuclear arms treaties. In the early 1990s Russia started it nuclear partnership with Iran. Obama shifted American policy from non-proliferation and mutual disarmament to effective unilateral disarmament. American nuclear deterrence has been nullified.
1 Like
See my response to Cogito on entanglement - and what is America’s business.
What Obama did was not an example of “avoiding foreign entanglements”. It was an example of a Communist deliberately weakening America in order to give fellow Communists the upper hand.
It was one of many examples of his treason.
If he’d had America’s true interests at heart, he would have kept us strong on the nuclear front, and prevented the threats we now face to our national security. Same in his dealings with Iran, which Biden has continued.
1 Like
Well said, Liz
1 Like
You haven’t convinced me that there is a false equivalency between Putin and Zelensky. Both are despots, both imprison their opponents (Zelensky, practising one-upmanship, even arrest priests), both prohibit such things as a free press and free assembly. Not much to choose here.
1 Like
The Israeli situation has no equivalence to Ukraine on a moral level. It is sui generis. The veils are falling everywhere. I feel the chill of an approaching Kristallnacht.
The audience cheered.
2 Likes
It’s mind-boggling. How can Chappelle recognize the stupidity of wokeness, but not the fact that “Free the Palestinians” is just another manifestation of the same stupidity? Not to mention the blatent antisemitism. I guess that’s the connection - he’s antisemitic himself.
1 Like
Yes, what we have to fear now is worse than the abandonment of the rule of law, politically-motivated imprisonment, confiscation of property. We must expect to have our heads sawn off. To be burned alive. To see our children decapitated, burned. The Left is a ruthless destroyer of civilization, of everything. It is allied with Islam. Hundreds of millions - a world majority? - support it with intense enthusiasm.
1 Like
Yes. Jews need the existence of Israel now most urgently.
1 Like
Nine days before Hamas murdered and raped its way through kibbutzim in southern Israel and brought almost 200 hostages back into Gaza, officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hosted a White House roundtable with five prominent Islamist organizations in the United States, three of which have promoted pro-Hamas propaganda after the October 7 attack.
Read all about it here:
1 Like
More proof of this government’s complete infiltration by traitors.
1 Like
Not very long ago I chided some friends for thinking about returning to Israel. My position was that America was the true Promised Land for the Jewish people, that there they would finally find refuge from the persecutions, pogroms, inquisitions, restrictions, humiliations, and genocide of the last two thousands years. How incredibly naive I was.
1 Like
You were not naive. You made a good case. But now all is changed.
1 Like