Among the headlines in the Washington Post this morning was “Trump’s dinner with antisemites provides test of GOP response to extremism.” While I agree that the dinner was wrong, even if Trump did not know who Nick Fuentes was, he knows Kanye West (now Ke) is an antisemite having made a series of antisemitic statements. I also have to question Trumps staff for not stepping in before the dinner
This all, however, brings up the hypocrisy of the democrats and the news media. Where was the outrage over the statements of congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her fellow congressional antisemite congress woman Rashida Tlaib? The House under Democrat control has failed time and again to censor their actions or statements.
If we are to stand against evil, we must be ready to do so without prejudice. Antisemitism is evil, racism is evil, white supremacy is evil, and it does not matter the political affiliation. You cannot take the moral high ground if you are willing to ignore immoral acts based on politics. Wrong is wrong in all cases, not just in the third person, our side is right only their side is wrong.
“You furnish the pictures and I will furnish the war.” This famous anecdote was attributed to William Randolph Hearst when the illustrator Frederick Remington, whom Hurst had sent to Cuba to cover the revolution, wired that there is no war and he would like to come home. I bring this up to illustrate the power a corrupt press has over the people. We are entering the next phase of elections which will result in the 2024 Presidential election as well as the second House election since Joe Biden has assumed office.
Many who had hoped for a red wave this past cycle are obviously disappointed yet should not be surprised. While part of the problem can be laid at the feet of the Republican party for putting up weak candidates, we must not forget the role the press plays in shaping public opinion.
The main stream media played up Trump in every possible way as the spawn of the devil and the democrats pushed this narrative with all their might. While polls showed most Americans where not buying into the Dems narrative of any Republican victory meant the end of Democracy, they could not escape the constant drum beat of Trump, Trump, Trump being the end of the world as we know it.
I can blame Trump for many things that have happened in the past. He was never a leader from a political perspective. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit he should have led by example by, at least, wearing a mask. He did however lead by increasing the number of respirators available, moving hospital ships to high population areas and rushing the development of a vaccine. The press however concentrated on his being an arrogate ass and putting himself out there seeming to be on the side of those who refused to take the pandemic seriously.
There are those who are attempting to rehabilitate Trumps image by putting out on social media actually facts that showed Trumps successes such as reviving the economy and reducing unemployment, increasing the number of minority businesses and more. Theses are the things ignored by the MSM, if it could not be ignored at least it was minimized.
For all the real good Trump did he will never overcome what the press has done to him. I am sorry to say that I cannot support Trump in his attempt to regain the White House, I would vote for him if he gets the nomination but I am very afraid he is coming with too much baggage and will hurt the republican party in the long run.
The Republican party needs to get a much larger portion of the middle road and Trump cannot do that this time around. The press will never allow the truth to come out and the right does not have the proper outlets to overcome that.
The United States today appears to be divided between left and right polls. If the news media is to be believed there is no middle ground. I personally believe there is a large middle ground, but they are being beaten into submission by the extremes. What is driving this may be understood using the old adage “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” We have seen this philosophy used countless times, not only in war but politics as well. Many are unaware that one of the reasons the founding fathers put freedom of speech in the constitution was to insure that people with opposing thoughts had the right to express them. This also kept opposing forces from joining together to oppose the government. As long as they could express their beliefs and opinions freely there was no need to join with their enemies. This could be a lesson for some social media groups who impose their “community standards” on their sites giving rise to competition. This was seen in the 2d World War with resistance movements such as the French maquis. The maquis included such groups as the French Communist party and the Young Catholic League. Two sworn enemy who joined together to fight the evil occupation. This did not end well, at the end of the war these groups turned on each other.
How does this reflect in today’s America? A recent example of how far we have fallen is a report from Yale University that around 100 Yale law students: “…disrupted a bipartisan panel on civil liberties by trying to shout down and intimidate the speakers — who had to be escorted out of the building by police, according to reports.
The panel “hosted by the Federalist Society featured Kristen Waggoner, a controversial anti-LGBTQ speaker with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, and Monica Miller, an associate at the progressive American Humanist Association,” when reminded of Yales policy of free speech and free expression the students could only understand that they had a right to protest and that the panel did not have a right to express their views.
On the other side we have some right-wing extremist in Congress calling the president of Ukraine a thug and saying we should not support him. The congress approved a measure designed to help pressure Russia with eight republicans voting against it, Of the two, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, have repeatedly pushed propaganda that mirrors that of the Putin. Why, because if Biden or the Dems say it, it must be wrong.
We have been subjected to the concept of “Cancel Culture” which both sides use. Also called call out culture, it can be an effective way to pull back the curtain on things that otherwise would be left in the dark. The MeToo movement was a start to correcting the process that had kept survivors of sexual assault from speaking out. It was instrumental in bringing down people like Harvey Weinstein, but then it became a political tool. One of the most famous political uses of this was during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Kavanaugh, a distinctly conservative jurist, was about to be confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court. Toward the end of the hearings a professor from Palo Alto CA, Christine Blasey Ford, claimed that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when the two were in High School. The cry rang out that victims must be believed. The problem with this is that there was no proof. Even after Ford named a friend at the party who could confirm the attack. This witness, Leland Ingham Keyser, stated she had no memory of the party and did not know who Kavanaugh was, regardless some of the public accepted Fords claim and would not be dissuaded by the facts. Similarly the public has been told that Trump is the personification of evil and regardless of facts continue to cancel him, with no direct or supportable evidence.
Today we see in the same type of cancel culture attacks on the current Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. To be honest she is much too liberal for my taste, but I cannot find a reason to deny her the nomination. Calls that she was too lenient on child pornographers are a subjective argument. She sentenced within the guidelines, which themselves may be too lenient, but the sentencing was legitimate. Worse are calls of how she defended clients when she was a public defender. While some of her clients may be the scum of the earth, it is a lawyer’s job to provide a defense.
What does this all mean? Are we all becoming extremist or is the way we get our information failing? Information that the public gets has always been skewed by those reporting. A prime example was back when the US and Spain were almost at war. As the story goes William Randolph Hearst, a powerful news paper publisher, sent one of his illustrators, Frederick Remington, to cover the insurrection in Cuba. Remington cabled Hearst that there was no war to which the reply was “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” Today open any news paper or watch any news station and count the times the reporters attack a person or political party rather then just give us the news. Look at how many times you will see FOX News or CNN attacked by rivel networks. There was a time that those of us of a certain age remember watching a news show because of the popularity of the person giving the news, rarely did you have any idea of their political affiliation. Even worse is the proliferation of online sites that don’t even pretend to be news reporters but attempt to play into a certain segment of society while pretending the opinions or “news” they are giving are facts.
What to do? Remember there are no GOOD news sources, suspect story. If it is important to you do your own investigation. Accept that those with opposing views not only have the right to express them but that they may be right. In the end PLEASEThink for yourself.
Now that lives have been lost and we have withdrawn, this ill-conceived operation once again highlights the lack of US Foreign policy capabilities or our understanding of what is needed to protect American interests. Since the end of the Korean War the US has slowly lost the will to build influence and continue to lead the world. The Cold War was the last hoorah for what was left of US influence mostly based on the nuclear stand off with the Soviet Union. Much of the problem stems from the United States inability to adjust to a different world. Most of US foreign involvement since the cold war has been in Asia and the Middle East, cultures that most in Washington do not understand. This should not be the case as it is not in many other western countries and the US foreign service should be able to accept the different cultures but has always ended up trying to impose US values on the nations we get engaged with.
In 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia helped establish the countries we know today that make up Europe. There were tweaks along the way, but it established the customs of international relations we know today. It was established within the bounds of European customs and cultures and of course held little sway as countries pushed out of Europe to colonize the world. At the end of the First World War the victorious nations sliced and diced the world up to their economic and political advantage. Ignoring the wants and desires of the indigenous population they put in motion decades of violence. Many countries put together by colonial powers were countries in name only. Following the Second World War and then the Cold War many of these countries broke apart or fell under ruthless regimes that held them together at gun point.
After the creation of Israel, the US seems to have locked out any further changes, no new countries. This of course left the made-up countries like Iraq to fend for themselves. We refused to acknowledge the different ethnic, religious, and even linguistic differences. The United States has the distinct advantage/disadvantage of being one of the most heterogeneous nations in the world. Regardless of all our knowledge we refuse to accept that not all countries and people will accept our values or adhere to our customs. We are seeing this play out today in Afghanistan. A tribal nation that many have tried to forge into a single country. It will not work. We needed to arm and train tribal forces not a national army. If it was ever to change it would take generations a century or more to make it whole. The United States unfortunately maintains a five second view of the world and has no idea of second and third order effect of its decisions. We look to deal with problems on a country-by-country basis while the countries we are dealing with are acting in regional or overarching religious aspects. In the case of the Taliban, they see their version of Islam as the only correct interpretation.
Biden said that after 20 years it was time for the Afghans to take charge, but who are the Afghans? As a single entity they do not exist. Our presence did begin to push a lot of the country forward. At a minimum woman were being educated. We are now talking to a group that holds a world view front he 7th century and act as if they have changed in 20 years and are now willing to become a part of the world. But all that will end simple because our foreign policy professional has failed once more.
There will be much finger pointing and recriminations following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. There will be Congressional hearings and white papers from think tanks, and none will address the root cause of this and other problems that face the government and the people. The culture within the decision-making process sucks.
Much of what I am going to say can be summed up by a saying attributed to Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House in the mid 1950s to early ‘60s. When speaking to young congressmen who told him of their ambitions his reply was, “to get along you have to go along.” This is the basic philosophy that drives career government and military leaders as they advance, don’t rock the boat.
This is not to say that there are not those who do indeed rock the boat, but they are few and do not last long. Those in the Intelligence Community are known as Cassandras, from the Greek woman in mythology who was given the gift of prophecy and the curse of never being believed. While there should be a place for different analysis, and in fact has doctrinal support, it is seldom if ever used. Those who go the route of “Red Team,” or Devils Advocate,” rarely survive, it’s a career ender.
While this mentality is less evident in the military it begins to rear its ugly head as people advance. To that end those that reach the higher command levels tend to be more politician than warrior. This was not always the case. There is an old story about a Soviet officer saying that the difficulty in planning against the Americans is that they rarely read their regulations or feel an obligation to follow it. Today strict adherence to doctrine is the road to success. George Patton would likely not have made it past captain.
I am not sure this problem will be, or can be, address. Those who write reports for the decision makers have their own form and language. If they are certain of the results, their superior wants they can structure the report to fit the desire. If not, which is more often the case, they can structure the report to be interpreted as needed. An absurd example would be a report that should read, “it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, we conclude it is a duck” would conclude more like “… we conclude with a high degree of probability that it is some form of waterfowl.”
Many have touted the results of a recent final report to congress from the Afghanistan Study Group that had listed several courses of action and the resulting consequences. Today most zero in on courses of action from the chapter of Alternative Pathways. The recommended pathway was to maximize existing US leverage to achieve an acceptable negotiated peace agreement. The most risky pathway was called a Washing of Hands and warned of the results, which we have now seen. The conclusion of the report stated that
“With the launch of peace negotiations, the conflict in Afghanistan has entered a new phase. This new phase requires a new understanding. Afghans must take primary responsibility for their own future. The United States must orient its efforts and resources toward shaping the conditions around the peace process—resetting and reframing it in ways recommended in this report—in order to give it the best chance to succeed. It should be reiterated, however, that our troop presence is a key point of leverage. U.S. troops play a vital role in ensuring the continuity of state structures, and thus their presence is essential to brokering a lasting peace. Success, it should be acknowledged, is not guaranteed. But there is a clear path forward. There is now a real possibility of the conflict winding down and Afghanistan becoming a country that needs far less help from the United States. If this happens, the United States can bring its troops home and both countries can move forward as sovereign nations with friendly relations based on shared values and sacrifices.”
The answers were given to the decision makers, not from the IC or DoD but a select group empowered by Congress. This groups membership consisted of retired politicians and retired military as well as former diplomats and academics. In other words, this group consisted of people who could speak their minds without fear of professional recriminations, and they got it right. This also shows that the information was out there for anyone willing to see it and think.
This failure of allowing the unpopular analysis to get through to the decision makers needs to be corrected and the culture of fear over being out of step with the mainstream needs to end. This needs to be a major lesson leaned or this problem will just continue.
The Murders in Atlanta are a horror and an abomination, as they would be anywhere. The horror of what the left is making of them is even worse for our society. The suspect Robert Aaron Long, is a troubled young man with a history of mental illness. Two stories in the Washington Post highlight the problems the left has with dealing with reality. The first, headlined in at the beginning of the online and print versions spoke of the troubles Aaron faced in his life, starting the article with “The war within Robert Arron Long was evident for years.” Long is portrayed as a quiet young man who was raised in a strict religious family and community. He was seen changing after graduation from High School when he became obsessed with sex. He found relief through pornography and visits to massage parlors where the women would help him masturbate. He was in rehabilitation programs that centered on religious therapy. He eventually succumbed to guilt and decided that killing the sex workers at the Spas would reduce his guilt. He was captured on the way to Florida where he intended to attack the Porn industry.
Six of the eight people he killed were Asian. The media immediately declared this a hate crime and decried the rise in hate crimes against Asians, blaming it on President Trump calling the Covid-19 virus the Chinese virus. Statistically a case can be made for an increase. According to reports the number of hate crime against Asians rose 150% between 2019 and 2020. The number of hate crimes recorded against Asians in 2020 was 122. Society should never tolerate hate crime and one is too many, yet 122 is hardly at crisis level. To be clear these are reported hate crimes and the number does not cover anti-Asian racist incidents.
The second article in the WP was about President Biden and Vice-President Harris on a trip to Atlanta speaking out on the crime and declaring it a racist act. This is reminiscent of President Obama’s visit to Ferguson Missouri following the death of Michael Brown. Browns death at the hands of a police officer was called police brutality perpetrated by a white officer. This launched the Black Lives Matter movement as well as several deadly riots across the country. Obama and his AG, Eric Holder, met with the community and spoke of the horror of racism and the need for police reform. In the end, after all the evidence was collected, it was determined that Brown had attacked the officer and that the shooting was justified.
As the evidence is being collected in Atlanta it is becoming clear that this is not a hate crime against Asians, but murder committed by a deranged individual who targeted sex workers who he felt were guilty of his problems. What the takeaway should be is to look at the potential of sex trafficking in this case, the use of massage parlors to conduct prostitution, and the need to pay attention to the mentally ill in need of help. The response should bot be an instant cry of racism and protests and calls for more laws. We need to look at the reality and evidence and wait and see were that leads us. In other words, Pleasethink before just reacting.
We need to remember the story of the boy who cried wolf. When will the cry of racism become ignored? A military axiom from Frederick the Great of Prussia states, He who defends everything defends nothing. We can extend that today and say when everything becomes racist, then nothing is racist. There is racism in the world, always has been and always will be. The objective is to blunt its impact on society. Today however we reward its activities and when there is not enough, we make it up. The people that gain from this are not the few racist/white supremacist/black activist, but the politicians who use it to increase their hold on power at the expense of the people. I for one am tired of them trying to manipulate me.
What happened Atlanta was a crime, it was murder, it was mass murder, but it was not racially motivated and to insist that it was is to deny the facts and ignore the true nature of the crime which means that crimes like this will continue while society looks the other way.
As you can tell from the title, I am no Dr, Suess. I do need to talk to you today about him. By now we all know that Dr. Suess has come under attack for his books having “undertones of racism.” While others have mentioned in the past some of the imagery in Dr. Suess books did portray racial stereotypes, the main study being used today is an article in “Research on Diversity in Youth Literature,” by Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens.
Since the authors have reached back to Suess’s past to prove a racist predilection it is important to look at the authors past and current positions. To their credit they mentioned it in the paper “Katie is a director and Japanese American researcher for the critical literacy organization, The Conscious Kid. Her grandparents were incarcerated at Manzanar and Minidoka concentration camps during World War II, so her family was directly impacted by the anti-Japanese rhetoric and hysteria that Seuss fueled and espoused. Ramón is a director and Black male educator for The Conscious Kid. A CRT (Critical Race Theory) framework was employed due to his professional training and to address Black teacher advocacy in teaching.”
March 2nd is Read Across America Day; the date was picked because it is Theodor Seuss Geisel’s birthday. This year he would have been 117, which means he was born in 1904. He was raised in Springfield MA and went to Dartmouth College as an undergrad and then attended Lincoln College, Oxford. Intending to be an English teacher he was diverted by another student, Helen Palmer who would be his wife, to use his skills at drawing and illustration. Following collage, he launched a career doing Political cartoons and illustrations for marketing. Now we have a Youngman in the mid-1920s to early 1930’s working in advertisement the authors of depict it as “In spite of Dr. Seuss’ extensive body of explicitly racist published works dehumanizing and degrading Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and people from other marginalized groups (including Jewish people and Muslims), many differentiate and defend the author’s children’s books as “promoting tolerance,” and even “anti-racist.” This last, seems to piss the authors off to no end.
I will admit I did not read every word of the paper but read most of it and understand the intent of the authors. In explaining how they went about their study; “Our study sought to evaluate the claims that his children’s books are anti-racist, and was shaped by the research question: How and to what extent are non-White characters depicted in Dr. Seuss’ children’s books? We designed our study to provide important insights into the manner and extent to which White characters and characters of color are portrayed, and assess their implications to the development and reinforcement of racial bias in young children.”
The question is, did they really search out the truth or did they look for information that supported their predetermined conclusion? In the background of the paper under Seuss’ History of Publishing Racist Works they go back to his Undergraduate days; “In the 1920s, Dr. Seuss published anti-Black and anti-Semitic cartoons in Dartmouth’s humor magazine, the Jack-O-Lantern. He depicted a Jewish couple (captioned “the Cohen’s”) with oversized noses and Jewish merchants on a football field with “Quarterback Mosenblum” refusing to relinquish the ball until a bargain price has been established for the goods being sold. In the same issue of Jack-O-Lantern, Seuss drew Black male boxers as gorillas.” I cannot defend these images they are fairly common for the time. If the depiction of the Quarterback causes censorship we will need to ban “The Merchant of Venice.” Much of what he did as a political cartoonist and illustrations he did in marketing reflected mass appeal and that is what politics and marketing is all about. Most of the advertisements in the 50’s and 60’s depicted women in subservient roles wearing stings of pearls while in house dresses. Should we ban everything Mary Taylor Moore did because she once dress as a fairy and danced around a refrigerator? Ishizuka personalizes his anti-Japanese work during the war and talks about his work with Frank Capra to dehumanize the Japanese. I am sorry but this was a war and Pearl Harbor was very fresh in the minds of America. If Suess is to be punished let us ban the works of Capra such as “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The paper starts out with the premise that Suess was an unrepentant racist. The biases of Ishizuka and Stephens runs through this paper, In particular we must address the concept of Critical Race Theory which deep in the assessment. Stephens academic career has focused on race and CRT as well as critical literacy. These subjects have been subjected to the complaint that they are too judgmental based on the assumption that all white people suffer from white privilege and support in one form or another white supremacy. These terms run as a consistent theme in the paper. When researching this subject, the authors point out that the cat in the hat is based on blackface and minstrel shows indicates a deep-seated misunderstanding of the books. They also state that any defense of Suess in based on whiteness.
Keep reading Suess to your children, it encourages reading and teaches tolerance.
Welcome to our brave new world, which is starting to look like the bad old world. In the last week Iranian backed militias have launched three rocket attacks at American forces and positions including the American embassy, killing a US contractor, and injuring US service personnel. The reaction of the Biden administration has been to label the attacks an “Outrage” but that the US will not lash out, but consider options, Come on man. Iran has in the past tested the resolve of the United States, recently under Trump. The result with Trump was withdrawal from the JCPOA, the Iran deal, which cost them billions due to renewed sanctions. When they attempted to force their point once again by staging an attack on our embassy in Baghdad, their lead terrorist was killed by a drone strike. In June of 2019 Iran shoot down a US Drone over international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. The US responded by a cyber attack which shut down the Iranian Air Defense Grid. Last year the number of attacks increased but the number of rockets fired in each attack decreased. The attacks also were of very little effect since they mostly missed hitting anything of value with no US casualties.
Today we see death and casualty causing impacts as well as an increase in accuracy. The good news is they are not using their more sophisticated weapons and not using the mass barrage technique of the past. How long will it be before they use larger more sophisticated missiles and aim to cause mass death. If there is no response, it will not be too long. Our allies I am sure are cautioning against the cowboy diplomacy of the past and the Biden administration is more then happy to oblige. While claiming to be assessing and contemplating they can continue to just sit back and do nothing. How will this work out?
In the past, during the cold war there was a military doctrine known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) that was thought to keep the US and the Soviet Union from using nuclear force. We may not be talking about stopping a nuclear war (yet), but the concept of deterrence is valid. An excellent book from those days is “Arms and Influence” by Thomas C. Schelling. The first chapter in his book is titled “The Diplomacy of Violence.” Schelling speaks of the difference between compelling a foe or coercing them. Joe Biden is familiar with compelling someone as we saw with his threat to Ukraine to fire a prosecutor or lose US aid. Coercion is different, since it is making someone do what they do not want to do under threat of violence. Compelling Iran to stop supporting militias in Iran or to stop exporting terrorism in the region is a futile quest. Coercing them with threats of violence has limited effect but can still be effective if the amount of hurt inflected or perceived to be coming is sufficient to slow down an action. Claiming they were in Iranian waters the boats and crew were taken captive. Secretary of State Kerry apologized for the incident and thanked Iran for releasing the crew. Obama pointe the incident out as a success for diplomacy. Iran continued to size tankers in the gulf and demanding ransom. Most recently they sized a Korean tanker in January claiming it was polluting the gulf. Iran just announced it was releasing the tanker after South Korea released 1 Billion dollars in assets frozen by US sanctions.
The Biden administration must learn how to deal with terrorist regimes, or the violence will increase and consume the region and the world. One teaching of life comes from William F. Buckley who said, “Idealism is fine but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.” No government or political institution can stand if it is based solely on ideology that makes no room for change.
Just a couple of quick Items for the weekend. First, Sen Ted Cruz, who cares. It is a PR disaster but not a major mistake. He is a US Senator and would have very little power to do anything but make phone calls to FEMA to ask how things are going. It is not like he is a Governor of a state whose actions may have killed thousands, but let’s keep Cruz in the news to keep Cuomo out.
The new all Democrat congress, which the media has judged centrist, assigned Sen. Bernie Sanders to be Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He is now scheduling high-profile hearings that highlight the socialist agenda he has pushed for his 30 years on the hill. The first is titled “Why Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations?” Future hearings are on such subjects as “making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share,” as well as the cost of climate change. I am sure these will be fair and open meetings. I will soon be discussing the concept of the wealthy paying their fair share and what that means.
Biden has returned the US to the Paris Climate Accords, by the way the US has meet or exceeded the benchmarks set before this decision.
Biden has recently overturned several Trump executive orders, two were designed to lower the cost of insulin and increase support for apprenticeships.
Have a good weekend and PLEASEThink about what is happening around you.
Much is being said and written about advancing a third major political party. Many parties have existed in the United States since its beginning. The early parties are no longer with us, having outlived their usefulness or morphed overtime into what we have today. Recently there have been attempts to start viable third parties but all have failed. Even movements within the parties, such as the Tea Party, used to push toward an extreme view have ended badly. For good or ill the US is a two-party country and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. To determine the way forward for the republican/conservative movement we will take a page out of resent home improvement shows. Couples on these shows are given the option of keeping their current home with upgrades or moving to a new home. We must determine if we want to keep our party with upgrades or move on to an unknown.
Obviously, my recommendation is to upgrade and rebrand. We got a good start from President Trump and need to build on that. Trump acting in the interest of the country as a whole and fought for the individual. We need to find a way to shed the image of racism and the party of the one percenter. This will not be easy since the left owns the news media and will not allow for any positive reports about the right, to get much coverage. We need to work around this obstacle. Local organizations must be recruited to spread the word. The word must also be moderate and less extreme than some may wish. Most of what the republican party is about is moderate action to problems and reasonable solution that work overtime. This is anathema to the left who respond to everything with kneejerk reactions and a need for instantaneous gratification. We need to push back on the radical ideas that have no basis in fact and stop fearing popular reactions to unpopular statements.
Identity politics has driven the concept of differing views to the point that there can be only one why of looking at any situation. In a recent interview on CNN Freshman Representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) called for a truth commission to root out and combat extremism. She is not the first and I have not heard much from the right. This type of ideology, that puts itself above the constitution, needs to be confronted. We have heard from the new Secretary of Defense that he is ordering a 60-day standdown to confront extremism in the military, while most recently the acting chief of police in Washington DC said they are exploring ways to investigate police officers who may hold extremist views. What no one has defined is what is extremism. Will visiting a Proud Boys web site cost you a career or a promotion? Will there be equal examination for Black Lives Matter or Antifa? The right should be standing up and screaming about this, but so far nothing. Where do these type of big brother investigations end?
The Republican party needs to return to the roots of American thought and culture. We must push the ideas of freedom and liberty. We must continue to push the concept of the individual above the collective state. It must be understood that America is unique in the world. Solutions that have worked or perceived to have worked elsewhere may not work here. At the same time, we must understand that we cannot export American culture.
We have reached a time in which too many of our citizens are ashamed of being American for reasons they cannot explain. We must get everyone to PLEASEThink about how great our country is and how we can work together to make it work.
pleasethink1 