FDR: New Files Reveal His Role In The Holocaust

The Jews Should Keep Quiet reassesses the hows and whys behind the Roosevelt administration’s fateful policies during the Holocaust. 

Michael Flores Mar 30, 2024

Rafael Medoff delves into difficult truths: With FDR’s consent, the administration deliberately suppressed European immigration far below the limits set by U.S. law. His administration also refused to admit Jewish refugees to the U.S. Virgin Islands, dismissed proposals to use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees, and rejected pleas to drop bombs on the railways leading to Auschwitz, even while American planes were bombing targets only a few miles away—actions that would not have conflicted with the larger goal of winning the war.

What motivated FDR? Medoff explores the sensitive question of the president’s private sentiments toward Jews. Unmasking strong parallels between Roosevelt’s statements regarding Jews and Asians, he connects the administration’s policies of excluding Jewish refugees and interning Japanese Americans.

The Jews Should Keep Quiet further reveals how FDR’s personal relationship with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewry’s foremost leader in the 1930s and 1940s, swayed the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Documenting how Roosevelt and others pressured Wise to stifle American Jewish criticism of FDR’s policies, Medoff chronicles how and why the American Jewish community largely fell in line with Wise. Ultimately Medoff weighs the administration’s realistic options for rescue action, which, if taken, would have saved many lives.

For years after war’s end the full horror of the holocaust was hidden from the public. A short 1955 film NIGHT AND FOG a decade after the war began to reveal the truth. You can watch it here: Click this link for NIGHT AND FOG 

• "This highly original work addresses the U.S. government’s unwillingness to undertake serious rescue efforts and the deep divisions within American Jewry over how to respond to U.S. indifference to European Jewry’s plight. Expanding on David S. Wyman’s pathbreaking work on America’s response to the Holocaust, using new archival materials and interviews with persons then on the scene, Medoff provides the best assessment to date of the relationship between America’s foremost Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.”—Professor Stephen H. Norwood, author of The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower and coeditor of Encyclopedia of American Jewish History
• “The Jews Should Keep Quiet reveals in troubling detail how FDR manipulated American Jewish leaders to suppress criticism of his abandonment of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust. Our family was certainly impacted. I was two years old on January 30, 1933, the day Hitler became Reichschancellor and my Dad told my Mom: ‘We are leaving Germany forever.’ It took us two and a half years of seeking a sympathetic American consul to overcome the barriers of FDR’s State Department. We need to learn from Dr. Medoff’s disturbing but necessary and enlightening study of moral failure and its consequences.”—Rudy Boschwitz, U.S. Senator (1978–1991)
• “The Jews Should Keep Quiet conclusively documents, far better than anything else I have read, how Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s private attitude towards Jews motivated him to close America’s doors to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Medoff adroitly exposes how FDR suppressed Jewish immigration with the unwitting assistance of Rabbi Stephen Wise. This book is a revelation—courageous, scholarly, and chillingly honest. You will never think of FDR the same way after reading it.”—Irving Abella, president of the Academy of the Arts and the Humanities of Canada
• “The Jews Should Keep Quiet is of lasting importance for the teaching and understanding of the Holocaust. Dr. Medoff’s incisive examination of the complex relationship between the US president and America’s foremost Jewish leader shines a light on troubling aspects of American history that many would prefer to ignore. This book is must reading.”—Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath, director of Holocaust Studies, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, The University of Texas at Dallas
• “The Jews Should Keep Quiet is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of elite complicity with government inaction. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise regarded Franklin D. Roosevelt as a friend, even though the Roosevelt administration was unfriendly to the plight of Jewish refugees, opposed the bombing of extermination camps, and remained ambivalent toward Zionism. Meticulously researched, engagingly written, and eminently fair-minded, The Jews Should Keep Quiet deserves a wide audience.”—Dean J. Kotlowski, author of Nixon’s Civil Rights and Paul V. McNutt and the Age of FDR
• “In this important volume, Medoff shows there was a great deal Roosevelt could have done despite the various political circumstances and limitations. The new material and analysis he brings to light are vital study in a field rife with apologetic, consensus historians—and dare not to be forgotten.”—Allen H. Podet, professor emeritus, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Buffalo State, State University of New York
• “The Jews Should Keep Quiet is a meticulously researched and disquieting history of the reasons behind America’s failure to rescue Europe’s doomed Jews. Readers may rightly conclude that if there is a Roosevelt they can admire, it is Eleanor and not Franklin.”—Dr. Alan L. Berger, Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies, Florida Atlantic University
• “An essential study shedding further light on a watershed period, attempting a challenging balanced approach with irrefutable evidence condemning two major figures whose close collaboration ultimately carried disastrous consequences.”—CCAR Journal/The Reform Jewish Quarterly

Scientists have long been puzzled by the frequent disappearance of ships in the Bermuda Triangle. In his new Holocaust documentary, filmmaker Ken Burns has managed to make the entire Bermuda Conference on Refugees vanish....................How, then, could Ken Burns have omitted any mention of Bermuda from his six hour-long PBS series on “The U.S. and the Holocaust”? Was it because one of the themes of the series was to minimize President Roosevelt’s responsibility for America’s harsh refugee policy, and the Bermuda Conference conflicted with that narrative?...............To Read More......

P&D and The Week That Was

Truth is the Sublime Convergence of History and Reality

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De Omnibus Dubitandum (Everything is to be questioned)

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 This Link will take you to My Commentaries.  This Link will take you to My Commentaries by topic.  This Link will take you to My Global Warming Commentaries

By Rich Kozlovich 

"You Know That Little Voice Inside Your Head That Keeps You From Saying Things You Shouldn't? Yeah, I Don't Have That."

Busy week, lot's of stuff in today's edition. Fifteen offerings by me and eighteen others by some great authors.  I'm once again finding polls to be really strange, and confirms to me they're not to be believed.  Polls show Trump in the low 50% bracket, and Joe Biden in the high 40% bracket, and one even has Biden leading Trump by a percentage point.  

Do we really think up to 49% of Americans think Joe Biden should serve another term as President of the United States?   Ya just gotta be kidden me!

What I think is far more telling is how Joe Biden, Obama, and Clinton attended a fund raiser in New York ignoring a funeral that was being held for murdered officer Jonathan Diller, but Trump attended and was applauded.  Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul also attended and wasn't welcome!  She was applauded for leaving.  

Update:  It appears along with "Hochul, Bragg, James, and Adams tried to muscle in on slain officer's funeral and it didn't end well for them".

Remember, this is New York City, as far left and Democrat as there is, so, if the purpose of polls is to get the views and feelings of the public, then, that's what I call a "true poll"

One of the most important events of the week was the terrorist attack in Moscow murdering 130 innocent, unarmed, undefended civilians by Muslims.  We learned that Putin is as gutless as Biden when it comes to Muslims, and no matter how much one tries to appeal to the better nature of Muslims we find there is no better nature.  Which bring us to the next lesson.  Why in the world would any sane rational person wish to protect these HAMAS monsters with a cease fire, and then impose a suicidal two state solution on the nation of Israel?  That's Joe Biden!

We really need to get this.  Putin is a vicious beast, but it's Islam that's western civilization's greatest threat, and Israel is the canary in the coal mine.  That's where we have skin in the game, not Ukraine.  Europe created the Ukraine mess, and its a European mess, so let them fix it or not, we have no skin in that game. 

My Commentaries

1. California's A Mess, and It's Not My Fault, Part V
2. This is the Obama Military
3. Blast From the Past: Islam Means Submission: Really, It Does - And They Really Mean It!
4. Even a Blind Acorn Can Find a Squirrel Once in a While
5. News From Up North
6. Why Is That So Hard To Get?
7. This Falls Under the Category of "We've Lost Our Minds".
8. This Defines Each and Every One of America's Major Cities
9. Congress is Out of Control! What Would Mike Royko Have Thought?
10. The World as I See It, March 25, 2024
11. The World as I See It, March 24, 2024
12. The World as I See It: March 23, 2024
13. My Gazette: Voter Fraud
14. My Gazette: Free Speech
15. My Gazette: Squatters Rights 

Commentaries

1. RFK Jr. and the Vice President Reality TV Show By Leeza K. Donner
2. Massive Irregularities in Ohio Voter Database By Joe Fried
3. House GOP Majority Shrinks as More Republicans Call It Quits By James Fite
4. Poll Shows U.S. Muslims Support Hamas By Daniel Greenfield
5. Biden Lies to America, Tells the Truth to China  By Daniel Greenfield
6. We Are the Victims and Everything We Do is Justified  By Daniel Greenfield
7. The Greenfield Gazette By Daniel Greenfield
8. Hamas-Supporter Qatar ‘Sponsoring’ What Americans Learn By Raymond Ibrahim
9. Patriot Neighbors: Lipstick on a Pig! By Robin Itzler
10. When It Comes To The Powers Arrayed Against Israel, There’s A Simple Solution By Jerold Levoritz
11. NY AG Letitia James Hit Hard by Reality By Liberty Nation Authors
12. Loss Of U.S. Moral Authority Undermines Democracy Around The World By Francis Menton
13. More Good News Thanks to Colorado’s TABOR Spending Cap By Dan Mitchell
14. The Economics of Creative Destruction, Part III By Dan Mitchell
15. Democrats, Republicans, and Job Creation By Dan Mitchell
16. The 2024 Version of America’s Dismal Fiscal Future By Dan Mitchell
17. Washington’s Fiscal Ponzi Scheme By Dan Mitchell
18. Whatever happened to... (Part 2) By Mike Shaw

 My Permanent Links

1. 45 Communist Goals to Destroy America as Listed in the1963 Congressional Record
2. My Seven Rules of Geopolitics

Constant as the North Star

When It Comes To The Powers Arrayed Against Israel, There’s A Simple Solution

March 30, 2024 By Jerold Levoritz @ American Thinker 

Editor's Note:   I've not asked for nor have I received permission to publish this piece, but I think it's an important piece that needs as wide a distribution as possible because this helps to explain the corrupt, illogical, irrational, and universal condemnation of Israel by the world's powers.  If American Thinker or Raymond Ibrahim object, I will break it down to a link.   RK

Despite regularly watching Caroline Glick, I don’t like doing so. That’s because her relentlessly realistic understanding of Israel’s position in the world tears me apart. A recent interview with Mike Benz, director of the Foundation of Freedom Online (embedded at the end of this post), is one of the most poignant I have seen because it explains so much. However, once one understands what’s really going on, there is a solution, and it’s a relatively simple one.

We who care about Israel and its survival compulsively scratch our heads and wonder why the media, the intelligence community, our elected politicians, the United Nations, the European Union, and a slurry of individual nations can be so taken up with anti-Semitic rhetoric and seek to neuter or destroy the only Jewish state in the world. Why would any mentally sound individual or political body curry favor with Iran and hang Israel out to dry?

Mike Benz clearly explains the intentions of those who engage in squelching Israel. Let me cut to the chase: Money, power, and control, mainly relating to petroleum resources, drive the current anti-Israel sentiment among the nominally civilized nations.

The process leading to this situation has been methodical and insidious. The US military-industrial complex has weaponized our civilian institutions to serve its needs. In a world that no longer recognizes kinetic military conquest as a means of acquiring territory and commodities, the only way to guarantee constantly increasing government funding for the military is through the soft military mobilization of civilian entities like the electronic media, the press, NGOs, corporate entities, and seemingly unrelated governmental agencies like the FDA.

Instead of buying tanks and warships, the Pentagon now purchases influence to limit competing narratives among the masses. Everything is paid for either by the military or wealthy industrial stakeholders. Money greases the wheels at every level through direct purchase of services, kickback contributions, jobs for retirees, and unethical influence peddling.

The US government collects money from the American people and then gives it to the military. The US military distributes it to other government agencies that, in turn, distribute it to non-governmental institutions. Some of these private recipients of government money are the universities that have established entire sections advising the military on how to limit the information available to the taxpayers.

Each social media company has a unit that has as its sole purpose to deplatform and demonetize people supporting competing understandings of social problems. The open internet of the 1990s has become a closed loop, so “things don’t get out of hand.”

Most particularly, the oil and gas industry shells out lots of money upfront in order to obtain the proper government policies that will benefit it. For example, under the influence of these energy companies, the US government has eased sanctions on Iran so they can export oil and gas to China.

China acquires Iranian energy by exercising its influence with the Biden administration and those in Congress who agree with or do not oppose the loosening of Iranian sanctions. America has at this moment a peculiar problem with the Biden family conflict of interest that is undermining US foreign policy. Their questionable behavior is well-documented but still unaddressed.

Immediately after World War II and the modern state of Israel was established, Britain assumed from the Nazis the role of despoiler of the Jews. The British took concentration camp survivors and imprisoned them on Cyprus for the crime of wanting to immigrate to the nascent state of Israel. Then, they provided officers, training, and arms to the Jordanians to weaken Jewish defense efforts in British-mandate Palestine.

Under the British, the “west bank” was emptied of its Jews. Those who recall correctly will remember that the League of Nations gave to Britain the Palestinian mandate to establish a home for the Jews. Instead, the British tried to rig the game so the Jews would lose that opportunity because of their battlefield losses.

The Brits had no authority to put Jews back in concentration camps, but they did it anyway. Perhaps they hated the Jews. However, at the end of the day, their sole goal was to retain the favor of oil-producing Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia. They chose oil over the lives of the Palestinian Jews and the remnants of the concentration camps.

It is no different today, with American and British support for Iran arising from Iran being the third or fourth largest source of petroleum in the world. Today’s Israel is being sacrificed for oil again. America is groveling at Iran’s feet to secure that oil for world consumption. The groveling is for monetary gain, with industrial conglomerates funneling money back to the politicians’ campaigns. If Israel insists on standing in the way, it must be weakened or eliminated.

Now, we reach the easy solution for this constant vying for petroleum resources among the powerful elites. There are just too many people who want to stay warm in their homes. If it were up to the sadists and psychopaths among the powerful, a catastrophic decline of population would be the way they would reduce energy consumption.

That the human population is likely to decrease on its own does not seem to reduce the zeal of these violence-prone advocates of forced population suffering. However, a less distasteful approach would be for everyone to support the production of adequate levels of energy for our current denizens. This can be accomplished by developing Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors (LFTR). The technology is available and would make oil cheaper than dirt because of the competition of plentiful nuclear power.

For the technically inclined, here are the undisputed facts. According to physics Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia, a ton of thorium could produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium or 3,500,000 tons of coal. If converted to electricity at 50% efficiency, 820 keV/u is equivalent to 11 billion kilowatt-hours per metric ton of thorium/

Given that it is Israel who is being scapegoated by the world’s wealthy, I suggest Israel make it their raison d’etre to immediately begin developing working LFTR units to undercut oil prices.

This approach will save the lives of billions of people slated for extinction by the Darwinians among the wealthy. It will aid in undermining the cabal of information manipulators, beginning with our overly-endowed military. Once LFTR is in place, that will allow for quieter relations among all nations of the world, with each man able to live under his own vine and fig tree (Biblical reference) in peace.

Image: The first commercial oil well in Saudi Arabia. Public domain.

 

Loss Of U.S. Moral Authority Undermines Democracy Around The World

 Francis Menton March 28, 024 @ Manhattan Contrarian

Around the world today, lots of countries claim to be “democracies”; but then the state thugs use various ploys to assure that no opposition can ever prevail. Among such ploys, the tactic currently in vogue is to gin up some collection of flimsy criminal charges to get the opposition leader and/or his/her supporters arrested or otherwise sidelined.

If you haven’t been following the subject closely in recent months, you may not realize how pervasive the use of this tactic has become. Sure, imprisoning the opposition leaders has long been part of the playbook of the worst thugocracies. It’s what you would expect of a small-time African dictatorship or of a Central American banana republic, not to mention the likes of Russia or China. But recently the tactic has been spreading like a case of poison ivy to countries otherwise pretending to grown-up, or semi-grown-up, status. Countries like India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. And, did I mention, the United States — once known for claiming to be the shining exemplar for the world of good governance, and for seeking to use its moral authority to induce others to follow its lead. Today, governing cliques in other countries are greatly emboldened by the brazen abuse of power orchestrated by Biden and the gaggle of Democratic prosecutors pursuing Trump. Hey, we’re just conducting business the same way you Americans do in your own country! You have no standing to criticize us!

We’ll start with a couple of the worst — Russia and Venezuela. In Russia, Vladimir Putin, either personally or through his stand-in Medvedev, has been in power continuously since 1999. In three prior re-elections, to keep the opposition from getting traction, Putin has used a standard playbook of the autocrat — control of the press and television, suppression of demonstrations and rallies, control of the vote-counting process. But the most recent election, held March 15, is the first time Putin felt emboldened to have the opposition leader (Navalny) imprisoned. The charge was “extremism,” (whatever that means) for which Navalny was convicted by a compliant court and sentenced to a term of 19 years (!). And then Navalny mysteriously died in prison in February, just weeks before the election. Putin claims to have won some 87% of the vote in the election.

In Venezuela, the next election is expected in July. Current dictator Maduro (along with predecessor Chavez) has totally run the country into the ground. Likely, he would lose any fair election badly; but he’s taking no chances. The opposition has united around a candidate named Maria Corina Machado, who announced her candidacy in June 2023. According to this January 26, 2024 piece in the AP, shortly after Machado announced her candidacy in June, the Venezuelan government imposed a 15-year ban on her running for office. The supposed grounds are “fraud and tax violations and . . . seeking the economic sanctions the U.S. imposed on Venezuela last decade.” Machado says she was never notified of the supposed ban, and she proceeded to run in a primary conducted independently of the government in October by the opposition groups, winning some 90% of the votes. Thereafter, the government told her of the ban, so she challenged it in court. But in December, Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice, totally in control of Maduro’s forces, upheld the ban. In the latest development, according to this piece from Reuters, on March 20 Madura’s henchmen arrested, and/or issued warrants for the arrest of, nine top members of Machado’s campaign team including her “right hand,” (campaign manager) Magalli Meda. As of today, Machado herself apparently remains out of prison, although I doubt that will last. She has also been prevented from registering as a candidate for the upcoming election.

Meanwhile, over in Bangladesh, there was an election on January 7, 2024. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasami, head of the Awami League party, ran for her fifth term in office, against main opposition party Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Here is what happened in the run-up to the election, according to a January 8 piece in the Guardian:

In the months leading up to the election, tens of thousands of BNP leaders and rank and file members had been arrested en masse and kept in terrible conditions in overcrowded prisons, while opposition protests were met with heavy police violence. At least nine BNP leaders and supporters have died in jail in the past three months, according to the opposition.

In these circumstances, BNP made the strategic decision to call for a boycott of the election. The result was a very low turnout election, where the ruling party won an overwhelming victory. From the Guardian:

Tarique Rahman, the BNP chairman who lives in exile in London due to corruption allegations against him that he denies as politically motivated, said: “What unfolded was not an election, but rather a disgrace to the democratic aspirations of Bangladesh.”. . . Rumeen Farhana, one of the few BNP MPs who has not been jailed, called it a “dummy election”, adding: . . . “Bangladesh will be a de facto one party state after this election.”

In India, there is an election scheduled for April 19. The LA Times reports on March 22 that one of the main opposition leaders, a guy named Arvind Kejriwal, was just arrested. The LA Times identifies Kejriwal as the “top elected official” (analogous to mayor?) of New Delhi. Despite the fact that his claim to fame is crusading against corruption, Kejriwal has been charged with taking some $12 million in bribes. From the LA Times:

Arvind Kejriwal, who is New Delhi’s top elected official, was arrested Thursday night by the federal Enforcement Directorate, which is controlled by Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. The agency accused Kejriwal’s party and ministers of accepting $12 million in bribes from liquor contractors nearly two years ago. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, or Common People’s Party, said the accusations were fabricated. The party said Kejriwal will remain New Delhi’s chief minister while it fights the accusations in court.

And then there’s Brazil. Brazil is a country of nearly 220 million people, and with a GDP of over $2 trillion. It should be joining the ranks of the most important countries of the world. But it currently is in the grip of a far left-wing government, headed by Luis Ignacio (“Lula”) da Silva, who ousted former President Jair Bolsonaro in a close election in 2022. The next election is in 2026.

Bolsonaro is a somewhat Trumpian figure in Brazil, with analogies including that he has a very committed populist following, that he holds large and boisterous rallies, and that his supporters conducted a riot protesting the last election at the time of the transfer of power to Lula in January 2023. (Bolsonaro in fact left office and transferred power.). Not surprisingly, Bolsonaro is getting the full Trump lawfare treatment from the current government and essentially all elite institutions in Brazil. It’s as if the Brazilians were following the news from the U.S. and trying to imitate every move that the state actors take against Trump. The New York Times on March 19 has a piece that includes a rundown of some of the initiatives seeking to take down Bolsonaro:

• “Brazil’s electoral court has already ruled Mr. Bolsonaro ineligible for public office until 2030 for spreading false information about Brazil’s voting systems on state television, forcing him to sit out the next presidential contest in 2026.”

So in Brazil a politician of the right can be disqualified from running for “spreading false information about . . . voting systems.” It’s surprising that Colorado didn’t think of that one.

• Mr. Bolsonaro has been subject to questioning and searches as part of several inquiries, including into the selling of watches and jewels he received as presidential gifts from Saudi Arabia and other countries, as well as accusations that he worked with top government officials to hatch a plan to try to hold onto power after his 2022 election loss.

It does seem a bit tacky for the President of a big country like Brazil to get gifts like watches and jewels from foreign governments and then sell them to obtain personal funds. On the other hand, it’s also not clear that these were bribes, or otherwise illegal. Bribes require a quid pro quo, and what is it exactly that Bolsonaro could have done for Saudi Arabia as the quid pro quo to make these gifts into bribes? (Unlike Biden, who could withhold or release a billion dollars of aid to Ukraine depending on how much the oligarch paid his son for a fake directorship job.). Recall that former Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia was initially convicted of taking multi-hundred thousand dollar gifts, but his conviction was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis that he was not alleged to have done anything in return other than set up some meetings. So unless Brazil has some law prohibiting a President from taking gifts, it’s not clear what Bolsonaro may have done that is improper.

And then there’s the latest bit of lawfare against Bolsonaro:

• Brazil’s federal police recommended that former President Jair Bolsonaro be criminally charged in a scheme to falsify his Covid-19 vaccine card, partly to travel to the United States during the pandemic, in the latest sign of criminal investigations closing in on the former president.

Well, that one will surely bring him down! It’s almost as bad as paying hush money to a woman accusing you of a sexual impropriety.

And finally, there’s the news from the West African country of Senegal. There, main opposition presidential candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye was arrested and detained in advance of the election held over the past weekend (March 23-24). The charges included “incitement to insurrection” (sound familiar?), and “defamation of a constitutional body.” However, he was released 10 days in advance of the election on orders of Senegal’s constitutional court. And it appears that he has won the election! Mark Steyn has a brief report on the events, and links to multiple articles from the West African press about the event.

Credit goes to Senegal in this collection for the closest thing to untampered elections.

Hamas-Supporter Qatar ‘Sponsoring’ What Americans Learn

March 29, 2024 By Raymond Ibrahim @ American Thinker

Editor's Note:   I've not asked for nor have I received permission to publish this piece, but I think it's an important piece that needs as wide a distribution as possible because this helps to explain why America's universities are a mephitic ooze of anti-American stench..  If American Thinker or Raymond Ibrahim object, I will break it down to a link.   RK

“Hamas patron” Qatar has given more than $5.6 billion to 61 American schools since 2007, including Ivy Leaguers such as Harvard University, Yale University, Cornell University, and Stanford University, according to a Feb. 9, 2024 report.

Qatar is not the only nation to be supportive of “learning” in the West while simultaneously having deep ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations — not to mention exhibiting a very anti-liberal stance and unenlightened mind at home.

According to another report from 2023,

China, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Turkey have poured millions of dollars into the University of Delaware since the school launched the Biden Institute, President Joe Biden’s domestic policy think tank led by his sister. ... Since the Biden Institute was established in 2017, the University of Delaware has received $6,704,250 in funding from China, $23,610,996 from Saudi Arabia, $2,513,646 from Oman and $1,673,847 from Turkey, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.

Every one of these “generous donors” is either explicitly or implicitly hostile to Western civilization and everything it stands for, prompting a simple question:

Why are nations that are notoriously hostile to freedom, diversity, women’s rights — basically all Western values — donating many billions of dollars to fund, of all things, liberal American universities? The answer seems clear enough: elite universities produce American leaders, and foreign money — “donations” — buys power and influence over those very same future leaders, not least by ensuring that what they “learn” — or are indoctrinated into believing — is beneficial to them, the donors, while also detrimental to the U.S.

All of this was made abundantly clear by a blockbuster report published by the Department of Education under the Trump administration in 2020.  It thoroughly documented the “purchased” influence foreign nations have on America’s most prestigious universities and, as a result, on what America’s current and upcoming generations of analysts and policymakers will think and believe.

As seen, among those “gifts” has been a whopping $5.6 billion from the Muslim Brotherhood’s number-one state backer, Qatar, which also runs the Arabic propaganda network Al Jazeera.  Another $1.1 billion came from the chief disseminator of “radical” Islamic ideology, Saudi Arabia, and nearly $1.5 billion came from China.

As the 2020 Dept. of Ed. report explained,

at least some of these foreign sources are hostile to the United States and are targeting their investments (i.e., “gifts” and “contracts”) to project soft power, steal sensitive and proprietary research, and spread propaganda.

As one example of how these “hostile donations” work, in March 2019, an event described as a “Three-Day Anti-Israel Hate-Fest” was sponsored by the University of North Carolina’s Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies and the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies — both recipients of big bucks from Islamic nations that hate Israel.

Following this event, the Dept. of Ed. warned the Consortium, in a letter dated August 29, 2019, to stop misusing federal grants by advancing “ideological priorities.”  According to the letter:

The Duke-UNC CMES appears to lack balance as it offers very few, if any, programs focused on the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yadizis, Kurds, Druze, and others. Also, in your activities for elementary and secondary students and teachers, there is a considerable emphasis placed on the understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East. This lack of balance of perspectives is troubling.

Similarly, a 2018 report found that “elite U.S. universities took more than half a billion dollars” from Saudi Arabia in gifts and donations between 2011 and 2017.  As far back as 2005, Georgetown and Harvard each received $20 million “to support Islamic studies on their respective campuses.”

Here again, the question arises: why would a nation such as Saudi Arabia — which treats women like chattel, insists that all Muslims are obligated to hate all non-Muslims, and arrests and tortures Christians for “plotting to celebrate Christmas” — become a leading financial supporter of America’s liberal arts?

The answer should be clear: to influence what students are taught about the Middle East and Islam.

The Dept. of Ed.’s 2020 exposé (section E.5) on Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding “exemplifies how foreign money can advance a particular country’s worldview within U.S. academic institutions.”  As such, it is worth quoting at length:

[T]he Center could advance Islamic ideology in a fashion that belittles opposition, threatens academic integrity, and improperly influences future civil servants. The Center also received criticism for deceptively labeling itself as pluralistic; according to critics, the “Christian” studies portion of the Center was a “misnomer” as there was no Christian representation. ...

This donation empowered the Saudi Arabian government to advance a particular narrative about Islamic society to the West via a legitimate Western institution like Georgetown University. ...

The Saudi Arabian government had successfully impacted American foreign policy thinking through money alone. The Saudi Arabian government invested significantly into the dissemination of its favored ideological views at Georgetown University and several other U.S. academic institutions.

The report further adds that, while raking in and failing to report on these billions in foreign “gifts,” these same universities “depend on direct and indirect subsidies from U.S. taxpayers, including through Federal student loans that have encumbered Americans with staggering debt loads, to operate.”  Even so, “the evidence suggests institutional decision-making is generally divorced from any sense of obligation to our taxpayers or concern for our American national interests, security, or values.”

In all spheres of life, education is an indicator of the potential for success.  Its opposite, ignorance — or worse, indoctrination in falsehoods — is an indicator of potential failure.  As such, clearly, one of the reasons U.S. foreign policy, from China to the Middle East, has been a disaster is because policymakers and the advisers and analysts on whom they depend upon are products of academic indoctrination financed by those who are hostile to the United States.

Poll Shows U.S. Muslims Support Hamas

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

 

After 9/11, elected officials told us that Islam had nothing to do with terrorism. And that accusing Muslims of supporting Islamic terrorism was a dangerous bigotry they dubbed “Islamophobia.”

In the decades since, the same speech has been delivered after every Islamic terror attack.

Now, as Muslims and leftists riot in support of Hamas, after Islamic groups and public figures from campus groups to the leader of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) celebrated the Oct 7 atrocities, we are not allowed to suggest they support terrorism.

Even as Dearborn, Michigan became the hub of a movement to save Hamas by pressuring Biden, led by figures who had praised Hamas, an op-ed by a MEMRI counterterrorism researcher in the Wall Street Journal that warned of the degree of support for terrorism in the Muslim area was denounced by everyone from Biden on down for its “Islamophobia.”

Muslims in America, we’re told, don’t support Hamas, they just oppose Israel. Is that true?

While there were polls which showed that the vast majority of Muslims in Israel (the so-called ‘Palestinians’) support Hamas, there hasn’t been a comprehensive poll of Muslims in America.

However a recent Pew survey on the war showed that half of Muslims in America (49%) believe Hamas has “valid” reasons for attacking Israel, while the majority (54%) also reject the idea that Israel has the right to defend itself against the Islamic terrorist organization

Unlike the vast majority of Americans from all ages and backgrounds, Muslims are the only group where less than half agree that the Oct 7 murders, rapes and kidnappings were wrong.

1 in 5 Muslims in America (21%) were willing to admit they supported the Oct 7 massacres. Nearly 1 in 3 claimed to be unsure whether burning Jewish families alive in their homes was wrong.

Only 5% of Muslims in America believe that Israel’s military campaign on Hamas is acceptable while 68% of Muslims believe that Israel’s attacks on the Islamic terrorists are not acceptable.

67% of Muslims in America have an unfavorable view of the “Israeli people” (not the Israeli government which an overwhelming 86% of them oppose.)

While only 8% of Americans have a favorable view of Hamas, 1 in 3 (37%) Muslims in America are willing to admit to a favorable view of a sanctioned terrorist organization. (There are multiple reasons why some Muslims might oppose Hamas while still hating Israel, including support for the Palestinian Authority, political opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood or resentment over Hamas siding with the Sunni rebels in Syria.)

60% of Muslims in the U.S. resent that America is “favoring” Israel.

These numbers are troubling because they pose a threat not only to Israel, but to America.

Support for Islamic terrorism in one part of the world can often translate to support for terrorism elsewhere. Including in America. Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which has built an extensive infrastructure in America. When the Brotherhood took power in Egypt, before being removed in a popular uprising with military backing, many Muslims here rallied to support it.

Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups operate not only in Israel or the Middle East, but around the world. Al Qaeda was formed as part of a fusion with a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group. Osama bin Laden was one of a number of Al Qaeda leaders who had been in the Brotherhood.

And the Muslim Brotherhood is on every campus in America through its student groups, it has built up organizations that control mosques and represent Muslims on Capitol Hill. Some of those organizations also did everything possible to undermine America’s war on Al Qaeda.

Now some of them are cheering on the Houthi Jihadists as they battle the U.S. Navy to sink as many ships in the Red Sea as they can. Will they also cheer on attacks against America?

The Pew numbers show quite clearly that a surprising number of Muslims are willing to express support for Islamic terrorism. How many share their views but are more circumspect about telling them to a stranger on the phone? That is something we may only find out far too late.

While 1 in 3 Muslims will admit to supporting Hamas, 1 in 2 claim that Hamas has valid reasons for attacking Israel. And hardly any believe that the victims of Islamic terrorism have the right to fight back. That is the final number that truly matters. Some Muslims will claim to reject Islamic terror, but very few are willing to actually support non-Muslims who fight back against terrorism.

While the Pew poll offers plenty of bad news about Democrats and their support for terror, this is in part driven by the growing Islamic role in the party, the media and public life. That is the phenomenon reflected in the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s ‘Election Jihad’ report which showed that Islamic activists were gaining statewide offices around the country and using their positions to defend Islamic terrorists while opposing efforts to put a stop to their violence.

Muslims in America don’t represent a range of diversity, they are clear outliers when it comes to supporting Islamic terrorism even among those groups most prone to supporting terrorists.

Over 3 times as many Muslims, as Democrats, support the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7. Twice as many Muslims as black protestants, the other group least friendly to Jews, believe Hamas has valid reasons for fighting Israel. Over twice as many Muslims, as 18-24 year olds, the most pro-Hamas age demographic, support Hamas.

These views do not represent an American range, but a dangerous un-American one.

The support for Hamas and the opposition to Israel among Muslims in America is not a reflection of American politics, but of Islamic ones. This is also true of the anti-Israel campaign. The majority of Muslims don’t just oppose Israel, but the “Israeli people”. This is not a disagreement with a particular government, but a tribal hatred of an entire people.

And that is the same genocidal hatred that Hamas and other terrorist groups have mobilized.

American Jews are shocked at the level and depth of support for the murder of Jews, but over the past decades, they (like most Americans) failed to view immigration as an urgent threat. Now that there are multiple crises, from terrorist mobs in the streets to a mass invasion at the border, some people are waking up. And that wake up call needs to turn into action.

Israel has its war at its own borders and we have ours. America is a generation away from its own Oct 7. As in Europe, a new terrorist threat is rising in our own country, not from abroad, but from a generation of Muslims and converts who were born in this country.

The Pew poll shows once more how deep the support for Islamic terrorists is not just in abstractions like the “media” or the “college campus”, but among Islamic immigrants.

If Americans and, especially, Jews, do not come to terms with that, what follows will be worse.

 

 Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

More Good News Thanks to Colorado’s TABOR Spending Cap

March 25, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Colorado has the best fiscal rule in the United States. The Taxpayer Bill of  Rights (TABOR) limits state government spending so that it cannot grow faster than inflation plus population.

Does Colorado’s spending cap work perfectly? Of course not.

Politicians in the Centennial State have spent decades coming up with ways evade and avoid TABOR’s restrictions.

But let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

A study published last year shows that TABOR has saved taxpayers $8.2 billion.

And taxpayers in Colorado may soon keep even more of their money according to an article by Brian Eason in the Colorado Sun. Here are the relevant excerpts.

…the budget will be squeezed primarily by two seemingly minor factors. One, U.S. Census estimates now say the state’s population grew by less than the state’s demographer had anticipated. That means the state revenue cap under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which tracks inflation and population growth, can only increase by 5.8% this budget year rather than the 6.1% legislative forecasters were expecting. Two, the state is now expected to collect $185 million more in road usage fees and retail delivery charges this year than last, under the legislative staff estimates. Taken together, the two forecast changes mean state lawmakers could have to issue larger than expected TABOR refunds to Coloradans next year, leaving the state with fewer General Fund tax dollars to spend… That would translate to a nearly $400 refund for the average single-filer in 2025 under the current refund formula, which is tiered based on income.

I’m tempted to call this the feel-good story of 2024. Politicians get less money to waste and taxpayers get more of their money returned.

No wonder TABOR is the gold standard for good fiscal policy at the state level. And Switzerland shows that spending caps also are very effective at the national level.

By contrast, there is very little evidence that balanced-budget rules produce good results.

P.S. Perhaps the best evidence for TABOR is that the pro-spending lobbies in Colorado are always trying to trick voters into approving ballot initiatives that would allow more spending. But as we saw in 2013, 2019, and 2023, the voters of left-leaning Colorado keep voting to to maintain their spending cap.

California's A Mess, and It's Not My Fault, Part V

By Rich Kozlovich

As I've noted in,  Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, the theme, "so goes California so goes the nation", may not be true any longer, since California is now a sewer, and it stinks, I mean it really stinks, filthy with crime out of control, and it didn't just start yesterday.   This article by Milt Harris March 22, 2024 This Should Work, City Council Member Wants A “Department Of Homelessness”, saying:  

Just keep beating your head against that liberal wall because it feels good when you stop. I love it when the only way people in the government can think of to solve a problem is to add more government. Nothing solves a problem like spending more money and hamstringing the issue with increased bureaucracy and miles of red tape.

I love the picture, the city is burning to the ground and these nitwits are telling the nation this is what we're offering for the rest of America, isn't it nice? 

On July 28, 2021 Craig Bannister (the link no longer works) reported the Vice President of the Police Union, Joe Gamaldi,  stated, criminals were stealing everything that's not nailed down because we won't prosecute them.  He went on to say, "district attorneys publicly announced that they will no longer prosecute thefts of less than $950", and this was voted on and accepted by the people of California, via the lunatics they chose for their leaders.

• Spike In Shoplifting Blamed On California Prop 47’s Reduced Penalties Anything below $950 keeps the crime a misdemeanor — and likely means the thieves face no pursuit and no punishment, say retailers and law enforcement officials. Large retailers including Safeway, Target, Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies say shoplifting increased at least 15 percent, and in some cases, doubled since voters approved Proposition 47 and ended the possibility of charging shoplifting as a felony with the potential for a prison sentence.....
• VIDEO: Shoplifter Fills Up Backpack With Stolen Goods During Stroll Through San Francisco Walgreens
• California Man Only Gets Probation for Stabbing 94-Year-Old Asian Woman

In Oakland's Chinatown they're demanding Gov. Newsom declare as state of emergency because they're living in a state of fear saying:

“Governor Newsom, we want you to declare a state of emergency for the city of Oakland. We want you to bring in the California Highway Patrol,” said Chan of a letter he sent to Newsom demanding action. “I’m not only asking you for Chinatown. I’m asking you to send the police, the CHP, to the city of Oakland; all areas. We need your help.”...........“The rash of shootings, carjacking, assaults and robberies hold the city of Oakland hostage,” said Chan. “Citizens are living in the continuous state of fear for our safety, well being, livelihoods and future.” Chan blamed the rise in violent crimes on the “defund the police” movement in part, but also noted that those committing the crimes were less concerned about consequences because the state’s justice system and unnamed district attorneys that he said are too lenient with repeat offenders........

If you thought Prop. 47 was insane, it gets even worse with passage of the 2020 California Racial Justice Act, which is can easily be called a "descent into racialist madness".  By claiming "systemic bias" every thug, murder, or thief, in California's prison system can "retroactively challenge his conviction and sentencing on the ground of systemic bias, and they can provide "experts" to testify to that, even "experts' who publicly state whites are all psychopaths. 

We know know the reason for this is America's prisons are full of blacks, and the reason they're full of blacks is because blacks commit more crimes than America's other races, per ratio, a lot more. 

In Los Angeles, blacks are 21 times as likely as whites to commit a violent crime, 36 times as likely to commit a robbery, and 57 times as likely to commit a homicide, according to police department data. Those data come from reports filed by victims and witnesses, who are themselves disproportionately black. Blacks over-offend to an appalling degree in other states, too. But liberals cling to the hoary myth that “disparities” in law enforcement can only be due to racial bias in criminal justice.

And now there's a massive crime wave throughout California, imagine that!  It boggles the mind any political party could be so stupid as to be in favor of more crime.  Yet that must be the case since they're passing laws that can only assure more crimes will be committed, and once this trend gets started, it metastasizes into more violent crimes.  

Will the nation follow?  Well, there's New York, Oregon, Washington, and every major city in America going in that direction, but I seriously doubt most states will follow California, and at some point these Democrat sewers, cities and states, will collapse and left to rot in their own corruption, and the rest of the nation will refuse to bail them out.  

The productive citizens are leaving, en masse, as taking their money with them, and they're not coming back.  It will be decades before some of these cities are revived. 

 Schadenfreude.  

• California to help 'undocumented immigrants' purchase homes? - March 9, 2024 By Eric Utter - California Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula has introduced Assembly Bill 1840, aimed at expanding home ownership opportunities for “undocumented immigrants” in the state.The bill would make illegal aliens eligible for first time homebuyer loans. The bill, as originally introduced earlier this year, was aimed at low- and middle-income citizens, but Arambula apparently decided that was too exclusive, and therefore recently proposed his updated version. This is yet another kick in the shorts to citizens, especially since the formerly Golden State has the highest priced housing — and by far the most homeless people — in the nation...........
•  Recalled San Fransicko DA Says Victims Don’t Have Rights Under the Constitution -  (Daily Signal)—Crime victims don’t have rights under the Constitution, former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who was recalled by voters in 2022 amid an escalation of crime, said during a conference here at UC Berkeley School of Law.  Boudin’s surprising comment came as part of a larger debate between the Left and Right on criminal justice issues at the March 8 gathering, called “Justice Unveiled: Debating Crime and Public Safety Conference.”.....

This is the Obama Military

By Rich Kozlovich

On March 24, 2024 J.B. Shurk published this piece at American Thinker, We Should Fight First for the Bill of Rights, with a devastating analysis of the military, which the Obama administration deliberately destroyed and then re-created into the corupt mess it is now, which the Biden continues to destroy saying: 

1. I will not fight for a government that is guilty of murder, rape, drug-trafficking, and other violent crimes because the Department of Homeland Security refuses to enforce our sovereign borders. 
2. I will not fight for the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, the United Nations, or any other international body that seeks global control over local communities.  
3. I will not fight for a D.C. Deep State that calls me a “domestic extremist” or “terrorist” because I believe in freedom, family values, and God.  
4. I will not fight for a gaggle of worthless Pentagon politicos who think “patriotism,” “duty,” and “honor” are all dirty words. 
5. I will not fight for people who wish to destroy my country.

He then goes on to quote a career retired Army Colonel who served for 31 years by the name of Larry Wilkerson who made a video saying:

“I recommend none of you 18 and 19 year olds go into the military, because all your military is doing today is being led by people who are insane, infested with lust for money, who want to get out of the military and make seven, eight figures with defense contractors, [and] want war after war after war.”......I'm almost 80 years old and I never thought I would say that to young people."

The author goes on to make these three points:

1. Who wants to volunteer for an organization that has watered down physical and mental fitness requirements and brags about unfairly promoting personnel based on their race or sexual identity?  
2. Who wants to serve under a politically motivated leadership class that views “white supremacy,” Christianity, and “climate change” as America’s existential enemies?   
3. Who wants to risk life and limb for Defense chiefs who punished service members for refusing experimental “vaccines” (and would do so again)?   

I'm almost 78, I served and worked in intelligence, and loved the work.  I hated the military, but truth be told, I hate any form of institutional life as it reduces you as an individual, unless you're among the officer class, who I despised, and I still despise.  But at least they weren't traitors then.  However, there's a caveat to that.

We really need to understand this in order to understand how Obama destroyed the military.   The  officer corp is the ultimate go along to get along gang, provided you want to get promoted, and the reason they weren't traitorous then is because the ground wasn't fertile for treason as it is now.   

 The author makes this final point:

The Armed Forces are in dire need of an ideological fumigation that can drive the “woke” mind virus out for good.  Unless the branches return to a culture that celebrates honor, strength, and merit, DIE-obsessed Marxists will continue to transform America’s once-intimidating fighting forces into a puny pack of politically correct toy poodles.  Nothing invites aggression so much as perceived weakness.

Can this be turned around without a massive u-turn in society in general?  And that starts with a massive fumigation in public education by eliminating the Department of Education, stop all funding to education at all levels making education a local and state function, eliminating all public employee unions, especially the teacher's unions, and attacking the Marxist stench of academia.   

That will take more than four years to fix, but it can be done by understanding the left is like rust it never sleeps, and conservatives must be equally unrelenting, never back down, never make bargains with the left, and attack each and every scheme they propose.  Always remembering they spout nothing by lies of commission, lies of omission, obfuscate and twist the definition of words, and spew out logical fallacies that sound good.  Never forget, the left isn't just wrong, it's evil, as their true goals are to destroy the American character, the American identity, the American economy, and ultimately, destroy the Constitution.  

That's history, and that history is incontestable.  Once we accept that everything they do and say falls into place.

The Economics of Creative Destruction, Part III

March 24, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Time for Part III in my series on the economics of creative destruction (here’s Part I and Part II).

We’ll start with this clip from a recent trans-Atlantic interview. 

As you can see from the discussion, I openly acknowledge that the progress enabled by free enterprise can produce economic pain.

This is why I’ve called creative destruction the best and worst feature of capitalism.

 

For instances, millions of jobs are destroyed every year. But (assuming politicians aren’t causing too many problems) more jobs usually are created.

And, over time, our incomes grow and our living standards increase (with some countries doing better than others for obvious reasons).

For today’s column, let’s look at some additional evidence.

We’ll start with some findings from a 2019 study published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The researchers found that failure is a necessary feature of a market economy.

Here are some excerpts from the abstract.

We examine the components of this productivity growth by estimating the contribution of entry, exit, within-firm growth and re-allocation to productivity growth in Australia in the period 2002- 2013. We use an experimental linked dataset of 10 million workers across 1.5 million firms. …We find that firm entry and exit are by far the largest contributors to productivity growth across all industries.

In general, firm exit contributes positively to productivity growth whereas firm entry generally contributes negatively. This would suggest that policies which facilitate firm entry and exit are likely to help achieve increased productivity gains. Policies which provide large advantages to incumbent firms are likely to detract from productivity growth.

That final sentence is key. It shows why politicians should not coddle big business with handouts, bailouts, subsidies and protectionism, and other forms of cronyism and industrial policy.

That’s a recipe for zombie firms and stagnation. This is why it is good news that the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. lost ground over a 60-year period.

Let’s now look at another study, this one published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. James Feigenbaum and Daniel P. Gross looked at how the economy adapted after massive job losses in the telephone industry.

Using panel variation in the local adoption of mechanical switching and population outcomes from complete count census data from 1910 to 1940, we show that dial cutovers presented a large negative shock to local labor demand for young, white, American-born women, with the number of young operators dropping by upwards of 80%—a near-total collapse in entry-level hiring in one of the country’s largest occupations for young women—and accordingly around 2% of jobs for this group being permanently replaced by machines, essentially at the flip of a switch.

These 2% of jobs represented entry-level opportunities for several times as many young women, and the fear was that its automation might choke off future generations from the labor force. We find that this shock did not reduce future cohorts’ employment rates. It appears that comparable middle-skill office jobs and some lower-skill service sector jobs absorbed future generations of young workers workers, and did so fairly quickly, with women of only the youngest ages on average ending up in lower-paying occupations than they would have been in otherwise.

The adverse consequences of automation were concentrated in incumbent telephone operators, who were subsequently less likely to be working, and conditional on working, more likely to be in lower-paying occupations—but even then, the magnitudes of these impacts were relatively modest.

In other words, “creative” generally outweighs “destruction.” Which was one of Joseph Schumpeter’s main points when he explained the concept last century.

Speaking of which, let’s close by looking at Professor Richard Ebeling’s column about Schumpeter.

Schumpeter…defined “the entrepreneur” as the central and dynamic figure of the market process who introduces transformative innovations that radically change the forms and directions of economic activity. …Looking over the nearly century and a half from the start of the nineteenth century to his own time…, Schumpeter pointed to the dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, including new and better goods that were not available to even the wealthiest of kings and princes in, say, 1790 or 1810. …

In doing this, capitalism was also serving as a great “leveler” that was raising the economic well-being of all, while also narrowing the differences in the quality of life between “the rich” and the rest. …The “culture of capitalism,” Schumpeter said, also had eliminated political privileges and favoritism and had increasingly fostered equality before the law for all, including women and religious and ethnic minorities. Capitalism replaced primitive tribal and social collectivism with an ethic and a politics of individualism that established the ideal of individual rights, private property, and human association based on freedom of contract. …

Fortunately, even in the face of the regulatory and redistributive state, the market economy has still possessed enough competitive openness and profit-earning opportunity that continuing prosperity has been a reality.

By the way, Schumpeter was actually pessimistic about the survival of capitalism. He feared that it was just a matter of time before supporters of statism would get the upper hand.

For all intents and purposes, he was describing the tension in my 16th Theorem of Government. In other words, will politicians give the economy enough “breathing room” to deliver more prosperity?

Whatever happened to... (Part 2)

More painful observations

Michael D. Shaw Mar 28, 2024 @ Mike's Point Of View

Whatever happened to…Civil Rights—The notion of “Civil Rights” must be contrasted with basic human rights, that are presumed to exist as part of the Natural Law. In essence, Civil Rights must be guaranteed by the government, while human rights are part of the inherent dignity of mankind. Indeed, our Bill of Rights is mostly about preventing the government from limiting our human rights.

The landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was concerned with ending discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The Act enabled the Feds to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. Never mind that virtually all this discrimination was originally imposed by the Government at some level.

Barry Goldwater is remembered for opposing the Act, even though he was quite a leader in the Civil Rights movement in his home state of Arizona. Goldwater’s opposition was based on his correct perception that this was an immense power grab by the Feds, since there was almost no limit to what could be deemed a “civil right.” Goldwater was to soften up as he got older, and said that he regretted his decision.

Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states that:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

It would seem that this provision was routinely violated for 96 years, and I guess no one ever noticed, until it became politically expedient. Mostly because of the liberal bent of the mainstream media, the Democrats—well-known at least in the South as the party of segregation—became identified with the Act. Still, it never would have passed without significant Republican support.

Affirmative Action, whereby government contractors are to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin" dates back to a 1961 Executive Order. It gained momentum following the passage of the Act, and would soon turn into full-blown quota systems.

Alas, the quota systems would morph into outright in-your-face discrimination with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. Thus, we come full circle with both the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act being violated—all with the full faith and credit of the Feds. Do you think the younger Barry Goldwater was onto something?

Given the ingenuity of plaintiff’s lawyers, pressure groups, and the insatiable appetite of the Feds for more power, within a few short years after the passage of the Act, countless victim groups would come forward, in the name of “civil rights.” To be sure, many of these were worthy causes, but what have we wrought?

Do I really need to count up the ways in which society has been fragmented, secularized, and polarized, or how human rights have taken a distant second place to civil rights?

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