In the closing weeks of the 1964 presidential campaign, at a rally in Marion, Ohio, I rose to meet my first test of Republican loyalty. Things were tough that fall and many in the party were keeping their distance from the nominee, ducking for cover, scurrying away to escape an impending landside. But not my older brother Chris and me. No sir, we were proud to step up on the platform, lend our unequivocal support, and even offer a kind of written endorsement for Barry M. Goldwater. The two profiles in courage were pictured in the next day’s Marion Star. From left to right: Matthew Scully, his brother Chris Scully, and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater at campaign event in Marion, Ohio during the closing weeks of the 1964 election. Photo appeared in the ‘Marion Star’ Oct. 1, 1964. The paper-plate signs we wore, and the black eyes simulated with eye shadow, were my mother’s inspiration, playing off a well-known cigarette ad of the era in which customers declared they liked their Tareytons and “would rather fight than switch.” Her idea worked well enough to catch the attention of a campaign aide, who spotted us in the crowd and led us onto the stage — to the delight of Mrs. Goldwater, who said to her husband, “Look, Barry, isn’t he cute?”(READ MORE: The #MeTooing of Wayne Pacelle) I note for the record that my other older brother, Steve, would have been standing there with us that afternoon but for a meddling teacher at Columbus, Ohio’s St. Agatha School who should have been ignored. And it was Goldwater himself, many years later, who pointed out to me an “intriguing” detail in the background of the photo, a sign showing the left half of his opponent’s slogan ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ. Naturally, I have the picture framed in my office, as does Chris in his office, and it always offers much to ponder. Lately, time is a theme of my wandering thoughts. It gets the Baby Boomer Angst stirring when I reflect, for example, that 34 years after first meeting Senator Goldwater, I covered his funeral for National Review, and that article about his sendoff is already more than a quarter-century old. Indeed, if the ex-Republicans at the Lincoln Project, The Bulwark … have any trait in common with liberals, it’s that they will never, ever admit to being proved wrong. Or how about this: If a man in 1964 had shared a vignette of political history comparable to mine from that year, it would tell of a boyhood encounter with Alton B. Parker, the defeated candidate in the campaign of 1904 against another incumbent who had assumed office in tragedy. From the present back to that day in Marion, and from there to the McKinley-Roosevelt era, is the same distance of time. Or finally, consider that in October of 1964, a time I can remember, Robert F. Kennedy was campaigning for the Senate, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate from Minnesota was named Humphrey, Ronald Reagan debuted in politics, Jimmy Carter turned 40, Herbert Hoover died, and on the very same day Kamala Harris was born — two weeks before the ’64 election. And so on — fading scenes, the ever-receding past, the wheel turning. Heavy stuff. The Hysteria Machine Mostly, though, that 60-year-old picture on my wall helps keep me oriented politically — and, I like to think, also grounded in practical political reality. Experiencing first impressions of politics from Goldwater ’64 can prepare you for certain constants in Republican affairs, while conferring enough immunity from illusions about the Democratic Party and the media to last a lifetime. I guess the image is what Jungian analysis would call an “archetype” in my mind. If some Viennese psychiatrist were to take me into a room for hours of questioning, shades drawn as he probes for the innermost ideal that shapes what I perceive and seek in the political world, that’s what he’d come up with: the manful, principled, maligned but thoroughly admirable figure of Barry Goldwater, champion of freedom. Probing further, the analyst might extract a formative memory of the modern Democrat Party in action. This one, if you can bear a little more reminiscing, goes back to the 1970s. Watergate was a very big deal for me when I was a teenager, a matter I followed, after our family had moved east, every day in the New York Times, Daily News, and on television, and argued about with any high-school classmate or teacher who sneered at the name Richard Nixon in my presence. That man, so grotesquely caricatured by the press, was one of the finest, most astute and able ever to serve as president, and he was engaged at the time in trying to manage other crises involving the security and interests of America and our friends. An exhaustive archival search of White House mail from those days would turn up letters from me urging him to keep fighting on, and also commending Vice President Ford for his loyal defense of Nixon right up until August 1974. I credit my young self for grasping, amid the hysteria, how utterly contrived the Watergate drama was from beginning to end; how destructive it was to our country and to those who depended on us (the people of South Vietnam, among others, left to pay the horrific costs); and how self-serving were Nixon’s tormenters in the Democratic Party and its media apparatus. These posturers lived out their days being toasted as heroic truth-seekers. In reality, they had acted in devious, reckless, and contemptible ways that did lasting harm, a story best told by Patrick J. Buchanan in Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles that Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever (and also by attorney Geoff Shepherd in three excellent, irrefutable accounts of many events surrounding Watergate). Such was my disgust at the time that, to this day, the very word “Constitution” is marred for me because I often still hear it in the insufferable voice of House judiciary committee chairman Peter Rodino, the Democrat who presided over the impeachment hearings. Like other travesties to follow, such as the Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, Watergate was a spectacle of fake indignation, bad faith, and guile that only liberals could conjure up. That era gave us the Washington hysteria machine they’ve been operating ever since, at full pitch and practically nonstop since Donald Trump entered the picture in 2015 — the make-believe Russian collusion investigation, two slapdash impeachments, and the recent array of spurious criminal cases, being just highlights in that story. It is no commentary on upright and proud Democrats individually, of course, but only on their party as a force in our national life to point this out. More even than the virtues of my own party, it might be the distinctive qualities of the other — the underhandedness of Democrats at the national level, their capacity for disingenuousness, their groupthink and way of turning barely-concealed agendas into all-consuming manias — that have made me a loyal Republican, in the Trump years as much as ever. The ‘Never-Trump’ Posture With this hardcore background to steady me, I have never had the faintest “Never Trump” impulse come over me these past nine years, even though, at the outset, I had mixed, unsettled views. If one longed for a candidate with the bearing and clarity of Barry Goldwater, or with the expansive, disciplined mind of Richard Nixon, to say nothing of graces we remember as Reaganesque, Trump was not the man. Along with a majority of Republicans, I suppose, I’d have preferred a more orderly and polished version of the same candidate, if such a being could even exist, with roughly the same agenda of issues that the party’s presidential candidates, consultant class, and assorted big thinkers had long ignored or else tried too hard to finesse. I didn’t exactly rejoice at Trump’s arrival but I didn’t mind it either. If he signaled a sudden re-shifting of allegiances in an otherwise static political landscape, a newfound connection with the concerns of voters my party had either neglected or taken for granted, and best of all an end to our reputation for milquetoast, “country-club Republicanism,” I certainly welcomed all that. In fact, as the large field of 2016 Republican candidates narrowed to a few, I called myself a “Never Kasich” man when the grating then-governor of Ohio offered himself as the last establishment hope against a Trump nomination — foolishly and characteristically inviting the very outcome he was resisting. “Populism” is an academic’s word, and discussions on the subject, as explanations for Trump’s appeal, hold zero interest for me. The most relevant point about 2016 was that so many anti-Trump Republicans were unprepared for the upheaval. That they were left so horrified only revealed, of course, how estranged they’d become from voters they should have been paying attention to. Even the post-Romney 2012 Republican “autopsy” report concluded basically that the party wasn’t enough like the Democrats on such matters as trade and illegal immigration, and on social issues such as abortion — the very opposite of what the 2016 returns would so explosively demonstrate. With such a clueless expert class, in both parties, Trump’s victory was as if a giant meteor had been hurtling for years toward Earth without a single astronomer noticing and giving warning until the thing appeared directly overhead. I can’t claim to have been especially alert myself. It fell to my brother Chris, a Trump supporter from the start, to set me straight. Early in the summer of 2015, as I was running through the relative strengths and prospects of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, and other contenders lining up that year, he matter-of-factly told me, “Matthew, Donald Trump is going to be the next president.” He also informed me, long before it played out this way in early 2020, that progressive Democrats would end up coalescing to make Joe Biden their pliable front man as the nominee. So when Chris does his forecasting, you want to listen. Plenty of fellow conservatives I respect simply don’t like Trump, regard him as a “bad man” even if he might at times serve good principles, won’t take the tradeoff in order to elect a Republican, and even now still aren’t sure they can bring themselves to support him against Vice President Kamala Harris. That’s just never been my take at all. I find qualities to like and admire in the untamed spirit of Donald Trump — his entertaining disregard of PC etiquette, his resilience, incredible stamina, and defiance against calumny and opposition, among other traits — and the impression is partly based, for what it’s worth, on a couple of brushes with him in 2016 and after his presidency. (As if to compel another vignette for this piece, we were introduced in Phoenix at the former residence of Barry Goldwater.) Yes, we Trump voters could all do without the time-wasting rally riffs, the disconcerting asides, the kind of pointless conflict with fellow Republicans that in 2020 cost a Senate seat or two in Georgia, some of the Truth Social stuff, and other downsides on a lengthy list that anyone, and above all his own campaign advisors, could draw up. (READ MORE: More Takeaways on the Trump – Harris Debate) And his comments about John McCain over the years stand as a bewildering mark against him, showing an animus I have never understood toward a truly heroic man and servant to our country whom I was honored to work for — and also a man who, one could easily forget, supported Trump in ’16 despite whatever deep misgivings he had. As some of these faults keep tripping up our standard-bearer in ’24, an agonizing spectacle at times, I imagine the advice that Nixon, who first noticed Trump’s political potential, would give him now: Speak to the unpersuaded, explain your positions, read prepared speeches, stick with a plan, lay off the nonsense and quit playing to a crowd that’s already with you. Everybody pulling for Trump can see these problems as clearly as the people who detest him can see them. The flip side is that everybody knows he’s sui generis and, as NR’s Andrew McCarthy puts it, the flaws are “priced in” to a package many voters will take anyway — a kind of durability that comes only when a candidate really stands for something. In the way of “bad men,” or merely deluded ones, there’s no denying that a large contingent of them made an appearance at the U.S. Capitol one afternoon in January 2021 — that “wild” day, as Trump promised it would be. In high-pressure scenarios that call for self-command and presence of mind, he handles assassination attempts better than he handles mob scenes. What pointed, evocative words would Senator Goldwater have chosen to describe that sorry ending to a presidency? Democrats, “Never Trump” ex-Republicans, and liberal commentators are here correct, for once, in treating this violation of norms as inexcusable. Still, if we wanted judicious appraisals as to whether this rendered the former president “unfit” for another term, they would be the last people we would ask. I have never been impressed by Republicans who make a big show of exiting our ranks in objection to Trump’s influence. And least of all do I take seriously the declarations and grandiose “open letters” of various former White House and campaign colleagues of mine endorsing Harris. If you’ve been around a while, you know that such ostentatious departures are among the constants that every presidential campaign season brings. It would violate a fixed law of Republican politics if, every four years, we did not hear news of certain Republicans announcing to reporters that they can be silent no more about the supposed extremism of a nominee; that each is so dismayed and alarmed as to “no longer recognize my party anymore.” President Trump does draw more than his share of this treatment, but anyone who thinks he is the first to receive it must have missed 1980, when, in a refrain of that primary season, as also of the ’76 primaries, a big-state governor told reporters: “If Ronald Reagan is nominated, this party won’t recover for a generation.” Reagan, George Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney are all held out now in liberal commentary as model statesmen and moral exemplars by comparison to Donald Trump. Do some searching and you’ll find, I promise, that each of these nominees had his turn as leading figure in the never-ending media narrative of dark and disturbing trends in the Republican Party. With my background in speechwriting for the second President Bush, Senator McCain, Governor Sarah Palin, and others, it has occurred to me that a week’s worth of minor fame and media pampering awaits even me, if only I will make it known that I’ve had it! with “all the extremism” and “can hardly recognize my own party anymore!” Though these performances by disenchanted Republicans date back to ’64, when some in the party declared Goldwater a dangerous if not deranged man (often citing the helpful headline, “1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater is Psychologically Unfit to Be President”), they now come in a style and tone only our era could produce. Combine social media-driven vanity with Lincoln Project-level sanctimony and you get “Republicans for Harris.” Plus, of course, endless melodrama. I was amazed, on this score, to come across recently a Substack piece by an ex-Republican campaign professional I know, a man I like and respect a great deal even though poor judgment has got him writing and podcasting these days about Trump and nothing else, in a series called “The Warning,” while also extolling the newly revealed gravitas, awe-inspiring presence, and, well, sheer wondrousness of Harris. The piece was composed, he tells us, on a hike in Germany within sight of what remains of Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Eagle’s Nest. “I can see clearly,” he wrote, “the genius of Aaron Rupar’s phrase ‘sane washing’ to describe how Trump is covered in America, which is much like Hitler was covered in Germany. I see clearly how evil can emanate from a beautiful place like Palm Beach, Florida.” As Republicans convened in Milwaukee this summer, this same fellow wrote: “Donald Trump is a fascist. His convention is a gathering of fascists.” But when things start to look this stark and ominous, when you’re hearing Franklin Graham, Lee Greenwood, and Hulk Hogan but can’t get Nuremberg out of your mind, it’s not the party that is nearing the edge, and my friend should stop to clear his mind. Incessant alarm, overwrought sentiment, cliché, and undercurrents of ill will are as much the signature touches of “Never Trump” ex-Republicans as they are of the progressive causes these people have, in effect, embraced with their support of the Democratic Party. And you have to wonder if their mistake might have been joining the party in the first place, long before Trump arrived on the scene. Consider that the Lincoln Project, a snake pit of intraoffice acrimony over personnel and money, was founded by, among others, the top strategist for McCain 2008 and the top strategist for Romney 2012. Here are the guys Republican voters once counted on to help win crucial elections, and both are now professional “Warning”-sounders and MSNBC explainers of how hateful and dangerous Republican voters are. The story that the Romney 2012 guru tells is a brooding, self-involved drama of disillusionment and betrayal in which it finally dawned on him that this was a mean and “racist” party all along, going back to 1964 — a libel on Goldwater and others that I have answered elsewhere. A less trite, and more truthful, version of the story would tell of the cluelessness, arrogance, self-enrichment, and misplaced trust by which the 2012 election was thrown away to help set the stage for Trump’s takeover of the party. Peruse a list of embittered ex-Republicans like this operator who now bemoans the “lies” of others, then weigh that against a list of ex-Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Alan Dershowitz — substantial people with serious things to say — and you’ll want to keep the trading going. We’re coming out ahead every time. With another, less distasteful breed of “Never Trump” Republican, the basic problem has always been that they simply cannot get past the compromises and sullied motivations that come into play in politics generally, and so turn every discussion of Trump into an ethics seminar. Nor is there any liberal equivalent of their punctilious approach to weighing options, the strained even-handedness and tortured rationalizing that would have Republicans cast our lot with Kamala Harris despite disapproving of practically everything the woman stands for as a candidate. Like extremely scrupulous judges at a show trial, unaware of what’s actually going on, these commentators still take seriously the Left’s avowedly high-minded reasons for hostility to Trump — always a mistake. Thus a widely noted New York Times column in August by one Republican commentator: “To Save Conservatism from Itself, I’m Voting for Harris.” Try imagining an analogous piece from the Left — “To Save Progressivism from Itself, I’m Voting for Trump” — and you realize how one-sided, idle, and fixated the “Never Trump” case can be. Do progressives and their leaders pose no dangers to our country that might point informed conscience in the direction of the Donald Trump and J.D. Vance ticket, as the sole realistic alternative? Have the progressives in power today no troubling policy plans, abuses of power, or derelictions of duty to answer for? Republicans Against Republican Victory Can we Republicans please conduct our collective moral-purity test later and get on with trying to hold back the leftist agenda, with the democratically chosen nominee we have? Over on the Left, at least, they skip the “saving” of the sacred tablets and confessions of worldly aspiration to concentrate instead on practical imperatives, which is why their presidential candidates were so readily switchable in July — Biden a beloved, FDR-like colossus one day and a cast-off ball and chain the next. To buy into “Never Trump” in 2024, you have to get comfortable with self-contradiction and make-believe, suspending reason and judgment in the hopeful expectation that a progressive Democratic presidency will somehow turn out better than a mostly conservative Republican presidency under Trump — “saving” our principles while everything else is lost. The method of “Never Trump” Republicans is to take any alleged vice of Trump’s and assume as fact the corresponding virtue in Harris, and then to lash out at the rest of us for not falling for a word of it. And it won’t really matter when none of these hopes materialize: there’s never any accounting, never any acceptance of responsibility for choices they have made and urged on others. They never go back and acknowledge that their hopes — for minimally competent economic policy under Biden-Harris, for anything resembling control of public debt, for basic border enforcement, for international crises averted, or for whatever else — were unfounded and that their assumptions were false. Indeed, if the ex-Republicans at the Lincoln Project, The Bulwark, and other such anti-Trump outfits have any trait in common with liberals, it’s that they will never, ever admit to being proved wrong. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — in a strange turn … the other day said that Republicans are now “the party of the common man.” Something else that the two groups have in common, which helps explain all the melodrama, is a way of taking politics so personally that it begins to overwhelm everything else; to determine one’s friendships, social standing, emotional well-being, or even, at the extreme, one’s own basic identity and sense of meaning in life. A top aide to Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, who is also working now as a strategist for Harris, has described 2016 as the year that “will scar us for as long as we breathe the same air that Trump befouls with his every word.” The raptures of November 2008, by contrast, recall for him such a “blissful” time for Democrats, a moment when “me” became “we” and so many embraced the joy of “living part of their lives every day through and on behalf of Barack Obama.” People didn’t used to talk that way about election outcomes. Politics has always been a pretty intense business, of course, but it used to center mostly on tangible, rationally debatable issues, leaving all concerned to find meaning and self-worth on their own. You could argue with liberal supporters of, say, Henry Wallace in the ’40s, or Adlai Stevenson in the ’50s, without fear of encroaching on anyone’s bliss or denying them their joy, while also trusting that they could meet election-night defeat without facing existential shock. Mature men and women are supposed to be able to handle disappointment. Presidential elections back then were about — what else? — choosing the head of the executive branch of government; no one was looking for self-affirmation, purification, or nirvana. Trump gets blamed these days for causing depression, ruining friendships, marring family gatherings, “befouling” the very air we breathe. But really he is just the point of convergence for psychodramas of desolation and intolerance that we would see acted out in other ways. Such hypersensitivity in politics, the attitude that sees ultimate stakes in every presidential election, and spreads panic over the unbearable prospect of a loss at the polls, is built into modern liberalism — all along the main driver of hysteria and bitterness in American politics. A related feature of the progressive Left, and often of our permanently militant “Never Trump” ex-Republicans, is that whenever they throw an accusation our way, we can almost always be certain that they are guilty of the very offense in question. It’s uncanny how this rule applies in almost every case. We hear, for example, He’s a threat to our constitutional order. This from people on the Left who for 50 years have acted as if the Constitution and Supreme Court exist only to give them whatever they want, and now pledge to restructure a branch of government that has failed in its solemn institutional duty to deliver liberal outcomes. Another example: He’s cruel, especially to the vulnerable and marginalized. This accusation comes from a political party whose most fervent cause since 1973 has been to exclude an entire category of humanity from the protection of law. I’ve long suspected that one reason why Democrats still wallow endlessly in past civil rights glories is that the mid-’60s marked just about the last time they were collectively on the right side of a crucial moral issue — and even their claim to those glories is exaggerated. And so we hear them today openly celebrating abortion, on demand and at any stage, as “freedom,” which no doubt is how it seems when you simply erase from your mind the fate of an innocent, unwanted fellow human. And because they cannot even speak and argue coherently on so profound an issue, because they have no respectable arguments to prevail in honest debate, they’re now reduced to instructing us, in the bellowing, self-satisfied voice of Tim Walz at their convention, “Mind your own damn business.” Likewise: Our rights, our very democracy, are at stake in 2024. This from people who in 2020 used every contrivance available to stretch the limits of voter traceability, as Democrats will do again even as they try to silence every doubt about election integrity; fell in with the lawless and destructive BLM madness of that year; and, instead of minding their own business, demanded our cooperation with all the little commissars and informants set loose on America during the Covid era, with no concern for the consent of the people or the Bill of Rights. Then there’s this insult, a judgement on MAGA rallies: They’re like a cult! The charge recalls again the recent Democratic National Convention, which presented us with an arena full of people chanting “Joy! Joy! Joy!”, hailing their suddenly reincarnated nominee as “the president of joy,” and other such displays of forced, programmed, unhinged emotion. It would have fit the picture had there been a mass “auditing” of delegates and an appearance by Xenu to help show A New Way Forward. And finally, this collection of accusations, courtesy of a recent “Republicans for Harris” statement signed by various former foreign-policy and national-security officials: Trump “undermined our allies,” “won’t stand up to Russia,” “brought danger to our country,” and “disparaged our veterans.” Reading the full statement from these wise men of the foreign-policy establishment, it helps to know that many of them in 2020 also endorsed Joe Biden, that master of the global chessboard responsible for a calamitous, humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan that sent a signal of weakness across the world, and for practically inviting Russia’s ruthless attack on Ukraine by suggesting that an “incursion” could be tolerated. We are assured that Kamala the stateswoman has “demonstrated a commitment” to Israel, as if this meaningless verbiage could outweigh Trump’s record of shutting down Iran’s oil exports to deny funding for terrorists, ridding the region of the prime terrorist Soleimani, setting the Abraham Accords in motion, and defying timid, conventional thinking by placing the American embassy in Jerusalem. The Very Good People Who Support Trump In general, I seem to recall that Russia, Iran, China, and other hostile countries were all a lot quieter and more circumspect before Biden arrived. Examine the spotty records and globalist thinking of these same Republicans for Harris — think-tank Talleyrands whose idea of a shrewd move is to prolong the carnage in Ukraine and wage a proxy war against a nuclear power — and it’s obvious they are in no position to pronounce judgment on Donald Trump, a president who defended American interests and kept the peace. Which makes it only more reprehensible that their statement recycles the claim that Trump “disparaged our veterans,” evidently an allusion to a toxic smear tossed into the 2020 campaign by the liberal Atlantic magazine, which reported that Trump had insulted the memory of American soldiers who served in the world wars. It happens that over the last several months I’ve spent time with quite a few veterans, including ten very vigorous centenarians who served in World War II. To share just a toned-down version of the consensus, as a group these men do not think highly of the current president but they do support Trump. Run that foreign-policy experts’ statement by the men and women at any VFW or American Legion post in America and see how many Harris supporters you can sign up. If the election were to be decided by the votes of veterans alone, which candidate would you put your money on for a landslide? As long as Donald Trump’s name is good with men and women in those ranks, it’s good with me. Whatever it is about our three-time candidate that rates their approval does him lasting credit, and is an asset as crucial and telling as any his party can claim. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — in a strange turn, the figure in ’24 whose theme of resisting concentrations of power, private or public, most recalls the Goldwater era — the other day said that Republicans are now “the party of the common man.” Why shouldn’t we like the ring of that? Why not support and respect the guy who earned us the tribute? Honest reasoning may lead others this year to different conclusions. But as for me, I wouldn’t consider switching. Loyalty settles the question, and I will again proudly cast my vote for the nominee of the Republican Party. The post Republican Loyalty and the Self-Delusions of ‘Never Trump’ appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

For a glimpse of the cynicism that animates the Democratic Party, a good place to start would be a comment made by former Obama advisor David Axelrod concerning the effect Hurricane Helene would have on voter turnout in North Carolina. Noting that, aside from upscale liberals in Asheville, most of the disaster victims are rural Republicans who will find it difficult to cast ballots: “I’m not sure a bunch of these folks who had their homes and lives destroyed elsewhere, in western North Carolina, in the mountains, they are going to be as easy to wrangle for the Trump campaign.” “Over two years, more than $1.4 billion has been committed from FEMA-administered programs to support … migrants.” Axelrod offered this observation on his aptly named podcast, Hacks on Tap, between jokes about whether GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance wore eyeliner during the recent VP debate. He failed to note that many of these rural Republicans won’t be able to vote because they died waiting for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to do its job. FEMA operates under the aegis of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who claimed just a month before Helene made landfall that the agency was well prepared to deal with potential crises. This was either a lie or he has been misallocating FEMA funds. Here’s what he said: FEMA is tremendously prepared. This is what we do. This is what they do. And the key here is also to make sure that communities who are potentially impacted are prepared as well … They have exercised these muscles regrettably year after year. As the impacts of climate change have been more and more evident, we have seen and experienced increasing frequency and gravity of extreme weather events. And we have protocols in place, not just with respect to the core FEMA personnel, but also to draw upon the resources of the Department of Homeland Security. Mayorkas changed his tune shortly after it became obvious that the damage caused by Helene would rival that of Hurricane Katrina. He suddenly began insisting that FEMA doesn’t have enough money to operate because of the extra outlays Helene required. This was certainly a lie. During a recent appearance on This Week On The Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson told host Tony Perkins, “I want to make this very clear: before Congress left Washington last Wednesday, we provided over $20 billion additional dollars to FEMA to ensure they had the necessary resources to respond to this storm which was imminent at that time.” Mayorkas and other officials in the Biden-Harris administration deny accusations that FEMA funds have been diverted to state and local governments overrun by illegal immigrants. According to a report in the New York Post, however, “Over two years, more than $1.4 billion has been committed from FEMA-administered programs to support non-federal entities that are taking care of migrants.” But these “migrants” are by no means the only foreign recipients of U.S. largesse as desperate Americans in Appalachia beg for federal assistance. On Saturday, for example, VP Kamala Harris issued the following announcement on X: The people of Lebanon are facing an increasingly dire humanitarian situation. I am concerned about the security and well-being of civilians suffering in Lebanon and will continue working to help meet the needs of all civilians there. To that end, the United States will provide nearly $157 million in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon for essential needs such as food, shelter, water, protection, and sanitation to help those who have been displaced by the recent conflict. This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to over $385 million. This no doubt endeared Harris to the people in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee to whom she promised the princely sum of $750 for immediate needs while claiming that “FEMA personnel are going door-to-door” to help people apply for that assistance. Considering that thousands no longer have houses — much less doors — for FEMA personnel to knock on, this promise probably didn’t provide much solace. Likewise her additional assurance: “FEMA is also providing tens of thousands more dollars for folks to help them be able to deal with home repair, to be able to cover a deductible when and if they have insurance.” According to a report from Reuters, “Roughly 1 in 200 single-family homes in the region is covered by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).” This is the program through which FEMA manages the kind of large-dollar payments Harris pledged during her brief visit to view the storm damage and pose for the cameras. Sadly, the hapless residents of Appalachia don’t live in the right location to qualify for the help Harris promised. Why not? “That is because the federal program is focused on the flood risks posed only by rising seas and swelling rivers, not the threat posed by the sort of extreme rainfall brought on by Helene.” But, as David Axelrod pointed out in the podcast discussed above, the hardest hit by the hurricane and the limits of federal assistance are just Trump voters. They are not the “upscale liberals” that Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats really represent. So, why should she care about providing the assistance they need? The electoral incentives push her in the opposite direction. She may be able to win North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes if Trump’s voters are trapped, which would help offset a Pennsylvania loss. Is she really that cruel? Perhaps Joe Biden could answer that — after the knife wound in his back finally heals. READ MORE from David Catron: The Imaginary Electoral College Advantage for Trump Teamsters Expose Fatal Harris Weakness The post The Democrats Weaponize FEMA Relief appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

A Woman Underground By Andrew Klavan (Mysterious Press, 288 pages, $27) Sometimes it takes several entries in a fiction series to strike gold. There were three terrific James Bond movies before the ultimate, Thunderball (Sorry, Goldfinger aficionados). And Hercule Poirot made a clever sleuth for two books only to stun readers in the rule-breaking third by Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. For ex-government assassin, unofficial detective, college poetry professor, and reluctant moralist Cameron Winter, everything comes together in Andrew Klavan’s thrilling mystery, A Woman Underground. Every character is distinctive and memorable, you could say modern-day Dickensian. Of course, the real mystery is how Klavan could offer such rich Winter novels just a year apart then outdo himself in the latest. It’s as if he’d started a subtle puzzle in the first book, kept assembling it through the next two, then added the satisfying last piece to the new one. Such multiyear narrative control requires a remarkable writer, and Klavan is one of the best. I already knew he could do this from my introduction to his work, a riveting trilogy featuring two other detectives, Jim Bishop and Scott Weiss. That Klavan specializes in tough guy crime fiction puts him in the pantheon with Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, and Fleming. A Woman Underground retains the clever framework of three alternate stories established by the previous three Cameron Winter books: When Christmas Comes, A Strange Habit of Mind, The House of Love and Death. This consists of the fresh main mystery; a flashback to Winter’s youth then assassin spy past as told to his lovestruck yet sharp old psychiatrist, Margaret; and an intrigue on the university campus where Winter teaches Romantic Poetry, not coincidentally a passion of the author’s (see my review of his The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England’s Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus. There are two major variations on the formula in A Woman Underground, and a great minor one. The memory Winter narrated to Margaret in the first book about his childhood love for a beautiful older girl, Charlotte, who still haunts him, becomes the main mystery in this one. In a brilliant demonstration of literary legerdemain, Klavan creates a fourth storyline — a novel within the novel featuring a renamed Charlotte as the protagonist, who’s in present-day danger. Winter has to mine the book for clues and locate the pseudonymous old female author to find Charlotte before a very real murderer does. Both devices are unique, engrossing innovations, at least to my experience in the mystery thriller genre. According to Winter’s fictional guidebook, Charlotte was involved with several men in a fascist group planning to counter the forces of antifa during the early decade riots. One of the men, the handsome brutish “Moran,” Winter academically pegs as the elusive author’s John Galt, but whom he, Winter, recognizes as a formidable homicidal psychopath — his own Red Grant (From Russia with Love reference). Moran is also obsessed with “Miranda” — Charlotte, only far more menacingly. Winter must beat Moran to her but is diminished by his own emotional depression that she helped initiate. The masterful combination of psychological insight, urgent literary detection, and ticking-clock cat-and-mouse suspense makes A Woman Underground an engrossing read. The difference in the college storyline proves just as satisfying. All three previous installments featured Winter’s more attractive yet equally amusing Gladys Kravitz (old Bewitched reference) Lori Lesser, the dean of student relations who simultaneously wants to oust Winter for his sexual indiscretions and seduce him. Their maneuvers provide welcome humor in some serious drama. Lori is absent this installment, in which a professor colleague admits to Winter his intention to leave his wife and son for a nubile coed. Though this thread is secondary to the main plot, it ultimately becomes just as exciting and heroic, while offering some of the finest writing in recent fiction. When Winter happens to observe the oblivious femme fatale on campus, seldom have the contrasting perspectives in a typical affair been more incisively described. “He thought of the hulking forty-year-old Roger Sexton singing the aria of his middle-age opera. Oh, Barbara — she makes me feel so alive. And here was Barbara herself, and she hadn’t a clue that she was part of the show. Or if she did know, she didn’t give a damn.” And even without Lori Lesser, Klavan finds the human comedy in Winter’s annoyance at Roger Sexton: “So often he struggled with the fact that he had killed people. But just now he was wondering if maybe he hadn’t killed enough of them.” Every character is distinctive and memorable, you could say modern-day Dickensian. They include recurring ones like Margaret, undercover federal agent Stan Stankowski, who’s less a master of disguise than an inhabitor of each, and the enigmatic Recruiter, Winter’s former spy chief, who appears only in flashback this time unlike in a previous book. And the new people really shine, in one special case, the present version of Charlotte, who we knew through Winter as a little girl then a teenager then a young woman. Indeed, it’s hard to measure which inspires more suspense — Winter’s predator-prey confrontation with Morgan or his looming encounter with Charlotte. Both greatly reward the reader, as does this book. With the closing of a life-affecting chapter in his life, it will be interesting to meet Cameron Winter again next year. Knowing Andrew Klavan, he’ll be turning up right on time. READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: Real Men Vote for Trump Trump the True Barbarian Wonder who’s going to win the presidential election in November? Read my astonishingly timely and exciting political thriller The Washington Trail for clues. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever fine mysteries are sold. The post <i>A Woman Underground</i> Is A Great Book appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Today is the first anniversary of the horrific Hamas attack on Israel that killed more Jewish civilians than any event since the Nazi holocaust. At least 30 Americans were among the dead. Israel could take out much or all of Iran’s cyberwar capability if it chose to. It was an attack beyond our imagination. Hamas murdered whole families in their homes, burning babies and raping hundreds of Israeli women. Many were killed because they were attending a music festival. About 240 people, including as many as 20 Americans, were taken hostage, some of them — including three or four Americans — are believed to be alive and still held by Hamas. The whole world hasn’t changed, but the Middle East has. French President Emmanuel Macron, in the hallowed tradition of France, always picks the wrong side. He said the other day that all arms shipments to Israel should be embargoed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called him “a disgrace,” which he is. (READ MORE from Jed Babbin: Iran Stokes Endless War, US Does Nothing) We have learned that some of our so-called allies in the region are nothing of the sort. Egypt has permitted Hamas to build dozens of tunnels between it and the Gaza strip, through which tons of war supplies have been smuggled to the terrorists, probably including much from Iran. Qatar has enabled Hamas leaders to stay in luxury hotels in its capital city, Doha, probably exercising whatever command and control authority that remains to them from there. Our — and Israel’s — principal enemy in the region, Iran, has directly attacked Israel twice, once on April 13 and again on October 1. The October attack was supposedly in response to Israel’s killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the top Hamas leader, in Tehran. Both attacks failed because Israeli, U.S. and — and this time Jordanian — missiles managed to down almost all of the attacking missiles and drones. Meanwhile, Hizballah — Iran’s proxy in Lebanon — has fired at least eight thousand missiles at Israeli civilians since October 2023. Most of them have also failed to penetrate Israeli defenses. The Hamas terrorist network — which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2006 — could have taken the billions in funds sent by misguided Europeans, Russians, and Americans and made the Gaza Strip into something akin to Las Vegas without the booze. Instead, they amassed arms, communications equipment, and dug tunnels to attack Israel. The Biden-Harris crew is still helping Israel’s enemies. Harris announced last week that they were sending $150 million to Lebanon to aid in its supposed humanitarian crisis. None of that money will ever help Lebanese civilians. It will all be seized by Hizballah and used to fund more terrorism. (Biden-Harris, in contrast, is sending $100 million for aid to U.S. citizens in North Carolina. Biden has said that the money will run out before the end of the year. Having Funneled Emergency Money to Aliens, there’s supposedly none left for our own citizens.) The Israelis fight every war as if their lives depended on victory, which they do. Since last October 7, they have managed to kill terrorist leaders in Tehran, in Beirut, in Gaza and several other places. And they have fought a multi-front war from Gaza to Syria to Lebanon to Iran and Iraq. Those of us of advancing age remember when President Lyndon Johnson and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, “helped” the professionals fight the Vietnam war by personally choosing the targets to be bombed and the routes the aircrews would fly. That resulted in the loss of too many American flyers who were killed or shot down and imprisoned in hell holes such as the “Hanoi Hilton.” How To Strike Iran Now President Biden is trying to do the same. Last week he told the press that America wouldn’t support an Israeli counterstrike to the October 1 attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. He hinted that we might support an attack on Iranian oil facilities instead. The Israelis can be counted on to ignore Biden. And they should. Unlike the Iranians, the Israelis will attack only military targets, of which there is a bountiful list. The list ranges from killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to bombing Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities. It includes bombing Iran’s parliament. Nevertheless, the Israelis have to calibrate their counterstrike carefully and can be expected to do something no one expects. Bombing Iran’s oil export facilities could weaken China which, according to a Reuters report, gets about 15 percent of its oil, over one million barrels a day, from Iran. That would be a strategic effect high on our list. Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities must be even higher on Israel’s list. The Israelis know that, despite Biden’s effort to protect Iran’s nuclear sites, Iran is close to deploying nuclear-armed missiles. Iran will, sooner rather than later, attack Israel with those weapons. Any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could delay Iran’s plans. Israel’s intelligence about Iran is, of necessity, better than ours. Israel could take out much or all of Iran’s cyberwar capability if it chose to. Iran, like China and Russia and possibly North Korea, is trying to interfere in our November election through cyberwar and social media. Any Israeli attack on Iran’s cyberwar capabilities — or its oil or nuclear facilities, or all of these targets — should be welcomed, not condemned, by Biden. America is too self-absorbed over the November election to pay much attention to Israel or Ukraine. Just last Thursday, Kamala Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, promised that Muslims would have a role in a Harris administration, a “side-by-side” relationship. Israel will be shunned by Harris despite all of her assurances to the contrary. (READ MORE: The World, Israel, and Our Diplomacy of Dunces) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a very tough guy. Years ago, he served as a member of Israel’s Sayaret Maktal, one of its special forces groups. He understands the threat Iran poses and the threat Kamala Harris, if she’s elected, will pose. He and his war cabinet must choose to strike at Iran decisively. Whatever the Israelis decide to do, they cannot count on support from Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris. Election politics, in their minds, outweighs any strategic consideration. The post One Year Since Oct. 7, Iran Is in Israel’s Crosshairs appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Iran’s proxies plunged the Middle East back into bloody chaos on October 7, 2023 when 6,000 psychopaths scrambled across the Gazan border into Israel and murdered, maimed, raped, and kidnaped over 2,000 innocent Israeli citizens and visiting foreign nationals. Today Gaza is in ruins and Hamas decimated. Either way, if Israel can resist the Biden administration’s attempts to slow and stall it’s counteroffensive, the fat lady has sung.   Incredibly, after witnessing the utter desolation of Gaza, Iran’s Hezbollah surrogates owned a piece of the action by launching thousands of rockets toward Israeli civilian populations. Today, the upper echelon of Hezbollah military leadership has been killed, and Israel is launching a ground invasion into Lebanon. (READ MORE from Mike Howard: Elon Musk for President?) Even more incredibly, with Hamas and Hezbollah on their heels, and the Houthis in Israel’s crosshairs, Iran has repeatedly engaged Israel with hundreds of ballistic missiles and vowed to “crush” Israel if they dare even think about any counterstrikes. Seriously? “Crush” Israel? With what? The 60 percent enhanced weapons-grade uranium production that Iran has fast-tracked to terrify Western proponents of appeasement? Iran may have enough weapons-grade material to build three nuclear weapons. Given time.  Neither the Biden/Harris administration nor Israel will tell you, and you won’t learn this from mainstream media, but Israel already has a nuclear capability  —  and has for decades. Conservative estimates credit Israel’s nuclear arsenal with a minimum of over 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads, with enough plutonium to arm over 200 weapons. It’s not so much a secret —  as a taboo topic.  Of course, all the nuclear weapons in the world aren’t much of a threat without a delivery system, a system like Israel’s squadrons of U.S.-made F-15s (with a range of over 3,500 kilometers), F-16s (1,600 kilometers), and F-35 stealth aircraft (2,200 kilometers)  —  all capable of in-air refueling, and all capable of nuclear roles. Or systems such as Israel’s Jericho II nuclear-capable surface-to-surface ballistic missiles (1,500 kilometer range) or their Jericho IIIs (4,000 kilometer range). Or like Israel’s half-dozen Dolphin-class submarines, each capable of launching 16 nuclear-tipped 200 kiloton cruise missiles literally anywhere in the Middle East. The German-built Dolphin-class diesel-electric subs guarantee Israel a second-strike retaliatory capability, no matter what happens to their homeland. With Hamas defanged and Gaza in rubble, with Hezbollah degraded and leaderless and Lebanon at risk of ground pacification, the Houthis can be dismissed as so many irritating gnats. Suddenly, the risk of a three-front war by Iran’s proxy “warriors” is gone. Iran’s “buffer” of useful idiots has evaporated into battlefield smoke. Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei is in hiding, and his “Islamic Revolutionary Guard” is disavowing any desire for an expansion of hostilities. Yeah, right. I suspect that it is too late for that. Way too late.  Israel Turning Toward Iran Israel is now prioritizing pre-selected targets for the coup de grâce: Iran’s oil fields, launch sites, missile production, and nuclear “research” centers. The oil fields, launch sites, and missile production sites are vulnerable. Blazing infernos waiting to happen. The “research” centers are hardened sites dug into mountainsides and housed in vast underground facilities  —  but nothing that a few well-placed “bunker-busters” can’t handle. Or if worse comes to worse? A couple of well-placed Jericho missiles. If Hosseini is smart  —  and he’s shown no evidence of that over the course of this last year  —  he’ll take the losses and orchestrate the immediate release of all surviving hostages and the respectful return of the remains of those who were killed in captivity. Either way, if Israel can resist the Biden administration’s attempts to slow and stall it’s counteroffensive, the fat lady has sung. (READ MORE: Israel Forced to Live Beyond Hollywood’s Imagination) The “existential threat” paradigm has shifted. Irretrievably. And this time, when the sand has settled  —  there may actually be a chance for peace in the Middle East. The post By Triggering Israel, Terrorists Made Peace a Possibility appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

October has arrived, and with it the final month of what has seemed like an interminable election season. As a sometime political commentator, I should be filled with excitement, eager to follow the twists and turns of the days to come, the October surprises if such occur, the campaign events as they unfold, the building suspense culminating on election night, the tipping points in each critical state. And, with so much riding on this election, perhaps more than any in recent memory, I will certainly have observations to make in the weeks to come. I wish that you could take away the message of hope that I and the other American attendees drew from this event. Just now, however, before giving in to election fever, I want to take a moment to reflect on a recent experience, one that offers encouragement that, whatever happens on November 5th, our country can find a path to a brighter future. We’ve done it before, and I remain convinced that we can do it again. But finding that path requires a backward glance, a brief look at the country we once were, with the hope that, in the fulness of time, we can become that country once again. (READ MORE from James H. McGee: Female Superheroes Not Needed at the Secret Service)  France Honors Brave Americans Several weeks ago, I participated in an event commemorating the 80th anniversary of the WWII liberation of eastern France from the Germans. The event centered on the brutal battles for a bridgehead across the Moselle River near Metz. I’ve written of these battles before, of how they shaped my father’s life and, through him, my own. I’ve also written of the several French groups who’ve done so much over the years to keep the memory of these battles alive, “Thanks GIs” and “The Friends of Fort Driant,” among many others. I’ve interacted with these groups for the better part of a decade, and I’m consistently astonished at their dedication, whether in helping to identify MIAs or, more generally, in promoting an appreciation of American sacrifice in the cause of freedom. Here in the U.S., such sacrifice seems largely forgotten, but not along the banks of the Moselle, where the locals are pleased to refer to the fight for a river crossing as “Omaha Beach in Lorraine.” And without taking away from the enormity of Omaha Beach, the comparisons are at least suggestive, not least in terms of the casualties suffered: some 2,000 killed, wounded, and missing before the bridgehead was secured in the face of fanatical SS troops, repeated tank attacks, and bombardment from German fortifications impervious to virtually every weapon in the U.S. artillery arsenal. Winning the bridgeheads was, above all, an infantry battle, one where the usual American advantages were lacking, one in which grit and determination won the day. The anniversary celebration, frankly, was astonishing. It centered upon the dedication of a huge monument to the American soldier, a roughly 50 by 30 foot concrete rectangle, displaying, on one side ten soldiers paddling one of the tiny wooden assault boats used in the crossing, on the reverse some 945 stars, one for each of the KIAs, WIAs, and MIAs lost in the first of the two bridgehead battles (the thousand plus lost in the second battle still await a similar display). At the base of the memorial wall are the words, in French and in English “They gave their tomorrow to give us our today. The wall is surmounted by a large “Red Diamond,” the symbol of the 5th Infantry Division, which bore the brunt of the bridgehead battles. It’s quite the remarkable display, all the more so when one considers that it’s construction relied in large part on local donations. The dedication ceremony included an immense French honor guard, an American honor guard from an Air Force base just across the border in Germany, speeches by a host of French dignitaries, both civilian and military, and by the U.S. Consul-General. My French is less than perfect, but I was consistently impressed by the thoughtfulness and passion that the French officials brought to this special moment. A highlight was when the band played “Amazing Grace,” followed by “Taps” and the French equivalent “Aux Morts,” or “To the Dead.” The crowd — and it was truly a crowd — in attendance greeted these moments with the utmost respect. My daughter and I were fortunate enough to be placed with a group of “honored American guests,” honored not because of anything we’d done, but rather as representatives of our fathers or uncles or grandfathers. I found myself seated next to the nephews of one of my boyhood heroes, whose uncle, Dale B. Rex, had earned a Distinguished Service Cross only a few hundred yards from where we sat that afternoon. The ceremony culminated with a moving display presented by a small team of young French military re-enactors, who emerged from the opposite river bank amidst a massive fireworks display, paddling a tiny assault boat, a direct copy of the ones used 80 years ago.  They crossed precisely in the place where the Americans fought their way across the river — a football field-wide expanse of water — under machine gun , mortar, and cannon fire. Landing on the near bank, the re-enactors took on board a beautifully crafted American flag floral display and paddling back to mid-stream, floated it out upon the water, a special tribute to the many soldiers who drowned in the crossing. And that moment, there were few dry eyes among the hundreds who lined the river bank. For everyone who happens to read this, I can only say that I wish you could have been there. More, I wish that you could take away the message of hope that I and the other American attendees drew from this event. For the last few years, and particularly as we reach the end stage of a bitterly contested election season, it’s easy to focus on all that divides us, and easy, too, to wonder if the U.S. still can produce young men of the caliber of those who won the Moselle bridgeheads, and who prevailed in hundreds of similar battles until the war was won. It’s easy to wonder if we even understand any more how wars are won, what victory looks like, or even to believe in a country worth fighting for. Americans Have Done This Before So where, then, do I find even a modicum of hope? Simply this. If one attends, honestly, to the history of the years prior to WW II, one is reminded over and over again of how bitterly divided our country had become in those years. We all heartily sing-along to “This Land is Your Land” these days, without every recalling that it’s author, Woodie Guthrie, was a Communist sympathizer, and that from the bread lines to the highest reaches of the Roosevelt administration, there were many who firmly believed that the great American experiment had been proven a failure.  Defending the country was widely derided as a “sucker’s game,” and then, as now, American intellectuals, and leading lights in the media, were willing to look elsewhere — chiefly to the Soviet Union — for their political inspiration. Even as our future security hung in the balance, even as, belatedly, we began to rebuild our military in the face of a world filled with contempt for all that we stood for, our Congress, in 1941, could only sustain this buildup by the margin of a single vote. Unity only came with the shock of Pearl Harbor, a unity born of fury, but maintained through the experience of common purpose for years after the Axis had been defeated. (READ MORE: The Paris Olympics Aren’t Representative of the France I Know) I hope that it won’t take another Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 to enable us to recover our faith in each other as Americans and to work together across our various differences. Reading the headlines each day, I find, sadly, that optimism seems a fool’s enterprise, that hopes arise only to be dashed to pieces. And yet I still hope, inspired by moments like the ceremony I just attended, by the remembrance of courage and common purpose, by appreciation for the fact that there are others, a continent away, who still honor what we once were and, God willing, will be again. James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A forthcoming sequel finds the Reprisal team fighting against terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges across the globe. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions, and on Kindle Unlimited. The post Americans Can See Hope in Remembrance appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When one thinks about the major causes of death for industrialized countries, a familiar number of ailments come to mind — cancer and heart disease, for instance. In the past few years, COVID has also ranked high in some countries’ mortality tables. But Canada has a new leading cause of death that is both shocking and surprising: death by doctor. While courts and lawmakers created the assisted suicide regime … individual citizens must stand up for the rights of individuals to live with dignity. That’s one of the major conclusions from a recent study that examined our neighbor to the north’s medical aid in dying laws and their grisly consequences. According to the study, assisted suicide now ranks alongside cardiovascular disease as Canada’s fifth leading cause of death. The number of assisted suicides rose thirteenfold from 2016 to 2022, to over 13,000 — this in a country with a population roughly one-tenth the size of the United States. And because some provinces do not report assisted suicide as the cause of death, the data actually under-estimates the impact of assisted suicide on Canadian mortality. (READ MORE: Assisted Suicide Surges in California) These results flow from decisions taken by policymakers to promote assisted suicide. Legislative expansions of a “right” first created by courts — i.e., the right to take one’s own life — have allowed for same-day suicide, and made conditions like vision and hearing loss eligible for aid in dying. The report illustrates how an outcome once alleged to be rare has become shockingly routine. While a 2020 journal article predicted 2,000 assisted suicides that year, the actual outcome exceeded that prediction by nearly threefold, a number that nearly doubled again from 2020 to 2022. Even the head of the commission that monitors assisted suicide in Quebec had to admit that in the province, “we’re now no longer dealing with an exceptional treatment, but a treatment that is very frequent.” Why Is Assisted Suicide Growing? Why has Canada’s regime grown at the fastest rate of all the assisted suicide programs in the Western world? Along with the frequent eligibility expansions, one has to point to the country’s single-payer system of socialized medicine. Persistent under-funding means that over 1.2 million Canadians are waiting for various treatments — some for more than a year. With obtaining appropriate medical treatment difficult due to government rationing, some Canadian patients may lose hope and turn to assisted suicide in the absence of an alternative. In some cases, physicians may try to promote this outcome by persuading patients of the futility of their cause. Talk about a macabre — not to mention immoral — way to lower health care costs. The way that Canada has devalued life is horrifying and disgusting. The fact that some states like California and Washington state have also gone down the road of assisted suicide makes me fear that our culture does not stand up for the least among us. In promoting assisted suicide, we are sending a very clear message to those with disabilities or in pain that their lives have little meaning and are not “worth it.” (READ MORE: Trans Individuals Seek Euthanasia After ‘Gender-Affirming Care’) While courts and lawmakers created the assisted suicide regime in Canada, and in some states here, individual citizens must stand up for the rights of individuals to live with dignity, without feeling bullied or influenced into taking one’s own life. Let us work to build a culture that values all human life, from conception to natural death, to promote the inherent worth of all Americans. Mary Vought is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. You can follow her on X @MaryVought.     The post The Horrific Assisted Suicide Boom in Canada appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Volkswagen made headlines recently as its leaders expressed concern about the company’s prospects, suggesting that they may have to close their operations in Germany, the birthplace of the company and its home for almost 90 years. And they should be a warning sign for us. VW is suffering from bad economic, environmental, and industrial policies in Germany — policies that are dangerously being embraced by both sides of the political aisle in the United States.  While the turmoil at VW is worrying for Germany … it should also unsettle Americans. German Labor Problems Volkswagen’s top problem involves its German workforce. Since 1972 and the passage of the Works Constitution Act, German law has required all medium and large German companies to have significant labor representation on their boards as well as favorable rules regarding labor unions.  These rules have made it nearly impossible for VW to trim or restructure its labor force to cut costs and remain competitive. As a result, they may have to shut down some of their German operations entirely — which would clearly be a much worse outcome for German workers than a restructuring. The Supply Chain Act that went into effect in 2023 exports these onerous German labor rules to German-owned factories around the world. Democrats have been friendly toward organized labor throughout the 20th century. Labor unions, especially large public sector unions, give far more heavily to Democrats than Republicans. But despite extensive evidence that labor unions and labor restrictions make companies less effective and less profitable, an increasing number of Republican senators from Marco Rubio to Josh Hawley to JD Vance have said they want to revitalize labor unions.(READ MORE: Why We Shouldn’t Expect a Return to the Trump Economy)   In fact, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican national convention this year — the first time a labor union leader has done so. German Energy Problems VW also suffers from skyrocketing energy costs in Germany. Although the Russia-Ukraine war and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline has exacerbated the problem, energy prices in Germany have been increasing for decades as the political elite became enamored of “net-zero” policy while simultaneously shuttering German nuclear power plants. The result has been a strained energy grid and increasingly expensive electricity. Other environmental restrictions on emissions and the use of fossil fuels have made matters worse. This policy of forced energy starvation has long been championed by the left, now with increasing urgency. Vice President Harris’ historical opposition to fracking, the Biden administration’s ban on the development of new liquid natural gas (LNG) export facilities, the EPA’s increasingly strict requirements for coal power plants and for combustion engine vehicles, and Biden’s revoking of the permit for the Keystone pipeline project all illustrate the left’s hostility toward reliable, cheap, abundant energy. German Resource Problems VW faces a third problem with the high cost of its inputs: steel, semiconductors, rare earth metals, etc. Unfortunately, both political parties in the U. S. have proposed policies that will make this problem worse in America. Democrats champion extremely costly environmental regulations that make it nearly impossible to create or expand mining operations in the U. S. While Republicans want to ease many of those environmental regulations, they advocate tariffs that will vitiate the benefits of these changes. Tariffs on steel raise the domestic price of the commodity thereby increasing the cost of building cars, farm equipment, and many other products. Tariffs on semiconductors and imported raw materials similarly raise the domestic price of these resources, eating into the profitability and competitiveness of U. S. manufacturers. Heavily subsidizing struggling companies, as some in Germany have suggested doing for Volkswagen, is not a good road to follow. The electric vehicle craze was fueled by government subsidies and tax credits in the first place. Now that governments are pulling back, companies in the EV space like Volvo and Northvolt are left scrambling and backpedaling. Similarly, although Chinese car companies seem to benefit from significant government subsidies, appearances can be deceiving.  Many Chinese EV manufacturers have seen their vehicles pile up in inventory. Their long-run profitability is questionable and Chinese taxpayers are on the hook to lose billions that the government poured into over-building EV production. Industrial policies like subsidies, tax breaks, and protection from international competition merely transfer the problems of struggling companies onto the general public. (READ MORE: The Real Relationship Between Trump-Style Tariffs and Economic Growth) While the turmoil at VW is worrying for Germany, especially for German VW employees, it should also unsettle Americans. Both Democrats and Republicans seem ready and eager to replicate the labor, environmental, energy, and resource problems in Germany — and in the EU more broadly — reducing their competitiveness. Whether or not you like GTIs or Jettas, we would be better off importing German cars than importing bad German policies. The post Import Germany’s Cars, Not Its Policies appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

I have been marooned without electricity for almost a week (thank you – not! – Helene) and yet somehow the word reached me that Pete Rose, professional baseball’s all-time hits leader, passed away on September 30 at age 83. Rose’s passing triggered a ton of memories from this longtime baseball fan. Never during his playing career was Rose’s intense competitive nature more pronounced than in the 1970 All-Star game. I recall finding his rookie baseball card in a package of bubblegum in 1963. Pete won the National League Rookie of the Year Award that year, so there was already a buzz around him. Alas, the shoebox stuffed full with my baseball card collection was thrown out while I was away at college. I saw Rose play dozens of times on television — All-star games, playoffs, World Series — and finally saw him play in person in 1979 when I was teaching in St. Louis and Pete was playing with the Phillies. He was mesmerizing to watch. If there was one definitive characteristic to the way Pete Rose played baseball, it was his intensity. If he drew a walk, he ran, not trotted, to first base. Baseball fans dubbed him “Charlie Hustle.” Every time he went to the plate, his enthusiasm and concentration were palpable. You could tell that he relished the one-on-one battle between pitcher and batter, and he was going to do his utmost to win that competition: 4,256 times, Pete won that competition by getting a base hit. The immortal Ty Cobb was the only other major league baseball player to exceed 4,000 hits. Cobb has 4,191 hits, which he was able to accumulate while batting 2,787 times fewer than Rose. Cobb, of course, holds the record for highest career batting average — .367. That is a truly incredible feat, for there have been only 117 individual single season records of .367 or higher (14 of them by Cobb himself) in the last 124 seasons, and yet Cobb averaged .367 over a span of 24 seasons. The highest batting average Pete ever had in a single season was .348, and his career average was .303. That was excellent for the era in which he played, and he won three batting titles during his career. He also had a 44-consecutive game hitting streak in 1978 — a streak so unusual that it was getting headlines in newspapers in Mexico City, where I happened to be at the time. Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits is a staggering achievement when you put it in perspective. Getting at least 200 hits in a season is considered a great achievement. Babe Ruth did it three times, Willie Mays once, and the great Ted Williams never. Cobb did it nine times, and Pete Rose and Ichiro Suzuki share the record of ten such seasons.  Ringing up 4,256 hits is the equivalent of hitting at least 200 hits in a season 21 times. That’s mind-boggling. It surely was made possible only by Rose’s tenacity and intensity. He simply loved baseball and loved to compete, and he excelled at it for more than two decades. Rose the Competitor Never during his playing career was Rose’s intense competitive nature more pronounced than in the 1970 All-Star game. Pete scored the winning run for the National League in extra innings by barreling into catcher Ray Fosse so hard that Fosse never hit for power again and ended up retiring young a couple of years later. On the one hand, it seemed like such a waste — after all, an All-Star game is an exhibition game — but to Pete Rose, a game is a game, and the only way to play it is to go all-out to win. Rose, by the way, was elected to be a starter in the All-Star game at five different positions — first, second, and third bases, and left and right fields. And it wasn’t because Rose was a weak fielder and his manager had to find a place to put him in the field so that he could get Pete’s bat into the lineup. Rose won a couple of Gold Gloves for fielding excellence during his career. No other major leaguer has shown such masterful versatility to be named an All-Star at five positions. Rose’s competitive nature had a darker aspect. There may be a variety of opinions about the psychology of a compulsive gambler, but my theory is that Pete was so obsessed with competition that he gambled on baseball games to find another way to beat the person on the other side. It was his gambling habit, of course, that got Pete banned from baseball for life, and that explains why major league baseball’s all-time hits leader is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Now it is time to bid farewell to an American sports legend. Pete Rose will forever occupy a special spot in this history of baseball as a tragic hero — a man whose competitive nature both propelled him to the top and then brought him down. RIP, Pete. READ MORE from Mark W. Hendrickson: Shohei Ohtani: Major League Baseball’s Supernova How Trump Can Win (Or Lose) The post Pete Rose: A Baseball Icon With Feet of Clay appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from Stew Peters Network: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/