Foreign Affairs The Growing Rift in the Latin American Left Nicaragua’s Ortega attacks Petro in Colombia and Lula in Brazil. Credit: image via Shutterstock The repercussions of the July 28 election in Venezuela continue to grow, as President Nicolás Maduro’s refusal to release the ballots from the election to certify the vote count announced by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council has driven a wedge into relations in what was once a relatively closely aligned bloc of left-wing Latin American nations. Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua and a close ally of Maduro in Venezuela, on Monday sharply criticized Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for their continued insistence that Venezuela release proof of Maduro’s victory in July. “If you want my respect, you will respect me, Lula. If you want the respect of the [Venezuelan] people, you will respect the victory of President Nicolás Maduro, instead of being dragged around,” Ortega said. “Petro? What can I say with regard to Petro? Poor Petro… Petro, I see as competing with Lula to see who will be the leader to represent the Yankees in Latin America.” Petro responded with a broadside of his own the next day. “Daniel Ortega has said we are being ‘dragged around’ just because we want a peaceful and democratic negotiated solution in Venezuela,” he wrote in a post on X. “At least I do not drag through the dirt the human rights of my country’s people, much less those of my brothers in arms and my companions in the fight against dictatorship.” Ortega’s angry outburst follows a joint effort by the two countries to gingerly renegotiate their relationship with Maduro. While Ortega, Petro, and Lula—along with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico—have traditionally supported Maduro against the more right-wing governments of the region and what they perceive as the hostile interests of the United States, Maduro’s doubtful reelection and his increasingly harsh repression of the Venezuelan populace have precipitated a rift between the authoritarian left of Maduro and Ortega and the more democratic left of Lula and Petro. In many ways, it is not surprising that the Brazilian and Colombian leaders would wish to distance themselves from the increasingly violent and unstable Venezuela. Both countries have suffered serious disruptions from fleeing Venezuelan refugees, whom Maduro refuses to allow to be deported back into the country. Moreover, linking domestic left-wing political movements with the situation in Venezuela is a losing proposition.  Petro in particular is in a precarious place. He is already considerably unpopular in Colombia, where conservatives consider him a traitor and appeaser for negotiating with the guerrilla narcoterrorists that infest the Colombian selva. This is a golden opportunity for him to burnish his democratic credentials and unchain himself from a sinking and regionally unpopular government. The same rationale goes double for relations with Nicaragua’s Ortega, who has gone on a campaign of brutal retaliation and suppression in the past several years. The Catholic Church has been a particular focus of Ortega’s ire, after it supported protests against his government in 2018. Since then, 20 percent of the nation’s priests have been killed, imprisoned, or exiled—including nearly a score just this month. Hundreds more of Ortega’s political opponents were jailed leading up to and subsequent to the 2021 national elections, which—like the recent Venezuelan elections—were of doubtful legitimacy. Ortega’s attack on the two South American leaders suggests that what was once a relatively robust coalition of left-wing governments in Latin America may be fracturing for good. Maduro now can only count on the support of Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico and Bolivia. Colombia and Brazil, Venezuela’s most important neighbors, may soon join Gabriel Boric’s Chile as left-wing critics of Maduro. Mexico’s position regarding Venezuela deserves closer attention. Immediately after the election, López Obrador joined Petro and Lula in calling on Maduro to release the ballots from the election. He quickly changed his tune, however, and endorsed Maduro, arguing that he sees no reason not to trust Venezuela’s National Electoral Council. This is a potentially concerning approach, given the president’s current efforts to dramatically rewrite Mexico’s constitution in ways that favor his own political party, including ending the independence of Mexico’s own National Electoral Institute. Continued convergence between Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela should be considered a warning sign for the continued health of the Mexican political system. An authoritarian Mexico, even if it were far less harsh than the current Venezuelan or Nicaraguan governments, would be a major blow to American interests and to our ability to control our southern border. On the other hand, the new distance opening up between Venezuela on the one hand and Colombia and Brazil on the other may provide new opportunities for amicable cooperation with the U.S. Left-wing Latin American governments are often hostile towards the U.S. for its long history of intervention in the region. But, with the specter of worldwide communism long gone, the U.S. should work for positive-sum engagement with democratic left-wing governments where reasonable—particularly as China will eagerly fill the deficit if Americans decline to step up. The post The Growing Rift in the Latin American Left appeared first on The American Conservative.

WATCH: Bill Maher defends free speech, calling the removal of Donald Trump from Twitter like “keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame.” "If you're a Republican or a Bolsonaro supporter in Brazil, can you say on the site the election is stolen? I think you can and should be able to. That's still opinion. That's still free speech.” Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, was arrested in France for failing to comply with the government's censorship laws. Meanwhile, in Brazil, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes blocked access to X due to Elon Musk's refusal to remove accounts accused of spreading disinformation and hate speech. Elon better stay put in America. They'll try to arrest him, too. More Stories on @Vigilant_News: Time Magazine Pushes Crazy FAKE NEWS to Combat RFK Jr. Model and Former Dem Embarrasses Woke Mark Cuban with One Simple Question About Kamala Harris Follow @VigilantFox ?

Mistakes can happen. The post The mistake George Martin left on The Beatles song ‘Drive My Car’ first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

One of the cool things about being a biographer with special expertise on a specific subject — in my case, Ronald Reagan — is that readers come to you with all sorts of neat revelations. I’ve published eight books on Ronald Reagan, which I believe is more than any other author. People who know Ronald Reagan usually know me, and they come to me with stories that have never been reported. I could write a separate article on those stories. A few have been quite dramatic, such as my late, wonderful friend Herb Meyer disclosing to me the bombshell revelation that he and his boss, CIA Director Bill Casey, and President Ronald Reagan knew that the Soviets were behind the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981. What Herb told me in confidence went further than what my dear friend Judge Bill Clark (I was Clark’s biographer) had told me about the shooting. I shared that story here at The American Spectator at the time of Herb’s death. Until then, I could not reveal Herb as my source. The revelations Herb and Bill Clark shared with me ultimately led to my book, A Pope and a President. Speaking of assassinations, there were the revelations shared with me by Ronald Reagan’s pastor at his Presbyterian church in Washington, D.C. The Rev. Louis Evans called me shortly before he died because he wanted me to know some things about the near assassination of Reagan on March 30, 1981. Among the fascinating things that Evans told me was about his meeting with Nancy Reagan after the shooting of her husband. Nancy confided: “I’m really struggling with a feeling of failed responsibility. I usually stand at Ronnie’s left side. And that’s where he took the bullet.” If only she had been next to her husband as he walked to that limousine outside the Washington Hilton, positioned between him and John Hinckley’s pistol, Nancy could have taken the bullet for her beloved Ronnie. She was willing to lay down her life for her beloved. The Rev. Evans told me that after reading my 2004 book, God and Ronald Reagan. I incorporated the touching story into my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, which is the basis for the Reagan movie starring Dennis Quaid that releases this weekend. (I also told the story in an op-ed piece for Fox News when Nancy died in March 2016. Megyn Kelly was so moved by the story that she invited me on her show to tell it.) I’m pleased to note that Nancy’s statement about taking a bullet for her Ronnie made it into our movie. It is a touching scene. ‘That Is My Job’ All of this brings me to another nice story that I learned more about only in the last few weeks, after reporting it almost 20 years ago at the close of The Crusader. It’s a wonderful account of a Cold War survivor of communism in the Ukraine and the chance meeting that he and his grandson had with Reagan after their liberation and well after his presidency when the president was in the throes of Alzheimer’s disease. Here was what I knew back then in 2006 and recorded in the epilogue: In the summer of 1997, Ronald Reagan … strolled through Armand Hammer Park near his Bel Air home when he was approached by a tourist named Yakob Ravin and his twelve-year-old grandson, both Jewish Ukrainian émigrés living near Toledo, Ohio. They cheered Reagan as he got near and briefly spoke to the former president, who posed for a picture with the boy, which his grandfather proudly snapped. “Mr. President,” said Ravin, “thank you for everything you did for the Jewish people, for Soviet people, to destroy the communist empire.” The slightly confused 86-year-old Reagan paused and responded: “Yes, that is my job.” That was his job—one he had assigned to himself long ago. And then, after it all, after the task was complete, and after he was permitted, mercifully, a short window of time to comprehend and savor the accomplishment, it all quietly disappeared through the last ten years of his 93 years of life. And then, finally, Ronald Reagan’s time on this earth terminated on June 5, 2004, as he ended that long, quiet drift into oblivion, and perhaps, again, drifted back to the Rock River. The Rock River is a central theme of The Crusader and thus also the Reagan movie, with Reagan’s lifeguard years played terrifically by actor David Henrie. Unfortunately, that scene with Yakob Ravin did not make our script. There are only so many great stories that one film can include and stay on theme. Still, it’s a touching scene that chokes up many readers when they visualize it. One reader called me to say he was on vacation with his family at the beach and was embarrassingly sobbing when he read it. It chokes me up as well. So, I nearly fell off my chair a few weeks ago when my email box suddenly received a photo of that very scene in real life, plus added details over two decades later. Indeed, I can now tell the rest of the story of Yakob Ravin and his grandson, thanks to a reader from Toledo, Ohio named Robert Loeb. Living the American Dream Thanks to Reagan Rob, a certified financial planner who works in Sylvania, Ohio, was likewise touched by that scene. (He actually read about it in my 2017 book, A Pope and a President, where I told the story again.) When he got to page about Ravin and his encounter with President Reagan, Rob was surprised and excited to learn that Yakob likewise lived in Toledo. He decided to try to track him down and found him in an assisted living facility in a suburb of Toledo. Rob informed me that Yakob was alive and well: “He will turn 92 this week and is in reasonably good health although he has faced a plethora of challenges in the past few years, including the death of his wife of nearly 60 years,” reported Rob. Rob was “thrilled to meet him along with his daughter Marina” on June 18. Rob explained that it was Marina’s son who was with Yakob that day in 1997 and got his picture with President Reagan. The son, whose name is Rostik, is now a doctor in Florida. He was 12 years old at the time. “Yakob retold me the story of his chance encounter with Reagan,” said Rob, who pleased the author of the book by telling me: “You had every detail exactly right!” Remarkably, Rob said that Yakob had never seen my book. He wasn’t aware that I had shared his story with the wider world. Rob gave Yakob a copy of the book. Those details were striking enough, but what really got me was that Rob attached a photo of Ronald Reagan’s encounter with the grandson. I never knew that a photo existed. To our knowledge, the photo might well be the final public photo of the private Ronald Reagan before Nancy closed him off from the public due to his slow deterioration from Alzheimer’s. The photo is being published here for the first time at The American Spectator. Ronald Reagan with Yakob Ravin’s then 12-year-old grandson in Toledo, Ohio (Robert Loeb/The American Spectator) Yakob has that photo proudly displayed in his tiny apartment. Little does he know that it is probably the last public picture of The Gipper. That email from Rob was sent on June 20. He closed: “If you’d like any information about Yakob or his grandson, let me know.” To that, I replied, “Yes, thank you, go!” I gave him several follow-up questions, tasking the good man as a research assistant, a job he took up with enthusiasm. Rob’s sleuthing generated key added details, including the exact date of the encounter. It was Aug. 23, 1997. He shared this in a follow-up email that I shall quote in full: Yes, you nailed the quote and the story perfectly! His daughter read out loud that section of your book, and he “said that’s exactly right, that’s what President Reagan said.”  Yakob and his 12-year-old grandson Rostik (Marina went instead to South Carolina) were visiting a friend in California and were just walking in the park when they spotted Reagan. Yakob told me that he felt he had to say something to him. Reagan had 2 Secret Service guys with him, but they let him approach Reagan. After he thanked Reagan, you eloquently stated his [Reagan’s] humble response in your book. Yakob and Rostik then walked away, but after a few minutes he thought he’d ask for a picture. The Secret Service guys told him they didn’t allow pictures, but Reagan overheard him and said, “sure come on over, I’d love to take a picture.” And this is the picture! Rob learned that a few weeks later the local newspaper, the Toledo Blade, did a story about their meeting, which was picked up by the AP wire and various newspapers. That was where I first learned about it. Interestingly, the story almost got much larger exposure. Yakob and his grandson received a phone call from Good Morning America asking them to come to New York (all expenses paid). They were scheduled to do the show on Monday, Sept. 1, 1997, but they learned early that morning that their segment was canceled because Princess Diana had just died in a fatal car crash and the entire show would be devoted to that tragedy. They were thanked and told to enjoy New York. GMA never rescheduled the segment. Rob further added of Yakob: He also talked about leaving Ukraine in 1992, and the trepidation they felt. He was 60 years old, starting over in a new country. This was not to be taken lightly. He spoke English but his daughter (Marina), Marina’s husband at the time, and son Rostik did not speak much English. Marina is a successful nurse today, and Rostik is a doctor in Gainesville, Florida. In Ukraine they were not treated well as Jews, but also his wife’s doctor told her that they should leave Ukraine, because of their proximity to Chernobyl. They only lived about 85 miles away in Kiev and the doctor felt there would be long term health consequences if they stayed. So somewhat reluctantly, they moved to Toledo where they had some friends. They were only allowed to take $200 (equivalent) each and some other stuff that fit in a duffle bag, which he still has. Luckily, he was an engineer and found work right away. Fast forward to today and they all love our country and of course President Reagan and are incredibly grateful he ended the evil empire….. They are incredibly grateful to be here. They still have friends in Ukraine that they worry about. As for Rostik, Rob proceeded to later meet him in Toledo as well. He goes by “Ross.” When Rostik and his family and grandfather came to America in 1992, he spoke almost no English — in fact, the only words he knew were “I can’t speak English.” Now, Rostik is living the American dream. Just as Ronald Reagan would have hoped when he had sought to peacefully liberate the “Captive Peoples,” as Reagan referred to those languishing behind the Iron Curtain in the Evil Empire. I thank them for their witness and story. And I thank Rob Loeb for wrapping it up for me in a splendid bow. We Should All Just Appreciate What Is Good In all, it is a nice, feel-good story, much like the Reagan movie that premieres nationwide in theaters this weekend. That movie is receiving nice reviews from nice people. I’m told that the New York Times and Washington Post both panned it. I’m not surprised. That’s why I don’t read either paper. I prefer to spare myself the agony. What these modern liberals don’t understand is that there was once a time in America when everyone liked the president of the United States, including even the liberals who didn’t vote for him. To quote no less than CBS News anchor (and liberal) Walter Cronkite: “Ronald Reagan is even more popular than [Franklin] Roosevelt, and I never thought I’d see anyone that well-liked…. Nobody hates Reagan. It’s amazing!” That was why Reagan was reelected by winning 49 of 50 states, nearly 60 percent of the vote, and crushing the Electoral College by 525 to 13. There were literally millions of Democrats who voted for him. It was a moment of real unity. Our 2024 Reagan movie shows that rare unity in the 1980s and focuses on the epic achievement of Reagan’s life and presidency: his peaceful effort (his crusade) to undermine Soviet communism, to win the Cold War. That was a truly grand event that no one could or should complain about. If modern liberal reviewers of Reagan can’t celebrate that triumph, well, that’s sad. I suggest they put aside their partisanship and try to like what is good. What Ronald Reagan did was good. Individuals as different as Mikhail Gorbachev, Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neill, and Pope John Paul II all agreed on that. And if liberals would like a modern witness or two, maybe they should talk to some folks like Yakob Ravin and his grandson. They certainly appreciate Ronald Reagan. And one day in Aug. 1997, they let him know. The post A Moment of Unity: Reagan United the Country Like No Other appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

One of the most striking things about higher education is that many of the world’s greatest geniuses never had much, if any.  Johann Sebastian Bach was 18 years old and never went to school again; his five years in a local gymnasium and a church school were more than sufficient to instruct him in theology and the classical languages, but his real instruction in music came from his elder brother, the church choir, and musicians and organists he met and made music with. (READ MORE: Living Crucifixes: The Phenomenon of Stigmata) Thomas Edison spent only a few months as a small boy in the local public school. He was so disruptive there and so frustrated that his mother decided to teach him on her own. When it came to machines and inventing things, the boy was self-taught. If he were alive today, he would be diagnosed with a brain disorder. Some disorder! It saddled him with distraction from trivialities, while it compelled him to pay entire attention, even to be absorbed to the exclusion of everything else in the world, to what fascinated his mind. We would give young Tom a drug, and that would be the end of Tom the boy inventor. Michelangelo had no formal education at all. He was a boy hanging about the marble quarries of Settignano, an already talented apprentice in the studio of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, and a young hanger-on at Marsilio Ficino’s “Academy” on the estate of Lorenzo de’ Medici. There he took part in conversations on Platonic philosophy, and whatever else the members of the informal group were interested in. He did not learn his craft there. Where Are Our Modern Bachs, Michelangelos, and Edisons? We are, to be sure, talking about exceptional men: arguably, the greatest composer, the greatest inventor, and the greatest artist in the history of the world. But we are not talking about exceptional cases. The stories of Bach, Edison, and Michelangelo are repeated, at a lower pitch perhaps, in the stories of countless men of great and dynamic accomplishment who became what they were in spite of their having little or no association with colleges and universities. Many of them left school at a very early age to do what they longed to do. I used the phrase “in spite of,” when I might have written “because of.” In those days, there was nothing on a screen to distract the young mind from its passions or to waste youth and energy on ephemera. The boys developed the ability, early on, to exclude everything from their field of vision but the thing to be mastered, the thing to be accomplished. What would they have done had they had higher education too — or had the world been organized so that they could not work without the paper credentials the colleges sell? (READ MORE: Critics of Lolita Need to Learn How to Read Fiction) Very likely, nothing much. We cannot suppose they would have been more inventive at their work. For now that everybody of at least modest intelligence must go to college, and absolutely everybody must graduate from high school to get a half-decent job, you would think we would meet a Bach, an Edison, and a Michelangelo in every big town and city. After all, near-Bachs, near-Edisons, and near-Michelangelos there were aplenty in those other times and places, many of whom likewise shared the advantage of freedom from the formal school. We had, for example, near-Bachs in America among the big band leaders and composers, very few of whom had a college education. Where are they now? College Is Useless for Imparting Genius This year will be my 40th as a teacher at the college level, 37 of them as a professor of English or Humanities. I love my work. I enjoy being around young people, and I am prompted by the teacher’s characteristic impulse, to show someone else something beautiful or fascinating that he has found. But I am under no illusions about the corruption of the university. Many courses and whole departments are given over not to that impulse but to political or social action, to propaganda in the worst sense; or to instilling in students a hatred or disdain for what past generations — mainly, ordinary people with ordinary sentiments — considered to be good or true. Still other courses and departments are mere credentialing services, enabled by the artificial bottleneck that employment law in the United States has created. To see the bottleneck, one need only ask an obvious question regarding Bach, Edison, or Michelangelo. Who would now hire them? Would Edison be permitted to teach shop in your local high school? Could Bach be hired to compose or conduct music for one of the movie studios, without college credentials?  Could Michelangelo secure a commission as the architect of a new county courthouse, without a degree in architecture? Please do not say that Michelangelo would now need to learn things that can only be imparted in a formal setting. The logistical and material problems that beset him when he worked on the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica, without our diesel-powered tools, without computer projections, without light but strong metals, were at least as difficult as anything that besets the architect now. If Michelangelo could figure out how to solve problems then, he could figure out how to solve comparable problems now. The Government Shouldn’t Force Employers to Tell Genius Kids to Get Lost Why should there be a bottleneck at all? Here we meet some touchy issues. Suppose that federal and state governments have no say in telling you whom you must hire, either in the individual case or in general. You might then, it is feared, discriminate — but discrimination is, in one sense or another, essential to all evaluation, including that of hiring or not hiring someone. If you are sensible, you will not use as a criterion for discrimination anything irrelevant to the work to be done, in the workplace where it is to be done. That would be like turning away George Washington Carver because of his race. It would be stupid. It would hand a favor to your competitor. But if the bottleneck were gone, you would be free to take credentials for what you believe they are worth and to evaluate talent by your best lights. Millions of people would be freed from having to procure those credentials. (READ MORE: A Sacred Peace: The Promise and Perils of Localism) As I write, a crew of young men from Brazil is at work on my house at a big carpentry and painting job. I am too old now to do many of these things myself, as I used to do, though I could never do the splendid job they are doing. I doubt whether any of the men has formal education beyond high school. Who cares? They are masters at their work. The connection between the hand and the mind is extraordinarily strong so that the more you work with your hands at subtle tasks — such as, to mention a relatively simple thing, cutting a board to fit exactly where it must go, maneuvering it into place, and securing it with nails angled in — the smarter you become. The hands acquire a “feel” for what is right: good wood for this or that purpose, good stone, good metal, good ground. That the imagination works also through the hands, no musician who has composed upon the piano can doubt. But formal education has little to do with the hands. It may well coat the hands in the rubber of verbiage so that they lose their sense of realities. I am not a libertarian. But in this regard, I say it is time to end surveillance over employers as to whom they hire and why so that the Edisons, Carvers, Bachs, and Michelangelos of the world, and all those lesser but still brightly shining lights that are like them, may thrive without having to pay the collegiate extortionist, and without the strong possibility that they will waste or stifle their genius as they muddle through. No more need the employer say, “Get lost, kid. You don’t have the degree.” He might say, “All right, show me what you can do.” The post Get Lost, Kid appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Last week’s Democratic Party joyfest in Chicago opened with the now-obligatory acknowledgment that it was taking place in “indigenous homelands.” It wrapped up with a war party that named Donald Trump as the enemy over 400 times, according to one source. So, it’s altogether fitting that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ridiculed by Trump as “Pocahontas,” was one of the featured speakers. It was the 4th straight DNC where Warren spewed her socialism. I prefer calling the senator from Massachusetts, “Little White Dove” as I always had an affinity for Johnny Preston’s 1959 recording with the backup singers chanting “uga, uga, uga, uga.” (READ MORE: Five Quick Things: Who Lies About Working at McDonald’s?) As a refresher, the senator’s claims of being either Delaware or Cherokee came into question when the then-Harvard professor was engaged in a tight race for Senate in 2012. It was in 2019 that Liz ended up apologizing to the Cherokee Nation after her self-proclaimed ancestry, checked through DNA, suggested that she may have had a blood relative as far back as 6-10 generations. The Cherokee noted that it required more than self-identifying and a trace of DNA. Does this matter? Not really, except as a check on her character. After all, Warren profited as a self-identified “minority” in her career advancement. Her speech at the 2012 Democrat convention put her on the national stage when she was the introductory speaker for former President Bill Clinton. At that time, she essentially painted her roots as akin to J. D. Vance’s hillbilly. Unlike Vance, she was a hero to the “progressive” wing of the party and her job was to point to Republican and Wall Street greed as part of a rigged system to keep the little guy and the middle class down. Take that, Mitt Romney! We’re coming after you and your big wampum — an Algonquian word. The Warren of DNCs Past The Harvard Crimson, reporting in September 2012, noted about the prime-time speech, “(Warren)… reintroducing herself to a nation as the unlikely Senate hopeful who rose from the lower crust of the middle class.” And that publication, continuing without even a hint of disbelief, noted, “She said that Democrats want to decrease national debt and build a stronger country from the middle class up.” Moving forward with even more national debt into 2016, now a senator and a star, Liz was off of Romney and on the warpath after Trump. Not surprisingly, part of her speech that year in support of Hillary Clinton sounded the same shrill notes against Orange Man. Back then, with Barack Obama still president and Joe Biden nursing his grievances, Little White Dove spoke of the Trump vs. Clinton matchup: “America faces a choice, the choice of a new president. On one side is a man who inherited a fortune from his father and kept it going by cheating people.… A man who cares only for himself — every minute of the day.” (READ MORE: The Trump Revolution) Continuing with the big contrast, “On the other side is one of the smartest, toughest, most tenacious people on the planet — a woman who fights for children, for women, for health care, for human rights, a woman who fights for all of us…” If you were lucky enough to miss it live, you may not have picked up the contrasted “man” vs. “woman” emphasis. Warren remains the belle of the ball to the Marxists in this country. She again spoke at the 2020 DNC, that time as the 3rd place contender for the nomination which was bestowed upon “the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock puppet,” as the great Mark Steyn refers to Joe Biden. Bernie Sanders was ahead of her and Michael Bloomberg and Pete Buttigieg trailed her. Democrat Mooning Shows Contempt for America Fast forward to the present, just last week at her fourth recycling before the Democratic National Convention, Liz had been cut back to a very short speech — about 5 minutes with the extended applause from the rabble in attendance. She began with, “You know what I love best about Kamala Harris? Kamala Harris can’t be bought.” Ouch! Was that aimed at Donald, “the felon,” or a reference to the Biden Crime Family? Judging from the “joy” expressed by the crowd over that and “felon,” we shouldn’t be surprised by her conclusory remarks when she summarized Kamala and the Democrats’ positions: “There it is. Groceries, gas, housing, health care, taxes, abortion.” (READ MORE: America Waited 39 Days for This? The Blah-ness of CNN’s Kamala & Tim Show) So, in homage to a great native American tradition, Little White Dove, Kamala, and the rest of the Democrats just dropped trou (pantsuits are great for this!) and mooned America. As Joe Biden would say, “No joke!” Just north of the state of Massachusetts, there is an account of an early encounter between the Abenaki people — an Algonquian tribe — and European mariners in the critically acclaimed book, 1491, by Charles C. Mann. The author tells the story dating to 1523 as follows. “The Indians denied the visitors permission to land; refusing even to touch the Europeans, they passed goods back and forth on a rope over the water. As soon as the crew members sent over the last items, the locals began ‘showing their buttocks and laughing.’” Mooned as a measure of disrespect. What took place in Chicago was a show of contempt for America. My long-time friend Bob Tyrrell, well known as the Founder of TAS, is fond of quoting H. L. Mencken. None is better than, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” The post The Democrats Mooned America From Potawatomi Lands appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

When Matt Walsh traveled to Africa to ask members of the Maasai people about transgenderism, the Maasai villagers laughed at him. The short clip in Walsh’s 2022 documentary What Is a Woman? stands in stark contrast with the other interviews in the film, in which accomplished American professionals tie themselves in verbal knots to justify the non-negotiables of gender ideology. To the Maasai, it’s obvious that a man can’t become a woman, and vice versa. In Western nations, however, pro-LGBTQ activists have spent decades working to erode that simple belief and build a new progressive consensus in America and Western Europe Now, activists are exporting gender ideology to Africa, too.  “From Kenya to Cameroon, Ghana to Tanzania, local archbishops tell the Register that Western aid workers, government officials and even tourists are advancing secular understandings of sexuality and the human person that are incompatible not merely with African cultural values, but with the timeless teachings of the Catholic faith,” wrote Jonathan Liedl, senior editor for the National Catholic Register. ‘Missionaries of Evil’ In Tanzania and Kenya, where the Maasai people live, Catholic leaders are trying to protect young people from exploitation by foreigners. Home to Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania relies on foreign tourism to generate an estimated 17 percent of Tanzania’s GDP. In some regions, like Zanzibar, tourism is an even bigger part of the local economy. But these tourists aren’t just bringing revenue to the region — some are bringing progressive sexual mores, too.  Comparing the influx of progressive Westerners to Christian evangelists who once brought the Gospel to Africa, Archbishop Renatus Leonard Nkwande said that the West is now sending his nation “missionaries of evil.”  Archbishop Nkwande told the Register that “anxieties about Westerners promoting sexual deviancy are so widespread that ‘the first meeting with somebody from Europe,’ whether a tourist or an NGO worker, ‘you just fear. You try to shy away.’” Tourists are only responsible for some of the cultural proselytization; foreign nongovernmental organizations are the main culprits. Despite the name, many NGOs receive government support through grants and funding. In recent years, foreign organizations operating in Africa have come under scrutiny for their role in the economic development of African nations, which critics see as a new iteration of the “scramble for Africa.”  Though NGOs promise aid, foreign organizations, and workers carry cultural baggage that conflicts with the traditions and beliefs of many Africans. In Tanzania, for example, Western NGOs distribute “lubricants used in gay sex.” Archbishop Nkwande said that these products have been distributed widely during the Biden-Harris administration but had ceased under President Donald Trump.  NGOs and Social Media Promote Gender Ideology and Abortion in Africa In neighboring Kenya, foreign workers promote gender ideology in schools and “provide financial support to young people who enter into a gay lifestyle, which in turn draws in other youths,” the Register reports. In Cameroon, where abortion is illegal, the French embassy has promoted abortion and NGOs provide funding for free abortions.  Even without foreign aid workers, social media has become a major force behind the increasing presence of liberal Western culture in Africa. In Cameroon, Catholic leaders have noticed the impact of French social media content on the nation’s younger generations. Bishop Sosthène Léopold Bayemi Matjei told the Register that he has noticed “changes in speech and dress,” as well as heard “reports that young boys are organizing sex groups after being exposed to the idea through online videos.”  Unlike the activism of NGOs, which relies on foreign funding, the promotion of gender ideology via social media can reach anyone with internet access. As internet use continues to increase throughout the continent, leftist Western ideology could leave an indelible mark on African nations. (RELATED: The LGBTQ Conquest of America) Pope Francis has specifically warned against the “ideological colonization” that occurs when countries weave together LGBTQ ideology and pro-abortion stances with the wealth and aid needed by developing nations. Across Africa, Catholic bishops are aware of the growing threats to traditional morality.  But if the past few decades of American culture have proven anything, they show that a sea change in sexual morality can happen within a lifetime. There’s no guarantee that an interview with the Maasai would result in the same disbelieving laughter in a generation or two — after all, Americans once laughed, too.  Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.  READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:  Planned Parenthood Mobile Clinic Provides Abortions and Vasectomies at DNC Can Republicans Win in Michigan This November? The Real Gender Gap Is Political The post ‘Missionaries of Evil’: Africa Is the New Frontier for LGBTQ Activism appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The fortunes of Mexico and Donald J. Trump are inextricably linked. When I visited Mexico City in the summer of 2017, locals seemed to have warmed to that reality. Several told a yarn about investing in 11-foot ladders to scale Trump’s 10-foot wall, a joke that always landed if told with levity and confidence. Driving along the Paseo de la Reforma in the capital’s elegant heart, my host and I noticed a large rainbow flag commanding the entrance to the American embassy, affirming Washington’s cultural imperialism. (READ MORE: Five Quick Things: Who Lies About Working at McDonald’s?) “Trump can’t control his own government!” my friend gleefully chided. The egg was decidedly on this Trump-voting gringo’s face. It was something of a personal introduction to the administrative state, apparently impervious to electoral democracy. Since that time, a handful of excesses have bubbled to the surface of American public consciousness and highlighted a foreign policy that Rod Dreher has summarized as “queer the Donbass.”  ‘Queer the Donbass’ In February of 2023, Karen Decker, Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Mission to Afghanistan, tweeted, “Are Afghans familiar with #BlackGirlMagic and the movement it inspired? Do Afghan girls need a similar movement? What about Afghan Women? Teach me, ready to learn.” Later that year, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby asserted, “LGBTQ+ rights are…a core part of our foreign policy.” So much so, in fact, that the United States Embassy in the Vatican has sported a giant rainbow flag under the current State Department regime. (READ MORE: Robin DiAngelo’s Plagiarism Exposes the Fraud Behind ‘Anti-Racism’) In the Central and Eastern Europe region, to which I devote my attention and research, I see the abuses that don’t make headlines across the Atlantic. In Hungary, Ambassador David Pressman (from the Clooney wing of the party) has been a reliable cheerleader for identity politics and regime change. In Poland, Mark Brzezinski (son of Zbigniew and brother of Mika) waves the cultural-imperial flag and brazenly backs the newish liberal government. In Bulgaria, locals refer to “the embassy,” the only one that sports such a moniker; they marvel at how American prestige could collapse so thoroughly in just a decade. In all these countries and countless others, U.S. government money flows into the coffers of left-wing political movements.  Recent USAID (the government’s foreign-aid arm) grant priorities have included abortion, gender equity, and mobilization of “climate activists.” One information request last year uncovered U.S.-funded projects to promote DEI in Ethiopia. The agency’s Central Europe program, announced in 2022, purports to “[support] new locally-driven initiatives in Central Europe with the goal of strengthening democratic institutions, civil society, and independent media, which are all pillars of resilient democratic societies.” One can easily read the political ramifications between the lines. A Trump Administration Is Beholden to the Whims of the Bureaucracy How American foreign policy reached this point is not mysterious. Consider the 2020 election cycle, in which a staggering 93 percent of political contributions from State Department employees and 96 percent of those from USAID employees went to Democrats and associated PACs; financial contributions from employees of these institutions totaled $2.9 million for Democrats and just $200,000 for Republicans. Never mind the interests of American power and prosperity. The foreign-policy apparatus promotes the priorities of the establishment wing of one political party. (READ MORE: Gamers Don’t Want to Deal With DEI) If President Trump wins this year, the likes of Pressman and Brzezinski will ship out for the Washington cocktail-party circuit, and Republican dignitaries will secure some plum ambassadorships. Yet, we’ve seen this film before — most of the iceberg remains untouched. The U.S. Foreign Service includes some 15,000 Americans at 271 embassies and consulates. For some context, the embassy in tiny Luxembourg employs 32 American direct-hire employees; the embassy in Iceland employs 12. The path of least resistance leaves most of the diplomatic corps intact. Most of these personnel will remain employed and unaccountable — and so the cultural-imperial flag flies in Mexico City.  Now extrapolate this conundrum across the entire federal government. Education watchers will relate similar anecdotes from the DOE. Criminal justice experts can lament the state of the FBI. Any Republican administration is subject to the whims of the permanent bureaucratic class, which consists of nearly three million people.  This, of course, is the impetus for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Heritage is just one think tank, and its now-infamous proposal is a drop in a sea of Washington policy ink. The issue shouldn’t be about Heritage, and it shouldn’t even be about Donald Trump. American liberals correctly understand the importance of government staffing and have treated the issue accordingly. They have defined the narrative and hammered it relentlessly. Institutional Rot Will Destroy Trump’s Legacy It seems most American conservatives are content to give this issue the abortion treatment, dismissing it as a losing battle rather than crafting a truthful, resonant counter-narrative — in short, embracing something difficult. Too much of the already-limited conservative rhetoric on this topic has focused on theoretical questions of power-wielding that belong in a university political science department. Even respectable conservative commentators are too willing to accept the framing of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Meanwhile, the Left is committed to a bumper-sticker-friendly dictatorship narrative. It isn’t hard to grasp why it is winning — and why the cultural-imperial flag still flutters at our embassies. Government staffing is a policy issue, but it shouldn’t be dismissed as an electoral one. We hear about Obama-to-Trump union voters, South Texas Hispanics, and Florida Men, but the “institutional-rot” voter is undeniably part of the Trump coalition and a forgotten one at that. For a President Trump concerned with legacy-building and a Republican Party anxious to maintain a coalition that can navigate a tightening map, it should register as a demographic that needs some shoring-up.  For now, there might be just enough of the 2016 anti-establishment magic, just enough hope — however naïve — that liberalism hasn’t completely trampled democracy in our liberal democracy. If Republicans continue to fumble this issue, who knows how many will decide civic participation is a futile exercise, as countless Britons reportedly have done? Institutional rot is the 11-foot ladder scaling Trump’s legacy-defining wall. Republican leadership would do well to confront it. Mr. Trump, tear down that flag!  Michael O’Shea is a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute. Follow him on X: @Michael_F_OShea The post Trump and the GOP Sidestep Government Staffing at Their Own Peril appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across The World of Literature Edited by John McMurtrie (Princeton University Press, 256 pages, $29.95) John McMurtrie introduces Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across The World of Literature with the famous Robert Frost quote: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the road less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” While Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken has become synonymous with a psychological journey, McMurtrie’s beautifully curated and exquisitely illustrated compilation of essays from over 50 contributors showcases works of fiction where the major characters embark upon a physical journey which also serves as an emotional crossing. Chronologically structured, Literary Journeys is divided into four different sections, The first section, “Quests and Exploration,” starts with Homer’s The Odyssey  (725 to 675 B.C.) and ends with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The second, “The Age of Travel,” opens with Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness (1899) and closes with Alejo Carpentier’s The Lost Steps (1953). The third, “Postmodern Movements,” commences with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) and concludes with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (1998). The fourth, “Contemporary Crossings,” begins with César Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter (2000) and finishes with Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway (2021). At the Very Beginning McMurtrie’s decision to open Literary Journeys with The Odyssey reinforces Homer’s epic poem as the touchstone of Western literature. “Comprised of twenty-four books, The Odyssey was originally meant to be heard, not read…. In more than 12,109 lines of hexameter verse, it unfolds as a mythological rather than a historical tale. Man-eating giants, witches, and hydra-headed goddess creatures thwart the hero’s drifting homeward journey. Homer’s picture of the underworld became the model for all later western geographies of hell, most notably in Dante’s Divine Comedy.” (WATCH: The Spectacle Ep. 140: The Lord of the Rings is Still Relevant) A basic understanding of The Odyssey is essential to navigating Western history, literature, and popular culture. I was first exposed to the story of the Greek hero Odysseus and his 20-year journey to return to his wife Penelope as a high school student. I would later read The Odyssey in its entirety in a college freshman English class. I enjoyed its beautiful language and vivid imagery and felt empathy for Odysseus as he struggled to return home despite the efforts of various creatures to detain him. My experience was further enhanced by my professor arranging for the class to see the 1954 film Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas as Ulysses (Odysseus). The same actress Silvana Magana was cast as both Penelope and the sorceress Circe who endeavors to keep Ulysses from returning home. This casting choice was illustrative of the hero’s powerful commitment to his wife which prevented him from even seeing the face of another woman. Given the long shadow that The Odyssey has cast on Western civilization, it is no surprise that every section of Literary Journeys includes a work that pays homage to it. “The Age of Travel” includes perhaps the most famous example, James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). The almost 800-page novel takes place over the course of one day, June 16, 1904. On this day, the protagonist Leopold Bloom who is supposed to represent Ulysses (Odysseus) walks the streets of Dublin as he grapples with the knowledge that his wife Molly has been unfaithful to him. Very little happens beyond Bloom’s physical wanderings and interior reveries. Yet, despite its dark elements, McMurtrie asserts that the novel is not devoid of hope as it “celebrates Dublin’s friendliness, musicality and expressiveness of language.” I was 22 when I first read Ulysses, and while I understood intellectually that Joyce was drawing structural and thematic parallels with The Odyssey, I did not have a full appreciation for the novel’s beauty and complexity. Consequently, I have revisited it. (READ MORE: Little House on the Prairie Changed My Life) Literary Journeys additionally salutes Homer with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road  (2006). I read both of these books for the first time relatively recently and see an interesting parallel between them. Kerouac’s novel is a rambling documentation of his cross-country travels with the writer Neal Cassady. Kerouac and Cassady, who are named Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty in the book, spend their time pursuing “kicks” in the form of women, drugs, easy money, and cool experiences. While On the Road is an engaging and accurate reflection of the counterculture of its time, its principal characters are self-absorbed individuals who are slaves to their own intellectual and sexual vanities while they eschew all other responsibilities. Dean Moriarty flits back and forth between different women while also engaging in sexual relationships with men and routinely abandons his wife and children with little tangible consequence. On the other hand, in McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, the unnamed father and son are on a pilgrimage of necessity as they spend each day trekking towards a coastal area while desperately trying to stay alive in a dystopian world where food and other resources are scarce and it is difficult to differentiate between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Furthermore, the father in The Road, unlike Dean Moriarty, will stop at nothing to protect his young son, including sacrificing his own well-being. Travel in the Postmodern Literary Age My favorite section of the book was “Postmodern Movements,” with Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1957), which depicts many journeys as its characters travel across Russia in search of political and personal freedom including a memorable three-day carriage ride in the snow which Dr. Yuri Zhivago takes with his wife Tonya and their son. McMurtrie also profiles John Updike’s Rabbit Run (1960), the first of four novels featuring the protagonist Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a former high school basketball star who finds himself trapped in a loveless marriage to an alcoholic wife while holding down a boring job. One day Rabbit tries to escape his existence by driving all night from his hometown the fictional Brewer, Pennsylvania, located about 50 miles outside of Philadelphia, towards Florida, but his journey goes awry. Rabbit will eventually arrive in Florida in a later book but his experience does not meet his expectations. (READ MORE: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road Is a Conservative Classic) McMurtrie comments that Updike once said that he wrote the Rabbit books in response to the “romanticized heroes of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to illustrate to readers “what happens when a young American family man goes on the road — the people behind get hurt.” I was especially delighted to see Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955) included in this compendium. I first read Lolita when I was 17 years old and I have spent my entire adult life defending it, especially in recent years in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Nabokov’s novel is a linguistic masterpiece that mixes tragic elements with satire. Moreover, it is a journey novel as Humbert and Dolores (Lolita) spend a lot of time driving to escape the mysterious car that is following them. As Humbert comments, We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing, And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — at the moment I feigned sleep. If anyone has any doubt that Nabokov sees Humbert Humbert as a deeply disturbed individual and the story’s villain, the aforementioned quote should put that perception to rest. I highly recommend John McMurtrie’s Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across the World of Literature. The author has created a marvelous tribute to Western literature that not only maps the journeys of celebrated literary characters but also encourages us to trace and retrace their footprints. The post The Road Well Traveled: Exploring the History of Literary Journeys appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.