As yesterday’s European election results came in, media coverage began to take on a distinct sense of dread. “A far right surge upends national politics,” blared one CNN headline. “Far right gains deal stunning defeats to France’s Macron and Germany’s Scholz,” declared PBS. A New York Times title sought to strike a relatively optimistic tone, finding solace in the fact that “In E.U. Elections, the Center Holds” — but, it noted glumly, “the Far Right Still Wreaks Havoc.” It remains to be seen whether this most recent bout of elections will change much of anything in European politics. Indeed, the suite of nationalist, anti-immigration parties that the media consistently insists on describing as “far right” made gains that were “even more stunning than many analysts predicted,” CBS noted. While the nationalists did not muster enough votes to wrest control of the European Union from the body’s current center-right majority, its substantial gains were yet another sign of surging popular momentum for a coalition that was regarded as fringe and marginal just a few years ago — particularly in a number of the E.U.’s most powerful and influential nations. (READ MORE from Nate Hochman: Strangers in Their Own Country) The most remarkable story of the night, in this regard, was in France, where President Emmanuel Macron moved to dissolve his country’s National Assembly and call a snap election in the face of a shocking two-to-one loss to Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling center-left party lost to the nationalist Alternative for Germany, which overcame a series of scandals — and overwhelming opposition from the German political establishment — to make substantial gains, finishing second-place overall (and solidifying its position as the largest and most popular party in east Germany). In Italy, too, nationalists shored up their dominant position, led by “Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — whose far-right Brothers of Italy party surged to first place in the country, solidifying Meloni as a rising conservative star on the world stage,” the Washington Post reported. And in Austria, too, “the far-right Freedom Party was also forecast to finish first.” The projected record number of seats secured by “far-right” parties represents one of the most decisive mandates yet for Europe’s right-wing populists, in a continent-wide show of political force. The E.U.’s parliamentary elections are debated in more than 24 languages, and represents a constituency of 27 countries and some 373 million potential voters — the “world’s second-biggest exercise in democracy, behind India’s recent election,” ABC reported. What’s more, voter turnout across Europe was the highest it’s been in 30 years. (And in many countries, it was much higher still — Germans turned out at a record-breaking 64.8 percent). Many centrists and liberals across the West professed bewilderment at their ideological compatriots’ electoral trouncing. (Belgium’s liberal Prime Minister broke down in tears while announcing his resignation in the face of a crushing loss). “The re-emergence of the radical right as a political force is coming as a shock,” POLITICO’s European affiliate reported. On X, Meta’s Tom Gara mourned: “It’s very scary that in basically every Western democracy immigration politics is powering a massive far right surge and nobody on the non-far-right seems to have any idea how to deal with it.” One suspects that most Western elites are smart enough to know exactly what they would need to do to “deal with it”; in reality, they simply don’t want to. The nationalist surge is anything but shocking, and its origins are plain and unambiguous to anyone with ears to hear and eyes to see. Immigration — at unprecedented levels, each year seemingly higher than the one before, importing millions upon millions of unassimilated, often-hostile foreign peoples from alien nations and cultures into small, once-homogenous Western nations — is the singular, defining, fundamental issue of our time, both in Europe and the West more broadly. It is the near-singular issue that every one of the ostensibly “far-right” parties rode to victory, and it is the near-singular reason that heretofore-unseen numbers of Europeans voted for them in yesterday’s election. The people who have run Western civilization for the past three decades (if not always in formal political terms, then certainly in de facto cultural and social ones) have gone to increasingly extreme lengths to avoid doing the one thing that would stem the rising tide of nationalism. They have, in varying times and places, discarded centuries of legal norms, manipulated or outright rigged their respective nations’ electoral systems, outright banned entire political parties, jailed activists and even sitting politicians, and implemented a regime of massive state censorship — all to avoid simply ending mass migration. (READ MORE: Western Civilization Is Not Just a Data Point) What yesterday’s electoral returns in Europe show is that none of this has worked. In many instances, it has had the exact opposite effect, nurturing a sense of resentment and hostility to the political establishment amongst the native populations of many European countries. More to the point, the emergent outlines of a hardline anti-immigration popular majority in Europe indicates a rising national consciousness among Europeans, sharpened by the threat from abroad. This newly awakened collective consciousness — a coherent sense of “us” and “them” — is still in its infancy. But it will soon mature, and when it does, it is certain to shape the future of the continent (and perhaps the civilization) in the years to come. Conservatism — both as a self-conscious intellectual philosophy and a felt, mass political sensibility — is almost always articulated and mobilized in response to threats from without. (As I wrote in the American Mind two years ago, “this is a feature, not a bug, of the Right: A political project that seeks to conserve is often incoherent until the traditions, institutions, and ways of life it defends are under threat.”) So it is in Europe and the rest of the West today. It remains to be seen whether this most recent bout of elections will change much of anything in European politics; Westerners have voted for less immigration many times before, often to little effect. But Europe’s political elites would be wise to give the people what they are asking for, and soon. They may not be wise enough to know it, but the so-called “far right” in Europe today is their last opportunity to avoid the genuine extremism that will invariably emerge to take its place. The post A Message From Europe appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Breitbart headlines said it all. There was this out of France: Macron Trounced by Le Pen’s Populists at EuroParl Elections, Immediately Dissolves Parliament for Snap National Election And this out of Belgium: Belgium’s Anti-Trump Leader Resigns After Suffering Right Wing Election Victory The bottom line? As is true in the United States, rank-and-file average Europeans have had more than enough of the globalist/socialist agenda, and in the style of America’s former President Donald Trump, they want out. If anything is missed here it would be that conservatism has been on the rise for decades. In 1960, having just nominated the moderate GOP Vice President Richard Nixon for president, the GOP convention’s delegates suddenly leapt to their feet when Arizona’s Senator Barry Goldwater, the Mr. Conservative of his day, took the podium for a speech, a speech in which he, in instantly famous style, growled: “Let’s grow up conservatives!” Four years later Goldwater himself was the nominee, defeating the GOP Establishment’s New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. From the get go Goldwater was facing a losing battle. Barely a year earlier the nation had been traumatized by the assassination of the young and beloved Democrat President John F. Kennedy. The astute and decidedly liberal Lyndon Johnson had succeeded JFK, and the country was in no mood for more change. As the GOP stared the coming defeat in the face, on October 27, 1964 a flare of light for conservatives shot across the political sky. Actor Ronald Reagan appeared on national television to deliver a speech for Goldwater titled “A Time for Choosing.” In which, among other things, Reagan said: This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down — [up] man’s old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. While Goldwater did indeed still lose in a 44 state pro-Johnson landslide, Reagan’s speech launched his own political career, with immediate calls for him to carry the conservative cause into the next (1966) election for Governor of California. The state GOP Establishment fought Reagan and his conservative followers, putting up the moderate GOP Mayor of San Francisco George Christopher. Reagan won going away, moving on to the general election and defeating liberal Democrat incumbent Governor Pat Brown. And with that, the conservative cause was seriously on the move, triumphant in 1980 with Reagan’s 44 state landslide over the Democrats’ President Jimmy Carter. There’s more, of course. But the central point here is that from Goldwater’s lonely scolding in 1960 — “Let’s grow up conservatives!” — to Reagan’s two landslide victories to the Trump 2016 win and his seriously possible repeat victory in 2024 — the conservative movement has flowered, becoming a serious force in American politics to this day. And without doubt, its leader today is former President Trump. So back to those headlines out of Europe. As with the conservative, now Trump-led cause in America, the conservative movement in Europe has had the same slow, gradual move to success. No better example is the gradual rise of Margaret Thatcher inside the UK’s Conservative party. It took a while, but eventually she was the decidedly strong Prime Minister Thatcher. As this is written the decidedly conservative Nigel Farage is upending the British establishment of our day. Farage is the “architect” of “Brexit” — the move to get Britain out of the European Union. He left the Conservative Party over the issue — a quintessential “Establishment vs. Outsiders” battle. A few days ago, Farage announced he was returning to elective politics waving the banner of the Reform UK party. Which is to say, the decidedly conservative Farage is yet again shaking up British politics. As Trump has shaken up American politics. And this time around, as the news stories suggest, there is a similar Trump-style revolt gaining steam inside other European countries, with France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium among them. All of which is to say, Donald Trump has emerged as the leader of a global movement, with others around the globe following in his footsteps. And while Americans are understandably focused on their own 2024 election, it is safe to say the undercurrents of that election are flowing across Europe. In two words: Buckle in. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Biden Should Withdraw Reagan Remembered The Curious Trump Tie: Alito’s Flag and Merchan’s Trial     The post Trump-Style Candidates Rising in Europe appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Such a smart plan, it was. Get a blue state Soros D.A. like the undistinguished Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg to indict 45th and 47th President Donald Trump on something or other. On what? Who cares what? Indict on charges of Whatever. Pick something whose limitations statute has expired. Add some mayonnaise, some pepper, some paprika — you always add paprika — and file the indictment. If you are still too lazy or stupid to make up a valid crime, just leave it out. If you get an anti-Trump judge and an anti-Trump jury, you don’t need a crime. They will convict him anyway on 34 counts of Whatever. The Democrats’ brilliant foolproof lawfare strategy was structured to tie up Trump through November and pile on him guilty verdict after guilty verdict. So they get a judge who donates his own money to anti-Trump Democrats and whose daughter becomes a million-dollar-baby off anti-Trump merchandise. Then you get a Manhattan jury. Remember: a guilty verdict on a criminal case must be unanimous (except in Braggland). That means if you are on that Manhattan jury, and the jury fails to convict, you must go back to your job in Manhattan the next day and explain why you screwed up and let Trump get away. Then you have to answer to your Manhattan neighbors, your Manhattan church friends, your Manhattan clients or patients, your Manhattan family. So you avoid the hassle, vote to convict for Whatever, and call it a day. (READ MORE from Dov Fischer: American Lawfare? Time to Bean Them With a High, Hard Fastball) Witnesses? You don’t need real witnesses in Braggland. Heck, just pull some people who knock on people’s doors every Sunday morning and who hand out The Watchtower — people who call themselves “J Witnesses.” You want more? Well, let’s get a stripper and hooker. That will guarantee a worldwide audience. And, after all, if you cannot trust a hooker who can you trust? And, just for good luck, bring in a convicted conman, crook, and perjurer, and make him your star witness. Made for TV, based on a true story. Not enough? Put a gag order on Trump, but let everyone else defame him. Deny his main witnesses the right to testify in their areas of expertise. Yell at one of his witnesses and threaten to throw that guy in jail because you don’t like the way he is looking at you. And tell the jury in that criminal case that they don’t have to be unanimous. OK, that is Democrat Lawfare Step 1. So they put on their show, get their hooker, get their bag man, get their 34 counts of Guilty-of-Whatever in a day.  And Trump’s supporters start donating so many tens of millions so fast that even Michael Cohen would not be able to collect and tally it all, and take half of it for himself.  Even “Never Trumpers” were driven to donate to Trump because the Trump campaign is no longer neatly something that “Never Trumpers” can oppose with gusto. They are now forced to fight for the future of their democracy. It may be fun to virtue signal and say, “I am a Republican, but I will not vote for a dictator.” Lovely. But now they come face-to-face with the unappetizing reality that, with Democrat Lawfare like that of Stalin’s NKVD and KGB, and like Hitler’s People’s Court under the Honorable Judge-President Roland Freisler, tyranny is here. Bragg and Juan Merchan got their verdict. And Trump cashed in. But what do the polls say? How badly has this hurt Trump? The polls are okay but do not matter anyway. Elections are five months away. In October, no one will remember Juan Merchan or his 34 counts. Remember how much people were exercised about Putin invading Ukraine? No one cares about that now, except for those on both sides of the aisle who have focused on it passionately from Day One. Remember all the tears for Israel after the October 7 massacre? No one cares about that now, except for those on both sides of the aisle who have focused on it from Day One. Honestly, do 90 percent of Americans know the differences among Jabaliah (a New Orleans food?), Khan Yunis, and Rafah? (The Philadelphi Corridor? I didn’t know Gaza was in Pennsylvania!)   Remember how every day everyone on TikTok talked about nothing but Taylor Swift? She is so “yesterday.” Now it’s all about Caitlyn Clark. And when was the last time anyone mentioned Cardi B? Thus, Democrats who passionately hate Trump will carry the 34 verdicts to November. Those who support him will donate 34 times as much money to him as they ever did before. And the vast middle ground of Undecideds and Independents will wonder whether gasoline under Biden will hit $34 a gallon and whether illegal immigration will hit 34 million. The Democrats’ brilliant foolproof lawfare strategy was structured to tie up Trump through November and pile on him guilty verdict after guilty verdict. So what has unfolded? The crooked “January 6 Prosecution,” run by a Democrat who has a partisan record, is all tied up itself. Procedural and substantive appeals have jammed it on hold, while the Supreme Court first must decide on the boundaries of presidential immunity, and determine whether and how the real law distinguishes between a president’s “private” acts and his “public presidential acts.” They will figure it out and eventually hand down their decision. My predictions on that one: Sotomayor is a political hack and will hold that Trump can be prosecuted for everything and forever — even for Whatever. She Who Cannot Define a Woman also is a hack and will join with Sotomayor, as she always does.  Kagan will write an honest, thoughtful liberal opinion. Roberts probably will go with her to prove that there are no Obama Judges or Trump Judges. And the other five probably will rule that a president has some immunity but not absolute immunity. So the case will go back to Jack Smith, and he probably will not have enough time to prosecute it before the November election. Thus, Lawfare Step 2 has become a nullity. Nonetheless, Trump will be able to raise more money off it and gain more sympathy from Independents. And what about Lawfare Step 3, the Florida Documents Case? That judge is being deeply judicious, making contemplative decisions on pre-trial motions, and that case probably will not go to trial before November. The Democrat Lawfare Mafia are going insanely crazy — bat-feces crazy — over that one. Every day now, another left-wing newspaper or online magazine publishes an op-ed article or generates a “news” story quoting a frustrated source, ruefully fuming that the “case” won’t make it to trial before elections because the judge overseeing it is incompetent and an idiot. The judge, the Hon. Aileen Cannon, has issued a ruling indefinitely delaying the trial, and all the left are ganging up on her, saying she is an idiot incapable of making up her mind. (If Republicans said that about a female Obama Judge, they would be called misogynists and mansplainers. And, since she is of Colombian parental heritage, Dems also would call her critics anti-Latinx.) (READ MORE: A Disgusting, Filthy Corruption of American Justice) Well, is Judge Cannon really that much of a moron? Maybe. All I know is that she graduated from Duke, then from University of Michigan Law School magna cum laude and Order of the Coif. That’s as good as it gets, and that law school regularly is ranked in the Top Ten out of 196 American law schools.  Then she was an attorney at a Top 15 national law firm Gibson Dunn, then served successfully as a federal prosecutor for seven years. So, waddya think? Maybe she’s a dope? In order to prove that Judge Cannon is a Latina dummy, virtually all media go to the same one guy for juicy quotes, attacking her. Their pit bull is a retired, ex-state court judge. MSN quotes him. CNN digs him up. Huffington Post, too. Also Salon. And Newsweek. And Mediaite. And Yahoo. A retired guy could make a nice side income just on the residuals for attacking her. Ah, and that leaves the best for last: Lawfare Step 4 — the Fani Willis Circus in Georgia. You know: the one with the married-to-another-woman guy, Nathan Wade, who spent time with Fani when the bedroom lights went out at night in Georgia. Oral argument on the motions to disqualify her or even to throw out the whole “case” is scheduled for October 4. Briefs will be filed. Appellate judges will deliberate. Draft opinions will be circulated among the judges before a final version is published. Text will be tightened. Spelling and grammar will be checked and improved. Cases will be Shepardized to make sure all citations are kosher and not mischaracterized or ChatGPT ideations. So that one will not be tried until after elections. Thus, the Biden Lawfare Scheme. As with Biden himself — too smart by half. The Lawfare cases will not be tried before elections, after all. Just the one Bragg-Merchan case. That was the one that led to Trump raising $53 million in 24 hours, for a total of $141 million in May (as compared to $76 million the month before, which itself was his all-time high until then, powered by that month of Braggadocio). And along the way, while physically confined to New York for the trial Trump’s handlers were practically forced finally to schedule him for speeches and huge campaign events in black-majority Harlem, and Hispanic-majority South Bronx, shocking nay-sayers that Trump has enormous support there, too — much more than imagined — among American blacks and Hispanics. Or, as Biden would say to America’s African Americans: “If you’re for Trump, you ain’t black.” It is fascinating to watch the corruption of justice turn on its corrupters. The post Biden’s Lawfare Against Trump Ain’t Following the Script appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Besides devoting a whole month to celebrating one of the seven deadly sins (for the poorly uneducated, that would be “pride”), annual Pride Months are intended to normalize and even promote an ever-expanding list of sexual orientations (pan-, grey, or demi-sexual, anyone?) and gender identities. We are a long way from the simpler times leading up to Obergefell, where the main focus was on gays, lesbians, and whether their intimate relationships and, if they formed them, households, were just as likely to be healthy, in every important respect, as heterosexual ones. These debates seem almost quaint now that, for the most part, gay rights arguments about the healthiness and normalcy of same-sex sexual relationships have triumphed in public opinion and our laws, whether these claims are empirically valid or not. Studies like this, and social scientists willing to honestly report politically incorrect results from them, are pretty hard to come by. Yet there is a set of facts, assiduously ignored or downplayed by mainstream media, that bucks the now-standard narrative. It has to do with violence against women by their intimate partners — that is, spouses, ex-spouses, boy- or girlfriends, live-in lovers, and so on. Now, female victimization by intimate partners is a real problem that ought to concern all citizens of good will. But not only have progressives focused more attention on this over the years, they have often been selective in doing so, concentrating more on promoting feminist ideology vilifying men and casting doubt on the safety of heterosexual marriage than upon alleviating the plight of most real women. For example, a disproportionate amount of liberal commentary on intimate partner violence has focused on abusive husbands, despite decades of hard data verifying that women in stable marriages face much lower risk than those in other relational situations. When they are not casting suspicion on husbands (ridiculously, often by lumping them in with boyfriends, live-in lovers, ex- or separated spouses, etcetera), they are fretting about males in general, amidst hand-wringing about “toxic masculinity.” (READ MORE from David Ayers: Marriage, the Catholic Way) Lesbians being victimized by their female lovers? In the mainstream (although not LGBT)) media ignoring or downplaying the degree of intimate partners violence experienced by lesbians, while focusing almost exclusively on abuse of heterosexual women by their partners, is the norm, evident in many college classrooms and media punditry. But the fact is that, among women, in most measured areas lesbians are consistently somewhat to much more likely to experience intimate partner violence, compared to heterosexuals. Women certainly are not generally safer in the arms of other women. But this reality is inconvenient for progressives pushing the “gay relationships are just as likely to be as healthy as everyone else’s” narrative. Three researchers compared intimate partner violence victimizations for homosexuals and bisexuals versus heterosexuals.  Published in 2013 by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it drew upon a national survey conducted in 2010. The sample was huge — 16,507 adults, 9,086 of whom were women. Since only about 1.3 percent, or roughly 118, of the women identified as lesbian (despite the bogus, inflated numbers often tossed around by gay rights activists), differences between them and heterosexual women that would be statistically significant with a larger lesbian sample were not in this study. But the differences are mostly consistent and clear none-the-less.  This study is important and routinely cited by those concerned with intimate partner violence in the LGBT community. It is not the only research highlighting these realities, but it is probably among the largest and most detailed. Studies like this, and social scientists willing to honestly report politically incorrect results from them, are pretty hard to come by. I cannot cover all of their findings here. But I can give readers a flavor. The study defined physical violence as “a range of behaviors from slapping, pushing, or shoving to severe acts such as being beaten, burned, or choked.” The percentages of women experiencing such violence at some point in their lifetimes were 40 percent for lesbians compared to 32 percent for heterosexuals. For “slapped, pushed, or shoved” these percentages were 36 percent for lesbians and 30 percent for heterosexuals. For “severe physical violence” (including such actions as beating, burning, knives and guns, kicking and hair pulling), the percentages were 29 percent for lesbians versus 24 percent for heterosexuals. These differences were not statistically significant (see above) but they were not tiny and this data was consistent. In each measure, heterosexual women did better. The authors reported the sex of perpetrator for a handful of measures. One was for overall intimate partner violence, in which they combined rape, stalking, and physical violence. Despite the inclusion of rape (where offenders are overwhelmingly male), over 67 percent of lesbians had only ever been intimate partner victimized in one or more of these ways by other females. Thus, this victimization does not primarily reflect the experiences lesbians had during some phase in which they had male intimate partners. Overwhelmingly, it is female-on-female violence. Psychological aggression is harder to define. The list of behaviors the study identified in this category was lengthy and serious, including anger perceived as dangerous, name-calling and humiliation, demeaning, various threats including physical harm to the victim and others they love or even pets, preventing the victims from using their own money or contacting family and friends, destroying their property, and the like. Sixty-three percent of lesbians had experienced some form of psychological aggression by an intimate partner, compared to 47.5 percent of heterosexuals. Overall differences in psychological aggression actually were statistically significant, again, despite the small number of lesbians surveyed. Putting findings like these together with what we have known about the relative intimate victimization rates of married women, the notion that we can be sure that lesbians are as likely to be in healthy intimate relationships as heterosexual women, and especially married ones, does not appear to be accurate. This runs counter to the pervasive image portrayed in the mass media. (READ MORE: IVF Companies Depend on Abortion) Yet, other than shoring up the public image of lesbians in committed relationships, how does this muting of the facts help them? There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about these realities that have nothing to do with hating homosexuals or trying to marginalize and demean them. When are people going to be able to discuss facts like this, and the possible reasons for them, openly and honestly—not just in the gay press or scientific literature but in the public square — without fear that they will be accused of homophobia, cancelled, or worse? The post Intimate Partner Violence In Lesbian Relationships appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The radical Left’s agenda isn’t only too extreme for Americans, it’s also become “personal.”  While the former is important, the latter is the kicker — the result of policies being transported from homilies into homes. By taking their failed ideology from the abstract to the concrete, the radical Left are galvanizing average Americans.  Now personally affected, the populous is rebelling against an extremist elite. Liberals have forever used the “personal” … to advance their policies as government programs. Liberals’ agenda has always been counter to average Americans’ sensibilities.  We are, after all, a center-right country.  Despite liberals’ vendetta against Trump helping increase turnout, 2020 exit polling still only showed 24 percent of respondents self-identifying as liberal, while three times as many identified as moderate (38 percent) and conservative (38 percent).  The Constitution is further evidence: hard to change by design, it is America’s ultimate foundation — sacrosanct in our secular world. Unable to change it, liberals’ successes have had to come from stretching its definitions. (READ MORE from J.T. Young: The 2024 Battleground Grows and Tilts Toward Trump) For the most part, Americans could and did ignore liberals.  The liberal agenda largely lived in Washington and certain lefty enclaves. Yes, the federal government overtaxed, overspent, and over-borrowed, but these did not discernibly affect average Americans’ lives.  The enormity made them seem unreal and their remoteness, seemingly effect-less: someone else would pay some other day. It had always been thus and regrettably, always would be, but no one looked to the federal government as a model of efficiency.  Reagan had aptly captured average Americans’ feelings with his adage, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”  The federal government was impervious and impersonal — but more importantly, for average Americans it was “un-personal,” in that it rarely affected them. The radical Left has changed this.  They took liberals’ misguided theories to their illogical extremes.  Setting them atop their ideology — that government could not only make things better, but that government should make everything perfect — they strapped liberals’ policies to a rocket and put them into orbit across the U.S.  By so doing, the radical Left not only took liberal policies to new heights; they also brought them home for average Americans.  Accelerated and elevated, the radical Left’s extremist policies also reached their inevitable — and unmistakable — failures sooner and more visibly. “Sanctuary cities” were once a laughably liberal concept.  Virtue-signaling as legislation, they offered preening without a price.  Often far from the border, liberal enclaves were held harmless: CBP and ICE stood between them and liberalism’s consequences. Then Biden, accommodating the radical Left, opened the border.  With a welcome mat laid out, the predictable influx came.  Soon, inundation.  Costs followed: crime, crowding, and expensive government benefits. The radical Left, via Joe Biden, had brought the Left’s policies home to Americans.  It hardly stopped there. “Defund the Police!” was akin to sanctuary cities: liberals’ knee-jerk symbol of solidarity, a shibboleth uttered in sanctimony.  Again, it was easy to say while police stood between liberals and their principles. However, the radical Left meant it.  Then, they did it.   Enforcement decreased. Officers were cut, culled (leaving on their own), or cajoled (effectively standing down in accordance with the radical Left’s wishes).  DAs didn’t prosecute and judges released.  The enforcement vacuum that existed on Biden’s border moved to cities too and, like the border, what enforcement had once stopped now rose. Just as with law enforcement’s absence, the same result occurred absent fiscal self-control.  Liberals had always wanted to spend more.  However, the radical Left wanted to spend everything.  Joe Biden sought to indulge them.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2024’s end he will have spent $7.9 trillion over 2019’s pre-pandemic spending level, racked up $7.4 trillion in deficits, and put federal debt at $27.9 trillion — 99 percent of U.S. GDP.  Yes, there had been spending, deficits, and debt before, but Biden’s brought high and persistent inflation, which then brought high interest rates — both socking average Americans’ wallets. Neither was liberal coddling of public sector unions new.  To average Americans, this was government — lamentable but unavoidable.  Nothing personified it like teacher unions’ domination of public schools that overspent and underperformed.  Then came COVID.  The radical Left leveraged it to impose government broadly and, having long since seized the teachers’ unions, the two achieved prolonged school closures.  Schools went from underperforming to literally nonperforming for average Americans. To these families’ dismay, when schools were open, they often indoctrinated rather than educated.  The radical Left’s DEI, CRT, and sexual extremism found homes in homerooms.  The radical Left saw to it that parents not only had no say in the indoctrination, but even in their children’s sexualization. The radical Left saw to it that higher education took indoctrination to a higher level.  Following October 7’s terrorist attack on Israel, Jews were recast as aggressors and anti-Semitism as acceptable.  Parents watched as so-called elite colleges — which their children wouldn’t be considered for, or which they struggled to afford and where they now worried about their child’s safety — relinquished further control to the radical Left.  They saw too Biden cancel college debts — even as elitist college students were canceling Israel (and their values) — and shift the debt to them. Liberals had long embraced environmentalism.  For them Earth Day lasted all year, but for average Americans they could go about their lives the other 364.  Elsewhere there were solar panels and wind farms (bird blenders), but these only attracted attention when they blocked the Kennedys’ beach views. Then, the radical Left took charge.  With the Biden administration’s help, they sought to ban gas appliances and limit fossil fuels and gas cars — just about everything average Americans use.  To no one’s surprise (but the radical Left) when supply was attacked prices rose.  Again, average Americans paid. Average Americans have learned the radical Left are not the limousine liberals who used to show up, then leave — and leave them alone.  An extremist elite, the radical Left aren’t leaving.  And they certainly aren’t leaving average Americans alone. With fervency’s fury, they have put platitudes into practice on a mass scale.  The radical Left did so expansively and expensively.  And expressly: the costs being almost immediate and unmistakably clear.  This has played out painfully — and most importantly, personally — for average Americans. There was a discernible difference between abstract and concrete, between liberal rhetoric and radical reality.  What had existed only on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the radical Left had brought to average Americans’ doorstep — then over the threshold. (READ MORE: Forget Cancel Culture. The Real Danger Is the Left’s Creation Culture.) When liberal policies were simply abstract inanity, average Americans could roll their eyes, hold their tongues, and let their lives go on.  But the radical Left made the abstract concrete for average Americans.  For their part, average Americans have found the radical Left’s policies as unavoidable as they are unendurable. Conservatives should see no little irony here.  Liberals have forever used the “personal” — isolated anecdotes — to advance their policies as government programs.  Now, the radical Left’s policy has made their programs “personal” on a mass scale for average Americans.  Not surprisingly, average Americans are pushing back. J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023. The post Average Americans Are Taking the Radical Left Personally appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

My hyper-idealistic political book Radical Middle was published in 2004, and to nearly everyone’s surprise, including mine, it attracted some attention.  Suddenly I was being asked to speak at big bookstores and other mainstream venues, and I was on the radio a lot too. She let me sit with her and hold her hand, but it felt like the hand of a dead person. I felt way out of my league.  I’d been brought up in placid, small-town Minnesota, and still secretly wished I could be back there.  On top of that, as a dedicated opponent of capitalism and its materialistic values, I was wedded to the alternative culture.  Even after attending law school in my 40s — to sharpen my analytic skills after my first visionary political newsletter went kaput — I remained loyal to what I called “voluntary simplicity” and wary of becoming what I called a “groan-up.” The year Radical Middle was published, I was living in Washington DC and putting out another visionary political newsletter.  It was barely keeping me afloat but taking nearly all my time.  I liked to think that that’s why I had no steady girlfriend: I was too poor, too dedicated, too impossibly idealistic.  So I was touched as well as alarmed when I began receiving admiring emails from a female who described herself only as “Lauren.”  I came to think of her as The Stalker and was quietly proud that I had one. (READ MORE from Mark Satin: My Super-Woke Ideas Helped Kill My Former Girlfriend) The Stalker’s first email greeted me the night I returned to my office-apartment, alone, after being featured on Kojo Nnamdi’s popular talk radio show in DC.  Her email was effusive and weird and I didn’t answer it.  Later emails, also unanswered, claimed that she’d attended my talks at the fashionable Politics and Prose Bookstore on upper Connecticut Avenue and at the cavernous downtown Barnes & Noble. I couldn’t help myself: after her seventh or eighth email I finally responded, asking for her picture, and she directed me to some on an internet site called “The Malakim,” Hebrew for “the angels.”  I glowed at that, remembering how I’d felt protected by angels while couch-surfing (and double-bed-surfing) across North America to promote my New Age Politics book in the late 1970s.  And her pictures were beyond lovely.  She seemed about 18 (if that), with a strong alert face and long flowing hair, and a lean sensual body that reminded me of my first girlfriend’s body, 40 years before.  My sexual imagination ran wild. I tried to be responsible, kept emailing her that I was “way too old” for her, but she wouldn’t listen.  When she emailed me that she’d grown up in Iowa (kissing cousin to my long-lost Minnesota), I invited her over at once.  Would I pay for a cab?  Of course I would, three times over; when can you get here angel? *  *  * As soon as The Stalker arrived, she called me on her mobile phone to come out and pay for her cab — apparently she wasn’t willing to risk that I’d refuse to reimburse her.  It was the first time I’d heard her voice, and neither its message nor its tone appealed to me.  After I came out to pay the cabbie, my heart dropped even more.  She did not look like her pictures.  She was at least eight years older than 18, and a bit pudgy, with hair that was shorter than mine.  I escorted her to my apartment in a state of shock.  We didn’t touch, and we hardly said a word. Once inside, she sat on my couch, a rickety old thing that a friend no longer wanted, and I fetched her a glass of carrot juice.  I placed it on an old Utne Reader on my coffee table, which was a couple of upside-down plastic milk-carton holders that I’d liberated from behind the neighborhood grocery. Now she was the one that looked shell-shocked.  “I thought you’d have, like, a fancier place,” she managed to say.  “And this room is so narrow!” “I am a lifelong advocate of voluntary simplicity!” I gushed.  I had yet to sit down.  “I wrote a whole book based on that and similar concepts in the 1970s, guess you weren’t born then.” The Stalker stared at me blankly. “And look around,” I enthused, waving my arms. “That’s Rothko’s ‘Green and Tangerine on Red’ taped to the wall, it extends your consciousness as far as you’ll let it.  And just across the street — you can see it through my window — is the National Zoo.  Who could ask for more?” “You just look so different here than you did at the bookstores, in front of an audience,” she said.  “How old are you, anyway?” “I told you at least twice in my emails, I am ridiculously, unspeakably old.  Where do you work, anyway?” “I work in community theaters here, behind the scenes, set construction, that sort of thing, but I want to break into acting … You’re not more than about 43, are you?” “I look younger than I am,” I said, sweating now.  “I’ve always looked younger ‘cause I’ve never, ever compromised, I’ve always done exactly what I want to … Hey, get up, see where I work.”  We walked into my combination bedroom and study.  “I write my newsletters here, at this display table of a desk.” “This is where you work?” she said incredulously, glancing over my banged-up office furniture and modest bed.  “I mean — this is where you relate to the world?  On the radio they said you’re an attorney.” “DC Bar number 462790,” I said.  “But I’m non-practicing, all I do is write my newsletters. Hey, if you listen closely you can hear the tapirs.  They live right behind the zoo fence.  When I relate to the world, I commune with them!  They sound like humans weeping.” The Stalker strode back to the living room and plopped down on the couch.  I gingerly followed.  “Your age, Mr. Satin?” she said. “I am 67,” I said proudly. “No you’re not,” she said. “OK. 57.” “Come on!” I showed her my non-driver identification card. “Oh my God,” she said.  “What am I doing in this claustrophobic place with a guy who’s almost 60?” “You’re exploring the universe,” I told her, seizing the opening.  “I’m doing the exact same thing in my own way.” “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, cutting me off. I was hoping that, in spite of everything, she’d warm up to me after she came out.  But all she did was inform me that my sink and toilet needed cleaning. “Right, will do,” I said, concealing my hurt. “Your parents ever see this place?” she added. “They never see me!” I said.  “I’ve been basically boycotting them ever since they hated me for dodging the draft in Canada during the Vietnam War.” “Surprise, surprise,” she said. “Thanks for visiting,” I said, avoiding her eyes.  “Can we hold hands on the coach for a while before you go?” She let me sit with her and hold her hand, but it felt like the hand of a dead person, and after about a minute I gave her $10 for the cab ride home and escorted her to my door.  Then I sank back down on the couch and pawed around for her little warm spot, but it wasn’t there. (READ MORE from Mark Satin: The Inner Lives of Socialists) I felt too foolish to cry.  But I did conk out, and when I resurfaced I felt profoundly tired — tired of living in righteous squalor, tired of refusing to reconcile with my parents, tired of preaching hyper-idealistic political fantasies, tired of not having an intimate partner to come home to.  It was as if I’d been course-corrected by some angel.  At the age of 57, for the first time since Minnesota, I longed to be a groan-up. Mark Satin is the author of Up From Socialism: My 60-Year Search for a Healing New Radical Politics (Bombardier Books, 2023). The post Another Idealistic Lefty Bites the Dust appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

On Saturday June 8, pro-Palestinian protestors in red clothing and carrying red banners surrounded the White House, proclaiming themselves the symbolic red line for Gaza that President Biden drew then ignored. The White House Press Corps has also become obsessed with the red line question. Where exactly is the red line? Has Israel crossed it? Can we know if they have? By what metric? Does the red line even exist, or has the President walked it back as the protestors allege? Questions like this have become red meat for reporters. Another similar example of this Washington parlor game was the reinforcements issue during the Vietnam War. Biden drew the red line on March 9 when MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart asked, “What is your red line with Prime Minister Netanyahu? … For instance, would invasion of Rafah, would you have urged him not to do? Would that be a red line?”  “It is a red line, but I’m never going to leave Israel,” the president answered. He stressed that “the defense of Israel is still critical” so it did not mean the U.S. would cut all aid, “but there’s red lines that if he crosses …” and then the president’s answer became vague. In a later interview Biden clarified that going into Rafah was the red line foul. (READ MORE from James S. Robbins: The Myth of Student Protest) However, when Israel in fact started going into Rafah on May 6, the White House was forced to clarify. So, whether taking the Rafah crossing, moving slowly into Rafah neighborhoods, taking control of the Gaza border with Egypt, or even sending tanks in the center of Rafah itself — none of these actions crossed the red line. The matter became acute when an Israeli airstrike on Hamas targets killed scores of Palestinian civilians. Horrific video from the scene showed charred corpses and a decapitated child. Surely this crossed the line? No, according to NSC spokesman John Kirby, because Israel is “not moving into a major ground operation in population centers in the center of Rafah.” The White House even took credit for Israel having listened to their concerns and moderated their tactics, something Israel denied. But drawing the red line at “major ground operations” is the kind of subjective definition which will mean many more such questions will be coming from journalists no matter what Israel does. This is not the first time a president has been left red-faced over red lines. In August 2012, President Obama said he had been “very clear” to Syria’s leader Bashar Assad “that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” He reiterated the point several times. Even then-Vice President Joe Biden said, “we’ve set a clear red line against the use or the transfer of” Syria’s chemical weapons.  None of this redlining would have been all that controversial except that Assad actually did use chemical weapons. Then the White House tried to deny that a red line had ever been set, or that the president didn’t really mean it, or that he meant using a lot of chemical weapons instead of just a few, or that “the world” set the red line, not Obama. Drawing a red line is a dramatic rhetorical gesture. And once drawn, they become irresistible story lines for the press. The issue is not whether red lines should exist, or if they are good policy; but rather a question of credibility when they are not enforced, or are explained away after the fact.  Another similar example of this Washington parlor game was the reinforcements issue during the Vietnam War. When major U.S. ground forces were deployed, President Johnson decided that for political reasons U.S. force commitments had to be limited. In 1965 he publicly authorized a maximum 125,000 troop deployment to Vietnam, but this number immediately began to creep upward based on military necessity. Every time the number changed, it became a story, eroding White House credibility. The troop ceiling finally leveled off at 525,000 in the summer of 1967, and this was a line Johnson was determined not to cross. For the rest of that year, U.S. forces in-country stayed slightly below this self-imposed limit.  But the following spring, after the Tet Offensive devastated North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, military leaders saw an opportunity to escalate the war and finish the job. A heated debate raged between administration factions over whether to hold the arbitrary limit sacrosanct. The on March 9, the New York Times published internal Pentagon documents on the debate leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, fueling public controversy over whether the U.S. was actually winning the war as the administration claimed. The troop increase request was taken as evidence of panic. Had there been no troop limit in the first place this story would not have landed as hard; as it was, the media storm that resulted frightened officials into abandoning the reinforcements, and the rest is history. (READ MORE: Progressives Demand a Ceasefire in Gaza. Biden’s Struggling to Give It to Them.) So for the Biden White House the red line row is a self-inflicted wound, an artificial, irrelevant issue over something the president never should have said in the first place. It puts the administration in a permanent defensive posture, in which every move by Israel will be measured against this hypothetical limit resulting in continued questioning and skepticism. Like the temporary floating pier that broke apart and beached, the Gaza red line has become another symbol of weakness for an administration that has lost control of both events and the narrative. James S. Robbins is the Dean of Academics at the Institute of World Politics and author of This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive. The post Red Faced Over Red Lines appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The aircraft carrier USS George Washington cruised through the south Atlantic last week in the first joint U.S. naval  exercise with Argentina in more than 30 years. Leftist Peronistas who  governed the country during much of those decades gave bases to China, supported Maduro’s regime in Venezuela and covered up Iran’s involvement in terrorism, as they drove the country to bankruptcy. Argentina’s new libertarian president Javier Milei, recently elected on a landslide by Argentinians suffering an annual inflation of 15,000 percent , is  changing course and his foreign minister, Diana Mondino, has just signed an agreement for “High Level Strategic Dialogue” with U.S. secretary of state Anthony Blinken . “I want a free capitalist world but it must be protected from those seeking to  prey on it,” Milei said in a recent interview with  The Free Press. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: Cuba Is Training Leftist American Anti-Semites. The Biden Administration Is Helping.) The Biden administration has had to overlook Milei’s vitriolic attacks on “ globalist collectivism” and his open admiration for Donald Trump, to  seize a much needed chance to roll back  Chinese, Russian, and Iranian encroachments on the western hemisphere which have reached alarming levels and are increasingly coordinated. “A realization by the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon that Washington could completely loose control of the hemisphere unless they took advantage of the opportunity to strengthen ties with Argentina allowed national security concerns to prevail” The American Spectator was told by Fabian Calle of the Argentine Council for International Relations, who is an advisor to the new government. Biden’s State Department had otherwise shunned right wing leaders, such as El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, who they threatened to sanction over his brutal but effective crackdown on the country’s “Mara” gangs, while appeasing communist dictators in Venezuela and Cuba to gain favor with iconic center leftists like Brazil’s Lula da Silva. Results:  Venezuela’s model of dictatorship in democratic camouflage is being adopted in other countries; Lula is parroting Hamas propaganda and welcomed Iranian war ships in Rio harbor last year. Cuba has allowed China to set up an electronic listening station and hosting a Russian naval squadron including a nuclear submarine which arrived in Havana this week and sails next to Venezuela. A series of U.S. defense and intelligence officials have traveled to Argentina for high-level discussions with their new Argentine counterparts over recent weeks. The head of the U.S. Southern Command, Gen. Laura Richardson, who has been outspoken in denouncing the growing Chinese and Russian presence in the region, has made several trips to arrange delivery of badly needed assistance to Argentina’s neglected armed forces. CIA director Nicholas Burns has flown to Buenos Aires as has FBI director Christopher Wray who arrived on board a giant Air Force C-17 Globemaster. There is some progress. Chinese construction of a port  in Tierra del Fuego dominating strategic waterways connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific has been stopped. Gen. Richardson repeatedly warned in congressional statements, that the facility would have “dual use” as a military base that could hinder the only crossing point between the two oceans for aircraft carriers which are too large to cross the Panama Canal. Negotiations are currently underway to switch the port concession over to the U.S., which also wants control of  the “Hidrovia” or a canal system under construction by China in the crime ridden Triborder region, which connects Argentina’s northern Parana river with Bolivia and could be turned into a major drug trafficking route. The FBI has been allowed to impound an Iranian Boeing 707  cargo jet covertly operated by the IRGC through a Venezuelan air charter company, which was running hundreds of flights between the Middle East and Latin America, according to Argentine security officials. It was grounded in Argentina in 2022 through the enforcement of U.S. sanctions which blocked its refueling by an American owned company servicing Argentine airports. The pilot was identified as a member of Quds as were seven other Iranians on board, most of whom carried Venezuelan passports. They were returned  to Venezuela before Milei took power, preventing a U.S. supervised interrogation. Argentine security officials told The American Spectator, however, that the secret IRGC flights involved “ logistical support” for Hezbollah cells forming throughout the hemisphere. Argentina was the target of devastating Hezbollah attacks in the 1990s and Peronista governments tried  covering up the involvement of Iranian diplomats in the bombings that demolished the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center, killing over 100 people.  A special prosecutor appointed by Argentina’s congress to investigate the case was assassinated. Argentine officials fear what China might do  if they accede to U.S. demands to dismantle a China’s Tiangong deep space ground station in Argentina’s southern Patagonian province of Neuquen equipped with a 65 foot antennae and operated by a PLA linked company that forbids outside inspection. While presumably built to guide a projected Chinese lunar expedition,  the facility could also  guide hypersonic missiles over the Antarctic for a sneak attack on the U.S., interfacing with Chinese satellite tracking stations in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba. “I’m surprised that the government of Argentina permits the Chinese armed forces to operate in Neuquen. We don’t know what Chinese soldiers are doing with that telescope”  U.S. ambassador to Buenos Aires Mark Stanley recently told the Argentine newspaper La Nacion. Construction of  the satellite base was authorized by former president Cristina Kirchner through a corrupt deal in which private owners of the 494 acres were never paid for the property. She is so worried about possible prosecutions for what was possibly the most corrupt government in Argentine history. On a recent visit to Moscow, she met with NSA defector Edward Snowden to ask him what U.S. intelligence agencies have on her. Argentine intelligence officials told The American Spectator that Cuba has greatly influenced Kirchner who declared before the Argentine congress in 2021 that “the future is with China and Russia.” Kirchner left Argentina vulnerable to Chinese economic blackmail. Beijing is already calling in a debt of an $8 billion owed through its interest free credit or SWAP system ruthlessly leveraged to exercise political control over Latin American and African governments. Argentina doesn’t have the cash to pay off China. The Peronistas emptied out the nation’s reserves, leaving  Milei with a negative balance of -1.5 billion and Beijing can further sink the economy by cutting imports from Argentina, whose entire soy bean production is committed to China. (READ MORE: Russia Is Pounding Eastern Ukraine’s Industrial Heartland) Milei is trying to generate a free market based recovery with drastic cuts in the obese state sector, diversification from commodities, and cancelation of uncompetitive trade agreements. He visited  Wall Street and Silicon Valley last week to sell his plan, receiving an enthusiastic reception from Elon Musk and other CEOs eyeing Argentina’s vast mineral wealth in lithium and copper. But if China sabotages the economy at a time in which the population is suffering the effects of austerity measures, violent protests could be activated by Venezuelan agents who have largely taken control of Peronista social organizations and labour unions, according to intelligence sources. Street violence supported by Venezuela, which has destabilized conservative governments throughout the continent in recent years, could be further coordinated with Iranian sponsored terror attacks over Milei’s  support for Israel. Securing Argentina is crucial for America’s future in its own hemisphere as well as a test for its ability to pull distressed friends out of Chinese quick sands. The next months will be critical for Milei and we can only hope that it isn’t too late to turn back the Biden administration’s failed policies in Latin America. The post Milei Must Wiggle Argentina Out of China’s Grasp appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

One aspect of post-pandemic analysis that sets my hair on fire is the folklore that in the early stages of the Covid outbreak, health experts were “trying to explain the latest public health advice to a frightened public even as scientists were struggling to learn about the new virus.” That publications like Time and the Atlantic have persisted with this “we didn’t know” memory-holing is to be expected. But when I read a similar take in The American Spectator last Friday — albeit in the context of an article I generally agreed with — I admittedly blew a fuse. Fauci and Birx lied to Americans that the “science” behind these guidelines came from research out of Australia….  No, it didn’t. In reference to the lockdowns and social distancing edicts, writer Debra J. Saunders said this: “I understand why these quick-draw policies were hatched. It was panic.” She went on: “When COVID-19 first appeared on U.S. shores, the public faced an unknown threat of dubious origin — and people were dying. Americans were desperate for information from authoritative sources.” Yet even The New York Times observed on the first anniversary of “fifteen-days-to-slow-the-spread,” that in early 2020 scientists knew pretty much everything there was to know about the virus: “how it spreads, who among us is more vulnerable, and what simple precautions can be taken against it.” (READ MORE from Carina Benton: Meloni Must Stop the Boats) If you zero in on the critical period from mid-February to mid-March, 2020, one point becomes glaringly obvious: although the “experts” knew this novel disease didn’t pose a threat to most people, they recommended unprecedented and severe containment measures, which we now know weren’t based on science but “sort of just appeared,” as Dr. Anthony Fauci put it. That’s not “panic.” It’s malfeasance. Let’s retrace the timeline. In mid-February, 2020 a team of 25 international experts led by Senior Advisor to the WHO-Director-General, Dr. Bruce Aylward, embarked on a two-week fact-finding trip to Wuhan. The WHO-China Joint Mission’s February 28 report praised China’s “ambitious, agile, and aggressive disease containment effort” in the face of a “highly contagious” and “rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic.” However, the numbers buried within the document provided crucial context. The report found that “approximately 80 percent of laboratory confirmed patients [in China] had mild to moderate disease [and recovered].” In children under 19, Covid was mild and constituted around 2.4 percent of reported cases; only 0.2 percent of children infected with the virus developed “critical disease.” Aylward later confirmed that children did not appear to be major spreaders of Covid and there had been very few examples of outbreaks in schools. The report stated that asymptomatic spread (i.e. people with no symptoms spreading the disease) “appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.” Dr Aylward told a session organized by Dr. Craig Dalton for the Health Protection Officers of Australia on March 6 that widespread asymptomatic spread was an “urban myth.” Nevertheless, a schizophrenic narrative quickly emerged and was replicated over the first two weeks of March in press briefings, media releases, and interviews across the globe. On the one hand, there was consensus that the disease was mild for the vast majority of people. We heard this almost verbatim on March 4 from Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, on March 12 from French President Emmanuel Macron, and on March 6 from Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly. On March 16 Kelly emphasized that “for most people, it is a minor disease and we’re finding that wherever it has developed in the world … that’s pretty standard.” Fauci stated in a March 4 White House Coronavirus Taskforce press briefing that “the risk of infection throughout the [U.S.] is … low…” and “the risk for a young person who gets infected [of] getting into trouble is really low.” Dr. Robert Redfield, then Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), echoed this. He explained that the recommended mitigation strategies, including washing hands, covering sneezes and coughs, and staying home when sick, were “absolutely no different than what we ask the American public to do for the flu.” On March 8 U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams reassured Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan that “most people who get the coronavirus are going to have a mild disease,” that “very few will actually need to be hospitalized” and that “the average age of people who are dying from coronavirus is 80 plus.” On March 11, Fauci, Redfield, and Dr. Robert Kadlec, Assistant Secretary of Human Services for Preparedness and Response, testified to the House Oversight and Reform Committee that “the immediate risk of this new virus to the American public is low” and that “our nation’s healthcare system is better prepared than it has ever been.” Yet at the same time, there was fear mongering and an unmistakable drive towards replicating China’s unprecedented lockdown strategy. Aylward supported implementing extreme social distancing (the WHO was at the time arbitrarily recommending 2 meters) and restricting freedom of movement. In a Feb. 25 telebriefing, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the CDC’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and early incident manager for the Covid response, warned Americans of “severe disruption” to everyday life as she braced the public to expect “school closings, workplace shutdowns, and the canceling of large gatherings.” On February 27 Fauci was privately encouraging former “Dallas” actress and AIDS awareness advocate, Morgan Fairchild, of all people, to prep her social media followers for eventual “behavioral adjustments” including “social distancing, teleworking, temporary closure of schools.” Dr. Deborah Birx later admitted to advocating full lockdowns under the euphemism of “flatten-the-curve guidance.” (READ MORE: To Win the ‘Culture War,’ We Need Fewer Conservatives and More Counter-Revolutionists) Hence on March 9 the groundwork for lockdowns was officially laid via the earliest CDC guidelines. As I previously reported, Fauci and Birx lied to Americans that the “science” behind these guidelines came from research out of Australia (authored, funnily enough, by the very Dr. Dalton who had interviewed the WHO’s Dr. Aylward on March 6.) No, it didn’t. Fauci had never even contacted the Australians. Their paper had been published online only days before and wasn’t peer-reviewed, which Fauci knew. In any case, it was hardly “science.” The paper relied on a combination of dodgy Chinese data and pandemic influenza research that actually found no proven benefit from the most common social distancing measures. What followed next is best described in Birx’s own words : The White House had handed down guidance, and the governors took that ball and ran with it …California was first, doing so on March 18. New York followed on March 20.… In relatively short order by the end of March and the first week of April, there were few holdouts. The circuit-breaking, flattening-the-curve shutdown had begun.” No, she wasn’t panicked; she was elated. I have low expectations of jail time for these sociopaths and sadists. But let’s at least cut the fables and acknowledge a historical fact, very much on the public record, and right in front of the nose of anyone who bothers to look: they knew the disease wasn’t dangerous to most people, yet they locked us up anyway.    The post Health ‘Experts’ Knew Covid Wasn’t Dangerous To Most Americans appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from Redacted: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/