America has an administration and a Congress which consciously seek to expand the size and scope of government in the tradition set out by the Progressives and New Dealers. They came to power assuming that in times of economic distress Americans would be more amenable to or supportive of big government programs. This was a lesson they absorbed directly or secondhand from the great New Deal historians Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and James McGregor Burns, and from Franklin Roosevelt himself. The American people, the property-owning majority, even in this time of economic distress, seem to be embracing instead a culture of independence, a culture as old as the republic itself.
The Obama administration knew that it had this rot in the middle of the process on offshore drilling – yet it empowered an already discredited, disgraced agency to essentially be in charge."
The stark reality is that while Turkey and the United States are not enemies in the Middle East, they are fast becoming competitors. Whereas the United States seeks to remain the predominant power in the region and, as such, wants to maintain a political order that makes it easier for Washington to achieve its goals, Turkey clearly sees things differently. The Turks are willing to bend the regional rules of the game to serve Ankara's own interests. If the resulting policies serve U.S. goals at the same time, good. If not, so be it.
The impending end of the Atlantic Era reflects the self-inflicted wounds that Europe and America have each suffered over the past decade.
The American left has turned its back on the incomparably rich and sophisticated political tradition that has been bequeathed to us. The narrative of the left has this great tactical virtue: It is simple, even simple-minded, in its conception, lacking the slightest nuance. Perhaps this accounts for the left’s singularly empty rhetoric; beneath its ad hominem attacks, faux emoting, and tactical calculation, its intellectual architecture could not support a feather.
The foundational American myth of empire is exceptionalism, the belief, dating back to the Puritans, that the U.S. is different, better, and morally superior to the rest of the world. Americans have always looked at the outside world suspiciously and viewed it as a source of contagion: war, imperialism, militarism, religious intolerance, non-democratic forms of governance, and latterly totalitarianism, genocide, and terrorism. All these bad things, we believe, come from “over there.”
Protest against a Republican-run federal government, no matter how intemperate, is patriotic. Protest against Democratic-controlled government leads inexorably Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. No matter how anfractuous the logic, the fact that such protest is now widespread is what has Clinton seriously disturbed.
Obama’s foreign policy has two pillars: conciliation as a tool for peace (defined as lending a close ear to every recalcitrant nation, while abjuring any American right to be censorious); and an avowed preference for pragmatism over any values-based evangelism (in effect, the elevation of pragmatism to the status of directive principle). Commentators have observed that there is an element of Bush repudiation in Obama’s foreign policy. I would go further: Bush repudiation is not “an” element. It is “the” element.
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Victor David Hanson for Pajamas Media
This new America is ultimately predicated on the notion that we were born equal and must die absolutely equal as well. And this is entirely within our grasp, if we just understand that individual responsibility, talent, natural endowment, chance, merit, luck, tragedy, and a dozen other variables far too complex for government to imagine, much less solve, in fact, are not the real obstacles to ensuring equality.
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Joseph I. Lieberman, UNITED STATES SENATOR
History has shown time and again that when a regime tyrannizes its own citizens, ultimately it will fail and freedom will prevail. Standing in solidarity with the people of Iran is, to my mind, both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative.
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Vera Lynn for The Reactionary
In California we have a surplus of vapid, Zombie-like people and air-headed celebrities only interested in some euphoric Utopia of a socialized system that can provide for those whom they believe can't provide for themselves.
Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States--controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture--has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome.
When President Obama makes wise decisions, as I believe he has done in some respects on Afghanistan, and in reversing his plan to release incendiary photos, he deserves our support. And when he faults or mischaracterizes the national security decisions we made in the Bush years, he deserves an answer. The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our President's understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of this country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric, but on a truthful telling of history.
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Richard James for The Reactionary
The freedoms that Americans purchased at great personal peril are under threat in America today. The wise protections built as foundations for our Constitutional system are eroding through the inaction of our Legislature. Two hundred years of successful government are at risk if current abuses become accepted practices. The sacrifices of our revolutionary forebears to free themselves from the caprice of unchecked power will lose relevancy. We must act to restore the balance of power to protect our nation.
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Alexander Ackley R.A. for The Reactionary
The international press – the chronicler and custodian of anti-Americanism - declare that we are all Americans, and that Barack Hussein Obama is the President of the World. The pathological hatred of everything Bush – much of it exported abroad by the American mainstream media (i.e. the grey and tattered lady, the New York Times, and all the servile publications and media outlets that parrot its fatuous, pseudo-urbane lefty agitprop) – has passed its apogee and will now recede into the mists of history. Rebirth is in the air. What follows the benighted Bush era will be something totally apart from politics, we are told. A phenomenon has been delivered and he will sweep the carcass of what Norman Mailer once described as Washington D.C.’s “deadening verbiage” – along with many of its dishonorable traditions – into the dustbin.
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Peter Brookes for The Reactionary
At least 60 former Guantanamo detainees who were released from the facility have returned to terrorism.
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APOCRYPHA for The Reactionary
The Interior/MMS cesspool of Bush was merely extended to his successor. These guys are as thick as thieves. Crony capitalism. It was business as usual at MMS after Obama took over. “Categorical exclusions” were issued to BP by Salazar. The hypocrisy, then, of all the rabid vitriol and far-out demands for up-front billions, ring as hollow as ever. It’s a show. A damn show.
The "ruling class" has burgeoned in size and pretense, has undertaken wars it has not won, presided over a declining economy and mushrooming debt, made life more expensive, raised taxes, and talked down to the American people.
It has long been impossible to cut anything in Washington. Every proposal for a reduction is met with hysteria from some special interest. The hysteria is then amplified by the media. There is wailing, there are tears. The final appeal is always made for the children. It always works. They will suffer, goes the refrain. What can politicians do? They back out while the rent-seekers lick their chops. In the meantime, the debt just keeps growing.
American conservatives, particularly the fiscal variety, tend to hold up the European Union as a model of irresponsible, big-spending economic policy. But consider this: According to E.U. rules, member countries cannot maintain budget deficits above 3 percent of gross domestic product; nor can their total debt rise above 60 percent of GDP. The U.S. budget deficit in 2009 was three times the E.U.’s limit, and total debt will zoom past the 60 percent threshold sometime this year. Washington makes Paris look frugal.
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Edwin Meese, Grover Norquist, Tony Perkins...and many more...
Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead - forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?
American academia has been transformed into the most postmodernist, know-nothing, anti-American, anti-military, anti-capitalist, Marxist institution in our society. It is now a bastion of situational ethics and moral relativity and teaches that there are no evil people, only misunderstood and oppressed people. American academia is now a very intolerant place, As Ann Coulter, who has been driven off more than one campus podium because of her conservative views, has put it, "There is free speech for thee, but not for me."
Russian “Illegals” Not Alone in Trying to Seal U.S. Secrets
Anyone who underplays the perils that Russia and its tactics presents to the US in... more