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Ruth King

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When great institutions lie By Caroline B. Glick

By on September 9th, 2017

Over the past week, two major US institutions have produced studies that discredit their names and reputations as credible organizations. Their actions are important in and of themselves. But they also point to a disturbing trend in the US in which the credibility of important American institutions is being undermined from within by their members who pursue narrow partisan or ideological agendas in the name of their institutions.

The political implications of this larger trend were clearly in evidence in the 2016 presidential election. From a larger, long-term sociological perspective, if the current trend is not reversed the implications for American society will likely be long lasting and deeply destructive.

The first study was produced by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. It dealt with the Obama administration’s policies regarding the war in Syria and specifically the acts of mass murder undertaken by the Assad regime. Authored by Cameron Hudson, a former Obama administration national security official who now serves as the director of the museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, the report absolved the Obama administration of all responsibility of the bloodbath in Syria.

As reported by Tablet magazine, the paper argued that “a variety of factors, which were more or less fixed, made it very difficult from the beginning for the US government to take effective action to prevent atrocities in Syria.”

The paper’s claim was based on “computational modeling and game theory methods, as well as interviews with experts and policy-makers.” It argued that had then-president Barack Obama not ignored his own redline and actually responded with force to the regime’s 2013 chemical weapons attack at Ghouta, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

In the last months of the Obama administration, Obama appointed several of his loyalists, including his deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, to positions on the board of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Rhodes was one of the architects of Obama’s Syria policy.

After sections of the report were released to Tablet and the report was posted on the museum’s website, its findings were angrily rejected by prominent Jewish communal leaders and human rights activists.

For instance, literary critic Leon Wieseltier told Tablet, “The first thing I have to say is: Shame on the Holocaust Museum.”

He added, “If I had the time I would gin up a parody version of this that will give us the computational- modeling algorithmic counterfactual analysis of [then-US assistant secretary of war] John J. McCloy’s decision not to bomb the Auschwitz ovens in 1944. I’m sure we could concoct the f***ing algorithm for that, too.”

Wieseltier was exactly right. A mathematical model is based on inputs and outputs. If you input specific data, you will get specific consequences. From an academic perspective, the study’s findings are worthless.

In the wake of the firestorm the report provoked, the museum pulled the study from its website and canceled its scheduled formal presentation on September 11.

But the damage that the Holocaust Memorial Museum did to its reputation by producing and publishing a transparently false, politically motivated report is not something that can be mitigated by pulling it from its website.

As some of the Jewish communal leaders, who spoke to Tablet suggested, the Holocaust Memorial Museum diminished its moral authority as an institution by publishing a report clearly produced to rewrite recent history in a manner that absolved the Obama administration of all responsibility for the mass murder in Syria.

While distressing, the impact of the Holocaust Memorial Museum’s action is limited to a historical falsehood. The goal of the second study published this week by an esteemed institution is to distort and indeed block discussion about a problem that is ongoing.

This week, Stanford University’s Research Group in Education and Jewish Studies published a report which purports to show that there is no significant antisemitism on US college campuses and that Jewish students do not feel threatened by antisemitism.

The Stanford’s conclusions fly in the face of a massive body of data, collected by researchers over the past decade, which all show the opposite to be the case. If the Stanford study is believed, it will discredit the work of hundreds of professional researchers and academics, journalists and Jewish and academic leaders throughout the US.

But that’s the thing of it. The Stanford study is utter nonsense.

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MELANIE PHILLIPS: THE AXIS OF DESTRUCTION

By on September 9th, 2017

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to fling open the doors of Germany to more than a million migrants from the developing world baffled many. Although only a minority of these migrants were refugees fleeing persecution, with most of them seeking instead the chance of economic opportunities in Europe, it is widely believed that Mrs Merkel saw the presence of at least a proportion of Syrian refugees amongst their number as an opportunity finally to shake off the spectre of her country’s belligerent past and recast its reputation as a nation governed instead by conscience and compassion.http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-axis-of-destruction/
What she triggered, however, was political and social crisis. The migrants brought with them a disproportionate amount of violence, mainly sexual and directed at German women and girls. The political crisis was perhaps not so much in Germany, where she is ahead in pre-election opinion polling, but more widely in Europe where the combination of the Merkel gesture, the knowledge that many more millions were trying to get to Europe and the EU’s own free movement rule raised the spectre of an unmanageable flood of migrants causing social chaos and destroying European identity itself.
As Robert Curry points out sharply in this article: “In World War II, Germany’s conquest of Europe and subsequent defeat left the continent in ruins. This time, however, Germany’s actions seem designed to bring about Europe’s destruction by inviting conquest rather than by initiating it”.
Curry makes the equally sharp point that, far from being on the same historic page as Britain, France and America in the creation of modern western civilisation, Germany stood against it long before the horrors of Nazism. While Britain, France and America produced the Enlightenment, Germany produced the counter-Enlightenment.
Actually, there were significant differences within the Enlightenment itself in that, while Enlightenment thinking in Britain lay squarely within the context if Biblical morality, the French version was militantly atheistic, creating some of the distorted thinking in the west that passes for modern progressivism today. But most of that distortion can be traced back to German Romanticism that rejected Enlightenment thinking, and which led Germany to become such a problem for the west.
With Germany such a weak link in the chain, the enemies of the west understand very well that mass migration is the way they can destroy it through what might be called demographic colonialism. Turkey’s President Erdogan, who has said in terms that mass migration is the way to conquer the west for Islam, has his thumb on the migration spigot. He is threatening to release it and flood Europe with more Muslim migrants, thus blackmailing the EU to grant Turkey membership – and thus flood Europe with more Muslim migrants.
And now Dr Mordechai Kedar, the Middle East and Islam expert who thinks out of the box, has presented a yet more chilling scenario. He suggests that Iran and Russia plan to destroy western Europe, the US and Canada through a new wave of millions of Syrian Sunnis fleeing the Shi’ite takeover of Syria.
He writes that the millions of Syrian refugees who have fled the civil war will not be able to return once hostilities finally end, for two reasons: first, the place is in ruins, and second, they will be in justified fear of the new rulers of Syria – Shi’ite Iran.
“Iran has been moving Shiites from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan to Syria for a long time in a clear attempt to change the demographic makeup of the country from the Sunni majority it had before the civil war broke out in 2011. The issue could not be more clear because it is no secret that the pre-civil war Sunni majority considered the Alawite rulers heretic idol worshippers who had no right to live in Syria, much less rule over it.

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NORTH KOREA’S ULTIMATUM TO AMERICA :CAROLINE GLICK

By on September 9th, 2017

The nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.

If the previous round of this confrontation earlier this summer revolved around Pyongyang’s threat to attack the US territory of Guam, Sunday’s test, together with North Korea’s recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental US, was a direct threat to US cities.

In other words, the current confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.

The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming.

First, because this is about the lives of Americans, rather than allied populations like Japan and South Korea, the US cannot be diffident in its response to North Korea’s provocation. While attenuated during the Obama administration, the US’s position has always been that US military forces alone are responsible for guaranteeing the collective security of the American people.

Pyongyang is now directly threatening that security with hydrogen bombs. So if the Trump administration punts North Korea’s direct threat to attack US population centers with nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council, it will communicate profound weakness to its allies and adversaries alike.

Obviously, this limits the options that the Trump administration has. But it also clarifies the challenge it faces.

The second implication of North Korea’s test of their plutonium-based bomb is that the US’s security guarantees, which form the basis of its global power and its alliance system are on the verge of becoming completely discredited.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Trish Regan, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton was asked about the possible repercussions of a US military assault against North Korea for the security of South Korea.

Regan asked, “What are we risking though if we say we’re going to go in with strategic military strength?… Are we going to end up with so many people’s lives gone in South Korea, in Seoul because we make that move?” Bolton responded with brutal honesty.

“Let me ask you this: how do you feel about dead Americans?” In other words, Bolton said that under prevailing conditions, the US faces the painful choice between imperiling its own citizens and imperiling the citizens of an allied nation. And things will only get worse. Bolton warned that if North Korea’s nuclear threat is left unaddressed, US options will only become more problematic and limited in the years to come.

This then brings us to the third lesson of the current round of confrontation between the US and North Korea.

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Dreamers and Their Dreams by Linda Goudsmit

By on September 9th, 2017

Civil rights dreamer Martin Luther King Jr. had a 20th century dream. He dreamed that one day all children would be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed an American dream that embraced our country’s racial ideals of freedom and equality.

Patriotic dreamer President John F. Kennedy had a 20th century dream. He dreamed that Americans would ask what they could do for their country not what their country could do for them. John F. Kennedy dreamed an American dream that embraced our country’s patriotic ideals of freedom and equality.

JFK was alive to hear King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Both men were assassinated – their dreams shattered by bullets.

President Donald J. Trump has a dream. He dreams that America can fulfill the dreams of MLK and JFK. He dreams that American civilians can be unified like the American military as one cohesive American family regardless of race and make America great again through patriotism.

What unifies the military is patriotism, equality, common cause and an infrastructure of observed rules of conduct. We can become a unified society with a parallel commitment to patriotism, equality, common cause and an infrastructure of observed laws that keep order.

Americans do not bow to power – we enjoy a three-part government structured with checks and balances on executive power. Laws are designed to be changed peacefully through open debate and votes by elected representatives of the people. The current trend of divisiveness and anarchy fomented by Obama’s Leftist “resistance” movement is designed to collapse American democracy and our balanced three-branch system.

What is the purpose of relabeling illegal immigrant children with the romanticized term “Dreamers?” Are the dreams of legal American children less valuable? These are important questions to consider because they define our national priorities. President Trump prioritizes American children and American workers. His America-first promises and policies are designed to preserve and protect American sovereignty, American democracy, and the legitimacy of American territorial borders.

President Trump has a 21st century challenge of reaffirming America’s nationhood and national priorities. The relabeled “Dreamer” movement is an insidious political ploy designed to legitimize illegal immigration in an effort to tip elections toward the Democrat Party. Obama overstepped his constitutional authority with the presidential order that created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA). Deceitfully advertised as humanitarian, DACA prioritizes illegal immigrants over Americans. The “Dreamer” movement is an end-run around our legislative branch that sidesteps existing immigration laws.

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Homeland Missile Defense: A Brief History By Abel Romero

By on September 8th, 2017

Over the weekend North Korea conducted its six, and most powerful, nuclear test to date. Reports indicate that the impoverished nation is preparing to launch yet another Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), this time potentially on a standard trajectory. A highly provocative move without regard to overflight of neighboring countries airspace. North Korea’s accelerated nuclear and ballistic missile developments have many in Washington showing more bipartisan interest in missile defense playing a significant role in defending the American homeland.

However, over the past three decades, the path toward a truly robust homeland missile defense system has been precarious. Political support over five presidential administrations wavered, while historical funding for the Missile Defense Agency averaged less than 2% of the overall defense budget. As Washington considers its options for addressing a threat which has evolved more rapidly than expected, it should carefully consider lessons learned from decades of less than adequate support for homeland missile defense. The Trump administration must avoid the mistake of his predecessors and fully commit to investment in expanded missile defense capabilities

The Reagan Administration

In the early 1980’s, fear that the Soviet Union had achieved a nuclear first strike capability led the Joint Chiefs of Staff to recommend developing plans for ballistic missile defense capabilities. On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan delivered an address to the nation outlining an ambitious new plan for ballistic missile defense called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). During the speech, President Reagan called for a defensive capability that would render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” In 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was established to begin Research and Development (R&D) efforts to create several programs such as Brilliant Pebbles, a non-nuclear, space-based, boost phase anti-missile system. Ultimately, many of the most ambitious SDI technologies were set aside due to political pressure and U.S. obligations to limit testing and development of BMD technology. While the Reagan Administration argued that it could test and develop BMD systems under a “broad interpretation” of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty many in Congress, led by Senator Sam Nunn, argued such an interpretation violated the spirit of the treaty.

The Bush 41 Administration

During the January 29th, 1991, State of the Union Address, President George H.W. Bush citing the success of the Patriot missile defense system during the Gulf War, mandated the “SDI program be refocused on providing protection from limited ballistic missile strikes, whatever their source.” This directive led to the development of Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS), aimed at stopping small ballistic missile attacks on America and thwarting limited strikes against U.S. troops with the use of theater ballistic missiles. GPALS represented a new Post-Cold War mentality in the United States that focused more on limited theater ballistic missile strikes rather than a large-scale Soviet ICBM strike.

The Clinton Administration

The GPALS concept would ultimately be canceled in 1993 by President Bill Clinton. Rather than taking a global approach to a range of ballistic missile threats, President Clinton’s 1993 Bottom-Up Review concluded that, while the threat from “Third World” countries could not be excluded, the missile threat from Russia and China had diminished. Secretary of Defense Les Aspen ultimately recommended that “a robust theater missile defense effort plus a limited national missile defense technology program is the best and most cost- effective approach” for the overall U.S. ballistic missile defense program.

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A Smash Zionists Rally at the U of Illinois Students advocate violence as the “only option” against Zionists and other “fascists.” Matthew Vadum

By on September 8th, 2017

The radical Students for Justice in Palestine organized a “Smash Fascism” rally this week at the University of Illinois to attack Zionism and the fiercely democratic State of Israel as a supposedly white-supremacist, fascist country.

What these left-wingers meant by “fascism” is subject to debate. Fascism has long been in the eye of the beholder. The term has been used so promiscuously in recent decades that it has been drained of meaning.

George Orwell’s observation in the essay, “Politics and the English Language,” that “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable,’” is as true today as the day he wrote it.

When the Left speaks of fascism they don’t refer to actual fascism as an ideology and political system — they mean whatever they oppose. What is fascist changes, sometimes daily.

But today’s leftists don’t oppose fascism: they demand it. They want speech codes on university and college campuses. They want to abolish the First Amendment. They want omnipotent government and central planning of the economy. They want to kill police officers and persecute white people. They want to tear down old statues commemorating people they don’t like. They want to extinguish whatever freedom remains in this country after Barack Obama’s eight-year anti-American juggernaut.

Speakers at the rally Tuesday led the small audience in a chant of “No Zionists, no KKK, resisting fascists all the way.” Among the other groups participating were United Muslims and Minority Advocates, Jewish Voice for Peace, Asian Pacific American Coalition, Campus Union for Trans Equality and Support, Black Lives Matter, and the Chicano separatist group MEChA.

What they said was less important than what they did.

Old-time liberals, as opposed to flaming leftists, were not welcome at the rally whose organizers went out of their way to use the descriptor “radical” to refer to themselves in communiques. Tellingly, one commenter on the event’s Facebook page, linked to an old clip of Malcolm X speaking.

The assassinated Nation of Islam figure is shown saying:

There are many whites who are trying to solve the problem but you never see them going under the label of liberals. That white person that you see calling himself a liberal is the most dangerous thing in the entire Western Hemisphere. He’s the most deceitful. He’s like a fox and a fox is always more dangerous in the forest than the wolf. You can see the wolf coming. You know what he’s up to, but the fox will fool you. He comes at you with his mouth shaped in such a way that even though you see his teeth you think he’s smiling and take him for a friend.

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Israel Believed To Be Behind Strike That Destroyed Syrian WMD Facility The Jewish State walks the walk and sends strong signal to its genocidal enemies. Ari Lieberman

By on September 8th, 2017

In the early morning hours of Thursday, Syria’s al-Tala’i military research facility located in Masyaf was reduced to ash and flames. The Jerusalem Post reports that contemporaneous with the strike on al-Tala’I, a Hezbollah weapons convoy in the vicinity was also hit and destroyed. According to Western intelligence sources, al-Tala’i is a center for the production of chemical weapons. Syria blamed Israel and claimed that at least two regime soldiers were killed in the attack. The regime issued a banal and somewhat hypocritical warning of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region.”

Israeli officials were mute but Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Liberman issued a terse statement shortly after the attack making it clear that Israel reserves the right to act when its interests are affected. “We are not looking for any military adventure in Syria but we are determined to prevent our enemies from harming, or even creating the opportunity to harm the security of Israeli citizens,” he said. This is as close to an admission that we’re likely to witness.

According to former Israel Air Force Head Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel, Israel has carried out over 100 precision strikes in Syria in the past five years, mostly aimed at thwarting arms transfers to Hezbollah. Other strikes, like the one carried out on January 18, 2015, have been aimed at sending a message to Iran and Hezbollah that Israel will not tolerate the creation of Iranian or Hezbollah bases near the Golan Heights border. Twelve Iranian and Hezbollah operatives, including the son of Imad Mughniyeh, and an Iranian general, were killed in that raid.

The al-Tala’i facility is located in northwest Syria near the Russian naval base at Tartus and lies 70km southeast of Russia’s largest and most important airbase in the Mideast, Khmeimim air force base. Russia maintains formidable air defenses in Syria, including the S-400 anti-aircraft platform but the Russians refrained from firing. Perhaps the Israeli aircraft simply didn’t register on the S-400’s radar system – Israel is known to possess a sophisticated array of electronic counter measures – or perhaps there is an unspoken understanding between the Israeli and Russian militaries – the two nations maintain effective liaisons to prevent military mishaps. No one can say for certain why the Russians held their fire but either way, it was a clean operation with no Israeli casualties, no collateral damage and no political fallout.

There is speculation that Syria was prepared to hand over the facility to its ally, Hezbollah. This theory was forwarded by former Israeli national security adviser, Maj.-Gen (ret.) Yaakov Amidror. Amidror, who is currently an analyst at Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, cited a recent visit to Damascus by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah where the terror leader requested control of the facility. The acquisition of a WMD facility in the hands of the world’s most dangerous and best armed terrorist organization would represent a strategic threat to Israel, and one that the Jewish State could not easily ignore. Amridor’s theory seems plausible and if accurate, would explain the urgency of the Israeli action.

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Germany Heading for Four More Years of Pro-EU, Open-Door Migration Policies by Soeren Kern

By on September 8th, 2017

The policy positions of Merkel and Schulz on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.

Merkel and Schulz both agree that there should be no upper limit on the number of migrants entering Germany.

Merkel’s grand coalition backed a law that would penalize social media giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, with fines of €50 million ($60 million) if they fail to remove offending content from their platforms within 24 hours. Observers say the law is aimed at silencing critics of Merkel’s open-door migration policy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is on track win a fourth term in office after polls confirmed she won the first and only televised debate with her main election opponent, Martin Schulz, leader of the Social Democratic Union Party (SDP).

A survey for the public broadcaster ARD showed that 55% of viewers thought Merkel was the “more convincing” candidate during the debate, which took place on September 3; only 35% said Schulz came out ahead.

Many observers agreed that Schulz failed to leverage the debate to revive his flagging campaign, while others noted that Schulz’s positions on many issues are virtually indistinguishable from those held by Merkel.

Rainald Becker, an ARD commentator, described the debate as, “More a duet than a duel.”

“Merkel came out as sure, Schulz was hardly able to land a punch,” wrote Heribert Prantl, a commentator at Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The candidate is an honorable man. But being honorable alone will not make him chancellor.”

Christian Lindner, leader of the classical liberal Free Democrats, compared the debate to “scenes from a long marriage, where there is the occasional quarrel, but both sides know that they have to stick together in the future, too.”

Television presenter Günther Jauch, writing in Bild, said he had hoped to “at least understand what differentiates Merkel and Schulz in political terms. Instead, it was just a conversation between two political professionals who you suspect could both work pretty seamlessly in the same government.”

Radio and television host Thomas Gottschalk said that the two candidates agreed with each other too often: “They were both always nodding their heads when the other was speaking.”

Germany’s general election is scheduled for September 24. If voters went to the polls now, Merkel’s CDU, together with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), would win 39%, according to a September 4 Politbarometer survey conducted for the public broadcaster ZDF.

Coming in second, Schulz’s SDP would win 22%; the classical liberal Free Democrats (FDP) 10%; the far-left Linke 9%; the Greens 8% and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) 8%.

The poll also found that 57% of respondents said they preferred that Merkel serve another term; only 28% favored Schulz to become the next chancellor. Nevertheless, half of Germany’s 60 million voters are said to be undecided, and some pollsters believe that the country’s huge non-voting population may determine the outcome.

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The Latest Victim of the Campus Hate Industry by Bruce Bawer

By on September 8th, 2017

“All men are trash.” — Esme Allman.

Allman is a young woman who, although a student at one of the finest universities on earth, considers herself to be a multiply oppressed victim and who sees the world around her as swarming with oppressors. She has been so well-schooled in the idea that whites are always the oppressors and dark-skinned people always the victims that when she sees a fellow British subject rooting for his own nation’s side in a war against jihadists, her first and only thought is to brand him an “Islamophobe” — this, even though the enemy in that war are men who would force her into a burka or consider her, as an infidel, deserving of rape and/or death.

So it is that Robbie Travers, whose only offense is believing in freedom and opposing a totalitarian ideology, has found himself in hot water — a real victim of a mentality that is all about power and dogma even as its pretends to be devoted to “dignity and respect” for all.

Robbie Travers is a 21-year-old law student at the University of Edinburgh and an articulate, insightful contributor to Gatestone as well as other websites. In his essays, he has illuminated the topsy-turvy values that dominate contemporary British political discourse – as exemplified by the refusal of the Speaker of the House of Commons to invite President Trump to address Parliament and the refusal of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to ban Al Qaeda from Britain as a terrorist organization.

Now, Travers has become the victim of the very forces about which he has written. In April, after the US Air Force carried out a successful anti-ISIS action, he posted a comment on Facebook:

“Excellent news that the US administration and Trump ordered an accurate strike on an Isis network of tunnels in Afghanistan. I’m glad we could bring these barbarians a step closer to collecting their 72 virgins.”

It was no different from a British subject during World War II celebrating the invasion of Normandy. But Travers’s comment offended first-year history student Esme Allman, who filed a complaint with the university. In it, she charged that Travers had violated the student code of conduct and accused him of “blatant Islamaphobia [sic]” and of putting “minority students at risk and in a state of panic and fear.”

As a result of Allman’s complaint, the university is now investigating Travers on “hate crime” charges. A spokesman for the university explained that it is “committed to providing an environment in which all members of the university community treat each other with dignity and respect.” Travers, for his part, has described Allman’s complaint as retaliation for a social-media posting in which he had drawn attention to a comment by Allman that “all men are trash.”

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Dreams, Delusions and Duplicity by Mark Steyn

By on September 8th, 2017

Between you and me, I’m in favor of deporting every single Dreamer just because of the stupid name “Dreamer”.

Failing that, I’m in favor of deporting Senators-for-Life Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch, who sponsored the original “DREAM Act”, which failed. That’s to say, despite repeated efforts over the course of this century, it has not become law. It’s not an act, it’s a bill – and a flop bill, which means it’s just a pile of moldering papers sitting somewhere in the basement of the Orrin Hatch Archive and Senatorial Library soon to be built in Utah.

Readers will know I strongly dislike the contemporary habit of acronymic legislation: The “DREAM Act” is, more precisely, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act. The Tea Act that so excited His Majesty’s subjects in British North America was, in fact, called “An act to allow a drawback of the duties of customs on the exportation of tea or oil to any of his Majesty’s colonies or plantations in America; to increase the deposit on bohea tea to be sold at the East India Company’s sales; and to empower the Commissioners of the Treasury to grant licenses to the East India Company to export tea duty-free”. If only Lord North had thought to call it the TASTY Act (Telling Americans we’re Still Taxing You), the whole unpleasantness of the Boston Tea Party and subsequent events might have been avoided.

But the DREAM Act is not merely an example of fatuous aconyms. It also demonstrates the larger point I’ve made over the years – of how culture trumps politics. The DREAM Act bombed as politics, but the stupid name took hold in the culture – to whit:

DREAMers Like Me Have Flourished Under DACA. Trump Might Take It All Away

…and a zillion other headlines: “The Dreamers Are Ready to Fight President Trump.” “This Dreamer Is Ready to Go to the Army. Will Trump Let Him?” “Congress, It’s Up to You to Protect the Dreamers.” Etc.

So we have gone from “illegal aliens” to “undocumented workers” to “Dreamers”. And Republican voters wonder why they never win anything. Sixty years ago, the US Government was happy to call its “comprehensive immigration reform” plans “Operation Wetback”, and President Eisenhower was willing to use the term in public. Now we expect jelly-spined finger-in-the-windy legislators to stand firm against “Dreamers”. Yeah, right. As for Europe, if Chancellor Merkel and the EU start calling their legions of sturdy young Muslim “refugees” Dreamers, it’s game over.

Okay, if it’s unreasonable to deport a fine upstanding colossus of the Democrats such as Dick Durbin, could we at least deport Orrin Hatch? A former Republican presidential candidate, he was all over the airwaves yesterday claiming to be tough on border enforcement …but only once we’ve legalized all these “Dreamers”. Presumably it was some obscure staffer of Durbin’s, acting at the behest of the lobbyists, who came up with the beguiling name “DREAM Act”. But Hatch might have understood the concession he was making. The sentimentalization of public affairs that accompanies these acronymic abominations is embarrassing to a self-governing republic in and of itself. But it’s especially damaging on this particular question – because mass unskilled immigration is the biggest issue facing the western world right now, and that grotesque sentimentalization embodied by hogwash like “Dreamers” makes mature, rational discussion of public policy impossible. Republican voters have minimal expectations of the likes of Orrin Hatch, but they had at least the right to expect he would have grasped something that basic.

“I’m A Dreamer. Aren’t We All?” as Janet Gaynor sagely observed in Sunny Side Up. I dream of a villa on Lake Como, but I don’t see why the Italian government should be in the least bit interested in my dreams, or in adjusting their laws to accommodate me. As the founder of Davos, Klaus Schwab, has speculated:

Imagine one billion inhabitants [of the developing world], imagine they all move north.

I ran his math:

A billion man march, eh? The population of the developed world – North America, the European Union, Japan, Oz, NZ – is about a billion. Of the remaining six billion people around the planet, is it really so absurd to think that one-sixth of them would “move north” if they could?

As we had cause to reflect on Labor Day, no developed nation in the year 2017 needs mass immigration. To judge from the press coverage, the average DACA beneficiary is a twelve-year-old beatific moppet. In fact, Obama amnestied those aged 30 and under in 2012 – which means some of them are 36 now, which means (given that they’re either undocumented or using fraudulent documents) some of these dreaming moppets are in their forties. No matter. Those who aren’t telegenic infants are, we’re assured, serving in the US Army or helping with Harvey relief. As Tucker Carlson scoffed last night, the proportion of Dreamers serving in the military is tiny. And as a statistic it might be more useful if we could compare it to the number of Dreamers serving in, say, MS-13.

Yet Orrin Hatch assures us that Dreamers have to be “of good character”. And DACA supposedly requires that a Dreamer…

.. has not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.

But this is rubbish. First, because US Immigration checks nothing. (I was told at the time of my own application that the relevant bureaucrat would spend six minutes on it, which is not enough time to read it, never mind check it. And I would imagine that since then the time allocation has only shrunk.) Second, because anyone with even the most casual acquaintance with the dank toilet of the US justice system knows that all over the map criminals are pleading down felonies to misdemeanors every minute of the day (a career criminal who stole from me did it in New Hampshire just last year). Third, because, thanks to the genius jurists of the Supreme Court, criminal aliens are specifically required to be advised of any immigration implications to their case, and so prosecutors more or less routinely tell them to cop a deal to avoid attracting the attentions of ICE.

That’s to say, the left hand of government tells Americans not to worry, no felons are eligible – while the right hand of government is frantically pleading down felonies to misdemeanors precisely in order that the felons remain eligible.

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