RUTHFULLY YOURS

Into the Fray: If a Palestinian state were established, the full weight of the horrors of the Arab world would come pressing down on Israel, from indefensible borders, infinitesimal distances from major population centers.

As I mentioned in my previous column, following my participation in The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York last month, I received an invitation from Russell Robinson, the CEO of the Jewish National Fund, to make a telephonic address to major donors across the United States, assessing the status of the “peace process.”

My column last week was devoted to the first part of that address, delivered on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day. In this week’s column, I share with Jerusalem Post’s readers the remaining topics I raised – with some minor modifications and editorial “tweaks” – which as before, have been made to accommodate the transition from oral to written form.

To recap briefly

As readers will recall, in Part I of my address, aided by a citation from Shakespeare’s Richard II, I argued that the entire peace process, from its inception, was founded on the self-delusion of its architects, and their denial of the harsh realities of the region.

I pointed out that there is a growing awareness of the futility of endeavors to reach a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians. This has resulted in an alarming erosion, over recent decades, of Israeli positions, which I illustrated by excerpts from public proclamations of Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. The spreading sense of futility has led to increasingly desperate proposals for dealing with the situation – some of which I shall elaborate on this week.

I argued that for Israel to survive over time as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it needs to address a twin imperative: geographic and demographic, and that the two-state paradigm does not contend adequately with the geographic imperative while the one-state paradigm does not contend adequately with the demographic imperative.

I concluded by elaborating on why the withdrawals necessary for the implementation of the two-state paradigm would leave Israel’s principle population centers and strategic installations hopelessly exposed to attack. All these would be in range of weapons being used today from territory relinquished by Israel, creating a situation in which it would be impossible to preserve the nation’s socioeconomic routine that could be disrupted at will by regular forces or irregular renegades, deployed in the areas transferred to Palestinian control. Today, this nightmare scenario can no longer be dismissed as “right-wing scaremongering,” as it is no more than a plausible extrapolation of the precedents.

Now I turn to the remaining issues I raised in my address.

Arab Spring as threat multiplier

The dangers entailed in the creation of a Palestinian state are greatly magnified by the ongoing events in Israel’s immediate geo-political environment. Once the “lid” of dictatorship was removed, all the horrific realities that permeate – some would say, characterize – the societies in the Arab world, were graphically exposed.

Clearly then, if a Palestinian state were created, the full weight of the horrors of the Arab world would almost certainly come pressing down on Israel, from indefensible borders, infinitesimal distances from major population centers – raising the already unacceptable risks involved in such a measure to even more intolerable levels.

As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted in last week’s Remembrance Day speech, referring to Syria: “A few kilometers north of Jerusalem a massacre is occurring that has killed tens of thousands who do not have the power to defend themselves. Who would doubt that that would be our fate…”

READ ALL FOUR PARTS HERE:

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2014/05/14/edward-cline-the-guardian-of-every-right-part-one/

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2014/05/15/the-guardian-of-every-other-right-part-ii-by-edward-cline/
“Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.” – Ayn Rand, 1963*
James W. Ely, Jr.’s chapter, “Progressive Reform and Judicial Conservatism, 1900-1932,” details the clash between a noisy, generational cadre of Progressives and the dwindling grasp of individual and property rights in the American judiciary and especially on the Supreme Court. Lately, in our own time, the Court has been called the “Supine Court,” so characterized because of Chief Justice John Roberts’s bizarre, pretzel-like explanation in the majority opinion in June of 2012 for upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare) as a tax levied by Congress, as opposed to Congress’s power to “regulate commerce,” in this instance, the power to compel “commerce” between an individual and health insurance companies. As the New York Times reported:
“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.”
At the same time, the court rejected the argument that the administration had pressed most vigorously in support of the law, that its individual mandate was justified by Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. The vote was again 5 to 4, but in this instance Chief Justice Roberts and the court’s four more conservative members were in agreement.
The majority opinion on the other hand ostensively rejected the Administration’s contention that the ACA’s constitutional status was sanctioned by the commerce clause. Whether or not the mandatory transaction takes place within or across state lines is in fact irrelevant, even though most states forbid buying virtually any kind of insurance from an out-of-state company. The “individual mandate” crosses every state line, it’s a federal mandate or compulsory “economic activity,” ergo, “interstate.”
Significantly, Roberts wrote (and in the meantime impugned the character of the Framers):

“Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.” – Ayn Rand, 1963*
As a final note on James W. Ely, Jr.’s chapter, “The Development of Property Rights,” where we left off in Part II of this review, something should be said about the status of intellectual property and patents. Ely wrote:
Patent and copyright law also raised important issues of property rights and community interests during the antebellum period. The Constitution authorized Congress to grant limited monopolies to inventors and authors for the purpose of encouraging technology and literary production. In 1790 Congress passed legislation securing both copyrights and patents. Under these acts, copyrights lasted for a renewable term of fourteen years from the date of publication. Patents, granted on application for novel and useful inventions had a duration not exceeding fourteen years. once copyrights and patents expired, the work fell into the public domain. (Italics mine; p. 81)
Ely does not discuss the status of trademarks, however.
The Supreme Court’s first ruling on the law of intellectual property was Wheaton v. Peters (1834). Concluding that there was no common law copyright, the Court held that a statutory copyright could be obtained only by strict compliance with the terms of the 1790 act. Reflecting the Jacksonian hostility to monopolies, the Wheaton decision established that copyright protection was designed to benefit the public and was therefore confined to the narrow limits set by Congress. (Italics mine; p. 81)
Ironically, Wheaton v. Peters concerned the status of copies of the Supreme Court’s deliberations as recorded and managed by a Court reporter, Henry Wheaton. Supreme Justia.com carries the opinion of Court:
In the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States it is declared that Congress shall have the power “to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing, for a limited time, to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and inventions.”
The word “secure,” as used in the Constitution, could not mean the protection of an acknowledged legal right. It refers to inventors as well as authors, and it has never been pretended by anyone either in this country or in England that an inventor has a perpetual right at common law to sell the thing invented.
Henry Wheaton had filed a copyright claim to the Court’s reports, and transferred publication rights to another person, while renewing the copyright for himself for another fourteen years. In the meantime, his successor as Court clerk, Richard Peters, published an abridged version of Wheaton’s 24-volume work. While Peters’s six-volume abridged version was based on Wheaton’s work, Wheaton was not paid anything from the sales of Peters’s version, which was a financial success. Procedural details governed the outcome of the case, as well, concerning whether or not Wheaton and others had complied with the terms of the 1790 law. My point here is that it was the “public” that was deferred to as the prime beneficiary of intellectual property, not the creator, not the individual who had a first claim to his intellectual or patented idea. This theme governed Court decisions well into the 20th century. The opinion stated:
That every man is entitled to the fruits of his own labor must be admitted, but he can enjoy them only, except by statutory provision, under the rules of property, which regulate society and which define the rights of things in general.
We now move on the post-Civil War “Gilded Age and the Challenge of Industrialization.” This era saw the initial disintegration of any protection of property rights, which would reach a climax with the debut of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930’s.

Leave it to President Obama and Democrats in Congress to enact “comprehensive” health reform and overlook the plight of 8.5 million veterans. That’s what they did in 2010 when they passed ObamaCare.

It provides coverage for convicts and even for newcomers to this country with no waiting period, but it does nothing to help the nation’s veterans, who have suffered on waiting lists for care in the VA system for over 20 years.

This injustice can be fixed with a one-page bill that Congress should pass this week. ObamaCare already offers bronze, silver, gold and platinum plans. Congress should add the red/white/blue plan for vets only, with no premiums or deductibles for any vet who has been in combat.

Trapped vets waiting months for VA care shouldn’t get their hopes up based on Congressional investigations, hearings and empty promises that the backlog will be fixed.

They need care, and for some now waiting for it, their lives are at stake. Give them the option of enrolling in ObamaCare at no cost, so they can go outside the broken VA system for a civilian doctor and hospital. ObamaCare eventually should be repealed, but whatever reform replaces it should also guarantee combat vets a no-cost escape from the VA.

In April, the nation heard about dirty tricks used at the Phoenix VA medical center to conceal long waits for care. Whistleblower Dr. Sam Foote exposed how more than 1,400 vets had lingered on a secret waiting list, and 40 had died there.

Since then, more whistleblowers have reported harmful wait times and corrupt practices to conceal them at VA medical centers in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Waco, San Antonio and Austin, Texas.

The American Legion and members of Congress have called for VA Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation. President Obama says he stands behind him. Ridiculous. Though the deadly waiting predates Shinseki, he has led the department since 2009, long enough to have fixed it. The secretary needs to go, but that won’t save the lives of waiting vets.

There is a relentless driving sound in America. It is a pneumatic drill pounding away at the nation’s moral anchors. The mediating structures that maintained equilibrium are the targets.

Schools that once transmitted knowledge about the republic are now repositories of ignorance, even hateful ignorance about America’s “malignant” role in the world. The flag once a synecdoche of what our citizens believe and admire has been transformed into a symbol of evil. On top of the misguided and one-sided treatment of the past, is the dumbing down of the population so that very few Americans can find Egypt on a map or calculate 8 times 9 without a calculator. We spend more for less effect each year. Teachers claim they need additional funds, but attainment lags. It is an odd economic model in which new resources achieve predictably dismal results.

The family – the bedrock of the Republic – is in dire shape. Divorce is still at an all-time high level and illegitimacy is a staggering proposition of new births, e.g. 72 percent of black children are the products of out of wedlock homes. Gang leaders are surrogate fathers in many ghetto communities. This isn’t Boko Haram in Nigeria which kidnaps children from parental lairs; these are children ensnared by men who offer guidance and friendship. But the result isn’t so different.

Churches once established the moral parameters for behavior. They were a guide to right and wrong, the superego for young minds searching for existential truths. How quickly they have been submerged in the tidal wave of relativism. Truth is now what you want it to be and morality is a question of sentiment. The tablets of natural law frozen in the sphere of human existence crumbled like pie crust. Even the Ten Commandments have become the Ten Recommendations. If there is a God, he should be held secretly within the cavity of one’s heart. Public displays of religious sentiment have been largely banned through the avatars of church-state separation.

On May 13, 2014, Franklin Miller, Principal, Scowcroft Group, delivered an important address on “The Emerging Nuclear Deterrent Challenges: Thoughts on the Nuclear Triad and Arms Control” at the Congressional Breakfast Seminar Series on Nuclear Deterrence and Missile Defense, (in its 34th year) sponsored by the Air Force Association and hosted by Peter Huessy. This is a critically important subject that needs greater national attention especially how China and Russia see their nuclear arsenals and the role such weapons play in geostrategic relations.

MR. FRANK MILLER: Thank you, Peter. Nice to see you again. I want to thank Peter on two counts: first, for inviting me back to conduct my annual revisit to the wonderful world of nuclear policy; and second, for keeping this series going lo these many years to provide a forum for those of us whose views are not consistent with what the Politically Correct believe.

I would like to spend my time with you this morning talking about three subjects: Russia, Arms Control, and the Administration’s need to come to grips with the serious problems we face in our strategic arsenal.

First, Russia. It is essential that we come to grips with the fact that Russia under Czar Vladimir the bare-chested has become a very dangerous threat to global security. If you have not yet done so, I urge you to read Putin’s March 18 speech to the Russian parliament. It is a chilling statement of perceived historical wrongs and slights mixed with a thinly veiled warning of his intent to redress them. Truly, Churchill’s magnificent 1940 description of Adolf Hitler comes to mind: “This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame.”

Putin augments his dangerous world view with a menacing military capability. I have been pointing out for several years from this podium that Russia is engaging in a massive modernization of its entire strategic Triad. It is deploying two new types of ICBMs while developing a third, a follow-on to the heavy, heavily MIRVed, SS-18. It is deploying two new types of SLBMs and a new type of SSBN.

It is in the final stages of development of a new long-range air-launched nuclear tipped cruise missile. It has built a new ground-launched cruise missile which violates the INF treaty (more on that later). It is maintaining a vast and bloated arsenal of shorter-range nuclear warheads and systems, including a nuclear tipped short-range ballistic missile [SS-26] which violates Russia’s commitments under the 1991 and 1992 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives.

The Russian government’s response to President Obama’s 2009 plea that nuclear weapons be accorded a reduced role in nations’ security policies has been to maintain a nuclear doctrine which calls for the use of nuclear weapons in local and regional wars. If you perused You-Tube in December 2013 and again last week you would see president Putin ostentatiously presiding over nuclear force exercises featuring live launches from all legs of their strategic triad. As the Soviets were fond of saying: “This is no accident comrade.”

What should we make of this? First, Putin does not accept Mr. Obama’s view of the role of nuclear weapons. Second, contrary to the politically correct apologia, Putin’s intended audience is not an internal one but us and our allies: he uses Russia’s nuclear weapons to try to intimidate and blackmail.

Add to this Putin’s policy of flying strategic bombers close to the national airspace of the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, and the United States, Russian military exercises which simulate nuclear strikes on Poland and the Baltic states, and the repeated pronouncements by senior Russian officials about targeting the West with nuclear weapons and you get a fairly complete picture.

Democrats brag their Party is comprised of people from myriad and diverse backgrounds. They are, but then, for the sake of political convenience, individuals are compartmentalized into easily defined subgroups that are monotheistic in terms of thoughts. For example, if one is poor one must think like a poor person; if one is Hispanic, one must act Hispanic; if one is Black, do not think like a conservative; if one is a young, twenty-something female, one must behave like all other young, twenty-something females; if one is old, one must conform to the wants of the aged; if one is of the “99%”, one must stand against the venomous one percenters. Democrats assume that a young, Black, female conservative must be demented or brainwashed. Such attitudes may fire-up the electorate, but they are insulting to the individual and sanctimonious in the assumption that people cannot think for themselves.

The Republican Party, despite detractors’ claims, also includes people from across the spectrum. But, more important, it tends to be polytheistic in ideas and opinions. That gives it, at times, the cacophonous look of an asylum, but in reality it provides a forum for the sharing and free expression of ideas. But, for such apostasy the Party gets ridiculed by mainstream media. Tea partiers are racists, evangelicals are anti-gay, Midwestern blue-collar workers are narrow-minded and prejudiced, dopey, old white men are prejudiced, dopey, old white men.

Liberal Democrats – at least those in the highest elective offices – believe in a government of the elite by the elite, for the masses. It is only the elite that have the intelligence, empathy and sophistication to understand the needs of the less fortunate. “I feel your pain,” Bill Clinton might say to a medley of suffering poor, as he reaches for a plate of fried oysters and heads out to make another $200,000 speech. “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” called out Barack Obama in rock-star fashion at the University of Missouri in late October 2008 to youth influenced by Mr. Obama’s charisma, but unconcerned as to his use of the word “transforming.” Recently, Black Democrat Representative James Clyburn chastised Black Republican Senator Tim Scott for not voting the color of his skin, inferring that Mr. Scott was an “Uncle Tom,” implying that he does not have a mind of his own and ignoring the fact that Mr. Scott represents all the people of South Carolina. Trust us, these political leaders are saying, just don’t ask us to explain.

Democrats claim to be liberal, but what is liberal about college students refusing to hear speakers that have views contrary to their own? Might not the students at Rutgers, Brandeis and Smith College have learned something from women like Condoleezza, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Christine Lagarde? What moral turpitude the president and trustees of these universities expressed in giving in to a few students’ intolerant demands!

The Cancer of Common Core — on The Glazov Gang

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-cancer-of-common-core-on-the-glazov-gang/print/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by superstars Basil Hoffman, a Hollywood actor (“Rio, I Love You”), Ann-Marie Murrell, the National Director of PolitiChicks.tv and Ernie White, a Civil Rights Activist.

The Gang discussed The Cancer of Common Core,analyzing how Mao’s Cultural Revolution has now reached America’s public schools. Don’t miss it!

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Ukraine crisis has created a catalyst for Sino-Russian rapprochement. Events in Ukraine have persuaded Russia that it cannot rely on Western Europe as its primary market for hydrocarbon exports. Consequently, after decades of negotiations between Moscow and Beijing for a long term natural gas mega-contract, it seems that Russia has finally relented to China’s terms, with China becoming the senior partner in a lopsided China-Russia relationship.

There is broader context to the struggle over sovereignty in the Ukraine, and China may emerge as the victor. After a decade of negotiations between Moscow and Beijing for a long-term natural gas supply contract, it appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to sign a 30-year deal during his state visit to China next week. Events in Ukraine appear to have persuaded Russia that it cannot rely on Western Europe as its primary market for hydrocarbon exports. It has therefore chosen to turn towards China. Evidently, Russia is willing to make price concessions that China has long demanded and Russia has long resisted.

China’s “New Silk Road” investment program is one of the most ambitious undertakings in world economic history. Beijing plans to build high-speed rail and broadband networks from China through to Turkey, with major spurs to Southeast Asia in the South, and through Israel and Egypt in the West. China will spend $7.3 billion to build a 3,700 kilometer pipeline from Turkmenistan, as well as shorter energy pipelines through Pakistan and other areas.

China’s economic presence in Russia’s Central Asian “near abroad” now dwarfs that of Russia. According to a report by GlobalRiskInsights,

Due to its proximity and reliability, Central Asian energy is increasingly important to Beijing. Turkmenistan is already China’s largest natural gas supplier, and Beijing invested $45 billion in energy projects in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, including oil, gas and uranium deals. Chinese-built pipelines have helped CA countries reduce their energy dependency on the Soviet-built pipelines running through Russia for oil and gas distribution. In addition, China overtook Russia as the region’s largest trade partner in 2010, with deals reaching $46 billion in 2012, compared to Russia’s $27 billion.

http://carolineglick.com/our-world-letting-go-of-abbas/ What makes PLO chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas tick?   In 2008, when Abbas rejected then prime minister Ehud Olmert’s expansive offer of Palestinian statehood, he did so for the same reason that Yassir Arafat rejected then prime minister Ehud Barak’s expansive offer of Palestinian statehood at Camp David in 2000.   […]