Needful things: U.S. policy on the current Hamas-Israel war; The Bully Pulpit

This passage was originally to be part of a larger article on a core set of measures the U.S. needs to undertake, to facilitate a “better peace” from this war – the “better peace” being the desired goal of Western warfare as conceived by British author B.H. Liddell Hart in his canonical 1954 book Strategy.

That article addresses Iran, Iran’s proxies, containment in the Middle East, and other topics related to the progress and predictable aftermath of the war.  It will come out soon as a separate piece.

But recent developments have clarified how essential it is to strengthen America and make her a credible, persuasive voice from the bully pulpit, on the central concern for which the world is increasingly ready to hear that voice.  The concern is antisemitism (some prefer the expression Jew-hatred).

In the last few weeks we have seen – in America – an appalling outbreak of bloodthirsty fury directed at Jews.

TOC Ready Room 31 May 2023: B-1Bs do the Balkans; Fox suffers analysis fail; RR Shorts

We’ll try to get through the Ready Room grab-bag with dispatch today.  The starter topic is whatever it is going on in the Balkans, which if you don’t recall hearing much about it means you’re normal.  We’ve got B-1B Lancers tootling around Europe like a supersonic Bugs Bunny, and wouldn’t you know it, they’ve already had signal events over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the past week, right next to where NATO’s KFOR peacekeepers were attacked in Kosovo on 30 May.

But there’s more context, so let’s back it up a little.

It’s always the Balkans

Don’t worry:  we’ll only go this far back for one data point.  Readers may recall the odd incident in August 2022 in which Russians and a Ukrainian were detained in Albania

German schools rename ‘St. Martin’s Day’ fest – but look who opposes doing that

St. Martin’s Day – too Christian for the European left. (Image: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung)

You just know this latest in the thousand cuts of “multi-kulti” cultural suicide has to do with fear of offending Muslim immigrants.  And it does.

But I urge readers to look past the surface and keep in mind who’s doing the slice-and-dice job.

The story at hand involves a school in Oberkassel, Dusseldorf, which has redesignated the traditional St. Martin’s Day festival, held on 11 November, as an absurdly generic “Festival of Light.”  German media reported this late last week, and it was picked up quickly by English-language outlets.  (It’s worth making the point, as an aside, that we not only have to give up the richness of our own Western culture to supposedly avoid offending those from other cultures; we have to dumb everything down as well, turning ourselves into primitive animists and nature-worshipers.  Having a festival about “light” is so 10,000 years ago.)

Same-sex marriage: Supreme Court cries ‘Havoc!’

The law, as she is practiced in America.

It’s been a banner week for the opponents of reason and the rule of law.

It will also turn out to have been a banner week for the opponents of tolerance, which includes most of today’s political left.

The left has never been about tolerance.  It has always been about opposing what other people believe, as the left defines it – which may or may not even be what those other people actually believe.  The left is about opposing things: about setting up definitions that require either affirmation or enmity.

And it’s the tide of the left’s “affirmation or enmity” proposition that will quickly rise around us, now that the Supreme Court has declared that people have a “right” to have their specialized definition of marriage recognized by the state.

Gruesome abortion trials on 14-year-olds linked to big-name fellowship program

Experimentation.

New post up at Liberty Unyielding.  Enjoy!