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What truths do we hold?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Are these truths still self-evident, in a nation where all moral and natural boundaries have been worn away, not by the steady march of time, not even by complacency, but by a determined and calculated campaign to redefine standards and values that were once universal?
The great wisdom of the Framers was to recognize that human values shift like the sands of the desert, and that the foundations of any civilization will only endure so long as its people continue to believe that there are higher ideals than individual self interest, that personal and collective sacrifice are necessary for personal and collective prosperity, and that commitment to individual responsibility is the only way to ensure the preservation of individual rights.
Without these, a society will inevitably become a house divided against itself and, as such, will not survive for long.
Radio Interview with Steve Curtis
More discussion about my recent article in the Times of Israel Blog, “The Danger of Democracy.”
My interview with Steve Curtis of KLZ-AM in Denver ran a full hour segment. Enjoy!
Remember their sacrifice
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
Political Correctness: the root of all evil
Dear Future President:
If you want to fix the country, you can start with the root cause of all that ails our country:
Political Correctness.
The truth is that political correctness is not a new idea at all; it is simply the new label for an old, established moral postulate once accepted by all.
The word civility shares its linguistic root with the word civilization. It means taking into consideration the comfort of others before expressing what I think or doing what I want. It means remembering that other people have rights before I assert my own. It means reflecting upon how my actions are going to affect my community and recognizing that I have a responsibility to a society that is more than the sum of autonomous individuals.
So what was wrong with the term civility that the concept needed rebranding as political correctness? Most likely, it was the connotation of political ideology that spawned this illegitimate offspring of cultural nobility.
In this series, professionals provide advice for the next U.S. president.
#nextpresident
Who we are not
So here we are again, contemplating a general election that will give us a choice between the lesser of two evils. And the likely options look to be more noxious than any we’ve ever had to face.
Everyone is asking the same question: how did we get here? And the bad news — which is old news — is that negative advertising works.
But why does it work? Everyone hates it, everyone complains about it, everyone laments the decline of civility, the widening of the political divide, and the incurable blight of ideological gridlock. So why do we continue to respond to the very thing we can’t stand in a way that makes it keep getting worse?
A new study may offer a glimmer of explanation.
Spitting Image 2:6 — The FBI vs. Apple: Lessons Learned
Good news, everybody! The FBI has found a workaround to break into the iPhone of suspected San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, and the Department of Justice is backing down from Defcon 1. So now that the crisis is averted, what are some practical lessons we can learn about confrontation and conflict resolution?
Here are a few suggestions:
Both sides might be right. The FBI and Apple each claimed national security as its top concern. The FBI was thinking short-term — stop more terrorist attacks now; Apple was thinking long-term — don’t make ourselves vulnerable later. It’s entirely possible that both parties were sincere and correct.
So here’s the first takeaway. Until evidence proves otherwise, assume positive intent. Your adversary is not necessarily evil; he may just be looking at things from a different angle. Trying to understand his position before going into attack mode may avert conflict and promote mutually beneficial cooperation.
Go around roadblocks, not through them. Apple refused to cooperate. The FBI refused to back down. But as each party dug in and the deadlock stretched out, government officials did something that should renew our hope in government officials: they looked for another way of solving the problem. When the most straightforward plan of action isn’t panning out, don’t give up on finding a detour.
There might already be a solution. After arguing for months that it was impossible to break the phone’s encryption without Apple’s help, the government apparently found hackers who did what hackers said they could do from the beginning: find a way in. So if you don’t know what to do, ask someone who knows more than you do.
Nothing is foolproof. It’s a cliche, but cliches are usually true. Anything that can be protected can be broken into; and any plan can be thwarted. Or, as Yogi Berra used to say: Good pitching will always beat good hitting; and vice versa.
There are no perfect fixes. Although the Department of Justice isn’t releasing details, some believe that breaking into the phone may have caused some of its data to be irretrievably lost. A win doesn’t have to be 100%. In business, in diplomacy, and in most of life, it rarely is. If you end up with most of what you want, don’t let what you had to give up spoil your victory dance.
Save litigation as a last resort. Law suits cost everybody; except the lawyers. So if you’re not a lawyer, try everything else before you push the nuclear button.
Working together makes you look better. Black eyes and bloody noses are painful and unattractive, even when you win. I’m reminded of the Karate master who was accosted by hoods as he was leaving his dojo. “Do you want to beat me?” he asked. “Yeah, we want to beat you,” their leader replied.
The master could easily have dispatched the young miscreants without breaking a sweat. Instead, he took of his jacket and laid down on the sidewalk. “Now you have beaten me,” he said. The hoods looked at him in confusion, then drifted away.
Maybe cooperating means giving up a little more now. But you will almost certainly come out ahead in the end.
Nothing left to say, nothing right to say
I’m going to make a greater effort to stay away from politics in general and Donald Trump in particular (although I’ve made that resolution before without much success). I’ve been baffled by the responses I’ve gotten from Trump supporters accusing me of dishonesty and spreading a message of hate.
It’s hard to imagine how individuals who claim sensitivity to lying and hate-mongering are able to overlook such an abundance of both in their own candidate’s rhetoric. But I’ve already addressed the proliferation of such double-standards and willful ignorance elsewhere.
So here is my parting shot (for now), excerpted from an article by the always-insightful Jonathan Rosenblum:
IF DONALD TRUMP SPEAKS to voters tired of being ignored and condescended to, he is nevertheless a disastrous representative of them. Nothing in his life until now has shown an iota of concern with those who now salute him, and he has not offered one serious policy prescription that would address their economic insecurities. All he offers is his boastful self-promotion and a call for the power to make America great again. However different in style he is to the polished and fluent Barack Obama, he offers the same promise of being some sort of miracle worker. (Remember when Obama pronounced his nomination as the day the oceans cease to rise.)
Trump is not the antidote to thought-stifling political correctness, as his supporters seem to think. Vulgarity and the lack of basic human decency are not the opposite of political correctness.
[Trump] has betrayed no understanding of the American system of checks and balances or three co-equal branches of government. Recently, he boasted that he would gut First Amendment protections of the press to make it easier for him to sue, in the manner of Turkey’s Erdogan, reporters and papers that get under his tissue-thin skin.
ONE OF THE WISEST OF THE FOUNDERS, Benjamin Franklin predicted, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” And, as David French argues, “Trump is running not for president of a constitutional republic but to be the strongman of a failing state.”
One by one, many at first inclined to hold their noses and vote for Trump (and there is an argument for doing so) have determined that they cannot, for he will further lower the standards of an already debased culture. For some it was his casual dismissal of the courage of John McCain during six years of torture in North Vietnamese captivity, which left McCain permanently disabled.
For Andrew McCarthy, the lead government prosecutor in the first World Trade Center bombing, it is Trump’s boast that he will order American troops to become war criminals and target the wives and children of ISIS fighters. For Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, it is the impossibility of explaining to his young children why someone would mock the physical disability of a crippled reporter. For the religious conservative David French, it is his pledge to keep funding Planned Parenthood to the tune of millions of dollars, so that it can continue killing hundreds of thousands of babies a year.
These thoughtful conservatives are shocked that Trump’s supporters rather than being appalled by his cruelty and malice are attracted by it. They see him as the artifact of a society from which the civic vitality catalogued by de Tocqueville has been lost and replaced by vitriol and demagoguery.
“Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people,” wrote John Adams. “It is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other.” (Hat tip again to David French.) If so, America is grave danger on the evidence of this election season.
Hat tip: Sylvia Poe
2016: The Last Year of the Weimar Republic
In this new era of surrealism, it’s ironic that we can find prophetic wisdom in as unlikely a source as Hollywood scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin. In his 1995 masterpiece The American President, we find this exchange between President Andrew Shepherd and his domestic policy advisor, Lewis Rothschild:
Lewis Rothschild: People want leadership, Mr. President. And in the absence of genuine leadership they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership; they’re so thirsty for it they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water they’ll drink the sand.
President Shepherd: Lewis, people don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty; they drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.
The truth is that both are right. Deprive people of authentic leadership for long enough and they will certainly lose the ability to tell the difference between reality and illusion.
When we reflect upon the contrast between the elegant ideals set forth by revolutionary leaders two and a half centuries ago and the cartoonish ranting of the avenger seeking coronation today, there is ample reason for anxiety that has nothing to do with Nazi genocide.
Frank Reagan for President
Highly principled, hard as nails, even-keeled, dedicated to higher values, devoted to the welfare of the people he serves, and fiercely loyal to those who serve under his command.
If he’s not available, I’d settle for Tom Selleck. Like Ronald Reagan, at least he would know how to act like a president.
Yonason Goldson 