Ordinary Iranians Deserve Relief

Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Trade

Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a patriot. About that there can be no doubt. Unlike American pols, whose policies vis-a-vis the American people border on treason, Netanyahu generally acts in the interests of his countrymen. As the patriot he is, one expects Netanyahu to disapprove of the deal Western powers are hammering out with Iran.

“I told them that according to the information reaching Israel, the deal that appears to be in the offing is bad and dangerous,” said Netanyahu. “Not just for us but also for them. I suggested that they wait and give it serious consideration, and it’s good that that is indeed what was decided. We will do everything we can to convince the leaders not to reach a bad agreement.”

The truth, of course, is that the “deal” is not dangerous to the U.S.

Israel’s concerns notwithstanding, pursuing negotiations that ease sanctions on Iran are good for the U.S. and indubitably fair to the Iranian people. Detailed in “The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us” are the costs to Americans—as opposed to their overseers in Washington—of sanctions:

Not to be overlooked are the costs to Americans of sanction enforcement, avers Harmer. In addition to the opportunity costs—the missed business aforementioned—there are “direct costs.” The Office of Foreign Asset Control in the U.S. Treasury Department squanders around $1 billion a year in developing lists of “financial institutions that are subject to sanctions,” and then infringing on the rights of individuals and companies to freely exchange privately owned property.

“Indirect costs” are incurred in the course of cultivating a massive U.S. intelligent infrastructure—a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—upon which the Treasury draws in enforcing a regimen of sanctions.

So, too, are the “deterrent costs” borne by the American taxpayer who pays for patrolling the Persian Gulf, the Northern Arabian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. …

The toll on ordinary Iranians is orders of magnitude greater. Especially pressing: “the disbursement to Iran in installments of up to about $50 billion of Iranian funds blocked in foreign accounts for years.”

Ultimately, trade, not democracy, is the best antidote to war with Iran. The more economically intertwined countries become, the less likely they are to go to war. More than boycotts, barter with Iran is bound to promote good will and reduce belligerence on both sides. As a general rule, state-enforced boycotts harm honest, hard-working Americans who use the economic means to earn their keep. They benefit servants of Uncle Sam—the political class and its media and think-tank hangers-on. For they deploy the political means to advance their ends and grow their sphere of influence. As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard once observed, these “are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth”—the economic means is honest and productive, the political means is dishonest and predatory.

Definitive Text On Democratic South Africa Reviewed @ Townhall.com

Conservatism, Democracy, Republicans, South-Africa

Why is Jack Kerwick’s review of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” at Townhall.com, so extraordinary? Here’s why (excerpted from the book under review):

South Africa was just one more issue on which Republicans had slipped between the sheets with the fashionable left. Members of America’s delinquent duopoly stood against the gradualism of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, vis-à-vis South Africa. Pushing revolutionary radicalism on the Old South Africa was the goal not only in high diplomatic circles, but among most Republicans. With a few exceptions. As is documented in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot”:

“For advocating ‘constructive engagement’ with South Africa, members of his Republican Party issued a coruscating attack on Ronald Reagan. … Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., in particular, stated: ‘For this moment, at least, President Reagan has become an irrelevancy to the ideals, heartfelt and spoken, of America.'”

AND, who other than the extraordinary Jack Kerwick could pull off such a review? Jack is not only brilliant; he actually cares—this deep thinker cares deeply about the fate of the imperiled minority of South Africa and about the implications for his country and countrymen. Writes Dr. Kerwick:

“… But it would be a grave mistake to think that Cannibal is only about South Africa. It is not. As its author describes it, and as its subtitle makes clear, it is a ‘labor of love’ to her homelands old and new. Mercer is determined to spare America the same fate that befell South Africa. Furthermore, it would be as equally egregious a mistake to think that Cannibal is only, or even primarily, about race. There are larger issues to which Mercer speaks, issues with which conservatives have grappled from at least the time that their ‘patron saint,’ Edmund Burke, first articulated them.

“Though Mercer insists that she is no conservative, there are similarities, striking similarities, between her and Burke. The latter made an impassioned defense of his 18th century England against the radicalism of the French Revolution that he feared would soon enough ravage his country. It was in response to these ideological excesses that conservatism first emerged as a distinctive tradition of thought. Mercer carries on this estimable tradition inasmuch as she seeks to defend her new country, America, against the ravenous radicalisms that threaten it.”

“The forces that imperiled France and England in Burke’s day are the same forces that consumed South Africa and that imperil America in our own. These forces boil down to a lust, an insatiable lust, for revolutionary change and the ideological abstractions that inspire it. …”

“… However, it isn’t just the usual suspects—leftists or Democrats—who have an ardent affection for radical change and abstract ideals. The GOP and ‘the conservative press’ have had more than their share of true believers as well.”

“It was, after all, ‘conservatives’—or, more accurately, neoconservatives—that most rigorously supported George W. Bush’s campaign to ‘fundamentally transform’ the Middle East into an oasis of ‘Democracy.’ Noting that abstract ideals like Democracy are not timeless principles written in ‘human nature’ but the hard-earned gains of a civilization that has been millennia in the making, Mercer was among those who argued mightily against this fool’s errand from the outset. Though she fell out of favor with some notable ‘conservative’ media personalities for doing so, time has vindicated her while indicting her critics.”

“Like Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, Ilana Mercer’s “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is at once timeless and all so timely. …”

Read on. “The Future of the Conservative Movement” is on Townhall.com.

(“The Cannibal” is available from Amazon. More editorial reviews are here. Please Like “The Cannibal”—and further its cause—on Facebook.)

UPDATED: Some Things Are Unforgivable (No-Fault Forgiveness Folly)

Barack Obama, Christianity, Healthcare, Judaism & Jews, Justice

What is with Christians that they hunger to forgive evil, usually without any evidence of expiation?

It’s hard to tell what’s more obscene: The idea that one can apologize for the hubris and deceit that is Obama and his health care, or the actual need some have for an apology from an entity so evil that he would toy with the lives of millions as though they were insects and he God.

Some things are unforgivable.

For what it’s worth, here’s Hussein’s “apology” for the pox he has unleashed on the land:

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me. Obviously we didn’t do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law … And, you know, that’s something I regret. That’s something we’re gonna do everything we can to get fixed … We’re looking at a range of options.”

UPDATE (11/8): “No-Fault Forgiveness Can Be Fatal”:

[The] all-too familiar spasms of no-fault forgiveness …are more a distillation of the mass culture than a reflection of any real religious sensibility. If anything, they are a sign of people adrift in a moral twilight zone.
If punishment is a declaration of those values we wish to uphold, then pardoning [someone] before he has made amends and paid for his crime perverts and subverts those values. Redemption can be achieved only when the consequences of one’s actions are faced. …
In the Jewish perspective, justice always precedes and is a prerequisite for mercy. A Jew is not obliged to forgive a transgressor unless he has ceased his harmful actions, compensated the victim for the harm done, and asked forgiveness. Even then, he can but is not obligated to forgive. This is both ethically elegant and psychologically prudent. It upholds the notion of right and wrong and lends meaning and force to the process of asking for and extending forgiveness. And it doesn’t mandate the incongruous emotion of compassion for someone who has … committed other unforgivable crimes.

MORE.

UPDATE II: Beware Of Liberals In Libertarian Drag (Ditto In Conservative Clothing)

Elections, Homosexuality, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Racism

“Beware Of Liberals In Libertarian Drag” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… True to type, Robert Sarvis’ same-sex marriage sanctimony is not only pious, but specious. By Wikipedia’s telling [the libertarian lite, third-party candidate in the Virginia gubernatorial race] “supports same sex marriage and says it is a personal issue for him because his own marriage, which is biracial, was illegal in Virginia 50 years ago.” (By the same token, why not support affirmative action, on the ground that it, too, wasn’t the law “in Virginia 50 years ago”?)

True libertarians toil to keep the state out of marriage altogether. In furtherance of liberty, Uncle Sam’s purview must be curtailed, not expanded. On this score, let our gay friends and family members lead the way. Let them solemnize their commitment in contract and through church, synagogue and mosque (that will be the day!). Once interesting and iconoclastic, gays have become colossal bores who crave nothing more than the state’s seal of approval. Go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police’s violations of privacy and private property were the object of gay anger and activism.

Invariably deployed to encroach on private property and police subversives, the political construct that is “discrimination” (“sexism, racism, blah, blah”) ought to be opposed by the party of individualism. So long as the individual keeps his paws to himself, let him think, speak, associate and dissociate at will. …”

The complete column is “Beware Of Liberals In Libertarian Drag”. Read it on WND.

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UPDATE I: CNN’s chief national correspondent, John King, offers the “nitwork’s” analysis of Terry McAuliffe’s victory in Virginia, as he segues into an analysis of the New Jersey race, where, he contends, the same variables are at work.

JOHN KING: Chris, this one will be studied because this race was so close. Virginia is the governor’s race and Virginia is a tug of war evenly divided on the big major issues. Let’s take a closer look at Terry McAuliffe’s win. Start by looking at all this red. If you glanced at this map, you would think the Republican won, right? Look at all that red across Virginia.

Terry McAuliffe owes his victory right there, just like President Obama in 2008 and 2012, the more populous Washington suburbs. It’s the fastest growing part of the state, more moderate voters, younger voters, a rising Latino population. That is why Terry McAuliffe has his narrow win, all due to big support in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.

Let’s take a closer look at how he did it. I’ll explain what I mean about that tug of war. Look at this, the electorate, almost evenly divided, 51 percent women, 49 percent men. Women were the majority of the electorate and a majority of those women just barely went for Terry McAuliffe. Higher number in the suburbs, this mattered hugely, a slight gender gap, but enough to help Terry McAuliffe.

Helping him despite this, look at this, here’s one thing that’s changing in Virginia. We used to think of this as reliably red, a conservative southern state, 44 percent of the electorate described themselves as moderate. It is not the conservative state it used to be. Support among moderates and liberals put Terry McAuliffe just barely over the top.

Chris, over the top despite very strong opposition to the president’s health care plan, 53 percent oppose Obamacare in the state of Virginia. This is what kept Ken Cuccinelli close at the end. Look at this, 81 percent of Obamacare opponents supported the Republican for governor. This is what kept this so close, closer than most of the late polls. The recent opposition to Obamacare hurting the Democratic candidate, the president is under water in Virginia and yet the Democrat won just barely, the president’s disapproval rating.

Here’s how. Terry McAuliffe told the people of Virginia that Ken Cuccinelli was part of the Tea Party crowd that shutdown the government. Virginia voters blamed the Republicans more than the president. Those who blamed Republicans for shutting down the government, remember how close, especially Northern Virginia is to Washington, D.C. a big factor there.

Lastly, Terry McAuliffe made the point, not just on Tea Party issues, but controversial issues like gay rights, abortion. Half of the electorate thought Ken Cuccinelli was too conservative for the state of Virginia. Of those voters, look at that. That’s your margin of victory. Push them on the Tea Party, the social issues, get turnout in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

That’s why Terry McAuliffe narrowly will be the next governor of Virginia. People will study the exit polls looking ahead to 2014 and especially 2016 where Virginia is still important when it comes to presidential politics.

CUOMO: Very interesting. Seems to reflect they had the right issue with Obamacare, but didn’t go about it the right way. Let’s go to Jersey where it’s very different there. It’s really all about the man. How did you see what it means for Governor Chris Christie?

KING: Look, he is now the premier brand in Republican politics. You can say that just flat out. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, some of the Tea Party guys are with the Republican base. The way you validate yourself in politics is you win elections. Look at that. This has been one of the bluest of blue states in America especially in presidential politics. Chris Christie filling in everything except urban Newark with red so Chris Christie will carry this forward.

I’m sure this will hang on his wall somewhere and mail this to Republican activists all around the country saying look what I did in my state. Let’s move over to the New Jersey exit polls, a sweep. He’s running against a female Democratic candidate, Chris Christie not only wins men, he wins women and both big.

Of course., Chris Christie Republicans tend to win the white vote but remember, Chris, what happened to John McCain among African-Americans and Latinos in 2008, what happened to Mitt Romney among those same constituencies. Let’s look at this. Now Barbara Buono did win African-Americans, but Chris Christie will brag about this.

Look at this number here, 21 percent of African-Americans voted for their Republican governor to re-elect him. Not only did he get 21 percent, he more than doubled his take from four years ago. So Chris Christie can make the case, I can broaden the Republican base. Have you seen that in a long time? That’s red.

The Latino vote, 9 percent of the vote in New Jersey is colored red because Chris Christie actually carried the Latino vote by five, six points there, 51 percent. Remember what happened to Romney and McCain in places like Florida, Nevada, New Mexico. This a powerful message for Chris Christie that I can put the swing states back into play.

If you move over and look at little bit more. It’s clear the people of New Jersey like their governor, but you want to talk about 2016. I’m going to leave that one for you. Superstorm Sandy 84 percent — 84 percent of the people said he handled Sandy well. That was a big personal factor for him. Now we go to 2016 to see if Chris Christie can make the case as he travels the country.

CUOMO: Here’s the segue way. You showed the numbers there. Last night, the governor won with women, which was surprising, showed strength, but however when we talk about the woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the story changes even though a man named John King told me to listen for what you don’t hear said. What do we see?

KING: It’s a close race. The state hasn’t gone Republican for president since 1984. It’s a close race. Hillary Clinton is still ahead by four points. Chris Christie’s message to Republicans can be I can guarantee New Jersey, but if he’s competitive in New Jersey he’s probably competitive in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio as well.

These are the races up in 2014 Republican governors. Iowa, that’s up. There’s a place called Ohio that’s up. There’s a place called South Carolina that’s up. You know where I’m going here. He’ll get a chance to test his appeal in the states that matter most when we pick presidents.

UPDATE II: Beware Of Liberals In Libertarian Drag And In Conservative’s Clothing. Via Mr. Buchanan:

According to Chuck Todd of NBC, though heading for a blowout, Christie rebuffed a desperate plea to come down to Virginia for a few hours to help Ken Cuccinelli, whose late surge almost won the state.