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America in decline? Could happen, says Mark Steyn.
…Is America set for decline? It’s been a grand run. The country’s been the leading economic power since it overtook Britain in the 1880s. That’s impressive. Nevertheless, over the course of that century and a quarter, Detroit went from the world’s industrial powerhouse to an urban wasteland, and the once-golden state of California atrophied into a land of government run by the government for the government. What happens when the policies that brought ruin to Detroit and sclerosis to California become the basis for the nation at large? Strictly on the numbers, the United States is in the express lane to Declinistan: unsustainable entitlements, the remorseless governmentalization of the economy and individual liberty, and a centralization of power that will cripple a nation of this size. Decline is the way to bet. But what will ensure it is if the American people accept decline as a price worth paying for European social democracy.
Is that so hard to imagine? Every time I retail the latest indignity imposed upon the “citizen” by some or other Continental apparatchik, I receive e-mails from the heartland pointing out, with much reference to the Second Amendment, that it couldn’t happen here because Americans aren’t Euro-weenies. But nor were Euro-weenies once upon a time. Hayek’s greatest insight in The Road to Serfdom is psychological: “There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought,” he wrote with an immigrant’s eye on the Britain of 1944. “It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.” …
…Why did decline prove so pleasant in Europe? Because it was cushioned by American power. The United States is such a perversely non-imperial power that it garrisons not ramshackle colonies but its wealthiest “allies,” from Germany to Japan. For most of its members, “the Free World” has been a free ride. And that, too, is unprecedented. Even the few NATO members that can still project meaningful force around the world have been able to arrange their affairs on the assumption of the American security umbrella: In the United Kingdom, between 1951 and 1997 the proportion of government expenditure on defense fell from 24 percent to 7, while the proportion on health and welfare rose from 22 percent to 53. …
Maybe the country will decline the decline. New poll shows the Mass. US senate race a toss up. We shall see if voters in Massachusetts are going to send a thunderbolt to the White House. Corner post with the details.
The Senate race in Massachusetts is a dead heat according to an extensive new poll, with Republican Scott Brown leading Democrat Martha Coakley 48-47 among likely voters.
Brown enjoys a staggering 70/16 favorability ratio among independents, and 66-31 advantage over Coakley (thanks in part to a total lack of advertising from the latter). He also benefits from an “enthusiasm gap”: 68 percent of Republicans polled said they were “very excited” about casting their vote, compared to just 48 percent of Democrats. …
Ready to get covered with slime? The Dems have a plan to delay the swearing in of Scott Brown if he’s elected to the senate.
Tony Blankley looks to the past to instruct us on how to handle the tumultuous times that we face.
Over the Christmas holiday, I read a couple of books that, at least for me, may provide some guidance in the upcoming tumultuous and probably consequential year. The first book was “Munich,” 1938 by David Farber, (grandson of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan) by far the most authoritative book on that world changing event. …
…The other half of the story of Munich 1938 was events in Germany, where, unlike in Britain, the problem was a war policy advocated by Adolf Hitler that was opposed by most of the institutional leadership (including many of the very top generals) and by the general public which feared another war. (As Hitler paraded his armored columns through Berlin in preparation for entering Czechoslovakia, according to a witness, “the people of Berlin ducked into subways, refused to look on, and the handful that did stood at the curb in utter silence. It was the most striking demonstration against the war I’ve ever seen.” Hitler watched it from a window and in furious contempt of the German people complained “With such people I cannot wage war.” Of course he did, in part because of what, the author points out, was Hitler’s “exceptional insight into the tendency of men torn between conscience and self-interest to welcome what made it easier to opt for the latter.”)
The second book is a new short biography of Winston Churchill by the prolific English writer Paul Johnson. It has the advantage of being probably the last Churchill biography which will be written by an author who personally knew the great man – and is filled with personal tidbits that bring further color to the well known story of Churchill’s life. …
…The author identifies five Churchillian attributes that guided his eventual success: 1) He aimed high, but never cadged or demeaned himself to gain office or objectives; 2) there was no substitute for hard work – even though he was brilliant; 3) Churchill “never allowed mistakes, disasters – personal or national – accidents, illnesses, unpopularity and criticism to get him down. His powers of recuperation, both in physical illness an in psychological responses to abject failure, were astounding”; 4) Churchill wasted extraordinarily small amounts of energy on hatred, recrimination, malice, revenge grudges, rumor mongering or vendettas. Energy expended on hate was energy lost to productive activity; and 5) he always had something other than politics to give joy to his life. …
Charles Krauthammer reviews the Obami’s irrational counterterrorism policies, and the irrationality of radical Islam.
On Wednesday, Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was indicted by a Michigan grand jury for attempted murder and sundry other criminal charges. The previous day, the State Department announced that his visa had been revoked. The system worked.
Well, it did for Abdulmutallab. What he lost in flying privileges he gained in Miranda rights. He was singing quite freely when seized after trying to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit. But the Obama administration decided to give him a lawyer and the right to remain silent. We are now forced to purchase information from this attempted terrorist in the coin of leniency. Absurdly, Abdulmutallab is now in control. …
…This is nuts. Even if you wanted ultimately to try him as an ordinary criminal, he could have been detained in military custody — and thus subject to military interrogation — without prejudicing his ultimate disposition. After all, every Guantanamo detainee was first treated as an enemy combatant and presumably interrogated. But some (most notoriously Khalid Sheik Mohammed) are going to civilian trial. That determination can be made later. …
In the Corner, Robert Costa posts an interview with Liz Cheney at Keep America Safe about national security concerns. Here’s Pickings dream ticket – Palin and Cheney.
Liz Cheney, the founder of Keep America Safe, tells National Review Online that President Obama’s national-security remarks this afternoon, plus the press conference with John Brennan and Janet Napolitano, were “extremely troubling.”
“Over the course of the last year, President Obama has taken his eye off the ball and allowed America’s counterterrorism systems to erode,” says Cheney. “Brennan and Napolitano both said they were surprised to learn from the review released today that al-Qaeda in Yemen was operational. Napolitano went on to say she hadn’t realized previously that al-Qaeda might use an individual to attack us. Yet, in the past year, we’ve had three attacks on America from individuals with Yemeni connections — from the terrorist at the recruiting station in Little Rock to the terrorist at Ford Hood and now the Christmas Day bomber.” Thus, she says, “it is inexplicable that our nation’s top counterterrorism officials would be surprised by a method of attack we’ve repeatedly seen before.”
“At the end of the day, we cannot win this war without daily, unwavering, resolute presidential stewardship,” says Cheney. “By tasking his counterterrorism officials to spend their time focused on trying to close Guantanamo and investigating their predecessors, by treating terrorists as criminals, by treating terrorist attacks on the U.S. as the acts of ‘isolated extremists,’ President Obama has failed to make fighting terror and keeping the nation safe his top priority.”
“The president says he’s using every tool at his disposal but he’s not,” says Cheney. “We can’t prevail against terrorists without intelligence. When President Obama treats terrorists like criminals, reads them their Miranda rights and allows them to lawyer up, he ensures we won’t get the intelligence we need.” In addition, Cheney says, “When the president stopped the enhanced-interrogation programs and revealed our tactics to our enemies, he significantly reduced our ability to successfully interrogate any senior al-Qaeda leaders. Intelligence is key. Let’s be clear: We’re not going to win this war through more intense airport screenings.”
Roger Simon blogs about global warming wealth-seeking.
Hardly more than two weeks after the United Nations Climate Conference known as COP15 global warming has virtually disappeared from the world’s front pages. First was Climategate, then the inconvenient truth of Siberian winds bringing record breaking cold to Beijing (not to mention Miami, of all places) and virtually everywhere else and poof (!) AGW is gone, more than likely for a long time to come. It’s almost as if it never happened, all those drowning polar bears and glaciers receding forever and a day. Now, only crickets. …
…I don’t know whether Mr. Rachman was in Copenhagen, but I was. I didn’t speak to Singh or Wen or anybody quite that august, but I did speak to a number of third world delegates and it was commonplace among them to admit the AGW was hooey, therefore acknowledging the obvious – that they were there for the money. In fact, I was stunned at how easily they admitted it.
But speaking of the money and the strange saga that allowed it to become conventional wisdom that the CO2 we all know and love from photosynthesis was a treacherous greenhouse gas about to turn us all into baked potatoes, PJM and PJTV promise not to let this subject go. In the coming weeks and days, we’re going to be following that money – and there’s a lot of it to follow indeed. We’re going to name names too. That should be fun – even if we don’t get our money back (less likely, alas).
Gerald Warner posts in the Telegraph Blogs, UK. He advocates that the British public vote out all politicians advancing green fraud.
“Climate science” is the oxymoron of the century. There is not a city, town or hamlet in the country that has had its weather conditions correctly forecast, over periods as short as 12 hours, during the past week. This is the “exceptionally mild winter” that the climate change buffoons warned us would occur as a consequence of global warming. Their credibility is 20 degrees below zero.
Yet nothing shames them, nothing persuades them to come out of the bunker with their hands high and “fess up”. …
…The entire Northern Hemisphere is frozen. …That is completely normal, part of the random climate fluctuations with which our ancestors were familiar. Yet fraudulent scientists have gained millions of pounds by taking selective samples of natural climate change, whipping up a Grande Peur and using it to advance the cause of world government, state control and fiscal despoliation of citizens.
2010 should be the year when all that ends. It is time for Zero Tolerance of AGW fraudsters and their political masters. It is time to say: Green taxes? We won’t pay them. Nor will we vote for or permit to remain in office any politician or party that supports the AGW fraud. This year is one of those rare occasions when we have an opportunity to punish and control our political masters – provided Britons have the will to break with the two-party system. …
Peter Robinson reports on the entitlement demonstrations at Berkeley in Forbes.
…Faculty and administrators have joined the protests. Advocating a march on Sacramento, Robert Birgeneau, the Berkeley chancellor, has compared the student movement with the civil rights movement. “I hope that this [march] will match the March on Washington,” Birgeneau said. Prof. Ananya Roy has become a particular champion of the protest movement. Addressing students one day, Friend writes, Roy “began to voice … [their] dismay in sharp, sloganeering phrases. … In her piping voice … she repeated, elegaically: ‘We have all become students of color now.’”
We have all become students of color? A march on Sacramento that possesses the same moral dimension as the March on Washington? Let us remind ourselves just what the Berkeley protesters are demanding–not racial equality but money. For the poor and dispossessed? Scarcely. For themselves. To place the protesters’ demand in perspective, a few figures…
–The salary of Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau: $445,716. The salary of a typical full-time professor at Berkeley: $127,300. The average starting salary for the holder of a Berkeley undergraduate degree–I repeat, the average starting salary: $59,900. The median household income in California: $61,154.
–The number of Berkeley professors who have been laid off as a result of budget cuts: zero. The proportion of California workers who are now unemployed: 1 in 10. …
In the NY Times, Tara Pope reports on 11 foods to boost your health.
Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.
Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.
How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.
How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked. …