How Crazy-Ass Tom Cruise and 'Top Gun' Saved America (VIDEO)

I saw this movie. Folks are right: It's very good.

From Matt Taibbi, on Substack, "America needs to get back to meaningless fun, and "Top Gun: Maverick" delivers in colossal doses." 

Hands Off My Gun

At Amazon, Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America.

Invasion of Ukraine and the Rise of America's Isolationists

Interesting piece, from Zoe Strimpel, at Bari Weiss's SubStack, "America Is Afraid of War. Putin Knows It":

The problem is not just that the United States has, over the past two decades, waged two unsuccessful wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor is it just that Americans are tired of fighting and don’t care about the former Soviet Union, although there’s some of that. (In a poll just released by the Associated Press, just 26 percent of Americans say the U.S. should play a major role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.) Nor is it just that Joe Biden is a weak president who lacks the energy needed to do battle with the likes of Vladimir Putin. (See, for example, the statement Biden put out shortly after the invasion was announced.)

It’s that the United States seems to have forgotten the point of waging, or threatening to wage, war. Peace is earned through strength. We can’t ask for it. We can’t talk our way into it. We can’t simply impose (or lift) sanctions. We have to achieve it by threatening—credibly—to pummel into oblivion anyone who gets in the way.

There is a reason that Teddy Roosevelt’s famous 1901 pronouncement—“Speak softly, and carry a big stick”—has become something of a cliché. It’s because it works.

This used to be understood, or taken for granted, not only in Washington but in London, Paris and every other NATO capital. That is no longer the case—in no small part because both left and right, while moving further apart from each other in almost every other respect, have converged on a shared neo-isolationism. Today, almost no one in any position of authority is willing to make a moral argument for going to war.

If you grew up in the second half of the 20th century, during the Cold War or immediately after, you heard often about America being the world’s policeman. During this time, Britain watched its empire collapse and the American empire, which the Americans never called an empire, rise. America promised to respect freedom, democracy and minority rights, and it backed that up with force: a sprawling conventional army, a vast navy, thousands of fighter jets, a nuclear umbrella that extended across the West.

I felt the safety of this promise keenly as a child in London. Most of my extended family had been decimated by the Third Reich, and the idea of a liberal and humane controlling authority was enormously reassuring.

Of course, America had many faults. There were plenty of Vietnamese who did not regard it as a beacon of freedom. The same was true in large pockets of Latin America and Africa. And it was haunted still by slavery. It had gotten much wrong, at home and overseas.

But still. America was the crown jewel of the West, the culmination of a 2,500-year-old evolution that stretched back to the Athenian polis. It had hurtled human progress forward, created gleaming skylines and world-renowned universities and an American Dream that—amazingly—was open to the entire world. It was an invitation to everyone. At the heart of all this was a new kind of civilization that transcended ancient bloodlines and tribal affiliations. It was rooted in the Enlightenment, and its radical promise—that all men are created equal—offered dignity and hope. It was held together by a democratic tradition, an individualism that was rugged but tempered by a sense of community and duty, and the rule of law.

All of this is blindingly obvious but has become almost embarrassing to say out loud. That’s because we no longer know who we are or why it matters...

RTWT.

 

Justin Farrell, Billionaire Wilderness

At Amazon, Justin Farrell, Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West.

Simpler Times

I found another "American Power" guy on Twitter, lol.

Simpler times . . . we could use a little more straight talk in America. pic.twitter.com/hkQN4zh9Ui

— AMERICAN POWER!! (@_Pax_Americana_) December 3, 2018

Dennis Prager: The American Trinity (VIDEO)

This video draws from Prager's excellent 2013 book, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.

At Prager University:

Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West

*BUMPED.*

Hmm, I see a lot of really good non-fiction books coming out, which is going to delay my progress on my fiction book list, which is gargantuan.

At Amazon, Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy.

What If Diversity Isn't America's Strength?

From Jonah Goldberg, at LAT, "This should elicit some fun email":

Sen. Lindsey Graham says he scolded the president for saying something scatological about certain countries and their immigrants. "Diversity has always been our strength," he allegedly said. By my count, this makes Graham the bazillionth person to proclaim some variant of "diversity is strength."

Is it true? I think the only close to right answer is, "it depends." Specifically, it depends on what — often clichéd — analogy you have in mind. Diverse stock portfolios are more resilient. Diverse diets are healthier. But that doesn't mean picking bad stocks will make you richer or that eating spoiled foods is good for you.

I once heard Jesse Jackson explain that racial integration of the NBA made it stronger and better. He was right. But would gender integration of the NBA have the same effect? Would diversifying professional basketball by height? Probably not.

All of these analogies can take you only so far. Thomas Sowell once said, "The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."

There's a growing body of evidence that even if diversity— the kind that results from immigration — once made America stronger, it may not be doing so anymore. Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist at Harvard, found that increased diversity corrodes civil society by eroding shared values, customs and institutions. People tend to "hunker down" and retreat from civil society, at least in the short and medium term.

I think the real culprit here isn't immigration or diversity in general, but the rising stigma against assimilation. Particularly on college campuses, but also in large swaths of mainstream journalism and in the louder corners of the fever swamp right, the idea that people of all backgrounds should embrace a single conception of "Americanism" is increasingly taboo.

Anyone of any race or national origin can be an American, but it requires effort and desire from both the individual and the larger society. There's a shortage of both these days...

More.

This is How Radical Leftists View the President, at Home and Abroad

At Der Spiegel:

New Der SPIEGEL Cover: The Age of Fire and Fury https://t.co/jxgHScxKrO pic.twitter.com/wVKK5aHrcE

— SPIEGEL ONLINE English (@SPIEGEL_English) January 12, 2018

Post-Christian America?

Look, I think American War is practically non-fiction, so Ima say no.

But check at NRO:

Can America Survive as a Post-Christian Nation? https://t.co/nJ68MPcyZg via @DavidAFrench pic.twitter.com/UY63qr9Qud

— National Review (@NRO) December 28, 2017

Battle for Conservatism

This is good, from Jacob Heilbrunn, at the New York Review, "Donald Trump’s Brains":

A battle for the future of conservatism is being fought. Jacob Heilbrunn pays a visit to the pro-Trump camp associated with the Claremont Institute. https://t.co/qC0iw8aEoi

— The New York Review of Books (@nybooks) December 13, 2017

The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom
by Thomas G. West
Cambridge University Press, 420 pp., $99.99

American Greatness: How Conservatism Inc. Missed the 2016 Election and What the D.C. Establishment Needs to Learn
by Chris Buskirk and Seth Leibsohn
WND Books, 272 pp., $25.95

Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump
by Laura Ingraham
All Points, 307 pp., $27.99

How the Right Lost Its Mind
by Charles J. Sykes
St. Martin’s, 267 pp., $27.99

The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World
by Thomas O. Melia and Peter Wehner
56 pp., available at gwbcenter.imgix.net

Among the many anomalies of Donald Trump’s presidency has been the near invisibility of institutions that for many years served as a bulwark of Republican policymaking. Though many on the right like to quote Ronald Reagan’s assertion from 1981 that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” his administration in fact began its bold work with a comprehensive playbook—the twenty-volume Mandate for Leadership, published by The Heritage Foundation. It contained a variety of proposals for slashing federal income taxes, boosting defense spending, and rolling back business regulations. It was widely seen as a blueprint for the administration, and Reagan gave a copy to each member of his cabinet. A redacted paperback version even became a best seller. “Of a sudden,” Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan declared, “the GOP has become a party of ideas.”

In subsequent years, Heritage and other conservative think tanks continued to formulate sweeping proposals. It is well known that the Affordable Care Act, so reviled by Trump and other Republicans, emerged from a market-based model that was developed by Stuart Butler, the director of Heritage’s Center for Policy Innovation, and adopted in 2006 by Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. During the George W. Bush presidency, foreign policy experts at the American Enterprise Institute, such as Richard Perle, a Defense Department official in the Reagan administration, helped shape Bush’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including, most notoriously, the war in Iraq.

Under Trump, however, these institutions are struggling to adjust. Though Heritage has played an important part in recommending nominations to the judiciary, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, its actual influence on policy seems negligible, and its members have conflicting views of Trump’s nationalist agenda. Something similar can be said about a number of other conservative think tanks in Washington, including the American Enterprise Institute, which has a number of fellows such as Jonah Goldberg who are highly critical of Trump.

The result is that many neoconservatives and establishment conservatives—ranging from Eliot A. Cohen, a former adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to David Frum, author of the new book Trumpocracy, to Stuart Stevens, the campaign strategist for Mitt Romney in 2012—have vociferously united in their loathing for Trump. They see him as a sinister mountebank who is destroying true conservative principles from within the GOP and who, incidentally, threatens to exile them to the political wilderness.

A battle for the future of conservatism is in effect being fought between these anti-Trump conservatives and pro-Trump conservatives associated with the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank based in California, which for years has been discussing the Federalist Papers, the dangers of progressivism, and, above all, the wisdom of the German exile and political philosopher Leo Strauss, who taught for several decades at the University of Chicago. For some both in and out of government, the Trump presidency is a deliverance—or at least offers tantalizing promises of an audacious new conservative era in domestic and foreign policy...

Keep reading.

Punish Americans for Their Heritage, but Reward 'Dreamers': How #DACA Outrage Exposes the Left

At Breitbart, "By now it is crystal clear: the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was simply a way for President Obama to force his successor to make an unpopular decision."

Why Trump Is Right About Immigration

From Mark Krikorian, at the National Interest:

For the past two years, ever since Donald Trump’s escalator ride, the immigration debate has focused on enforcement and illegality. The wall, criminal aliens, deportation, Obama’s lawless executive amnesty—it’s been all illegal immigration, all the time.

And that’s as it should be, at first, because if the rules aren’t enforced, it doesn’t much matter what the rules are.

But in the long run the more important questions are: What are the rules? How many people should the federal immigration program admit each year? How should they be selected? How can we minimize the harm from the program while maximizing the benefits?

Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue have started to answer these questions. They joined President Trump at the White House this morning to unveil legislation to restructure and modernize the federal immigration program. The Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act (RAISE Act) resumes the effort undertaken by civil rights icon Barbara Jordan’s U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in the mid-1990s. Two decades ago, the corporate Right allied with the cultural Left to kill Jordan’s recommended immigration changes. But the logic of those changes didn’t go away. And today’s announcement picks up where she left off.

The Cotton-Perdue bill makes a number of significant changes to the current program. First, it focuses family immigration more narrowly. Currently, two-thirds of the million-plus foreign citizens who get green cards (i.e., permanent residence that can lead to citizenship) each year qualify only because they have relatives already here. This nepotistic system does not screen for skills or education. It also drives chain migration, as each cohort of immigrants sponsors the next one.

The RAISE Act would limit family immigration rights to the actual nuclear family: husbands, wives, and little kids of American citizens and legal residents. The current categories for adult siblings, adult sons and daughters, and parents would be retired. U.S. citizens could still bring in their elderly parents in need of caretaking, but only on renewable nonimmigrant visas (no green cards or citizenship) and only after proving that they’ve paid for health insurance up front.

The second major element in this restructuring addresses the employment-based immigration flow. It is now a jumble of categories and subcategories, the main result of which is to provide steady work for immigration lawyers. The Cotton-Perdue bill would rationalize this mess by creating one, streamlined points system, along the lines of similar schemes in Canada and Australia. Points would be awarded to potential candidates based mainly on education, English-language ability and age, and those who meet a certain benchmark would be in the pool for green cards, with the top scorers being selected first.

The bill would also eliminate the egregious Diversity Visa Lottery and cap refugee admissions at fifty thousand per year, rather than allow the president let in as many as he wants, as is the case today.

The level of immigration—now running at over a million a year—would likely drop by 40 percent, and then drop some more over time, as the number of foreign spouses declined. (Most U.S. citizens marrying foreigners are earlier immigrants, so as they age, and fewer new immigrants come in behind them, the demand for spousal immigration is likely to fall.) That would still mean annual permanent immigration of 500,000–600,000 a year, which is more than any other nation.

The bill isn’t perfect. It leaves the level of skills-based immigration, for instance, at the current 140,000 a year—the world doesn’t generate 140,000 Einsteins annually. It preserves a category for the spouses and minor children of green-card holders, which I don’t think is justified. (That relates to spouses acquired after immigration; if you’re married at the time you get your green card, your spouse automatically gets one too.) And I don’t think there’s any justification for resettling even fifty thousand refugees (as opposed to helping a far greater number at the same cost in the countries where they’ve taken refuge).

Neither does this bill address so-called temporary immigration, where businesses import cheap labor—both higher- and lower-skilled—to make an end-run around the American labor market...

More.

Sailors and Marines Deploy from Naval Base San Diego (VIDEO)

I'm so glad the local network posts these stories. They're so important.

The family sacrifice is profound, but no complaints.

MAGA!

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Sailors and Marines in the America Amphibious Ready Group and 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit left San Diego Friday for a regularly scheduled deployment. The naval force is comprised of the amphibious assault ship USS America, amphibious transport dock USS San Diego and amphibious dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor.

During the deployment, they'll operate with embarked forces of the Camp Pendleton-based 15th MEU, the "Wildcards" of Coronado-based Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23, and various other units...

Out Today: David McCullough, The American Spirit

At Amazon, David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For.

He's a good guy.

On CBS This Morning, yesterday morning:

David M. Wrobel, Global West, American Frontier

Another excellent-looking book.

At Amazon, David M. Wrobel, Global West, American Frontier: Travel, Empire, and Exceptionalism from Manifest Destiny to the Great Depression.

Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment

*BUMPED.*

I've got this item already loaded up in my shopping cart at Amazon. (ADDED: I'll purchase a new batch of books on the 1st, when my Amazon associates commissions come through, as well as my regular paycheck lol. Thanks for your support!)

I'm excited to read it.

See, Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890.

Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land

At Amazon, Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth.

Ray Allen Billington, America's Frontier Heritage

*BUMPED.*

I picked up a copy, to continue my study of the American frontier and the Native American experience.

At Amazon, Ray Allen Billington, America's Frontier Heritage.

Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution

I love this book.

I'm breaking out my copy today, in preparation for my lectures this week on the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention.

At Amazon, The Radicalism of the American Revolution.

More blogging tonight.