Today's Democrats: Peace at Any Price

Senator Joseph Lieberman's essay today reveals the true nature of today's Democratic Party. Abandoning the legacy of Presidents Harry Truman and John Kennedy, the party today, torn by its antiwar base, demands peace at any price, endangering America's relations in the world:

How did the Democratic Party get here? How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders. It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam. In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party. Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest. Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved. In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

Of course that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged. Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide. But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world. Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected. In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power. He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Lieberman, next to John McCain, is the most important spokesman on American foreign policy in the U.S. Senate. This is why he's attacked mercilessly by the very groups he identifies in his essay, the hardline surrenderist left.

In fact, my foreign policy nemesis says it's Lieberman who's become extreme:

...the things he's saying today were conventional wisdom among center-left elites five years ago and as recently as three years ago Peter Beinart could be found getting a respectful hearing for the idea that MoveOn members should be analogized to Communist Fifth Columnists and purged from progressive politics. It's just that most people who used to hold those views have abandoned them, often sotto voce, leaving Lieberman as an unexpected outlier.

So, basically, advocacy of a robust foreign policy, once championed by the heroic Democratic presidents of the post-war era, now places proponents as extreme outliers on the ideological continuum.

Things are just getting going in this election, too.

I'll have more ... but see also Jules Crittenden.

Iowa Voters Jittery on Trade Policy

Iowa voters are shifting toward protectionism on trade, as this Wall Street Journal article indicates, reporting from Waterloo, Iowa:

At a John Deere plant here, bright green tractors bound for Brazil, Russia and China roll off assembly lines. Global demand for tractors is good, and that's been good for Waterloo.

Yet over the last couple of years, workers and voters in this blue-collar manufacturing outpost -- and throughout Iowa -- have grown decidedly downbeat about globalization. Trade has become such a hot subject that Democratic presidential candidates seeking support in Iowa's influential Jan. 3 caucuses are turning into trade skeptics, and the issue is splitting traditionally free-trade Republicans.

Iowa's ambivalence is all the more remarkable because the state is on the whole a big winner from global trade. "Iowa, as much as any other state, is on the plus side of the ledger," says James Leach, a 30-year Republican congressman from Iowa who now runs Harvard University's Institute of Politics. "It would be highly ironic if pro-protectionist candidates prevailed in the Iowa caucuses." Trade wasn't always such a high priority: In the 2004 Iowa caucus, Richard Gephardt, the most outspoken Democrat on the issue, attracted so few votes he subsequently pulled out of the race.

As the 2008 presidential election approaches, anti-trade sentiment is percolating across America. It is particularly strong in places like Ohio, where foreign competition has decimated jobs. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted earlier this month found that 60% of voters nationwide agreed with the statement that "foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy."

Iowa's anxiety stems from a mix of factors, many of which are also at play in other Midwestern swing states. By many measures, the global economy has been good for the state. Boosted by the ethanol and biofuels craze and surging demand for crops and farm equipment world-wide, Iowa's exports are up 77% over the past four years versus 50% nationally. The state's unemployment rate hovers around 3.7%, below the national 4.6% average.

But the past couple of decades have seen a steady decline in once-prized factory jobs, from a high of 252,700 in 1999 to 231,000 today. Just this year, Iowa lost about 1,800 jobs when appliance-maker Maytag, now owned by Whirlpool Corp., shuttered its plant in its home town of Newton. (The jobs moved to Ohio, but foreign competition was a key reason Maytag was acquired by Whirlpool.) Wages haven't kept pace with inflation, and employers here, as elsewhere, have been paring health and retirement benefits.

Many Iowans blame their difficulties on global trade. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll of Iowa Democrats conducted in September found that by 42% to 33% they favored a candidate who believes trade pacts hurt the U.S. economy over one who believes they benefit the economy; Republicans were evenly split at 39%. (The balance said they didn't know or hadn't a preference.)

The article notes that the Democratic presidential hopefuls are pandering to these trade fears:

On a recent Tuesday, the crowd at Des Moines Area Community College bursts into loud and sustained applause when Mr. Obama vows to make sure "that globalization is not just working for multinational companies."

In Cedar Rapids, workers nod as former Sen. John Edwards tells them that "the negative effects from globalization are rippling through the economy." In perhaps the most telling development, Democratic front-runner Mrs. Clinton says the North American Free Trade Agreement -- which her husband pushed through Congress -- has "serious shortcomings."

It's hard to shake the sense that American worked have struggled amid increasing global economic interdependence. Unfortunately, while Democratic proposals for "fair trade" policies stressing labor and environmental standards might play well in Peoria (or Waterloo), such a shift would mark a dangerous turn away from the centrist pro-integration trade policies of the Bill Clinton adminstration in the 1990s.

A recent article in Foreign Affairs, "A New Deal for Globalization," made a troubling case for an interventionist approach to trade adjustment, focusing on establishing redistributive payroll tax policies in exchange for "saving" American support of trade openness.

The Democrats are also joined by many Republicans, who have grown increasingly skeptical of free trade policies. Together the concerns of voters all around may be creating a perfect storm for the dismantling of the post-World War II trade consensus in the U.S.

The implications of a protectionist, redistributive turn on trade policy are far reaching. As Carla A. Hills, a former U.S. Trade Representative during the G.H.W. Bush administration, noted in a 2005 Foreign Affairs article:

The U.S. experience since World War II proves that increased economic interdependence boosts economic growth and encourages political stability. For more than 50 years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States has led the world in opening markets. To that end, the United States worked to establish a series of international organizations, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO)....

The results to date have been spectacular. World trade has exploded and standards of living have soared at home and abroad. Economist Gary Hufbauer, in a comprehensive study published this year by the Institute of International Economics, calculates that 50 years of globalization has made the United States richer by $1 trillion per year (measured in 2003 dollars), or about $9,000 added wealth per year for the average U.S. household. Developing countries have also gained from globalization. On average, poor countries that have opened their markets to trade and investment have grown five times faster than those that kept their markets closed. Studies conducted by World Bank economist David Dollar show that globalization has raised 375 million people out of extreme poverty over the past 20 years.

And the benefits have not been only economic. As governments liberalize their trade regimes, they often liberalize their political regimes. Adherence to a set of trade rules encourages transparency, the rule of law, and a respect for property that contribute to increased stability. Without U.S. leadership...the world would look very different today.

Candidates of both parties may find it hard to resist the protectionist persuasion, and the outcome of these trends may be one of the most important consequences of the 2008 presidential election.

Francis Fukuyama and America's Self-Defeating Power

Francis Fukuyama's got a piece up at RealClearPolitics arguing that the Bush administration's foreign policy has exacerbated global anti-Americanism:

When I wrote about the End of History almost 20 years ago, one thing that I did not anticipate was the degree to which American behaviour and misjudgments would make anti-Americanism one of the chief fault lines of global politics. And yet, particularly since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, that is precisely what has happened, owing to four key mistakes made by the Bush administration.

First, the doctrine of "preemption", which was devised in response to the 2001 attacks, was inappropriately broadened to include Iraq and other so-called "rogue states" that threatened to develop weapons of mass destruction. To be sure, preemption is fully justified vis-a-vis stateless terrorists wielding such weapons. But it cannot be the core of a general non-proliferation policy, whereby the United States intervenes militarily everywhere to prevent the development of nuclear weapons.

The cost of executing such a policy simply would be too high (several hundred billion dollars and tens of thousands of casualties in Iraq and still counting). This is why the Bush administration has shied away from military confrontations with North Korea and Iran, despite its veneration of Israel's air strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, which set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme by several years. After all, the very success of that attack meant that such limited intervention could never be repeated, because would-be proliferators learned to bury, hide, or duplicate their nascent weapons programmes.

The second important miscalculation concerned the likely global reaction to America's exercise of its hegemonic power. Many people within the Bush administration believed that even without approval by the UN security council or Nato, American power would be legitimised by its successful use. This had been the pattern for many US initiatives during the cold war, and in the Balkans during the 1990s; back then, it was known as "leadership" rather than "unilateralism".

But, by the time of the Iraq war, conditions had changed: the US had grown so powerful relative to the rest of the world that the lack of reciprocity became an intense source of irritation even to America's closest allies. The structural anti-Americanism arising from the global distribution of power was evident well before the Iraq war, in the opposition to American-led globalisation during the Clinton years. But it was exacerbated by the Bush administration's "in-your-face" disregard for a variety of international institutions as soon it came into office - a pattern that continued through the onset of the Iraq war.

America's third mistake was to overestimate how effective conventional military power would be in dealing with the weak states and networked transnational organisations that characterise international politics, at least in the broader Middle East. It is worth pondering why a country with more military power than any other in human history, and that spends as much on its military as virtually the rest of the world combined, cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation. At least part of the problem is that it is dealing with complex social forces that are not organised into centralised hierarchies that can enforce rules, and thus be deterred, coerced, or otherwise manipulated through conventional power.

Israel made a similar mistake in thinking that it could use its enormous margin of conventional military power to destroy Hizbullah in last summer's Lebanon war. Both Israel and the US are nostalgic for a 20th century world of nation-states, which is understandable, since that is the world to which the kind of conventional power they possess is best suited.

But nostalgia has led both states to misinterpret the challenges they now face, whether by linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or Hizbullah to Iran and Syria. This linkage does exist in the case of Hizbullah, but the networked actors have their own social roots and are not simply pawns used by regional powers. This is why the exercise of conventional power has become frustrating.

Finally, the Bush administration's use of power has lacked not only a compelling strategy or doctrine, but also simple competence. In Iraq alone, the administration misestimated the threat of WMD, failed to plan adequately for the occupation, and then proved unable to adjust quickly when things went wrong. To this day, it has dropped the ball on very straightforward operational issues in Iraq, such as funding democracy promotion efforts.

Incompetence in implementation has strategic consequences. Many of the voices that called for, and then bungled, military intervention in Iraq are now calling for war with Iran. Why should the rest of the world think that conflict with a larger and more resolute enemy would be handled any more capably?

But the fundamental problem remains the lopsided distribution of power in the international system. Any country in the same position as the US, even a democracy, would be tempted to exercise its hegemonic power with less and less restraint. America's founding fathers were motivated by a similar belief that unchecked power, even when democratically legitimated, could be dangerous, which is why they created a constitutional system of internally separated powers to limit the executive.

Such a system does not exist on a global scale today, which may explain how America got into such trouble. A smoother international distribution of power, even in a global system that is less than fully democratic, would pose fewer temptations to abandon the prudent exercise of power.

My reading of Fukuyama is that he's stuck in a pre-surge mentality.

The justification for the U.S. invasion of has been debated ad nauseum (so that's a stale rehash). Fukuyama also fails to note the recovery of international views toward the United States (public opinion in our Western democratic allies has recovered since the early days of the Iraq war).

Further, we don't need to wonder why a hegemonic U.S. "cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation." It is well known among security experts that the effective deployment of American military power will be most difficult in the "contested zones" of international security, in countries like Somalia in the 1990s and Iraq in this decade. In these theaters irregular forces have used unconventional tactics to neutralize the preponderant advantages of American military technology. But America has adapted, and the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy is now bearing fruit in Iraq, with most parts of the country seeing dramatic improvements in security.

Fukuyama's right that a dramatically lopsided distribution of global power will lead to international antagonism toward the system's leading state, which is currently the United States. But we will always face opposition to the forward exercise of American power, no matter who's in office. The Bush adminstration simply shook international opinion out of its Clinton-era stupor - national populations around the world had to reckon with an American hegemon intent on deploying power in its national interest.

The result has been costly, but progress is being made. It will be interesting to see how long Fukuyama will continue to make arguments such as this. Fukuyama's a top scholar in international relations, but he's flipped-flopped in his loyalties to neoconservative theory. Perhaps he's jockeying for a prominent foreign policy post in a Democratic administration. I wish him luck, but I'll be on him when he starts backpeddling from his criticism of America's mission in Iraq, particularly amid additional signs of progress in consolidating that nation's democratic regime.

The End of Democracy Promotion?

The Atlantic's polled a group of policy makers, political scientists, and pundits on the prospects for democracy promotion worldwide.

Obviously, the Bush administration's made things tough for would be neo-Wilsonians, although the findings - certainly pessimistic on the future of global democratic consolidation and expansion - aren't all that bad.

Here's one of the key question items:

"Is the U.S. capable of meaningfully affecting the prospects for democracy in most nondemocratic states?"

68% YES

“The Bush administration has given democracy a bad name. The U.S. can’t impose democracy or insist on democracy; it can only carefully support indigenous democrats (sometimes by staying far away) and the aspiration of human beings to live a better life. Most important in supporting the democratic impulse, the United States must ensure that it stays true to that impulse in its own deeds, not just its words.”

33% NO

“The U.S. can nudge nondemocratic states to head in a democratic direction by providing political and economic incentives. But the U.S. has little direct leverage over the domestic developments that decisively determine the character of a state’s government.”

The article doesn't say, but I imagine these are selected quotes from some of the respondents.

Check out the whole thing, in any case. When asked, "Do you believe the proliferation of democratic government is inevitable in the long run?" one respondent indicated:

“Despite the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, people who are free to choose (as Mrs. Thatcher said) do choose to be free. And the information revolution enables more people to see lives in free countries.”

Don't forget to check the "List of Participants," which did include a couple of neoconservatives.

Unfortunately, I think the findings reflect considerable Bush-fatigue, and perhaps even a little BDS.

After Bush has long left the White House, similar surveys will be more positive on the possibility of democracy promotion.

Note too, that even now the administration doesn't get enough credit for U.S. democracy promotion efforts outside of Iraq, as the New York Times points out, "In Kenya, U.S. Added Action to Talk of Democracy":

For more information, see Larry Diamond, "The Democratic Rollback: The Resurgence of the Predatory State."

Photo Credit: Atlantic Monthly

Netroots Takes Issue With Democrats' Fox Push

Well I don't normally find a lot of glee when blogging about the netroots, but I'm getting a little kick out of the Politico's piece this morning, "Fox Trumps Netroots; Bloggers Rebel."

It turns out that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's appearances on Fox News have pissed off the high and mighty of the leftosphere, and there's more than a little schadenfreude in that:

The nation’s top Democrats are suddenly rushing to appear on the Fox News Channel, which they once had shunned as enemy territory as the nemesis of liberal bloggers.

The detente with Fox has provoked a backlash from progressive bloggers, who contend the party’s leaders are turning their backs on the base — and lending credibility and legitimacy to the network liberals love to hate — in a quest for a few swing votes.

In a span of eight days, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean are all taking their seats with the network that calls itself “fair and balanced” but is widely viewed as skewing conservative....

The Democratic leaders’ new openness to Fox reflects the liberal left’s diminishing power, at least at this point in the political cycle. Once feared by the Democratic candidates, these activists are now viewed at least in part as an impediment to winning the broad swatch of support needed to clinch the nomination.

The Politico indicates that Obama promised to diss Fox on air during the broadcast, or what's what is referred to in the leftosphere as "delegitimation," in Adam Green's words:

It was a mistake for Obama to go on FOX’s Sunday show and treat the experience as if it was a real news interview. Democratic politicians need to understand that FOX is a Republican mouthpiece masquerading as a news outlet. When dealing with FOX, you either burn them or they will burn you.

It's well documented that FOX executives send morning memos to anchors and reporters dictating Republican talking points. In 2006, one said, “Be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents...thrilled at the prospect of a Dem controlled Congress.” Robert Greenwald's videos have shown FOX's consistent pattern of smearing Barack Obama, smearing Hillary Clinton, smearing African Americans, and denying global warming.

FOX's power lies not in its audience size – which is puny and consists mostly of unpersuadable voters. Instead, FOX's power comes from tricking politicians and real journalists into treating their “breaking stories” like real news, thereby propelling smears like the Swift Boats and Rev. Wright into the mainstream political dialogue. That's why progressives fought (successfully) last year to deprive FOX of the legitimacy that comes with hosting a Democratic presidential debate. And that's why Democratic politicians should never treat FOX like a real news outlet - including FOX's Sunday show.

Barack Obama's campaign made a promise before this weekend's appearance. They said he would "take Fox on" – inspiring hope among those who watched Bill Clinton in 2006, Chris Dodd in 2007, and progressive activist Lee Camp in 2008 delegitimize FOX on the air. But Obama didn't do that, and he suffered as a result.

What Green's doing is demonizing Fox for having a political viewpoint at odds with the "progressive" left. But it's typical - and anti-intellectual - to whine about Democratic appearances on the conservative network.

I think it's a lot more respectable for Fox to host interviews with Democratic candidates - who, if they're smart, can cut through efforts at ulterior subterfuge in the questioning - than it is for CNN to host a GOP YouTube debate with planted left-wing questioners.

All's fair in love and war, they say, which is a little wisdom apparently lost on the spurned netroots mandarins.

The Case for a League of Democracies

I love John McCain's proposal for a international league of democratic states.

The idea's bipartisan, (relatively) new, and exciting.

The notion of a concert of great democratic powers augmenting the moribund international institutions of the post-World War II-era couldn't come at a better time, as the United Nations descends into further irrelevance amid Third World radicalism that enables the worst excesses of rogue state manuevering in the new global system of transnational terror.

Current American preponderance will be more effective with a new array of structures conducive to cooperation among liberal democratic polities.

Robert Kagan makes the case for a league of democracies at the Financial Times:

With tensions between Russia and Georgia rising, Chinese nationalism growing in response to condemnation of Beijing’s crackdown on Tibet, the dictators of cyclone-ravaged Burma resisting international aid , the crisis in Darfur still raging, the Iranian nuclear programme still burgeoning and Robert Mugabe still clinging violently to rule in Zimbabwe – what do you suppose keeps some foreign policy columnists up at night? It is the idea of a new international organisation, a league or concert of democratic nations.

“Dangerous,” warns a columnist on this page, fretting about a new cold war. Nor is he alone. On both sides of the Atlantic the idea – set forth most prominently by Senator John McCain a year ago – has been treated as impractical and incendiary. Perhaps a few observations can still this rising chorus of alarm.

The idea of a concert of democracies originated not with Republicans but with US Democrats and liberal inter­nationalists. Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, tried to launch such an organisation in the 1990s. More recently it is the brainchild of Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy expert and senior adviser to Barack Obama. It has also been promoted by Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton university, and professor John Ikenberry, the renowned liberal internationalist theorist. It has backers in Europe, too, such as Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish prime minister, who recently proposed his own vision of an “alliance of democracies”. The fact that Mr McCain has championed the idea might tell us something about his broad-mindedness. But Europeans should not reach for their revolvers just because the Republican candidate said it first.

American liberal internationalists like the idea because its purpose is to promote liberal internationalism. Mr Ikenberry believes a concert of democracies can help re-anchor the US in an internationalist framework. Mr Daalder believes it will enhance the influence that America’s democratic allies wield in Washington. So does Mr McCain, who in a recent speech talked about the need for the US not only to listen to its allies but to be willing to be persuaded by them.

A league of democracies would also promote liberal ideals in international relations. The democratic community supports the evolving legal principle known as “the responsibility to protect”, which holds leaders to account for the treatment of their people. Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, has suggested it could be applied to Burma if the generals persist in refusing international aid to their dying people. That idea was summarily rejected at the United Nations, where other humanitarian interventions – in Darfur today or in Kosovo a few years ago – have also met resistance.

So would a concert of democracies supplant the UN? Of course not, any more than the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations or any number of other international organisations supplant it. But the world’s democracies could make common cause to act in humanitarian crises when the UN Security Council cannot reach unanimity. If people find that prospect unsettling, then they should seek the disbandment of Nato and the European Union and other regional organisations which not only can but, in the case of Kosovo, have taken collective action in crises when the Security Council was deadlocked. The difference is that the league of democracies would not be limited to Europeans and Americans but would include the world’s other great democracies, such as India, Brazil, Japan and Australia, and would have even greater legitimacy.

Note Kagan's key point: The new body would act when "the UN Security Council cannot reach unanimity," which is most of the time!

During the Cold War, precisely two major multilateral actions were taken under traditional theories of collective security: In Korea in 1950, when the Soviet Union boycotted the Security Council vote on North Korean aggression, and in 1990, at the end of the Cold War, when both President G.H.W. Bush and Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev joined together in a New World Order to authorize the repellence of Iraq's invasion Kuwait.

Despite the democratic league's origins in Democratic Party foreign policy circles, the proposal will be resisted vigorously by leftists now that McCain's endorsed it.

McCain's recently backed off the proposal, but he shouldn't.

The idea offers a genuinely important alternative to the postwar system of international institutions. As Kagan notes, the traditional order of multilateral institutions will not be replaced, but facing a little competition, they might improve their speed and efficiency in responding to the world's contemporary crises.

Hillary Clinton and American Foreign Policy

The "Campaign 2008" foreign policy series continues over at Foreign Affairs with a new essay from Hillary Clinton, "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century." Clinton's article arrives amid great anticipation, at least on my part (and I imagine on the part of a number of others who follow the foreign policy-making literature). Unfortunately, Clinton's piece is a let down: The article recycles much of tired criticisms of the Bush administration's foreign policy, while at the same time offering a half-baked validation of much liberal internationalist gobbledygook common among leftist foreign policy specialists.

Here's Clinton's boilerplate attack on the Bush administration's foreign policy record:

The tragedy of the last six years is that the Bush administration has squandered the respect, trust, and confidence of even our closest allies and friends. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the United States enjoyed a unique position. Our world leadership was widely accepted and respected, as we strengthened old alliances and built new ones, worked for peace across the globe, advanced nonproliferation, and modernized our military. After 9/11, the world rallied behind the United States as never before, supporting our efforts to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan and go after the al Qaeda leadership. We had a historic opportunity to build a broad global coalition to combat terror, increase the impact of our diplomacy, and create a world with more partners and fewer adversaries.

But we lost that opportunity by refusing to let the UN inspectors finish their work in Iraq and rushing to war instead. Moreover, we diverted vital military and financial resources from the struggle against al Qaeda and the daunting task of building a Muslim democracy in Afghanistan. At the same time, we embarked on an unprecedented course of unilateralism: refusing to pursue ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, abandoning our commitment to nuclear nonproliferation, and turning our backs on the search for peace in the Middle East. Our withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol and refusal to participate in any international effort to deal with the tremendous challenges of climate change further damaged our international standing.

Our nation has paid a heavy price for rejecting a long-standing bipartisan tradition of global leadership rooted in a preference for cooperating over acting unilaterally, for exhausting diplomacy before making war, and for converting old adversaries into allies rather than making new enemies. At a moment in history when the world's most pressing problems require unprecedented cooperation, this administration has unilaterally pursued policies that are widely disliked and distrusted.

Yet it does not have to be this way. Indeed, our allies do not want it to be this way. The world still looks to the United States for leadership. American leadership is wanting, but it is still wanted. Our friends around the world do not want the United States to retreat. They want once again to be allied with the nation whose values, leadership, and strength have inspired the world for the last century.

Clinton then goes on to say that she'll restore America's global standing in the world. Actually, she won't have that hard a time of it, since things aren't as bad as she makes out. The last couple of years have seen great improvement in global sentiment regarding the United States. According to a Pew Global Attitudes Report from 2006, strong majorities in all of America's major current treaty allies - Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan - held a favorable opinion of the U.S. Even in Britain - where opinion is often characterized as deeply opposed to the Bush adminstration - 56 percent of those polled held favorable views of America.

America as international bogeyman gains some support among Third Word nations in the Pew survey, but in truth the nature of global anti-Americanism is much more complicated. As Anne Applebaum pointed out in a 2005 Foreign Policy essay, even during the initial outrage following the American invasion of Iraq, people around the world continued to see the America as the world's beacon of liberty, and in a number of countries - like India, the Philippines, and South Africa - majorities evinced "mainly positive" views of the U.S.

Applebaum also notes large generational differences in public support. In countries like Poland, for example, anti-American opinion after Iraq was isolated to younger cohorts who have little recollection of American support for Poland during its historic resistance to Communist oppression during the Cold War. Applebaum highlights the tremendous latent good will toward the U.S. in international attitudes. Such positions make understanding international opinion more involved than we might get from Clinton's the-U.S.-as-bogeyman meme. (Don't forget as well the tremendous outburst of lasting respect for the United States in Indonesia, which followed America's strong leadership in tsunami humanitarian relief efforts.)

Also questionable are Clinton's obligatory statements on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. One can place little trust in such statements, because Clinton has shown very little consistency on Iraq policy in 2007, endlessly shifting her positions to satisfy the most important constituency demands of the moment. Because of the sheer logistical and strategic impediments to a rapid withdrawal, Americans ought not to expect a rapid drawdown of American forces in Iraq. To do otherwise would invite a collapse of order, and indeed the potential release of violent elements intent to restore a reign of murder in the wake of America's precipitous exit:

Here's Clinton:

We must withdraw from Iraq in a way that brings our troops home safely, begins to restore stability to the region, and replaces military force with a new diplomatic initiative to engage countries around the world in securing Iraq's future. To that end, as president, I will convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council and direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to bring our troops home, starting within the first 60 days of my administration.

While working to stabilize Iraq as our forces withdraw, I will focus U.S. aid on helping Iraqis, not propping up the Iraqi government. Financial resources will go only where they will be used properly, rather than to government ministries or ministers that hoard, steal, or waste them.

As we leave Iraq militarily, I will replace our military force with an intensive diplomatic initiative in the region. The Bush administration has belatedly begun to engage Iran and Syria in talks about the future of Iraq. This is a step in the right direction, but much more must be done. As president, I will convene a regional stabilization group composed of key allies, other global powers, and all the states bordering Iraq. Working with the newly appointed UN special representative for Iraq, the group will be charged with developing and implementing a strategy for achieving a stable Iraq that provides incentives for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey to stay out of the civil war....

As we redeploy our troops from Iraq, we must not let down our guard against terrorism. I will order specialized units to engage in targeted operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and other terrorist organizations in the region. These units will also provide security for U.S. troops and personnel in Iraq and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote stability in the country, but only to the extent that such training is actually working.

Nothing new here. Recent reports indicate dramatic U.S. successes in beating back al Qaeda's operations, and the U.S. military is engaged in a wide-variety of security initiatives with local forces to accelerate the operational independence of the Iraq security apparatus.

But check out as well Clinton's platitudes on global multilateralism:

Contrary to what many in the current administration appear to believe, international institutions are tools rather than traps. The United States must be prepared to act on its own to defend its vital interests, but effective international institutions make it much less likely that we will have to do so. Both Republican and Democratic presidents have understood this for decades. When such institutions work well, they enhance our influence. When they do not work, their procedures serve as pretexts for endless delays, as in the case of Darfur, or descend into farce, as in the case of Sudan's election to the UN Commission on Human Rights. But instead of disparaging these institutions for their failures, we should bring them in line with the power realities of the twenty-first century and the basic values embodied in such documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Here Clinton systematically ignores the role of interests in international politics. The U.S. will resist multilateral initiatives that work to subordinate American international priorities. The Bush adminstration in fact began efforts to reform global bodies like the IMF and U.N., only to meet vicious opposition from some of the most corrupt bureaucrats on the planet. Hillary Clinton needs to propose an increase in such efforts, not the abandonment.

Finally, Clinton's international agenda evinces hallmarks of 1990s-era foreign policy as social work:

To build the world we want, we must begin by speaking honestly about the problems we face...We will also have to take concrete steps to enhance security and spread opportunity throughout the world.

Education is the foundation of economic opportunity and should lie at the heart of America's foreign assistance efforts...As president, I will press for quick passage of the Education for All Act, which would provide $10 billion over a five-year period to train teachers and build schools in the developing world. This program would channel funds to those countries that provide the best plans for how to use them and rigorously measure performance to ensure that our dollars deliver results for children.

The fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other dreaded diseases is both a moral imperative and a practical necessity. These diseases have created a generation of orphans and set back economic and political progress by decades in many countries.

These problems often seem overwhelming, but we can solve them with the combined resources of governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and charities such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We can set specific targets in areas such as expanding access to primary education, providing clean water, reducing child and maternal mortality, and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. We can strengthen the International Labor Organization in order to enforce labor standards, just as we strengthened the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements. Such policies demonstrate that by doing good we can do well. This sort of investment and diplomacy will yield results for the United States, building goodwill even in places where our standing has suffered.

Read the rest. Clinton goes on to propose American pocketbook leaderhip on global warming, international energy investment, human rights, gender equality:

U.S. leadership, including a commitment to incorporate the promotion of women's rights in our bilateral relationships and international aid programs, is essential not just to improving the lives of women but to strengthening the families, communities, and societies in which they live.

These are essentially human development issues. But what's missing is a discussion of the fundamental importance of markets and trade in promoting economic growth in Third World countries. The U.S. can continue to build the international infrastructure of global prosperity through policies of trade expansion and international openness. Greater economic development will precede greater human development. According to Clinton's manifesto here, though, rather than a reliance on traditional trade practices, we see an aggressive call to lift up all nations through a Herculean American social policy effort.

There's much that's admirable about such goals, and we shouldn't reject innovative approaches in helping to solve the globe's most intractable problems. But Clinton's paper is almost like a wish list for the future of America's global role. Her discussion of vital interests and Ameican policy is cursory, and she avoids any tough talk beyond quick talking points on "firmness" and "resolve" (she derides the Bush administration as advocating the use of force as the preferred policy to most international problems).

Hillary Clinton's deeper problem is her notion that American foreign policy is a moral failure, and that we must "regain our authority" in international affairs. The U.S. hasn't lost its authority. The country remains the world's indispensible nation, and when global crises demand benign leadership for the provision of international goods, the U.S. will continue to get the call. We've faced difficulties in Iraq, which has made sustaining momentum and support more difficult. But we're gaining the upper hand, and to now feed the terrorist a victory through withdrawal would be folly. In the realm of opinion, much of international anti-Americanism is based on a resistance to America acting on the basis of its self interests. This is not new, and opinion trends are already turning back towards increasing acceptance and support (and recent elections in France and Germany have demonstrated how powerful the impulse to bandwagon on American power remains).

The U.S. needs to make adjustments, indeed, but not in the direction proposed by Hillary Clinton. America should leverage its improvements in Iraq to foster increased international efforts to combat the forces of terror, both transnational and state-sponsored. Diplomacy is key here, of course, but we have no desire to negotiate away our vital interests in regional and global security. We can, as well, increase spending on defense and expand the armed forces. We must increase efforts at vigorous public diplomacy to clarify America's interests in democracy promotion, economic development, and nuclear nonproliferation. We must not denigrate the great power that we enjoy. We can exercise robust leadership amid our substantial capabilities in ways no less "warm-hearted" than in earlier eras. In short, we need to continue to get things right, to follow-up our current victories against the forces of nihilism with more success. The "American idea" continues to glow, yet its illumination burns brighter amid a backdrop of competence and progress.

Teflon Don

This has to infuriate leftists.

I love it!

At Politico, "Teflon Don confounds Democrats":

Democrats have attacked the president every which way, but polling and focus groups show none of it's working.

Democrats tried attacking Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. They’ve made the case that he’s ineffective, pointing to his failure to sign a single major piece of legislation into law after eight months in the job. They’ve argued that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that his campaign was in cahoots with Russia.

None of it is working.

Data from a range of focus groups and internal polls in swing states paint a difficult picture for the Democratic Party heading into the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. It suggests that Democrats are naive if they believe Trump’s historically low approval numbers mean a landslide is coming. The party is defending 10 Senate seats in states that Trump won and needs to flip 24 House seats to take control of that chamber.
The research, conducted by private firms and for Democratic campaign arms, is rarely made public but was described to POLITICO in interviews with a dozen top operatives who’ve been analyzing the results coming in.

“If that’s the attitude that’s driving the Democratic Party, we’re going to drive right into the ocean,” said Anson Kaye, a strategist at media firm GMMB who worked on the Obama and Clinton campaigns and is in conversations with potential clients for next year.

Worse news, they worry: Many of the ideas party leaders have latched onto in an attempt to appeal to their lost voters — free college tuition, raising the minimum wage to $15, even Medicare for all — test poorly among voters outside the base. The people in these polls and focus groups tend to see those proposals as empty promises, at best.

Pollsters are shocked by how many voters describe themselves as “exhausted” by the constant chaos surrounding Trump, and they find that there’s strong support for a Congress that provides a check on him rather than voting for his agenda most of the time. But he is still viewed as an outsider shaking up the system, which people in the various surveys say they like, and which Democrats don’t stack up well against.

“People do think he’s bringing about change, so it’s hard to say he hasn’t kept his promises,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

In focus groups, most participants say they’re still impressed with Trump’s business background and tend to give him credit for the improving economy. The window is closing, but they’re still inclined to give him a chance to succeed.

More than that, no single Democratic attack on the president is sticking — not on his temperament, his lack of accomplishments or the deals he’s touted that have turned out to be less than advertised, like the president’s claim that he would keep Carrier from shutting down its Indianapolis plant and moving production to Mexico.

Voters are also generally unimpressed by claims that Trump exaggerates or lies, and they don’t see the ongoing Russia investigation adding up to much.

“There are a number of things that are raising questions in voters’ minds against him,” said Matt Canter, who’s been conducting focus groups for Global Strategy Group in swing states. “They’re all raising questions, but we still have to weave it into one succinct narrative about his presidency.”

Stop, Democratic operatives urge voters, assuming that what they think is morally right is the best politics. A case in point is Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville. The president’s equivocation on neo-Nazis was not as much of a political problem as his opponents want to believe, Democratic operatives say, and shifting the debate to whether or not to remove Confederate monuments largely worked for him...

Keep reading.

Tom Perez, Keith Ellison and the Meaning of Anti-Semitism

From Caroline Glick, at RCP, "Perez, Ellison and the Meaning of Anti-Semitism":

Was former Secretary of labor and assistant attorney-general Tom Perez’s victory over Congressman Keith Ellison over the weekend in the race to serve as the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee a victory of centrist Democrats over radical leftists in the party? That is how the mainstream media is portraying Perez’s victory.

Along these lines, Prof. Allen Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat who promised to quit the party if Ellison was elected due to his documented history of antisemitism and hostility toward Israel, hailed Perez’s election. Speaking to Fox News, Dershowitz said that Perez’s election over Ellison “is a victory in the war against bigotry, antisemitism, the anti-Israel push of the hard Left within the Democratic Party.”

There are two problems with Dershowitz’s view. First, Perez barely won. Ellison received nearly half the votes in two rounds of voting.

Tipping his hat to Ellison’s massive popularity among the party’s leadership and grassroots, Perez appointed the former Nation of Islam spokesman to serve as deputy DNC chairman as soon as his own victory was announced.

There is a good reason that Perez is so willing to cooperate with Ellison in running the DNC. And this points to the second problem with the claim that Perez’s election signals a move toward the center by Democratic leaders.

Perez is ready to cooperate with Ellison because the two men have the same ideological worldview and the same vision for the Democratic Party. As Mother Jones explained, “There’s truly not much ideological distance between the two.”

Far from being a victory for the centrist forces in the party, Perez’s win marks the solidification of the far Left’s control over the party of Harry Truman. Only hard leftists participated in a meaningful way in the race for leadership of the second largest party in America – a party that less than a decade ago controlled the White House and both houses of Congress.

The implications of this state of affairs are disastrous for the US generally. It is inherently destabilizing for a nation when one of the parties in a two-party political system is taken over by people who have a negative view of the country.

While America as a whole will suffer from the radicalization of the Democratic Party, perhaps no group will suffer more from the far Left’s takeover of the party than the American Jewish community. The vast majority of American Jews give their partisan allegiance to the Democratic Party and their ideological allegiance to the Left.

While Perez made a name for himself by fighting the enforcement of US immigration and naturalization laws against illegal immigrants, and Ellison rose to prominence for his activism in radical African American and Islamic circles, thanks to the so-called intersectionality of the far Left, that makes the cause of one faction the cause of all factions, today Perez is as much an apologist for Israel bashers as Ellison.

Perhaps in response to the danger that the far Left’s takeover of the Democratic Party represents, Malcolm Hoenlein, the long-serving professional head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations called on Sunday for the convening of a global conference on antisemitism. In a meeting with The Jerusalem Post’s editorial board, Hoenlein said that one of the goals of the proposed conference would be to reach a universally accepted definition of antisemitism...

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "7,000 Anti-Semitic Incidents Under Obama?"

Linda Kimball, 'Exposing America's Enemies: The Social Justice Seeking Communist Left'

At his post this morning, Robert Stacy McCain linked Linda Kimball's piece on "Cultural Marxism" at American Thinker. It's an old piece, which I've read before, but I googled some of the articles linked there. One of these is, "Exposing America's Enemies: The 'Social Justice Seeking' Communist Left," originally posted at the American Daily, but now dead.

I'm posting here some excerpts I've found at various other cites. Ms. Kimball apparently aroused some strong passions on this issue, at Democrat Underground, for example, and this was back in 2006.

Free Republic also posted it at the time:

On one hand, Americans were outraged and appalled by the May 1 immigrant demonstrations that clogged streets and virtually closed down some cities. Law-abiding citizens saw lawbreakers who not only seemed to feel justified in their criminal behavior, but also believed they ought to be rewarded for it.

On the other hand, Americans are more infuriated and disgusted with their duly elected government officials in both legislative and administrative branches for not enforcing the law and protecting the rights of citizens. President Bush and the weak-kneed GOP have deservedly come under fire. If our sovereign nation is to survive, however, it is of paramount importance that the harsh light of truth be focused upon the subversive element responsible for creating an atmosphere conducive to lawlessness and tyrannical militants brazenly declaring their intentions to ''conquer'' the Southwest and to throw Americans out of their homes and off of their land.

The subversive element--a motley collection of Marxists, Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists, anarchists, and malcontents--organized themselves in the 1960’s and became known as the New Left. For over forty years the New Left has been waging a Gramscian ''quiet'' revolution for the overthrow of the America of our founders. Today these subversives call themselves liberals, progressives, and Democrats. Even though there yet remain good, decent Democrats such as Zell Miller, the majority, as David Horowitz attested to, are social-justice seeking communists: “The Democratic Party is very close to being the (Communist-controlled Progressive) party of Henry Wallace…The vast bulk of the American left is a Communist left and they’ve introduced some fascist ideas like “identity politics,” which is straight out of Mussolini.” (How Marxism Dominates the Left, Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com, June 1, 2005)

America’s Communist Left operates in a vast interconnected matrix of revolutionary groups disguised as respectable civil rights and legal organizations. These front groups have consistently worked towards the transformation of America through subversion of America’s Rule of Law, Constitution, judiciary, and all institutions necessary to the longevity and health of our nation and civilization. These groups attack all national security measures, subvert immigration laws and procedures, lobby on behalf of terrorist and enemy combatants, and engage in propagandistic apologetics for the most brutal dictatorships in the world even as they constantly vilify and demean America and Americans. As they do these things to destroy America and shame Americans, they hypocritically portray themselves as defenders of democracy and humanity.

The purpose of this article is to expose, at least in part, some of the principal communist groups responsible for undermining and weakening America and who likewise serve as a power source, not only for the militant Marxist organizers of the recent demonstrations, but for Islamic jihadists as well.

The Quiet Revolution

In 1984, “The Power to Lead” was published. In it, author James McGregor Burns admitted: “The Framers of the US Constitution have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified by mechanical linkages, frail bridges, tinkering. If we are to ‘turn the Founders upside down’…we must directly confront the constitutional structure they erected.” (A Chronological History: The New World Order by D.L. Cuddy PhD)

Turning the ''Founders upside down'' and directly confronting the ''constitutional structure'' are what the American Civil Liberties Union, National Lawyers Guild, and The Center for Constitutional Rights are committed to doing. Together, these three communist front groups comprise the “legal left,” and they slash and rip at the fabric of the constitutional framework.

The ACLU was established in 1920 by Roger Baldwin, a Stalinist who candidly admitted: “I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately, for abolishing the state itself.” On the Communist Party USA website, the ACLU can be found at this link: go here. http://www.cpusa.org/link/category/22/

When not working with and defending terrorists like Sami al-Arian, the ACLU terrorizes towns into removing Ten Commandments monuments and crosses and persecutes and intimidates Boy Scouts and law abiding Christians. The ACLU’s Immigrant Task Force and Immigrant Rights Project are a dual driving force in the Open Borders Lobby. Among current projects: dissolving America’s borders, erasing all evidence of Christianity and God, and requiring the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to provide free legal counsel to illegals while simultaneously demanding that illegals be provided with full welfare benefits.

The ACLU and its partner groups receive funding from a large assortment of subversive leftist funders. Among them: Arca Foundation, Ford Foundation, George Soros Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Foundation, Woods Fund of Chicago (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1936 by the Communist Party USA. The NLG is an active affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, which served as a Soviet front group during the Cold War. The NLG defines its mission as an effort to: “unite lawyers, law students, legal workers, and jailhouse lawyers of America (to) function as an effective political and social force…to the end that human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests.” In other words, its mission is to ''deKulakize'' America in the name of social justice.

In 1999, NLG member Chip Berlet described a Guild ''communist debate'' session: “The cacophony at some meetings (arises from) debates featuring…Leninist, Trotskyite, Stalinists…Maoist…Marxist, anarchists, libertarians and progressive independents…with multiple identities as lawyers, legal workers, labor organizers, tribal sovereignty activists, civil liberties and civil rights advocates, environmentalists, feminists, gay men and lesbians, and people of color.” Chip Berlet is an activist with Morris Dees Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), another communist front group and Open Borders member.

Not coincidentally, it was the SPLC that ''redistributed''--in the name of social justice--an Arizona ranchers’ property to some illegal aliens. This incident was detailed in an article entitled: “Two Illegal Immigrants Win Arizona Ranch in Court,” (New York Times, 8/19/05). Dees was quoted as saying, “…it’s poetic justice that these undocumented workers own this land”

Like the ACLU, the NLG is a key member of the Open Borders Lobby. Its National Immigration Project consists of a network of lawyers, law students, and legal workers committed to “full democratic rights for all non-citizens”--in the name of social justice. The NLG receives funding from, among others, the George Soros Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The last of the trio is the Center for Constitutional Rights. It was founded in 1966 by pro-Castro attorneys Morton Stavis, Ben Smith, Arthur Kinoy, and William Kuntsler. The CCR prides itself on using “litigation proactively to advance the law in a positive direction to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest protections.” This is communist code for: “We subvert America’s laws.” Among those deemed by the CCR to be in need of protection are terrorist organizations, enemy combatants, and illegal immigrants.

The CCR receives funding from the Ford Foundation and George Soros Open Society Institute. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org )

Two principal front groups, both of whom disguise their treachery as ‘civil rights,” are United for Peace and Justice and Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride.

The UFPJ is a rabidly anti-American, anti-war coalition co-chaired by committed communist Leslie Cagan. Cagan, who worships upon Fidel Castro’s altar, was an original founder of the Committees of Correspondence, a splinter group of the Communist Party USA. The UFPJ was created Oct. 25, 2002 in the Washington D.C. offices of People for the American Way, which played a key role in forming UFPJ. UFPJ is a sponsoring organization of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. UFPJ’s social justice agenda extends well beyond anti-war activism as it is also a pro-abortion, pro-open borders advocate that condemns nearly every aspect of American culture and our government’s foreign policy. (Source: www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride (IWFR), another key player in the Open Borders Lobby, is supported by the ACLU and Communist Party USA. Additionally, it has the backing of Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean, and Joe Lieberman. Among other groups listed as members of the IWFRC’s national sponsoring committee are ACORN, National Council of La Raza, National Immigration Forum, and United for Peace and Justice.

At the link below are literally hundreds of sponsors of IWFR, such as: Democratic senators, representatives, county board supervisors, governors, town council members, radical organizations, liberalized Christian and non-Christian churches, and political parties (including CPUSA and Democratic Socialists of America: go here).

Many thousands of Americans have been taken in by a myth. The myth states that communism died when the Soviet Union imploded. It further says that in these ''enlightened progressive times,'' only superstition-believing McCarthyite rednecks still believe in the communist boogieman. The myth, of course, was created by New Left communists to whom seduction, deception, and psychological manipulation are the ''rules of the game.'' Gramsci’s transformational revolution is very much alive. It’s spreading the cancer of godless communism--the ideology from Hell--throughout the length and breadth of our culture, and corrupting and decaying everything it touches.

President Ronald Reagan cautioned that: “…without God, there is no virtue because there’s no prompting of the conscience. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

Americans---awaken and remember!

And here's more, from "Exposing America's Enemies, Part 2: Communist Progressive Democrats":

Social Justice is Communism

Judging from the adolescent name-calling and howls of protest which my previous article elicited from Progressive groups such as the Democratic Underground, it is obvious that the enraged howlers have no idea of what it really means for one to be a seeker of social justice. Either that or they really do know but are deceivers of the first magnitude.

Be that as it may, some clarification and definition of the terms social justice and communism is in order before proceeding on to the issue of Progressive Democrats.

To most Americans, communism means the Kremlin, gulags, killing fields, and Mao's brutal Red Guard. These things though were not the essence of communism. They were the visible manifestations of inhumane power and its consequences, all of which resulted when social justice seekers acquired total control to remake society and man.

The essence of communism is social justice, or justice in the social sphere. This is code for the elimination of poverty, of suffering, and of all differences between humans that erect walls between people. Fundamentally, social justice is a process of elimination that results in sameness (egalitarianism). When social justice seekers speak of the need for equality, what they're really calling for is sameness.

However, the attributes which make people different from each other and which social justice seekers are determined to eliminate, are the product of human nature and of freely made choices. For instance, some people are ambitious and hard-working while others are indolent and lazy and may willfully choose to live out of the pockets of the former.

It's the positive aspects of human nature that make a society dynamic. Dynamism is the animating force behind America's greatness -- her productivity, excellence, creativity, free markets, etc. In eliminating human differences, social justice seekers kill all of this, and as they did in the former Soviet Union, leave behind a smoking ruin haunted by despairing cookie-cutter claymation beings.

In speaking of the social justice process of elimination, Balint Vazsonyi remarked, prophets of socialjustice communists, whether by that name or any other name, focus on who should have less. Because they have nothing to give, they can only take away. First, they take away opportunity. Next, they take away possessions. In the end, they have to take away life itself. (America's 30 Years War, Balint Vazsonyi, p. 59)

The America of our Founders simply cannot coexist with the Search for Social Justice. For instance, as designed by our Founders, the Rule of Law exists to guarantee that unequal (different) people can have individual liberty, rights and possessions—including land ownership, which social justice seekers view as the original sin. Social justice demands that those who possess more of anything have it taken away from those who earned it and redistributed to those who did nothing to earn it.

Social Justice Seeking Democratic Progressive Caucus

The Democratic Progressive Caucus (DPC) is an organization comprised of about sixty Members of Congress. It was founded in 1991 by Rep. Bernie Sanders, former socialist mayor of Burlington, VT, and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The DSA describes itself as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. (www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org)

The DPC advances its communist agenda behind innocuous sounding phrases such as social and economic justice. The three core principles of The Progressive Promise are:

1. Fighting for economic justice and security for all. (Code for: We’re going to ‘eliminate poverty and suffering’ by taking away all of your possessions and redistributing them.)

2. Protecting and preserving our civil rights and civil liberties. (Code for: We’re going to ‘eliminate’ all differences and pound everyone down to the lowest common denominator).

3. Promoting global peace and security. (Code for: We—your Superiors—will finally feel secure and at peace once agendas 1-2 have been carried out to completion.) (Source: http://www.bernie.house.gov/document_display_text.asp?FileToConvert=/pc/index.asp)

In “Pelosi Leader of Progressive Caucus,” it was revealed: “Until 1999, the website of the Progressive Caucus was hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Following an expose of the link between the two organizations in World Net Daily, the Progressive Caucus established its own website.” (WorldNetDaily.com, Nov 11, 2002)

On the website of the DSA it boldly declares: “We are socialists…Democracy and socialism go hand in hand…wherever…democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetwork.org ) The DSA increases its influence and power by networking with the Democratic Party to advance social justice programs and policies such as affirmative action and Stalinist hate crime laws. “Like our friends and allies in the feminist, labor, civil rights, religious, and community movements, many of us have been active in the Democratic Party.” (ibid)

Following are brief descriptions of some of the social justice seeking subversives in the Democratic Progressive Caucus whose words and actions embrace the tenets of communism:

1. Barbara Lee (D-CA): “former agent of the Black Panther leader and convicted killer, Huey Newton. Lee conspired with fellow communist, Cong. Ron Dellums, who used his authority to impede US foreign policy with regard to the Communist dictatorship of Grenada.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetWork.org ) “anti-American Communist who supports America’s enemies and has actively collaborated with them.” (Radical Road Map, James H. Hansen, p.189)

2. Jim McDermott (D-WA): “In 2002, McDermott and fellow Progressive Caucus member Rep. David Bonoir (D-Mich) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) traveled to Baghdad, where they publicly embraced Saddam Hussein and created propaganda on his behalf.” ( www.DiscoverTheNetWork.org )

3. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), who has accepted an award from the DSA once told one of its writers: “The American people are not ideological; therefore, the way to go is to attack private power.” (ibid)

4. John Conyers (D-MI): “In 1981 Conyers co-hosted a delegation from the Soviet front World Peace Council, giving that group a forum in Congress. Conyers endorsed a Communist-led antiwar demonstration in Washington in 1983 and…spoke at another Washington demonstration led by ANSWER in 2003.” (Radical Road Map’s, James H. Hansen, p 189)

5. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) “has taken part in…CAIR (a radical group with ties to Mideast terrorist organizations) events…including a Ramadan iftar…hosted (on Capitol Hill) by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), and Barbara Lee (D-CA).” (Kucinich Headlines Muslim Fundraiser, WorldNetDaily.com, Nov. 30, 2003)

The Constitution requires that members of Congress “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation to support this constitution.” The Oath of Office sworn to by US Senators reads:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the U.S…that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Very simply, if Democratic Progressive Caucus members truthfully believed in the Christian-Judeo God and likewise in our Constitution--the document conceived of by our Founders and not the Lefts living document nonsense—they wouldn’t be social justice seeking communists. Rather, they would be Conservative Constitutionalists. That they are social justice seekers tells us that when they took their oath before God, they lied. Quite simply—they lied.

In Noah Webster’s 1828 edition of the American Dictionary of the English Language we find the correct term to apply to treacherous Democratic Progressives. That word is “traitor,” and the following definition is the one most likely referred to by our Founders. “Traitor: One who violates allegiance and betrays his country; one guilty of treason…who, in breach of trust, delivers his country to its enemy…who aids an enemy in conquering his country.”

Through use of Stalinist psycho-politics, America’s Communist Left imprisoned the consciences of Americans within psychic strait-jackets of political correctness. As long as we allow ourselves to be chained by political correctness, we will not be able to identify and speak openly about our enemies--those without, and those within. In the absence of freedom of conscience and of clear and honest speaking, we can neither formulate strategies for our safety nor deal appropriately with the treacherous deceivers operating amongst us who are colluding with our enemies and plotting to destroy our nation from within. The first order of business then, is for all Americans to break out of the psychic strait jackets of political correctness, thus allowing Truth to expose the treachery and treason at work in our nation.

Truth will set us free: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32.

Obama's Post-Allied America

From Abe Greenwald, at the Weekly Standard, "Post-Allied America: The U.S. Shrinks Its Influence and Severs Ties With Sympathetic Global Partners":

With last Wednesday's decision to scrap plans for a promised missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama put the finishing touches on a new and dangerous entity: post-allied America. With his declaration a week later before the UN General Assembly that "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long gone Cold War" no longer apply, he justified his creation. As a string of headlines from Central and Eastern European capitals makes plain, the U.S.'s most reliable democratic partners see the administration's decision for what it was: a historic shift in America's priorities. Adversaries' wishes now enjoy equal baseline footing with the needs of friends. Whatever may tip Washington in this or that policy direction, a history of cooperation or shared ideology will not be a factor. The Obama administration believes, ahistorically, that this will turn bad actors good.

The implications are disastrous. Small democracies, like Poland and the Czech Republic, may fall prey to aggressive, expansionist neighbors like Russia. Rogue and autocratic regimes will go unchecked as they ratchet up various proscribed initiatives. The U.S. will lose access to valuable partnerships, thus halting our ability to roll back dangers and maintain global stability. Already fading is American credibility. How can the U.S. hope to shame China out of abetting totalitarian North Korea when President Obama himself has just agreed to snub the pro-Democracy Dalai Lama out of deference to China? One-time allies will be forced into expedient relationships with our ideological antagonists. Democracy may see worldwide retreat.
The missile defense decision was a knock-out blow to our fraying alliances. But the Obama administration's unmistakable capitulation to the Kremlin was preceded by months of escalating post-ally policy. It should be no surprise that some of the potential dangers listed above have been realized. Treating Israel as just another Middle Eastern country with stubborn complications has led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into secret security discussions with Moscow. Indifference to maintaining our relationship with Great Britain may be seen as the backdrop before which Scotland freed the murderer of 190 Americans in order to facilitate Libyan oil contracts.

The shift in American policy is more than geostrategic. It is a shift in the realm of ideas. President Obama has not merely sided with anti-democratic states over democratic ones, but supported anti-democratic forces over democratic ones within the same states. Instead of throwing U.S. patronage behind aggrieved Iranian voters, the American president "bore witness" to their deadly struggle before the White House publicly recognized their tormentor as "the elected leader" of Iran. Instead of standing with democratic Hondurans, who refused to see their country go the way of regional banana republics, Obama has decided to refuse them aid and recognition until they accept a would-be self-appointed strongman.

More at the link.

Related: The Washington Post, "Iran Reveals Existence of Second Uranium Enrichment Plant." Plus, Dana Loesch responds, "Obama Knew About Second Iranian Facility?" (via Memeorandum).

Republicans Emerge As Country's Coalition Party

Fred Barnes makes the case for a reversal of roles between the two major parties. The Democrats have long been a party of fissiparous interests, pulling and tugging their candidates every which way. The Republicans, on the other hand, are known for their small number of key contingents who pull together to rally around a frontrunner.

The parties have traded places this year:

In 2008, the parties have reversed roles. You merely have to watch a Democratic presidential debate to realize Democrats are now the consensus party. On everything that matters--Iraq, taxes, immigration, health care, the war on terrorism--Democrats basically agree. Their debates sound like an echo chamber.

In contrast, Republicans have become a party of squabbling ideological groups that John McCain must bring together if he is to win the presidency this fall. With McCain as their nominee--one with whom many conservatives have disagreements-- Republicans have become the coalition party.

I've made similar arguments (see especially, "McCain Forging New GOP Coalition), but I particulary liked Barnes' discussion of Barack Obama's sheltered political existence in the Democratic Party's ideological echo chamber:

In his brief political career, Obama has experienced the easy life. He's rated by the National Journal as the most liberal member of the Senate, but he's never had to defend his liberal views. Certainly in the 18 televised Democratic debates this year, including last week's Texas faceoff with Hillary Clinton, he hasn't. The debates have been liberal lovefests.

Hillary Clinton argues that she'd be a better Democratic nominee because she has been forced to deal with what she calls "the Republican attack machine," and he hasn't. She has a point. Perhaps Obama, if he's the Democratic nominee, will be able to dismiss Republican attacks as easily as he's brushed off Clinton's criticism of him on minor points and peripheral issues. But I doubt it.

Obama has barely had to respond to Clinton at all, since their disagreements are so trivial. She says some of his words are "change you can Xerox" because he plagiarized a tiny portion of his stump speech. His answer in last week's debate was, "C'mon." That won't suffice when McCain insists Obama's plan for Iraq would amount to pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Iraq is an example of a major issue that Obama has not been forced to think through because of the Democratic party's consensus. He has made no adjustment for the success of the surge in Iraq, scarcely even acknowledging that the violence-wracked, politically polarized country of a year ago is no longer the Iraq of today.

The surge isn't a problem for McCain. Getting Republicans to coalesce around him is. Since Ronald Reagan was the party's presidential candidate in 1980, Republicans have lined up reflexively behind their usually conservative nominee. But McCain is anything but a reliable conservative.

So he must, first, attract strong conservatives, including the talk radio hosts who've often zinged him for being insufficiently conservative. McCain has little margin for error. He needs to win the overwhelming backing of social and religious conservatives, too. He must attract the relatively small contingent who've supported Ron Paul to prevent Paul from running as a third party libertarian candidate for president. (Paul says he has no plans to do this.)

It took no effort for McCain to round up Republican moderates. He's their guy. And he's gotten the George Bush wing with endorsements from Jeb and the elder George.

Conservatives may not admit it, but their failure to nominate one of their own may turn out to be a godsend in 2008. It's precisely the things they don't like about McCain--things I'm not crazy about either--that make him a tough target for Democrats: torture, Guantánamo, global warming, guns, stem cells.

Then there's bipartisanship or, as Obama puts it, bringing us together. This is the core of Obama's appeal. It allows him to campaign not from his ideological home on the left but from somewhere above the fray, somewhere in the heavens.

McCain, alone among Republicans, can bring him back to earth. Obama talks about crossing the partisan aisle and ending polarization, but he's never done it in any serious way. McCain specializes in it--one more thing infuriating many Republicans. He's joined with Democrats on campaign finance reform, immigration, global warming, judicial nominations, and a lot more.

Imagine a presidential debate this fall between McCain and Obama, the coalition candidate versus the consensus candidate. McCain, for sure, would skewer him on national security, the war on terrorism, taxes, and spending. Would Obama dare invoke his signature response and claim McCain is being divisive and partisan and we must rise above such disagreements? If he did, would it work?

Many hardcore McCain opponents among the conservative base hate to admit this, and many remain committed to sitting out the election.

But on the key issues faces us this year - on fiscal policy, healthcare, personal responsiblity, and the war in Iraq - the differences between the candidates are stark.

The left hoped for a Mitt Romney nomination, a candidate they could have torn to shreds on ideological inconsistencies and inexperience. Not so with the Arizona Senator: McCain's an endless nightmare to the big government surrender forces of the America-bashing, nihilist left.