1) “Pompous: Europe in a moral quagmire between benefactor US and evil Iran” (Conrad Black, Brussels Signal)
From the article — This is a very distressing degeneration of the Cold War Alliance in which eminent statesmen including Churchill, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Thatcher, Mitterrand, de Gasperi, Andreotti and Mulroney all pulled their weight and played their part. Western Europe is increasingly a moral wasteland of declining population, stagnant economies, and the lack of the moral solidity even to prevent waves of destitute people with none of the constructive motives of authentic immigrants from swarming into Europe with no more thought for the jurisdictions they are entering than the Goths, Huns, Saracens and Vandals of the fifth century.
It appears that mere envy at the relaunch of America under Trump, with accelerating economic growth, collapsing crime rates, the end of illegal immigration, the debunking of green extremism, and the shaping up of the American military into an instrument of extraordinary power and precision, has driven much of Europe into the quagmire of moral relativism between their American benefactor and the evil terrorist state of Islamist Iran. One would have expected mere opportunism to produce better judgment than that.
2) “Our New Ungracious Immigrants” (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness)
From the article– I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India, Japan, and Mexico. Their work ethic, love of America, and productive farms were models for U.S. non-immigrants. Such immigrants explained why the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive and richest agricultural region in the nation.
My own Swedish grandfather, disabled by poison gas while fighting on the Western Front in World War I, loved all things Swedish, but not nearly as much as his beloved America. Four Hansons fought on the front lines of World Wars I and II. One was disabled, and another was killed on Okinawa. And all felt blessed that their parents and grandparents had gotten to America.
But recently, something has gone terribly wrong with immigration—an open border, of course, but also a change in legal immigration as well as student visitors.
During World War II, Japanese Americans fought heroically in horrific conditions in Italy in the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion—even as their families were interned in the Western United States. Few native-born Americans were more loyal or patriotic than the Japanese Americans.
And now?
While America is at war with Iran and de facto with its terrorist proxies, crowds of immigrants, visitors, and foreign students in New York scream anti-American slogans as they cheer on our enemies in theocratic Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.
Are we surprised, then, when Islamic terrorists begin hunting down Americans on our own soil?
3)“The Horrific Legacy of Paul Ehrlich: The apocalyptic professor who was wrong about almost everything, and still managed to change the world.” (Aubrey Harris, American Spectator)
From the article — Ehrlich, of course, was the author of the tiny paperback book that took the world by storm in the 1970s. The Population Bomb claimed, quite simply, that the “battle to feed all of humanity is over.” The globe was vastly overpopulated, and the result would be widespread death in the coming decades. People would starve — so many people that, “by 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people.”
The timing of the book was perfect. We were coming to the end of the post-war baby boom, and humanity had recently been forced to reckon with the potential for its imminent end via atomic war. Ehrlich’s message struck a nerve — one that NBC’s Johnny Carson recognized when he decided to have the scientist on The Tonight Show more than 20 times.
And yet, more than half a century later, most of us can safely say Ehrlich’s predictions were mistaken (although the New York Times insisted in his obituary this week that they were merely “premature”). Global hunger rates are much lower than they were in the 1970s (today, just one out of every eleven people goes hungry), and the population of the earth is more than double what it was when he published his book. If anything, we’re more concerned about underpopulation, rather than overpopulation. (READ MORE by Aubrey Harris: We Could Be Doing Something About Our Birth Rate Problem. But We Aren’t.)
Unfortunately, The Population Bomb wasn’t just an obscure scientific paper with no impact. It sold millions of copies, and its arguments were seized by groups like the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the Population Council, the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund, and other programs, which threw enormous amounts of funding into making sure babies weren’t born.
In China alone, hundreds of millions of children were aborted when the government coerced their mothers into doing so. In India, proof of sterilization was required to obtain water, electricity, ration cards, medical care, and other basic amenities — a policy that was so successful that, in 1975, “more than eight million men and women were sterilized.” In the Philippines, birth control pills were dropped from helicopters over remote villages.
Was Ehrlich really responsible for all this?
Maybe not directly, but these kinds of policies didn’t come out of nowhere. They were born in a global intellectual climate shaped by men like Ehrlich, who proclaimed that drastic measures were necessary for human flourishing.
Related articles: “Population Doomster and False Prophet of Ecological Apocalypse Paul Ehrlich Has Died: The author of The Population Bomb was never right but never in doubt that the world was about to end.” (Ronald Bailey, Reason)…“Death of a Charlatan: Paul Ehrlich was a useful idiot, a facile clown.” (Scott McKay, American Spectator)
4) “America Can’t Be A Welfare State And A Republic At The Same Time” (Jim DeMint, Federalist)
From the article — In a healthy society, widespread interdependency is pervasive. People depend on each other in many ways. Family members support each other, especially when one member is suffering. Employees depend on their employers for their livelihoods and vice versa. The poor are often served by churches and volunteer organizations. Citizens depend on their government for protection and safety, and government depends on its citizens for funding and election support.
These forms of interdependency are the glue that holds families, communities, and nations together. But when healthy interdependency is replaced with a one-way dependence on government by its citizens, societal cohesion disappears. Unity deteriorates into suspicion and entitlement.
In a constitutional republic where citizens elect their representatives, vote to restrain government growth and spending, and hold government officials accountable for their actions, those same citizens must avoid becoming dependent on government for their basic needs — including income, food, housing, and health care.
Dependence on federal and state governments for personal needs creates conflicting interests for both elected officials and voters. Elections become bidding wars between candidates who promise more and more from government. Dependent voters lose interest in limited government and vote for the candidates who promise to give them more stuff. Government spending and debt continually ratchet up as fraud and corruption increase exponentially. This is what is currently happening in America.
5) “HHS Official Urges Medical Residents to Stand on Conscience against Abortion, but HHS Policy Offers Scant Protection” (Joshua Arnold, Washington Stand)
From the article — U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Brian Christine encouraged medical residents to refuse to participate in procedures that would violate their consciences. The comments offer a refreshing contrast with the Biden administration, which often sided with the medical establishment in pressing abortion on medical providers. But HHS policy needs to catch up.
“If your deeply held religious convictions [are attacked] — say that you can’t engage in some activity, for instance, abortion, or a sex-rejecting procedure — stand strong in that,” Christine counseled medical residents in a recent interview with The Daily Signal. “Refuse to do that. And, again, reach out to the proper authorities and individuals at their institutions.”
The grisly backdrop to these comments is the medical establishment’s successful campaign to force medical schools to require abortion training.
The effort dates back to 1994, two years after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) adopted a mandate that “experience with induced abortion must be part of residency training” for all OB/GYN training programs. Before this, abortion training was available, but medical residents had to opt in to such training, instead of having to opt out. Additionally, while individuals with a moral or religious objection could opt out, medical training programs with a moral or religious objection (such as those run by Catholic or Protestant hospitals) could not.
As a recent congressional letter noted, “ACGME is the only accrediting body for GME [obstetrics and gynecology] programs in the US and thus there is no other option for training programs or residents.”
Other Excellent Articles from this Week
* Relating to the Joe Kent resignation as head of the National Counterterrorism Center are these two articles: “How Kent Went” (Scott Johnson, Power Line) and “President Trump Just ENDED Joe Kent’s Entire Career With One Brutal Screenshot of an Old Tweet” (Jim Hᴏft, Gateway Pundit)
* “‘These People are Crazy:’ Climate Science and the Cult of Self-Loathing” (Terry L. Headley, Watts Up With That?)
* “When Obama And His Party Need To Suppress The Vote, It’s OK” (I & I Editorial Board)
* “After Four Jihad Attacks in Two Weeks, Guess What It’s the International Day to Combat” (Robert Spencer, PJ Media)
* “Why the nation of Churchill is no more: A former diplomat blows the whistle on anti-Israel bias and Islamist entryism.” (Melanie Phillips)