President-elect Trump ran on a national security platform that promised a return to peace through strength, and within days of his re-election, the world is already responding. Qatar ejects the Hamas leadership while the terrorists beg for peace. After four years of chaos, Mexico says it will finally stop migrants at the U.S. border. China and Russia both make overtures in pursuit of reduced tensions between their states and ours. The European Union pledges to buy natural gas from America instead of from Russia. And this is all happening two months before Trump even takes the oath of office. It’s clear that the world — friends and foes alike — responds to strong American leadership, and they all know Trump will bring it. Ronald Reagan, the original peace through strength president, also well understood this dynamic. His legacy offers important lessons for the new Trump team to emulate: Keep the economy strong. It is the center of gravity and the source of American strength. Trump’s domestic economic agenda seeks to rebuild the U.S. economy through deregulation, tax cuts, and sound money, just as Reagan used the same methods to grow it beyond the point where the Soviet Union could compete. Maintain the means to keep the peace. Reagan understood the old adage: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Now as then, the United States must build up its defense industrial infrastructure, increase the size and strength of the Navy to deter Beijing, and modernize its nuclear deterrent. The best way to avoid going to war is to make it too costly for adversaries to contemplate. Restore pride in the military. Reagan inherited the “hollow forces” of the post-Vietnam era and left office with the world’s most capable, cohesive, and deadly fighting forces. Trump must likewise rescue the DEI-damaged military, encourage national pride to rebuild enlistment and refocus the services to the sole mission of winning our nation’s wars. Use force judiciously but boldly. Reagan, whether liberating Grenada or intercepting the Achille Lauro hijackers, showed what was possible with bold, limited, but decisive, use of force. Trump showed in his first term a similar instinct, destroying the ISIS caliphate and taking out Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qasem Soleimani. We can expect to see similar actions in the second term. Stand up to Iran. In Reagan’s time as now, the Islamic regime in Tehran is a threat to international peace. When Iran and its proxies threatened international shipping, Reagan responded with the Persian Gulf reflagging operation and sinking Iranian frigates and gunboats. Trump should resurrect the “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran and take direct action against threats to global peace from Iran’s proxies. Pursue energy independence. Reagan knew that energy was the key to the U.S.’s economic growth and global security. In Trump’s first term, the United States became the world’s top energy producer and can reclaim that crown in the second term by exploiting both U.S. natural resources and technological superiority in emerging energy innovations. Restore public diplomacy. Reagan understood the power of ideas and empowered his friend Charlie Wick to make the U.S. Information Agency a force for spreading the inspiring message of the American dream to a global audience. Trump can likewise restore the corrupt and ineffective U.S. Agency for Global Media to make it a forceful tool for promoting American messages of peace and prosperity. Continue the mission against totalitarianism. The most important thing Reagan brought to the White House was his vision of the outcome of the Cold War. As Reagan put it, “We win. They lose.” Today, the United States is in a new Cold War with communist China, and Trump can bring that same clarity of mission, not only to the competition with China but also to every country that seeks to damage U.S. global interests. Renew American confidence. Reagan came to power when the United States had been humiliated in war, suffered economic shocks, and Americans were told their best days were behind them. So, too, is it today. As Reagan once did, Trump can rekindle pride in the American mission, certainty in our national strength, and confidence in the country’s future. Ronald Reagan was an outsider to Washington, derided as too old and too extreme, and yet left office with the United States in its strongest global position since the end of World War II. Donald Trump faces similar challenges and is entering his second term with hard-won lessons from the last eight years. This new term is an opportunity to pivot from a limited national security strategy seeking merely to manage U.S. decline to one that sets the terms of American interests, and then boldly proceeds to pursue them. Dr. James S. Robbins is dean of academics at the Institute of World Politics and author of the forthcoming book Forging Peace Through Strength: Ronald Reagan and the Cold War. READ MORE from James S. Robbins: Red Faced Over Red Lines The Myth of Student Protest The Clock Is Ticking on TikTok The post Reagan’s 9 Lessons for Trump in Pursuing Peace Through Strength appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Although Republicans won resounding political victories across the country this November, there is one area where conservatives consistently lost: abortion. Seven of 10 state-level pro-abortion laws passed — including in four states that Donald Trump won —and Florida’s pro-choice law only failed to pass because it fell just short of the 60 percent share of the vote required for passage. This raises the question: Why are conservatives losing the abortion argument in this country, even when they are winning in so many other areas? No large-scale social phenomenon is caused by a single factor. However, one thing looms large in this explanatory window: Progressives have created a blind spot in increasingly large portions of the country about the reality of what an abortion is. Somehow, liberals have managed to disconnect one of the two central figures in an abortion — the fetus — from the narrative altogether. A generation of people has grown up thinking of abortion as a purely political issue without considering the most basic physical fact that defines it. However a fetus is construed, there is no denying that it is alive — and that an abortion kills it. But liberals do not talk about it that way. A visit to Planned Parenthood’s information about abortions on its website is instructive. In this detailed description of abortion, there is no mention of the word “fetus” at all. Instead, the fetus is referred to like this: “[A] doctor or nurse uses medical instruments and gentle suction to take the pregnancy out of your uterus.” A fetus’ existence is reduced to literally nothing. You don’t kill a fetus — you take the pregnancy out of your uterus. Because liberals have for so long controlled much of the educational system and methods of information distribution, this language has created a blind spot in the American populace. Abortion is your right, they say. Abortion is safe, they say. But what is it, medically speaking? Well, classrooms and social media have conspired to allow us to accept a massive medical procedure without talking in depth about what it is. Liberals haven’t just tried to implicitly train the country to ignore the death of the fetus; they have actively tried to suppress people they disagree with on the subject. For example, here in western Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh passed a law that explicitly targets the speech of conservative crisis pregnancy centers. (These laws are not unique to Pennsylvania. Kamala Harris infamously pursued similar initiatives against crisis pregnancy centers as attorney general in California.) Among other things, it warns that any statement released through any means cannot be used if it is “deceptive, whether by statement or omission, and that a limited services pregnancy center knows or reasonably should know to be deceptive.” This is a shocking violation of free speech on two separate grounds. First, it is so broad that anything the excessively progressive city government of Pittsburgh considers “reasonable” can be prosecuted under the law. For example, one of the things that the progressive think tank the Alliance — on whose authority a lot of this argument rests — claims is “misinformation” is the idea that abstinence has positive benefits, explicitly singling out religious perspectives as a “vehicle for medical disinformation and ideological messaging.” So now we are not allowed to say we think abstinence is a good idea? Second, this censorship contains one of the hallmarks of authoritarianism (see my book Liberal Bullies for more details): Group-based asymmetry. Even if one grants that it is legal to suppress someone’s viewpoint as “misinformation,” why specifically pass a law to target crisis pregnancy centers? It is noteworthy that by the dangerous “omission” standard, most liberal groups would fail the test very clearly. Nowhere in the document from the Alliance trashing crisis pregnancy centers could I find a single description of what a fetus is, or what the medical procedure actually does to the fetus. This seems like an important omission. Do you imagine that liberal city governments will target pro-abortion groups for this omission of an obvious fact that seems quite relevant to the medical procedure? I’m not holding my breath. I care deeply about both the health and the freedoms of women. Contrary to common tropes from the Left, I do not want to take away certain rights without reasonable cause. Contrary to what some might assert, I have no ill will toward women who have had abortions. All I want for them is healing, love, and grace. But truth is not the enemy of grace; it is in fact its needed partner. It’s time that we reclaimed that truth ground by unashamedly shining a light on the most undisputed fact about what an abortion does: It kills a fetus. All our national discussions about the issue must start and end with that fact, and we mustn’t let the country get away with pretending otherwise. No matter the attempted censorship, no matter the names they call us, we must work through argument and reason (presented with kindness and compassion) to remove this American blind spot. READ MORE: Did Kamala’s Abortion Obsession Alienate Americans? Florida Turns the Tide for Social Conservatism Despite Massive Spending Gaps The Republican Party Erred in Abandoning Its Pro-Life Platform The post America’s Abortion Blind Spot: How Liberals Convinced Americans to Ignore the Fetus appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“The University of California is eyeing a looming budget gap of half a billion dollars next year,” reports CalMatters, and to fill the gap the university is “relying in part on its out-of-state undergraduates,” whose costs will be increased. In their quest for a balanced budget, UC bosses might cut back on overhead. A good place to start would be the diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy, which never should have been established in the first place. In 1996, state voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), which banned racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment, and contracting. As Thomas Sowell noted in Intellectuals and Race, the predicted disaster never occurred and the number of African-American and Hispanic students graduating from the UC system went up, including a 55 percent increase in those graduating in four years with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. State politicians and “educrats” maintained that the measure somehow harmed “diversity” and in due course set up a professional caste of DEI bureaucrats to impose the same kind of preferences CCRI banned. For the DEI officials, it was highly profitable. Consider, for example, Dania Matos, UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for the Division of Equity and Inclusion. She bags $364,446 in total pay and benefits, and UC Berkeley alone employs 150 professionals and 250 additional students to fight “systemic inequities.” All 10 University of California campuses deploy DEI officers, who cost big dollars but add no educational value. Eliminating them all would help balance the budget, and the system might take a look at salaries in general. Consider UC Berkeley Chancellor Richard Lyons, who pulls down a whopping $946,450. In September, the University of California Board of Regents approved salary boosts, in the neighborhood of 30 percent across the board, jacking up the salary range for the 10 campus chancellors to between $785,000 and $1.2 million. The countless vice chancellors, provosts, deans, and such could doubtless use some cutting in salary and numbers. UC budget balancers might also track down pots of money that have escaped scrutiny. Consider former University of California President Janet Napolitano, also the former Arizona governor and Department of Homeland Security director, who came on board in 2013. In 2017, California State Auditor Elaine Howle discovered that Napolitano, while raising tuition and fees, was hiding a slush fund of $175 million that she used to shower perks on staff. Napolitano’s office “intentionally interfered with investigators” but the UC president faced no criminal charges and stayed in office until 2020. So far nothing like that from current UC President Michael V. Drake, who got a $300,000 raise in September, bringing his base pay to $1.3 million. The former UC Irvine chancellor and UC vice president for health affairs is a “strong advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion.” So on Drake’s watch, cuts in the DEI overhead or executive salaries are unlikely, and that places UC plans in jeopardy. As CalMatters notes, with the $500 million budget gap looming, the University of California system has been pouring “tens of billions of dollars” into seismic retrofitting, new classrooms, and medical centers, without “the funding to build or renovate most of what it needs.” The bill for the system’s construction projects comes to $53 billion, and hiking tuition for out-of-state undergrads to $52,536 won’t get it done. “California’s public university system is a bloated jobs program,” contends Katy Grimes of the California Globe. “The students are clearly secondary.” As students, parents, and taxpayers might recall, in 2020, California voters rejected Proposition 16, which would have overturned Proposition 209. Contrary to popular belief, CCRI did not eliminate “affirmative action.” The UC can still lend a hand on an economic basis but cannot reject or accept students on the basis of race or ethnicity. Meanwhile, Janet Napolitano, the UC president who stashed away $175 million, recently served on a panel to investigate the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Californians can be forgiven for questioning her qualifications for the task. Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Election Aftermath in California Government Efficiency Is a Tall Order for Musk California’s Identity Problem The post Oh Say Can UC? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

George Washington Professor of International Affairs Robert Sutter writes in The Diplomat that the Biden administration has successfully checked China in Asia and will be a tough act to follow for the incoming Trump administration. Sutter claims that the Biden legacy includes “checking Beijing’s challenges and ambitions,” building “positions of strength” to achieve “integrated deterrence,” advancing “bilateral alliances” in the Indo–Pacific, “establishing new minilateral frameworks among allies” in the region, and integrating NATO allies with Asian allies to counter Beijing’s ambitions. Which raises the question: What world does the professor live in? During the last four years, China has behaved more aggressively toward Taiwan, carrying out military exercises involving land, sea, air, and missile units that have heightened tensions in the South China Sea. China also expanded its advantage in shipbuilding capabilities, dramatically increased its strategic nuclear and medium-range nuclear forces, expanded the reach of its Belt and Road Initiative in Latin America (an unambiguous challenge to the Monroe Doctrine), and moved closer to Russia, Iran, and North Korea. (RELATED: Rejuvenating the Monroe Doctrine) China expert Gordon Chang has noted that Biden’s fumbling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and his failure to deter Russia from invading Ukraine demonstrated to Chinese leaders the incompetence of the outgoing American administration. Those failures were compounded by Biden’s Middle East failures, which have given China an opportunity to extend its influence in the region, just as Obama’s similar failures provided an opportunity for Russia to return to the Middle East. Compare Sutter’s world with that of Helen Raleigh, an entrepreneur who lives and works in the real world. Writing a few months ago in The Federalist, Raleigh deemed Biden’s China policy a complete failure for continuing to encourage American businesses to invest in China, for failing to strictly enforce restrictions on semiconductor chip exports to China, for pursuing “green initiatives” that only serve to deepen America’s dependence on China, and for talking out of both sides of its mouth about whether America would defend Taiwan in the event of Chinese aggression. Raleigh also noted China’s significant nuclear weapons buildup and its increased threats to Taiwan, the Philippines, and other U.S. allies in the region. She believes that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been emboldened by observing Biden’s mental and physical decline. An even more damning indictment of Biden’s foreign policy — including his China policy — appears in The National Interest in an essay by two scholars at the Stimson Center, Matthew Burrows and Robert Manning. They characterize Biden’s legacy as a “troubled interregnum” where the limits of American power were ignored in an effort to perpetuate a “fading primacy.” They ridicule outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s assertion that Biden’s strategy “has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago” as “hubris on steroids.” Instead, Biden and his foreign policy team have presided over an “unraveling global order” that has seen the world placed in a state of “polycrisis.” Its policies have pushed China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea closer together. The Biden team has attempted to disguise its failures by touting its role in a false ideological struggle between democracy and autocracy, even as it promotes the notion of global governance. It is the very antithesis of realism. Under the Biden administration, what the communists used to call the “correlation of forces” has shifted in China’s favor. It is not unlike the situation Ronald Reagan faced after four years of Jimmy Carter. Let’s hope that Donald Trump emulates Reagan and reverses the correlation of forces in America’s favor. READ MORE from Francis Sempa: Rejuvenating the Monroe Doctrine Is Biden Trying to Start World War III Before Trump Takes Office? Trump’s Well-Chosen Promises The post International Affairs Professor Says Biden ‘Checked’ China: What World Does He Live In? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

What is it going to take for people to finally start waking up?  Warheads are literally raining out of the sky.  The Russians essentially simulated what a nuclear attack on Ukraine’s fourth largest city would look like, and yet most people don’t seem too alarmed.  The Russians only used conventional warheads, but they are clearly warning us that next time things could be very different.  Meanwhile, we could see a massive escalation in the Middle East at any moment.  Jesus specifically warned us that the days just before His return would be a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and if you haven’t figured out that we are living in a time of “wars and rumors of wars” by now, I don’t know what to say. If we really are living in the end times, war is in our future. In fact, Revelation 6:8 tells us that war will be one of the primary reasons why one-fourth of the entire global population dies during the seal judgments… And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. This is coming. Maybe you don’t think it is coming right away, but if the Bible is true it is coming. And at this moment we are closer to an apocalyptic global war than we have been since the days of World War II. Yesterday, a British missile that was fired from Ukrainian territory hit a military base in Russia and wounded a top North Korean general… A senior North Korean general was wounded in a recent Ukrainian strike in Russia’s Kursk region, Western officials said Thursday. It is the first time Western officials have said that a high-ranking North Korean military officer has become a casualty in the escalating Russia-Ukraine conflict. More than 10,000 North Korean troops are deployed in Kursk as the Kremlin tries to repel Ukrainian troops who mounted an offensive there in August, U.S. officials have said. This conflict in Ukraine has evolved into a truly global struggle. During a speech that he just delivered, the former head of the Ukrainian military boldly declared that World War III started in 2024… Ukraine’s former military Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny said that the direct involvement of Russia’s autocratic allies in its war on Ukraine means that World War III has started. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” said Zaluzhny, who is now Ukraine’s envoy to the United Kingdom, during a speech at Ukrainska Pravda’s UP100 award ceremony. “Because in 2024, Ukraine is no longer facing Russia. Soldiers from North Korea are standing in front of Ukraine. Let’s be honest. Already in Ukraine, the Iranian ‘Shahedis’ are killing civilians absolutely openly, without any shame,” said Zaluzhny, adding that North Korean and Chinese weapons are flying into Ukraine. On the other side, Vladimir Putin is also acknowledging that what is happening in Ukraine is now a “global” war… On Thursday President Vladimir Putin issued a stern warning in the wake of Ukraine launching long-range strikes on Russia’s territory utilizing newly approved US and UK long-range missiles. “Kiev has launched a long-range missile strike against military facilities located within internationally-recognized Russian territory,” began his televised address by saying. He confirmed British-made Storm Shadow missiles and US-made HIMARS were fired targets located in Bryansk and Kursk Regions. He said this action threatens to turn the Ukraine conflict into a global war. “A regional Ukraine conflict instigated by the West has acquired elements of a global one,” Putin spelled out, and noted that these systems cannot be used without the direct operational involvement of Western military specialists. Putin warned us that bad things would happen if western leaders allowed Ukraine to fire long-range missiles provided by them into his country. Of course western leaders decided to call his bluff, and then they found out how serious the Russians really are about their red lines. Following the stunning attack on Dnipro, Putin went on television and admitted to the world that his country had just used a hypersonic ballistic missile to deliver those warheads… Today Vladimir Putin gave an unscheduled live address to the nation. He claimed that on Nov. 19, six ATACMS missiles — and on Nov. 21, several Storm Shadow missiles — had been used by Ukraine for strikes against targets in Russia’s Kursk and Bryansk regions. According to Putin, Russia retaliated on Nov. 21 with a combined strike against a Ukrainian defense industry facility. In addition, “a field test was conducted in combat conditions” for one of Russia’s newest medium-range weapon systems: a nuclear-free hypersonic ballistic missile. “Our engineers named it ‘Oreshnik’ [‘Hazel’],” Putin declared with a smile. It didn’t have to come to this. Donald Trump won the election, and Joe Biden and his minions should have allowed him to make the decision about whether or not to escalate the conflict in Ukraine. But instead, it appears that they are trying to make it very difficult for Trump or anyone else to end this war.  I really like how Tucker Carlson made this point during a recent interview… “If you doubt how serious the opposition is to the public, not just to Trump, but to the majority of the country that voted for him, They’re trying to leave him with World War III on the way out,” Carlson urged. Russia is furious about the Biden administration lifting restrictions on use of US developed long range missiles, and Putin has repeatedly stated that such a move would mean NATO countries are at war with Russia. Carlson continued, “I can’t imagine a more desperate or evil thing for Tony Blinken, who I think is desperate and evil, in my view, to do. Leave him with a war?” Most Americans have no idea how much damage U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has done. It will be so good to see him leave Washington. But of course there are lots of other warmongers in D.C., and they will be pushing for the war in Ukraine to continue. If we stay on the path that we are currently on, it will lead to nuclear war. At the end of Revelation chapter 6, there appears to be a description of a future nuclear conflict… 12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: 17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? Have you noticed that very few people like to talk about this particular passage? But we should be talking about it, because we are steamrolling toward an unthinkable global conflagration right now. We really are living in the end times. We really are the Book of Revelation generation. Bible prophecy is playing out right in front of our eyes, and yet most of the population is still in a very deep state of sleep. Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com. About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today. Get prepared for what is ahead by visiting some of our sponsors… The Jase Case is more than an emergency medication supply. The right meds the moment you need them: https://jasemedical.com/?rstr=22537 Protect your home and vehicle with EMP Shield: https://www.empshield.com/?coupon=snyder50 Ready Hour Emergency Food: https://www.readyhour.com/?_ef_transaction_id=&oid=8&affid=109 My Patriot Supply: https://www.mypatriotsupply.com/?_ef_transaction_id=&oid=1&affid=109 InstaFire: https://www.instafire.com/?_ef_transaction_id=&oid=10&affid=109 AlexaPure: https://www.alexapure.com/?_ef_transaction_id=&oid=9&affid=109 Camping Survival: https://www.campingsurvival.com/?_ef_transaction_id=&oid=7&affid=109 The post We Are The Book Of Revelation Generation appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

by Joseph P. Farrell, Giza Death Star: If you’ve been following those stories about “artificial intelligences” designing goofy, or downright creepy “art” or carrying on chilling conversations with humans, then you can add this one, shared by V.T., to your list: The ‘conversation” that took place is chilling, but, as will be seen, raises significant […]

by Geoffrey Grinder, Now The End Begins: A bizarre new DEI ad for car brand Jaguar has been widely mocked as ‘woke’ and ‘outdated’ by social media users. Jaguar released a new logo treatment along with other branding today that they themselves describe as a ‘new era’, seismic change’ and ‘bold’. All three of those things […]

When Harley-Davidson Factory Racing rolls onto a racetrack, the world listens—and at the Circuit of Barcelona-Catalunya, it wasn’t just the […] The post Harley’s Bagger Kings Take On MotoGP Barcelona appeared first on Hot Bike Magazine.