[unable to retrieve full-text content]Recent polling shows Americans’ mistrust of establishment media at an all-time high. The only surprise is that it isn’t higher. America’s establishment media…

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The Christian faith is much more than feelings and good vibes: As has been discussed so often on these pages, there are some versions of the Christian faith that are good, wholesome, and biblical. Sadly,…

After the death of Yahya Sinwar, the choir of blessed peacemakers resumed the refrain for an immediate ceasefire and a plan for “the day after.” Kamala Harris, the lead singer, glanced repeatedly at her politically crafted score that proclaimed, “it is time for the day after to begin without Hamas in power.” What criteria determine when the day after a war begins? Harris claims it has come because “Hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated.” But Hamas has not yet surrendered, and even a significant reduction of military capability may not be sufficient. Sinwar’s younger brother Mohammed, who shares his brother’s hardline stance and brutality, will succeed him. This may only complicate the peace process. The lesson is clear: We are far from knowing what the day after will look like or when it will occur. As Netanyahu stated, eliminating Sinwar is not the end of the Gaza war, but the beginning of the end. In the shifting sands of the Middle East, there are other uncertainties. For instance, Hezbollah has threatened to increase, not cease, their unprovoked attacks on Israel. The Houthis attack vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Eden, threatening global trade. The Israeli retaliation against Iran could lead to an expansion of the conflict, involving the U.S. and possibly Russia and China. No Arab state has formally agreed to take the lead in stabilizing Gaza, insisting only on a ceasefire and humanitarian aid. These unfolding events leave unanswered the question of the day after what, and when this will occur. Despite gains against Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is still fighting a war on eight fronts. What conditions are needed to realistically define the day after? With history as a guide, consider that the development and initiation of the Marshall Plan, the most successful postwar reconstruction, was not begun in 1941, 1942 or 1943. Development of the proposal began only in 1944 and was presented in September, eight months prior to the end of the war on May 8, 1945. However, this plan was NOT the Marshall Plan! It was the ill-advised Morgenthau Plan that aimed to de-industrialize Germany and transform it to an agrarian society so it couldn’t wage war again. This would have devastated German society, causing massive unemployment, poverty, starvation, and long-term instability. If this initial plan had not been rejected, it would have been “Versailles II.” Proposed only towards the end of war when victory was in sight, it still proved premature and likely catastrophic. The transformative Marshall Plan, or European Recovery Program, did not emerge overnight but evolved slowly after considerable confusion and debate about competing ideas of how to manage postwar Europe. Most are surprised to learn that George Marshall announced this proposal in a speech at Harvard in June 1947, a full two years after Germany’s surrender in 1945. It was implemented in 1948, three years after unconditional surrender. Germany was devasted by war, its economy in ruins. Marshall recognized that a strong Germany was essential for European recovery. The punitive Morgenthau Plan that proposed crippling Germany’s industrial base was driven by fear and anger because of its barbaric atrocities during the war. Time was needed for the passions of war to fade and a magnanimous sentiment to prevail. The lesson is clear: We are far from knowing what the day after will look like or when it will occur. As Netanyahu stated, eliminating Sinwar is not the end of the Gaza war, but the beginning of the end. The battle with Hezbollah is in a middle phase and the war against Iran, the head of the octopus, is only beginning. It is illusory to think that a constructive, day after plan can be developed before the smoke of battle has lifted, the emotional climate cooled, and the facts on the ground of the postwar Middle East are defined. Israel will likely defeat Hamas and Hezbollah, but what will Lebanon look like? What will the attitude toward Hamas of the Arab street be in Gaza? Will Iran remain an Islamic nuclear power or a restored Westernized nation? What role will the U.S. play after the election, as well as Russia or China? Will moderate Arab states agree to collaborate with Israel and the West to establish a transformative “Middle East Recovery Program?” Currently, none have signed on. Even with a clear-cut unconditional surrender marking the end of the Second World War, it took extensive political debate, three years of military occupation, and a process of de-Nazification to successfully implement a stable restructuring of Europe. The “day after” in the Middle East war that will result in lasting peace, as with successful wars throughout history, requires both the victor and the defeated players. With the tide turning toward Israel, this will be when their enemies are forced into accepting defeat, not a perpetuation of ceaseless ceasefires. Historically, the criteria for victory are well established: Military dominance which is achieved by decisive defeat of the enemy’s forces that render them unable to continue battle. Gaining control of key economic or strategic territories that signify defeat to the enemy. Political collapse signified by the breakdown of the enemy’s political infrastructure, regime change, or the loss of the will to fight. Economic depletion such that the enemy’s financial resources are drained to the point that they can no longer continue the war effort. Diplomatic negotiations that result in an agreement which formally ends the conflict in favor of a victor. A diplomatic solution (5) is not possible with religiously fanatic terrorists too willing to die. This war, characterized by modern technology, guerrilla tactics, and asymmetrical warfare, admittedly adds new complexities. But the basic principles of victory and defeat remain relevant. Israel has made notable progress achieving points 1 through 4. Once these are more fully realized and facts on the ground are in clearer focus, the prolonged conversation about the day after can begin. Robert Schwartz, who holds a Ph.D., is a psychologist and former assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He has published pioneering scientific articles on positive psychology and coping with stress, as well as social and political commentaries in the Jerusalem Post, Arutz Sheva, Christian Science Monitor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the American Thinker, and others. The post When Is the Day After in the Middle East? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The October 7 atrocities took place on a holy day in the Jewish calendar. Like the German Nazis, who often scheduled roundups and slaughters on Jewish holy days, the Middle East Nazis carry on psychological warfare by staining Jewish sacred time with Jewish blood. This was true of the Yom Kippur War, this was true of countless other smaller incidents — and plans that Israel thwarted as well.  The goal of these new Nazis is unity, to be established by the extirpation of a whole group who would maintain its independence politically and religiously. Like the jihadists of other times, like the Crusaders, like the Inquisition, like all the different religious players in Europe’s spate of religious wars after the Reformation, unity is the common goal. The brittleness of the Left comes from its inability to adequately encompass difference. The peace of Europe after those post-Reformation battles was shaped by a concept that arose in the peacemakers’ minds from a classical Jewish source. Jewish law has stated centuries ago that the 613 commandments found in the Five Books of Moses bind only the people of Israel. Everyone else is bound only by the Seven Noahide commands. World order was conceived without requiring religious uniformity. There is a common human drive for unity. How that unity is conceived makes a difference. The divine imagination portrayed by the Bible is that both the universe and humanity start from a single point and then diverge into rich variegation. The Psalmist cries out in admiration How manifold are Your works, O Lord! You have made them all in wisdom. The world is filled with Your creatures. Human genius has often preferred the simplicity and the apparent convenience of a pared-down nature.  Consider the domesticated potato. The South American home of the potato features a dizzying variety of potatoes that vary in color, size, and taste. But by the time the potato became established in Ireland as the staple of the poor man’s diet, there was no variety left. Ireland employed a monoculture instead of holding on to the wide natural variety. Most of Ireland was sown with the Irish lumper variant, and they were clones — genetically identical. That monoculture offered its advantage of simplicity. But its single genetic code meant that when a disease would strike it, there was no reserve defense in its DNA. When the potato blight hit, it was a complete knockout, and Ireland was devastated by starvation which killed about a million souls and drove another two million to emigrate to survive. Genetic variety goes a long way towards protected species from such devastation. The varieties of genetic code within nature offer a broader coordination to resist disease and other hazards than mere uniformity. We seek to conserve ancient subspecies as well as help raise new ones, all genetically conversant, to create a coupling of flexibility and robustness. Political conservatism opposes the totalitarian thrust towards monocultures of the mind and spirit. It is distrustful of investing everything in a one-and-done political battle, for it knows that the thrust and parry of various ideas is natural and healthy. Conservatism prefers a constitution that preserves the free give and take of ideas to an all-encompassing political catechism that proposes definitive conclusions to end the debate. As the conservationists of the old Sierra Club used to put it, we want not a blind opposition to progress but opposition to blind progress. For the world constantly changes, even as the unity underlying it, the personality of the cosmos, as it were, does not. As conservatives, we, too change, but we realize if change is to be coherent, it must preserve the coherence that has expressed itself through time. We realize that coherence requires our active participation, and know that the liberals’ proclivity to think it will take care of itself robs us of freedom’s dignity and leads to denial of lasting meaning in our lives. Our political battles are not, then, to define life. Conservatism believes that politics does not provide the deepest organizing principles of our lives, that both define our individuality but conserve our underlying unity. Rather, for politics to be fruitful and benevolent, it requires us to come with those deep principles already in hand. We conserve religion through putting religious freedom in the first place, politically. We know that politics that acts as a religion will not respect the differing religious views that our religions themselves teach are necessary to understanding the nature of the divine unity. Instead of uniformity, the traditions stemming from the Bible teach of the pre-eminence of love — and love requires difference to make its own oneness sublime and triumphant. The brittleness of the Left comes from its inability to adequately encompass difference. It has rejected vast swaths of Americans as deplorables, bitter clingers, and weird, even as rightists in another American age did so of those who did not conform to a certain canonic set of sensibilities. To a degree, they are right, inasmuch substitute our kind of uniformity for theirs. To the degree that our goal is an increase of freed thought and discussion to go along with the conservation of meaning, we occupy the high ground.  The shrill accusations of racist heresy sound like the rantings of modern Cotton Mathers and Grand Inquisitors. Their hollowness exposes how far short of useful truth their politics has fallen. Fewer and fewer are fooled by it. If we hold high the banner of freedom and do not strive for uniformity ourselves, this year could see a lasting victory for what we have held dear through trying times. It will be worth it. The multiplicity does not contradict the divine oneness, but is evidence of its astonishing goodness and power, much more so than a uniform universe would be. The very fact that difference does not compel conflict is evidence of a robust unity, one that is not fractured or endangered by difference. On the basis of Scripture, our religious traditions would have us emulate God’s ways. The uniformity that totalitarians seek to enforce results in a sclerosis of the spirit. The enriching differences of a free society are replaced with conformity. Instead of welcoming the variations of human experience into the societal conversation, a single person or small group authors a claim of exclusive truth which they do not allow to be tested and to which they allow no amendment. The Jewish holiday on which the October 7 atrocities took place is set by a lunar/solar calendar that varies with respect to the common Gregorian calendar much as Easter does. This past Thursday, still a day in the future as I write this, is the first recurrence of this holiday, in which we rejoice with the Torah. I will celebrate the distinctiveness of its gift to me and all Israel — and I will celebrate as well as its universal message. That is a message of freedom, the message that our unity is strengthened by the uniquely varied ways we stay true to the deepest reality of life and the universe, to the God whose story runs through each of our lives and every particle and wave of Creation. May we celebrate freedom, triumphant in a unity worthy of the One in whose image we are all created. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. The post Unity Is a Common Goal, Often Abused appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Oops, the FBI has been caught surreptitiously “revising” their crime statistics. The FBI’s stealth edits of their 2022 crime statistics showed that violent crime had not dropped by 2.1 percent as they originally claimed, but actually increased by 4.5 percent. That is a net increase in violent crimes of 6.6 percent from the figures the FBI originally reported. That is quite a large difference. The public would never have known about the dramatic increase in violent crimes but for the diligence of RealClearInvestigations (RCI). Their researchers noticed a seemingly innocuous note on the FBI website, “The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023.” Intrigued, the investigators went to the website to learn what the updated FBI stats revealed. They were startled when they compared the new data with the statistics the FBI had reported earlier. The revised numbers showed 80,029 more violent crimes than what was previously reported. The new dataset showed thousands more rapes, murders, robberies, and aggravated assaults than the FBI had reported: 7,780 more rapes 1,699 more murders 33,459 more robberies 37,091 aggravated assaults 54,216 more motor vehicle thefts How could the FBI miss 1,699 murders? Bodies in the morgue are hard to miss, but the FBI managed to overlook them. It boggles the mind that over 80,000 violent crimes were missed by the nation’s “premier law enforcement agency.” (READ MORE: Lies, Damned Lies, and Crime Statistics) Former FBI officials are chagrined at the manipulation of crime data. Former Assistant FBI Director Mark Morgan wrote in the Washington Examiner that the FBI’s earlier report was “unreliable at best and deceptive at worst.” Carl Moody, an economics professor at the College of William and Mary who studies crime, said, “The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.” No kidding! You would think a revision showing such a large increase in violent crime would be a major story. Yet, the FBI made no public announcement of this dramatic escalation in violent crimes. In fact, the FBI’s September press release touting a downward trend in violent crime is still on their website — uncorrected. This fits a troubling pattern. Democrats claim that crime is falling in the United States, and they cite FBI statistics to back up their argument. Democrats use the erroneous original FBI report to accuse Republicans of spreading “disinformation” when they claim violent crime is rising. This could almost be considered election interference since the FBI released this false report in the middle of a presidential campaign, thereby providing the Democrats with the headlines they wanted. USA Today, reporting on the now debunked statistics, wrote, “Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.” And Vox trumpeted, “The crime wave is over, but Republicans can’t let go.” Appearing almost intentional, the now disproven FBI figures were used against Trump during the Presidential Debate. ABC’s David Muir interrupted Trump and challenged his statement that crime was “through the roof.” Muir butted in with, “FBI data shows that overall violent crime rates have actually been declining in recent years.”  Because of the RCI investigation, we now know that David Muir was wrong, and Trump was right. Yet ABC has not acknowledged their error nor apologized for misleading their viewers. For several years, Leftists have been telling us that violent crime is decreasing, despite the mayhem we see on the news each night. According to the government, we can’t trust what we see. In the words of comedian Chico Marx, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”  Our “lying eyes” are seeing gangs of looters running into stores, smashing display cases, grabbing expensive items, and then racing off into waiting cars. We see immigrants beating and kicking police officers on the street, violent criminals set free with no bail who go on to commit more crimes, the National Guard deployed to protect passengers on New York subways, South American gangs taking over apartment buildings and terrorizing residents in Colorado and Texas, and young women raped and murdered by criminal illegal immigrants — immigrants the Biden–Harris administration allowed into our country. But the Democrats and their media friends tell us we are mistaken. That crime is not on the rise, despite what we see. Other agencies are not innocent of gaslighting the American public either. The bureaucrats at the Department of Labor have been using the same revisionist two-step reporting as the FBI. They have reported large increases in job creation only to later quietly revise those numbers downward. Similar to the FBI’s crime statistics, the Department of Labor’s adjustments are huge. USA Today reported, “The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday revised down its estimate of total employment in March 2024 by 818,000, the largest such downgrade in 15 years. That effectively means there were 818,000 fewer job gains than first believed from April 2023 through March 2024.” So, the Department of Labor misled the public into thinking that the U.S. was doing much better economically than it really was. And this is not a onetime occurrence. Virtually every job report in the last two years overestimated the number of jobs created, only to later adjust them downward. In other words, the initial reports almost always overstate the number of jobs — garnering favorable headlines — but later, with no fanfare, the Department of Labor adjusts them downward. Isn’t it amazing that 85 percent of the time the errors work in favor of the current administration? They are gaslighting us! Gaslighting is an insidious psychological manipulation in which malefactors work to deceive someone and force them to question their sanity and memory. It is very troubling that our own government is the one employing such tactics to make us doubt what we see and experience. Don’t fall for their underhanded schemes. Trust your own eyes and ears. Russian author and Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s observations on similar tactics employed by communist Russia are applicable here: We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country. Folks, the Democrats and the FBI obviously think we are stupid. I think they have miscalculated and we can prove them wrong on November 5. Pat Nolan is Director Emeritus of the Nolan Center on Justice at the CPAC Foundation. READ MORE from Pat Nolan: Will Democrats Finally Address the Mental Health Crisis? Prisoner Rape Is No Joke Reclaiming Our Cities From Mayhem The post FBI Caught Gaslighting the Public With Bogus Crime Stats appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The clouds of war that have cast dark shadows over Europe and the Middle East are now extending to the Korean Peninsula. In recent days North Korea threatened to go to war with South Korea after remnants of a supposedly South Korean drone was found in North Korean territory. Photos of the drone were released by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), which officials said they retrieved on October 13. North Korean military and state security agencies claim that the design of the drone is the same as the drones that were recently shown during a parade in South Korea. This comes after North Korea publicly accused South Korea earlier this month of flying drones over the capital city of Pyongyang. The North Koreans maintain that the drones were seeking to distribute anti-North Korean propaganda. North Korean officials insist that the alleged drone incident represents a grave threat. A statement released by KCNA asserted: “If a violation of the DPRK’s territorial ground, air, and waters by ROK’s military is discovered and confirmed again, it will be regarded as a grave military provocation against the sovereignty of the DPRK and a declaration of war and an immediate retaliatory attack will be launched.” North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un reinforced this threat during a speech last Friday: “As we have already declared, if our offensive forces are used in the precondition of ‘if,’ it constitutes legitimate retaliatory action against the hostile country, not the fellow countrymen.”  Despite the rhetoric of “retaliation,” Kim and his lackeys have long displayed aggressiveness against South Korea. Last Tuesday, they destroyed northern sections of unused road and rail routes that once linked North Korea to South Korea. The routes have not been used for over a half century, but nonetheless, their destruction was seen as a symbolic act of North Korea’s anger.  These threats are nothing new to South Korea. Despite no confirmation of responsibility from South Korean officials over the drone, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff responded to North Korea’s threat by vowing, “If the safety of our citizens is threatened in any way, our military will respond with stern and thorough retaliation.” The timing of this escalation is especially troubling. It comes just as news reports have surfaced about the discovery of North Korean forces assisting Russia in its war on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that close to 10,000 North Korean troops have arrived in Russia, according to recent intelligence he had received from his government.  Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have questioned the validity of these reports. However, there does seem to be mounting evidence of North Korean forces in Russia, signaling a major point of escalation for the war in Ukraine. Last Friday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) released a report stating that 1,500 North Korean special forces were sent to Russia’s far east for training and acclimatizing. The NIS report revealed, “four landing ships and three escort ships belonging to the Russian Pacific Fleet completed the first transport of approximately 1,500 North Korean special forces from the areas near Chongjin, Hamhung, and Musudan (Attachment 1) to Vladivostok, Russia … and a second transport operation is scheduled to take place soon.”  Additionally, the NIS report stated that North Korean officers were visiting frontline areas in Ukraine to assist Russian forces with North Korean-made KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles. The report states that “the Ukrainian government announced that the KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles that North Korea provided to Russia were used in attacks on major cities, including the Ukrainian capital Kiev, resulting in a significant number of civilian casualties.” In response to North Korea’s growing involvement in Ukraine, South Korea officials spoke with the Russian ambassador to South Korea, Georgy Zinoviev, demanding a complete withdrawal of all North Korean forces from Russia. While American policy makers have expressed concern over North Korea’s behavior on the Korean peninsula, the real danger is the prospects of a larger global conflict. Between North Korea’s growing cooperation and defense pacts with China and Russia, as well as America’s mutual defense treaty with South Korea, the prospect of a wider conflict has begun to inch closer to becoming a frightening reality. Should Kim Jong-Un keep true to his word and order any military action against South Korea, he would be responsible for pushing the world towards cataclysm.  The post Kim Jong-Un Pushes South Korea, and the World, to the Brink of War appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Washington Trail: A Slade and Cork Mystery Written by Lou Aguilar (Aethon Books, 304 pages, $21.99) Regular readers of Lou Aguilar’s weekly column for The American Spectator are familiar with the author’s signature passions. Above all, he is a patriot who supports Judeo-Christian values and eschews anything that even hints at woke-ism. For Aguilar, DC’s football team will always be the Washington Redskins not the Washington Commanders because he knows that Native Americans never took umbrage at the team’s original name but they were very offended by the left’s attempts to erase any linkage between the football team and the Indian warrior culture. Aguilar, a screenplay writer, also waxes eloquently about Hollywood, especially the Hollywood of days gone by before the progressive left spray painted it with political correctness transforming the once glamorous industry into what he has labeled Hollywoke.The author also uses his column to lament the disappearance of traditionally beautiful  and intelligent women from the big and the small screen in favor of unattractive and at times mean spirited she-devils. In Aguilar’s world, the ideal woman is endowed with the intellectual acumen of an astrophysicist and the physical assets of Raquel Welch circa One Million Years B.C. (1966).  Such is the essence of Lou Aguilar. He is unabashedly blunt and politically incorrect. Yet behind his seemingly cynical veneer beats the heart of an optimist who embraces the transformative power of the chance encounter. He believes that the world is inhabited by contemporary incarnations of Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan offering  “a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.” It is this embrace of serendipity coupled with film noir type intrigue that populates the pages of Aguilar’s latest novel, The Washington Trail: A Slade and Cork Mystery Thriller. Set in present day Washington, DC a few months in advance of the 2024 presidential election, The Washington Trail is peppered with indirect references to former U.S. president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump and current U.S. president Joe Biden. The novel was clearly written before Biden exited the race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s  presidential candidate.  The story opens with a beautiful woman named Amy contacting private investigators Mark Slade and Neil Cork to investigate why her boyfriend Greg, an aide to a conservative senator, abruptly ended their relationship. Although Slade and Cork think the case is nothing more than a romantic ghosting, they agree to take it on anyway. Slade, an Afghanistan veteran, and Cork, a former FBI analyst, are quickly thrown into a situation involving multiple murders, government corruption, a plot to subvert the election process, and a search for a mysterious expensive painting. While the book is a work of fiction, Aguilar’s distinctive voice and antiprogressive posture are ever present.  The Washington Trail  is very fast paced, the archetypical potboiler. The novel also satirizes contemporary progressive ideology, especially radical environmentalism. Aguilar writes like a cinematographer with such a level of visual detail that one imagines he storyboarded the novel while composing it. He also has an ear for memorable dialogue. If I were to offer any criticism, it is that the characters themselves are not particularly well developed. I found myself having difficulty differentiating between Slade and Cork. That being said, the story was incredibly engrossing. I happen to be a voracious reader and I finished the 300 page book in about three days, which is faster than usual for me. I also believe that The Washington Trail has the potential to become a film or limited series. And while Aguilar has stated that he would love to have his novel adapted for film, he has concerns about casting. The two protagonists are in their thirties and the author worries that it would be difficult to find actors of that age range who would be willing to appear in an inherently conservative production.  If you appreciate Lou Aguilar’s column, Washington, DC intrigue, and film noir mystery, you will also enjoy The Washington Trail. It is a true page turner. The post Follow <i>The Washington Trail</i>: New Cloak and Dagger Mystery Lampoons DC Corruption appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.