Obama

Build That Wall: America v. Castro

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Freedom

 

Ding, dong, the witch is dead!

Keeping Things in Perspective

I’ve read a number of editorials reflecting on the life and times of Fidel Castro. They’ve fallen into two camps: moral euphoria at the death of a dictator and a recitation of his crimes; or, the mealy-mouthed moral equivalency game played by those on the left (see Obama, Trudeau, Junker, Corbyn et al.).

To be clear, Castro was a bad guy and any attempt to cover over his crimes by appealing to his good intentions is the sort of deplorable, high-minded elitism that average Joe sees for what it is: baloney.

Then again, we ought to keep Castro’s crimes in perspective: he was a two-bit thug who caused a great deal of trouble for his people and sparked fires in South America and Africa for decades. Given the chance, he may have been a monster on the scale of Mao and Stalin, but even in his own country his tyranny never reached such diabolical heights. He only brushed with global significance on the occasion of the Cuban Missile Crisis—a scheme driven by his boss in Moscow and not even of his own making.

Further, it should be added that Castro’s death is not “the end of an era.” Castro had long been out of circulation, a ghost of a man, and Cuba still labors and suffers under an entrenched, kleptocratic dictatorship created by the late Fidel. We will have more of business as usual.  Continue reading →

Breathing Easy: The Morning After the Election

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They’re dancing now.

 

The fever pitch of this election has only started to abate. As people realize that Trump isn’t the second coming of Hitler, tempers and passions will cool. The pessimist in me thinks it will be, in the end, a return to business as usual. The optimist in me expects the economy to roar and the conservatives to lock down the Supreme Court for a generation. If we can avoid stupid wars, that would be nice too.

I’m not that old. This is the first presidential campaign I’ve really paid any attention to (the last one I was happily removed overseas). But that’s where reading books and talking to older people provides perspective.

Older people.

There’s this couple I’m close to. They’re educated conservatives. They’re good people, and as long as I’ve known them, they’ve been peaceable folk. The last eight years of Obama, though, knocked the stuffing out of them. They didn’t like his policies or his condescending, arrogant tone. Hillary was as bad or worse. The last eight years plus the prospect of another four put them on edge like I’ve never seen.

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The Establishment, Romney, And Tired Tropes

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There are few things more marvelously entertaining than watching a Party implode. And this year we might just get a twofer! The Democrats aside, Trump is unprecedented, so I frankly don’t blame members of the Establishment for losing their collective mind.  I do suspect, though, they are already coming to terms with their grief and anger and ready to accept the inevitable. Continue reading →

Hillary’s Progressive Pandering

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I’ll protect you from the corporations.

Hillary recently published a piece on CNN decrying campaign finance laws (see Citizens United) and state’s “restricting voting rights.” I’m not convinced that Citizens United is the great evil it’s cracked up to be. Jeb(!) with his grand war-chest is on life support. Trump is playing the game with pocket change. So much for buying elections. Nor do I think that efforts to improve the integrity of the voting process necessarily imprudent (we don’t want dead people voting, do we?). But I’m not interested in either of these issues at the moment. What interests me is Hillary’s belief that democracy, and more of it, is a good in-of-itself. As she puts it: “Let’s restore people’s voices and people’s votes to their rightful place — at the center of our democracy.” Clear away the barriers thrown up by corporate money and voter restrictions, let the unadulterated voice of the people ring forth, bring freedom to the oppressed, and the nation will rise to a glorious future. In this assumption, Hillary is joined by her competitor, Bernie. Of course, it’s Hillary, and she’s received gobs of money from corporations and so I suspect Hillary’s appeal is fundamentally disingenuous, and yet the belief in the will of the people is deeply ingrained in the progressive left. Continue reading →

The New Cultural Imperialism: America in Africa

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There has always been a certain dissonance at play with America’s response to imperialism.  While the United States routinely criticized European power land grabs around the world during the 19th and 20th century, as long as Europe stayed out of the Western hemisphere, Americans did not meddle. With the coming of the Cold War, however, America found itself awkwardly confronted by a necessity: while they rejected imperialism they also feared the expansion of communism. Consequently, the liberation of European colonies, while desirable at the level of principle, proved practically difficult as many were ripe for communist intervention. National security and national principles existed in an uneasy tension.

In the aftermath of that dicey and often contradictory time, it remains fashionable among members of the left to excoriate European imperialism and America’s complicity with it. The irony is that left wing attacks upon America’s past actions miss the fact that the left itself propagates a cultural imperialism in the developing world.

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