Columnist.
Emphasizing diversity has been the pitfall, not the strength, of nations throughout history. The Roman Empire worked as long as Iberians, Greeks, Jews, Gauls and myriad other African, Asian and European communities spoke Latin, cherished habeas corpus and saw being Roman as preferable to identifying with their own particular tribe. By the fifth century, diversity had won out but would soon prove a fatal liability. Rome disintegrated when it became unable to assimilate new influxes of northern European tribes. Newcomers had no intention of giving up their Gothic, Hunnish or Vandal identities.
A group of 50 conservative foreign policy elites and veteran national security officials of prior Republican administrations recently wrote an open letter denouncing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. They cited especially his lack of character and moral authority — and his "little understanding of America's national interests." Particularly bothersome, they wrote, is Trump's inability "to separate truth from falsehood." The letter stated that Trump's one-year campaign of blustery rhetoric suggests he could be as reckless in deed in the White House as he has been in word on the campaign trail. Is there a like group of past Democratic wise men and women who can commensurately "police their own" and so warn us about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton?
Many elections redefine political parties. The rise of George McGovern's hard-left agenda in 1972, followed later in the decade by Jimmy Carter's evangelical liberalism, drove centrist Democrats into the arms of Richard Nixon and later Ronald Reagan. These so-called neoconservatives ("new conservatives") grew tired of liberals' perceived laxity about fighting the Cold War. In foreign policy, the neoconservatives were best known for supporting idealistic nation-building abroad. They distrusted the rise of what would become political correctness and ever more government. They worried about violent crime and higher taxes. So decades ago, these Democrats joined the Republican Party.
Early 20th century modernism ignored classical rules of expression. But late 20th century postmodernism blew up those rules altogether. Barack Obama was a modernist candidate. He turned out vast numbers of young and minority voters, mastered new social media, and in 2008 overturned the old-guard Democratic furniture such as Hillary Clinton. In contrast, Donald Trump has simply destroyed normal politics. Unlike Obama with his record Wall Street fundraising of 2008 and 2012, Trump has raised almost no money. He ignores endorsements from political kingpins. Trump has organized no serious voter registration drives. His convention was bizarre, showcasing his kids instead of party bosses and special-interest groups.
Seventy-five years ago, the world blew up in just six months. World War II ostensibly started two years earlier, when Germany invaded Poland. In truth, after the rapid German defeat of Poland in September 1939, the conflict was mostly confined to Western Europe for nearly the next two years. By summer of 1940, only Britain had survived Hitler's European victories. The dormant European war only went global on June 22, 1941, when Germany suddenly surprise-attacked the Soviet Union, its former partner. America and Asia were still not directly involved in the 1941 expansion of the war until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and British Malaya on December 7-8.
"Obama's remedies proved worse than the original illness."
When President Obama entered office, he dreamed that his hope-and-change messaging and his references to his familial Islamic roots would win over the Muslim world. The soon-to-be Nobel Peace Prize laureate would make the U.S. liked in the Middle East. Then, terrorism would decrease. But, as with his approach to racial relations, Obama's remedies proved worse than the original illness. Obama gave his first presidential interview to Al Arabiya, noting that he has Muslims in his family. He implicitly blamed America's strained relations with many Middle Eastern countries on his supposedly insensitive predecessor, George W. Bush.
Here is a sampling of some recent news abroad: A Russian guard attacked a U.S. diplomatic official at the door to the American Embassy in Moscow, even as NATO leaders met to galvanize against the next act of Russian aggression. The Islamic State continued its global terrorist rampage with horrific attacks in Baghdad and Istanbul. Iran rebuffed United Nations warnings and defiantly boasted that it will continue testing ballistic missiles. German intelligence believes that Iran, empowered by the release of $100 billion in impounded cash, is violating its recent American-led nonproliferation deal in an effort to import nuclear bomb-making technology.
There was more of the same old, same old California news recently. Some 62 percent of state roads have been rated poor or mediocre. There were more predications of huge cost overruns and yearly losses on high-speed rail — before the first mile of track has been laid. One-third of Bay Area residents were polled as hoping to leave the area soon. Such pessimism is daily fare, and for good reason. The basket of California state taxes — sales, income and gasoline — rates among the highest in the U.S. Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom.
Following the Brexit, Europe may witness even more plebiscites against the undemocratic European Union throughout the continent. The furor of ignored Europeans against their union is not just directed against rich and powerful government elites per se, or against the flood of mostly young male migrants from the war-torn Middle East. The rage also arises from the hypocrisy of a governing elite that never seems to be subject to the ramifications of its own top-down policies. The bureaucratic class that runs Europe from Brussels and Strasbourg too often lectures European voters on climate change, immigration, politically correct attitudes about diversity, and the constant need for more bureaucracy, more regulations and more redistributive taxes.
Hillary Clinton is a seasoned liberal politician, but one with few core beliefs. Her positions on subjects such as gay marriage, free-trade agreements, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Iraq War, the Assad regime in Syria and the use of the term "radical Islam" all seem to hinge on what she perceives 51 percent of the public to believe on any given day. Such politicians believe truth is a relative construct. Things are deemed false by politicians only if they cannot convince the public that they are true — and vice versa. When the majority of Americans no longer believe Clinton's yarns about her private email server to the point of not wanting to vote for her, then she will change her narrative and create new, convenient truths to reflect the new consensus.
At first glance, 2016 sizes up as no other election year in American history.
The history of nations is mostly characterized by ethnic and racial uniformity, not diversity. Most national boundaries reflected linguistic, religious and ethnic homogeneity. Until the late 20th century, diversity was considered a liability, not a strength. Countries and societies that were ethnically homogeneous, such as ancient Germanic tribes or modern Japan, felt that they were inherently more stable and secure than the alternative, whether late imperial Rome or contemporary America.
When standing today at Hadrian's Wall in northern England, everything appears indistinguishably affluent and serene on both sides. It was not nearly as calm some 1,900 years ago. In A.D. 122, the exasperated Roman emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of an 80-mile, 20-foot-high wall to protect Roman civilization in Britain from the Scottish tribes to the north. We moderns often laugh at walls and fortified boundaries, dismissing them as hopelessly retrograde, ineffective or unnecessary. Yet they still seem to fulfill their mission on the Israeli border, the 38th parallel in Korea and the Saudi-Iraqi boundary, separating disparate states.
"The road to Hiroshima ... was paved by unprovoked Japanese aggression at Pearl Harbor."
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the December 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that killed more than 2,400 Americans. President Obama is visiting Hiroshima this week, the site of the August 6, 1945, dropping of the atomic bomb that helped end World War II in the Pacific Theater. But strangely, he has so far announced no plans to visit Pearl Harbor on the anniversary of the attack. The president, who spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, should — given that many Americans have forgotten why the Japanese attacked the United States and why they falsely assumed that they could defeat the world's largest economic power.
In 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Ãdouard Daladier warned Adolf Hitler that if the Third Reich invaded Poland, a European war would follow. Both leaders insisted that they meant it. But Hitler thought that after getting away with militarizing the Rhineland, annexing Austria and dismantling Czechoslovakia, the Allied appeasers were once again just bluffing.
Support for, or opposition to, mass immigration is apparently a class issue, not an ethnic or racial issue. Elites more often support lenient immigration policies; the general public typically opposes them. At the top of the list are Mexico's elites. Illegal immigration results in an estimated $25 billion sent back in remittances to Mexico each year. The Mexican government worries more about remittances, the country's No. 1 source of foreign exchange, than it does about its low-paid citizens who are in the U.S., scrimping to send money back home. Remittances also excuse the Mexican government from restructuring the economy or budgeting for anti-poverty programs.
"Jump the shark" is an American pop-culture expression that derives from a 1977 "Happy Days" sitcom episode and describes a moment of decline. At a certain point, a TV show becomes so predictable, empty of ideas and gimmicky that in desperation its writers will try anything — like the character "The Fonz" jumping over a shark on water skis — just to keep on the air.
While in London last week, President Obama waded into the upcoming British referendum about whether the United Kingdom should stay in the European Union. Controversy followed his lecture about the future of the Anglo-American relationship should Britain depart the EU. Obama also implied that without an EU, the United States might again be dragged into European squabbling, as it had been in the prior world wars. Americans might take this occasion to reflect on Britain's role in World War II.
