It was necessary to distribute the immediate-prior Blast e-mail because it was becoming unwieldy;

replete with info that appeared to be ignored elsewhere, it contained items with time-value [EMET] and
long-term import [the Tobin essay about Zakaria, as a BHO-apologist regarding all thats wrong with
Americas throw-up-your-hands posturing that is purported to emulate a decent Foreign Policy. Also,
pivotal concerns of the GOP were explored, along with the ultimate nuclear option consideration when
enticing Dems to act against BHOs imperialism by supportingnominally, just in 14the GOPs effort to
regain the Senate Majority; in that regard, handicapping was updated in a global fashion [without trying
to capture nuances among the political seers] to support the view that BHO will again get shellacked.
Why two must-see flicks have been praised was also captured [buried among customary Summer-fare];
ending with a wrongheaded graphic [read through the terse annotation in conjunction therewith] was
intended to capture the depth of control enjoyed by lefties when lead-stories can easily be amended.

Again, the backlog dating back to December 7, 13 has been compiled (each < 2 megs],
yielding the entire set of suggested Action-Items *I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII,
XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, and
December [I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI,
XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII and XXVIII]; once XXIX has reached ~ 2 megs, it will
be added. They can be searched for key-words; the prior six months entries *entitled
anti-BHO+ will be added *focusing on BHOs Scandal-Sheet and efforts to defund
ObamaDontCare, spotlighting Cruz].} More than 3000-pages were composed during the
past year; the reader is invited to ID any internal contradiction *for there arent any!+.

Points made therein dealt with the fear that the GOPs POTUS could appoint the next SCOTUS-justice;
the need to peg BHOs behavior as evil *for its deceit is pervasive and it lacks any factual foundation
from Fathers/Founders; the need for the Log Cabin Republicans [LGBTQ] ASAP; the depths of BHOs
pacifism*recalling BHOs interview with Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic in which he eschewed leading the
government into the status of emerging victorious in any military conflict in any theater in the world];
the hope that Corbett can help people recognize the risk of electing a Dem who will increase taxation;
the reason why limits to gun ownership are both unconstitutional and dangerous [for people may wish
to be able to defend themselves], undermining the desire for Gun-free Zones to be maintained [even in
a hospital]; the need to withhold judgment regarding any justification for the police-shooting of an
unarmed perp [having just robbed a convenience store, until a quality investigation can be instituted];
the importance of Kurdistan and of supporting Israel; and the ongoing risk that the Senate will append
its prior Amnesty bill to the House-passed bill regarding Illegals (triggering the joint-conference
committee that could yield a reform passage, that Dems and Boehner could pass [ignoring, again the
Hastert Ryke], and that would then open floodgates for Illegals that would be impossible to reverse.

Insights into the USA-Israel relationship are contained herein, so scroll past what may
feel tiresome, but please dont ignore the implications of what BHO is doing to Israel.

Although the info provided was cohesive, a major reason why the prior Blast e-mail was released
before the customary sources had been cited to-exhaustion was awareness that additional a-bit-lengthy
citations loomed [in addition to those already provided]; the first is the [Jonah] Goldberg File, which is
only available via Blast e-mail. It may be recalled that, after his Keynote address @ the PA Leadership
Conference four months ago, I mildly berated him for appearing reticent to cite the wisdom enshrined in
his tome Liberal Fascism; as will be quite apparent, he more-than-compensated in this weekly essay
*and careful listeners of FNCs All-Stars that starts @ 6:37 p.m. (e.d.t.) @ the end of Special Report
will note he has far more frequently conveyed awareness of the sweep of a given issue].

Ferguson Agonistes

I have to confess I am very late to the Ferguson story. I tend not to follow these kinds of
events too closely when they break, because they always seem to go the same way.
What am I supposed to say? If the cop did something wrong, he should be punished for
it. If he didn't, he shouldn't be.

But even if he did something wrong, rioting is almost never justified. It can be more or
less understandable depending on the circumstances, even forgivable I suppose. But
never justifiable, never mind permissible. Why should the crime -- real or alleged --
committed by person X make it okay for person Y to do harm to person(s) Z? No one has
ever been able to explain that to me.

And I grew up in New York City in the 1970s, when race riots were a thing -- though not
as much of a thing as they were in the 1960s. And that's part of the problem. In the
1960s, you could see the point of race riots (though less so in the North where they
were quite common). But by the 1970s, liberals had incorporated race riots into their
mythology as noble "happenings" even though the romance of rebellion had lost its
plausibility. And by the 1980s, tragedy had been fully swamped by farce. It is an
axiomatic truth going back to Socrates: Nothing can be wholly noble if Al Sharpton is
involved. Nonetheless, it was amazing to watch New York liberals act like battered
spouses as they tried to explain why blacks are right to loot while at the same time they
shouldn't do it.

I haven't followed the details well enough to have an informed opinion on what actually
happened. But, as far as I'm concerned, that's the easy part. I'm wholly with my NR
colleagues on this. There should be an honest investigation. If the officer unlawfully shot
an unarmed man, he should face the consequences. If he didn't, there should be no
(criminal) consequences. How this is a complicated issue intellectually is a mystery to
me. How this has become a complicated political problem, sadly, is not.

This Is Different

All of that said, I think the Ferguson story has become more interesting and significant
than the usual spectacle of this kind. The timing coincides with the ripening of an
argument on the right against the militarization of U.S. police forces (led by Radley Balko
as far as I can tell). It's funny how unaware so many liberals are that this conversation
was even taking place on the right. Liberals have been mocking libertarians for years as
paranoid lunatics. Oh you want to live without government? Move to Somalia! Oh wait,
when did the cops get tanks? (Some wag on Twitter made this point but I can't find it
now.)

It looks like the Missouri Governor made the right call bringing in the state police and
Captain Ron Johnson, an African American from Ferguson. I'm sure the guy is qualified
and he seemed pretty impressive from what I've seen and his decision to demilitarize
things as quickly as possible was inspired. But part of his success stems from the fact
he's black. And that's okay.

I think this should be an educational data point for those who think any nods towards
racial diversity are ideologically suspect. I am as against racial quotas as anyone, but the
idea that police forces shouldn't take into account the racial or ethnic make-up of their
communities when it comes to hiring has always struck me as bizarre. A Chinese-
American cop will probably have an easier time in Chinatown than a Norwegian-
American cop. A bilingual Hispanic cop will have similar advantages in a mostly Spanish-
speaking neighborhood. When my dad was a kid in the Bronx, it was not uncommon for
a cop to give a teenager a well-intentioned smack as a warning and leave it at that. But
forget the smack. Today, in many neighborhoods, if a white cop even talks harshly to a
black kid, it might immediately be seen as a racial thing. If a black cop said the exact
same things, it might be received differently.

One last thought. While some uncharitable folks might find a way to blame Obama
somehow for the chaos in Missouri, I don't think that would be fair. This sounds like a
local issue. But it has become nationalized by the media, and that's not good for Obama.
Chaos at the border, tear gas in the streets, crucifixions in the Middle East, ebola
scandals, a "booming" economy where no one feels the boom: These all contribute
mightily to the sense the planet is going ass over tea kettle and are not the sorts of
things that incline people to be happy with the status quo.

Libertarians in the Mist

My column today (well, tomorrow from where I am sitting) is on Robert Draper's New
York Times Magazine piece on the alleged "libertarian moment." Before I go on, I will
confess to a bit of embarrassing vanity here. I look fantastic in my Star Trek uniform. But
that's not important. I will admit I wish Draper had talked to me. I've been debating and
writing about libertarians and conservatives for almost 20 years. I've debated Nick
Gillespie and Matt Welch among others on the subject, and I'm at a loss to count
how many times I've written about it. All I know is that whatever the number is, it
passed the minimum threshold for my wife to make fun of me about my obsession
about a decade ago.

Random morning circa 2002:

Me: What should I write my column about?

The Fair Jessica: Hey, why don't you write about fusionism again while I
eat a bowl of broken glass?

There are so many things I couldn't get into in my column. So let me just rant about
them bullet-point style (it helps if you say "bullet-point style" like a badly dubbed
Shaolin monk in a Kung Fu movie "Oh, your bullet-point style is good, but mine is
bettah!"). Libertarianism is popular now because it is cool to say you're libertarian even
if indeed, especially if you are not libertarian. I've spoken at about 100 college
campuses and I've made this point almost every time. Libertarianism is a bigger threat
to conservatism among young people than liberalism is because given the culture today
libertarianism is easier than conservatism. To be a conservative you not only have to
judge people, you have to judge people out loud. And making judgments about right and
wrong is a sin in today's secular culture. A libertarian can argue with his poli-sci and
economics professors by day and be a party guy by night. "Socialism is stupid" in the
classroom and "Who's up for getting high?" in the dorm.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about libertarianism is its blind spot about the
importance of community. Ayn Rand and Barack Obama share the view that there are
only two important institutions: the individual and the state. The difference is Rand
thought the state is evil and Barack Obama thinks it is awesome. The truth is closer to
the middle. Well, let me modify that. The state in the Bismarckian/Wilsonian sense
sucks. But government is not evil. Oh, it can be. But it needn't be. Sure, semantically you
can make the case that it is a necessary evil, but I don't think that's entirely fair. Nothing
truly necessary can be evil. Gravity is not evil. Food and shelter are not evil. There are
things we need to do collectively. That's why the Founders wrote the Constitution. Its
genius lay in the fact that it understood that government is necessary but not sufficient
for a good life.

Let's talk foreign policy. Rand Paul's foreign policy isn't libertarian because there is no
such thing as libertarian foreign policy. Oh, sure, the majority of libertarians are either
non-interventionist or isolationist (more the former than the latter), but the reason we
call those ideas libertarian isn't because the internal logic of the philosophy requires
non-interventionism or isolationism. It's because that's where non-interventionists and
isolationists have found a home. This understandably will offend many libertarians who
are sincere non-interventionists. But the fact is that there is a very clear demarcation
between the international realm and the national realm. How we order our internal
arrangements must be different than how we order our external ones. Inside the
fortress we can believe in maximalist notions of individual liberty. But the Constitution
(libertarian-ly understood) by definition doesn't apply to individuals or nation-states
outside our borders. Contrary to the claims of many hawks and neoconservatives (not
the same thing!) as a matter of fact and logic no libertarian is an isolationist. Isolationists
do not believe in free trade or open borders. Q.E.D.

Non-interventionism's moment is probably starting to wind down. I'm pretty sure it
cannot withstand sustained news cycles of jihadists burying children alive and crucifying
Christians. Non-interventionism seems brilliant when intervention is or seems to be
a bad idea. Rand Paul has benefitted enormously from the relative calm we've been
living under for the last several years. As Seth Mandel explains in a really insightful post,
"A stable global order is a great time to be a noninterventionist."

Oh, for you constitutionalist libertarians, you might ponder the fact that the reason we
swapped out the Articles of Confederation for the Constitution was that the Barbary
pirates were getting all up in our business and we needed to pay for a navy to open a
can of whoop-ass on them.

When it comes to the federal government in the domestic sphere, I'm pretty damned
libertarian. But I am also damn near a hippy communitarian when it comes to
everything else. The libertarians in Draper's essay talk a great game about individual
liberty and there's no end of sneering at social conservatives. But in a truly free society
individuals would be free to live conservatively. Far more important: They would be free
to live conservatively in groups. We call these groups "communities." That means in a
free society some communities would be free to establish rules that other people would
find too constraining. What breaks my heart about Draper's essay is that it buys into
Obama's view of society: Individuals versus the state. Bollocks. In such a denuded
society the federal government will inexorably take charge of things it has no business
taking charge of. Too many liberals and libertarians share the view that the government
in Washington is the only government in the game. I agree entirely with libertarians that
the feds shouldn't be in the business of telling anybody how to live. But local
communities should have enormous though not unlimited latitude to organize
around principles that some libertarians, conservatives, and liberals don't like.

Another point (which I've made 8 trillion times). Liberals aren't libertarian about social
issues! Libertarians don't believe in speech codes. They don't believe in racial quotas.
They don't believe in cigarette bans. They don't believe private citizens should be forced
to do business with people they don't want to do business with. They don't believe in
socialized medicine or limits on soda sizes. I have contempt for both liberals who claim
they are libertarians and for libertarians who find common cause with liberals who
refuse to acknowledge this fact. Claiming to be socially liberal but fiscally conservative is
one of the great dodges in American politics. But it pales in comparison to claiming that
you're socially libertarian when you're in fact socially authoritarian.

One last point. Let's assume that Draper is right. This is the libertarians' moment. Well,
I've got bad news for my libertarian friends. That moment will last exactly as long as,
and no longer than, it takes for libertarians to actually take power. The instant there is a
libertarian president or a libertarian majority in Congress, liberals will immediately and
passionately denounce libertarianism as evil, cruel, sexist, and racist. This is the story of
progressivism and it will never change. Any non-progressive movement that gains
power becomes The Enemy. If Rand Paul is the nominee, I guarantee you people will
look back on Draper's piece as a set up. Liberals do this all the time. They designate out-
of-power factions as the good conservatives or good right-wingers, because that makes
them sound open-minded ("I don't hate all conservatives, just the ones in charge."). But
then once they have a chance of seeing their ideas implemented, the fearmongering
begins. If Rand Paul's the nominee, the New York Times will be bludgeoning us with
bones from his father's closet until Paul is a Klansman. Remember, this is the crowd that
told us Mitt Romney gave some woman cancer. People forget that liberals loved
neoconservatism in the 1990s when it was out of power. Once it was in power (or
perceived to be) under George W. Bush, it became foreign and scary and "Straussian."
Today green-eyeshade Republicanism of the Nixon-(Poppa) Bush variety is all the rage.
But when Nixon and Bush were president, liberals shrieked "Fascism!" Liberal nostalgia
for Reagan or Goldwater is remarkably hard to reconcile with the way liberals treated
Reagan and Goldwater when they were in power.

Progressivism, stripped of its philosophical flare is ultimately and irreducibly about
power. Any idea, movement, or politician that threatens the power of progressives and
the(ir) administrative state will be cast as the greatest evil in the land. Libertarians who
think otherwise are betraying their own anti-utopian creed.

*
Obama's DOJ Silent as New Black Panthers Leader Incited Violence in Ferguson
Hillary Clinton / Barack Obama feud continues to bubble and froth




"The Giver," from The Weinstein Co. and Walden Media, based on the 1993 book by Lois
Lowry, is in theaters today - The president of Walden Media is Peter Flaherty's brother,
Mike -- Per the movie's website: "The haunting story of the Giver centers on Jonas
(Brenton Thwaites), a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless world of
conformity and contentment. Yet as he begins to spend time with The Giver (Jeff
Bridges), who is the sole keeper of the community's memories, Jonas quickly begins to
discover the dark and deadly truths of his community's secret past." Trailer
--"'The Giver' and the Totalitarian Instinct," WSJ op-ed by former U.S. ambassador to the
Vatican Raymond Flynn: "Watching the cast that includes Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep and
Katie Holmes in this powerful, dystopian story, I kept thinking of a real-life tale
populated with actors on the world stage: communist Poland in the 1980s, when men
such as Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa changed history."

On Iraq, Pope Francis' message of peace met the reality of war when, after he called on
the international community to find an efficient political solution that can stop these
crimes, the Vatican also tried to make peace with the idea that U.S. military strikes that
began last week were necessary and working: This is something that had to be done,
otherwise (the Islamic State) could not be stopped, Archbishop Giorgio Lingua, the
Vaticans ambassador, or nuncio, to Iraq, told Vatican Radio.