Worse Than War
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
And God said to Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
In the middle of the 20th Century the European people literally wiped the Jews from the continent, six million of them within a period of 5 years. Europe today is cursed what with most of its nations imploding, economically, socially and politically, while the current Muslim minority living in Europe quietly awaits the certainty that it will demographically outnumber the current secular population within the next 40 years. As recently stated by Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, “Jews are the ostensible but not ultimate casualties of the organization of politics against them.” Since it is becoming more than clear should Israel, America’s ally, be destroyed America will be, if it is not already, the next target of the enemy of the Jews. The American people instinctively know this and willingly incline to the needs of Israel a Jewish state and our natural ally. However Obama’s predisposition is to drift from the existential concerns of a free and democratic nation and place greater favor upon those who desire its downfall.
Of course relying on divine proclamations made nearly 3,000 years ago is hardly a substitute of a great nation’s foreign policy. But it assists our understanding of America’s historical presence in the world and its role in its undiminished loyalty to those nations which cling to freedom and justice. It was Reinhold Niebuhr who said that there are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
Deadly Giant
Filed under: International Reflections, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
As the doom and gloom merchants spell out America’s collapse in the near future the real disaster is happening across the Atlantic in the country that most believe is the economic and political bulwark of Europe, Germany.
Today Europe relies on Germany as the country with sufficient economic prowess to bail out the failing socialist countries of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and who knows what other country will require infusions of billions of dollars to prop up their failing social welfare programs. German sycophants point to Germany’s successful socialized medicine program, a successful government pension program, few poor people, if any and no need to be burdened with giant military expenditures. In a phrase it is “Socialist heaven.”
Well let’s take a close look at this German heaven. Today Germany is plagued by one particular crisis that seems to have no solution which is Germany’s Muslim minority. Unlike the Muslim minority in America which embraces America the Germany Muslim minority seems to have shut itself off from Germany, refuses to speak German and refuses to share in the German and European worldview. The birth rate among German Muslims is 2.4, nearly double that of the native German population which 1.38. Therefore within 6 generations the number of native Germans will be cut in half while the number of Muslim immigrants will quadruple. And that’s only one problem. In 2009 while 100 Germans of working age between 20 and 65 had to provide pensions for 34 people, they will have to generate income for approximately 65 pensioners in 2060. These 3 challenges of Muslim population growth, native German depopulation and aging will have major consequences for the financial sustainability of Germany’s socialist system.
Economic Reality
Filed under: Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
The current dispute in Congress over the deficit and the lifting of our debt limit is really about how this nation will look 20 years from now.
Today Europe rivets our attention with Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain becoming the proverbial economic basket cases because their governments believed that they could maintain their democracies by paying off the electorate. The inevitable bills have now come due and they are looking for others to pay off their crushing debts. Americans wonder: Is this what is in store for us? And if so who will be paying off our debts. Barack Obama, a feckless and unimaginative president, wants to kick the can down the road and there are Republicans quite ready to help him along. And few of our leaders, if any, Democrat or Republican provide a vision which offers the American people the will to engage the future.
But there is a dynamic future awaiting us, but not across the Atlantic, made up of countries which have adopted a dying economic philosophy but rather across the grand Pacific. Admiral Mike Mullen describes it as free and dynamic nations such as India, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Philippines and yes and perhaps even China beckon us to join with them in a 1000-ship Navy standing watch over the seas of trade and commerce and standing watch over each other. It is this vision, a generation from now, which will provide the American people the will to engage the economic reality of today.
Mother’s Always Right
Filed under: International Reflections, International War, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, United States at War
My mother, of blessed memory, used to say “If you are going to do something, already, do it graciously.” Well allow me to paraphrase. If the United States is going to interfere in the sovereignty of another nation, already, do it competently.
Recent signals from NATO are that, with respect to the Libyan campaign, more NATO nations are running out of that edifice than a burning tenement building in the City of New York. President Obama has made it eminently clear that the United States is not going to lead the Libyan campaign and wants some other nation to do it. His view is he doesn’t want the United States to be accused of making war on one more Muslim country. Right now he’s counting two in progress and then Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo. By the President’s calculation that’s five Muslim countries in which the United States unnecessarily, at least according to him, entangled itself. Libya makes six. The difference however with the Libyan campaign is that it’s all his. The problem however, as today’s Wall Street Journal points out, is once having led the campaign, whether President Obama likes it or not, America’s prestige, credibility and competence is on the line.
What escapes the understanding of President Obama is that our NATO allies have always considered the United States its butler in charge of military services to appear whenever they ring up. In some perverse way, since I strenuously disagree with his position, President Obama is now the proverbial subject yelling from the crowd that the emperor, in this case our European allies, has no clothes. For decades now the European nations constituting NATO have starved their military in favor of all those wonderful socialist benefits such as national health care, rich and early pensions, long vacations and life-time unemployment insurance. They have done this with the certainty that when the need arose to address a particular crisis with military software and hardware, they could always count on the Americans. It is truly ironic that the American President, who our European allies welcomed with happiness and joy now requests of them that they grow up, get the hell out of the house and pay their own bills. That’s not exactly the reason of President Obama’s refusal to lead the Libyan campaign. And he seems very uncomfortable and annoyed about their attempt to rescue themselves. But Mom, you are right again, if you’re going to do something, already, for God’s sake do it graciously.
Germany The EU Superpower, Again.
Filed under: International Reflections, Social Commentary
It is truly an irony of history that 3 score and 5 years ago the country that brought Europe to its knees and nearly destroyed its future should today be the country that may propel Europe into a future of peace and unlimited prosperity.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
The 27 member countries of the European Union are currently in a fiscal crisis. These countries have adopted the Euro as their currency but have currently refused to support its value by maintaining domestic spending at unsustainable levels. They have done this with the unwarranted expectation that the European Union will ultimately come to their rescue should more Euros be needed to satisfy their voracious creditors. This spending has been used to provide a cradle to grave cornucopia of benefits: rich retirements, unlimited health care, unlimited unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, subsidized transportation and months of vacation, holiday, sick leave and personal days. It has now come to an end and many of these 27 member states are careening toward default and bankruptcy.
There is only one country among the 27 that has the economic power to place a break upon these profligate children and that country is the Federal Republic of Germany. The country that 65 years ago was responsible for the deaths of 60 million Europeans and created so much destruction on the European continent that you could figuratively stand on chair and see all of it, is now admonishing its follow members, demanding that the spending stop and most important of all is willing to bail them out if and only if they put their fiscal houses in order.
There is however one unresolved issue that the 27 EU members face besides the reduction of spending and that has to do with the citizens of their own countries. Will they be willing to accept the necessary austerity that Germany demands? The children of Europe, who are now crying in the streets, will have to grow up, and quickly. For Americans it is a sight to behold as they watch Germany leading the children of Europe to adulthood and a promised land. Will wonders never cease?
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
The Dark Art Of War
Filed under: International Reflections, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
One of the most cleaver strategies in prosecuting a war against an intractable enemy is for the aggressor to cloak his actions so that the enemy is not aware that he is at war at all. The result is that deaths and destruction’s are viewed by the enemy as matters of serendipity, inadvertence, accident, happenstance, miscalculation and yes, even denial.
This Roger Madon and this is what I think.
How can this happen? How can a nation or a people not know that it is being attacked by an aggressing, devilish enemy? It’s quite simple really. The aggressor relies upon that group within the enemy nation which denies the reality of the events surrounding them, and is all too ready to blame everybody but the aggressor for the current misfortune of the nation. And why does this group deny the reality? That also is quite simple. To accept the fact that the nation is at war, that the nation may be irrevocably destroyed, that sacrifices beyond imagination will have to made, that loved ones may die horrible deaths and that all that is near and dear may exist no longer are facts beyond which the group can accept. And if the group is large enough, defeat is imminent.
Examples of this phenomenon run rampant throughout history: The English in response to William the Conqueror; During the American Rebellion against Britain nearly two thirds of the colonials refused to join the Revolutionary Army; The vast majority of American Indians were thoroughly unaware of the imperialist intentions of the white man on this continent; France at the beginning of World War II; European Jews in the late 1930′s and right up into the end of World War II when the victors and survivors began to count the millions of missing Jews throughout Europe, the Jewish leadership in Europe, at least what was left of it, finally got the idea. The examples are many. I only hope that America’s current conflict with radical Islam does not result in just one more example on the list of those nations and peoples that didn’t know they were at war.
This is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
Cain’s Question
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” And that question boys and girls is the most important question facing the American people today.
This is Roger Madon and this is what I think.
America under Pres. Barack Obama and this Democratic-Socialist Congress is moving toward an economic system quite similar to what Europeans have lived under since WWII: namely an oligarchic system of governmental allowances, contributions, funding and control and a deep regulatory system or ownership of its major industries. The underlying philosophy of the European system is based on the Judeo-Christian value of brotherly love expressed through societal responsibilities. So what’s wrong with that, you might ask?
Well it’s one thing to take care of your brother when he is in need of help due to events over which he could not or did not control. Isn’t it quite another thing when a society decides that an entire nation of people cannot take care of themselves and that government should take care of them?
When Cain asked God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” he was disingenuous since he knew that Abel was not alive and that he killed him. Is the current administration being just as disingenuous with the American people when it propounds a philosophy that demands that we are responsible for every American citizen and resident in America no matter their circumstances or their need while ignoring the heavy burdens placed upon all of us to perform that responsibility? How you answer that question determines how you answer Cain’s question to God and whether you are a socialist or not.
And this is Roger Madon and that’s what I think.
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