We should not have to look backwards to see America’s best years.
The parlor game continues in Israel: when will the United States attack Iran? Polymarket is in on the game too, with various sums placed on different dates of the new calendar month. I would be honored to have dinner with President Trump; I don’t think that I would want to play poker with him. He is very coy about his plans, talking about discussions with the Iranians on terms that they can never accept, lots of American war-fighting material entering the region and not telling Gulf countries of his plans. Will the US attack? If it does not, it may be the largest assembly of warships, planes and more that turned around and went home.
A better question could be, “Should America attack?” This is not an easy one to answer. While the flat-forehead crowd on the right believes that nothing outside of US borders should concern the president and his government, the reality is obviously quite different. Bin Laden could sit in a cave in Afghanistan and change the future of the US without having to double-park his camel. Iran has an outsized influence in the world, including on America. The Chinese buy billions of barrels of sanctioned Chinese oil for under-market prices; if a new pro-Western government came to power and joined world oil producers, the effect on Chinese economics and planning would be dramatic. Just as the removal of Maduro gives us reports that Cuba has only two weeks of oil reserves left in the country, so too the mullahs' opening new restaurants in Moscow would have a large impact on Chinese energy and Russian war-fighting. These considerations can be added to the thousands of American servicemen killed and wounded by Iranian IEDs during the Gulf War and the Iranian-sponsored terror that has led to a much less safe world. Did I mention the Iranian plot to kill President Trump? There are many reasons that have nothing to do with Israel as to why the US might want to weaken the regime enough to let the people take over.
A successful attack on Iran and a new government that is pro-US would effectively reset the clock to 1979, when the US and Iran had outstanding relations under the late Shah. There are many things that seemed to be somewhat better around 1980, including the music and kids not having cellphones. “Be home by 6:30 for dinner, and I don’t want to see you on the TV news tonight,” were the instructions given after school when friends got together. The food we ate did not seem to make us fat and having a home was the reachable dream of most Americans.
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That things often change is not surprising; our only hope is that things change for the better. Nobody goes to the hospital and asks for the 1953 treatment for stomach pains. There are many areas where mankind has made enormous progress. Elon Musk can have his own wing of the Mankind Progress Museum. His revolution in rocketry, robots, and self-driving cars is extraordinary. I saw a short clip on how his Optimus robots might one day serve a key role in home elder care: the robot gives the required drugs, does the chores, goes shopping with the owner, accompanies her for a walk, etc. Even if only 10 percent of that vision comes true, it would be a revolution for an aging population. My father spent the last seven years of his life living alone at home; he refused to leave his fortress. Every day, someone would check up on him and do light activities like laundry and food preparation. A robot that could have been with him and offer 24/7 emergency services if something went wrong would have been amazing. It’s hard to find good help today, and it does not come cheap. We were at our wits’ end here in Jerusalem when we felt that some of those taking care of my parents took advantage of their very good nature. So, yes, progress should be making us long for the future rather than yearn for the past.
But such is not the case. We look at previous times when the family was central to Western life. We look at cleaner cities where the citizens and not illegal visitors, were considered to be more important. There was civic pride and patriotism, and one did not have to be ashamed to love his country. But things changed, not the least of which we loosely call “education”. The left latched onto the training of the mind and turned Reading, Writing, ‘Rithmatic into pure dogma where the bad guys were always the US and white males. White females later got dumped into the villain group, though Hollywood still lets them beat up guys three times their weight. More and more stories come out about white males not being offered work or openly excluded from jobs and other opportunities.
As John Adams said so long ago, the US republic was built for a moral and religious people. Just as some amusement park rides demand a certain height or horse racing requires jockeys of lower weight, the US requires its citizens to have a moral framework in order for things to work. Democracy itself has no values. If 50 percent + 1 decide to throw anyone with a two-syllable last name out of town, that will be the law until some court finds it illegal. The US, up until the 1990s, had a very strong Christian ethos, even as American religiosity was already in decline. Thus, the rules of the game—or those white lines that define the outer realm of the football field—were almost universally accepted. Nobody had to debate “gay marriage” or the acceptance of “trans women” clobbering the real thing. These were abominations in the eyes of most Americans, so the debates revolved around how to deal with the Russians and whether recipients of welfare had to work. But then things changed. As non-religious parents brought up even less religious children, new religions became popular: Science is always right, even when it is wrong. Marxism and socialism found favor with people whose bank accounts start at seven figures. Saying the Pledge became controversial. A short prayer to begin the day was verboten. We figured that what worked for a religious and moral people would work for anybody. But it does not.
The import of millions of illegal aliens was predicated on declining fertility rates, as well as the idea that there was nothing so special about America that we should protect it and wall it off. Nope. Everyone is welcome, and the US and local governments will provide housing, food, and other bonuses not offered to homeless veterans who honorably served their country. The distinction between men and women, girls and boys was intentionally blurred so that one could interchange via drugs, surgeries and hocus pocus. The Biden administration went out of its way to get a cross-dressing guy over at Energy who had a proclivity for stealing women’s suitcases at airports. They had a Transportation secretary “chest feeding” an adopted child and thus convincing Putin that Kyiv was his for the taking.
Since the return of Donald Trump, recruitment is up and Americans’ views of the future are more positive. America can have a brighter future than her past, but it will still take a moral people, as morality does not come from the government but rather forms the contours of what government can do. America needs secure borders and even more secure elections. The American people need to be the ones who choose their elected representatives, so that the latter truly reflect the hopes, wishes, and dreams of those who put them into office.
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