The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
This chapter is an embellished story, so do not take it as inspired by GOD. I wrote this for entertainment, and thus it is but a figment of my active imagination mixed with some facts surrounding the times, the places and the characters.
I ask that you allow yourself to truly see what it must have been like for a husband and his 16 year old pregnant wife as they traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem in the week leading up to the birth of their first child. They were two humans with thoughts, feelings, and faith in the One and only Living God who promised them their child would be special. Here are some of the particulars involved that they had to face.
We live at a time when children are born in sanitized hospital rooms with the best of care, before and after the mother gives birth. When we hear of stories of women giving birth at home, or alongside the road where the car had to pull over because the child would not wait, we are captivated and amazed of such a thing happening in today’s world.
Yet, for the vast majority of man’s history, women have given birth in conditions we would not expect our pet animals to give birth in. So when you consider what Mary had to endure in her last week leading up to the birth of her first child, I want you to consider the following. Then maybe, just maybe, you will look at the story of Christmas a bit differently than you have in the past.
When you consider that Luke was a Doctor, it kind of makes sense that his version of the Gospel is the only one that tells the story of the birth of Christ. It makes even more sense when you consider that Luke was not just a good friend and traveling companion, but he was also the Apostle Paul’s Doctor. Another point of consideration is that, in Paul’s letter to the Galatians he wrote that he did not receive the Gospel from man, but from Christ Himself. So who better to know the events leading up to the birth of Jesus, than the man He shared it with.
“But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:11-12)
I ask that you allow yourself to truly see what it must have been like for a 16 year old pregnant wife and her husband in the week leading up to the birth of their first child. They were two humans with thoughts, feelings, and faith in their God who promised them their child would be special. Here are some of the particulars involved that they had to face.
“And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the Inn.” (Luke 2:7)
Victoria Coates is a former Deputy National Security Adviser in the first Trump administration. Now she is the Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. She has an interesting take on what is not the “Palestinian problem” (with its implied “two-state solution”), but rather, the “Palestinians’ problem,” the problem, that is, of failing to recognize the significance of their repeated defeats. For nobody will tell it to them straight. She does. More of her discussion can be found here: “Victoria Coates: Palestinians lost battle with Israel – ‘someone has to tell them,’” by Maayan Hoffman, ILTV, December 3, 2024:
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict ended decades ago with the country’s founding and its victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, according to former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Victoria Coates.
Speaking to ILTV on Monday at the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, she said the Palestinians were never told they lost. Instead, “they were encouraged, particularly after the Iranian Revolution, to continue this self-defeating, suicidal, genocidal [behavior] we saw on October 7.”
“Someone has to have the nerve to say to the Palestinians, we are not negotiating a ceasefire, we’re negotiating terms” to end the conflict, she added.
Coates, an evangelical Christian and staunch supporter of the Jewish state has visited Israel many times. She has held several key political leadership roles, including serving in the Department of Energy, where she advised Secretary Dan Brouillette on national security issues and acted as his representative in the Middle East and North Africa.
Today, she serves as Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. She recently published a book, The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel—and America—Can Win, which focuses on October 7 and why America must stand with Israel.
She said the possibilities for the Palestinians, if they were to disarm and accept defeat, are abundant….
What would that mean? It would mean they would have, as Prime Minister Netanyahu likes to say, “all the powers they need to govern themselves, and none of the powers to harm Israel.”
Coates told ILTV she believes Trump would act decisively to expand the Abraham Accords, including securing a Saudi deal….
Is an Israel-Saudi “normalization deal” even possible? The Saudis insist that first a Palestinian state must be created. The Israelis are not about to see themselves squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea, in order to accommodate a 23rd Arab state that would be used to launch future attacks on the single Jewish state. Let me repeat it one more time: As Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, Israel wants the Palestinian Arabs to have all the powers to govern themselves, but none of the powers to harm Israel.
Trump will likely operate with an “unabashedly pro-Israel stance” because he understands this approach is in America’s best interest.
“I’m a Christian … but that’s not why I am here and not why I wrote the book,” Coates emphasized. “I wrote the book because the United States, we need Israel in the region, we need Israel locally, to be a partner and ally to us.”
She highlighted Trump’s nomination of former Governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel as an example of his pro-Israel policies and his understanding of the evangelical community that played a significant role in his election.
“You would assume that Israel would want a Jewish ambassador. But I think the enthusiasm for Governor Mike Huckabee is palpable,” Coates said. “I think he can help bridge those two worlds and not make this a Jewish or Christian issue. This is an American issue. There are hundreds of millions of Americans who care deeply about Israel.”
Listen up, Palestinian Arabs. You lost. Get over it.
A person remarked that when 80% of your counties want to secede, it is only a question of time before they secede.
If Oregon does not address its questionable elections and give the rural voters a voice or representation in the Oregon State government, then secession will be the only route the disenfranchised rural Oregon voters will have to pursue. The Greater Idaho movement is already contacting the incoming Trump administration to discuss allowing them to split from Oregon. We may soon see Oregon split between east and west counties. This maybe the end point of a Democrat power dynasty in Oregon and a new ascendancy of conservative Idaho.” [from The American Thinker]
THIS is the way to beat the leftists. Not just in Oregon.
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All we’ve heard for years is that you’re a “threat to democracy” merely for disagreeing with the Biden regime, since the Biden regime was (supposedly) voted in by a majority. This time, Trump was voted in by a majority, and Biden does everything humanly impossible to undermine his policies even before Trump enters the White House. Does this make Biden a “threat to democracy” too?
According to a federal survey of school leaders, 40% of students in the nation’s public schools were behind grade level in one or more subjects at the beginning of the school year.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) announced its findings this week that the percentage of students school leaders estimated to be behind where they should be was down 7% from the 2022-23 school year but still 8% higher than before the pandemic.
School leaders told the federal education statistics agency in October that over a third of students were behind entering the 2024-25 school year. NCES data shows students are farther behind than before state and local governments closed schools during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Before the pandemic, school leaders estimated that 32% of students were behind grade level in at least one area. In 2021-22, it rose to 45%, and in the 2022-23 school year, it reached 47%.
The data shows school leaders were more likely to say students from low-income families and in schools where the population was 76% or more students of color were behind, with 52% of students estimated to be behind where they should be.
School leaders located in cities and at schools with fewer than 300 students reported that 48% of students were lagging academically.
The data follows with broader student academic achievement data and other metrics that show the effects of the pandemic closures were not equitable to minority students, who suffered more significant declines in academic achievement.
The survey also found that students were more likely to be estimated to be behind in specific subject areas studied.
“Ninety-eight percent of public schools reported that at least some students were behind grade level in mathematics and English or language arts,” the NCES said in its findings.
School leaders said 76% of students were behind in the sciences, and 55% were behind in social studies.
Peace is not at hand in the Middle East, and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu remains determined to expand the war. Syria’s de facto partition into Israeli and Turkish territories is the prelude to wider war with Iran. As the Times of Israel reported last week, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) has “continued to increase its readiness and preparations” for “potential strikes in Iran.”
Netanyahu’s top priority is the destruction of Iran before Russia wraps up its victory in Ukraine and Syria becomes a new battleground for Turks and Israelis. It’s not simply the end of Washington’s “rules-based international order.” It’s the onset of chaos. Israeli forces and Turkish auxiliaries (i.e. the Islamist terrorists who sacked Syria) are already staring at each other across a demarcation line that runs east–west just south of Damascus. Netanyahu harbors no illusions about the conflict between Ankara’s long-term strategic aims in the region and Jerusalem’s determination to claim the Syrian spoils of war.
In addition to serious financial trouble and societal discontent on the home front, President-elect Donald Trump now confronts the dangerous distraction of wars he did not start, wars that will bring his administration and his country no strategic benefit. America’s underwriting of Netanyahu’s expanding war in the Middle East will endanger U.S. national security and guarantee that Washington, its armed forces, and the U.S. economy will be hostage to whatever strategic direction Netanyahu decides to take.
Starting the war sooner, rather than later, is critical for Netanyahu. War with Iran presents Trump with a strategic fait accompli. In case Trump decides to distance the United States from another bloodbath in the Middle East, Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran and Turkey’s potential confrontation with Israel will make disengagement impossible.
American policy planners need to understand the larger context in which this is all unfolding—and why a war on Iran will ultimately bring us and our alleged Israeli friends to grief. The principal aim of U.S. foreign policy planners ought to be the adaptation of the American economy and military establishment to the multipolar world and the development of new markets, not new enemies. Washington’s refusal to acknowledge the fundamental shifts in power and wealth lie at the heart of much of the Biden administration’s foreign policy failure.
A successful management of change would avoid a conflict with Iran; it would peacefully reconcile competing claims to regional hegemony, as the Chinese recently did with their brokering of the historic rapprochement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It would revitalize such multilateral organizations as the UN Security Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. These actions would cultivate the emergence of new constellations of power along the lines of Metternich and Castlereagh’s 1815 Concert of Europe. Just as no question of strategic security in Europe can be solved without Russian participation, Washington cannot create stability in the Middle East by unconditionally backing Israel’s territorial ambitions.
An American failure to manage its own transition to multipolarity will create more chaos and ignite a major war in the Middle East, not to mention a full blown war with Russia, and, eventually, China. An outlook that prioritizes avoiding conflict, not starting new conflicts, must replace nearly three decades of feckless leadership in foreign affairs. New thinking in defense and foreign policy should rank diplomacy and peaceful cooperation first over the use of military power.
Bonaparte quipped that in war, truth is the first casualty. Nothing has changed since then. Washington is a veritable fountainhead of lies feeding an unending stream of false narratives regarding the true character of the jihadist hordes raging across Syria. For our purposes, however, it is important to note the alignment of powers behind the Islamist factions now pillaging and terrorizing Syria.
Washington seems blithely oblivious to Syria’s destruction and the emergence of joint Israeli-Turkish hegemony across the Near East. The disintegration of Syria does, however, open up a short window of opportunity for Tel Aviv to attack Iran. As the Times of Israel report noted, while previously the “IAF would not fly directly over Damascus when carrying out strikes on Iran-linked targets in the capital, it now can.”
Netanyahu believes he has the wind at his back: Emboldened by the collapse of the Assad regime, he will turn his attention to Lebanon, southern Syria, and the West Bank. One predictable consequence of an attack on Iran will be a solidifying of the Chinese-brokered Iran-Saudi rapprochement—and a hardening of the blocs in the Greater Middle East, which will see Iran, backed by Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, set against a temporary Israel-Turkish bloc backed by Washington and its European vassals.
Iran is not Iraq: At 90 million people, it is double Iraq’s population, has a more developed economy, and has more powerful allies than Saddam Hussein ever did. Contrary to neoconservative expectations, there are no cake-walks in the greater Middle East.
The only certainty amid the chaos is that, thanks to the connivance of Biden, Netanyahu, and Erdogan, a wider war in the greater Middle East is only just beginning. It is one we will come to regret.
Obama’s behind-the-scenes political maneuvering culminated in a failed Biden presidency that ultimately led to a significant Democratic electoral defeat and rejection of his political legacy.
Barack Obama had long been rumored as the catalyst for the 2020 Biden nomination—and thereafter played the whispering puppeteer behind the subsequent lost Biden administration years.
As such he and his coterie proved the virtual architects of the Biden administration, one of the most unpopular and failed presidencies in American history.
Recall earlier that after a flailing candidate Joe Biden lost the first three 2020 primaries and caucuses, his inert campaign was headed nowhere.
Barack Obama and fellow Democratic insiders abruptly engineered the withdrawal of his rival 2020 presidential candidates: hard left but likely sure-loser candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.
The Obamas ignored or withheld from the public their own firsthand knowledge that Biden was suffering from signs of dement
Instead, they found Biden’s cognitive decline and his former concocted reputation as workingman’s Joe useful as a veneer for a veritable Obama third-term, “phone it in” administration. Or as wistful Obama once conditioned his dream of a third term—”If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in.”
The Obamaites then got their wish for four years of enacted hard-left directives that they could only have dreamed of while in actual power.
But their radical menu since 2021 had divided and nearly wrecked the nation—hyperinflation, 12 million illegal aliens, a ruined border, spiraling crime, a shattered foreign policy of appeasement, the popular backlash against DEI/Woke/trans chauvinism, partisan lawfare, and weaponization of the government.
And the ruling radicalism beneath the Biden facade eventually cost the Democrats nearly everything—the presidency, the House, and the Senate.
An inert Biden is departing office with a 36 percent favorability rating in a recent Emerson poll. His Democratic nominee replacement, losing presidential candidate Vice President Harris, also has virtually vacated her office with 40 days left of her tenure.
Failed candidate Harris has been roundly faulted by staffers and donors for blowing through some $2 billion in assorted 2024 campaign money.
She ended up doing worse against Trump than Biden himself had in 2020.
Many Democrats believe that they might have done just as well had Biden stayed on the ticket even in his vastly diminished state.
The Obamas were further blasted for nullifying the wishes of 14 million primary voters by forcing Biden off the ticket—ironically in the same backroom, anti-democratic manner they had cleared the way for him in 2020.
Obama emerged from his comfortable retirement to hit the 2024 campaign trail, schooling the country that President-emeritus Donald Trump was a dictator, a fascist, a tyrant, and, of course, a “racist.”
The more Trump polled even with, or ahead of, Kamala Harris, the more an exasperated and ignored Obama talked down to supposedly low-information voters.
But by the time Harris lost the election, voters had tuned out a nagging and patronizing Obama—and his stale, now-dated hope-and-changey boilerplate speeches.
What Obama did not mention, but what the voters knew, was that the border was more secure under Trump than during either the Obama or Biden tenure.
Vladimir Putin invaded countries during the Obama and Biden administrations but stayed put on Trump’s watch.
Barack Obama’s bizarre vision of a new Middle East had sought to empower Iran as a supposed counterweight against moderate Arab nations and our ally Israel.
Years ago, Obama invited the Russians into Syria, empowered dictatorial Syria, berated Israel nonstop, and all but ignored the terrorist violence of Iran’s surrogate terrorists.
But after October 7, Israel retaliated to the mass slaughter of Jewish civilians with all-out war against Hamas and Hezbollah—rendering these once feared terrorists nearly impotent.
In an exchange of air attacks with Iran, Israel showed the world that Iran was as militarily weak as its chanting and threats were tiresome and shrill.
Iran is now tottering on the brink, as its terrorist appendages—including most recently the Assad dynasty—are melting away.
Israel and the moderate Arab regimes are in ascendance, as the entire crazy Obama-envisioned Middle East agenda melts away.
The 2024 anemic Democratic campaign and the Trump electoral college and popular vote victories—combined with record defections of Hispanic and African-American voters from the Democratic Party to Trump—proved a resounding rejection of the Obama legacy and his surrogates’ left-wing visions.
Yet after the people spoke in the election, the more Obama whined that democracy itself had failed him. Voters, he remonstrated, who disagreed with him were written off as racist and sexist.
Obama again harped that constituents did not know what was good for them.
And then, the disappointed former community organizer suddenly disappeared—pondering to which of his own four mansions his private jet would fly him home to commiserate.
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Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O’Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.
SamsaraGuruDecember 12, 2024Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized by the following traits: Has excessive feelings of self-importance. Reacts to criticism with rage. Takes advantage of other people. Disregards the feelings of others. Preoccupied with fantasies of success power, beauty and intelligence.about:blankSEE also, Obamaand just for the fun of it, for old times sake – some of my pre-election and the defeat of the scumbag brigade memes!about:blank
Everett_BrunsonDecember 12, 2024Perhaps we will never know who is behind the curtain pulling Obama’s strings. We do know his rise to power was completely engineered. Everything about him is completely fake, from his marriage, to his alleged acumen on foreign policy. Everything he did as president hurt America, economically. politically, and morally. Without the ACA, would there ever have been a Luigi?When I look at the continued turmoil in the Middle East, I see his grubby fingerprints on every disastrous outcome. One need only pick a random country to catalogue the disaster. From Egypt, to Libya, to Iran, to Syria—-all turmoil can be traced back to his failed policies.So it should come as little surprise to all when seeing the fast eclipse of his star post the 2024 election. As we enter Trump’s second act, my prayer is that most of the pressing issues—-domestic and foreign, be addressed and corrected.
SamsaraGuruDecember 12, 2024And hopefully, Everett, already we have a team planning out the strategy for 2028. We need 12 years of sane leadership – actually I would prefer about 30!If J. D. Vance gets his own terms, I will feel much more secure.The rot in Washington is so deep four years won’t be enough.
Christopher_ChantrilDecember 12, 2024I read somewhere that the reason for the Obama Iran deal was that he was afraid of getting into a repeat of the Iraq war.
Thanksgiving is a holiday where we celebrate prosperity and achievement. Those things only happen under political and economic freedom. America was, and still is, a unique country for its always rising prosperity and freedom — with each generation better off than the last. That’s why Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday. The more we renew our commitment to those magnificent ideals, the more joyful all our future Thanksgiving celebrations will be.
As Ayn Rand put it, “Thanksgiving is a producers’ holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
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THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 
Has excessive feelings of self-importance.
Reacts to criticism with rage.
Takes advantage of other people.
Disregards the feelings of others.
Preoccupied with fantasies of success power, beauty and intelligence.about:blankSEE also, Obamaand just for the fun of it, for old times sake – some of my pre-election and the defeat of the scumbag brigade memes!about:blank