A few days before the Democratic National Convention, presidential candidate Kamala Harris made a speech laying out her plans for the economy. It included a federal ban on “price gouging,” especially by grocery stores.

Many people—perhaps most people—view price gouging as wrong, maybe even evil. But they’re misguided. Price gouging typically occurs during times of natural disaster, or business disruption such as in the pandemic. It serves a vital economic function. We should want more of it, not less.

Let me explain with a little story. About 30 years ago, my wife and I—along with our four young children, our dog, and my mother —were driving from Chicago to Boston. By the time we reached upstate New York, we needed to stop for the night. This was before cell phones and the internet, so we pulled off at a big freeway exit to see what was available. Nothing. We tried hotel after hotel. Nothing. We asked them to call around. Nothing. It turned out it was the weekend of Woodstock ’94. Finally we found a seedy Super 8 motel that had two rooms left, for $400 each. This was back when Super 8 motel rooms were about $50 at most. 

“Thank you, we’ll take them!” I said immediately. My mom was furious—our family was being gouged! 

“How dare he charge so much!” she said. 

I tried hard to explain why she should be grateful that the owner was charging so much. 

“If he charged $50, or $100,” I said, “those rooms would have been gone long ago and we’d be sleeping in the car tonight. He took a big risk holding those rooms for us. Thank him and be grateful!” 

Though my mom was an amazing, smart, wise, and well-traveled woman, she wasn’t having it. Nothing I could say would persuade her that the hotel owner wasn’t being terrible in “taking advantage of us.”

Natural disasters like hurricanes often give rise to shortages of items like 4 × 8 plywood sheets as people race to board up their windows. What do stores that still have some plywood sheets do? They raise prices. Ditto the gas station, when gasoline trucks are blocked by fallen trees from getting to the town. In the pandemic, people who worried about having enough toilet paper cleaned out the shelves. Stores that raised prices were accused of “gouging.”

Unlike price fixing, which is illegal, price gouging happens in perfectly competitive markets. There suddenly isn’t enough of something to go around, so prices rise sharply. If it were an auction, buyers would bid the price up themselves. Store owners who bought when prices were lower can make a temporary profit. But this practice so infuriates the public that 37 states have enacted laws attempting to ban it. 

These price-gouging bans are woefully misguided. Price gouging is wonderful for all the reasons that letting supply equal demand is wonderful. When there is a limited supply, it tilts the field to those who really need it—and are thus willing to pay the higher price. Who really needs that high-priced gas? A handicapped person who has to get to a doctor across town? Or someone who could bike, take public transit, or walk to see a friend? Price gouging lets the really needy person move to the front of the line. 

Why did people buy tons of toilet paper in the pandemic? They were worried about not being able to get it in the future. If the big grocery stores and pharmacies had not been worried about being sued, or about the likelihood of bad press, they would undoubtedly have raised the prices. Higher prices would have given would-be hoarders a clear message: Don’t spend a lot to stock up now. And if you really need it, there will always be some in the store later.

Indeed, most big companies are reluctant to price gouge. Costco let the shelves run out of toilet paper rather than raise prices. Other stores rationed: You can have only four rolls—no matter if you have a house of eight people with diarrhea or if you’re stocking up your summer house just in case. To some extent, companies are simply afraid of being berated by politicians for price gouging. It’s also terrible PR. People who buy some of the limited supply hate the high prices. People who can’t find any goods for sale don’t understand that they’re going home empty-handed because the store didn’t raise prices enough. Stores want a reputation for passing on the low cost to the customer. Price gouging risks that reputation.

Restricting price gouging also reduces supply. For instance, if you run a Home Depot in hurricane-plagued Florida, how many 4 × 8 sheets of plywood do you keep in your inventory? Well, if you’re allowed to sell them for $100 each when the next hurricane is forecast, a lot. If you are forced to charge only the pre-emergency price until the shelves empty out, then not so much. Keeping inventory around is expensive.

What about people who can’t “afford” $10 gas? Rule number one of economics is: Don’t distort prices in order to transfer income. Rule number one of politics seems to be the opposite. Agricultural price supports enrich farmers but lead to overproduction. Rent control causes rents to be unnaturally low for the lucky few who live in rent-controlled apartments, but discourages developers from building new apartments. 

Price gouging works the same way. If gas is capped at, say, $4 a gallon in the wake of a disaster, it will simply extend the shortages and cause drivers to spend hours in gas lines to fill their tanks. That’s exactly what happened in the early 1970s, when President Richard Nixon imposed price controls on gasoline. 

If the government is genuinely worried about who can “afford” higher prices, then it should hand out cash to consumers, and leave price gouging alone. For example, give everyone $100 to “pay for gas.” But if some people look at the $10 price of gas and decide they can put up with substitutes like car pooling, bicycles, public transit, or just putting off the trip, then let them spend the $100 on something else instead.

In fact, this is mostly what our government did during Covid. There was a lot of noise about price gouging, but by and large the government just handed out checks so everyone could pay higher prices. (The big exception was the moratorium on evictions.) We got inflation, but we did not get the economic devastation that would have been caused by price controls and rationing.

Yes, rationing. Nobody likes “price gouging,” but choices are always between hard alternatives, not a dreamscape where everything rains down for free. If we aren’t going to use higher prices to decide who gets the limited supply, the alternative is rationing by waiting in line, political preference, or knowing the right guy.

Here’s the bottom line: Price gouging directs scarce supply to the people who really need it, encourages new supply to come in, encourages holding stockpiles for a rainy day, and encourages people to substitute for less scarce goods when they can.

Yet the cultural and moral disapproval of price gouging is strong. Going back thousands of years, people (and theologians) have felt that charging more than whatever price they are accustomed to is immoral, especially if the merchant happened to have inventory purchased in an earlier time, when the price was much lower. This idea of a “just price” motivates a lot of the anti–price gouging rhetoric. Economics has only understood the virtues of price gouging in the last 250 years.

As much as the U.S. is the land of free markets, we have a ways to go in our cultural acceptance of market behavior. In a capitalist society, the motto should be: “You’re free to charge what you want for your property, and I’m free to not buy. Everybody stop whining.” But that’s not how Americans feel.

It is surely morally worthy to give what you have to your neighbors in a time of need, especially the less fortunate. But we should not demand gifts. Moral feelings are a terrible guide for laws.

John H. Cochrane is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the author of The Grumpy Economist Substack, from which this article is adapted.

© 2024 The Free Press

One of the few interesting things about America’s highly choreographed political conventions is the gathering of people outside these events.  Supporters and protesters show up to yell at the top of their lungs for days.  What kinds of taunts do these opposing groups scream at each other?  Remarkably, they accuse each other of similar transgressions.  Probably the most common insults being lobbed from each side of the political spectrum are accusations that the other side is full of “fascists,” “Nazis,” and “racists.”  

It’s enough to make an observer wonder whether an awkward kumbaya truce could spontaneously break out, in which antagonistic foes raise a curious eyebrow and timidly ask, “You mean, you’re against fascism and racism, too?” before taking off their masks, throwing down their cardboard signs, and apprehensively shaking hands.  Of course, that never happens, so very angry Americans continue to denounce one another in nearly identical terms.

The whole thing would be funny if it were not so serious.  And it’s serious because the resulting confusion leaves Americans who might otherwise agree about an awful lot instead reaching for one another’s throats.  The more time they waste fighting, the easier it is for their real enemies to get away with all kinds of mischief without anyone noticing.  Who are their “real enemies”?  Well, regardless of any American’s particular ideological beliefs, those who most affect their lives (outside their families and friends) are almost certainly people with wealth and power — and not the vast majority of their working-class neighbors just trying to earn a living.  Because wealth and power remain in the hands of a small collection of political and financial “elites,” they benefit when citizens with neither wealth nor power choose to attack one another.  

Another way to think of this is to ask a simple question: what is the greatest threat to any political system?  Is it the threat of foreign invasion?  Economic depression?  Disease?  Of course not.  It is the possibility that those controlled by the system will overthrow those doing the controlling.  Every government in the world — communist dictatorship, theocratic regime, or so-called constitutional republic — claims to be working for the people.  But when the “elites” of those governments speak behind closed doors, their efforts are directed toward subduing the people.  Governments invest in the illusion that their power is limitless and that the people have no other choice but to obey.  Whenever common people recognize that they are the ones with inherent power, the government’s illusion of control is shattered, the system is upended, and a new era with novel organizing principles arrives.  

Seen through this lens, it is easy to understand why governments have a vested interest in stirring up domestic conflict.  A peaceful and well mannered society might engage in respectful debate and start asking serious questions, such as: why should private central banks be allowed to print money and devalue personal savings?  Why should America be financially squeezed by a bunch of multinational corporations that use cheap labor overseas and bully small businesses into bankruptcy here at home?  Why should foreign investment houses own so much land and property in America when fewer Americans than ever before can afford to own a home?  When government authorities use outside companies to censor Americans’ speech and spy on their private activities, do such workarounds really trump the Bill of Rights?  When corporations work hand in glove with government bureaucrats to track and police citizens, hasn’t our system of government transformed into something we would have once recognized as classically fascist?  

These important questions and others might lead common citizens to think more clearly about their government’s priorities before arriving at another uncomfortable question: does the government really represent the people’s interests, or does it represent the interests of its corporate partners?  Such discussions threaten to shatter any government’s well-guarded illusion of control. 

The political system can’t have that, so the corporate news media blast out daily reminders that “racism” and “extremism” are the real threats to peace and prosperity.  On television and on social media sites, the message is clear: trust the government but distrust your neighbors.  If everybody is more worried about Donald Trump’s personality or Taylor Swift’s political endorsements, nobody has time to wonder how we’ve reached the point when the federal government’s fiscal burden consumes 93% of America’s total accumulated wealth since its founding or how global debt now exceeds $315 trillion.  The wealthiest and most powerful people in the West take from everyone else and then set society on fire with engineered division and hate.  They are civil arsonists committed to destroying the evidence of all the damage they’ve wrought.

You can tell that financial and political “elites” are becoming desperate in their attempts to maintain power because they resort to little more than childish name-calling these days.  The great bugbear this decade is the “far right.”  Nobody explains why the “far right” should be feared more than the “far left,” when the theft and mass murder perpetrated by communist regimes over the last century dwarf the atrocities committed by all other ideologies in human history.  Nobody explains how the “far right” socialists of Hitler’s Germany can be distinguished from Venezuela’s “far left” socialists today.  Rather inexplicably, corporate news organs and academic institutions lump everyone who believes in limited government, national borders, self-determination, and personal liberty into the same category of WWII fascists who promoted totalitarianism, empire, dictatorship, and subjugation to the State.  Most citizens who are mislabeled “far right” distrust government and despise the notion of corporate control over society.  How that makes them “fascist” is a linguistic mystery.

What makes more sense is that Western governments fear the emergence of liberty movements not because they will one day be marching under the Arc de Triomphe, but rather because they represent a renewed public rejection of centralized power.  The more centralized the governing authority (e.g., the U.S. federal government, the E.U., and the U.N.), the more worried it has become that common people will reclaim sovereignty over their personal lives.  Consequently, the mouthpieces for the axis of corporate and government power in Western capitals — which is socialist in spirit and fascist in principle — slander citizens who are opposed to Big Government as somehow being the ideological descendants of Hitler’s Nazi Party.  It’s horse 

Those who are nonsensically labeled as “far right” do have all too frequent encounters with fascism.  It’s just that those experiences come in the form of corporate-government beatings from the same people and institutions claiming to “protect democracy.”  During the Reign of COVID Terror, social media companies threatened and censored citizens who questioned the government’s monopoly on scientific debate, the need for school closures and economic lockdowns, or the efficacy of the pharmaceutical industry’s experimental “vaccines.”  Fascist tyrants such as Justin Trudeau used his partnership with banking institutions to seize citizens’ savings and mortgaged properties when they protested against his COVID authoritarianism.  Cellular companies kept track of citizens’ movements and reported those violating house arrest to the police.

This kind of corporate-government fascism has become commonplace.  European governments dedicate enormous resources to monitoring citizens’ online speech and punishing those who express unapproved opinions, and tech companies are quick to assist these bureaucratic bullies in their hunt for “offensive speech.”  A UK man was recently arrested for engaging in “anti-Establishment rhetoric” in a social media post.  Google openly admits to manipulating search results in ways that promote the talking points of their government partners while hiding dissenting voices.  Big Tech, Big Banks, and Big Pharma don’t operate independently of Big Government.  They are one and the same.

It turns out that everyone hates fascism except for Western governments and their corporate friends.  That’s why they demonize citizens who cherish liberty.

I understand people who hate the United States – some of them, anyway. Well over 50 years ago, I interacted regularly with people who probably hated the United States. I did not hate them. I did not despise them. For the most part, I had no personal animosity toward them. They were North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers who were doing their duty, as we did, ours, brutal as it was on both sides.

So, I understand enemies who hate America, even though I disagree with them and have engaged in mortal combat with them.

But Americans who hate America are in a different category altogether. By an accident of birth, they have had the great luck to live in a great country that has delivered more people from poverty, provided more humanitarian aid to the less fortunate, and that has created more wealth for the common man than any country in history. Yet, oblivious to their good fortunate, they repay America and its citizens with undisguised hatred. Their hatred manifests itself in many different ways. I shall confine myself to two examples.

The first is the disgraceful pro-Hamas, anti-American riots that have become ubiquitous. We first saw them on college campuses and in major cities last year. We saw them again in D.C. when Prime Minister Netanyahu visited to address Congress. We saw a crowd that included what appeared to be many spoiled college-aged students, burning our flag and calling for bloody terrorism and murder – because that’s what an Intifada is – here in our country.

Here is one of them.

As you can see, the fool in the red shirt with the keffiyeh wrapped around his hips appears to be a young Caucasian, college-age male, maybe even a member of a fraternity. He is a nobody, but his burning of our flag is a desecration. We do not know who he is, but he clearly is identifiable. The U.S. flag he is burning is government property that was hauled down from the flagpole to be desecrated and replaced with a Palestinian flag. He clearly came prepared to burn the flag, as he is carrying a container of flammable liquid that he is squirting onto the burning flag.

One could only hope that our government would do its job and pull out all stops to identify him and his comrades, just as they did for anyone who was anywhere near the U.S. Capitol on January 6. DOJ? FBI? Where are you? Is there any reason why he and others should not be given equal treatment for destroying government property?

Alas, we now know the answer — It appears that the outnumbered police arrested 25 “demonstrators,” of whom eleven were referred to the Office of the Attorney General for possible prosecution. Of those eleven, however, it appears that the all the charges have been downgraded or dismissed. Whether fool-in-red-shirt is among them is unknown. Certainly, there has not been a pull-out-all-stops effort to identify and charge him and the others those who broke federal law by defacing and destroying federal property. So much for equal treatment under the law.

So, yes, I despise this ignorant but evil young American, with a passion that I never felt for a Vietnamese soldier looking down his rifle at me. And I equally despise our government officials who gloss over his crimes and refuse to investigate and prosecute because they fear offending pro-Hamas voters in Michigan.

I understand people who hate the United States – some of them, anyway. Well over 50 years ago, I interacted regularly with people who probably hated the United States. I did not hate them. I did not despise them. For the most part, I had no personal animosity toward them. They were North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers who were doing their duty, as we did, ours, brutal as it was on both sides.

So, I understand enemies who hate America, even though I disagree with them and have engaged in mortal combat with them.

But Americans who hate America are in a different category altogether. By an accident of birth, they have had the great luck to live in a great country that has delivered more people from poverty, provided more humanitarian aid to the less fortunate, and that has created more wealth for the common man than any country in history. Yet, oblivious to their good fortunate, they repay America and its citizens with undisguised hatred. Their hatred manifests itself in many different ways. I shall confine myself to two examples.Subscribe

Anti-American riots in support of intifada.

The first is the disgraceful pro-Hamas, anti-American riots that have become ubiquitous. We first saw them on college campuses and in major cities last year. We saw them again in D.C. when Prime Minister Netanyahu visited to address Congress. We saw a crowd that included what appeared to be many spoiled college-aged students, burning our flag and calling for bloody terrorism and murder – because that’s what an Intifada is – here in our country.

Here is one of them.

As you can see, the fool in the red shirt with the keffiyeh wrapped around his hips appears to be a young Caucasian, college-age male, maybe even a member of a fraternity. He is a nobody, but his burning of our flag is a desecration. We do not know who he is, but he clearly is identifiable. The U.S. flag he is burning is government property that was hauled down from the flagpole to be desecrated and replaced with a Palestinian flag. He clearly came prepared to burn the flag, as he is carrying a container of flammable liquid that he is squirting onto the burning flag.

One could only hope that our government would do its job and pull out all stops to identify him and his comrades, just as they did for anyone who was anywhere near the U.S. Capitol on January 6. DOJ? FBI? Where are you? Is there any reason why he and others should not be given equal treatment for destroying government property?

Alas, we now know the answer — It appears that the outnumbered police arrested 25 “demonstrators,” of whom eleven were referred to the Office of the Attorney General for possible prosecution. Of those eleven, however, it appears that the all the charges have been downgraded or dismissed. Whether fool-in-red-shirt is among them is unknown. Certainly, there has not been a pull-out-all-stops effort to identify and charge him and the others those who broke federal law by defacing and destroying federal property. So much for equal treatment under the law.

So, yes, I despise this ignorant but evil young American, with a passion that I never felt for a Vietnamese soldier looking down his rifle at me. And I equally despise our government officials who gloss over his crimes and refuse to investigate and prosecute because they fear offending pro-Hamas voters in Michigan.

And again, in Chicago with support from the President of the United States

We saw the same types again this past week in Chicago. As the Wall Street Journal reported,

On Tuesday night hundreds descended on the Israeli consulate with chants of ‘Intifada, Intifada, long live the Intifada’ and signs blaming the Democrats in Chicago for ‘genocide’ for supporting Israel against Hamas. 

And they were given cover by the President of the United States, who said, “They have a point.”

Well, they do have a point of sorts. Their point is that they support killing Americans. “Long live the Intifada” is just another call for massive murder and bloodshed on our streets.

When they shriek, “Intifada here! Intifada now!” and “Long live the Intifada!” these are not just slogans. They are calling for Americans to be massacred. No, that is too bland, too sterile. What “Intifada here” means in the real world is bodies dismembered, entrails hanging out of body cavities, blood and brain matter blown all over their friends, and worse horrors that most Americans — thankfully — cannot imagine. But when you pierce beyond the chanted words, that is what they are saying should happen in the United States. That is what an intifada is.

Here is one of the demonstrators at the DNC this past week. Take a look at him. This Chicago man-on-the-street sees nothing wrong with the crimes of October 7 (“What’s wrong with October 7? You tell me.”). He also made clear that “Every Palestinian supports Hamas. Not just me. Every Palestinian.” We do not know whether this man is an American citizen or a guest in our country. But he clearly despises this country and its values. We must despise his values.

And spare me the both-sides-do-it arguments. Israel is fighting a defensive but existential war against an enemy that has sworn to wipe of off the face of the earth and that uses women and children as human shields. For its part, Hamas revels in the propaganda value of its October 7 barbarism and vows to do it again and again.

Kaepernick squawks, Nike caves.

My second example: Colin Kaepernick and Nike. Nike recently released a new model of sneakers that had a depiction of the 13-star Betsy Ross American flag.

This apparently hurt Kaepernick’s feelings. No, that is too kind. He is a grown man; his feelings were not hurt by a picture of an historical American flag. Kaepernick obviously hates America, so he called on Nike to discontinue its marketing of the patriotic shoes.

Nike caved. Its capitulation was accompanied by a mealy-mouth statement that they withdrew the shoes, at God-knows-what-cost, because it was an “old flag.” They didn’t even have enough courage to tell the truth about what they were doing.

Nike, of course, is a corporation. It acts through its human agents. We do not know who ultimately made the decision that the Betsy Ross flag was too inflammatory be on a Nike sneaker, but it is a fair conclusion that whoever that weenie is, they at least disdain, if not hate America. If anyone thinks that I have overstated that, and that Nike and its officers really love America, then let them come forward with facts to prove that. I’ll wait.

Nike’s hatred for America, or at least its willingness to accommodate hatred for America, should be disqualifying. Mine is a small voice, but I hope that it might somehow be magnified. People who love this country should not buy any Nike merchandise. I know, I know…. Your kids like the sneakers. Sit them down and explain the facts to them: We will not give money to companies that do not support our country and that affirmatively work against it.

Trustees and boards of universities, including my own West Point, should send Nike a clear message that such anti-patriotic activity will not be supported by their school. I know that schools are raking in a lot of money for their athletic programs by displaying the Nike swoosh on their uniforms, but there does come time when principal must override money. If such a precedent were set by major universities, just think of the possibilities that such a change could open.

Yes, I know – you don’t have to tell me: I am being naïve to think that such a thing could happen. You probably are right.

But you never know what will happen if courageous people begin to take a stand.

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Here in the U.S., we are accustomed to economic growth almost every year. Look at a chart of U.S. GDP over the course of the last century, and the impression is of near-continuous and extremely robust growth. Here is such a chart from USA Facts, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (Commerce Department).

The so-called “Great Recession” of 2008-09 registers as barely a blip. Same for the Covid-related dip of 2020. (Note in the graph that backing out inflation flattens the slope of the curves to some degree, but does not change the basic form of robust and continuous growth.)

This pattern of continual growth is unfortunately not true for all countries. For an extreme case of the opposite situation, consider Venezuela. Venezuela elected the socialist Hugo Chavez in 1998, and he and his ideologically-aligned successor Nicolas Maduro have ruled ever since. It is not easy to get useful economic data from Venezuela. The best I can find for its GDP since the Chavez election and to the present is from Statista. Here is their chart:

I would not necessarily take these data from Statista as gospel. The main source is necessarily the Venezuelan government, which is highly suspect. The large run-up from 2004 to 2013 is probably mostly not real, being created by a combination of blow-out government spending (counted as real in GDP by economists) and increasing oil prices. On the other hand, the post-2013 collapse is undoubtedly very real. In fact, the collapse is likely understated, because the Venezuelan government would clearly cook the books in any way it could. Even if you think the current figure is mostly accurate, it leaves Venezuelan GDP today at well less than it was in the year 2000, and barely more than a quarter of what it was in 2013.

So what has brought about such an economic collapse for Venezuela? Apologists for the regime often cite the rapid fall of oil prices that occurred in 2014 and thereafter. But then, Texas also has an economy highly focused on the oil industry, and yet its economy has boomed in the decade since 2014. The same goes for many other oil and gas producing states and countries.

The clear thing that distinguishes Venezuela from economically successful places, and from the U.S. in particular, is that Venezuela has adopted one after another of economically destructive policies, well summarized by the word “socialism.” Let’s list a few: extensive price controls, particularly on food; huge increases in government spending notably on housing subsidies and redistributions; destroying the independence of the Supreme Court and of election authorities; “free” public healthcare.

Now we suddenly have a presidential nominee of the Democratic Party who has gone some combination of silent and vague on what economic policies she would implement if elected. Isn’t the presidency just about “vibes” and “joy”?

However, what little Ms. Harris has had to say so far on economic policy bears a remarkable resemblance to the Venezuelan program, notably price controls and middle class entitlements. Since she has gone silent, we have little to go on. But Kimberley Strassel in today’s Wall Street Journal points out that Senate Majority Leader Schumer let some of the mask down in an interview with CNN on Monday:

[Schumer] declared he was “committed” to everything Ms. Harris has outlined so far—the child tax-credit blowout, the new housing entitlement and all the rest. The moderator at one point noted cost estimates were $2 trillion; Mr. Schumer didn’t bat an eye. Reminded that even liberals were panning her price-control proposals, Mr. Schumer brushed them aside. This is “a good thing to do,” he assured, and he later promised price controls on drugs, too.

How about destroying the independence of election authorities and the Supreme Court?:

One of his first priorities would be the federal voting takeover that Democrats have been laboring to impose since 2021. Also important, said Mr. Schumer, is changing the Supreme Court; everything is on the table—including term limits. And “we’ve got to do more on climate change.”

Even Venezuela isn’t crazy enough to be trying to solve “climate change.”

The entire difference between economic success and failure for a country is good economic policy. I certainly hope that the voters will be smart enough to look through the current program of obfuscation by the Democrats to see what they actually have planned for us.

Francis Menton

The producers didn’t plan for the biopic about the life of Ronald Reagan to open so close to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, but delays caused by the pandemic and an actors strike led to its release on August 30.

It seems easier to portray a historical figure that no one currently living remembers. In the case of “Reagan,” the challenge would appear especially challenging.

Actor Dennis Quaid, who plays Reagan, is more than up to that challenge.

Quaid avoids what could have easily been a temptation to portray Reagan as a caricature. Though he resembles the 40th president with the help of hair enhancement and makeup, Quaid’s performance does not distract from memories of those who lived through his presidency.

The film opens with real news footage of Reagan being shot as he left the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. It includes his now famous line to Nancy Reagan, (played convincingly by Penelope Ann Miller): “Honey, I forgot to duck,” along with his quip to surgeons at George Washington University Hospital, “I hope you are all Republicans.” Those two comments endeared him even to many of his political opponents, including Speaker Tip O’Neill who is portrayed (by Dan Lauria), visiting Reagan in the hospital and elsewhere agreeing to cease talking politics at 6 p.m. when he and Reagan would discuss how to resolve their differences over drinks at the White House.

While recalling his childhood, his early acting career, and Screen Actors Guild presidency during the blacklisting of Hollywood actors, writers and others alleged to be communist sympathizers, or members of the party, a good portion of the film centers on Reagan’s efforts to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and United States. He responded to criticism for not meeting with a succession of Soviet leaders, saying “I would but they keep dying.” Eventually he meets with the reformist Michael Gorbachev, played by Olek Krupa, who bears little resemblance to the man he portrays (save for the birthmark on his head), but who sticks to the historical “script.”

Reagan’s insistence on pursuing his Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars” to his critics) is rightly credited with contributing to the fall of the Soviet Union during the administration of his successor, George H.W. Bush.

The film gets Reagan’s toughness and convictions right, but it also displays something absent from so much of today’s politics. They include his sense of humor (YouTube has a collection of some of his better jokes) and the fact that he treated even his adversaries with respect. One line that isn’t in the film but is an accurate depiction of his way of criticizing the beliefs of opponents without calling them names: “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

Unlike Meryl Streep’s portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady,” (it opens with her dementia while the Reagan film ends with his in a moving way that ought to bring tears to the eyes – it did to mine), “Reagan” is more of a love note to a man who did great things for his country and the world. There could be no better epitaph for any political leader.

If you are under 40, go see it and learn something beyond what biased historians and the media have said about the man. If you are over 40 and lived through his presidency, go see it and be reminded of what real leadership looks like and how one man, in collaboration with a British prime minister and a pope, helped bring freedom to millions in Eastern Europe and restored the faith of many Americans in their country.

Cal Thomas

The goal is to deny Donald Trump the White House and it will require mass election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris…

Everyone invested in a Kamala Harris victory in November isn’t making even the faintest attempt at taking her seriously as a presidential candidate. She’s not one because she has no reason to run for president, no vision, no interest in the job.

The whole point of this herculean, gravity-defying exercise we’re in the midst of isn’t to make Kamala president. It’s to deny Donald Trump the White House. The only way that can happen is for election interference on behalf of Kamala in ways that were once unspeakable.

We’re already seeing it with inexplicable poll numbers (literally, no one can explain them); a national news media that went from acknowledging Kamala as a perpetual screw-up to heralding her as a glamour queen; and an all-hands cleanup effort to remake her reputation from undeniably incapable to Barack Obama redux.

We’re entering a new phase where Democrats and the media will not only pretend Kamala’s last three embarrassing years in office never happened, but they will lie about anything and everything from here forward and to a degree in no way tethered to reality.

Once-great New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall this week asked a bunch of “historians” and “experts” at Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the like to envision a second Trump presidency. The result was the kind of unyielding, hysterical stream of horror fan fiction aspiring writers in high school post on internet forums at 3 a.m.

Sean Wilentz, Princeton: “The authoritarian imperative has moved beyond Trumpian narcissism and the cultish MAGA fringe to become an article of faith from top to bottom inside the utterly transformed Republican Party, which Trump totally commands.”

Laurence Tribe, Harvard: “All the dangers foreign and domestic posed by Trump’s cruelly vindictive, self-aggrandizing, morally unconstrained, reality-defying character … would be magnified many times over in any subsequent term.”

Timothy Synder, Yale: “Democracy depends upon example, and Trump sets the worst possible one. He has openly admired dictators his entire life. He would encourage Xi and Putin.”

These are the people unashamedly supporting a Democrat nominee who got no votes for the spot, who was installed via a bloodless coup, and who is currently serving in an administration that has indisputably weaponized the Justice Department to eliminate its primary political opposition. Or, as the left calls this behavior, “the fight for democracy.”

Trump “would encourage Xi and Putin,” meanwhile Kamala as vice president watched Russia invade a sovereign nation and China float a spy balloon across the entire United States. Trump is “vindictive” while Kamala sits at the top of an administration that, for the first time in American history, criminally charged a former president. Trump voters are “cultish” while Kamala’s party bypassed the entire primary process and rallied behind her as the newly anointed nominee with no consideration for dissenting opinion.

Democrats in positions of authority and prestige will say anything, at the expense of their credibility, to make this election work for them. Their reputations don’t matter to them, so long as they win.

Kamala just proposed a “ban on price gouging,” which is another way of saying “price controls,” which is another way of saying “socialism.” Every serious economist on either the left or right says it’s an abysmal idea or, at minimum, concedes that it would lead to mass shortages.

Another election intervention required. Axios writer Emily Peck wrote Tuesday that while Kamala hadn’t actually detailed a formal policy on the ban, those fears about shortages are “just not how anti-price gouging policies work in the U.S.” Paul Krugman at the Times wrote that what Kamala “actually” meant was “legislation banning price gouging on groceries.” And while Krugman opposes just about every popular proposal put forth by Trump, he declared that in this case, “just because something is popular doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea.”

Up is down. Wet is dry. Kamala is taken seriously.

You haven’t seen anything yet. The election interference on behalf of Kamala is going to get so much worse. She can’t possibly win without it.

Eddie Scarry, The Federalist

As Steely Dan might say, the things that pass for knowledge today, I can’t understand.  It’s all lies, falsehoods, and misdirection on tap, served fresh 24/7/365.

Lie #1: Joe Biden was a great president, a dedicated public servant who put country first and stepped aside so that Kamala Harris’s brilliance could save our democracy.

Well, that’s five lies all tied up in one bundle!  Joe Biden is easily the worst president in my lifetime, possibly ever.  He and his family got rich, not by serving anyone, but by grifting on his various political offices.  Slow Joe also didn’t step aside; he was kicked to the curb by his Democrat comrades after it became clear he was going to lose in November. And so now we have Kamala Harris, who was chosen as V.P. simply because she possesses ovaries and dark pigmentation.  And for the one millionth time, America is a republic — if we can keep it — not a democracy.

Lie #2: Man-made climate change will make the Earth unlivable for humans in (pick one) 5, 10, 39, or 5,000 years.

Ha, ha!  If you think our Creator would allow us, His/Her/Zey’s most ambitious, creative, and intelligent organism, to destroy our beautiful terrarium, then you’re either a fool or an atheist, possibly both.  Our most brilliant minds can’t predict tomorrow’s weather with precision, our weather records extend a mere blip into the nearly five billion years of the planet’s estimated existence, and the only reason the scam’s called “climate change” is because leftists gave up on “global warming” when the Earth inconsiderately stopped warming.

Lie #3: Democrats love black people.

Where to start with this one?  The president who ended slavery in America was a Republican.  It was the Democrat party who championed Jim Crow laws.  It’s Democrats who’ve historically come up with all kinds of handouts and special programs for blacks, not because they love them, but because they think African-Americans simply can’t cut it on a level playing field.  Folks, that’s racism of the highest order

As Steely Dan might say, the things that pass for knowledge today, I can’t understand.  It’s all lies, falsehoods, and misdirection on tap, served fresh 24/7/365.

Lie #1: Joe Biden was a great president, a dedicated public servant who put country first and stepped aside so that Kamala Harris’s brilliance could save our democracy.

Well, that’s five lies all tied up in one bundle!  Joe Biden is easily the worst president in my lifetime, possibly ever.  He and his family got rich, not by serving anyone, but by grifting on his various political offices.  Slow Joe also didn’t step aside; he was kicked to the curb by his Democrat comrades after it became clear he was going to lose in November. And so now we have Kamala Harris, who was chosen as V.P. simply because she possesses ovaries and dark pigmentation.  And for the one millionth time, America is a republic — if we can keep it — not a democracy.

Lie #2: Man-made climate change will make the Earth unlivable for humans in (pick one) 5, 10, 39, or 5,000 years.

Ha, ha!  If you think our Creator would allow us, His/Her/Zey’s most ambitious, creative, and intelligent organism, to destroy our beautiful terrarium, then you’re either a fool or an atheist, possibly both.  Our most brilliant minds can’t predict tomorrow’s weather with precision, our weather records extend a mere blip into the nearly five billion years of the planet’s estimated existence, and the only reason the scam’s called “climate change” is because leftists gave up on “global warming” when the Earth inconsiderately stopped warming.

Lie #3: Democrats love black people.

Where to start with this one?  The president who ended slavery in America was a Republican.  It was the Democrat party who championed Jim Crow laws.  It’s Democrats who’ve historically come up with all kinds of handouts and special programs for blacks, not because they love them, but because they think African-Americans simply can’t cut it on a level playing field.  Folks, that’s racism of the highest order.

And Democrats just love killing unborn babies, a statistically telling percentage of whom are black.

Lie #4: Diversity is our strength.

Nope, sorry, uniformity is our strength.  A team that’s chosen based on merit alone, and who plays according to one set of values and with a single goal in mind, always wins.  But don’t take my word for it; ask any recent champions of the almost three-quarters African-American NBA.  If diversity is strength, then the NBA is arguably one of the weakest b-ball leagues on the planet.

Lie #4: Gender is fungible.

People who think that taking hormones and having your penis or breasts amputated changes your sex are truly the saddest products of our failed education system.  They no doubt also imagine that having webbed feet makes you a duck, or sharpening your canines makes you a vampire.  It’s fun to pretend, like I do having a catch while wearing my Yankees jersey, sadly, that does not make me a Yankee.  Ninety-nine point nine percent of the human race is born male or female.  Period.

Lie #5: Life begins at birth.

During the process of conception, a live sperm unites with a live ovum, this within the vital body of a live woman.  This human continues to live — unless torn limb from limb and vacuumed out by an abortionist — until a live baby comes into the world.  There is literally no time, from the very moment of conception until birth, where an unborn human is not alive.

Lie #6: Fat is beautiful.

All humans of any size are precious and children of God.  That being said, I’ve been a skinny, just right, and borderline obese child of God.  And nothing is just right when you’re overweight and out of shape.  You’re easily fatigued, your clothes don’t fit you properly, and trust me: hardly anyone of the opposite sex is giving you a second look.  Although no one, including me, should hate himself for carrying extra poundage, it’s imperative to work toward one’s ideal weight, especially if you wish to live a long and active life.

Lie #7: No one is illegal.

If there’s no right or wrong, if all that follows this life is one long dirt nap, then OK, no one’s illegal.  But in a world such as ours, with an almost universal moral code and a multitude of written laws, much is illegal.  You can’t waltz into a foreign country without permission any more than you’d stroll into a stranger’s house and raid his fridge.  Or steal his car, assault his spouse, or molest his kids.  It’s one of life’s most difficult challenges to stay on the right side of the law.  And, frankly, some people don’t even try and should absolutely be called illegal.  And punished accordingly.

The Lie #8: The FBI is the pre-eminent law enforcement agency in the world, and they enforce the law without fear or favor.

This might seem true to people who’ve been in a coma for the last decade or consider themselves staunch Democrats.  But to believe this, you’d have to ignore (deep breath): the Feebs lying to FISA courts in order to spy on Donald Trump, sharing communications where they talk of insurance plans for stopping Trump, giving Crooked Hillary a pass on mishandling classified info and destroying subpoenaed evidence, wasting time and millions of taxpayer dollars on the Trump-Russia Collusion Scam, stuffing Hunter Biden’s laptop full of debauchery and criminality into the circular file, setting up a bunch of halfwits for a faux conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, killing an old, disabled man in Utah for the crime of threatening Joe Biden on social media, and pawing through Melania Trump’s underwear drawer during the outrageous raid on Mar-a-Lago, all the while prepared to use deadly force to settle a records dispute.  A records dispute!

At present, Funny Business, Inc. is “handling” a robust investigation into the attempted assassination of former president Trump.  Expect an in-depth report on that incident sometime after the Feebs decide whether or not there’s any evidence of criminality on Hunter’s laptop.

Lie #9: Joe Biden and the Democrats have brought decency back into the White House.

I don’t know about decency, but it’s true that senile Joe and his lackeys brought a bunch of things into the Executive Mansion: Dylan Mulvaney, a man pretending to be a girl; a “mysterious” bag of cocaine; a transgendered person flashing his fake breasts on the South Lawn; six of the president’s seven grandchildren, the youngest born of an affair between a stripper and Biden’s felonious son being persona non grata; the selfish, spoiled, America-hating soccer star Megan Rapinoe; the lewd, obscenity-spewing rapper GloRilla; a pair of vicious German Shepherds, both fond of chomping on Secret Service agents; and, of course, Hunter, the president’s crack-smoking, sex-trafficking, illegal gun–wielding Biden Family bagman.  If that’s decency, you can keep it.

Lie #10: The U.S. economy’s great; you just don’t know it.

Perhaps this seems true to all the millionaire actors, athletes, newscasters, entertainers, and academics so fond of smooching Democrat derrières.  But for those of you like me, who have to pay bills and balance checkbooks, this is not the best of times, but the worst.  I mean, Burger Kings are going out of business.  Dollar Stores have had to come up with a new name since almost everything costs more than a dollar these days.  Personal credit debt is at a record high, not to mention our astronomic national debt.  How can anyone tell this particular lie without covering the smirk on his face?

It’s perhaps life’s greatest challenge to personally embrace truth and reject falsehoods.  I’ve struggled with that challenge, but at least I’ve made an effort.

Not so for the people peddling the lies listed above.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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The Moslems invaded and ethnically cleansed the Jewish population were rebranded as Palestinians. The Muslims who had brutally purged the Hindu population of Kashmir became the ‘Kashmiris’. And the campaigns were reduced to somehow irresolvable territorial disputes between a majority and a Muslim minority.

But why are these territorial disputes irresolvable? Because they’re not about territory. Land can be negotiated, but a religious dispute in which one side’s religion tells it to kill the other cannot.

That’s why no matter how much territory Israel has given up, the fighting only gets worse.

Diplomats and the media blame Israel for not giving up enough territory, but where has a conflict between non-Muslims and Muslim terrorists ever been resolved except by force? Democratic elections, foreign aid, territorial concessions have been tried with no success.

The failures are never blamed on the Islamic terrorists only on those who resisted them. The terrorists were the oppressed and the onus was always on the oppressors to change that.

Locked into the same spiral of failure, civilized nations continue trying to appease their way out of a clash of civilizations. The pattern is right in front of them, but they refuse to see it.

After 9/11, those in the government and the defense community who knew it was a religious war told the rest of us that we had to keep quiet about it to avoid escalating the conflict. But lying about the War on Terror being a religious war did not fool them: it fooled us. Western nations committed to the lie until they could no longer see the pattern that was killing them.

There’s a good deal at stake in the question of pattern recognition for Israel.

Israel cannot win the argument by contending that it has been trying and failing to compromise with the so-called ‘Palestinian’ people who for some unaccountable reason won’t negotiate. A minimalist argument cannot defeat a maximalist position. Agreeing to peace negotiations did not give Israel the moral high ground: it was an admission of guilt that destroyed it. The Islamic refusal to compromise in the decades since validated their position and their terrorism.

The complete failure of the liberal establishment to see that has brought us to this point.

Appeasing and negotiating with Islamic terrorists does not discredit them when they in turn refuse to negotiate, make concessions or keep their word. It only discredits the appeasers and locks them into a disastrous cycle of concessions that empowers the terrorists, but never addresses the fundamental issue which is not territorial, national or socioeconomic.The core issue is religious. And a religious issue can’t be solved with land swaps.

To win the argument, Israel must reject the false claim that it is involved in a territorial and national dispute with a local ‘Palestinian’ minority and instead correctly define this as one of the flashpoints in a global religious war between Islam and the rest of the world. These flashpoints have already touched every single major power, America, Europe, Russia and China, and every continent, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, and every major and many minor religions.

Israel does not have to be alone in this fight. None of us do. We have to see the pattern.

Treating Islamic terrorism as a local problem doesn’t actually isolate it: it isolates us.

When we recognize that we are all in this together, that our problems are not local, but global, then we have some hope of standing together against the greatest conflict of this century.

The decision to tell the truth about the war we are in is both difficult and necessary. Israel is the canary in the coal mine in more ways than one. No major country has told the truth plainly and clearly. Decades of mumbling about “moderates”, “democracy”, “misunderstanding Islam”, “root causes” and “extremism” led us to one defeat after another in the War on Terror.

Time is running out. Telling the truth doesn’t guarantee victory, but living in a fantasy world ensures defeat.

There is no way to defend the cause of Israel (or any free nation) against Islamic terrorism without talking about Islam. Without seeing the larger pattern, every conflict will be local, Israel will be depicted as a bully beating up on a weaker Muslim minority, and no amount of photos of Israeli beaches and gay bars, Bedouin IDF soldiers and Hebrew U students in hijabs will change that. That brand of liberal ‘hasbara’ has been tried and failed because it is not the solution.

The liberal reading of the world is the problem. That is why liberal nations have fallen. No liberal nation has been willing to stand for its own people against the Islamic invasion. Why would it stand up for Israel? Tolerance, multiculturalism and integration, foundational to Israeli ‘hasbara’, are exactly why Western nations will not defend themselves and similarly reject Israel’s defense.

Israeli resistance to Islamic terrorism is not the subject of admiration in Europe, but humiliation. It serves as a bad example. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insistence on total victory turns back the clock to before Obama eliminated the entire idea of victory from our cultural vocabulary. The more Israel wins, the more it loses Western liberals who believe that victory is reactionary.

To win, Israel must reframe the conflict. Some half century ago, the Islamist-Marxist alliance reframed the conflict between Israel and its Arab Muslim neighbors from a struggle between one lone country standing up to a regional evil empire to a rogue state oppressing a minority group.

Israel must uncompromisingly reframe the conflict back to where it began. And there is more at stake than just its own existence. The future of civilization rests on whether we will all see the pattern, the great bloody wave rising above us, or whether we will go on pretending it’s a drop.

Oct 7 is not just in Israel, it’s in India, America, Russia, Africa and in Europe. Our governments have lied to us for too long and fooled us into not seeing the pattern that is killing us.

Unless we see the pattern, Islam will drown civilization in its own blood.

invaded and ethnically cleansed the Jewish population were rebranded as Palestinians. The Muslims who had brutally purged the Hindu population of Kashmir became the ‘Kashmiris’. And the campaigns were reduced to somehow irresolvable territorial disputes between a majority and a Muslim minority.

But why are these territorial disputes irresolvable? Because they’re not about territory. Land can be negotiated, but a religious dispute in which one side’s religion tells it to kill the other cannot.

That’s why no matter how much territory Israel has given up, the fighting only gets worse.

Diplomats and the media blame Israel for not giving up enough territory, but where has a conflict between non-Muslims and Muslim terrorists ever been resolved except by force? Democratic elections, foreign aid, territorial concessions have been tried with no success.

The failures are never blamed on the Islamic terrorists only on those who resisted them. The terrorists were the oppressed and the onus was always on the oppressors to change that.

Locked into the same spiral of failure, civilized nations continue trying to appease their way out of a clash of civilizations. The pattern is right in front of them, but they refuse to see it.

After 9/11, those in the government and the defense community who knew it was a religious war told the rest of us that we had to keep quiet about it to avoid escalating the conflict. But lying about the War on Terror being a religious war did not fool them: it fooled us. Western nations committed to the lie until they could no longer see the pattern that was killing them.

There’s a good deal at stake in the question of pattern recognition for Israel.

Israel cannot win the argument by contending that it has been trying and failing to compromise with the so-called ‘Palestinian’ people who for some unaccountable reason won’t negotiate. A minimalist argument cannot defeat a maximalist position. Agreeing to peace negotiations did not give Israel the moral high ground: it was an admission of guilt that destroyed it. The Islamic refusal to compromise in the decades since validated their position and their terrorism.

The complete failure of the liberal establishment to see that has brought us to this point.

Appeasing and negotiating with Islamic terrorists does not discredit them when they in turn refuse to negotiate, make concessions or keep their word. It only discredits the appeasers and locks them into a disastrous cycle of concessions that empowers the terrorists, but never addresses the fundamental issue which is not territorial, national or socioeconomic.The core issue is religious. And a religious issue can’t be solved with land swaps.

To win the argument, Israel must reject the false claim that it is involved in a territorial and national dispute with a local ‘Palestinian’ minority and instead correctly define this as one of the flashpoints in a global religious war between Islam and the rest of the world. These flashpoints have already touched every single major power, America, Europe, Russia and China, and every continent, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, and every major and many minor religions.

Israel does not have to be alone in this fight. None of us do. We have to see the pattern.

Treating Islamic terrorism as a local problem doesn’t actually isolate it: it isolates us.

When we recognize that we are all in this together, that our problems are not local, but global, then we have some hope of standing together against the greatest conflict of this century.

The decision to tell the truth about the war we are in is both difficult and necessary. Israel is the canary in the coal mine in more ways than one. No major country has told the truth plainly and clearly. Decades of mumbling about “moderates”, “democracy”, “misunderstanding Islam”, “root causes” and “extremism” led us to one defeat after another in the War on Terror.

Time is running out. Telling the truth doesn’t guarantee victory, but living in a fantasy world ensures defeat.

There is no way to defend the cause of Israel (or any free nation) against Islamic terrorism without talking about Islam. Without seeing the larger pattern, every conflict will be local, Israel will be depicted as a bully beating up on a weaker Muslim minority, and no amount of photos of Israeli beaches and gay bars, Bedouin IDF soldiers and Hebrew U students in hijabs will change that. That brand of liberal ‘hasbara’ has been tried and failed because it is not the solution.

The liberal reading of the world is the problem. That is why liberal nations have fallen. No liberal nation has been willing to stand for its own people against the Islamic invasion. Why would it stand up for Israel? Tolerance, multiculturalism and integration, foundational to Israeli ‘hasbara’, are exactly why Western nations will not defend themselves and similarly reject Israel’s defense.

Israeli resistance to Islamic terrorism is not the subject of admiration in Europe, but humiliation. It serves as a bad example. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insistence on total victory turns back the clock to before Obama eliminated the entire idea of victory from our cultural vocabulary. The more Israel wins, the more it loses Western liberals who believe that victory is reactionary.

To win, Israel must reframe the conflict. Some half century ago, the Islamist-Marxist alliance reframed the conflict between Israel and its Arab Muslim neighbors from a struggle between one lone country standing up to a regional evil empire to a rogue state oppressing a minority group.

Israel must uncompromisingly reframe the conflict back to where it began. And there is more at stake than just its own existence. The future of civilization rests on whether we will all see the pattern, the great bloody wave rising above us, or whether we will go on pretending it’s a drop.

Oct 7 is not just in Israel, it’s in India, America, Russia, Africa and in Europe. Our governments have lied to us for too long and fooled us into not seeing the pattern that is killing us.

Unless we see the pattern, Islam will drown civilization in its own blood.

Diplomats and the media blame Israel for not giving up enough territory, but where has a conflict between non-Muslims and Muslim terrorists ever been resolved except by force? Democratic elections, foreign aid, territorial concessions have been tried with no success.

The failures are never blamed on the Islamic terrorists only on those who resisted them. The terrorists were the oppressed and the onus was always on the oppressors to change that.

Locked into the same spiral of failure, civilized nations continue trying to appease their way out of a clash of civilizations. The pattern is right in front of them, but they refuse to see it.

After 9/11, those in the government and the defense community who knew it was a religious war told the rest of us that we had to keep quiet about it to avoid escalating the conflict. But lying about the War on Terror being a religious war did not fool them: it fooled us. Western nations committed to the lie until they could no longer see the pattern that was killing them.

There’s a good deal at stake in the question of pattern recognition for Israel.

Israel cannot win the argument by contending that it has been trying and failing to compromise with the so-called ‘Palestinian’ people who for some unaccountable reason won’t negotiate. A minimalist argument cannot defeat a maximalist position. Agreeing to peace negotiations did not give Israel the moral high ground: it was an admission of guilt that destroyed it. The Islamic refusal to compromise in the decades since validated their position and their terrorism.

The complete failure of the liberal establishment to see that has brought us to this point.

Appeasing and negotiating with Islamic terrorists does not discredit them when they in turn refuse to negotiate, make concessions or keep their word. It only discredits the appeasers and locks them into a disastrous cycle of concessions that empowers the terrorists, but never addresses the fundamental issue which is not territorial, national or socioeconomic.The core issue is religious. And a religious issue can’t be solved with land swaps.

To win the argument, Israel must reject the false claim that it is involved in a territorial and national dispute with a local ‘Palestinian’ minority and instead correctly define this as one of the flashpoints in a global religious war between Islam and the rest of the world. These flashpoints have already touched every single major power, America, Europe, Russia and China, and every continent, Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, and every major and many minor religions.

Israel does not have to be alone in this fight. None of us do. We have to see the pattern.

Treating Islamic terrorism as a local problem doesn’t actually isolate it: it isolates us.

When we recognize that we are all in this together, that our problems are not local, but global, then we have some hope of standing together against the greatest conflict of this century.

The decision to tell the truth about the war we are in is both difficult and necessary. Israel is the canary in the coal mine in more ways than one. No major country has told the truth plainly and clearly. Decades of mumbling about “moderates”, “democracy”, “misunderstanding Islam”, “root causes” and “extremism” led us to one defeat after another in the War on Terror.

Time is running out. Telling the truth doesn’t guarantee victory, but living in a fantasy world ensures defeat.

There is no way to defend the cause of Israel (or any free nation) against Islamic terrorism without talking about Islam. Without seeing the larger pattern, every conflict will be local, Israel will be depicted as a bully beating up on a weaker Muslim minority, and no amount of photos of Israeli beaches and gay bars, Bedouin IDF soldiers and Hebrew U students in hijabs will change that. That brand of liberal ‘hasbara’ has been tried and failed because it is not the solution.

The liberal reading of the world is the problem. That is why liberal nations have fallen. No liberal nation has been willing to stand for its own people against the Islamic invasion. Why would it stand up for Israel? Tolerance, multiculturalism and integration, foundational to Israeli ‘hasbara’, are exactly why Western nations will not defend themselves and similarly reject Israel’s defense.

Israeli resistance to Islamic terrorism is not the subject of admiration in Europe, but humiliation. It serves as a bad example. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insistence on total victory turns back the clock to before Obama eliminated the entire idea of victory from our cultural vocabulary. The more Israel wins, the more it loses Western liberals who believe that victory is reactionary.

To win, Israel must reframe the conflict. Some half century ago, the Islamist-Marxist alliance reframed the conflict between Israel and its Arab Muslim neighbors from a struggle between one lone country standing up to a regional evil empire to a rogue state oppressing a minority group.

Israel must uncompromisingly reframe the conflict back to where it began. And there is more at stake than just its own existence. The future of civilization rests on whether we will all see the pattern, the great bloody wave rising above us, or whether we will go on pretending it’s a drop.

Oct 7 is not just in Israel, it’s in India, America, Russia, Africa and in Europe. Our governments have lied to us for too long and fooled us into not seeing the pattern that is killing us.

Unless we see the pattern, Islam will drown civilization in its own blood.

Is Kamala incompetent? No. She’s a puppet with a purpose. The purpose of any Communist economic plan is to destroy the middle class. That way, the impoverished masses — faced with continued inflation and now shortages, brought about by the price controls she’s supporting — are dependent on government authorities for everything. You know — like it was under COVID. Only permanently, this time.

By the way, she will do it all with executive orders. Congress will be irrelevant, and she will ignore the courts, like Biden did. If Kamala weren’t the puppet, it would be someone else. Obama and the other oligarchs/statists in his network (America’s Politburo) are in charge. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s as plain as daylight.

Regarding the upcoming election season, headlines declare: “The Nation Decides”… Seriously?

The Oligarchy decides. The regime and its media decide.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, Michael Hurd Ph.D. on LinkedIn, @DrHurd on TruthSocial