America in October of 2024

posted by Steve McCann at American Thinker 

The 2024 presidential election is a year away. The political landscape of America in October of 2024 will be far different than it is today. The current polling, which focuses on which candidate for president is winning and the attendant punditry, is meaningless. Over the next twelve months there will be a significant increase in voter dissatisfaction due to unabated crime and illegal immigration as well as seismic shifts in the economy and foreign affairs which will dramatically affect the fortunes of both parties and their candidates.

A September 2023 poll revealed that just 28% of Americans believe the U.S. political system is working extremely or somewhat well. Additionally, 65% of respondents indicated that they are dissatisfied with the candidates running for president as another recent poll exposed that just 33% of American electorate has a favorable view of Joe Biden and only 29% have a favorable view of Donald Trump.

When combined with 76% of Americans believing the country is headed in the wrong direction, the darkly negative outlook of the citizenry will not improve over the next twelve months as there is virtually nothing indicating a sea change in the nation’s fortunes or politics. In fact, an unjaundiced view of the immediate future reveals ever-growing dark clouds on the horizon.

The economy is currently being propped up by unprecedented government expenditures combined with modest growth in consumer spending as Americans are paying significantly more for virtually everything. However, the current level of consumer spending cannot be sustained and will soon begin to significantly decline.

This decline is inevitable due to total household debt now reaching an unheard-of $17.28 Trillion  (equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of China) while real incomes continue to rapidly deteriorate due to intractable inflation.

Many have been forced to turn to borrowing, spending their savings, drawing down their retirement accounts and credit card debt to pay their bills. As a result, bankruptcies and loan and credit card delinquencies are skyrocketing, while the wealth of Americans is being rapidly depleted.

The Biden Administration and its allies in Congress are determined to continue propping up the economy through massive government spending. However, due to this out-of-control fiscal policy, the government is having an increasingly difficult time convincing investors to buy long-term U.S. Treasury bonds without committing to significantly higher interest rates with each new auction.

The estimated annualized interest payments on U.S. government debt currently exceeds $1 Trillion, which represents 45.5% of all income tax revenue collected annually by the federal government and a doubling of interest expenses over the past 19 months alone.

While exorbitant government spending, borrowing, and de facto money printing continues there is little chance of inflation receding. The consumer, unlike previous economic recoveries, will not be at the forefront of triggering economic growth. Thus, the reality of a severe long-term economic downturn becomes more inevitable by the month.

The general consensus of many economists is that there is at a 60-65% probability of a recession before September of 2024. However, the ongoing massive drop in shipping volume, record bankruptcies, and unprecedented layoffs in the global and domestic supply chain portends a much higher probability of a significant recession in 2024.

On the international scene, chaos will continue to reign. It’s not a question of if but how much worse will it be in 12 months.

It is highly likely that Iran will have nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles within the next twelve months. As Iran will not be confronted or sanctioned by the United States or the West, they will be further emboldened to sow chaos in the Middle East by expanding their support for their terrorist proxies, increasing their influence in Iraq and Syria and targeting Saudi Arabia. Utilizing their proxies, Iran will continue to isolate and attack Israel, who, thanks to American interference, will not have fully destroyed Hamas or Hezb’allah. The Middle East will be more volatile a year from now than it is at present and the risk of American military involvement will be exponentially higher.

The war in Ukraine will be over as it will end in a stalemate with Russia permanently annexing a portion of eastern Ukraine. However, the Biden Administration will obligate the citizens of the United States to finance the bulk of the rebuilding. The Biden administration and Congress will essentially declare Ukraine a de facto American dependent while agreeing to allow Ukraine to join NATO.

China will continue to expand its hegemony throughout the western Pacific region by isolating Taiwan and continuously provoking America and its allies in the region. They will be actively engaging in governmental upheavals throughout South and Central America while threatening to cut off trade routes and selectively limiting trade with the United States. China is convinced that the Unites States is politically incapable of confronting them while also dealing with the Middle East, Ukraine, and a myriad of economic and societal issues at home. China will be an even more dangerous, aggressive, and implacable adversary a year from now.

Joe Biden will not be the Democrat Party nominee in 2024. His high unfavourability stemming from his egregious scandals, his age, his mental decrepitude, and his overall incompetence will embolden the party hierarchy to convince Biden to drop out of the race in the spring of 2024 and then resign after November 5, 2024. Thus, allowing Kamala Harris to serve as the historic first female President of color. The party will nominate someone else who can run on not being responsible for the failures of the Biden Administration while making Donald Trump the entire focus of their campaign.

Donald Trump, will in all likelihood, be found guilty of at least one felony in the January 6^th “insurrection” trial as it is being adjudicated in Washington D.C. in front of a grossly prejudiced judge and a jury that will no doubt be predominantly made up of anti-Trump voters.

The Republican Party and its voters will then be faced with the quandary of sticking with Trump and his historically low approval ratings with the American electorate (average of 41% from 2017-2021, and an average of 37% from 2022-2023) or replacing him with someone the Democrats cannot so easily demonize.

The old adage “a year is an eternity in politics” is perhaps more apt in this presidential election cycle than in any in modern American history as there are so many variables that will impact the outcome. But the outcome of the 2024 election will determine the fate of the nation, particularly if the Democrats again control the White House and Congress.

X22, And we Know, and more- November 15

 

Seeing new NCIS Verse content, seeing great ratings reports, and seeing Season premiere scripts on actors's IG's.

I love those days being back again!!! 🥳

Piercing the halo of the FBI special agent

W.A. Eliot reporting for American Thinker 

When confronted with a litany of examples of recent FBI partisan bias, Director Christopher Wray in his congressional testimony always a makes a point of praising the rank-and-file special agents as being above the fray.  For example, here is an exchange with Louisiana senator John Kennedy on August 4, 2022 (starting at 8:40):

Wray: “I will tell you that what you’re describing is not representative of the FBI that I see up close every day in this country where I see patriots working their tails off ...”

Kennedy: “And I agree with that ...”

Wray: “... with tremendous integrity and objectivity”

Kennedy: “I, I agree with that and have said that to you repeatedly ...”

Note that Politico’s reporting — Kennedy said he agreed with Wray’s statement that the majority of FBI employees have “tremendous integrity and objectivity” —was either sloppy or dishonest, because if you watch the video, Kennedy, in his slow Southern drawl is still responding to “patriots working their tails off,” not to “with tremendous integrity and objectivity.”  Even so, care always seems to be taken not to criticize the rank-and-file special agent.

Is such care warranted?

If you follow any FBI partisan bias story carefully, there are always rank-and-file special agents carrying out orders.  For example, recall special agent Joe Pientka, who accompanied Peter Strzok when interviewing (and allegedly entrapping) Michael Flynn and the 302 he may have written up exonerating Flynn, and case agent Stephen Somma, Stefan Halper’s handler.

When the FBI excessively sent 25 uniformed agents armed with guns and shields to surround the house of pro-life activist Mark Houck and his family (after the Philadelphia Police Dept. did not file charges against him, the Philadelphia D.A. declined to prosecute him, and he had offered to turn himself in), did you expect a special agent tasked to be part of this operation to refuse to participate and get fired over it?  (Note: Houck was eventually acquitted of all charges.)

Same question with the pre-dawn amphibious assault on 66-year-old Roger Stone’s house, which aside from the frogmen included 17 vehicles, two of them armored and on his front yard, and CNN cameramen who just happened to be strolling around his residence in the darkness.

Same question with the raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

Consider too that FBI special agents are entitled to a far more generous pension than other federal employees:

Special agents receive retirement benefits through the FERS [Federal Employee Retirement System]. Their pension is based on the number of years of service as a special agent and their three years of highest income. Special agents receive 1.7 percent of this average multiplied by 20 for the first 20 years of service. Added to this is 1 percent of the high-three average salary multiplied by the number of years over 20 the special agent served.

In contrast, other federal employees generally get 1 percent per year of service, bumping up to 1.1 percent with age ≥ 62 and years of service ≥ 20.   I won’t weigh in on the merits of the higher FBI pension (special agents do risk their lives, they have a mandatory retirement age of 57, etc.).  But if you are a special agent two thirds through your twenty years, would you risk throwing away not only your job and health insurance, but your pension benefits (and possibly a post-retirement freelance job), not to mention having your reputation smeared by partisan Democrats and the MSM?

Not speaking up — while harmful to our country and possibly resulting in unjustified imprisonment and even death — is not on the same level as the Nazi defense “I was just following orders to kill people.”  In fact, FBI officials often defend their actions as legal judgment calls.  I would like to believe that if I were a special agent in the know, I would’ve spoken up early on about the Trump-Russia collusion plot, but talk is cheap.

FBI special agents risk their lives doing important national security work; praise them for that if you like.  But it’s also true that they follow orders from their superiors, just like other federal employees.  They are not praiseworthy — and certainly don’t get credit for “tremendous integrity and objectivity” — carrying out orders on, and knowing and keeping quiet about, so many FBI actions or inactions biased against conservatives such as the Trump-Russia collusion plot; suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop; targeting MAGA followers, attendees of the traditional Catholic Mass, and soccer moms protesting to the school board; and possible J6 incitement and entrapment.  Maybe this distinction can be raised the next time Wray testifies.

WaPo & NYT Make Dumb Fake News Out Of Very Perfect, Very True Trump Quote

Eddie Scarry reporting for The Federalist 

What I hate about the national media, almost more than anything, is their unwavering ability to take a legitimately fascinating or even mildly interesting story and turn it into something stupid, dishonest — or even worse, something boring.

Case in point, two separate op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post used the same quote from a recent TV interview Donald Trump sat for last week and stripped it of all its original and insightful meaning, purely to reinforce one of their tiresome “Democracy is at stake!” narratives.

Referencing the quote in question, Jamelle Bouie of the Times said, “Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals.” (Whoa! A president prosecuting his critics and rivals? Never thought I’d see the day!)

Citing the same quote, the Post’s Catherine Rampell said it was “horrifying” that Trump was threatening to use presidential power “against political rivals in retaliation for their alleged persecution of him.”

Both Bouie and Rampell used just a section of Trump’s remarks, but here’s more context:

Univision interviewer: “You say they’ve (Democrats) weaponized the Justice Department, they’ve weaponized the FBI. Would you do the same if you’re reelected?”

Trump: “Well, he’s (Biden) unleashed something that everybody — we’ve all known about this for 100 years. We’ve watched other countries do it and in some cases effective and in other cases, the country’s overthrown or it’s been totally ineffective. … What they’ve done is they’ve released the genie out of the box, you understand that. They’ve done something that nobody thought would happen. … They have done something that allows the next party — I mean, if somebody — if I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them,’ mostly that would be, you know, they would be out of business. They’d be out. They’d be out of the election.”

The fuller answer is even more interesting, but what Bouie and Rampell omitted is that Trump wasn’t making an unprovoked threat about what he plans to do if he’s reelected. He was accurately describing the logical consequence of criminalizing political opposition. When the party in power falls out of it, they’re vulnerable just the same.

That’s called payback, and no doubt Trump and his supporters want it. But let’s not leave out the details of how we got here. That’s the most interesting part of the story.

The end of Gaza’s most beautiful neighbourhood

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/85JPWipoYZ/gaza_al_zahra

The One Question No One Asks the Rabid 'Ceasefire Now' Hysterics, and It Explains Everything

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

On Monday evening, yet another "ceasefire now" rally was held by members of Congress. The faces were familiar, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and Ilhan Omar all making speeches.

For their part, the first two decided to pretend they were Jewish because that's apparently where we are now. Remember, cultural appropriation is bad unless it's a "Latinx" acting as if she speaks for Judaism to demand they submit to a terrorist government that invaded Israel and killed over a thousand people. 

As absurd as that was, I was more interested in this comment by Ocasio-Cortez, though.

Isn't she brilliant? You see, all Israel needs to do is formulate a "diplomatic solution." Why didn't anyone think of that before? I mean, it's not like there already was a ceasefire on October 6th before Hamas terrorists decided to paraglide into a music festival to rape, torture, and murder innocent people. 

That bout of sarcasm brings me to the question none of these rabid "ceasefire now" hysterics are ever asked: Should Hamas remain in power? 

It's the most obvious question possible, isn't it? After all, any "diplomatic solution" would have to be worked out with the current government of Gaza. That just so happens to be a terrorist group that has pledged to keep attacking Israel until every Jew has been killed. So how exactly does that work? 

Ocasio-Cortez and company should be made to actually explain their position, but there's a reason they are never asked to do so. Namely, press outlets know that the answer would inevitably lead to outright support of Hamas, and protecting Democrats from themselves is their top priority. There is no way to have a "diplomatic solution" at the current moment without Hamas retaining power. Thus, the calls for a ceasefire are effectively a pledge of support for Hamas continuing to be the ruling authority of Gaza. 

How does that work out for the actual people living there? That's a question no one ever asks either because Ocasio-Cortez and her like-minded cohorts don't actually care. These mass demonstrations aren't really about civilian casualties. If they were, they would have been rallying when hundreds of thousands were dying in Syria and Libya.

In the end, the cries for a ceasefire are just about destroying Israel directly or through a farcical "one-state solution." Speaking of which, that's a third question that's never asked. Who would run this supposed "one state" in which Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have a free hand to operate among Jews they've pledged to eliminate? Again, the answer would be rather inconvenient to the narrative so we'll never get one. 

Regardless, I'll return to the one big question that is most relevant now. In Ocasio-Cortez's magic world, who runs Gaza if a ceasefire is agreed upon? She'll never say, and she'll never be put in a position to say.

How Obama And Biden’s America-Last Ethos Demoted The U.S. From World Leader To Loser

The Obama-Biden foreign policy agenda has ushered in a 

new world order devoid of American strength and leadership.

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist

America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will.”

It would make sense if this were a quote from Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump. Both Republican leaders presided over historic foreign policy victories during their respective presidencies and understood the importance of American leadership on the world stage. But coming from the mouth of former President Barack Obama, the proclamation holds no weight.

Throughout his eight years in the Oval Office, Obama conducted what is arguably the most incompetent, anti-American foreign policy of any U.S. president in the modern era. Combining the worst elements of radical leftism and ignorance, Obama routinely downplayed American exceptionalism on the world stage, all the while alienating key allies and empowering the West’s greatest enemies. The often cited “leading from behind” quote from an Obama White House official isn’t just a perfect summation of how the 44th president tackled Libya or Iran or Arab Spring, but foreign policy writ large.

Now, after having served two terms as Obama’s second-in-command, President Joe Biden is attempting to replicate his former boss’s “America Last” approach to world affairs.

In less than three years, Biden has crippled American strength and credibility across the globe. U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia no longer fear the “big stick” America once carried. Instead, they’ve become increasingly aggressive and emboldened to act upon long-sought-after geopolitical objectives. One only needs to take a quick glance at the Indo-Pacific or Eastern Europe to see how unstable the world has become in the years Biden’s been president.

Contrary to industry “experts,” the Obama-Biden foreign policy agenda has ushered in a new world order devoid of American strength and leadership. It’s a legacy of failure and one that deserves further scrutiny if the United States has any interest in remaining a global hegemon.

Representing What You Hate

Fully understanding the Obama-Biden approach to foreign affairs requires answering a fundamental question. That is: How can someone represent America on the world stage when he hates America and the values upon which it was founded?

For Obama, the urge to downplay American greatness began well before he was sworn in as commander-in-chief. While giving a speech in Berlin as a presidential candidate in 2008, the Illinois Democrat opined that America has “not perfected itself” and “struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of [its] people.” Those remarks came minutes after the then-senator likened the U.S. and China’s roles in contributing to so-called “climate change.”

But Obama’s Berlin speech was just a preview of what was to come once he became president. In the months following his January 2009 inauguration, Obama embarked on a global “apology tour,” in which he all but got down on his knees and begged foreign powers to forgive the U.S. for what he alleged was decades of negligence and untrustworthiness. From France and England to the Czech Republic and Latin America, the 44th president repeatedly lambasted the very country whose people elected him to the highest office.

The more revealing comments, however, came when Obama was asked if he believed in “American exceptionalism.” Rather than highlight the uniqueness of America and its role as a beacon of freedom throughout the world, Obama once again claimed that believing the U.S. was special was merely a subjective outlook. “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” he said.

At the time, one could argue Obama was trying to play diplomat to avoid angering allies he would need in confronting future global issues. But given his willingness to express open disdain for the U.S., its people, and its founding principles in the years since, it’s clear that Obama’s remarks were expressive of how he actually felt about his country. After all, why act like America’s the greatest nation in the world if you never believed it was great to begin with?

This anti-America attitude isn’t exclusive to Obama, however. Throughout his half-century in Washington, Biden has similarly degraded American greatness in his capacity as a U.S. official and political candidate.

During a speech at the Harvard Kennedy School in October 2014, for example, the then-vice president professed that “[t]here is nothing special about being American,” and claimed that nobody in the audience could “define … what an American is.” In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Biden said during a podcast discussion on slavery and Black Lives Matter that America is an “idea” that “we’ve never lived up to.”

For both Democrat presidents, the compulsive desire to tarnish the freest and most tolerant nation ever to grace the planet stems not from ignorance, but from Marxist orthodoxy. The Judeo-Christian principles upon which the U.S. was founded run contrary to this left-wing pagan religion, which demands that Western concepts such as God-given rights and republicanism be sacrificed in the name of centralized power in the hands of a few. Therefore, accumulating political power and leaving a lasting legacy become the ultimate priorities — not the well-being of the citizenry.

Anti-Western Beliefs + Incompetence = Foreign Policy Disasters

But Obama and Biden aren’t just anti-Western leftists seeking to make names for themselves in the history books. They’re also extremely ignorant about foreign policy, as their respective approaches to Israel and Iran have shown.

Without question, Obama and Biden have been the most anti-Israel presidents since the Middle Eastern country was recognized in 1948. Both have regularly catered to the genocidal regime in Tehran at Israel’s expense, often putting the latter’s concerns on the back burner and abandoning its leadership during moments of need.

During the Obama years, it became obvious that the administration sought to make Iran — not Israel — the center point of its Middle East foreign policy. When he wasn’t shipping pallets of cash to Tehran, Obama and his team were attempting to formulate a flawed agreement that sought to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — temporarily. Even after the deal’s implementation, Obama tried to skirt U.S. sanctions on Iran and give the largest state sponsor of terrorism access to America’s financial system.

These policies also coincided with Obama’s regular acts of disrespect toward Israel, including his failure to recognize Jerusalem as the nation’s capital, interference in the country’s 2015 elections, and allowance of a 2016 anti-Israel United Nations resolution to pass without U.S. objection.

In light of Obama’s (anti-)Israel policy, it’s worth mentioning that the former president regularly surrounded himself with and embraced notable antisemites for decades. Dating back to his days as a “community activist” in Chicago, those closest to him have made credible allegations that Obama refused to disavow antisemitism and black nationalism. The former president’s more recent indulgence of “both sides-ism” regarding Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel has also turned many heads.

Meanwhile, America’s Israel-Iran policy is just as bad under Biden as it was under Obama. Not long after taking office, Biden and his team of anti-Israel Obama holdovers set out to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which the U.S. withdrew from under Trump. In their attempts to get Tehran to the negotiating table, the Biden administration waived numerous sanctions on Iranian entities, some of which are involved in the country’s “military missile programs.” The administration has also “open[ed] up billions to Iran,” sent “Hamas and Fatah hundreds of millions of dollars,” and is actively undercutting Israel’s ability to defend itself from Hamas.

The belief held by Obama and Biden that Iran — a nation whose government chants “Death to America!” — can be bribed into abandoning its ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons is a display of sheer stupidity. Tehran is spearheaded by Islamic terrorists hellbent on destroying Israel and the West. Playing footsie with an adversary of that nature at Israel’s expense is a fool’s errand and moronic.

But Obama and Biden’s policies toward Israel and Iran are but a microcosm of the failures accompanying their foreign policy agenda. In the Indo-Pacific, both Democrat presidents have been wholly incompetent at countering the rising threat of communist China.

Despite announcing a “pivot to Asia” strategy near the end of his first term, the Obama administration was unable to deter China from further expanding its military capabilities and aggressively fomenting territorial disputes with neighboring countries. In December of 2013, for example, Beijing began building and militarizing manmade islands in the South China Sea, the latter of which the Chinese government stakes territorial claims over to this day.

While the Trump administration led the way in recognizing and countering the China threat, Biden and his administration have regularly downplayed the harm Beijing poses to regional security and the U.S.-led world order. During the 2020 Democrat presidential primary cycle, Biden poured cold water on the idea that China is “going to eat our lunch,” and further claimed that “they’re not bad folks” and are “not competition for us.” Since taking office two years ago, he and his top officials have also regularly said they are not trying to “contain” China.

Coupled with Biden’s declining mental faculties, this lackadaisical attitude has prompted acts of Chinese aggression toward U.S. assets in the region and neighboring nations such as Taiwan and the Philippines.

The World Pays the Consequences

When it becomes obvious that American leaders don’t value the fundamental principles that built their country and are feckless at crafting a coherent U.S. foreign policy, the world responds in kind.

Under Biden, China is threatening Taiwan now more than ever, Russia’s invaded Ukraine, Hamas has orchestrated horrific attacks against Israel, U.S. embassies are being evacuated throughout the world, American troops are under attack from Iranian-backed proxies in Syria and Iraq, and North Korea is firing missiles left and right. To make matters worse, some of these adversarial powers are allying together to usher in a new “multipolar world order.”

The many examples of Obama-Biden international screw-ups are too many to detail in one article. Nonetheless, the point remains: The world is a much more dangerous place under this kind of inept U.S. foreign policy.

By abandoning the belief in American exceptionalism and projecting weakness on the world stage, Obama and Biden have opened the door for adversarial powers to reset the geopolitical chessboard. Coupled with the internal decay wrought by leftist policies, America’s role in leading a dying liberal world order is waning while its biggest enemies rise.

Obama was right when he said that America “must always lead on the world stage.” If only he and Biden actually bothered to do it.

Multiculturalism - the Suicide of Western Civilization

posted by Ward Clark at RedStateVIP 

Some days, I wonder if I'm becoming the stormy petrel of RedState. But when one looks around at the state of affairs today, in the United States and the other advanced, developed Western nations, it could be a justified concern. In particular, today, one has to wonder why the West seems to be bound to self-destruct.

It seems the former British Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, shares my concern.

Speaking in Washington, DC, in September, British home secretary Suella Braverman declared that multiculturalism has ‘failed in Europe’. To illustrate her point, she highlighted the numerous violent clashes, involving distinct ethnic groups, that have erupted ‘on the streets’ of Malmo, Paris, Brussels and Leicester. Had Braverman delivered the speech a few weeks later, she would no doubt have also drawn attention to the Islamist-dominated anti-Israel protests that have taken over European capitals on a weekly basis, following Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel on 7 October.

She argued that multicultural policies have fuelled this fracturing of society into sometimes antagonistic identity groups. ‘Multiculturalism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate’, she said. ‘It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it.’ She added that, in some extreme cases, certain groups of people can ‘pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of society’.

That last seems like something of an understatement.

My colleague Bonchie informed us on Monday that Suella Braverman was fired by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over this stance.

If anyone was holding on to some slight glimmer of hope that the United Kingdom could turn things around, that was pretty much snuffed out on Monday. Now former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been fired after penning an op-ed calling out the pro-Hamas protests taking over London and the antisemitism being espoused at them. 

Braverman has made waves in the past by declaring "multi-culturalism" a failure and taking a harder line on migration in her country. Here's a bit of what she had to say back in late September.

BRAVERMAN: Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades. I'm not the first to point this out. In 2010, Angela Merkel gave a speech in which she acknowledged that multiculturalism had utterly failed, and then, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British PM David Cameron echoed similar sentiments shortly thereafter.

Multiculturism makes no demands of the incomer to integrate. It has failed because it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it. They could be in the society but not of the society, and in extreme cases, they could pursue lives aimed at undermining the stability and threatening the security of our society. 

She was ultimately fired by PM Rishi Sunak, who is a member of the Conservative Party. With that move, one of the last voices of sanity in the UK has been extinguished.

Bonchie also has, in the usual inimitable manner, covered and analyzed the former Home Secretary's statements, so I won't go any deeper into that; instead, I'd like to look deeper into the idea of multiculturalism, its origins, its effects, and how it is shaking out today. As I wrote only last month, none other than Henry Kissinger is calling out the ill effects unchecked, uncontrolled immigration and the lack of assimilation are having on the West.

Multiculturalism is a fairly recent phenomenon, something that began with the opening up of borders at the end of the Cold War, arguably abetted in Europe by the Continent's demographic crash. But the early proponents of this practice either didn't foresee the end result or didn't care; and the results have been, to put it mildly, unfortunate.

Those results?

• Sweden now has "no-go zones," where local law enforcement is not allowed by an increasingly restive Muslim minority who are demanding they be allowed to rule those zones under Sharia law. 
• Following mass riots by Hamas supporters, parts of London have effectively become "no-go zones" for Jews; and in the case of the once-Great Britain, it's interesting to note that the former Home Secretary, who is quoted above as to her concern over "antagonistic identity groups," has dubbed these "hate marches" — and she's right.
• France, while pushing back on their own troublemakers a little more briskly, still is suffering rioting by this same religious minority that seems responsible for all these domestic uproars in Europe.

We might also note that given current demographic trends, Europe may well become a Muslim-majority region in the next few decades.

And as for our own nation?

America has traditionally been referred to as a melting pot, but that era may well be past; we are instead becoming a salad bowl. People used to come here because they wanted to be Americans; now they come here because they want to have what America offers but not to give up the culture, language, and practices of the lands they leave behind, no matter how barbaric, self-destructive or poisonous those practices are.

How long will it be before we have no-go enclaves like Sweden? We already have the genesis of these zones: Dearborn, Michigan, the self-segregated Somali immigrant communities in Minneapolis, and more. We have seen massive pro-Hamas protests all over the nation — in New York City, at President Biden's Delaware residence, and other places. In some of our nation's increasingly leftist-run colleges and universities, Jewish students are, in effect, told to hide, to cower, to deny themselves their very identity in the face of threats by antisemitic barbarians.

In 1916, while addressing the Knights of Columbus, President Theodore Roosevelt said:

I stand for straight Americanism unconditioned and unqualified, and I stand against every form of hyphenated Americanism. I do not speak of the hyphen when it is employed as a mere convenience, although personally, I like to avoid its use even in such manner. I speak and condemn its use whenever it represents an effort to form political parties along racial lines or to bring pressure to bear on parties and politicians, not for American purposes, but in the interest of some group of voters of a certain national origin, or of the country from which they or their fathers came.

In his usual direct, straight-to-the-point manner, old Teddy got this right. Too many people now have come to Sweden, France, Britain, or the United States of America but do not want to adopt Swedish, French, British, or American manners, practices, rights and obligations, language, and social norms. That's the heart of the problem. That's what has to change. If anyone wishes to come to America because they are yearning to be free, to take part in the endless opportunity America offers to those who are willing to work for it, to learn and become American, then we should welcome them.

And only them.