‘No Kings’ (Except Ours)

American Thinker 

As the curtain closes on Act Three of the performative “No Kings” protests, let’s use the intermission to ask the central question: is President Donald Trump some sort of modern king, as claimed by the marching malcontents?

But what exactly do they mean by “king”?

Under normal circumstances, the idea of “kingship” is in the conceptual neighborhood of tyranny, despotism, and autocracy. But oddly enough, President Trump’s actions have been distinctly anti-despotic.

After all, what powermonger would downsize the federal footprint?

What’s more, in driving tax cuts and child tax credits, the President is changing the economic calculus in favor of greater self-determinism -- a concept antithetical to central planning.

By reducing reliance on foreign manufacturing, President Trump is both unraveling the blackmail power that semi-hostile nations have over the American people and simultaneously creating homeland jobs through repatriation. If the President were a despotic “king,” he would work overtime to centralize production into the federal apparatus, not release it into the American free market.

Autocratic political systems, such as the 1930s German National Socialists and the communists of the Soviet Union, usurped the private sector by direct take-over or by tools like hyper-regulation. In direct opposition to this hallmark of autocracy, President Trump revoked the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, a program entangled in a web of “climate change” regulations that cost taxpayers an estimated $350 billion per year.

The leftist regimes in modern-day China and North Korea, like the Soviet communists and socialist Fascists before them, are highly opposed to Christianity and often let loose programs of persecution against the faithful. Both Presidents Biden and Obama made their disdain of Christians manifest by policy and coercion.

Once again President Trump stands in contrariety with his massive undertaking to protect religious liberty, including the formation of The Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias.

It’s easy to see that the claims about Trump’s supposed autocratic attributes crumble faster than an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez answer to a foreign policy question.

Since the spittle-laced epithets from liberal lips don’t fit a reasonable definition of “kingship,” a closer look at what they really want from their government should help us understand what all the fuss is about.

Virginia: The Liberal BLUEprint for America

The ballyhooed actions and policies of the newly-minted governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, provide distinct insights into the question at-hand.

Spanberger wasted little time doffing her “moderate” campaign mask and, along with Democrat lawmakers, has blitzed Virginia with a full-throttle return to the Obama/Biden program of collectivism-friendly policies.

By mid-March, no less than 25 gun-control measures were passed, including a ban on AR-platform rifles and magazines with a capacity over 15 rounds, along with a so-called “red flag” law that ostensibly creates a fiefdom of gunphobes influencing whoever should and shouldn’t be allowed to have a firearm.

Recent human history is arrayed with patterns of aspiring autocrats disarming their citizenry. Chavez and Maduro did it. The National Socialists in 1930s Germany did it. Castro, the Khmer Rouge, the Bolsheviks, were all highly effective “gun control” advocates.

But apparently Democrats are immune to this sordid history, so let’s move on to cultural Marxism.

With Spanberger and her signet ring at the helm, Virginia democrats passed a bill that directs agencies to use race-based discrimination for discretionary government contracts.

The theme of sculpting societal order by diktat also found purchase in Spanberger’s executive order on education. Executive Order 4 gushes with intersectional dog whistles and collectivist programs, like commissioning a “listening tour” to hear from educators, leaders, students, and parents, basically amounting to taxpayer-funded grievance junkets.

With the stroke of her pen, the Virginia governor barred the purging of voter rolls in the weeks leading up to elections; a move that lines up well with the spirit of “elections” in Russia and Venezuela. Unsurprisingly, the corporate media hailed the action in their signature Orwellian dialect as “strengthening election integrity.”

Spanberger also rescinded her predecessor’s mandate for state and local law enforcement support of ICE efforts to apprehend illegal immigrants with criminal records.

Not done with ICE and sensing the opportunity to cement a California-like legislative supermajority, emboldened Virginia Democrats passed a bill that restricts federal immigration enforcement near polling places. The Bill’s sponsor, Saddam Salin (D-Fairfax), triumphantly declared that “Virginia is choosing the rule of law over fear, transparency over secrecy.”  Really, Saddam, you call that “transparency”?

It doesn’t take a Rhodes scholar to recognize that the bill is a red carpet for illegal immigrants to vote for Democrats. But strangely, the “No Kings” crowd doesn’t seem to recognize that election fraud is catnip for autocrats.

On the economic front, Spanberger and her Democrat lawmakers are quickly enacting a bacchanal of taxation that includes raising the marginal income tax rate on portfolio and passive income, sales tax hikes on delivery services, increased taxation on dry cleaning, home repairs, landscaping, animal care, and other formerly exempt services, in addition to a de facto carbon tax via the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Taxation, of course, isn’t simply privation of personal earnings. Said economist F.A. Hayek, “Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life… it is the control of the means for all our ends.” This, of course, is not a surprise to the governor of Virginia.

In sum, Spanberger’s scorched earth leftism is the zeitgeist of 21st century American liberalism and a window into the Democrat blueprint for America.

The placard-carrying and whistle-blowing protesters are far from being concerned about the supposed dawn of a Trumpian autocracy under the punchline “No Kings” -- it’s merely Orwellian displacement for how they want us all to be governed -- they want their king. Not a King George, per se, but a ruling coalition of little King George apparatchiks to bring about their Utopian society.

Clearly, the royal shoe of autocratic “kingship” fits the leftist foot.

And therein lies the answer to our question: if the naked collectivism of Spanberger, Newsom, Walz, and Pritzker is “democracy,” then perhaps the protestors are right -- President Trump is indeed a “king” -- a monarch of liberty and champion of the American way of life.

Podcast thread for April 4th

 

peaceful day.

Trump Is Defeating Iran And Deep State Foreign Policy

American Thinker 

It appears that Donald Trump is about to checkmate two of the most serious enemies of the United States – the Islamic Republic of Iran and the media/Democrat Party coalition. 

Trump’s carefully worked-out strategy against Iran is even now reaching its climax. To all appearances, U.S. and Israeli forces are poised to carry out a coup de main that will result in U.S. control of Iran’s economy, along with the destruction of Iran’s remaining military assets, while putting the mullahs’ government in an unsurvivable position. 

The airstrikes that opened up this campaign were the most effective in history. Decapitating the Iranian government, the IRGC, and the military immediately put Iran on the back foot. It has never recovered, even to the point that it cannot name an actual successor to Khamenei. (His son is either dead or, taking his Twelver theology seriously, had entered “occultation” alongside the Mahdi, to remain hidden until Judgment Day.) 

There is no sign that Iranian forces are under any kind of unified command. Instead, they are acting independently, adhering to outdated war plans that don’t fit current developments at all. That is, when they simply haven’t been spasming uncontrollably, as in the idiot strikes against the Saudis and the Gulf States, which should aggravate the Sunni/Shia schism for another millennium or so.

Thanks to this state of affairs, the U.S./Israeli alliance (now isn’t that a grand phrase?) has steadily attritted Iranian forces, rendering the air force nonfunctional, annihilating the navy (140+ vessels sunk and counting), and steadily whittling down the number of ballistic missiles and drones to a point where they’re now bothersome but strategically useless.

Iranian propaganda has done its best with this, well aware that the Democrats and the legacy media are their last best hope. Last week, they claimed to have downed an F-35, thus proving the worthlessness of stealth. In fact, the plane was slightly damaged and returned to base with no difficulty. If the Iranian video footage can be trusted (though it looks fake), the plane was directly overhead of the launch site, at the point where even a stealth plane would be visible to radar. 

(Nor is this comparable to the Serbian F-117 Nighthawk shootdown, caused in large part by air staff’s insistence that planes fly the same route at the same airspeed and altitude, a practice that has cost a lot of airplanes and lives, as much as it made it easier to write reports. Let’s hope they’re not repeating that. No trick at all to shooting a plane down under those circumstances.)

Our Honest MediaTM eagerly attempted to retail that story. Unfortunately, it occurred within hours of an Iranian Yak-130 being downed by an Israeli F-35, which only underlined how complete our air supremacy actually is. 

The sole remaining problem was the Strait of Hormuz, which everyone foresaw. But even here, the mullahs’ disappointment was apparent. Though the UK, particularly Lloyd’s, cooperated with the caliphate to the best of its ability, oil prices briefly broke $100/bbl before dropping. Prices are still bouncing around a little, but aren’t anywhere close to the price per barrel in 2012, which was roughly $150–180 in today’s dollars, depending on the type of oil. Allah’s magic waterway had failed them

The Trump administration offered the mullahs a list of 15 demands, as compared to the “suggestions” of previous administrations. This list, which included disbanding the IRGC and abandoning nuclear weapons development, appears to have been intended to be rejected by Iran, which duly occurred. Iran’s own offer included closing down all American bases in the Mideast and even went so far as to demand “reparations.” 

Rejection here was automatic, which came as a relief to many, such as Gen. Jack Keane, who had been somewhat concerned (“worried” would be too strong a word) that Iran would turn to its accustomed diplomatic song and dance act to draw things out. But the dealmaker has seen it all. In truth, this rejection gives him a free hand to do exactly what needs to be done.

That was made clear enough by what was occurring in the background of the diplomatic shuffle. First was the embarkation of the amphibious assault vessel Tripoli Strait-ward, with a full complement of Ospreys,  F-35s, and 2,500 Marines. It was shortly followed by the Boxer, similarly equipped. This past Wednesday, it was reported that a detachment of the 82nd Airborne was on its way. Clearly, all these units, trained and equipped for assaults against defended objectives, are intended for something big.

It’s apparent that the target will be Kharg Island, the key point – and Achilles heel – of Iran’s entire oil apparatus. Having no air force or navy, Iran cannot defend the island. Kharg will, barring an act of God, be in U.S. hands by the end of next week, at which time the U.S., in the person of Donald Trump, will have complete control of Iran’s oil imports and economy. From that point, Iran will have little choice but to wrap things up quickly. 

Some questions remain. Who is it in Iran that Trump has been talking to? He asserts that they are serious and in a position to act.  Are these the legendary “moderates” we’ve been promised for that last half-century? The Islamic Republic has a record of producing such moderates in times of crisis to befuddle and confuse the kaffirs. If they think that this will work with Trump, they have a rude awakening coming

Then there’s the matter of the “gift” these people presented to the U.S. – or to Donald Trump, which is the same thing.  Trump played this very close to the vest when announcing it, stating merely that it was “very nice” and intended for the U.S. as a whole. What it actually comprises and what role it may play in upcoming events remains to be seen. (Most recent news is that it was allowing tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, which is a hell of a gift.)

Two matters of concern remain – matters that must be handled before Epic Fury can be termed a success: Iran’s nuclear material and the IRGC. 

Iran’s enriched uranium can’t be hidden forever, or even for much longer. It’s doubtful they’ll be able to hide it from the Mossad, which may in fact already have a good idea of where it’s at. While it’s possible that the mullahs may pull something along the lines of handing it over to Russia for “safekeeping,” it’s far more likely to be picked up over the next few days. 

As for the IRGC, it is no longer a paramilitary or security force. It is now an army of occupation, one operating in a hostile and vengeful environment. This suggests it will not have a long or prosperous future, no matter how it turns out over the next few weeks. 

If the IRGC does somehow hold out, President Trump could use some of the oil money coming in from Kharg Island to equip and train an Iranian liberation army. Such a force could be staged from the Gulf States or Kurdish northern Iraq. It could easily be supported with air cover and intelligence assets from a friendly Western power if one could be found. 

With this conflict, the U.S. media have outdone themselves. They have generally opposed U.S involvement in conflicts since the late 1960s, along with undermining American troops and belittling U.S. victories. But they have never disgraced themselves as they have done over the past few weeks, not even during the Vietnam War. 

The media have done little more than act as a conduit for Iranian disinformation and propaganda. A glance at the wire services shows a single positive report on any aspect of the war, while every accusation or claim from Iran receives a headline. When NY Times columnist Brett Stephens asserted this week that the war was going well (and the Times published it), it was treated as a source of shock.  

The same can be said for the Democrats. While all this was going on, their primary effort has been to stymie funding for Homeland Security. Think this through: at a time when the country is effectively at war with an aggressive Islamist power, and when we know with near certainty that this state has smuggled agents across the border (under the protection of the Democrats), the Dems have taken it upon themselves to cripple the internal security of the U.S. – with the legacy media egging them on. 

There was once a useful term for this, one that has been repeated too often and too loudly. But seriously, this is as close to treason as you can get without a gallows being set up. 

They can go no farther. Some kind of High Noon has to occur here. We will need to think about this. 

The repercussions of an Iranian defeat will be extraordinary. Cuba, which has likely been awaiting the outcome, can now surrender in good grace. China, with its source of oil under U.S. control, can now shelve its plans for Taiwan and anywhere else it hoped to target. Europe will not have to don the burqa just yet – unless it really wants to. But this is a topic that requires a lot more wordage than we can give it here. 

Moltke the Elder once said that no war plan ever survives five minutes’ contact with the enemy. With that in mind, we will leave it at this: If Epic Fury culminates anywhere close to how it’s being planned, it will cap the most extraordinary military campaign in modern history, one that will break the mold set in the aftermath of WW II and act as a pattern for conflict in the foreseeable future.

Former Climate Activist Perfectly Explains Why Net-Zero Leads to Disaster

Former Climate Activist Perfectly Explains Why Net-Zero Leads to Disaster

Rick Moran for PJ Media

AP Photo/Bryan Woolston, File

"Road to Damascus" moments are rare in these times. Social media strongly discourages changing one's mind about anything; otherwise, you risk being branded a hypocrite or worse.

That's why it was refreshing to read a climate activist's revelations about the absolute necessity for fossil fuels. 

Lucy Biggers spent 10 years as a self-described "climate journalist and influencer." "I believed I was on the right side of history, fighting against the climate crisis, and for a more just and equitable world," she writes in The Free Press.

"Now as I watch Cuba suffer from its lack of Venezuelan oil, and see the panic over the Strait of Hormuz, I’m reminded of the importance of oil and why, despite spending trillions of dollars in an attempt to transition to renewables, oil, coal, and natural gas still produce 86 percent of the energy consumed around the world," Biggers writes.

Perhaps the Cuban catastrophe and the threat to the Strait have clarified her thinking about fossil fuels. In much the same way, many liberals in the 1970s saw the radicalism that was taking over the left and gravitated toward conservatism. 

The Free Press:

Among the climate activists, there’s a deep belief in a kind of net-zero utopia. A vision where we can rapidly eliminate fossil fuels without serious trade-offs. In this worldview, the moral clarity of the goal far outweighs the inconvenience of reality. That was the world I lived in for six years.

I got pulled in around 2016, watching social media footage of Native American tribes protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline. I had seen documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth, Before the Flood, and Gasland, and I believed fossil fuel companies were villains destroying the planet. The climate movement gave me a sense of purpose and a way to feel virtuous.

But over time, I started to question it. In the first year of the pandemic, with our freedom of movement heavily curtailed, small businesses shuttered, and children attending school on Zoom, global carbon emissions fell by only about 5.8 percent. Given that, what would net-zero require of us?

Many liberals my age in the 1970s became disillusioned with the left's refusal to see where their policies would lead the United States, and despite opposition to the lies told by the government about the Vietnam War, they began to rethink their politics. Their journey from left to right was chronicled in David Horowitz's Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts about the 60s. 

Today's climate activists are just as close-minded, just as impervious to logic and reason as their grandparents were in the 1970s. 

Biggers "covered pipeline protests, pushed the Green New Deal, and repeated slogans like “Just stop oil” and “Keep it in the ground," she writes in The Free Press. "I believed I was on the right side of history, fighting against the climate crisis, and for a more just and equitable world."

In fact, she and her fellow climate radicals were refusing to face the simple reality that any Econ 101 student could have pointed out to her.

Critics will say if we just transitioned to renewables we could get off fossil fuels. But physics begs to differ. Solar and wind production just aren’t as energy-dense or reliable as oil and gas. They’re intermittent, meaning the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. This means our energy systems have to build out twice as much to get less reliable energy. In Europe, which has most zealously chased the net-zero mirage, energy prices have gone up and their manufacturing economy has suffered. Batteries are also not a practical solution. They have serious downsides, including a supply chain reliant on China, environmentally destructive mining, and an expensive price tag. Germany has invested tens of billions of euros to build out its battery capacity to 24–25.5 gigawatt hours. Sounds impressive, but that amount of storage could not even meet an hour of the country’s energy demand.

"Instead of a utopia, you get what’s happening in Cuba: a country in which many neighborhoods have power for only a few hours a day, the people are desperate, and daily life has ground to a halt," she writes. 

"It turns out you can’t 'just stop oil' without consequences," she concludes.

The fact is, Gen Z and Gen X don't do consequences. That's why they can sublimely advocate for the end of fossil fuels and still imagine a "utopia" and see themselves saving the Earth from climate change.

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Watch: Trump’s Easter Message Hits Faith, Revival, and a Country ‘Doing So Well Like Never Before’

RedState 

President Donald Trump released an Easter message to Christians everywhere Friday night focused squarely on the meaning of Easter, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the hope that comes with it.

Trump begins at the foundation of the faith:

“This Holy Week, I'm proud to join with Christians across the country and around the world to celebrate the most glorious miracle in all of time, the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In his life, Christ displayed true humility. In his death, he modeled true love, and in his resurrection from the tomb, he proved that even death itself will not silence those who place their trust in Almighty God.”

The president then points to John 3:16, one of the most widely known passages in scripture, reinforcing the promise at the center of Easter:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Lastly, President Trump turns to what that faith looks like in the country right now, arguing that it is not fading but returning in a visible way:

“This Easter, millions of Christians all over the globe will be reminded that because of what Jesus did on the Cross, all of us can live every day with hope in God's promise, knowing that in the end, evil and wickedness will not prevail. In the spirit of joy and renewal this Easter, we also celebrate the extraordinary resurrection of faith and religion in America… churches across the nation, on Sunday, the pews will be fuller, younger and more faithful than they have at any time in many, many years… our country is doing so well like never before.” 

Debate the numbers, the delivery, or even the messenger if you want, but the message stands on its own.

That same idea appears in a past Easter reflection from RedState’s Susie Moore:

“As difficult as it was to watch, it really brought home the enormity of the sacrifice made for us – and of the depth and breadth of God’s love for us… my prayer is that we all are reminded just how much we are loved.”

That’s what makes this message by Trump work, not politics or spin, just the core message of Easter.

At a time when everything feels loud and fractured, the tone here leans on humility, sacrifice, and hope without trying to turn it into something else, a reminder that Easter is about the idea that darkness does not win, that things can be restored, and that there is something lasting beyond the moment in which we find ourselves.

That’s a message people everywhere could use right now.

Watch:

Trump Needs A ‘Vicious Operator’ To Bring Justice Back To The Justice Department

Government investigator Mike Howell says Pam Bondi is out as attorney general because she wasn’t the right fit to take on the weaponizers.

The Federalist

Pam Bondi was President Donald Trump’s second choice for attorney general, and she never quite fit. Bondi often looked uncomfortable in the top prosecutor role, fumbling her way through and failing to meet the demands of a Department of Justice with a mandate to bring the criminals in the corrupt Biden administration to account. 

The frustration from the MAGA movement has been mounting for many months. The president’s patience had worn threadbare with an attorney general who — for many reasons — never did deliver on one of Trump’s biggest campaign promises: justice for the people caught in the crosshairs of the left’s political lawfare campaign.

So the president gave Bondi the “Great American” sendoff on his Truth Social platform Thursday and sent his second choice AG packing. 

“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump wrote Thursday, saluting Bondi for the DOJ’s work in bringing the nation’s murder rate to the lowest level in 125 years. 

Maybe Bondi was stuck in an untenable position for what the job entailed, but her biggest problem, one government watchdog says, was her inability to run a tenacious prosecution operation that would send a clear message to the leftist lawfare crowd. Of course, she did herself no favors with the Epstein Files mess.

“I’m not saying Bondi didn’t want to do that, but it certainly didn’t happen,” Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told The Federalist Thursday afternoon in an interview on the Vicki McKenna Show. The conservative organization investigates and litigates to expose and root out corruption in government, “Look, she got subbed in after Matt Gaetz went down and I think there was an understanding that she really wasn’t that type of lawyer or operator but she would have a cast surrounding her [so she could] be a spokesperson for the agency,” Howell said. “But over time it just became clear that there weren’t enough people who were actually committed to doing the mission and that was borne out by the lack of results.” 

Gaetz, a former Republican congressman, withdrew from consideration amid a buzzsaw confirmation process. 

‘Shouting from the Mountaintops’

Corrupt corporate media outlets framed Bondi as another victim of Trump’s vendettas against his political enemies. Missing from their narrative, per usual, is the fact that many of Trump’s political enemies bludgeoned the Constitution in their soft coup to cripple the president’s first term, and to do all in their power to make sure he wouldn’t win a second. They failed miserably. Trump and the Americans who voted for his return to the White House won the right to the records. And thousands of documents made public thus far have exposed Democrats and deep staters as defilers of the rule of law and the will of the people. 

The frustrations of the president and those who watched the left’s sustained lawfare campaign have only grown with the DOJ’s failure to act on the damning documents and testimony of whistleblowers. Bondi, and the attorneys surrounding her, have been loathe to move swiftly, if at all. 

Howell said the real victories have been few. 

“In place of actual actions you have been celebrations that I think are unwarranted. Like if you look at the FBI, it’s been all ‘Mission Accomplished’ over there and the claim that it’s been rebuilt from the ground up, but that’s just not true whatsoever,” he said. 

Bondi critics charge there has been too much deference paid to the old guard at the FBI and the Justice Department. The Oversight Project has been a lead investigator in the autopen scandal of the Biden years. Much evidence suggests President Joe Biden’s inner circle signed off on a glut of clemency orders — more than 4,200, smashing previous records for presidential pardons, commutations and remissions and respites. Biden’s acts of clemency covered members of his corrupt family, government crushers of individual liberties, and some very violent criminals.

The get-out-of-jail-free card winners included a career criminal “who admitted to killing someone on camera and has a long rap sheet of violent crimes,” according to the Oversight Project. Howell and his team urged Bondi and the DOJ to stop the release of the “illegitimate” clemency orders through a disqualifying use of the autopen. 

“There are a lot of violent criminals whose sentences were shortened by the autopen that this DOJ continues to release,” Howell said. “It’s been happening like clockwork and we’ve been shouting from the mountains tops.”  

Bondi released a statement Thursday pledging to “work tirelessly” to transition control of the AG’s office to her Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom Trump tapped as interim AG for the time being. She said she’s moving to “an important private sector role” where she will “continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration.”

“Leading President Trump’s historic and highly successful efforts to make America safer and more secure has been the honor of a lifetime, and easily the most consequential first year of the Department of Justice in American history,” Bondi wrote on X.

Her conservative critics disagree. Democrats said “good riddance,” with a straight face accusing Bondi of leading a corrupt department while they shrugged off the cesspool of corruption at Merrick Garland’s DOJ. 

‘De-weaponize’ the Government

Speculation on who will ultimately replace Bondi was running rampant Thursday. Blanche appears to be a leading candidate, although his conservative credentials have come under scrutiny. Fox News reported that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin is in line for the post. 

Howell said the next AG must be run by a “vicious operator” if there is any hope for accountability.  

“You need somebody who is not going to care what the liberal press thinks of them, what the rank and file of these departments and angencies will think of them, and how they’ll be framed as an institutionalist,” he said. “No, you need someone who is there primarily to get the job done and roll up their sleeves.”

A guy like Gaetz, who approaches his job with a “burn the ships” mentality, Howell said.

Or perhaps an attorney like Jeff Clark, a former legal warrior in the Trump administrations who has been raked over the coals in the left’s ceaseless lawfare campaign against Trump’s allies. Clark recently joined the Oversight Project as vice president of the nonprofit’s litigation team. His mission: to “de-weaponize” government. 

“We like Jeff a lot and we’re happy he’s here, so I won’t be heartbroken if he stays here. But that is exactly the type of person we put in charge of our legal efforts and I would do the same if I were president of the United States,” Howell said. 

On Presidents, Popes, and the Parlous State of International Affairs

On Presidents, Popes, and the Parlous State of International Affairs 

These Days Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric may offend delicate ears, but its premise is solid.

Roger Kaplan for American Spectator

Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric may offend delicate ears, but its premise is solid.

Donald Trump stated his case for finishing the fight against the Islamic Republic of Iran: it is the case for Americans and all others who share our preference for free societies. While the excesses, boasts, threats, and barstool style irritate listeners who expect a manner more solemn and steady from the American president, he made it with brevity and clarity: Iran’s aggressive, tyrannous regime must reform or be removed. Since the former is unlikely, the president was in effect saying the U.S. and its allies, such as they are, must succeed in effecting the latter.

The Islamic Republic, ruling Iran since 1979, is a horrible and monstrous regime that cannot be trusted and certainly must never have a nuclear arsenal. It was “right at the doorstep” of having such a capability. His argument rested on half a century of evidence of the Iranians’ intentions,  and his confidence in our military’s ability to thwart them.

Do you want to try to live with monsters armed with monstrous weapons?

Ensuring security is the fundamental role of any government. In this case, it is not difficult to see that the president of the U.S. chose prudence and decided to disarm a fanatical adversary, rather than seek an arms control treaty or offer a bribe. Past presidents tried that without effect.

The question is: do you want to try to live with monsters armed with monstrous weapons?

America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy, Mr. Trump might have said — had he John Quincy Adams’ gift for classical oratory. He has his own way of stating his position.

This sometimes leads to a sense of blustering incoherence, so time must be given to observe what the president does. Misunderstanding can also befall coherent and rhetorically faultless speakers like John Quincy Adams. Isolationists who quote Adams without reading him miss the theme of the speech that remains today as profound and practical a statement of American foreign policy as it was on July 4, 1821, when the great diplomat and future president explained that while we could not bring freedom to other nations, we could give them the gift of showing that it could be attained.

Adams believed and explained that we could not avoid involvement with the world. When attacked or challenged in our essential interests, such as the freedom of the seas, we should strike back, with diplomacy when possible, with arms when necessary. However, we should understand that our best foreign policy lies in adhering to our founding principles. They serve as a magnet and a model to other nations.

Democracy dies in mutism, but it can also suffer from cacophony.

Mr. Trump did not delve into the means and purposes of foreign policy because his purpose was to assure the American people that he knows what he is doing with regard to the immediate crisis with Iran, and his war policy is working. He is quite justified here, because there has been a great deal of noise from the chattering classes with the object of demonstrating that the administration’s policy is incoherent and reckless. Democracy dies in mutism, but it can also suffer from cacophony. If the opposition party and the media place bringing down the government rather than beating a regime that has vowed to destroy our nation, and indeed our civilization, it is unfortunate, but Mr. Trump’s job is to defend the U.S.A.

Thus, it was not the president’s purpose on this occasion to respond to the cliches and catch-phrases about days after and regime changes and nation building or rebuilding or anything else. Winning the war and restoring some order in the Gulf is the first order of business, just as, at a crime scene, the police are entrusted with stopping the malefactors, leaving for later questions of punishment or rehabilitation. Or even reconciliation and redemption.

Mr. Trump sees that it is futile and distracting to discuss an eventual rebuilding of Iran (politically and otherwise); for the moment, he is focused on the remnants of the ruling regime over there with the aim of demolishing it or crippling it to a point where it cannot threaten us.

Mental, moral transformation will follow, we hope. For 50 years, the Islamic Republic has made killing Americans a policy goal, directly or through proxies. It also ravaged an ancient Oriental civilization and made life miserable for its heirs, the people of Iran. Defending Americans and American interests from the Islamic Republic’s death cultists and theocratic tyrants is a way to help the people of Iran, and Adams would have approved, as he would have agreed it is up to them to seize the chance to reclaim their country and its culture, which includes the intellectual and spiritual riches of the Shiite religious branch of Islam.

Shiism considers itself the truest faith and intellectual system. All faiths have their fanatics, but neither Shiism nor any other religion forces its believers to be at war with other faiths and systems; it does so only when captured by hate-crazed lunatics, as the president might put it. Nor is a powerful faith bound to produce the totalitarian politics of the Islamic republic.

You can feel yours is the true faith without feeling obligated to impose it on others, unless you want to be at war all the time. But history teaches that this is easier said than done.

The head of the Catholic Church, Leo XIV, finds himself fortuitously in a position to pick up where Mr. Trump left off and address this question. He will be in Africa for a few weeks this month, bringing joy and courage to the faithful in sub-Saharan countries, among the fastest growing in the world for both Catholicism and nonconforming Christian sects.

However, his first stop is Algeria, where he will meet with government and religious leaders to discuss interfaith dialogue. Without denying that the Church engaged in interfaith dialogue in centuries past by means of crusades and inquisitions and wars of religion, he could point out that that was then and now is now, and two-way streets as well as fences make better neighbors.

Algeria is a Sunni Muslim country where Shiism is suspect, and Catholicism is regulated by a Ministry of Cults that also sends out talking points to the state-regulated mosques. Protestantism survives in catacombs, and Judaism (while we are on the subject of religion) is all but eradicated. In short, there is little official tolerance for heretics or unbelievers, though the ordinary Algerian is more often than not quite tolerant and welcoming.

The pope’s Algeria schedule includes a visit to Hippo, now Annaba, the home of Augustine (Leo XIV belongs to the order bearing the saint’s name), and it is not beyond credible that the meetings on interfaith dialogue were added by the hosts for PR, seeing as how they blame many of their problems not on their own system of government but on Western hostility and prefer to play the aggressed victim.

Now it is true the French colonial system (1830-1962) began with a brutal conquest and remained to the end unjust and oppressive, with deception and discrimination and humiliation the lot of the indigenous Muslim, Arabic, Berber, and Jewish communities, though there were arrangements, exceptions, and other forms of live-and-let-live.

Never enough, of course, and never with sufficient tact and sincerity, and the end was appalling, a seven-year war of terror, inter-communal and even intra-communal massacres that reached into France and left traumas and scars that are still being played out in the politics of both countries.

Not the least consequence of the French colonial experience and the independence war that ended it was that it wrecked what had been a land of surprisingly successful cohabitation among peoples of different backgrounds during the centuries that followed the eight century Arab conquest. The victorious “liberation” produced a state that felt it had to impose rigid conformity in religion and everything else to maintain national unity. Yet experience shows that a state that must resort to tyrannical repression to maintain its unity is on its way to failure. The American founders knew this; it is why they saw freedom of religion as essential to a durable constitutional order.

France recovered; Algeria took off economically (not without guilt-laden but also not disinterested French help, notably with regard to the need for energy that could be extracted in the Sahara). Politically, however, the “revolution” in Algeria turned out to be a grim example of single-party, police-state, uniform-thinking, no-opposition — especially from the Berbers who did not see why “Arab” should be the new nation’s only identity, nor Islam its only religion.

Many Berbers were and are Christian; in certain regions, notably the mountainous Kabylie north of Algiers, they are the majority (overall, perhaps a majority all across North Africa is in some form or another of Berber ancestry). The Algiers regime alternately makes it easier to repress dissent by outlawing separatist platforms (which Kabyle-based political and communal organizations have — peacefully — espoused), which gives them an additional legal weapon against Christians.

Without getting tangled up in tribal and ethnic grudges — though as a Chicagoan, Robert Cardinal Prevost could tell the Algerians some interesting stories in this area — the bishop of Rome could point out, and perhaps ought to, with all his tact and generosity, that freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, in short, freedom, never hurt a country or a society, except maybe America’s. So, my infidel brothers (hahah, just kidding, Mr Tyrrell and I are from Chicago too), consider what a huge boost to world peace you will make by setting an example! Why, even those crazies in Iran — whom you unwisely supported unconditionally as you did Hamas against Israel, which frankly was not very nice considering all the Jews gave your country in everything from medicine to music to translations of the Koran and much else, until you pretty much forced them out — even those boys might pay attention.

And you know, interfaith hooha, peace at last between Islam and Christendom, Judeo-Christendom, brother! (May I call you brother?) Why that might win you a Nobel prize — the American guy might even be happy to share. And even if it falls short, it is worth the old college try on Leo’s part. In the context of the parlous state of international affairs these days, it could even be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.