BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Search For Reagan’

BY FRANK J. DONATELLI

In a world seemingly in chaos dealing with wars abroad, congressional dysfunction, and unstable domestic politics, it is heartening to see that author Craig Shirley has produced yet another important study of Ronald Reagan, a familiar subject to him and by now to most of us.

Despite the reams of already published material, Mr. Shirley’s search for Reagan not only revisits familiar ground but also provides a fresh look at a long career and consequential life.


Early on, Mr. Shirley necessarily discusses Reagan’s hardscrabble Midwestern upbringing, which formed the building blocks of his life and political philosophy — self-reliance, hard work and, above all, freedom. He also notes Reagan’s devotion to natural rights that inspired the Constitution and its allied idea of limited government. So far, this is the familiar road of Reagan analysis.

Mr. Shirley then takes an unexpected but delightful detour. Quoting the author, “He was conservative, but not rigid in his outlook.”

This is explosive in Mr. Shirley’s hands as he enumerates many examples of this governing outlook. In the chapters that follow, he analyzes Reagan’s important decisions that underlined his penchant for supporting and implementing creative, flexible and, yes, pragmatic policies that sometimes went against the grain of many of his supporters.

The examples are legion. Here are just a few:

Reagan worked with House Democratic leaders including Dan Rostenkowski and Tip O’Neill to enact important economic initiatives, including two tax reform bills and an overhaul of Social Security that saw the system remain solvent for 50 years, including the next 10.

Reagan selected two running mates (Richard Schweiker in 1976 and George H.W. Bush in 1980) who differed with him on key policy issues. He did so to unite the GOP and to strengthen his electoral appeal. Both became supporters and friends.

Reagan nominated the first woman to the Supreme Court (Sandra Day O’Connor), supported (belatedly) the Martin Luther King holiday, and backed research dollars for AIDS. As Mr. Shirley notes, while he favored policies to help all Americans, he was not blind to the special obstacles faced by women and minorities.

Reagan opposed a ballot initiative in California in 1979, the Briggs Amendment, that would have terminated all gay people from teaching positions in California.

Most importantly, Reagan set aside a lifetime of opposition to Soviet Communism to work with Mikhail Gorbachev to wind down the Cold War, an initiative that eventually resulted in freedom for Eastern Europe and the ultimate destruction of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin has dedicated his career to reversing this result.

I hasten to assure Reagan conservatives that he accomplished all of this while remaining true to his bedrock philosophy of individual freedom at home and abroad. Unlike many others, however, he added more than a touch of common sense to his governing outlook.

Mr. Shirley doesn’t touch this, but one cannot help but note how different modern-day conservatism is from Reagan’s, as today’s MAGA establishment focuses on isolationism, grievance, culture wars and most sadly, authoritarianism.

Mr. Shirley ends his book with many assessments of Reaganism and Reagan’s presidential years, many useful and on target. I am drawn still to Reagan’s farewell address, delivered one week before the end of his term. In it, he was reflective, positive, thoughtful and focused on America’s future, a future he saw well beyond his own time, something most politicians are incapable of doing.

Here is Reaganism in Reagan’s own words:

“And how stands the city (America) on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true to the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.

“And she’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home. … We’ve done our part. We weren’t just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all.”

And finally and most appropriately, he added, “God bless the United States of America.”

____________WASHINGTON TIMES

Nigeria’s Islamist Militants, Iran’s Leader, Afghanistan’s Taliban Top Persecutors Of Christians

Nigeria's Islamist militants Boko Haram

BY MARK A. KELLNER, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Afghanistan’s Taliban, Nigeria’s Islamist militants and Iran’s supreme leader are among the world’s top persecutors of Christians, according to an annual report by an international advocacy group.

International Christian Concern (ICC) reported Wednesday that persecution in Afghanistan is at “its highest levels since the Taliban’s first government, established in 1996,” and that tens of thousands of Nigerian Christians have died at the hands of the Islamic fundamentalist Fulani militants since 2000.

“This report isn’t a list of sad, small statistics happening somewhere in the world, far-removed from us,” ICC President Jeff King said in a statement. “Many of these are mass human rights violations, with some approaching genocide.

“Religious freedom is an issue that affects people of all faiths and is a key driver in political freedom. This report is a wake-up call to churches in the West and a challenge to know the truth and act on it.”

According to the group’s Persecutors of the Year report, the top four countries are China, whose attempts at “sinicization” of religions has led to persecution; Algeria, which has closed dozens of Protestant churches; Egypt, where Coptic Christians are under threat; and Pakistan, where fundamentalists have persecuted Christians and other religious minorities.

What’s more, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “exerts control over every aspect of Iranian life, both physically and spiritually,” allowing many Iranian Christians to suffer “brutal torture and execution,” the ICC reported, citing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a persecutor of Christians.

The group also identified as persecutors:

• Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which “trains and conspires to create mobs and incite violence against India’s Christian population.”

• Al-Shabab, the Somalia-based Islamist group that has attacked

The Hungarian Resistance

Illustration on Hungarian resistance to EU dictated immigration by Alexander Hunter

BY CLIFFORD D. MAY

BUDAPEST (WASHINGTON TIMES) -- Most people want to survive. What could be more natural than that? Most peoples want to survive, too. That’s no less natural.

For a thousand years, the lands inhabited by the Hungarian people have been invaded, their settlements sacked, men, women and children enslaved and slaughtered. Mongols, Ottomans, Nazis and Soviets were among those who conquered and ruled the Hungarians. Somehow, they’ve survived.

Hungarians today, a clear majority, believe their national existence — their unique identity, language, culture and traditions — is threatened again. This time, however, it is not by nomads on horseback or soldiers in tanks. It is by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union.

In 2015, Mrs. Merkel decided, on her own initiative, to establish an open-door policy for “migrants” from the broader Middle East and Africa. Since then, she and other EU leaders have been pressuring Hungary to accept its “fair share.”

All members of the EU have a “duty to make legal migration possible to help countries that are in trouble,” she has insisted. Hungary should demonstrate “solidarity” by agreeing to participate in a “fair system of distribution” of those who have arrived — more than a million in 2015, several hundred thousand since — as well as those who will arrive over the years ahead.

Here in Budapest just over a week ago, a conference was convened by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Hungary’s largest multidisciplinary college. Its title: “Migration: The Biggest Challenge of Our Time?”

A featured speaker was former Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who argued that there was no need for a question mark on the sentence above. He accused “European elites” of seeking to replace the continent’s existing nation-states with a single “European nation” and attempting to create a “truly European man, a Homo bruxellarum.” To accomplish that, he said, “They have to dissolve the old existing nations by mixing them with migrants from all over the world.”

He added: “Mass migration necessarily leads to substantial cultural, social and political conflicts, shocks and tensions. It touches upon fundamental aspects of citizenship, community and identity of our countries. The European political leaders pretend not to see it. This is unacceptable.”

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy made clear that he didn’t quite agree but he defended “my friend Viktor Orban,” the controversial Hungarian prime minister, and called for compromise among the nations of a now “greatly divided” Europe.

Mr. Orban took the podium next. He observed that the population of Africa is predicted to rise by a half billion over the next 13 years, and that the gap between the quality of life in Africa and Europe will widen. He urged more economic assistance be given to Africans in their home countries.

He distinguished between asylum seekers — for whom Hungary has an application process in place — and other would-be immigrants, especially “men of military age, unarmed but in military style.”

The mainstream media mostly ignored the conference. The only CNN story I saw was headlined: “US sending diplomats to speak at migration summit — in hardline Hungary.” It criticized the Trump administration for not addressing “concerns over the spreading influence of far-right ultra nationalist parties on the continent.”

CNN is entitled to its opinions — though in days gone by distinguishing opinions from news was a skill its reporters and editors were expected to master.

Here’s my opinion: I think Hungarians have a right to make decisions for themselves, especially about issues likely to have profound and long-lasting economic, political, cultural and demographic impacts.

We all say we value diversity and pluralism. Doesn’t that imply that different peoples are entitled to make different choices? Hungarians make such choices by casting ballots. Last year, Mr. Orban won his third consecutive term in office, with a two-thirds majority in parliament. Oddly, however, democratic outcomes disapproved by the “elites” of whom Mr. Klaus spoke are reflexively disparaged as “populist” (or worse).

Some proponents of open borders and mass migration are undoubtedly motivated by humanitarianism. But the remedy for poverty in the developing south cannot be to resettle all the poor in the developed north.

Opponents of mass migration are often called nationalists, a term meant to be pejorative, and often justified by the assertion that that it was nationalism that caused World War II and the Holocaust.

But Hitler — born in Austria — founded the Third Reich, meant to be understood as a new empire. Its goal was to conquer and rule other nations. So Nazi Germany was not nationalist but imperialist.

Can nationalism lead to hyper-nationalism, chauvinism and supremacism? Sure, just as having a cocktail before dinner can lead to alcoholism. But that’s no justification for the defamation of either.

In “The Virtue of Nationalism,” Israeli political philosopher Yoram Hazony argues that to be a nationalist simply means believing that the world is “governed best when nations are able to chart their own independent course, cultivating their own traditions and pursuing their own interests without interference.” Does that sound “far right ultra” to you?

Mr. Orban’s priority, and that of those who have been voting for him, is the preservation of what Mr. Hazony would call a “national collective characterized by bonds of mutual loyalty and unique inherited traditions.” Again, I ask: Is that so radical?

Hungarians, Mr. Orban said, “don’t want to change, we’d like to stay as we are. We have our faults, of course, which we’re happy to go about correcting, but in essence we don’t want to change.”

Mrs. Merkel and other EU leaders are not obliged to agree with that view. They might be wise, however, to tolerate it.

• Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.

Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Saving Nigeria's Christians

BY TAMARA WINTER

WASHINGTON TIMES

Illustration on saving Nigeria's christians by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

Last month, Amnesty International released a new report that outlined the costs of a dangerous and often deadly cycle of violence occurring in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region between Christian farmers and Muslim herders — 3,600 people have been killed in the past 3 years, with 2018 being the worst year on record so far.

The Amnesty report is the latest warning that the situation in the Middle Belt is worsening. These concerns have been echoed by others from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the U.K.’s Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, chaired by Baroness Caroline Cox, and local Nigerian religious organizations such as the Saint Raphael’s Society of Nigeria. Ahead of Nigerian elections in February, which have the potential to cause further divisions, the Trump administration has now begun to acknowledge the scale of the problem.

The administration recently designated Boko Haram an Entity of Particular Concern, a designation for non-state entities engaging in severe religious freedom abuses. This is a necessary, but not enough to end sectarian violence in Nigeria’s troubled regions.

The Nigerian government has undoubtedly made progress, quelling Boko Haram’s ambitions for territorial expansion by limiting the group’s active presence to small villages across the countryside. However, in November the government suffered a major setback when members of one Boko Haram faction overran a military base, killing over 100 Nigerian soldiers and leaving an untold number of additional troops missing.

The focus on Boko Haram — both in Washington D.C. and in Abuja — risks leaving the wider religious conflict in Nigeria unaddressed. The reality on the ground is Christians in the Middle Belt face persecution, violence, intimidation and, increasingly, death.

As the U.K. aid group, Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART), has documented, “the asymmetry and escalation of attacks by well-armed Fulani upon predominately Christian communities is stark and must be acknowledged.”

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has also weighed in, urging the U.S. State Department to designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, as recently as this December.

Yet, the Trump administration did not do so, and instead selected countries including Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Pakistan for the designation. Nigeria’s Christians deserve a similar level of attention.

The need to act was highlighted in a recent congressional hearing in which Rep. Chris Smith noted the “apparent inability, perhaps even reluctance, of the Nigerian Federal Government under President Buhari to stop the violence, or to condemn the attacks”

Rep. Ron Estes further exposed the gravity of the situation on the ground, lamenting that “Sadly, Christians in Nigeriaare under fire in what many are calling a genocide.”

The Economist magazine similarly concludes that the slaughter of Christians can be defined as the early signs of genocide: “Fighting in the Central African Republic was seen as the “early signs of genocide” by the UN in 2017. The term has also been applied to the bloodbath in South Sudan, the depredations of Bashar Assad in Syria and Islamist attacks on Christians in Nigeria’s middle belt.” This is the scale of the crisis.

As President Trump adopts a more muscular strategy for Africa, the warning from Reps. Estes and Smith, and others around the world, cannot be ignored. It is time for the U.S. government, and Secretary Pompeo, to classify Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern.

Yet, a designation from America alone will not be enough. Nigerian Christians need action from President Buhari, who has the power, using the strength of the Nigerian military to end their suffering. Pressure from Washington D.C. is an essential step to accomplish this.

• Tamara Winter was born in Lagos, Nigeria, but now lives in Arlington, Va. She serves as the operations lead at the Center for Innovative Governance Research.

Africa Deserves Better Than What Tillerson Went To Give

BY KAREN ATTIAH

Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump

WASHINGTON (WASHINGTON POST) -- Turns out Rex Tillerson’s voyage to Africa was the trip of no return.

His tenure as secretary of state is finally ending, but with a whimper. His last hurrah as the top U.S. diplomat came in the form of a half-baked tour to Djibouti, Kenya, Chad, Nigeria and Ethiopia — all key U.S. allies on security and counter-terrorism. He got sick in Kenya and called off the day’s activities. He then cut short the Nigeria portion of the trip in order to come home to Washington on Tuesday to the news that President Donald Trump had fired him and seeks to replace him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

So what was the point of it all? Couldn’t he have just stayed home and sent Africa an email? From an optics perspective, the administration no doubt needed to do something to soften the blow of President Trump’s “shithole countries” remarks (though Tillerson sidestepped the issue at news conferences), as well as address Trump’s nonsensical travel ban on Chad, which fields one of the most dependable fighting forces in West Africa in the fight against Boko Haram. Ultimately, many Africans in the countries he visited were unimpressed.

But Tillerson’s sleepwalker trip was a missed opportunity to signal a new course in U.S. relations with Africa, one that treats the continent as a source of economic growth and opportunities for investment. It was a reminder not only of America’s diminished moral standing, but also that Washington is sitting on the sidelines while other countries are becoming increasingly more engaged in Africa, for better or worse.

In Africa, China is now the rising tiger. It has been building up its military presence and increasing humanitarian spending, though only countries that tend to vote with China in the United Nations seem to get an influx of aid. Puzzlingly, Tillerson gave a tough speech on China-Africa relations not to an African audience, but at George Mason University in Virginia. He said that China’s approach to Africa could leave nations indebted to Beijing. From the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa the next day, Tillerson added a warning about Chinese investments, saying that African countries risked “forfeiting elements of your sovereignty as you enter into such arrangements.”

Such admonitions look weak considering that the United States lags behind China in Africa on multiple fronts. Beijing has been investing heavily in infrastructure, manufacturing and mining. According to a 2017 Ernst and Young report, American foreign direct investment in the continent fell 5.2 percent in 2016, while Chinese-backed projects increased by more than 100 percent over 2015. Most significantly, China is creating jobs: In 2016, jobs created by China hit an all-time high in Africa, according to the report, and were “more than three times the number of jobs created by the next biggest investor, i.e. the United States.” According to a 2017 McKinsey report, a survey of more than 1,000 Chinese firms revealed that China had created some 300,000 jobs for African workers. China has also invested in worker training and exchange programs for students.

As for the accumulation of debts to China, Tillerson’s criticism glossed over the fact that African nations still spend more on servicing their World Bank and International Monetary Fund debts than they do on healthcare and education.

This is not to play down China’s intentions. Beijing is in Africa to further Beijing’s interests, not Africa’s. Chinese companies have been accused of abusing African workers and of degrading the environment. Still, as an oil businessman serving a businessman president, a better message from Tillerson to Africa would have offered increased U.S. investment, infrastructure projects and help in strengthening the capacity of African regional blocs to trade among themselves. If the Trump administration is concerned about security and terrorism, then jobs, particularly for underemployed youths, are likely the most powerful counter-terrorism tool in the long run and could help stem the migration crisis that has been plaguing the continent and Europe.

In the end, perhaps the most notable gift to Chinese interests in Africa in the short term is the instability of the Trump administration and America’s loss of standing as a voice for democracy and human rights on the continent. An administration that has been riddled with corruption scandals, has attacked the press, has scuttled international agreements and has had its commander in chief retweet Islamophobic posts is in no position to preach respect for the rule of law. Tillerson’s departure, like the final trip that preceded it, sends the message to China that U.S. foreign policy under Trump is unserious, disjointed and not focused on the long term. Africa deserves much better.

(c) 2018, The Washington Post

KAREN ATTIAH

Kennedy political torch passes to a new generation of Democrats

By Susan Crabtree, Washington Times

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For three days in Charlotte, a parade of prominent Democrats, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, numerous senators, union presidents and President Obama himself will try to rev up the base with live speeches.

But one voice that dominated Democratic Party politics for decades will be notably absent from this year’s festivities: the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the iconic liberal lion and fourth longest serving senator who passed away in August 2009 before he could see his lifelong political goal — comprehensive health care — enacted into law.

Known for his red-faced passion so prevalent in his speeches delivered on the Senate floor, Kennedy addressed his party’s convention after losing the primary to Mr. Carter in 1980 and was a consistent speaker at every party gathering afterward, delivering his final rousing endorsement of Mr. Obama in 2008 while suffering from a malignant brain tumor that would take his life a year later.

Kennedys have played high-profile roles at Democratic conventions since 1956, when Sen. John F. Kennedy gave a concession speech after losing a vote to become Adlai Stevenson’s running mate. Four years later, he delivered his “New Frontier” acceptance speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum, which many believe inspired Mr. Obama’s decision almost a half-century later to move his Denver nomination speech from an indoor arena to an outdoor stadium.

“It’s an end of an era without Ted Kennedy there,” said Ted Widmer, who directs the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. “I think his family and friends will be happy that the issues he cared about, like health care, economic opportunity and inclusiveness in general, are still very much in the news and being discussed.”

Joseph Kennedy III, the Middlesex County district attorney running for the seat of retiring Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, that would mark a return of the Kennedy family to Capitol Hill after a two-year hiatus, introduced a video tribute to his grandfather Robert’s younger brother and to the greater Kennedy legacy on the opening night of the convention.

“This is the first convention since 1956 that we meet without Sen. Kennedy. But make no mistake — he is with us here this evening,” the younger Mr. Kennedy said to thunderous applause.

He touted his great-uncle’s work on behalf of the poor, immigrants and the disabled, as well as his goal of universal health care, and recalled moment four years ago when he joined the senator in campaigning for Mr. Obama in small town along the U.S.-Mexico border. The elder Kennedy broke into a Mexican ranchero song in his famously Boston accent — “the Massachusetts mariachi” and “Uncle Teddy at his best,” Mr. Kennedy told the delegates.

Noting the senator’s enthusiastic support of Barack Obama from his first days in the Senate.

“Four years ago, Uncle Teddy marveled at the grit and grace of a young senator ,” Joseph Kennedy said. “Today, we’re carrying on that cause.”

The video that followed his introductions, which included clips of Ted Kennedy’s most famous speeches and highlights from his debates with Mitt Romney in their 1994 Senate race, left many of the Democratic delegates on the floor openly weeping.

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy who had entertained a run for the New York Senate seat that Hillary Rodham Clinton later won, is slated to speak at the convention Wednesday, and the late senator’s widow, Vicki, will host a another reception for her husband’s eponymous Boston-based institute that afternoon.

“We’ve missed him on the Senate floor, we’ve missed his voice in the caucus and this is the first time for many years that he won’t be at the convention,” said Jim Manley, a longtime Senate communications strategist who worked for Kennedy and other prominent Democrats before joining the private sector last year. “It’s nice for the DNC to pay tribute to him via video, but the fact is no one can give a speech quite like he did, so he will be missed.”

Next generation

In giving his first speech on the national stage, Joseph P. Kennedy III represents the next generation of Kennedy candidates, and he has big shoes and expectations to fill. The entire Democratic Party were watching the 31-year-old attorney to see if he has the charisma, seriousness and staying power to become a political player and recapture some of the family mystique that has dimmed in three years since Ted Kennedy’s death.

“It’s always nice to see young people claim the family mantle and the work going forward,” Mr. Widmer said.

Yet while the younger Mr. Kennedy wants to look impressive on the national stage, to win he has to canvass his district and discuss meat-and-potato issues that his would-be constituents care about.

“I doubt the Kennedy legacy is a dominating theme of the election,” Mr. Widmer added.

The Kennedy clan’s decades-long presence in Washington came to an end last year when former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, known for his alcohol and drug-related bouts and his work on mental-health legislation, decided not to run for re-election in his home state of Rhode Island.

Since then, the Kennedy family has made headlines more in the tabloids than in the political press, including stories of Conor Kennedy, grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, dating singing superstar Taylor Swift, and the suicide earlier this year of Mary Kennedy, wife of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Sen. Kennedy’s two sons, Ted Jr. and Patrick, showed up in Charlotte for their cousin’s moment in the spotlight, as well as for a Tuesday afternoon reception for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, which is under construction at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Although some Democrats are expressing muted enthusiasm for Mr. Obama’s re-election, Patrick Kennedy said his father’s legacy and Mr. Obama’s are inextricably linked, and if he were alive today, Edward M. Kennedy would again be rallying the troops for Mr. Obama.

“If my dad were alive, he’d be here reminding everybody that this president delivered,” Mr. Patrick told the Boston Globe Tuesday. “It’s the cause; that’s what the dream was.”

In many ways, Sen. Kennedy’s legacy also lives on in the army of Democratic political operatives and staffers who once worked for him — whom he trained and influenced. Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama’s sharp-tongued deputy campaign manager, helped manage Kennedy’s communications while he suffered from cancer, and Stephen Kerrigan, the CEO of the Democratic National Convention Committee, worked as a legislative assistant in his Senate office.

“He taught me more than he could have ever imagined about the art of legislating,” said Mr. Manley recalled.