This popular post was originally published May 2.

Last week, you couldn’t turn on the television or get on the web without being subjected to some sort of coverage of the royal wedding. It was truly a global phenomenon, and the American fascination with it was remarkable. What other event would prompt 22.8 million viewers across the country to wake up at an ungodly hour to witness an event taking place thousands of miles away? (Worldwide viewership is estimated at a staggering 2 billion, reportedly making the ceremony the most-watched event in history.)

In addition to the media frenzy, there was much consternation and speculation about the deliberate omission of Barack and Michelle Obama from the guest list for the wedding. Explanations for the snub ranged from the fact that the wedding was not a state occasion to possible security concerns. But I can’t help but wonder if the reason for not inviting the Obamas runs much deeper than those reasons. After all, Barack Obama has presided over a stunning and shameful deterioration of the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Special relationship” is the term often used to describe American-British relations. Winston Churchill used it frequently, though the term itself goes back to the 19th century. The phrase is a tip of the hat to our nations’ shared heritage and intertwined history, as well as a nod to the unique military, diplomatic, and economic alliance between the two countries. From the World Wars to the Reagan-Thatcher friendship, to Britain’s support of the War on Terror, the “special relationship” has been an obvious one.

Unfortunately, President Obama has done severe damage to the “special relationship.” A series of gaffes in diplomacy and protocol on the part of both Barack and Michelle Obama have strained the bond between the US and Britain:

Obama has been criticized by some for not embracing the ‘special relationship’ that has existed between the U.S. and Britain since the Second World War. Shortly after he arrived in the White House, the president presented Queen Elizabeth with an iPod and then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a bundle of American DVDs that would not work on British players. He also returned a bust of Winston Churchill that had stood in President George W. Bush’s Oval Office.

Last year, Mrs. Obama also touched the back of Queen Elizabeth’s back which, as White House watcher Keith Koffler notes, is considered a major breach of protocol when dealing with the royals.

The Obama administration has strained the US-British friendship with a series of political moves as well. In 2010, the administration, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, refused to acknowledge British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, a territory that has been a source of tension between the UK and Argentina for years.

During the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, many Britons were offended by the Obama’s continual references to “British Petroleum,” in spite of the fact that BP is a truly international corporation that hasn’t called itself “British Petroleum” in ages. And this year, those upstanding folks at Wikileaks released evidence that the United States shared with Russia secrets about Britain’s nuclear capability.

Last week, you couldn’t turn on the television or get on the web without being subjected to some sort of coverage of the royal wedding. It was truly a global phenomenon, and the American fascination with it was remarkable. What other event would prompt 22.8 million viewers across the country to wake up at an ungodly hour to witness an event taking place thousands of miles away? (Worldwide viewership is estimated at a staggering 2 billion, reportedly making the ceremony the most-watched event in history.)

In addition to the media frenzy, there was much consternation and speculation about the deliberate omission of Barack and Michelle Obama from the guest list for the wedding. Explanations for the snub ranged from the fact that the wedding was not a state occasion to possible security concerns. But I can’t help but wonder if the reason for not inviting the Obamas runs much deeper than those reasons. After all, Barack Obama has presided over a stunning and shameful deterioration of the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Special relationship” is the term often used to describe American-British relations. Winston Churchill used it frequently, though the term itself goes back to the 19th century. The phrase is a tip of the hat to our nations’ shared heritage and intertwined history, as well as a nod to the unique military, diplomatic, and economic alliance between the two countries. From the World Wars to the Reagan-Thatcher friendship, to Britain’s support of the War on Terror, the “special relationship” has been an obvious one.

Unfortunately, President Obama has done severe damage to the “special relationship.” A series of gaffes in diplomacy and protocol on the part of both Barack and Michelle Obama have strained the bond between the US and Britain:

Obama has been criticized by some for not embracing the ‘special relationship’ that has existed between the U.S. and Britain since the Second World War. Shortly after he arrived in the White House, the president presented Queen Elizabeth with an iPod and then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a bundle of American DVDs that would not work on British players. He also returned a bust of Winston Churchill that had stood in President George W. Bush’s Oval Office.

Last year, Mrs. Obama also touched the back of Queen Elizabeth’s back which, as White House watcher Keith Koffler notes, is considered a major breach of protocol when dealing with the royals.

The Obama administration has strained the US-British friendship with a series of political moves as well. In 2010, the administration, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, refused to acknowledge British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, a territory that has been a source of tension between the UK and Argentina for years.

During the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, many Britons were offended by the Obama’s continual references to “British Petroleum,” in spite of the fact that BP is a truly international corporation that hasn’t called itself “British Petroleum” in ages. And this year, those upstanding folks at Wikileaks released evidence that the United States shared with Russia secrets about Britain’s nuclear capability.

Fred Branfman, author, blogger and early contributor to the current California economic miracle under Governor Jerry Brown, has written a very long apologetic about Noam Chomsky, or more accurately a standard screed against US imperialism and capitalism using Chomsky as a prop. Presumably he thought that invoking the grand old man’s name would somehow spur the faithful to actually read through this door stopper, but I’m not sure the unearthed memoirs of Lenin could have done that. This is very much a “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” kind of piece and Branfman clearly hopes that if nothing sticks at least his readers will succumb to exhaustion and boredom before realizing it.

He needn’t have gone to so much trouble. The basic theme can be summarized in two sentences (spoiler alert for those of you actually thinking of navigating this tome):

• America is really, really bad.
• Communism will fix it.

In fairness, Branfman’s innovative variation is “I think America is very, very bad and Communism will fix it, and look Chomsky agrees with me!” but the basic approach remains the same. This is a patented two-step and Branfman pays close attention to the painted feet on the floor.

On the first point, demonizing America is reasonably straightforward as long as you remember to cherrypick the facts you don’t actually make up, and frame your questions with careful dishonesty. Branfman appears to have this down. Consider:

Which nation’s leaders since 1945 have murdered, maimed, made homeless, tortured, assassinated and impoverished the largest number of civilians who were not its own citizens?

I have asked this question of Americans in every walk of life since I discovered the bombing of Laos in 1969. It’s a simple matter of fact, not involving judgments of right and wrong, and I remain astonished at how most answer “the Russians,” “the Chinese,” or just have no idea that their leaders have killed more noncitizen civilians than the rest of the world’s leaders combined since 1945.

They have no idea because it isn’t true. Apart from the dearth of evidence to support such a claim the sophistry here is so obvious it’s like watching a third rate magician not quite able to get that red hanky into his sleeve. The qualifier “not its own citizens” conveniently excludes “the Russians” and “the Chinese” (proving conclusively that the Americans he talked to were smarter than he was), to say nothing of Pol Pot, Castro, Kim Jong Il and any other half-dozen dictators you could pull at random from the Communist Who’s Who. Among them, these “agrarian reformers” have killed more people on an off-day than the US would contemplate in a decade, but never mind; it’s just their own citizens.

By thus ignoring the Tiananmen Squares and killing fields of history, Branfman takes the apples and oranges fallacy one step further by denying the existence of the orange altogether.

Not that he understands the apples any better. Words like “murdered”, “maimed” and “tortured” are designed to evoke images of the Sopranos, not the unavoidable, if obviously tragic, consequences of war he is actually talking about. The US has, for all practical purposes, undertaken the defense of the free world since World War II.  It is therefore not surprising that it would inflict more civilian casualties in wars and police actions than, say, France—which like the rest of Europe reserves the right to be self-righteous about US military power while at the same time relying on it for protection.

Rendered of its fat, that’s all he’s got, which among any rational audience should provoke a vigorous “And so …?”

To which Branfman might then reply, “Wait guys, don’t go, you haven’t given me a chance to inflate the numbers yet!”

These would include the huge proportion of civilians among the 3.4 million Vietnamese that Robert McNamara estimated were killed in Vietnam (over 90 percent by U.S. firepower), Laotian and Cambodian civilians felled by the largest per capita and most indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets in history, the 1 million to 1.5 million Iraqis estimated by the U.N.‘s Denis Halliday to have died from Clinton’s sanctions “designed,” in Halliday’s words, “to kill civilians, particularly children,” and the hundreds of thousands killed as a result of the Bush invasion. The total number of civilians killed, wounded, made homeless and impoverished by U.S. leaders or local regimes owing their power to U.S. guns and aid—in not only Indochina and Iraq but Mexico, El Salvador, Israel/Palestine, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Egypt, Iran, South Africa, Chile, East Timor, Haiti, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Jamaica, the Philippines and Indonesia—is in the tens of millions.

Credible estimates put Vietnamese war dead at 3.8 million, over a span of 43 years (which for you history buffs includes the French and other combatants)—2.3 million if you exclude those who died by assassination, forced relocation, labor camps and various civil uprisings in that period. (For an example of someone who’s actually done his homework see R.J. Rummel: Statistics of Democide, Chapter 6.)

So I stand corrected, the French will occasionally shoot somebody if sufficiently provoked.

A greater canard is the Iraq number.

How Branfman’s can present Denis Halliday (anti-Israel flotilla activist and former head of the UN’s wildly successful Oil for Food program) as a credible source, without kicking the dirt and avoiding eye-contact, is a testament to his chutzpa. As Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch points out the sanctions were administered by the UN, not the US, and the civilian numbers were grossly exaggerated. What interest Halliday could possibly have had in ginning up the numbers–beyond providing poster children for his program and an exit strategy when he needed it—is anyone’s guess.

I don’t know about you, but even if we throw in Canada and the Virgin Islands (the only two countries he doesn’t seem to think we’ve decimated) I don’t know how he gets to “tens of millions.” But then again, he’s not expecting  anyone over at TruthDig to check. Just keep nodding and smiling boys.

Branfman then goes on—and on, and on—in this fashion, trying through sheer volume of prose to make the case that America is the source of all evil in the world.

His solution is a shocker.

Chomsky thus argues that human survival requires changing the system, not merely periodically replacing those running it.

[…]

The real choice, Chomsky makes clear, is not free enterprise versus statism, but state capitalism for (A) the few or (B) the many. The latter would include breaking up the banks, a focus on job creation and safety net expansion where needed, single-payer health insurance, higher taxes on the wealthy, far lower military spending, public members on corporate boards, greater employee workplace control and, above all, a new public-private partnership to see America become a leader in a clean energy economic revolution.

Got it. Apologies to Branfman and Chomsky for incorrectly believing they were dragging us down the road to serfdom once again. If it’s got the word “capitalism” in it, it must be good, right? Just like the word “democratic.” Since I know for a fact that Communists have never appropriated words to conceal their true intentions I know I’ll rest easy.

One wonders if Newsweek will soon come out with a “We’re All State Capitalists Now” issue.

Mexico’s drug war is still raging, with over 22,000 people having been killed since 2006. Now, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, often referred to as the FARC, are teaming up with the drug lords. The Marxist terrorist group’s ties to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and other organizations make the conflict to the south a major threat to the United States.

The violence in Mexico is severe. In the first two days of May, 25 people were killed in Chihuahua, with several of the murders happening in Ciudad Juarez. As the month of May began, 62 people had been killed in the city over the previous week, bringing the total to 850 lives lost in that city alone in 2010. Last year, the Joint Forces Command warned that Mexico and Pakistan were the two countries most at risk of “rapid and sudden collapse.” There have been arrests of high-profile drug lords, but the violence and corruption continues.

The latest arrest of Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid revealed how deeply he had corrupted Mexican law enforcement. Documents captured after his arrest found that he was bribing those commanding the police and soldiers searching him, which explains how he was able to avoid capture for 11 years. The New York Times described Madrid as running “a sophisticated counterintelligence operation.” The drug lords are growing bolder, and instead of opening fire when they are pursued, they are now on the offensive. They are directly attacking the police, soldiers, and those serving the government.

Dr. Maria Velez de Berliner, the President of the Latin Intelligence Corporation, told FrontPage that the brutality of the Mexican drug lords now surpasses that of the Colombian drug traffickers, which is quite a feat.

“If this situation continues, the time will probably come when Mexico will replace Colombia as the largest producer and exporter of cocaine,” she said.

Now, it is known that the FARC is teaming up with the drug lords, offering a major source of income for their own operations and potentially providing the criminals with the military expertise they need to further destabilize Mexico. The FARC connection also gives Hugo Chavez the ability to covertly attack Mexico and the United States and gain intelligence. It also means that other terrorist groups that are connected to FARC or the drug lords have the ability to send arms and operatives into the U.S. if they are willing to pay for it.

The leader of the FARC until 2008, the late Raul Reyes, is now known to have written a letter to his top commanders confirming that a relationship with the Mexican drug lords existed. He was enthusiastic about the new partnership, saying it would allow them to double their profits. It is estimated that FARC already makes $1 billion annually through its work with drug lords. According to Michael Braum, a former operations chief for the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Mexican criminals want to buy “multiton quantities of cocaine directly from South America.”

Dr. Maria Velez de Berliner said that the “FARC is not interested in attacking the U.S, they don’t have the field capability to do so.” However, she warns that FARC’s business with other terrorists and drug traffickers does threaten the U.S.

Olavo de Carvalho, a philosopher from Brazil who has written extensively about the activity of the Marxists in Latin America, agreed with her, saying that the FARC will not initiate military operations against the U.S. in the near-term.

“…but they can give strategic support to Mexican gangs operating in American territory, exactly as they did with several Brazilian gangs, transforming them from mere bunches of criminals into powerful and well-armed organizations. This is a serious and imminent threat,” he said.

The instability in Mexico is directly benefiting Hezbollah, which is now tied to the Venezuelan government and possibly the FARC. The smuggling routes used by the Mexican drug lords are being utilized by Hezbollah, using “the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels,” said Braun. The terrorist group has a long history of engaging in drug trafficking in order to fundraise.

“They [Hezbollah] are doing the same thing in Latin America that they are doing in the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon, and providing medical and social services,” Dr. de Berliner said.

She also mentioned that the FARC is working with Chinese gangs in the tri-border area of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. These gangs could potentially buy and upgrade the FARC’s semi-submersibles and use them in their human trafficking efforts, allowing them to potentially insert operatives into the U.S.

Al-Qaeda also will benefit from the FARC’s new ventures, and could conceivably pay them, or the Mexican drug lords, to help them smuggle in operatives. In fact, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia, Al-Shabaab, may have already done so as someone connected to the group oversaw the smuggling of 270 Somalis into the U.S. through Mexico.

FARC has already begun using Al-Qaeda members in West Africa in order to deliver drugs to Europe. Three members of Al-Qaeda have been arrested in West Africa and were extradited to the U.S. in December. The DEA’s director of South America’s Andean region says that “All of the aircraft seizures that have been made in West Africa, and we’ve made about a half a dozen of them, had departed from Venezuela.”

The separatist Basque ETA terrorists of Spain have entered into an alliance with the FARC as well, an unsurprising development considering the hostile relationship between Spain and Venezuela. A Spanish court has charged a Venezuelan official and a dozen FARC and ETA members with terrorism-related offenses, and Venezuela is refusing to extradite the suspects.

The evidence against them stems from seizures made by the Colombians that provided evidence that ETA members attended FARC camps from 2003 to 2008, located near Machiques in Venezuela. The ETA members provided explosives training for at least five FARC units, and two former FARC operatives have confirmed seeing ETA members training at their camps in 2008. The ETA members traveled with Venezuelan military officers, proving that Chavez’s government is involved in the relationship. This is a reminder that Chavez and other leaders often use the terrorists they support as a liaison with other groups, providing them with deniability.

The crisis in Mexico can not be seen in isolation. The worst enemies of the United States and the West are seeing it as a platform with which to expand their own capabilities. The debate about how the open border facilitates illegal immigration must be modified, because the problem goes much further than that. Terrorist groups are using the strife in Mexico and the open border to fundraise and sneak their operatives into the U.S. as we speak.

The mainstream media is trying to paint the violence in Greece over the country’s economic crisis as a popular reaction to the debt, budget cuts and overall economic problems facing the reeling country. The reality is that the violence is being committed by fringe opponents of democracy, including communists and anarchists, who are seeking to exploit the just uprising of Greeks understandably angry with the situation of their nation.

On May 5, three workers at a bank in Athens suffocated to death when protestors set their workplace on fire. Other buildings were attacked, and many police officers were injured trying to hold the country together. Some protestors even tried to seize the parliament, street fights broke out and shops were raided.

The Greek Communist Party and the anarchists had a hand in the attacks. About 100 of its members broke into the historical site of the Acropolis, and put up banners that read, “Peoples of Europe Rise Up.” Strikers that belonged to the party physically blocked boats from arriving in harbors. The Communist-backed PAME union is one of the leading voices calling for workers to go on strike, a call which has led to ferries and the judicial system being shut down.

Business Insider described the union that took over the Finance Ministry as being “aligned with the Greek Communist Party.” This means that the Communists form a key part of the organizers of the protests and demonstrations. This does not necessarily mean that the majority of those on the streets support their cause, but it does put the Communists in a position where they can leverage themselves into power.

The Greek government has not accused the Communist Party of having a hand in the deaths, but did say their rhetoric is contributing to the violent atmosphere. The Communists have attributed the deaths to a conspiracy to make them less popular. “The statements made in the last few days did not help – that the country is under a dictatorship or that the constitution is somehow in doubt. You know how much these words legitimise violence,” Prime Minister Papandreou said.

Communist terrorists are likely involved in the violence. In April, six people were charged by the government for being members of the Communist terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle. When one of the suspect’s homes was searched, plots were future attacks were uncovered.

Graffiti sprayed on stores were signed with the anarchist symbol. Anarchists are also believed to behind various physical attacks on police officers, fire-bombings and acts of arson. The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt correctly wrote that “so far, the violence has mainly come from the anarchist fringe.” Anarchists have also attacked the Greek embassies in the Czech Republic and Argentina.

The words of The Morning Star, a newspaper in the United Kingdom that was founded by the British Communist Party and still operates in support of them, are telling. The newspaper had been drumming up support for an uprising over the past few months, predicting that “the militant movement…will fly the red flag in defence of public services, jobs, and wages,” and boasting of the role of the Greek Communist Party, PAME, and the Young Communists.

The newspaper said that the demonstrators would spread to other countries in Europe, just as we’re seeing now. The Associated Press confirms these groups’ role in the unrest, reporting that “the bulk of Thursday’s protest—organized by the Greek Communist Party…”

Greece has long struggled with far-left terrorists and extremists. The problem has decreased since the Cold War, but these elements remain potent and willing to attach themselves to legitimate political causes. For example, in January of last year, there was similar unrest. Members the Revolutionary Struggle shot a police officer trying to combat the riots. The violence by political extremists including anarchists escalated into May, with homemade explosives striking banks and businesses.

During that crisis, Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis accurately framed the purpose behind such violence. “Bullets fired against them [police officers] are primarily aimed against democracy and society at large,” he said. The political extremists do not seek changes in policy within the system. They want to overthrow the system. And the fall of the government remains a distinct possibility.

A senior government official has admitted, “We may have an uprising in the making.” Greece is particularly susceptible to revolutions. As BBC News wrote during the last major crisis that began in late 2008, “Rebellion is deeply embedded in the Greek psyche.”

An overview of Greece’s history during the last century shows that the country’s government has frequently changed between being various forms of a republic, monarchy and dictatorship with these changes often occurring via military coup, civil war, and domestic uprisings. Based on these patterns, a scenario where the current government falls is not something that can be discounted. Should this happen, the well-organized Communists are bound to make a power play.

The high debt levels that caused the controversy are very likely to play into the hands of Communists and other forces railing against capitalism. Reports that Goldman Sachs helped the government hide the extent of its deficit are going to significantly strengthen such voices. It is important that the Communist Party fail in its efforts to equate capitalism with corruption, oppression, and ultimate economic failure.

The Greek people and the media covering their crisis need to accurately report the motivations of those engaging in violence and acts of destruction. The Communists, the anarchists, and the other extremists behind these incidents are different than the average workers who are fed up with government incompetence and have decided to peacefully express themselves. They are acting on a vision they have long held to overthrow capitalism and democracy, and while the protestors are fighting for justice, they must be aware of the allies they keep that could bring them into an even greater crisis.

We have heard from the Obama administration that companies like General Motors or various major banks are simply “too big to fail”—a mantra whose meaning is ambiguous. On one interpretation, the sense is that such enormous enterprises, owing to the fallout attendant upon their collapse, should not be allowed to fail and need to be propped up by vast infusions of cash. At the same time, the implication is that what we might call “maximal structures” generate their own survival momentum, and while some tweaking here and there may prove beneficial they will continue to lumber on regardless. We must, it seems, have confidence in the incommensurably large. We must believe that what is “too big to fail” will either not fail or will not be permitted to fail

Analogously, we have been instructed that countries, unlike individuals and certain corporations, are too big to go bankrupt. Walter Wriston, former director of Citibank, is a firm believer in the fiscal resilience of nations. This is no consolation, however, to the people of Zimbabwe today or the citizens of Argentina between1999-2002 during the great economic meltdown. Christopher Booker and Richard Fernandez warn that Britain is on the verge of crashing: the accumulating debt to GDP ratio is frankly unsustainable. When the welfare cheques stop coming, when inflation goes through the roof, when banks invest in padlocks, when essential services are no longer provided and salaries are a fond reminiscence, a nation is effectively in bankruptcy—which is merely another term for failure. The French word for bankruptcy says it all: faillite.

There are, of course, many ways for a nation to approach the tipping point of potentially irreversible miscarriage. Economic implosion, as we have seen, is one; defenseless borders in times of conflict are another; unchecked immigration leading to ballooning social costs and a dilution of civic sentiment, as well as internal subversion, is a third; a flaccid, poorly educated and self-indulgent public unwilling to embrace austerity when necessary or bestir itself to the preservation of the polity is yet a fourth. Taken together, these factors amount to a perfect storm that will bring even a colossus to its knees.

Size in itself has nothing to do with viability. In fact, some things may be too big not to fail. The Roman Empire was pretty big and so was the Muslim imperium, but their long and undoubted success was the precondition for their inevitable collapse. Such dromocratic constructs tend to grow topheavy or the lines of communication between center and periphery weaken and fray. They peter out from misrule, debauch, apathy or torpor, or succumb to invasions and repeated military defeats, their scope and volume notwithstanding. This is also the case for more coherent entities. Classical Athens was a political and civic triumph until it began to expand far in excess of the optimal polis census of 5000 freeborn citizens.

But why stop there? By all accounts, the universe is a rather big place, but cosmology informs us that it will either dilate toward inescapable death by entropy or will reach a point when it begins to reverse its expansion, leading to a “big crunch.” “Either way,” as the Greek tragedian wrote in the Oresteia, “ruin.” If the universe can “fail,” then, presumably, anything can, irrespective of magnitude.

Which brings us to the United States of America, considerably smaller than the universe but large enough to inspire assurances of invulnerability among those inured to the lessons of history or given to intellectual complacency. The Bridge Mix of social, political and economic programs—redistribution of wealth, a bloated bureaucracy, reduction of military power, amnesty for illegals, toleration of inimical communities, government takeover of the marketplace, ideology supplanting pragmatics—adopted by the American liberal-left and rapidly being put in place by the current administration are hurtling the nation toward its moment of truth when it will have to decide whether it survives as the United States of America or devolves into something that, until just a few years ago, would have been almost unimaginable.

Often what seems to be inconceivable is only the prelude to what may well become unavoidable. And in the case of America such a scenario is all too possible. For America has only three options looming before it in a rapidly foreclosing future. The best case scenario is that, assuming a concerned citizenry, the growing Tea Party movement, a return to strict budgetary rectitude and a revival of the wisdom of the Constitution and the Founders, the United States may weather the storm of social and political dismemberment it is presently undergoing and recover its essence as a constitutional republic. To accomplish this aim, however, the policies of the Obama administration must be resisted at every turn. What Henry David Thoreau wrote in On the Duty of Civil Disobedience in 1848 has a proleptic ring to it and is truer today than it ever was: “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

On the other hand the calamity of disintegration, as happened to the Soviet Union not so long ago, is a deeply troubling likelihood. The drive toward secession or what is called “disunion” along red state/blue state lines appears to be acquiring strength by the day. It is in the air. The threat of dissolution cannot be wished away or conveniently ignored. Whether such a parting of ways can be achieved peaceably and rationally or would entail violence and bloodshed remains an open question. But what resembles a bitter marriage between cultural incompatibles, the statist Left and the conservative Right, who have nothing to say to one another and disagree on just about everything, makes an eventual divorce by no means unthinkable. The clash between a pervasive scavenger mentality of collective entitlement and the ancestral belief in the values of personal initiative and individual responsibility cannot, it increasingly appears, be resolved amicably.

The third possibility is that America under the stewardship of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will become an impoverished, socialist, Muslim-friendly country, much like the United Kingdom today or Sweden tomorrow, with devastating consequences for the majority of its citizens. As David Horowitz remarks of the U.S., “its constitutional order is threatened by a political left whose values remain socialist and whose agendas are subversive.” Such is the fundamental transformation promised by the Democratic candidate five days before his election: the intent to legislate outcome at the expense of input, to ensure a syndicalist homogeneity of status among the population while installing a privileged managerial class in the seats of power, and ultimately to transform America’s most industrious entrepreneurial sector into over-taxed and over-regulated obsolescence. Where have we seen this before?

These, then, are the three alternatives between which America will have to choose: recovery, dissolution, socialism. Regarding the latter two, to cite Aeschylus once more, it’s “either way, ruin.” Clearly, the moment of decision is not far down the road. Even a one-term administration for Barack Obama and his cohorts may be sufficient to wreak irreparable damage; a two-term presidency would probably spell the end of the noble and unique American experiment in republican democracy. For there can be little question that Barack Obama and the Democratic ascendancy together form the single greatest disaster to befall the United States in the modern era. If the country does not right itself sooner rather than later, it will find itself broken down the middle or wake up one day to discover that it is now nothing more than another socialist or quasi-Marxist Republic, which is a republic in name only.

Thoreau is on the mark again. Deploring the effects of a “wordy” and ever-compliant Congress which had “not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and freedom” and which was devoid of “talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufactures,” he argues that without the “seasonable experience…of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.” And we remember, too, that the United States was a much smaller political entity in 1848 than it is in 2010.

Now is not the time to take refuge in the smug conviction of indestructibility. America is not too big to fail and it may well be too big not to fail. But one thing is undeniable. As it approaches the eleventh hour, its survival depends on a determined and informed citizen “army” of genuine patriots capable of restoring the practical ideal of limited government and of conserving the proper balance between the state and the nation, the governors and the people, the collective and the individual, equality and liberty. Should that come to pass, America may recoup its forfeitures and at least partially retrieve the grandeur of its heritage.

And this, it goes almost without saying, is the real meaning of hope and change.

Skyrocketing to the top of the prime-ministerial polls, sleek-but-shallow Brit politician Nicholas Clegg apparently misses Saddam.  And Clegg’s not alone in the resurgent dictators’ fan club.

The shiny young face of the UK’s usually lagging third party, the Liberal Democrats, Clegg may upend British politics in the May 6 elections.  One key to his stunning rise has been his dismissal of the “special relationship” with the US as out of date and worthless.

President Obama’s cool with that, but it’s hard to see who would respect a decoupled-from-Washington UK in the morning.  Anti-Americanism plays well in Britain, though.  (What, no Obama effect?).

Anti-Americanism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

Still, the real danger from Nick Clegg isn’t that he’s going to change everything, but that, behind the campaign flash, he’s the most ideologically backward party leader Britain’s seen since the 1970s.  He damns Cold-War thinking, even as he wallows in it.

And Clegg isn’t alone.  Around the world, bright-young-thing politicians are turning back the clock.  While fashionably damning nukes, they embrace the worst practices of the past with enthusiasm.

To wit: Clegg made a very public point of calling the intervention in Iraq “illegal.”  To the likes of Clegg (a perfect name for a Dickensian villain), it was legal for Saddam to torture, rape and massacre his own countrymen—under the bloody notion that whatever happens within a country’s borders is that state’s business alone.

Of course, Clegg and Co. also overlook Saddam’s two wars of aggression against neighboring states, while averting their polished gazes from the budding democracy in Iraq.  Clegg’s point is just that “America is bad.”  It’s lazy, destructive—but effective—politics.

Does Clegg truly believe that Saddam deserved to remain in power?  Or that the world would be a better place if he still ruled?

At 43, Clegg’s even younger than our own new-model president.  But the two men have in common a heartbreaking (and bone-breaking) sympathy for murderous dictatorships–as long as the dictator’s roots are on the left.

The immoral notion that a strongman can seize power, then do anything he wants to his countrymen with impunity because his state’s borders are sacrosanct—what I’ve called “the sovereignty con”–has excused immeasurable suffering.

President Bush, for all his practical errors, grasped that a genocidal dictator’s claims of sovereignty are bogus, that the only true legitimacy comes from the will of the people.

Bush did a great thing inexcusably badly in Iraq.  Still, for a few years, dictators shaped up.  In the end, though, a critical new ideal—that dictators can be held accountable for their inhumanity—was discredited by incompetence on the ground and the stunning bias of the media—whose propagandists, once suckled by Saddam, would sacrifice the lives of others to “get Bush.”

The Bush-haters won (Congratulations!  Why not visit a few mass graves on your next eco-friendly vacation?).  Now we’re back in the old, monstrous tradition of tolerating dictators.

The establishment media are fine with that.  When a journalist of authentic conscience, such as the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl, does get into print with a column describing “Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista thugocracy” in Nicaragua, he gets a grand total of six column inches.

Where’s the outrage, either from our elected leaders, or from wannabes such as Clegg, or from the media over Hugo Chavez’s destruction of Venezuela’s once-proud democracy?  At this month’s Nuclear Vanity Summit in D.C., Obama literally embraced Argentina’s corrupt and scheming President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Clegg’s pure white-bread, but Obama would be the perfect man to take on African dictators, such as Zimbabwe’s barbarous Robert Mugabe.  And what has our president done for human rights in Africa?  Nothing.

This convenient, murderous belief that what happens in Country X stays in Country X condemns billions of human beings to political slavery and, too often, to death.  It means that we continue to pretend that Afghanistan and Somalia are an actual countries, or that the brutal oppression in Eritrea is nobody’s business but that of the country’s dictatorship.  Or that Tehran’s butchers have every right to gun down, imprison, rape and torture protesters.

Well, Nick Clegg, who has an unexpected shot at becoming Britain’s next prime minister, may miss Saddam.  But Iraqis don’t.

As for the US, it seems that the only borders we don’t regard as sacred are our own.

The headline, “Vatican Aids Eichmann to Escape” is splashed on Page One of the Jerusalem Post. Of course my stomach turns, I’m a Roman Catholic. My husband and I have spent the past five years conducting research and documenting the growth of anti-Semitism in some conservative Catholic organizations, so I have no difficulty in believing that there could have been pro-fascists in the clergy who would have been disposed to help even Eichmann evade justice and hide in Argentina.

I assume the article will announce the declassification of previously sealed files that confirm that Priests or Bishops actually helped the Architect of the Holocaust escape from Germany, and I brace for impact. By the time I am done reading, I have learned nothing more than that a German advocacy group, the BND, headed by investigative journalist, Gabriele Weber, has requested a 4, 500 page file concerning Eichmann be declassified.

“There is good reason to believe [Eichmann] received help from German, Italian and Vatican officials.”

That’s it? That merits being sensationalized as, “Vatican Aided Eichmann?” The entire question of the Roman Catholic Church’s involvement in the Holocaust is a mine-field, capable of alienating human beings whose deepest mutual benefit demands that utmost respect for the truth be demonstrated by all who speak to this issue. The Holocaust was the fruit of lies, some, centuries old. Perversion of the truth is at the heart of the murder of 6,000,000 innocent men, women, and children.

This evil can only be justly deplored, expiated, and prevented from reoccurring by speaking the truth. If the Vatican releases the documents and these prove involvement by high, or even the highest officials, then so be it. Until that time, announcing as fact that which is unsubstantiated conjecture is irresponsible and not worthy of a serious journalist concerned with veracity.

Far more serious is the failure to properly research the background of the man named by the Post as the Vatican Official, Alois Hudal. In 1937, then Pope Piux XI wrote and ordered read in all the churches of Germany, an officical letter Mit Brennender Sorge, With Much Bitterness. The letter condemned the doctrine of the Nazis and warned Catholics to have nothing to do with Hitler.

Bishop Hudal, stationed at Rome to minister to the congreation of Austrian Catholics there, wrote two books in favor of the Nazi teachings and deplored the stance the Pope had taken against the Nazis. The Vatican responded with disapproval and the Bishop, who had been promoted prior to his pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic stand, fell from favor and was sent away from Rome after the War. Far from being a‘‘ Vatican Official,“ Hudal was repudiated by the Pope for his pro-Nazi position.

In 2003, Rabbi David G. Dalin, a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s James Madison Program, wrote of Hudal in his article, When Religion is Bigotry:Daniel Goldhagen slanders the Catholic Church:

“The recently released memoirs of Adolf Eichmann also contain new evidence disproving Goldhagen’s claim. The memoirs confirm that Vatican protests played a crucial part in obstructing Nazi intentions for Roman Jews. Eichmann wrote that the Vatican “vigorously protested the arrest of Jews, requesting the interruption of such action.’ At Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Israeli attorney general Gideon Hausner said, “the pope himself intervened personally in support of the Jews of Rome.” Documents introduced at the trial provide further evidence of Vatican efforts to halt the arrest and deportation of Roman Jews.”

“No accusation is too preposterous for Goldhagen to accept. Commenting on the Vatican’s alleged link to Nazi war criminals, he claims that Alois Hudal, an Austrian prelate and Nazi sympathizer, was “an important Catholic bishop at the Vatican,” as well as a “close friend” and “confidant” of Pius XII. Indeed, he adds, both Pius XII and the future Paul VI actively supported Hudal in his criminal assistance to fleeing Nazi war criminals.”

“As it happens, Alois Hudal was never a bishop “at the Vatican,” much less an “important” one, but rather an obscure rector of the Collegio dell’ Anima in Rome, where he was placed to confine him to a post of little significance. Hudal also was never a “close friend” of Pius XII or Montini.”

“In fact, Hudal’s memoirs bitterly attack the Vatican for steadfastly refusing an alliance with Nazi Germany to combat “godless Bolshevism.” Far from assisting Nazi war criminals in their escape, Pius XII authorized the American Jesuit Edmund Walsh to submit to the War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg a dossier documenting Nazi war crimes and atrocities. The recent book by David Alvarez, “Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & Intrigue from Napoleon to the Holocaust,” shows how much Hitler distrusted and despised Pius XII.”

Serious scholars continue to research and clarify of the role played by Catholics in the Holocaust, both the despicable and the heroic. Hastening to impugn the Vatican in this matter is a lack of due diligence that trivializes the demonic guilt of the truly culpable.

STOCKHOLM - Sweden's parliament narrowly approved a resolution Thursday recognizing the 1915 mass killing of Armenians in Turkey as genocide, prompting the Turkish government to recall its ambassador in protest.

The measure passed with a one-vote margin in a surprise decision that came a week after a U.S. congressional committee approved a similar resolution.

Sweden's governing center-right coalition opposed the measure but it passed in a 131-130 vote because a handful of center-right lawmakers broke party lines. Eighty-eight lawmakers were absent in the 349-seat assembly.

"After 95 years it is time for people who have suffered so long to obtain redress," said Gulan Avci, a Liberal Party lawmaker who broke her party's line and backed the measure, which had been proposed by the left-leaning opposition. Avci is a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

Turkey recalled its ambassador to Sweden immediately after the vote and the Anatolia news agency reported that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled a visit to Sweden on March 17.

"We condemn the decision. Our government, and our people strongly reject the resolution crippled by big mistakes and devoid of basis," the Turkish government said in a statement.

The resolution also labeled as genocide the killings of Assyrians and Pontian Greeks, ethnic groups that also suffered under the Ottoman Turks.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said he regretted the Parliament's decision, saying it "will unfortunately not have a positive effect on the ongoing normalization process between Turkey and Armenia."

The U.S. congressional committee approved a similar measure there in a 23-22 vote that would send it to the full House of Representatives, if the leadership decided to bring it up. Minutes after the vote, Turkey withdrew its ambassador to the U.S.

Turkish Ambassador to Sweden Zergun Koruturk told Anatolia that the Parliament's decision was harmful for relations between the two countries.

"I hope they are aware of the damage done here," she said.

Countries recognizing the genocide include Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Russia, Canada, Lebanon, Belgium, Greece, Italy, the Vatican, France, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania and Cyprus.

Cue the sad noise when Mario dies by mushroom: federal agents have charged three Miami businessmen with conspiring to smuggle videogame consoles to a shopping center in Paraguay that funds political terrorist group Hezbollah.

Khaled T. Safadi, Ulises Talavera, and Emilio Gonzalez-Neira were arrested Thursday following a nearly three-year investigation of their Miami-based export and freight-forwarding businesses. ICE agents working with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force say the three falsified invoices and export paperwork and used a network of fake addresses to mask the true destination of thousands of Sony cameras and Playstations: the Galeria Page Mall in Cuidad del Este.

The U.S. Treasury has identified Galeria Page as the headquarters for Lebanon-based Hezbollah in the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay; they say the manager pays a regular quota to Hezbollah based on the center's sales.

Federal prosecutors say wire transfer payments to the Miami shippers from their contact at Galeria Page, Paraguayan national Samer Mehdi, were routed through various other business to conceal their origin. Mehdi has also been charged but remains at large.

A source said the alleged smuggling ring made "hundreds of millions" of dollars for Hezbollah....

One way to reduce the wear and tear of Christmas shopping at the mall is to give books as presents. Books can be bought on the Internet, and they can be matched to the person who receives them without having to know that person’s measurements.

Dick Morris’ new book — “Catastrophe”— is an education in itself, on politics, on economics and on foreign policy. It is a strong antidote to the pious rhetoric and spin that come out of Washington and the media. Partly this is because Dick Morris was once a Beltway insider— an adviser to President Bill Clinton— who knows first-hand the ugly realities behind the pretty words that politicians use and that much of the media repeat.

Morris’ argument in “Catastrophe”— whose title tells us where he sees us headed— is backed up by numerous hard facts and supported by an understanding of history and economics. Most of all, it is supported by an understanding of politics as it is, rather than the way it is depicted by politicians and the media.

Dick Morris can also cut through a blizzard of political spin with a few plain words. In describing Barack Obama’s economic policies, Morris says simply: “Curing the recession was not his end; it was his means to the end. The end was bigger government.” Obama’s actions often make no sense if you believe Obama’s words, but they do make sense if you follow Dick Morris’ analysis.

A revised edition of Angelo Codevilla’s classic book, “The Character of Nations,” has been published this year, and it too is an education in itself. “The Character of Nations” is less focussed on immediate domestic political issues— though it does analyze the contrasting responses of the intelligentsia to Sarah Palin and Barack Obama— but it is focussed more on the underlying cultural developments that affect how nations work— or don’t work.

The very title of “The Character of Nations” is a challenge to the prevailing ideology that denies or downplays underlying differences among individuals, groups and nations. There are many examples of these differences. For example, Professor Codevilla says: “While it is unimaginable to do business in China without paying bribes, to offer one in Japan is the greatest faux pas.”

He sees the things that are valued differently in different cultures as the key to everything from economic progress to personal freedom.

But these values are not set in stone— which means that countries which currently benefit from a given set of values can lose those benefits when those values get lost.

Codevilla says: “The reason why inhabitants of the First World should keep the Third world in mind is that habits prevalent in the countries that became known as the Third World are a set of human possibilities that any people anywhere can adopt at any time. As Argentina showed in the twentieth Century, falling from the First World to the Third can be easy and quick.”

Another revised and very valuable book is “Choosing the Right College,” published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This latest edition is once again by far the best college guide in America. Like many of us, it has put on weight over the years and is now 1,084 pages long, but its weight is all muscle.

First of all, “Choosing the Right College” asks the right question: What is the right college for you, not what is the “best” college by some formula for ranking colleges and universities. In addition to a very thorough examination of the academic realities at these institutions, it goes into the social atmosphere, which can make or break the whole college experience in terms of what is right for a particular student.

College is, after all, not just a school but a home, for four long years— usually for people who are living away from home for the first time in their lives. Being in the wrong place, in terms of neighbors and atmosphere, can ruin the academic advantages of even the best institution. This book helps match particular students with particular places, which is what is crucial.

My own books published this year include “The Housing Boom and Bust,” which made the New York Times best-seller list.

Another book of mine this year was the revised and enlarged edition of “Applied Economics,” which has a long chapter on the economics of medical care, including the experience of other countries that have gone down the road to government control of medicine. Their experience should be a warning to us all.

The decade-long attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may have entered the final round on Sunday when Iran announced to the world it intended to build ten new uranium enrichment sites.

“This is really a statement of defiance,” a former senior Israeli atomic official told The Wall Street Journal, “telling the world we are going to go ahead with our nuclear program.”

The Iranian government’s statement came only two days after the world’s major powers condemned Iran’s nuclear program, which, despite Iranian denials, is believed to be producing nuclear weapons. China and Russia joined the United States, France, Britain and Germany to support an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution ordering Iran to stop construction on the uranium enrichment plant near Qom, a secret facility whose existence President Obama revealed last September.

Due to the international criticism, Iranians are now threatening to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. North Korea is the only other country ever to have pulled out of the treaty.

According to news reports, the Iranian decision to thumb their nose at the U.N. and world opinion and construct new nuclear fuel refinement facilities was made Sunday evening at a cabinet meeting chaired by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad. The Iranians will start work on five of the new sites within two months and at an unspecified future time on the remaining five.

It is believed the reason for the extra facilities is to allow Iran to build more nuclear bombs. One military analyst says U.N. weapons inspectors and the U.S. Department of Defense are of the opinion Iran currently has enough enriched fuel for one nuclear weapon. Iran would like to have several more in order to present itself as a “credible threat.”

The Iranian announcement signals a defeat for President Obama’s ‘soft’ approach towards the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite television network last January, Obama said Iran’s leaders would find the extended hand of diplomacy if they “unclenched” their fists.

“As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Obama said.

But as early as March there were already signs that Iran was in no mood to unclench and drop the rock it was holding in the form of its nuclear weapons program. That month, President Obama released a video, wishing the Iranians a happy New Year, which, in Iran, falls on the first day of spring. In return for his friendly overture, the American president received from the Iranian government nothing but a demand for apologies for America’s past transgressions, real or imagined, against Iran.

Sunday’s statement simply proves what most have suspected all along: One cannot talk to the Iranian leaders and that they are simply stringing out negotiations to complete their nuclear arms program. And the fact the Iranians still celebrate the 1979 American embassy seizure every November, a flagrant and criminal breach of international law, shows they do not want to talk to the United States in particular and are still willing to flout international norms.

Essentially, Iran’s leaders are religious fanatics who believe they have been chosen by God to establish a Shiite hegemony over the majority Sunni Islamic world and then, hopefully, over the whole planet. Of the world’s one billion Muslims, about 220 million are minority Shiites, of whom the largest number, about 62 million, live in Iran. Pakistan contains the next largest community of Shiites at 33 million, while India is third with 30 million and Iraq fourth with 18 million.

Iran’s mullah regime sees possessing nuclear weapons as instrumental to its plans for world domination. Nuclear arms would also add significant muscle to Iran’s security in a part of the world where any sign of weakness or vulnerability could be dangerous. Iranians have not forgotten how Iraq took advantage of Iran’s revolutionary turmoil to launch a devastating eight-year war against it in 1980. And like Russia with its former Eastern European satellites, Iran would also use nuclear weapons to intimidate weaker neighbors.

The Asia Times columnist, Spengler (a literary pseudonym), gives another reason why Iran is not afraid to seek confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Iranian demographics have sunk to West German levels of about 1.6 children per woman, which would make waging a war in 20 years impossible. Iran currently has enough young men to embark on a military adventure, whether internally for nuclear weapons acquisition or externally against the Sunni world, while in twenty years it won’t.

Iran’s heavily-subsidized economy is also imploding. Like Argentina with its 1982 Falkland Islands’ invasion and Germany in 1939, economically it is now or never for Iran to make a grab for the ring. In a year’s time it may be too late, especially if oil prices drop dramatically again. Besides, again like Argentina, a military adventure would probably cause those Iranian people actively opposed to the regime to put aside their economic and political grievances and rally around the country’s leadership in nationalistic pride.

But if Iran wants a fight, it will most likely get one. The Islamic regime’s Holocaust-denying leadership has openly stated it wants to erase Israel from the map. Facing such a naked threat to their country’s existence, one military publication states the Israelis are now openly discussing using a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Israel’s Jericho missiles can carry nuclear warheads, they also can be equipped with a conventional warhead. An attack by Israeli warplanes is also a possibility.

The Israelis already have American backing for such a strike if negotiations fail, as they appear to have. American Vice-President Joe Biden said in an ABC interview last July America would not prevent an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since the only other option would be a nuclear-armed Iran, the Israelis will now likely ensure this last round ends in a knockout.