THE RACIAL RADICALISM OF KAMALA HARRIS

                It was only a matter of time before the legion of leftist lunatics seeking the Democrat presidential nomination was divided between front-runners and laggards by political, financial, and media realities. 

                Although some 22 or 23 motley candidates remain in technical contention, the polls, media coverage, and contribution data seem to have reduced the field even at this early stage to four realistic leading candidates:  Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders.  Some would add the Rainbow Mayor of embattled South Bend, Peter Buttigieg, but he is now much closer to the hapless 2 percenters in the polls (he's at about 5% nationally) than he is to the four leaders (who range from three now clustered at 12-15% to leader Biden at 29%).  Such early polls can be sharply misleading if relied upon for precise outcome projections, of course, but here we are only talking about a gross division between the broad categories of leaders and laggards.

                Beyond this general division, however, influential elements of the Democrat-Left and its mainstream media arm seem to have settled upon one candidate in particular as their early favorite, despite Biden's lead in the polls:  Senator Kamala Harris of California.  Even some influential Republicans, like ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have touted Harris as the likely Democrat nominee.

                In a sane and sensible political environment, Harris would hardly seem to have the right stuff for a front-running presidential candidate.  On the national stage, she has little to show in terms of experience or accomplishment:  Barely two years of utterly undistinguished service as a U.S. Senator.  Period.  No significant legislation or successful policy initiative bears her name, and whatever senatorial prominence she had gained before seeking the presidency derived solely from her obnoxious, ill-tempered, and duplicitous outbursts in contentious committee hearings. 

                                                                         

                                                                                     lousalvador.home.blog
         Harris is closer to Al Sharpton than she is to reasonable positions on race.

                Similarly, her earlier service as Attorney General of California was at best undistinguished and at worst inept and dishonest.  Among other derelictions, she refused to take any position on a package of major criminal sentencing-reform initiatives which a strong attorney general would have pounced upon, one way or the other; she notoriously failed to prosecute Steve Mnuchin's California bank, OneWest, despite evidence "suggestive of widespread misconduct," while later accepting Mnuchin's donations to her senatorial campaign; and she arrogantly refused to defend Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure resoundingly approved by California voters affirming that marriage is solely between a man and a woman, leaving the measure undefended in federal court and effectively overriding a crucially important vote of the people.

                But actual accomplishments and effective leadership experience are not the qualities the Democrat Left favors in seeking presidential candidates.  If they were, Barack Obama would not have been the Democrats' nominee in 2008, when his sparse qualifications were eerily similar to those now presented by Kamala Harris. 

                Rather, today's Democrats are obsessed with considerations of race, gender, leftist ideology, and rabid hostility towards President Trump and his supporters in choosing their leaders.  Moreover, the Democrats have abandoned any reliance upon the ameliorating qualities of tactful charm and conciliatory style (as opposed to substance) that enabled Obama to conceal his leftist orientation from the clueless middle of the electorate in 2008 and 2012.  Current candidates like Harris, Warren, and Sanders have made it clear they are in no mood to charm or conciliate the roughly one-half of America's populace who support President Trump.  Quite the contrary.

                In this environment, the ascendancy of Kamala Harris as the anointed favorite of the Democrat and Media Left seems almost inevitable.  She is a photogenic female who flies the colors of black ethnicity, even though she is more Asiatic Indian than Black American (her father descends from Jamaican Blacks and her mother from Asiatic Indians).  This ethnic ambiguity does not seem to trouble genuine Black Americans from considering her one of their own – although the jury is still out on that --  while it enables her to extend her minority/ethnic appeal to South Asian-Americans. 

                Thus, Harris punches both the women's and minority cards.  This in itself gives her near-decisive advantages over the white male and white female candidates, not to mention over the single significant black male candidate, Senator  Booker of New Jersey.  Further, Harris fervidly endorses all the Left's favored social and sexual issues, like unlimited abortion, homosexual predominance, and the subordination of female privacy and modesty to the demands of trans-sexual intruders (i.e., she supports the radical legislation making sex or gender a matter of personal election, rather than biological reality, for purposes of federal law).  She also advocates the legalization of prostitution.

                But for whatever reason, powerful elements of the Democratic establishment, its hard-left political base, and especially the leftist mainstream media seem determined to anoint Sen. Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee -- and then assure her election "by all means necessary."

                If this grim prospect doesn't shock and infuriate all sane and sensible Americans, it should.  Because Kamala Harris, plain and simple, is a radical, afro-racist, anti-white, left-wing virago.  She should be allowed no closer to the presidency than earth is to the Crab Nebula.

                Harris's obsession with radical race-based programs and policies that benefit blacks and penalize whites (and in some cases Hispanics and East Asians as well) is open, unambiguous, and utterly unapologetic.

                She apparently believes that her race-focused approach will ingratiate her with the Democrat-Left base, yet fail to offend the moderates and independents needed to win a general election.  She is probably right on the former point, but the latter is dubious.  If not, we are in for difficult times indeed.

                Harris was one of the first and foremost of the Democrat candidates to openly support the spiteful, divisive, outdated, and obscenely unfair proposal of so-called economic reparations for slavery.  A reparations program for a slavery system that the White Americans of the Union dismantled with their blood, sweat, and treasury over 150 years ago would be unworkable, dysfunctional, unjust, and racially incendiary.  That is why even liberal advocates of race-based remedies (like President Obama) rejected reparations long ago as a hopelessly unworkable delusion – until its recent resurrection from the policy graveyard by afro-racist radicals and, subsequently, by pandering presidential candidates like Kamala Harris.

                Harris doesn't care that such reparations would forcibly transfer money (via taxes) from lower- and middle-class whites, Hispanics, and East Asians who had nothing to do with slavery to wealthy blacks (like herself) who were born a century or more after its abolition.  Millions of the putative black recipients of reparations have thrived and prospered in a legal and governmental system so far removed from slavery that blacks have long been systematically favored over whites under affirmative action and preference programs governing employment, education, housing, and extension of credit.  Harris completely discounts over fifty years of such government preferences and multi-billion-dollar grant and subsidy programs that have already benefitted millions of blacks (including those descended from slaves) without resorting to the unworkable and divisive procedures that would be entailed by a vindictive reparations program.

                As though her advocacy of reparations were not radical enough, Senator Harris has further proposed the resurrection of the insidious school busing programs that most Americans (blacks included) had considered rightfully dead and buried. 

                Harris brought the moribund busing issue back to life with a cheap shot against Mr. Biden in the Democratic debate, where she sanctimoniously portrayed herself as some kind of California Rosa Parks, bravely integrating segregated schools in, of all places, Berkeley, California.  The leftist media and political establishment swooned and gave her great plaudits for this subterfuge, when she should have been sharply condemned for her bald-faced fraud and hypocrisy.  The Berkeley schools were simply not segregated, and Ms. Harris' bus rides to a good public school had all the danger and drama of a suburban princess riding her bus to the Montessori School.

                Apart from falsely portraying herself as a brave heroine of desegregation, Harris's support for forcibly busing children from their natural neighborhood schools into distant and sometimes dangerous schools represents another example of her brazenly wrong-headed anti-white ideology.  Until extreme racial pandering gained prominence in the current democrat presidential campaigns, forced busing to achieve some desired level of racial balancing had been decisively rejected (and largely forgotten) not only by politicians, courts, and policymakers but also by both white and black parents.  It is a measure of her racial radicalism that Kamala Harris would advocate the resurrection of such a toxic and divisive policy, with reckless disregard for its divisive and damaging consequences.

                Not content with her incendiary advocacy of renewed racial busing, Harris further upped the racial ante by proposing an enormous, budget-busting program of race-based housing subsidies for blacks.  Specifically, Harris proposes to spend $100 billion of taxpayer funds to help black families buy the homes of their choice.  See https://www.bizpacreview.com/2019/07/07/kamala-harris-bribes-black-voters-100-billion-in-taxpayer-money-for-housing-772368. 

                As Harris explained her plan:  "After generations of discrimination, it’s time to give Black families a real shot at homeownership. . . . If we eliminate racial wealth disparities in homeownership rates, median Black wealth would grow $32,113 per household, and the wealth gap between Black and white households would shrink 31%.”  In fact, the federal government has been discriminating in favor of blacks in housing policy for decades, not the other way around.  It was ill-conceived government programs to eliminate minimal credit standards – e.g., through the Community Reinvestment Act -- to facilitate black home ownership that were largely responsible for the disastrous housing and financial bubble crisis of 2008-09.  Now Harris wants to do it all again, at catastrophic cost to taxpayers and the economcy, all in furtherance of her egregious political pandering to black democrats and their leftist cheerleaders.

                Even while this post was being written, Harris has proposed yet another multi-billion dollar race-based program in her seemingly inexhaustible pandering to black voters and the guilt-ridden, self-hating white leftists.  As though trillions for reparations and $100 billion for black housing were not enough extravagance, Harris now promises to invest an additional $60 billion in historically black colleges (HBC's) – schools that already receive an enormous amount of federal financial support even while they often discriminate against non-blacks.  But Harris was still not done spending your money to buy herself more votes.  Before the ink was dry on her HBC give-away plan, she announced an additional $12 billion for so-called "entrepeneurship" programs devoted to the black community.

                Needless to say, the expenditure of these absurdly astronomical amounts of federal funds on handouts to the 13% black portion of the population is nothing less than fiscal and budgetary insanity – wholly apart from the resentment and discord it would incite among elements of the population who would pay for the very programs that exclude them on racial grounds.  Yet the reckless and radical Senator Harris seems utterly oblivious to the disastrous consequences inherent in her proposals.

                In that respect, a critical thread that runs through Harris's racialist proposals is her utter disregard for the constitutional standards that limit such programs. 

                Government grants or preferences based on racial classifications are subject to the equal protection standards of the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments.  Specifically, such programs must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government objective under settled Supreme Court precedents, notably the 1995 case of Adarand v. Pena.  Harris's race-based proposals are unlikely to satisfy these constitutional standards.  Merely granting generalized benefits to blacks, or seeking to remove generic disparities between white and black wealth or income, do not constitute compelling government objectives under the governing precedents; in any event, Harris's grossly overinclusive programs are anything but "narrowly tailored." 

                Although Harris is an experienced lawyer and former state attorney general, she appears wholly oblivious of the demanding constitutional standards that her race-based programs must satisfy.  As a demagogue of the left, however, Harris scorns the rule of law and the Constitution whenever it stands in the way of her pandering political proposals.

                A final racial issue that Senator Harris exploits is the mindlessly repeated falsehood that the death penalty discriminates against blacks.  As Harris has stated, "“As a career law enforcement official, I have opposed the death penalty because it is immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars."  Specifically, she claims that black and Latino defendants are more likely to be executed than white defendants. 

                Piling on the demagoguery, Harris has further stated:  “The symbol of our justice system is a woman with a blindfold.  It is supposed to treat all equally, but the application of the death penalty — a final and irreversible punishment — has been proven to be unequally applied.”  She therefore promises, if elected, to support abolition of the federal death penalty.

                But as repeatedly demonstrated on this blog and elsewhere, Harris's claim that the death penalty is discriminatorily applied against blacks is patently and demonstrably false.  Not only false, but the opposite of the truth.

                What makes Harris's phony claim especially disturbing is that the facts which contradict it are so emphatically clear and readily available.  One need only click on the easily accessible databases of the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to confirm that for at least the last three decades the death penalty has been imposed disproportionally against whites rather than blacks.

                Simply put, for decades blacks have consistently committed slightly over 50% of U.S. murders (the only crime for which the death penalty is constitutionally permitted), yet represent only about 33% of those executed.  Recent years have emphatically reinforced this pattern of disproportionate execution of white defendants in the U.S.  In 2016, for example, out of 20 total executions in the U.S., 18 were white.  See BJS, Captal Punishment, 2016, Table 2 (April 2018).  Year after year, the pattern confirmed by BJS and FBI data is the same:  Blacks commit slightly more than half of U.S. murders, but white defendants predominate among those executed.  Yet racial agitators like Kamala Harris persist in perpetrating the canard that the death penalty is disproportionately imposed on black and minority defendants.  It is a Big Lie of grotesque proportions.

                On issue after issue – reparations, forced busing, privileged federal handouts for blacks, and race-based death penalty demagoguery – Kamala Harris pursues radical programs and policies that expressly favor blacks at the expense of the blameless non-black citizens who must fund or endure them.  If this does not constitute racist politics, it is hard to imagine what would.  At a time when the country is already burdened by toxic racial divisions, the nomination or election of this deeply divisive radical would be disastrous.

EX-DOJ FLASH-MOB'S BOGUS LEGAL PROTEST

                  On May 6, a purported "Statement by Former Federal Prosecutors" (FFP Statement) was released to bolster assaults on President Trump tied to the notorious Mueller Report.  The statement was organized by a Democrat-dominated anti-Trump organization called Protect Democracy.  Among the rabid Never-Trumpers associated with this group is the notorious Watergate felon and turncoat, John Dean, which tells you all you need to know about the group that instigated this duplicitous broadside.

                Since the media trumpeted the statement as though it were the thoughtful declaration of a latter-day Madison or Mason – rather than a partisan press release instantly endorsed by an Internet flash mob of Justice Department pensioners – a word is in order to place this misleading document in perspective.  It is, in fact, merely the latest in a series of similar anti-Trump productions, organized and orchestrated by Protect Democracy – and signed by a similar cast of characters.

                The statement purports to present the opinion of 400 or more "former federal prosecutors"  – meaning DOJ attorneys who once prosecuted criminal cases in federal courts – that the facts presented in the Mueller Report would warrant the pursuit of multiple felony charges against President Trump for obstruction of justice.  The statement acknowledges, however, that under the authoritative opinion of DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (where this writer formerly served as a Senior Counsel) a sitting President is not indictable.  Since the FFP Statement thus represents nothing more than the ineffectual fulmination of these former feds on a theoretical issue outside their purview, the question arises why they considered it necessary to put in their two cents?  The answer, of course, is that the statement's purpose is political, not legal.

                                                                         

      Protect Democracy's Legion of ex-DOJ Lawyers mobilized as quickly as a Flash Mob

                A highly experienced and credentialed Attorney General, who has ultimate authority to determine the issue, has carefully concluded that the Mueller Report does not provide the basis for an obstruction prosecution against the President (wholly apart from his constitutional immunity).  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – hardly a Trump sympathizer -- joined him in that conclusion.  Attorney General Bill Barr has been confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for OLC (an elite office which is a proving ground for Supreme Court Justices), Deputy Attorney General, and twice as Attorney General.  Few attorneys in U.S. Government history, if any, can match those credentials.  The notion that this highly accomplished legal giant needs instruction from a nondescript horde of functus officio DOJ careerists is risible.

                In any event, the origins, integrity, and authenticity of the FFP Statement are deeply suspect for a variety of reasons.

                Initially, the very first sentence of the FFP Statement is false.  It declares:  "We are former federal prosecutors."  But anyone who takes the considerable trouble to locate and decipher the statement's organic list of signatories will find that many of the signers were merely garden variety DOJ attorneys or bureaucrats who were not prosecutors.  The signers include, among many other non-prosecutors, attorneys in the following eclectic positions:  Intelligence Analyst, GS-14; Professional Responsibilities Adviser; Assistant Director, Office of Legal Education; Health Care Fraud Coordinator; Office of U.S. Trustee attorney; LEAA Administrator; various generic INS lawyers and immigration judges; purely civil attorneys from the Tax, Civil Rights, and Environment and Natural Resources Divisions;  Attorney Adviser;  Office of Pardon Attorney; and any number of undistinguished characters who described themselves with nothing more revealing than "Attorney," "Trial Attorney" or "Trial Counsel."  

               How or why such defunct legal bureaucrats are deemed qualified to denigrate the determination of a remarkably accomplished and experienced Attorney General  and former OLC Chief is anybody's guess.  In any event, it is evident that the FEP Statement's assurance that the authenticity of signers was "vetted to the best of our ability" is meaningless.

                The sheer duplicity of this collective legal salvo is further underscored by the utterly unprofessional – and suspicious -- circumstances surrounding its production, circulation, and endorsement.  

                The mainstream media would have us believe that hundreds of former prosecutors each closely analyzed the Mueller Report and reached a professional determination that the President was indictable.  The reality is that an eclectic digital throng of retired DOJ lawyers merely "clicked" their endorsement of the Project Democracy statement in the functional equivalent of hitting the "Like" button on a Facebook posting.

                The Mueller Report is an extremely complex and elaborate 448-page legal document painstakingly compiled by a team of experienced attorneys following a lengthy and arduous process.  It was released on April 24 of this year.  The FFP Statement, with its hundreds of "signers" already rounded-up, was released only twelve days later, on May 6.  It is unclear (and undisclosed) exactly who drafted the statement; one suspects it was attorneys associated with Protect Democracy, inasmuch as that group "organized" the statement and orchestrated its circulation.  In any case, a close and careful review of the Mueller Report would have to be completed before drafting or endorsing the statement if even minimal professional standards were to be maintained.

                We are thus expected to believe that, within this tight time frame, some 300- 400 attorneys – many or most of whom are likely employed in post-government practice – each obtained, reviewed, and analyzed the lengthy Mueller Report and formed an independent professional conclusion that its findings warranted a felony indictment of the President.

                This is absurd and simply not believable.  It is one thing for the Attorney General and Deputy AG -- who had the official responsibility, resources, and staff support to do so – to review the Mueller Report over a period of days and render their opinion that no prosecution was warranted.  They had, moreover, been officially overseeing and monitoring the matter for months.

                But the notion that some 400 attorneys of widely varying experience, expertise, and resources would all have the time, capacity, and legal ability to fully review and competently dissect the voluminous Mueller Report in this very tight time frame is risible.  The review and competent analysis of this dense, multi-faceted tome is simply not a task that would readily be undertaken outside one's professional obligations – let alone under such a demanding time frame.

                Rather, it is quite evident that the signers of the FFP Statement constituted a legal flash-mob who quickly and eagerly accepted Project Democracy's invitation to endorse the statement, at face value, with a click of their mouse.

                It is important to note in this respect that Project Democracy solicited signers with the following indiscriminate invitation:  "If you are a former federal prosecutor and would like to add your name below, click here."  There was no requirement or suggestion that would-be "signers" should even have read the Mueller Report, let alone analyzed the legal questions it raised, before clicking.  There can thus be little doubt that most signers read no further than the statement itself before adding their names.  In other words, the statement was supported by hundreds of approving "clicks" rather than by hundreds of considered legal opinions. 

                In fact, the FFP Statement was merely the latest of Project Democracy's campaign to mobilize the support of disgruntled DOJ attorney-pensioners in support of its anti-Trump agenda.  Just last December, a suspiciously similar document was organized by that same group, this time claiming that a suspiciously similar cohort of "400 Justice Department alumni" had signed a statement declaring they were "disturbed" by the President's appointment of Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General to replace the hapless Jeff Sessions. 

                The anti-Whittaker protest argued that the "Constitutional process" required the President to appoint the Senate-confirmed official next in the line of succession – i.e., presumed anti-Trumpist Rod Rosenstein -- instead of Whittaker.  But the Supreme Court made short work of the ex-DOJers' objections when it summarily rejected the constitutional challenge to the Whittaker appointment.

                It should surprise no one, moreover, that there is extensive overlap between the signers of the FFP Statement on the Mueller Report and the signers of the Whittaker Statement (on a very quick check I confirmed that at least 1/3 of a random sample of the FFP signers had also signed the Whittaker Statement).  Could it be that Project Democracy has a computerized master list of reliable anti-Trump "DOJ Alumni" whom it can count upon to quickly endorse whatever partisan screed it wishes to release?  You be the judge.

                Far from a considered legal review of the Mueller Report by hundreds of former prosecutors, the FFP Statement embodies the opinion of a Protect Democracy advocate or some other unknown attorney which was then hastily endorsed by much the same horde of ex-DOJ pensioners  that similarly endorsed Protect Democracy's failed objection to the Whittaker appointment.  The likelihood that all the members of this crowd actually read and legally analyzed the Mueller Report and its prosecutorial considerations is nil.

                As demonstrated by legal stalwarts like Alan Dershowitz, Andrew McCarthy, and Attorney General Barr – each of whose legal acumen dwarfs that of the anonymous scrivener who drafted the FFP Statement and the mediocrities who signed it – the President's executive powers under Art. II of the Constitution negate any claim that he obstructed justice in responding to the Mueller investigation's efforts to destroy his presidency.  As Mr. McCarthy described Mr. Barr's sound basis for concluding that no obstruction charge against the President was warranted (National Review.com, Apr. 18, 2019, emphasis added):

                                "That is why Barr laid out the facts that the president could have shut down the investigation but did not; that he could have asserted executive privilege to withhold information from the investigation, but instead made numerous witnesses and well over a million documents available to the special counsel; and that – reportedly according to Mueller – the president sincerely felt frustrated that the investigation was unfairly undermining his presidency. The point is that these facts so cut against the idea of corruptly impeding an investigation that it is inconceivable the prosecutor could prove an obstruction case beyond a reasonable doubt."

                Similarly, the distinguished Prof. Dershowitz explained that, in order for any of President Trump's actions outlined in the Mueller Report to constitute actionable obstruction, "The act itself has to be illegal.  It can't be an act authorized under Article II of the Constitution."  When asked whether the President's firing of FBI Director Comey, for example, could amount to obstruction of justice, Dershowitz tersely responded:  "It's not even a close case."  The same goes for the other possible obstructions fabricated by Mueller's team of Democrat and leftist advocates.  

               The President had every right to exercise the full range of his Art. II powers to defend the viability of his presidency against the subversive assaults being waged against it.  That is not obstruction of justice.  Rather, to paraphrase Art. II, sec. 3 of the Constitution, it is merely "tak[ing] care that the Laws be faithfully executed."  Even so, he refrained from imposing restraints on the Mueller inquisition that would have been within his constitutional authorities. 

                The unknown drafter(s) and motley signers of the FFP Statement either do not understand, or do not wish to recognize, that the President's constitutional authority under Art. II of the Constitution is flatly incompatible with the obstruction theory they so eagerly endorsed to undermine the Trump Presidency. 

                But apart from the legal and constitutional flaws in the statement orchestrated by Protect Democracy, the profoundly misleading characterization of its nature, substance, and authenticity should not be allowed to pass unrefuted.  Rather than presenting the considered professional opinion of hundreds of former federal prosecutors, the statement embodies nothing more than the reflexive, partisan endorsement of an Internet flash-mob of eclectic attorneys who hastily responded to Protect Democracy's click-bait.

EAST ASIA DEFIES DIVERSITY DELUSION

                       "Seek truth from facts."  -- Chinese Maxim

    In the United States and most of the liberal West, the ill-defined concept of racial, sexual, and ethnic "diversity" has assumed the status of a sacrosanct religious dogma.  No one can sensibly define its parameters, but few in "respectable" society stop to question its desirability or importance. 

    Governments, corporations, the armed forces, and universities all endorse and follow the precept that optimal diversity is critical to success in all areas of endeavor.  The ubiquitous mantra that "diversity is our greatest strength" is recited and repeated -- although never proven --like some kind of indisputable religious dogma.  Proof of efficacy is deemed irrelevant, and those who demand such proof are deemed retrogressive or racist. 

     Nearly all of the foregoing institutions maintain entrenched diversity officers and diversity divisions whose mission -- at enormous financial and human cost-- is to maintain and manipulate the diversity imperative towards the goal of fewer white males and more blacks, Hispanics, and women.  For some odd reason, however, expanded representation of East Asians is deemed to undermine  diversity, as illustrated by a lawsuit in which Harvard University is currently defending its blatant discrimination against East Asian applicants on that very basis.

     The ubiquitous diversity imperative has even achieved the status of a binding legal doctrine in the United States.  In the 2005 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court elevated the promotion of a university's diversity to the status of a "compelling government interest," sufficient to override the anti-discrimination principles of the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.  In a conflict between a non-minority student's claim to equal treatment of his application and the university's promotion of undefined "diversity" objectives, diversity now trumps fairness thanks to the Grutter decision.

     Thus, in the United States and much of the Liberal West, the diversity imperative is accepted, revered, and scrupulously followed in critical areas of national policy ranging from education to employment to immigration and refugee policy.

     Not so, however, in the ascendant nations of East Asia, where a trio of intelligent democracies -- Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan -- have emphatically declined to follow the West down this delusional rabbit hole.  They are not alone, moreover.  One look at videos and photos of China's People's Liberation Army -- particularly its visually startling Pink Militia of uniformly tall and lissome Han females -- will graphically confirm that China too is disinclined to embrace the diversity imperative.

                                                   

                 China's Pink Militia is untroubled by its diversity deficiencies

        Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and Taiwan are each among the most homogeneous, and least diverse, nations on the face of the earth.  They are also among the most intelligent, well-educated, technologically adept, safe, and civil societies in the world.  The question naturally arises, therefore, whether these facts are a matter of causation or mere correlation.

       Japan is an industrious, technologically adept, and prosperous monocultural democracy of 128 million people.  It rose from the ashes of World War II (with much U.S. help) to become the economic envy of the world by 1979, when responsible scholars were writing books with titles like Ezra Vogel's Japan as Number One.  Its economic success has since flattened, receded, and partially recovered, but it remains one of the world's five leading economic powerhouses (it presently ranks No. 3 in nominal GDP in the IMF's official rankings) .

       About 97.5% of Japan's population is of the Yamato, or native Japanese, race.  A predominant portion of the remaining 2.5%, moreover, are fellow East Asians, largely Korean, Chinese, or Filipino immigrants. Another significant portion of the non-native 2.5% are actually ethnic Japanese Nikkei who migrated back to Japan from Brazil or Peru.  In brief, Japan is utterly lacking in the ethnic diversity that is so highly prized and relentlessly demanded in the U.S. 

     This striking racial and ethnic homogeneity is caused and sustained by a combination of factors:  Japan's physical insularity, its highly restrictive immigration policies, its extremely difficult language (mastery of which is a prerequisite to permanent immigration), and its adamant refusal to join the West in welcoming purported refugees from the Mid-East and elsewhere. In 2017, for example, Japan admitted a total of twenty refugees out of 19,628 refugee applicants.  Another likely factor is that the Japanese people actually prize their Yamato identity and culture -- unlike guilt-ridden westerners -- and are unwilling to dilute them with an influx of non-Asian immigrants who are unlikely to assimilate or blend.

     Although Japan is presently considering a modest expansion in the numbers of temporary foreign workers it may admit in future, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stressed such expansion will not entail permanent residence of aliens accompanied by families, but merely temporary worker relief for industries suffering from a current shortage of native Japanese workers.  Moreover, any expansion of temporary or permanent immigration to Japan will, as with the minimal current foreign residency, likely be dominated by racially similar East Asians from Taiwan, China, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines.

     The Taiwanese lady behind the desk represents typical Japanese immigration -- racially indistinguishable from Japanese natives, at least to the Western eye. -- Japan Times photo

        The ROK, often called South Korea, has a total population of some 51 million.  Like Japan, it is an economic and political Phoenix that rose from the ruins of war and occupation (in its case, Japanese occupation from 1905 to 1945) to achieve its current status as an economic and technological Asian Tiger of the first order.  Despite its small area and comparatively modest population, it currently ranks 12th among all nations in nominal GDP (2018 IMF data).  As shown below, it joins Japan and Taiwan at the very apex of world rankings in various indicia of intelligence, education, STEM scores, safety, and other measures of technological advancement.

     On top of all this, the ROK also has its own distinctive "Gangnam Style" -- as YouTube viewers worldwide are well aware.

                     

   K-Pop Girl Groups have succeeded PSY's Gangnam Style in the ROK music explosion     

     Ethnic or racial Koreans are estimated to constitute upwards of 97.5% of the total population.  Moreover, a good portion of those classified as foreign residents of the ROK are actually ethnic Koreans repatriated from China.  Suffice to say, the ROK's ethnic homogeneity is remarkable, near total, and closely similar to Japan's.  One online encyclopedia (Encyclopedia.com) flatly states that the ROK "has no sizeable ethnic minority."

     The final member of the East Asian Trio, Taiwan, is a de facto sovereign state that, sadly, is treated by much of the world (including the U.S.) as a non-state and diplomatic pariah due to the demands of its domineering progenitor, the People's Republic of China (PRC).  Despite this severe handicap, Taiwan has survived and prospered as one of the world's most vibrant and well-educated democracies and economies.

     Taiwan's total population of about 23.6 million is composed of over 95% Han Chinese (the dominant racial and ethnic group of China); when limited to actual Taiwanese citizens, its population is about 97.5% Han.  Most of Taiwan's non-Han population is composed of native or aboriginal Taiwanese.  As with Japan and the ROK, resident immigrants from the U.S., Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are negligible.  Whatever Taiwan's "greatest strength" may be, it is certainly not diversity.

     Of course, the fact that these three Asian nations all have highly homogeneous, non-diverse populations is not in itself a matter of great moment or credit. A nation's relative diversity or homogeneity is often more a matter of geography and history than of design.

     Whatever one may think of the current diversity meme, the enormous diversity in the U.S. population has been with us from the founding.  We have had to accept and adjust to racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity whether we liked it or not, from the time when the successive waves of Northern European white settlers, black African slaves, Italian and Slavic immigrants, and Chinese railroad workers surrounded the appalled Native Americans with the multi-ethnic population that persists today.  In short, ethnic diversity is simply an inescapable reality in the United States. Only the degree, nature, and promotion of this diversity has evolved to reach the pervasive and dogmatic stature it manifests today.

     The question, however, is whether the American standard of diversity should or could be beneficially applied to profoundly distinct nations like the Asian Trio.  Put another way, is artificially enhanced diversity inherently beneficial on the national scale?  Or does national homogeneity have its own benefits? 

     The achievements and qualities of Japan, the ROK, and Taiwan when compared to the rest of the world's strongly indicate a negative answer to the former question and a yes to the latter.  Specifically, the demonstrated superiority of these emphatically "non-diverse" countries in qualities such as education, scientific and technological ability, IQ, safety, crime prevention, and economic development strongly suggest that, in some national cases, homogeneity may have genuine benefits.   

     In published rankings of nations by average IQ (compiled by the Statistic Brain Research Institute in 2016 at gazettereview.com), the ROK (#2), Japan (#3), and Taiwan (#4) are surpassed only by Hong Kong.  Since Hong Kong (itself a non-diverse 93% Chinese/Han) is not in fact a nation but a part of China, the Asian Trio could be considered the Top 3 nations in the world in IQ.  The U.S. ranked 28th.

     Although one might question the validity of any single rating of national IQ's, the preeminince of the Asian Trio is reinforced by other such rankings which consistently place them at or near the top.  For example, the ROK and Japan were surpassed only by the cities of Hong Kong and Singapore in another published IQ ranking, which placed Taiwan as No. 6 (all of the top six were East Asian nations or cities).

     Another revealing indicator is found in the STEM (science, technology, math, and engineering) rankings of national school systems by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as reported by Business Insider in 2015. Similar to the IQ rankings, Singapore and Hong Kong were on top, followed by ROK and then Japan and Taiwan in a tie.  Non-diverse Finland (at No. 6) was the highest ranking country outside East Asia.  The U.S. was in a tie for No. 28 with Spain.  Again, Japan, ROK, and Taiwan were the top three nations of significant size in STEM rankings.

     Relatedly, the ROK, Finland, and Japan ranked 1-2-3 respectively in rankings of the world's best education systems (primary school through college) by the World Top 20 Project.  

     Similarly, in overall technological innovation, the ROK and Japan were ranked No. 1 and 3 worldwide, respectively, with the U.S. at No. 2.
  
     One important index area that may be closely related to ethnic homogeneity is that of public safety and crime control, which amount to the same thing by different measures.  Here again, the East Asian Trio are at the very top of national rankings.  Depending upon which institutional ranking one consults, either Japan or ROK is the safest country in the world, and Taiwan is not far behind.

     A 2014 study by the OECD ranked Japan as "the safest country in the world," as well as maintaining the world's second lowest homicide rate (after Iceland) and the second lowest assault rate (after Canada).  A 2014 survey compiled by Listovative ranked Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the ROK, in that order,  as the world's safest countries.

     A 2016 ranking by Numbeo, a data aggregator, confirmed and reinforced the status of these countries as the world's safest, with only slight modifications.  Numbeo ranked the ROK No. 1 on its overall safety index, followed by Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

     One could continue with other areas of interest, but the foregoing representative rankings suffice to demonstrate that the Asian Trio of Japan, the ROK, and Taiwan are performing superlatively in key indicators of national achievement and well-being despite their decided lack of diversity as measured by American or western standards.  Their superiority in these national indicators confirms that, whatever may be the case with the United States and its European cohorts, the value of diversity at the national level is entirely relative and in some cases dubious at best.

     

     

Washington State Court Perpetrates a Capital Canard

                On October 11, Washington State's Supreme Court issued a decision perpetrating two insidious canards that, like those ghastly movie goblins who return to haunt us every Halloween season, simply refuse to die.

                In Washington v. Gregory, that court held Washington State's death penalty unconstitutional  on grounds that (1) it was discriminatorily applied to black murderers; and (2) failed to serve any "legitimate penological goal" because it lacked any deterrent effect. 

                Because the ruling was based on state law rather than the U.S. Constitution, it cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and is the final word on the death penalty issue in Washington State.  The decision has little practical impact on Washington's death row inmates, moreover, because that left-oriented state does not actually carry out executions, even though state statutes still authorized capital punishment. 

                But the court's widely-reported opinion does have significant and disturbing consequences because it reiterates two false legal and penological doctrines that are mindlessly regurgitated in the media, in politics, and in predominant elements of the legal and policy communities.

                I will not dwell here on the court's complete distortion and sophistry on the deterrence issue.   Authoritative studies recorded elsewhere (e.g., by David Mulhausen of the Heritage Foundation), as well as the most basic logic and common sense, establish that actual and timely enforcement of the death penalty does have a significant deterrent effect.  Lenient or long-delayed penalties have little chilling effect on potential perpetrators, but, as Dr. Samuel Johnson famously said, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."  

                Studies and arguments to the contrary merely establish that capital punishment's general deterrent effect is imperfect, not futile.  There are obviously categories of crazed, hardened, or furiously impassioned persons who are immune to abstract deterrence.  But it has been demonstrated that each actual execution deters anywhere from 3 to 18 murders, which is surely a "legitimate penological objective."  

              Further, the heedless Washington court's deterrence analysis had another dispositive flaw:  It failed to address the indisputable effect of specific deterrence.  A duly executed and dead murderer is specifically and absolutely deterred from terrorizing or killing fellow inmates or prison staff, or from killing innocent citizens after a prison escape – tragic consequences that do in fact occur when murderers are not executed.

                But the Washington court erred even more egregiously in its haphazard "holding" that the death penalty is discriminatorily imposed on black murderers in Washington.  

               The court rested this ruling on an ideologically-driven statistical study based upon a small data set (there were only 9 persons under sentence of death in Washington through 2016), substandard p-values, subjective coding of variables, and various "errors" recognized even by the court (decision at n. 7).  Further, the study established barely marginal statistical significance even if accepted as valid.  Indeed, the court inadvertently acknowledged the weakness of the decision's statistical underpinnings when it stated:  "We make this determination by way of legal analysis, not pure science. . . . [W]e decline to require indisputably true science to prove that our death penalty is impermissibly imposed based on race." (decis pp. 21-22).  Yet the decision rested squarely upon a highly abstruse, but patently flawed, statistical study rather than on direct evidence of discrimination.  In other words, it rested on "impure science" of the most questionable kind.

                Worst of all, the decision didn't even purport to establish that any actual discrimination motivated the sentencing of the murderer Gregory in his own case.  It adopted the absurd proposition that the constitutionality of a criminal defendant's sentence depends upon the statistical patterns deciphered by social scientists in past cases rather than the gruesome particulars of the defendant's individual crime.

                Rather than wrestling with the convoluted "p-values" and subjective regression analysis that produced its improbable conclusion – i.e., that the extremely progressive polity, government, and judiciary of Washington State collectively discriminate against blacks in capital sentencing – the court could have consulted objective and factual national death penalty data that are glaringly inconsistent with its decision.  Those data show that the death penalty is, and has long been, imposed disproportionately on whites, not blacks.

                In short, the court's race-based decision was not merely wrong; it was the opposite of the truth.

                The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) carefully monitors the administration of capital punishment in all states on an annual basis.  Its most recent report, Capital Punishment, 2016, was published in April 2018 (there is a lag in the annual BJS reports due to the difficulties in collecting and collating the data).  The 2016 Report found:  "Of the 20 prisoners executed [in 2016], 18 were white (2 of Hispanic origin) and 2 were black [emphasis added]."  BJS further reported:  "Among prisoners under sentence of death at year-end in 2016, a total of 55% were white and 42% were black."

                The fact that executions of whites in 2016 exceeded execution of blacks by 9 to 1 was no glaring aberration.  An earlier BJS Report in 2013 tabulated executions by race from 1977 to 2013 (Capital Punishment 2013, Table 11).  For the entire 35-year period covered, there were 770 executions of whites (57%) and 464 of blacks (34%).  In 2013, it was 23 whites versus 13 blacks executed.  In 2012, it was 25 whites, 11 blacks.  And so on through the years.  The last year in which black executions exceeded white was 1991 – 27 years ago – when there were 7 blacks executed versus 6 whites.  During this entire 35-year period, there were only two years (1989 and 1991) in which more blacks were executed that whites.

                Advocates of the discriminatory death penalty canard might, and do, argue that such data fails to account for the fact that blacks constitute only 13% of the U.S. population but account for well more than 13% of executions (i.e., 34% of executions during the era covered by the 2013 BJS Report).  That argument is futile, however, because the relevant population for this comparison is not the general population, but the population of those who alone are eligible for the death penalty – murderers.  Under U.S. constitutional law, only those who commit murder are eligible for the death penalty.

                The FBI's recurring reports on Crime in the United States establish that blacks consistently represent over 50% of murderers in the United States.  During the 28-year era covered by the FBI's 2011 Homicide Trends report (1980 to 2008), 52.5% of U.S. homicides were committed by blacks while 43.5% were committed by whites (NCJ 236018, Table 7).  More current FBI reports confirm this pattern. In 2016, for example, 53.5% of murder offenders in cases where the race was known were black (2016, Crime in the United States, Overview).  For 2017, the figure was 54.2% (6,444 black murder offenders out of 11,883 such offenders where race was known) (2017, Crime in the United States, Table 3).

                These straightforward figures speak with a decisive clarity that exposes the Washington court's tortured manipulation of reality for the sophistry that it is.  Objective BJS and FBI data establish that while black perpetrators commit slightly more than 50% of U.S. murders, they represent only about one-third (and in 2016, only 10%) of those who are ultimately executed for their murders.   The same data establishes that white murderers are therefore about twice as likely as blacks to be executed in the United States.  

              Unless sentencing decision-makers in Washington State are driven by an element of anti-black discrimination that is not manifest in the nationwide administration of capital punishment, the Washington Supreme Court's decision in the Gregory case is demonstrably and dangerously  wrong. 

KARLIE KLOSS, KAREN CARPENTER, AND THE PC KIMONO LUNACY

     Before resuming our reporting on the rampant leftist sedition at large in the land, SR takes a brief detour into the alien realm of fashion media to expose the latest extreme lunacy of the political correctness that pervades today's American culture.

     The always interesting Breitbart website recently reported on a remarkable example of the so-called "cultural appropriation" concept, which condemns any use or adoption of the fashion, customs, or arts of foreign cultures by so-called White Western Society.  It is not clear whether the reverse (foreign cultures adopting our music, art, etc.) is equally nefarious.

     According to Breitbart, a prominent American fashion model named Karlie Kloss recently posed in Geisha-style Japanese kimonos for an extensive photoshoot in Vogue magazine's so called "diversity" issue.  The spread featured the fashionably kimonoed Kloss posing in a variety of settings intended to present striking cultural images of Japan (as a knowledgeable Japan-hand of longstanding, SR can only say that the presentation is a bit gauche, as one would expect of the superficial millennials at Vogue, but certainly harmless, and complimentary, if anything).

                                                  

                                                                                                  Vogue Magazine
                           Oh, the Horror! A Caucasian Model Poses in Kimono!

     Almost instantly, the lunatic legions of the social media pounced on Ms. Kloss for her crime of "cultural appropriation." Typical of the clueless commentary was the following penetrating query:  "Did Vogue not get the 'culture is not a costume' memo that's been going around for the past few...decades?"  SR is surprised that such a "memo" ever existed or circulated, and expects the reader is as well; but in the twisted realm of the politically correct cognoscenti, anything is possible.

     The brainless commentary also condemned Ms. Kloss and Vogue -- both of whom undoubtedly deserve condemnation for many other stupidities and venalities, but not for this one -- for so-called racial "whitewashing."  This is an ironic and foolish charge indeed, for Japanese women place the highest aesthetic value on the whiteness of their complexions.  Nothing could be "whiter" than an authentic, original Japanese beauty in geisha splendor.  If anything,  a Western model would be less white than an authentic Japanese geisha.  So-called "cultural appropriation" is a purely mythical canard of the left, but this kind of cultural stupidity is a depressing reality, perpetrated by the PC and social justice morons on a daily basis.

     Ms. Kloss's attackers also questioned why Vogue could not have found a Japanese model for the photoshoot.  This criticism might have been valid if we were talking about the use of a non-Japanese actress to portray a Japanese woman in a movie about Japan -- as was actually done with the casting of a famous Chinese actress (Zhang Ziyi) to portray a Japanese Geisha in Memoirs of a Geisha. 

     But that's not what occurred here.  Rather than usurping the part of a genuine Japanese geisha, Ms. Kloss was employed to highlight the beauty and piquancy of cross-cultural diversity by artfully posing a beautiful Western woman in  the classical Japanese garment.  Rather than cultural appropriation, the intent of the photoshoot was cultural tribute.  But needless to say, this nuance was lost on the mindless minions of the politically correct.

     But the most depressing aspect of this absurd imbroglio was that Ms. Kloss felt compelled to issue the inevitable press-agent-drafted apology -- when she should have bridled with the justifiable fury of an outraged fashion diva.  She abjectly posted the following illogical nonsense on her Twitter account:  "These images appropriate a culture that is not my own and I am truly sorry for participating in a shoot that was not culturally sensitive.  My goal is, and always will be, to empower and inspire women."

     No, Karlie, you silly Airhead.  Neither you nor Vogue could  "appropriate" the ancient and magnificent Japanese culture in the wildest dreams of your illusory significance.  No apology was necessary, Dahlink, as Zsa Zsa might have said.  If anything, Japanese viewers would only have been mildly amused at Vogue's ham-handed, but gameful, attempt to capture an aesthetic that lies far beyond their superficial comprehension.  But they were certainly not offended.  On the contrary, as shown by the reaction of Japanese Twitter users, the Japanese enjoyed the spread and considered it a nice tribute to their culture.

                                                  

     Karen Carpenter charming the Japanese in her gift kimono, Tokyo 1974

     To place this absurd episode in sensible perspective, we need only flash back to the comparatively sane era of the 1970's.

     In 1974, popular music was still beautiful and harmonic, as exemplified by the gorgeous vocals of Karen Carpenter and the internationally beloved recordings of the Carpenters.  Nowhere were the Carpenters more popular than in Japan, and in the summer of 1974, the talented sibling duo (Karen and her brother Richard) arrived for a record-setting concert tour in Tokyo amidst media and popular fanfare reminiscent of the Beatles' arrival in the U.S. a decade earlier.

     As part of the extensive publicity campaign surrounding the Carpenters' arrival, their hosts presented both Richard and Karen with beautiful and extremely valuable kimonos. Both of the sibling superstars posed happily in the outfits for the Japanese press, and the Japanese were delighted with how charming Karen looked in a gorgeous kimono especially suited to a young lady in the spring-like glow of youth.  They were even more delighted when, near the conclusion of the Carpenters' concert in Tokyo's iconic Budokan, Karen sang portions of the hit song, Sing, in flawless Japanese, in a charming "duet" with a chorus of star-struck Japanese children.

     Needless to say, the notions of "cultural appropriation" or of "whitefacing" Japanese culture never remotely occurred to the Japanese, the Carpenters, or to anyone who observed the Carpenters' congenial engagement with the Japanese people.  So successful was the Carpenters' 1974 tour that their popularity in Japan reached spectacular heights that, remarkably, endure to this day.

     So all the neurotic social critics should take a deep breath; stay calm; and take a look back at how the good-natured embrace of another nation's culture, dress, and customs can be mutually enjoyable and rewarding.  Far from causing insult or embarrassment, a Western woman wearing a kimono with the right attitude and elan can form a lasting bond of mutual affection and appreciation.  That was how the Carpenters and Japan approached each other in 1974, to the enduring reward of both sides.

    

REJECTING AN INVITATION TO IMITATE GERMANY'S SUICIDAL OPEN HOUSE TO REFUGEES

     A trusted friend and colleague referred me to the article discussed below, suggesting it was particularly worthy of refutation.  See "President Trump's immigration order tests the nation's principles," Boston Globe (Jan. 30, 2017).  Although I was tempted to dismiss it as but another screed from the left attacking the President's recent executive orders on immigration – discussed here before in a preceding post – the fallacies in the piece were so blatant and wrong-headed that SR could not let it pass silently.  That the arguments were made by a former Admiral made the piece even more unsettling.  The article's author, James Stavridis, is currently Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and was reportedly considered as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton.

     When an article on the grimly serious issue of keeping alien terrorists out of the country begins with a slobbering reference to a maudlin Barbra Streisand movie, as this one does, one is instantly placed on alert that melodramatic superficiality is likely to follow.  And when the cinematic quote purporting to impress the reader with its piercing insight is "People are their principles," any doubt on that score is quickly removed. What does such quixotic navel-gazing  have to do with the harsh business of securing our borders against alien terrorist infiltration?

     Stavridis continues his lecture by generously condescending to "giv[e] the benefit of the doubt to President Trump" and "hoping" that Mr. Trump's "intentions are to keep us safe."  When a failed vice-presidential prospect for a failed presidential candidate presumes to pass supercilious judgment on the most basic bona fides of the newly elected President, it is quickly apparent that the author is confused about just who is the new Commander-in-Chief – and why.

     Stavridis then proceeds to criticize the President's recent executive orders on immigration and refugees with a level of incomprehension and illogic that would be amusing  were the subject not so serious.

                                                                          

                                                                                     theconservativetreehouse.com

 Some of the "creative thinkers" and budding capitalists the left would import in droves

     Perhaps the most patently ill-informed of many such contentions in the piece is this:  "I do not understand the arbitrary selection of some Muslim-majority nations but not others to face the consequences of this executive order, nor the rationale for a 90-day or 120-day time period."

     Had Stavridis (or his assistant) taken 60 seconds for rudimentary internet research, he would know that the seven countries in question – Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen – had been previously singled out by the Obama administration  as "countries of concern" (re: terrorism) and subjected to various travel restrictions on that basis.  Far from being "arbitrary," the selection of those seven countries was prudent, security-focused, and supported by actions of the previous administration.  Had President Trump selected a larger or smaller number of countries, his political and media enemies would undoubtedly have pounced on him for over- or under-inclusiveness.  If Stavridis really does not "understand" these basic facts, he is either willfully uninformed or simply duplicitous.

     Stavridis' purported inability to "understand" the rationale for the 90-day time period for the suspension is equally disingenuous, or simply fraudulent .  Even this limited suspension period has elicited howls of horror and fraudulent indignation from the illegal alien community, the subversive left, and their media echo chamber.  Had the President established a substantially longer, or indefinite, period – as he is expressly authorized to do by law, see 8 USC sec. 1182(f), authorizing presidential suspension of entry "for such period as he shall deem necessary" – the congressional baying and gnashing of teeth would have been even more extravagant.  In short, the ferocious resistance from enemies of border control has made it politically impossible to impose the more lengthy suspension that events warrant;  yet when the President pragmatically adopts a compromise shorter period, carping critics like Stavridis pounce on him for doing so.  Heads we win, tails you lose.

      Other palpably erroneous or simply insupportable assertions follow.  Oblivious to a distinguished succession of Presidents who have banned alien entry on a wide variety of grounds including nationality, Stavridis self-righteously denounces restrictions on immigration from any "particular nation."  The Presidents who actually have to protect the country and its borders disagree.   As but one example, President Carter terminated immigration from Iran (a Shiite Muslim Islamic state) in 1979, in entirely justifiable reaction to that nation's seizure of American hostages. 

     Far more importantly, Congress has approved and re-approved the following statute, 18 USC sec. 1182(f), which expressly and broadly authorizes the President to exclude aliens of a particular nationality – or any particular class of aliens, including a class based on religion – in language which in itself conclusively supports the legality of President Trump's suspension orders:

          "Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."   18 USC sec. 1182(f) [emphasis added].

    This provision, moreover, firmly negates Stavridis' contention that the President's actions are insupportable because they somehow violate various broad principles of international law respecting acceptance of refugees.  Even if one accepts the dubious contention that the President's orders run afoul of such standards, the President's constitutional and statutory authority to protect U.S. security and sovereignty reflected in section 1182 would override such objections.

     Stavridis also attacks the suspension orders on the purported grounds that they improperly discriminate on the basis of religion, asserting as follows:  "I am deeply disturbed by the general tone and thrust of the executive orders that, at least on initial read, seem to ban significant classes of people because of their religion, or prioritize one religion over another."  This assertion is so shot through with fallacy that one hardly knows where to begin.  But we will try.

     Stavridis first resorts to the dissembler's classic fall back qualifier, "at least on initial read."  The EO, which is not a lengthy document, was issued on January 27 and Stavridis' article is dated January 30.  He had ample time for a second, third, or fourth "read" if he intended to offer responsible commentary on the order.  He apparently was content to plow ahead with his article without carefully reading the readily available order.  But no matter how many times he read it, Stavridis would not find any language employing religion as a basis for the exclusion; rather, it was based on the nations  "of concern" previously identified by the Obama administration.

     In short, Stavridis falsely and irresponsibly attacked the orders for discriminating on the basis of religion.  They did not and do not.  Stavridis should know, for example, that Indonesia has far and away the world's largest Muslim population (with over 200 million Muslims), yet the suspension order does not apply to Indonesia.  Or to Pakistan, with its many millions of Muslims.  In any event, however, both the above-quoted 18 USC 1182(f) and the Constitution would permit exclusion of a class based on religion if it otherwise met the statutory criteria.  But President Trump declined to resort to that available option.

     But Stavridis' objection to the immigration orders because they "prioritize one religion over another" is probably the most egregious, and unconsciously ironic, of all his bogus contentions.

     Perhaps Stavridis has forgotten, or never cared to learn, that the Obama administration's perversely pro-Islamic immigration and refugee policies have discriminated grossly and demonstrably against Christians.  Christians fleeing religious persecution reportedly make up about 16-23% of the refugees, but only 2.5% of those being allowed to come into the United States.  More particularly, only some 0.46% of over 11,000 Syrian refugees admitted by the Obama regime were Christians, while over 98% were Sunni Muslims. 

     So one is forced to ask:  where was Stavridis' touching concern for religious discrimination in immigration when it was perpetrated against Christians by the Obama administration?  Nowhere in sight, apparently.  It is therefore evident that his professed concern that the orders "prioritize[ed] one religion over another" is bogus.  In fact, however, the U.S. would be quite justified in granting priority to Christian refugees as a remedial measure to rectify the systemic discrimination and disparate impact its immigration and refugee policies have had on oppressed Christian refugees.

      Stavridis plods on to offer the following extraordinary statement, apparently intended to strengthen his case that the new President should let in legions more, not less, Islamic refugees:  "Do we really want to be the nation that watches Germany (with one fourth of our population) take in more than a million refugees, in accordance with international law, while we say no and close our borders to those in need?"

      One can only wonder if the author is really serious in making this outlandish argument, or is he utterly delusional?  Germany's disastrous admission of over a million refugees has virtually destroyed much of the German culture, let alone the safety and security of its cities.  Who can forget the grotesque and shocking spectacle of the New Years Eve riots of rape and pillage in Cologne last year?  Even the hapless Angela Merkel has been forced to admit that, "In part, the refugee flow was even used to smuggle terrorists."  Yet Stavridis argues that the United States should somehow be shamed into emulating Germany's disdastrous refugee policy.   Indeed, he implies that it would be fitting if we took in four million refugees, since, as he pointedly stresses, our population is four times larger than Germany's.  In short, the author's reasoning leads to consequences that prove its fallacy.

     Lastly, Stavridis makes the risible argument that the U.S. will greatly benefit from admitting hordes of additional Mid-East refugees because "the vast majority are risk-taking, determined, creative thinkers who will over time gives us a high return on investment."  This is out-and-out nonsense.  Stavridis cites no evidence for his absurd claim, nor could he, because it is wildly false.  How or where he has discovered all these "creative thinkers" and budding capitalists among the belligerent refugee vagabonds remains a mystery to the rest of us.  There is simply no basis in fact for this delusional but dangerous fantasy.  On the contrary, about 90% of Mid-east refugees entering the U.S. go on food stamps, and nearly 70% receive government cash assistance (i.e., welfare).     As the hapless Europeans have learned to their great cost , the great majority of the migrating Mid-Eastern refugees are fighting-age males with little prospect for productive employment.

     But enough.  Stavridis' assault on the President's admirable first-step in restoring our shredded borders is long on delusional canards and short on hard realities.  The hard reality is that accepting his invitation to follow Germany's and Europe's recklessly porous refugee policy would needlessly replicate the cultural disaster that has reduced too many European cities to menacing danger zones.  Thankfully, President Trump's election has halted America's descent in that direction.