The View from Right Field

Hong Kong: Freedom’s Light Still Shines

Three weeks ago, on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, people were wondering what went wrong.  Democracy is on the decline in eastern Europe and elsewhere, while nasty populism is rising all over the world, including the United States.

But then, when things seem dark, a tiny ray of light shines, a delicate little flower blooms.  In 1977, it was Vaclav Havel and Charter ’77 in Communist East Europe.  In the 1970s, it was Spain, Portugal and Greece leaving dictatorships behind and becoming free.  Next were Taiwan and South Korea.  In 1994, it was Nelson Mandela in the South Africa of apartheid.

“For Laws and Lech, Basil and Borders Opened – Thanks!” – Joan Beck’s 1989 Thanksgiving Column

As I mentioned back in 2009 (and 2010 and 2011), each year at Thanksgiving, Joan Beck, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune (among other things), would write a special column of Thanks.  This year being the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought it appropriate to reprint her column from Thanksgiving, 1989:

“As we gather together to count the Lord’s blessings, 368 years after the first Thanksgiving Day, we are grateful, O God, for perestroika if it works and glasnost if it’s real, for the liberating breaches in the Berlin Wall and the integrated beaches in South Africa, for summits and summers and sunrises and symphonies and for the innate yearning to be free that no regime can trample forever.

Scaredy-Cat Protestors – And the Role of the Press

With the Donald Trump impeachment hearings on the TV and all over the news, there is plenty of time to do other things.  But let me talk about something possibly related to the news on the impeachment of President Trump: the media and who to believe.  There was a brouhaha over the weekend at the student-run Daily Northwestern, in Evanston, Illinois.  The editorial staff at the paper ran an editorial apologizing for the harm they supposedly caused when the paper ran/tweeted photos of people protesting a speech by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  Apparently, some of the people in these photos felt they were harmed by the publication of the photos.  On Sunday, the paper apologized, saying in part:

“We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night – along with how we plan to move forward.”

The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 30 Years On. #BerlinWall30

This Saturday is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Readers of this blog will know that I have written about the Wall a lot.  You can find what I wrote on the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Wall by clicking on “Berlin” in the list of Categories in the right margin.  The 25th anniversary, which we were lucky enough to be in Berlin for, was especially great.  But things seem to have changed since then.

Events are going the wrong direction in parts of eastern Europe and eastern Germany.  Viktor Orban is solidifying control in Hungary.  Law and Justice recently won re-election in Poland.  And in eastern Germany, the AfD increased its vote in state elections.  The populism that has come to the West is also increasing in eastern Europe.  

The “Silent Majority” Speech: Fifty Years On

Fifty years ago today, Richard Nixon gave his “Silent Majority” speech, one of his most famous speeches and source of his, almost certainly, most famous phrase.  Unlike presidents today, and before, President Nixon wrote the “Silent Majority” speech himself and came up with the phrase, “the silent majority,” himself.

For the speech itself, see here:

Evan Thomas, former Newsweek editor and best-selling author, notes that President Nixon’s approval rating went up from 52% to 68% after the speech.  For Mr. Thomas’s comments on the speech and more about President Nixon, listen to this podcast from the Richard Nixon Foundation.

For more on the Silent Majority speech, see Pat Buchanan, Nixon aide and speechwriter, here and this article/video from the Nixon Library and Museum. 

Does this Really Disqualify Joe Biden?

Joe Biden is thinking about running for president.  In fact, he recently just about announced, apparently by mistake, that he is running for president.  But, as he has been getting ready to announce, he has been hit with a number of complaints from women about the somewhat weird things he has done in the past.  One woman, who I think was a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016, said the former Vice President came up and smelled her hair and kissed her on the back of the head.  Other women have said similar things.  Clearly, former Vice President Biden hasn’t had a good understanding of personal space and the things you should and should not do.  But, so far, the complaints have been about things he did in public, things that were a little creepy and not what people do today, but that’s about it.

Still, it appears a fair number of people, in theory on his side of the political spectrum, think these things should disqualify Joe Biden from running for president. 

Happy Birthday, NATO

NATO has a birthday coming up.  On April 4, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will turn 70.  The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949.  Its first twelve members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, and West Germany in 1955.  Post-Franco Spain joined in 1982.  With the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries in eastern Europe rushed to join, thirteen more so far, with North Macedonia being the thirtieth soon.

There will be a number of articles on NATO’s anniversary in the next few days.  The Economist has already published a lengthy piece on “NATO at 70” in its March 16 issue.  Ivo Daalder, former ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. wrote an excellent article in last Friday’s Chicago Tribune.  While these articles cover the subject of NATO and its future better than I can, I would like to add a few thoughts to the birthday celebration for what has been best defensive military alliance in history, thoughts related to its future.

Concerns about NATO’s future have increased, especially among the foreign policy elite, since Donald Trump was elected president 2016.  President Trump, after all, said NATO was obsolete while on the campaign trail in 2016,¹ and he has been pretty obnoxious since then about the failure of many NATO countries to increase up their defense spending in line with commitments they have made in 2014 to get their defense spending up to 2% of GDP by 2024.

A Few Comments on Where We Are Going With Our Defense Policy

An article in last week’s Economist, “Bringing out the big guns,” described the shift in direction that is taking place in the U.S. military as it “prepares for life after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”  Some of the changes are good and necessary.  Others are more questionable.  Let me quote some sections from the article and then comment on them.

“In January 2018 the Trump administration published its National Defence Strategy (NDS).  Officials lamented that nearly two decades of whack-a-mole against insurgents and jihadists had eroded the country’s military edge, resulting in exhausted and under-trained units armed for the wrong enemy.  So the NDS decreed that America would henceforth focus on ‘long-term, strategic competition between nations’ – namely, China and Russia.”

If the military was “exhausted and under-trained,” it was because it wasn’t big enough and was not given enough money for the task(s) it was being asked to do under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.  It is understandable that the military can be stretched for some period of time.  Emergencies happen and the military has to respond.  But to be stretched for almost two decades is a choice – a choice to not properly fund the military.  And to continually ask the people in the military to do more than they should have to do because you don’t want to spend more money on defense is wrong.

What’s Going to Happen In Venezuela?

Venezuela is starving.  Literally.  Aid is on its borders, but President Nicholas Maduro is refusing to let it in because the aid has been organized by opposition leader Juan Guaido (and countries supporting him).  Already, at least four people have been killed and hundreds injured, reportedly by Venezuelan security forces, including militia. 

What happens next?  Obviously, nobody knows, but 2019 is the 30th anniversary of two possible outcomes.  The first is Tiananmen Square.  In 1989, people in China were starting to demonstrate for more rights and liberties.  The protests reached a peak in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in early June.  The Army faced off with the protesters.  The Army won because it was willing to shoot the protesters until they disbanded and left.  Deng Xiaoping was willing to put his economic reforms on hold to maintain political power.

When Principles Are a Club, Instead of Principles

In contemplating the mess that is Virginia politics, it is perhaps most instructive to see how the calls for Governor Ralph Northam to resign have subsided as it became possible that the result of his resignation wouldn’t be just another Democrat as governor but a Republican.¹  In the meantime, at least from this distance, Virginia Republicans appear to be keeping fairly quiet because (i) they are checking their own yearbooks, (ii) they realize that, when the other side is shooting themselves in the foot, the best thing is to get out of the way, or (iii) they remember what the Senate Democrats did to Brett Kavanaugh and they aren’t going to do the same (probably the least likely alternative).

In any case, maybe a few people are beginning to realize that we should pick our principles based on what is right and fair as opposed to either what we can beat the other side on the head with or what we have to do to protect our own people.  In this regard, consider the following from Megan McArdle on what can happen when you care more about protecting your own side: