That Sinking Feeling

CNBC just released its list of top 20 U.S. cities in the U.S. in which to start a business.  I search high and low, looked under the table and behind the cabinets.  I looked far and wide and checked the list numerous times and Chicago was not on it.  Of the 20 cities, 6 were in Texas.   Des Moines, Iowa made the list.  The Second City, City of the Big Shoulders, Hog Butcher for the World, home of the 3^rd busiest airport in America, two major world class universities, centrally located, with a magnificent lakefront was nowhere to be found.

Chicago and Illinois are dying and unless something dramatic happens soon, Chicago will become the next Detroit and the rest of Illinois will come tumbling down with it.  At every level….city, county, and state, the can kicked down the road is out of road.

A couple of years ago, I attended a general business roundtable of about 20 professionals in Chicago and the topic was the business climate in Chicago and Illinois.  When it came for my turn to speak, I simply asked the question, “If your child had job skill that would enable them to work anywhere they wanted, and you wanted them to have a happy and prosperous future, would you advise him or her to stay in Illinois?”  The question just elicited guffaws.  I followed up and asked, “Where would you advise them to go?”  The answer was unanimous---Texas.  It is not surprising that the CNBC list bears out what we have known for a long time.

Just the other night, another professional confided in me, “I really do not want to leave Chicago.  But I feel I am being forced out.”

At every turn and at every level, politicians are grabbing for dollars.  Toni Preckwinkle, President of the Cook County Board (after vowing not to) raised the state sales tax.  Cook county not only raised property tax rates but increased assessments.  Rahm Emmanuel is trying to get through a utility tax increase.  Mike Madigan is in a death match with Bruce Rauner in his attempt to raise taxes once again while Rauner is demanding systemic reforms.  Meanwhile, the state is buried under a mountain of unpaid bills and social services are being strangled.  The city, state and public school system bond rating are rated junk.  The state became a national joke when lottery winners were forced to sue to collect.  Let that sink in for a minute.

Why would you start a business here?

Or relocate here?                 

          

Or raise your children here?

GE took one look at Chicago as a potential home for its headquarters and quickly said, “Thank you, very much.  We’ll pass.”

Over the past few months, the news has gotten even more disturbing.  The Chicago Tribune published an article a few months ago that showed that working class, professional class, and entrepreneurial class African Americans are fleeing Illinois for the South.  The Illinois Policy Institute (illinoispolicy.org) recently posted statistics that showed that millennials are also fleeing the state.  If black and young people are fleeing, who will be left?  These are groups that are needed here to be the backbone of the city and state over the next decade. 

Yet, the politicians, Mike Madigan in particular, refuse to budge.  And the Democratic appointed judges resist ANY attempts to solve the problem.

The great economist Herbert Stein came up with something called Stein’s Law, which states: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

If there is any chance of halting the bleed out from Illinois, the elephant in the room needs to be confronted.   There is no solving the problem without dealing with the pension issue.  The pension issue is also driving the debt rating issue and it is getting bigger by the day. 

Most troubling was the issue raised by last week’s Crain’s Chicago Business. The financial crisis is so bad that it is pinching higher education.   Universities are struggling to attract and retain quality faculty and other universities are poaching our schools.    Faculty are leaving this great city because they are not sure they can get paid.

Education is about the future.  Pension payments are about the past.  Illinois is robbing from the future because they overcompensated workers in the past.   Young people know it and that is why, despite a tremendous geographic advantage, you would have to have a mental disorder to start a business in Chicago now. 

And when you add the violence on top of the dire fiscal situation, you can see why I believe the slide will accelerate as long as Mike Madigan remains in office.  And he is just hanging on until Dick Durbin and eventually, his daughter Lisa can get elected. 

I have spent a good portion of my professional career dealing with distressed entities.  In 100% of the cases, unless the entity makes fundamental, structural changes, it is doomed.  Mike Madigan and John Cullerton continue to pretend that we can fix these things with more tax increases.  It’s just not there.  People and businesses are voting with their feet.  Illinois and Chicago need to make dramatic changes now if there is any hope of reversing the slide and avoiding Detroit’s fate.  Once people leave and build a life elsewhere, they will not be coming back. 

This was a once great city and a great state.  It has been my home for my entire life and my family dates back to the Chicago Fire in this town.  But the fiscal catastrophe and the violence are making it harder and harder to stay and I can no longer tell young people that this is a great place to build a future.

Illinois is on a top 20 list, but it is is a list of deadbeat governmental units.

The Transcendentalists

While the nation has gone bonkers over the musical Hamilton, with tickets going for upwards of $1,000 on the secondary market, I saw a small production entitled Nature that featured a piece of Americana outdoors at the Morton Arboretum, a nature preserve just west of Chicago.  Nature was a celebration of the lives and works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.  Set in the outdoors, the play advertises itself as a “walking play” as patrons trudge off from station to station between acts with their folding chairs.  The walks are an integral part of the play and make the play an experience. 

Nature explored the ideas of both men and the Transcendental movement, a vital part of American intellectual and literary thought.  The play delved into the friendship and sometimes rivalry between the two men.  It roughly followed their lives chronologically, and even touched on the women transcendentalists—Mary Moody and Margaret Fuller.  The play was  at its best when it captured the tension between the themes of  nature and progress, an area in which Thoreau and Emerson disagreed and the play reached its climax with Thoreau’s famous importuning, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”

Nature wonderfully used the outdoors as a perfect setting for the performance and even the sounds cooperated.  At one point, the dialogue referred to the “rustling of the leaves by the wind,” and as if on cue, the wind blew and rustled the tree leaves.  The sound and the music also carried very differently in an outdoor venue and added to the authenticity and feel of the play.  All of the music was period pieces and the costuming was magnificent—every element of the play was calibrated to capture the period.  Many of the actors stayed on afterwards for a Q&A session and we learned that the actor that played Emerson is actually the great great  great  great grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It also occurred to me that two of the greatest essayists and thinkers that had much to say about man and his relationship to society—George Orwell and Henry David Thoreau—both contracted tuberculosis and died in their mid 40’s, thus depriving mankind of decades of potential thought and writings.

The play was riveting and engrossing.   Thoreau and Emerson will always have a special place in my life.  During the summer before my senior year in college, I took an American Literature course from one of the country’s finest professors at The University of Chicago- Robert Streeter.   During July of that year, I went to Maine and wrote my paper on Thoreau and Emerson while sitting on a rock overlooking a calm pond in Maine.  It was one of life’s magic moments.  Nature brought these two enmeshed lives together for me again in a unique and inventive way.   And it reminded me that an actual visit to Walden Pond is definitely on my bucket list.

And as I write these words extolling the virtues of America’s greatest free thinkers, Yale is busy forming a committee to rid itself of “offensive” names.  Let that sink in.

I Told You So

Way back on January 16, I spun out the reasons why I thought Donald Trump could win all the marbles.  It looks like I was at least close to being right and we will see if he in fact does.  I correctly assessed voter displeasure with the Republican Establishment and the Washington Elite.  Despite a field of 17 candidates and the headwinds of a MSM that painted him as an uncouth bigot, Trump secured the Republican nomination without the floor fight or other melee that had been predicted.  Sure, the Establishment took a stab at changing the rules and there was the Ted Cruz nonendorsement, but the convention was, I thought, reasonably successful, especially given dire predictions.

Trump made his case, and re-introduced himself to the American people in his acceptance speech which the Democrats criticized as "dark" and "pessimistic" and designed to scare the American people.  Well, we do have plenty to be anxious about--- a struggling economy, $18 trillion in debt, foreign foes throwing their weight around- ISIS, Iran, China, North Korea and Russia.  On top of it, we have had several instances of police officers gunned down in targeted assassinations.  Most Americans believe we are headed in the wrong direction.  If he is playing to fear, Trump is capturing the mood of the country at the moment.  But allow me to briefly comment on the convention.

What I liked about the convention:

• Trump correctly stated the primary purpose of government --to keep its citizens safe from foreign and domestic enemies that would harm us.  And he correctly stated that if government does not accomplish this aim, nothing else much matters.   On the home front, people need to be able to go about their business without fear.  The attacks by radical Islam on our soil have either been denied (workplace violence) or downplayed by the Obama administration.  Trump understands that our social fabric will break down if police remain under attack and are demonized by the federal government. For America to flourish, domestic and international order needs to be maintained and right now, it is breaking down in both arenas.
  
• Trump's line, "I am your voice" resonated.  American citizens have had too many edicts imposed on them without any voice at all.  Gay marriage was not decided by a vote.  Transgenders bathroom rights were also imposed by the federal government.  The Iranian deal (a treaty, in my view) was not signed off on by the peoples' representatives--in fact, material provisions were hidden from us.  The provisions of TPP have also been nontransparent.   President Obama has tried to avoid Congress in implementing his vision of an immigration policy.  The policy of "pen and phone" and legislating through regulatory bodies has taken "We the People" out of the equation in many significant areas. Obama has treated Congress as if they sprouted up spontaneously and was not duly elected. Whether Trump follows through or not remains to be seen, but the American people have been voiceless.

• Putting America first.  That is the president's job.  He is our advocate on the world stage and shouldn't be acting as Secretary General of the U.N. By definition, he is an American partisan. We have had nearly eight years of someone whose first instincts are to apologize for America and to reduce America's influence.
  
• Trump's kids.  His children stole the show.  Poised, articulate, genuine sounding, they were his best advertisement.  He has done something right to rear these children.  Ivanka's comments about working in his office were particularly poignant and said something about the values he tried to instill in them.  Many entrepreneurs still adhere to an informal policy of primogeniture but her comments dispelled that notion.

What I didn't like about his speech:

• Protectionism. There is no evidence to suggest that trade barriers are good for our overall economy and Smoot-Hawley should give anyone pause.  I understand the need to get a better bargain, but curtailing trade would be terrible for the world economy.  Trump's position on this goes against every bone in my body and I can only hope that he reverses position if he gets elected.
  
• NATO commitments.  His statements regarding the conditionality of defending NATO members is reckless and harmful.  Yes, other NATO members need to be browbeaten from time to time to increase their financial commitment.  It is true that over much of the postwar period, many European countries safely built their generous welfare states under the United States umbrella.  But with Putin lusting after the Baltics, ISIS launching attacks frequently, and now Turkey rapidly turning into a tyrannical Islamic state, NATO needs to be strengthened and LED, not dismantled.
  
• What he didn't say.  Trump didn't talk about the overreach of the regulatory state or tax reform, the deficit, shrinking government or federalism--all major issues that are vital to the vibrancy of our country. 

Trump (or his daughter) for the first time in memory addressed issues of LGBT rights, women's issues, and minority issues.  Republicans heretofore didn't even talk about them.

It is a long time until November. International events will certainly play a role and positions may change, but Trump is out of the gate and has gotten much farther than any of the "experts" predicted while the Republican Establishment is still staring at its shoetops.

It Matters

The dust up over Melania's Trump's plagiarized paragraph in her opening night speech has been dismissed by Republicans and the Trump campaign on a variety of fronts.  Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort denied the charge and then went on the offensive, claiming that, "This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton she seeks out to demean her and take her down."  This clumsy denial and attack is exactly the kind of response that the Trump campaign is running AGAINST.  Manafort's response was, well, quite Clintonian.  Deny. Deny. Deny.  Even when the evidence is incontrovertible.  No literate person with even a third grade reading comprehension level can read those two paragraphs and come to the conclusion that they are not identical.  Melania made things even worse by claiming that she wrote the speech.  No one believes that either.  Other Republican commentators dismissed the unforced error by pointing to the incidents where Obama borrowed words and contrasted her mistake with Hillary's blatant falsehoods.  These are weak defenses and this incident is more important that Republicans want to admit.

First, Mrs. Trump's speech completely blew an opportunity to control the narrative and differentiate the Trump campaign from the Obamas.  Trump has run on a them of putting America first and the criticism from the right of Barack and Michelle is that the Obamas do not have the love of country that other first couples have had.   The president has consistently criticized America abroad and Michelle's infamous quote, "the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," raised the ire of many Americans.  As an immigrant that is proud of the opportunity that America afforded her, Melania was in a position to make the case that America is ready for a first couple that understands the American narrative and is ready to move away from a couple that many believe carry an underlying resentment for this country.  The gaffe dilutes this message.

Second, this is a major gaffe and an indication of a system failure.  Somewhere in the system, quality control failed. Every person's message must be consistent with the themes of the campaign--especially one as close to Donald as his spouse.  A large proportion of the electorate still has misgivings about Trump.  He does not have a strong ground organization.  He has spent little money on advertising.  And he still has filled in few details about what his policy proposals will actually look like.  While it is true that this particular blunder will likely be forgotten as the campaign heats up, I believe that it is a sign of real weakness in his organization.  One of Trump's claims is that his is a businessman and knows how to run things.  But the ugly truth is that Trump's campaign organization failed his own wife and left her exposed to mocking and ridicule on her big opening night.

Republicans are like a football team playing on the road.  When a football team plays on the road, the crowd is against them, they are in an unfamiliar place, the refs are often against them--they are simply not going to get close calls.  Most of the time, they have to execute at a much higher level than they do at home and cannot afford major gaffes, especially early in the game.  The media will magnify them and, like home town refs, will make the call against the visiting team.

Many on the Republican side are dismissing this screw up as a one-off.   But the response of the campaign team and the fact that it left Melania exposed are indications that this was a bigger blunder out of the gate than Republicans assume.

Team Trump fumbled the opening kickoff.

Convulsions

The past few weeks have seen turmoil like we have not seen since 1968 and with the Republican convention coming up, it does not appear that it will abate.   We have seen terror attacks in Turkey and France, shooting of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, and perhaps the biggest setback in U.S. foreign policy since the fall of the Shah—a failed coup in Turkey.

The public statements of our leaders have made things immeasurably worse.  The day before the Dallas shooting decried the “systemic racism” in law enforcement (just as he declared ISIS “contained” the day before the Paris attacks, and then used the memorial service in Dallas, in part to advance his political agenda.    And he met with Black Lives Matter leaders for three hours in the White House – the same group that has been publicly calling for the death of cops and celebrating when it happens.  Donald Trump inexplicably praised Saddam Hussein for using gas on terrorists (never mind the collateral damage).  Hillary Clinton contradicted James Comey’s findings, stuck to her already discredited story and claimed that she did jeopardize national security.  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg broke with protocol to condemn Donald Trump’s candidacy, a move that is highly inappropriate.  And in a statement that was as anti-Churchillian as one can get, the French prime minister responded to the truck attack in Nice by stating, “Times have changed and we should learn to live with terrorism.” Gulp.

With the world in chaos and our domestic fabric fraying at the seams,  it appears that we could not find a single Western leader anywhere that could find the right words, do the right thing, send the appropriate message, and not use events to advance his or her own agenda.

Except one.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown showed us what leadership is all about.   Throughout this crisis, Brown has stepped up and in a calm and firm manner consistently found appropriate words that were comforting, calming and designed not to inflame an already volatile situation.   He comforted the families of the fallen officers, “we are your family now,”  and refused to be drawn into policy decisions that are not his to make, telling Jake Tapper that he was going to punt the question of gun control back to him.  He appropriately signaled and challenged politicians and the Black Lives Matter members to take ownership of the issue, telling the politicians, “we are asking the cops to do too much in this country.”   He obliquely challenged the president, “We don’t feel much support these days." 

Brown also challenged BLM but in a positive way and without being combative, "Get off the protest line and apply for a job. We're hiring.  We'll give you an application.  We'll help you resolve some of the problems you're protesting about." 

After the last few weeks of chaos and bloodshed both here and abroad with our leaders seemingly clueless, inappropriate or saying and doing things to make matters worse, one leader has stepped up to remind us of what leadership looks like.

If David Brown decides to run for office, I’d be on board.

One Up, One Down

Two seemingly unrelated events occurred back to back which will have an enormous impact on democracy, government accountability, and the rule of law.  

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first.  Despite meeting each and every element of 793(f) of Title 18 of the federal penal code, Hillary Clinton will not be recommended for prosecution by FBI Director James Comey.   While Comey found that Hillary was “extremely careless” in her handling of the email, somehow that extreme carelessness was a smidgen short of the “gross negligence” that the statute requires.  Worse, Comey spent a great deal of time talking about a lack of intent, although “gross negligence,” and not “intent” is the standard written into the statute.  (See Andrew McCarthy’s  National Review column http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/437479/fbi-rewrites-federal-law-let-hillary-hook).  Justice Scalia must be rolling over in his grave as prosecutorial activism has supplanted judicial activism as a means to a result.   And throwing even more suspicion on this outcome was Bill Clinton’s “chance” meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch just a few days before, where for 30 minutes, the two exchanged pleasantries over “golf” and “grandchildren.”  This all smacks of Putinism, and once again, Hillary slips out from being held to account for her behavior –behavior which exposed classified information and may have endangered U.S. agents and their sources.   Comey’s decision reinforces the view that “laws are for little people,” and that we are being governed by a political elite that create rules for us, and from which they are exempt, even when that bad behavior is violative of the laws passed by the People’s representatives and endangers national security.   We have now seen that we can have sanctuary cities where existing immigration laws are unenforced, where the I.R.S. can be used as a tool to harass political enemies with impunity, and where a public servant can blatantly violate laws specifically written to protect American lives, and there are no consequences.  Most egregiously, the nation’s top prosecutor can meet privately and secretly with a material witness just days before the FBI’s determination.    Taken together, the whole sordid episode looks something more like Putin’s Russia than the republic envisioned by the Founders.

But just a week earlier, the British took affirmative steps to make their government and the rules they live by more accountable to the people.  Despite all of the caterwauling about leaving the EU, and the charges of xenophobia and bigotry that supposedly underpinned the “Leave”movement, Brexit is a significant, courageous step toward bringing back government accountability.   Sure, unfettered immigration was a major issue for the British decision to exit the EU.  But a second and important issue is accountability.  As Pat Condell so eloquently put it in his impassioned plea (patcondell.net), the EU (like the U.S. regulatory bodies) has enormous power and authority, accountable essentially to no one to write rules and regulations that bind the British people.  And the British people had no ability to vote these people out of office.  And regulators do what they do and that is to regulate.  The Brits, seeing Brussels regulate things as inane as the curvature of bananas, said, “enough.”   Despite the hysterical warnings from the Left of the potential economic consequences of the pullout, the British people decided to wrest control over their own borders and over rulemaking back from the central authorities in Brussels.  While Brexit creates some uncertainty, the actual effect is not likely to be material over the long run.  London with still be a financial center, British companies will still trade with other European companies and others, and Great Britain will still be an important ally in NATO.   On balance, it will be a good thing for the British people.  It restores their voice in their own affairs and that, I  believe, is worth the tradeoff.

But I see these two events on two different continents—Brexit and the Clinton investigation as separate fronts in the same struggle in the West, and they actually mirror each other.  These are battles over putting decision making power back where it belongs—in the hands of the People through their elected representatives and making sure that political leaders are accountable to the people, transparent, and not above the law.

The British people saw their voice taken away and through the EU had delegated to unaccountable bureaucratic rulemakers in Brussels that were dictating how they should live.  Likewise, in America, we have had vast social and economic changes dictated to us in which we had no voice at all.   Local democratic decisions over gay marriage were rejected and that issue was essentially decided by a single individual.  Gay marriage was followed immediately by a directive to force schools to make available bathrooms and lockerooms to transgenders – again, taking it out of the hands of local authorities.  On another important issue—immigration, the Obama administration has repeatedly tried to avoid the democratic process with his “pen and phone.”   His administration has attempted to kill entire industries—coal and electronic cigarettes by regulating them out of business, and again, the people have had no say in it.   Through HUD, he has even attempted to dictate what our neighborhood will look like.    The two most significant pieces of legislation passed during his administration—Dodd Frank and the Affordable Care Act were not so much laws as outlines for a regulatory scheme that was to be written.  Again, out of the public eye, subject to no vote by our representatives and granting unknown, unaccountable regulators wide authority to impose his or her own will on us without any cost/benefit analysis or public scrutiny.  Under Obama, it’s been regulators gone wild.  Great Britain has rejected nonaccountable, nondemocratic lawmaking and has pulled this authority closer to home.

The failure to recommend indictment of Clinton was indeed a setback for government accountability and the rule of law.  That a top government official (who is also seeking to be the nation’s leader) entrusted with the most sensitive secrets of the government was so intent on not being transparent that she jeopardized national security and endangered peoples’ lives will not be held to account is a huge blow to our system and the rule of law.

In this round, the British were victorious in their efforts to make government more accountable, transparent and democratic.  America lost this round.

Thoughts on Orlando

The horrific events in Orlando were matched by an equally horrifying response by the Obama administration.   He continues to make strategic blunders on a grand scale that historians may be writing about for centuries.  Worse, as evidence piles up that his strategy is amiss, he simply doubles down and sticks with it.   Strategy is strategy, whether it is in sports, war, business or politics.  And every high school football coach in America knows that if the other team keeps scoring on you, you need to change something.

Right now, Radical Islam is beating Team Obama badly at the game of strategy.  

The first strategic blunder was the minimization of the threat.  Early on, President Obama dismissed ISIS as the “j.v.” and a “bunch of guys in pickup trucks.”  As late as last fall, Obama admitted he had no strategy for ISIS, and obscenely, on the eve of the Paris attacks, blithely declared that ISIS was contained.  He has made ludicrous statements such as asserting that the risk of dying in a slip and fall in a bathtub is greater than that of being killed in a terrorist incident.  He has released Gitmo detainees that are known killers and bombmakers.  He has continued to peddle the narrative that ISIS does not constitute an existential threat to the U.S.  His continued underestimation of the nature of their capabilities, their different forms, their reach, and their resilience is deeply troubling.  Worse, when the opposition party raises issues, he demonstrates more ire and more contempt for them than the enemy.  The U.S. military was able to obliterate the world’s 3^rd largest military in 100 days in the desert in 1991, yet after almost 15 years in Afghanistan, the Taliban controls more territory than it did 10 years ago in Afghanistan and ISIS is able to inflict casualties in Europe and our homeland.  Radical Islam’s ability to rebound and hit the West should end any threat minimization.  It is certain to evolve and become even more deadly.

The second strategic blunder has been the atrocious framing of the problem by the Obama administration.  Obama has twisted himself into a pretzel in his attempt to dissociate Islam from terror.   The business world is littered with failed companies that tragically dismissed smaller, more nimble competitors, misjudged the market, and were ambushed by technological advances that neutralized their advantages.  It is no different in the competition among countries and ideas.   Defining and framing the problem is everything.  It permits us to focus and expend resources wisely, build consensus, rally the nation and ease the fears of the citizens. 

“These aren’t religious warriors,” proclaimed Obama following the attack.  They problem is that THEY think they are and that’s all that matters. In Graeme Wood's seminal article, "What ISIS Really Wants," published in March of 2015 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/), Wood noted bluntly, “ISIS is Islamic.   Very Islamic.”   Whether Obama thinks they are Islamic or not is not relevant, and, indeed, will frustrate attempts to develop a real strategy around it.  It is their belief system, their interpretation of the Qur’an, their worldview that we are countering.  His denial that the words “radical Islam” have meaning in this struggle is almost surreal.  As somebody who trained for his professional life in law school, and whose political ascendancy was largely through rhetoric, he now claims that words are unimportant.  Every student of history and of leadership knows that this is simply not true.   When framing issues, words matter greatly.   Loretta Lynch’s statement that the Orlando 911 calls will have references to Islamic terrorism redacted is simply a stunning obfuscation of what we all know to be true. 

Islam has sick and pathological aspects to it, and the darker parts of it—those that directly contravene Western values of tolerance, individual freedom, and democracy—have been latched onto by various groups to attempt to impose its will on the rest of the world.  The more realistic we are about it and its pervasiveness, the better chance we have of shrinking, controlling, and eventually defeating it.  My religion-- Catholicism has also had pathologies throughout its history.  Among them were the sale of indulgences and the child sex abuse scandals.  By claiming that it held the keys to the everlasting kingdom, the church enriched itself by selling passes to heaven until Martin Luther came along to expose the corruption of the scheme.  The child sex abuse scandal was even worse.  The abuse involved not just one parish, one diocese, or one country.  It was systemic, pervasive and global.  There were thousands of children that suffered a lifetime of shame and pain, lives ruined by alcoholism, drug abuse, and wrecked relationships until the Church’s mishandling of it was exposed through the press.  Of course, we did not condemn all Catholics or even all priests because of this scandal, but you could hardly be accused of being a “bigot” or “Catholi-phobic” if you declined to permit your 10 year old son to attend an overnight religious camp supervised only by priests.  That wouldn’t be bigoted. That would be prudent.  Similarly, we cannot shrink from calling out the necrotic parts of Islam and those that espouse it.

Obama’s stubborn refusal to recognize the intertwining of Islam with terror and his abdication of leadership on the issue—from not attending the Paris march against terrorism to his instinctive rush to prevent the nonexistent backlash against Muslims---makes him sound at times more like the Executive Director of CAIR than the Commander In Chief of the U.S.   Most frightening to me is his willingness to subordinate Western values to avoid offending Islam.  He was at his worst when he asserted in his Cairo speech, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”  The exact opposite is true and must be true.  In the West, no religion, no worldview is above criticism or parody.  Artistic works like “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “The Life of Brian,”  “The Book of Mormon,” and even the widely criticized “Piss Christ” were all allowed to be seen and distributed in the West.  And no incidents of violence resulted.   Would we even think about producing a parody on Muhammed with dancing girls in short burkas on Broadway without risk of violence? Not if the threats against Salman Rushdie, the cartoonists that parodied Muhammed, and the deaths of Theo van Gogh and the Charlie Hebdo staff are any indication.  If we value freedom, freedom of expression, women’s rights, gay rights, the future MUST belong to those who would slander the prophet of Islam.  Obama has it precisely backwards.

Defeating radical Islam will be a very tough strategic problem.  Like the creature in the classic sci-fi film Alien, radical Islam has adapted itself quite well to our defenses.  Because it wraps religion around itself, it is an ideal defense mechanism—our nation was founded in part on religious freedom, and we are revulsed by any form of racial or religious bigotry.  More recently, it has also wrapped itself in humanitarian causes—the refugee crisis and has said that it has infiltrated those refugees.  No country on the planet is more responsive to humanitarian need than the U.S. and radical Islam is poised to exploit that.   Another adaptation is its exploitation of new technologies.   Radical Islam is a 16^th century mindframe that has successfully hijacked 21^st century networking capability through social media.  (Ironically, Lenin famously said that “the capitalist will sell us the rope we hang them with.” Radical Islam is inflicting damage with the technology we generously enabled them to access.) It has several forms and branches, that sometimes cooperate and sometimes compete---ISIS, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, and, of course, it has taken over the mechanisms of a state—Iran, the mother ship of all Islamic terror. 

Donald Trump has been widely criticized for his proposed policy to ban all Muslim immigration for a period of time as bigoted and overreaching.  And it is.  But he has gotten traction with this approach because people are scared and nervous and they see an administration that is almost willful in turning a blind eye to the issue that confronts us.   The surest way to avoid an overinclusive policy is to face this threat realistically, call it by its name, frame the problem correctly, and get our best, innovative strategic minds working on it.  If citizens do not feel adequately protected, they may ultimately opt for Trump’s approach.

We are faced with a multi-headed hydra.  Radical Islam is as totalitarian, brutal, dehumanizing and ruthless as Nazism.  We were able to defeat the Axis powers with raw industrial power.  We defeated Communism by fighting on several fronts—ideologically, militarily (through proxy wars) and economically.  Radical Islam is a tougher, more elusive, more resilient foe than Communism.  It is an idea, wrapped in a religion, armed with a network.  It has co-opted not just new recruits, but apologists in the Western media.  We should not be afraid to face it.  We need a comprehensive and realistic strategy to tackle this foe.  We need leadership that is willing to face truth.   In economic terms, we need to find ways of raising the cost to be a member of the radical Islam club.   We need to disrupt their ability to recruit and network while simultaneously respecting our own freedoms.  This will require a coordinated effort and innovative thinking on many fronts---economic, political, military, and ideological.  While Marie Harf’s solution is reflexively liberal and wrong (jobs for jihadis), her basic assertion is correct that fighting this solely along a military dimension will not likely be successful.  Blanket, simplistic solutions may have surface appeal but are not the answer—such as banning all Muslims or carpet bombing.  Even Islamic expert Daniel Pipes, who I respect a great deal, struggles with this when he says we should bank Islamists but not Muslims.   I agree, but telling them apart is THE issue.  But pretending that the problem does not exist, or recharacterizing it as something different than it is--a gun control problem, for instance, simply allows our adversary to retain the initiative.  This war will take innovative thinking, and the entrepreneurial minds in the West are more capable than anyone else in the world at this.  Unfortunately, we have an administration that is in deep denial and this is scary.  More attacks and more deaths are in our future (CIA director John Brennan directly contradicted Obama's assessment and said as much).  Perhaps it will take coordinated dirty bomb attacks on several cities before we get serious about strategy.

Delivering a blow aimed at the LGBT community just as the Obama administration was pushing hard for expanded LGBT rights was a message, and not merely coincidence.  Team Obama has underestimated radical Islam and has been outflanked.