Dear Weekend Jolter,
I’m not sure what proportion, exactly, of those of you reading this would be considered semi-fascist by President Biden, but I am sure it’s no negligible amount.
On Thursday, the commander-in-chief stood behind a podium — and in front of a backdrop that gave the impression he was addressing the Galactic Empire — to call a segment of his constituency (“MAGA Republicans”) a threat to “the very foundations of our republic.”
It was a shocking speech, and if you don’t believe me, just take a look at this transcript:
Blood alone moves the wheels of history! Have you ever asked yourselves in an hour of meditation, which everyone finds during the day, how long we have been striving for greatness? Not only the years we’ve been at war, the war of work, but from the moment as a child when we realized that the world could be conquered. It has been a lifetime struggle. A never-ending fight. I say to you, and you will understand that it is a privilege to fight! We are warriors! Salesmen of north-eastern Pennsylvania, I ask you once more: Rise and be worthy of this historical hour! No revolution is worth anything if it cannot defend itself! Some people will tell you salesman is a bad word. They’ll conjure up images of used car dealers and door to door charlatans. This is our duty: to change their perception. I say salesmen… and women of the world unite! We must never acquiesce for it is together, TOGETHER, THAT WE PREVAIL! We must never cede control of the motherland!
I’ll admit to not being the first to make that joke, but I’ve found it amusing every time I’ve seen it made.
In all seriousness, the speech represented an escalation in America’s already divisive political conflict. Of course, Donald Trump raised the ante more than a few times during his own stint in his office, but this publication’s stance on the former president is well-established by now and a predecessor’s mistakes are no excuse for Biden’s.
As Jim Geraghty observed in Friday’s Morning Jolt, the whiplash in Biden’s speech — and his presidency to this point — has been the stuff of a nasty, head-on collision. On the one hand, he campaigned on uniting the country and preempts half of his tweets with a faux-folksy “Folks.” On the other, he has called his mainstream political opponents proponents of “Jim Crow on steroids,” and intentionally conflates social conservatives with the lunatics who stormed the Capitol Building last January.
Now, it would be condemnable for any president to use his perch to disparage his fellow Americans as wannabe authoritarians. But it’s especially galling when that president has been more than happy to take unilateral, illegal action on a near-weekly basis. And it’s downright insane considering his party’s temeritious effort to nominate more extreme Republican candidates who will be easier to defeat in general elections.
There’s now a McConnell / Schumer super PAC ad war over the next week and a half in the NH Republican primary.
Rs dropped $4.5M to help Chuck Morse last-minute; Ds have now put in $3.1M to try to get the ultra-MAGA candidate Don Bolduc elected. pic.twitter.com/MShMozfH7B
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) September 2, 2022
As Charlie Cooke put it, the Democrats have “transcended those specific criticisms and talked itself into the idea that its entire agenda is synonymous with ‘democracy.’ In Biden’s mind, he didn’t make one speech about the Constitution and then another speech about his presidential aims; he made a single speech about democracy, which, in his estimation, is inextricable from Democracy.”
In other words: Give us a break and get over yourselves.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
President Biden is intent on repeating the mistakes of his old boss: Biden’s Looming Giveaway to Iran
Remembering, if not celebrating, Mikhail Gorbachev: The Good Loser
Another day, another embarrassing scandal for the FBI: Our Political FBI
Post-Dobbs, pro-life attorneys general should redouble their focus on the abortion issue: Attorneys General Need to Step Up to Defend Life
The GOP must not be a shapeless opposition party come November: The Missing Republican Agenda
Let’s not bite the hands that built us: Canceling Thomas Jefferson
ARTICLES
Russ Latino: How the Jackson Water Shortage Happened and How It Can Be Solved
Philip Klein: Blake Masters and the Limits of Fight Club Conservatism
Michael Brendan Dougherty: The Vatican Is Wasting Its Authority
Jimmy Quinn: How the Biden Administration Moved to Soft-Pedal the China Threat
Charles C.W. Cooke: Save Our Political System: Impeach and Convict Joe Biden
Charles C.W. Cooke: Donald Trump Is Still a Lunatic
Kevin Williamson: Biden’s Student-Loan Wipeout Sticks It to the Poor
Rich Lowry: Republicans Can’t Run and Hide on Abortion
Rich Lowry: All Things Considered, It’s Better Not to Be under FBI Investigation
Dan McLaughlin: Jungle Primaries and Ranked-Choice Voting are Bad. Combining Them Is Worse
Andrew McCarthy: Trump Brings Out the Worst in His Enemies, as He Undermines Himself
Jim Geraghty: Who Really Wins Under Ranked-Choice Voting?
Mark P. Mills: The First Energy War of the 21st Century
CAPITAL MATTERS
Democrats can’t decide if the Inflation Reduction Act is a climate or economic bill. Amanda Griffiths says it will worsen the condition of both: The Inflation Reduction Act Will Hurt the Economy and the Environment
Dominic Pino takes aim at an erstwhile U.S. trade representative: Robert Lighthizer Is Not a Conservative Hero
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen observes that “nothing keeps mischief-makers in line better than a handy supply of missiles” in his review of an Alabamian art museum: Ethel Waters in Oil and Sea Critters in Silver, Starring at the Huntsville Museum of Art
In Funny Pages, Armond White sees a valid critique of modern American society: The Subversive Humor of Funny Pages
FUN READS FOR NON-FASCIST READERS
Blake Masters and the other Fight Club Conservatives’ professed highest values are already being set aside for political expedience’s sake, observes Phil Klein:
To be clear, it is perfectly defensible to make the argument, as his defenders have, that the goal of conservatives should be to support the most pro-life policies that are politically feasible in each state — and perhaps the sorts of restrictions Masters is now talking about represent the ceiling in Arizona. However, there is a tension between advertising Masters during the primary as the “bold” candidate who isn’t going to sit silently like the previous generation of weak-kneed Republicans and then trying to argue that he’s pursuing the prudent approach by soft-pedaling his defense of human life.
For several years now, whenever traditional conservatives have pushed back against the current shift in the GOP (warning against embracing the Left’s view of expansive executive power, using the force of the state as a tool to reward friends and punish enemies, emphasizing the importance of constitutionalism and free-market economics), they are not only greeted with disagreement, but contempt. They have been pilloried as people who don’t understand the stakes and who want to surrender the culture war. Criticizing Trump and his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election, both on the merits and in terms of the atrocious politics of making an entire party subordinate to the bruised ego of an unpopular former president, triggers accusations of weakness, cuckery, and cowardice. And yet a leading light of this crowd, who declared, “It’s time for Republicans and conservatives to wake up and realize we’re in a culture war,” has climbed down on the most important culture-war issue, and the response from this same crowd is, “Well, that’s just pragmatic politics!”
Sorry, it doesn’t work this way. If the refined position among the Fight Club Conservatives is that it’s important to balance ideological goals against prudent political considerations, they don’t get to police who and who isn’t a real, manly, conservative.
Jimmy Quinn reports that under Tony Blinken, the State Department is cracking down on . . . those who tell the unvarnished truth about the nature of the Chinese Communist Party:
In a document issued last August, the State Department asked U.S. diplomats to soften their use of certain language condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s broadly damaging behavior — its “malign influence.” The document, experts tell NR, marks, at least, a critical yet quiet watering-down of Washington’s rhetoric toward Beijing.
News of the document’s existence comes at a critical juncture for the Biden administration’s handling of China, as Beijing ratchets up its military provocations in the Taiwan Strait and President Biden reportedly plans to see General Secretary Xi Jinping for a potential in-person meeting in November.
Notably, the six-page cable, approved by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and marked sensitive but unclassified, was circulated widely within the State Department and cleared by two White House offices, according to a copy recently reviewed by National Review. Titled “Guidance on PRC Messaging and Nomenclature in Department Products and Communications,” it instructs officials on how to use specific language when discussing China-related topics.
“The Department aims for precise and specific language that reflects this Administration’s policy approach to the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” it begins. “This requires the Department’s written products and diplomatic engagements focus explicitly on the PRC government’s actions and conduct — e.g., making clear U.S. criticism is not directed toward PRC nationals, the global Chinese diaspora, or U.S. citizens of Chinese descent, as well as citizens of other countries who are of Chinese ethnicity or heritage.”
It continues: “These principles serve as a guide to ensure the Department avoids conflating ethnicity and heritage with the negative political decisions and actions of the PRC government or the Chinese Communist Party; they are not meant to constrain cable reporting or messaging in other languages where there may be imperfect translations of these terms.”
While Blinken and other officials briefly acknowledged its existence — and the goal of encouraging specificity — last October, the document’s contents have not previously been reported. It effectively demonstrates the administration’s unwillingness to grapple with the very nature of the Chinese regime, experts told NR.
The president ought to get the early boot, argues Charlie Cooke:
There is not a single person in America who believes that what President Biden has done is legal — and that includes the people who penned the contrived legal justifications for him. His order is a ruse, a scheme, a hijacking — the product not of genuine ambiguity in the law, but of a preference for brute force. I know it. You know it. We all know it. President Biden knows it. This is why, in almost taunting tones, the president’s apologists have begun to remind the dissenters that, under the current standing rules, there may be no person in America who can sue. “Well,” they ask, gleefully, “Whatjagonnadoaboutit?”
I’ll tell you what I’d do about it: I’d impeach and convict the president, and end this trend for good. In this country, Congress makes the laws. In this country, Congress appropriates the funds. In this country, Congress sets immigration policy. In this country, as Barack Obama liked to remind us, the president is not a dictator or an emperor or a king. In this country, there is a path to getting things done, and that path is through Congress.
And if the president doesn’t like that? Then the president can go home. Among the many scars that Woodrow Wilson left on the American system of government, we can count the notion that the three branches of government are “co-equal.” They’re not. Congress is prime. Congress can pass laws without the president; the president cannot pass laws without Congress. Congress can remove the president; the president cannot remove Congress. Along with the states, Congress can amend the Constitution; the president cannot. Look at any part of the American order, and you’ll find that Congress has the power either to veto the other branches or to change the status quo via other means.
Last January, Congress should have used this power to impeach and convict President Trump for engaging in what Senator Ben Sasse appropriately described as “one of the most egregious Article II attacks on Article I in all of U.S. history.” A decade ago, Congress should have used this power to impeach Barack Obama for relentlessly explaining that he wasn’t an emperor, and then taking the very action he had deemed a usurpation of legislative authority. Today, Congress should use this power to remove Joe Biden from office for repeatedly breaking his oath in the most transparent way imaginable. And if we don’t — because it’s too hard or too divisive or harrowing — then we’ll deserve the system we’ll inevitably end up with, which, at this rate, seems destined to bear an uncanny resemblance to the system we once fought a revolution to pull apart.
Ryan Mills, capping off a year of excellent reporting on Afghanistan, writes about the plight of American allies left in Taliban-land by the Biden administration:
Rabah is still sure the Taliban wants him dead.
Taliban warriors recently stormed his home looking for him — the fourth time this year. They beat his wife and knocked out her teeth, the former interpreter for U.S. Special Forces said.
National Review first highlighted Rabah’s case in April. U.S. Embassy staff destroyed his family’s passports last summer as they prepared to evacuate the country, leaving Rabah stranded. Rabah paid for new passports, but they were confiscated by the Taliban.
He has since applied for a third set of passports, telling the local passport office staff that he lost them again. But they are skeptical, he said, and if the Taliban finds out, they’ll again confiscate his documents.
In the meantime, Rabah remains on the move, surviving on the money he made when he sold his house, and on donations from family and an American handler who is helping him. On Saturday, Rabah paid $2,000 to illegally cross the border with his family into Pakistan, where he believes they will be safer. He said he’d learned the Taliban were planning to kidnap his young daughter. He’s scared, he admitted, but he is trying to stay strong.
“I have to never give up,” he said. “I have to fight and keep my family safe.”
One year ago today, the Biden administration pulled the last U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, ending the nearly 20-year war in the country with a chaotic and disgraceful withdrawal that left 13 American troops dead, terrified Afghans clinging to American planes and falling to their deaths, and tens of thousands of American allies, people like Rabah who dutifully served the U.S., abandoned, their lives in constant danger in the Taliban-controlled country. Some have been able to sneak across borders into neighboring countries or escape with the help of civilian rescue organizations. But a year later, most of those allies remain left behind, while thousands of Afghans who were evacuated in the chaotic final days of the withdrawal had never worked for or with the U.S. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Shout-Outs
Allahpundit, at HotAir: My Farewell to HotAir Readers
Tim Carney, at the Washington Examiner: Time to name names: Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 against opening schools
Kenny Xu, in City Journal: Harvard’s Affirmative Action Rationale Is Bogus
CODA
Be sure to tune into Andor when it premieres a few weeks from now. Very possible that it will be the best Star Wars content since the last time its titular character showed up.