By: Robert Roos MEP, Honorary Distinguished Fellow
For decades now our Western society has made a success out of democracy and an economy based on free market forces. It is no coincidence that the two go hand in hand, because in an environment where people have the freedom to think and act, innovation and progress arise. Another key component of this success was affordable and reliable energy. The prosperity that these three components have brought us has also ensured that we have made great strides in improving the environment and living standards especially in the Western part of Europe.
But the economic freedom that has brought us so much may well be over. Today, 'Fit for 55' is presented as part of Frans Timmermans' Green Deal, a mega package of legislation from the European Commission to 'green' the economy.
By: John C. Wohlstetter
In a previous American Spectator article, “Dems to Supremes: Shape Up or Pack Up!,” I examined the lessons to be drawn from Franklin Roosevelt’s failed 1937 effort to pack the Supreme Court by raising the number of justices from nine to 15.
Roosevelt proposed that a new justice should be added for each sitting justice who is age 70 or older. Had Roosevelt been successful with his plan, the aging justices who blocked his New Deal programs would be nullified and the Court’s ideological balance would have shifted to the left.
By: John C Wohlstetter, Senior Fellow
President Joe Biden’s tirade against a Supreme Court decision that didn’t go his way elevates the future of the Court to a new level of intensity and, hence, political priority.
Let’s begin with the president’s July 1 tweet reacting to the Court’s Arizona election law ruling:
By: Eli M. Gold, President
I have long said that foreign policy is a non-partisan issue. While domestic issues (i.e. taxes, education, healthcare etc) often are, foreign policy is not. That is no longer. Over the last 5 months the Biden administration has implemented a highly partisan global strategy that turned international sentiment toward the notion that the U.S. can no longer be counted on to support our allies.
By: John C. Wohlstetter, Senior Fellow
In a March 2020 article for The American Spectator, “Event Tectonics: Quake, Shake, Bake & Fake,” I assessed the prospective impact — large — of COVID-19 and compared it in salience to prior events. Those events I divided into four categories:
By: Adelle Nazarian, Media Fellow and Dr. Seyed Hossein Lotfizadeh
An impressive array of congressional letters have been pulling the Biden administration in opposite directions regarding the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“Iran deal" for short) negotiated under former President Barack Obama over a span of days. While the heated atmosphere is a clear indication of the perils of whatever path the Biden administration opts to pursue, one would hope that cooler heads prevail at end of the day given the stakes.
By: Robert Roos MEP, Honorary Distinguished Fellow
Brussels (Brussels Morning) ‘Sofagate’ now seems a distant memory. A few weeks later, however, now that the dust has settled, it is very important to reflect long and hard on the issues raised and on the many lessons to be learned in parliament from this diplomatic spat.
Ms von der Leyen indicated that, during her visit to Ankara, she had felt ‘hurt’ and ‘abandoned’ and accused Turkish President Erdoğan of subjecting her to sexist treatment by failing to provide a chair for her as he had for Charles Michel.
By: Adelle Nazarian, Media Fellow
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) gruesome and likely intentional shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner with Canadian passengers on board on January 8, 2020, was recently condemned by Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice as a “shameful” act of terrorism.
Now, it is time for the Biden administration to do the same.
A D-Day remembrance by Senior Fellow John C. Wohlstetter as told to him by his ancestor, William Friedman, plus his own pilgrimage to the beaches of Normandy. (This article first appeared in the American Spectator magazine May 28, 2018)
By: John C. Wohlstetter, Senior Fellow
For decades, terrorists have relied on three weapons to fight the West: our technology, our media, and our laws and associated values.
By: Geoffrey Van Orden
Since 1948, Israel has had to fight for its existence in at least four major conventional wars, defending its small and vulnerable territory, half the size of Denmark, while surrounded by hostile neighbours. In living memory of the horrors of the Holocaust, suffering years of terrorism, Israelis have every right to feel under threat and defend themselves. Above all, Israel seeks recognition by Palestinians of its right to exist as an essentially Jewish state if progress is to be made in the creation of a viable and internationally acceptable Palestinian state. The Hamas leaders that in June 2007 seized from the Palestine Authority de facto control of Gaza, vacated by Israel in 2005, fundamentally oppose this.
By: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Senior Fellow
America’s foreign-policy establishment and peace-process industry are having a field day: The latest round of fighting between Israel and the terror group Hamas, they insist, has sounded the death knell for the Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered peace treaties between the Jewish state and several Muslim nations.
By: Geoffrey Van Orden CBE, Distinguished Fellow
In international relations, and in politics more widely, perception is often more significant than reality. In many overseas countries, Donald Trump was widely seen as an unsuitable, even dangerous, President - unpredictable and narcissistic, acting on instinct and unnerving friend and foe alike. Yet nearly half of Americans continued to vote for Donald Trump.
In a Newsweek essay published Thursday, Matthew Brodsky, former adviser to the Trump administration’s Middle East peace team, blasted the left, claiming it seeks to banish all dissent, and specifically criticized recent calls for the canceling of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
By: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Senior Fellow
Progressives today demand a profound remaking of the country. In their regressive Orwellian worldview, anti-Americanism is the new patriotism. In their version of American democracy, big tech thought police substitute for the real police now being defunded in communities across America. A free corporate media, presenting multiple sides of an issue and allowing for an open exchange of ideas on opinion pages, has given way to mob- and media-approved narratives and calls to silence and banish all dissent to the outer rim.