Commentary
As I prepare to depart on a short vacation, I felt the need to comment on a few stories that came to my attention while clearing my desk.
Biden’s Commencement Address
As I listened to President Biden giving his commencement address to graduates of the historically black Howard University, my mind wandered to his polarizing speech on Republican extremism in Philadelphia, standing in front of a blood-red Hitler-like backdrop waving his clenched fists in the air in defiance.
The backdrop at Howard was bright and Biden was wearing the school colors of blue and white, but his message was of “white supremacy,” claiming it was the “most dangerous threat to our homeland.”
I Couldn’t Say It Better – “It was a low, dispiriting affair, one that aptly captured the low, dispiriting nature of his presidency,” noted Wall Streety Journal columnist Gerard Baker. “Acerbic rhetoric from a partisan who demonizes opposition and divides Americans from one another; bottomless self-unawareness from a politician elected president almost accidentally in a moment of crisis, who continues to see himself as some sort of historical savior; cynical cant from a serial fabulist whose distortions are becoming as loathsome as the endless malign fictions of the predecessor he despises and who he desperately needs as a foil.”
What might we expect on May 27, 2023, when Vice President Harris gives the commencement address at West Point?
Americans have come to expect commencement addresses to be uplifting. A cheerful sendoff to graduates as they look forward to taking on the next chapter in their lives. I recently heard of the optimism voiced to graduates at the University of Arizona, among them a grandson.
Getting Smart in France
Speaking to an audience of industrial executives on how to reverse deindustrialization and revive French manufacturing. French President Macron suggested Europe may already have enough environmental regulation and doesn’t need more.
“Now we need to execute,” he said, rather than add more pages by the hundreds to the green rulebook.
Macron apparently isn’t alone. While not abandoning its net-zero goal entirely, Euro politicians are recognizing that so called green-tape is push more manufacturing elsewhere.
The Young Adult Vote
I often have to laugh when I read how this candidate or that candidate is getting the young vote. They don’t vote. I understand that just 23 percent of those under 25 actually vote.
I found it interesting that Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, is making the case for raising the voting age to 25, except for those who either fulfill a service requirement – at least six months in the U. S. military or first responder role – or pass the civics test administered to naturalizing immigrants.
Noting that only 23 percent of adults under 30 say patriotism is important to them, Ramaswamy believes that our lost civic pride won’t appear automatically. Reviving it will require boldness. His suggestion is bold.
Killing DEI
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin are the latest leaders to end demands of adherence to DEI – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Virginia Democrats have the long knives out to oust Martin Brown, a black Republican, who is the state’s chief diversity officer. After a recent speech at Virginia Military Institute, in which he said VMI needed to lead in “the greatest country in the world … that is already diverse, that has been inclusive, they were livid.
“The goal should be “promoting that and then expanding it and tearing down tribalism and divisiveness,” he said.
While the NAACP called for Brown to resign, former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder called for Youngkin to fire him. No chance.
Nothing to See Here
They call themselves journalists, but they’re nowhere to be seen on the southern border where some five million migrants have found their way to freedom in the United States, some with court reporting dates of 2026 and 2027, and the “gotaways” who just disappear.
They probably are unaware that hundreds of Chinese nationals have crossed the border and most recently, an Afghan on the terrorist list, was arrested.
Fox News has at least five or six assigned reporters along the border reporting daily from Texas to California. They are frequently asked if other news outlets have reporters there, and the response is always ‘no’ unless Homeland Security’s Alejandro Mayorkas is visiting.
Those leftist “journalists” bought the tale of the 51 former intelligence officers who referred to the Hunter Biden laptop e-mails as Russian disinformation and were quick to dump on the Durham Report as “nothing new” with no apologies for their prior claims of Russia ties to Trump.
How sad that we cannot trust the media.
Watch for my return in about a week.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
