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Useful idiot

US college backs professor’s free speech rights after anti-Semitic rants

Term^[1] invented in Soviet Russia to describe people who blindly supported the likes of Lenin and Stalin while they committed atrocity after atrocity.

This term (singular: полезный дурак) was attributed to Lenin by some Russian writers, e.g., by Vladimir Bukovsky (1984).^[4]

Today, it refers to brainwashed liberals and leftists the world over (usually college students that aren’t necessarily idiots, but just misinformed, naive, and ignorant of facts due to being indoctrinated with liberal/socialist propaganda through their public education) who believe that George W. Bush has committed more crimes against humanity than leftist darlings like Saddam Hussain, Yasser Arafat, and Osama Bin Laden, and still defend Communism, the cause of over 100 million deaths to this day.

Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.

Vladimir Lenin ^[5]

Demo ☭ rats #Pay4slay

Antisemitism embeds itself more firmly in the heart of the Democrat party

By Andrea Widburg
10July2023 https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/antisemitism_embeds_itself_more_firmly_in_the_heart_of_the_democrat_party.html

American Jews are overwhelmingly Democrat in orientation. They’re also, sensibly, extremely worried about antisemitism. The problem is that these same Democrat Jews are blind to the fact that antisemitism is the growing rot at the heart of their own party.

There are lots of reasons Jews are leftists. The main reason, probably, is that American Jews are dedicated to college degrees. There were already jokes in the 1930s showing a lady smiling down at a brand new baby swaddled in a white blanket and asking, “So, what is it? A doctor or a lawyer?” For American Jews, the journey from shtetl to tenement to the middle class was a short one if you could see your son (and, later, your daughter) through college. They are one of the most credentialed religious groups in America.

Jews are also leftists because (probably thanks to college) many of them have bought into the fraud that the Nazis were right-wing. Of course, the National Socialists were from the left. One of the great party tricks of the second half of the 20th century was how communists in America and Europe manage to indoctrinate the world into believing that fascism was a right-wing ideology.

NEA headquarters

Image: NEA headquarters, located three minutes from the White House. Photo by AgnosticPreachersKid. CC BY-SA 4.0.

And, of course, there were the legions of Jewish red diaper babies in the first half of the 20th century. These were Jews from Russia who, having suffered horrendous, murderous antisemitism at the hands of Tzarist forces, assumed that, if communists hated the Tzar, they must be friends to the Jews. Bernie Sanders comes from that class. These are committed leftists who, having drunk the Kool-Aid, turn a blind eye to the Soviet Union’s antisemitism, as well as the Nazi’s socialist Holocaust.

Bred on fallacies from communists and colleges (but I repeat myself), America’s Jews fear “the right.” That’s why, as of 2021, 68% of observant Jews and 77% of non-observant Jews are Democrats, for a total of 76%.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that observant Democrat Jews tend to be more form than substance. They are rigorous about the High Holy Days, send their kids to Hebrew school, and like to throw around Yiddish phrases. However, their values are formed by the Democrat party platform and their college curricula rather than by the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) or the Talmud (the main and ancient rabbinic text interpreting the Torah and creating rules for daily life).

So, in sum: For myriad reasons, 76% of American Jews hew left and fear the right, but all Jews fear murderous anti-Jewish hatred. The problem is that 76% of American Jews think that hatred comes only from conservative Christians and their fellow travelers on the right. They’re embarrassed to admit that it also comes from Islam (it lies at the heart of the Koran) and are ignorant of the fact that Karl Marx put it at the heart of socialism, where it created the Holocaust, Soviet programs, and, in America, the National Education Association.

Yup, I’m finally at the story that led to this post. First, let’s talk about the National Education Association, which is the largest labor union in the United States. It represents taxpayer-funded “educators” and staff from kindergarten up. It’s also fanatically Democrat, sending millions every year to Democrat politicians and initiatives while reserving statistically insignificant amounts for Republicans. It just had its annual convention, where this happened:

For several years, Jewish issues — more specifically, anti-Jewish issues — have been brought up by NEA members from Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere. There is a tiny Jewish caucus within the NEA, but it is relatively inactive. Unlike past years, the Jewish caucus was able to introduce some pro-Israel and pro-Jewish resolutions.

The delegates voted to support the following new business items:

NBI 3: NEA will use existing print and digital communication tools to educate members and the general public about the history, culture, and struggles of Palestinians.

NBI 7: The NEA will recognize Palestinian-American students and members by using existing digital communications to highlight their personal narratives and stories.

And the NEA delegates rejected (albeit narrowly) the following new business item:

NBI ??: The NEA will post the “blue square” emoji on its website during the month of January in honor of Holocaust Remembrance, to show that NEA stands against hate towards Jewish people.

A friend of mine constantly says that Jews are building their own cattle cars. Looking at the antisemitism at the heart of the Democrat party, I’m very sorry to say this, but she’s right.

 Democrats to Israel: Go to Hell

By Karol Markowicz 17November 2019 https://nypost.com/2019/11/17/democrats-to-israel-go-to-hell/

Sen. Bernie Sanders REUTERS

Last week, Israel once again faced a barrage of rockets from Gaza while most of the mainstream Democratic candidates whistled and looked away.

Candidates don’t have to comment on every event happening around the world, but the ­silence of much of the Democratic field feels like more than passing disinterest. And when Vice President Joe Biden offered even a bland message of support for Israel that would have been unremarkable a few years ago, he got massive pushback from the left on Twitter.

And it’s those activists on Twitter, and in the campus fever swamps, who shape the progressive conversation on Israel.

It’s terrifying.

In Thursday’s New York Times, Blake Flayton, a self-described “gay abortion-rights advocate and environmentalist,” wrote of the torrent of abuse he gets at his university because he is a “Zionist” — and how campus rallies about fair wages for custodial staff turn into Israel-hate fests.

He confessed that progressives like him are afraid to speak up about it: “We often refrain from calling out anti-Semitism on our side for fear of our political bona fides being questioned or, worse, losing friends or being smeared as the things we most revile: racist, white supremacist, colonialist and so on.”

The Democratic 2020 field is a lefty college campus writ large. Even when Democrats try to confront anti-Semitism, their message gets muddled — ­because they have to be very careful not to show too much support for Israel.

Consider Bernie Sanders’ essay last week on “How to Fight Anti-Semitism” at the Jewish Currents website. It offered no instruction on fighting anti-Semitism, but instead alternated between criticizing Israel and pretending anti-Semitism doesn’t exist on the left.

Sanders limited all discussion of anti-Semitism to fringe white nationalists. He even blamed regular attacks on Jews in Brooklyn on the ideology of a “whites-only America.” In reality, as Armin Rosen reported in an exposé for Tablet, “the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.”

We should all rail against white supremacists. But Sanders doesn’t dare diagnose, much less try to cure, the disease of anti-Semitism spreading among his hard-left comrades.

Sanders also lent credence to the Palestinian narrative about Israel’s supposedly sinful birth. “Acknowledging these realities,” he lectured, “does not ‘delegitimize’ Israel any more than acknowledging the sober facts of America’s own Founding delegitimizes the United States.”

Wrong. America doesn’t have to defend its very existence. More to the point, Palestinians could have had their own state side-by-side with Israel from day one. They chose to spurn peace, then waged decades of relentless, eliminationist war.

Then again, the wing of the American left that Sanders represents has absorbed that eliminationist mentality. “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” isn’t just something Hamas ­fanatics scream; it was chanted at the Democratic Socialists of America’s national convention at the University of Illinois in 2017.

The river is Jordan, the sea is the Mediterranean. If Palestine were “free from the river to the sea,” then there would be no ­Israel.

Mainstream Democrats rolled over for the far left so quickly on Israel that it’s hard to imagine them returning to a sane place. Jews, who vote for Democrats in overwhelming numbers, need to finally wake up to the reality that their party despises the world’s sole Jewish state.

Criticizing any country or its leadership should always be fair game, to be sure, even when it’s our ally. But what is disturbing about such episodes — and the poll numbers they mirror — was summed up in a recent New York Times sub-headline: “President Trump’s hawkish support of Israel has led many Democrats to question the United States’ relationship with one of its closest allies.”

If Trump is for something, in other words, then Democrats have to be against it. That’s absurd and childish. But it’s also based on a lie.

It’s a lie to say Democrats and mainstream liberals are now turning against Israel. That turn happened under the Obama ­administration. Now mainstream Democrats are struggling just to beat back the tide of overt Jew-hatred in their midst.

And they’re doing a feeble job of it. Either the Democratic candidates are too afraid of the hard-leftist base to stick up for Jews and their national homeland — or they don’t want to. ­Either way, this isn’t leadership.

De Blasio To AIPAC: Drop Dead

by Tyler Durden 30June2022 – 01:40 AM https://www.zerohedge.com/political/de-blasio-aipac-drop-dead

It wasn’t long ago that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee had an overwhelming grip on both major parties in the United States. However, in the most striking indication yet that Democrats are slipping from AIPAC’s grasp, former New York mayor and current congressional candidate Bill de Blasio has publicly disowned the group. 

In a virtual candidate forum, NY Jewish Week asked de Blasio if he supported AIPAC. “No, I don’t,” he responded, adding that the group has changed in a manner he called “unacceptable.” Hammering home his stance, he said, “I am not seeking their endorsement and would not accept it even if it were offered.”

Such an utterance from a prominent member of either party was unthinkable just a year ago—to say nothing of the fact that de Blasio is running in New York City…which, in 2019, de Blasio called “the largest urban Jewish community on Earth.”

Then Mayor de Blasio Marches in the 2017 Celebrate Israel Parade in Mahattan (photo NYC mayor’s office)

In May, House speaker Nancy Pelosi accepted the endorsement of AIPAC’s pro-Israel rival lobby group J Street. Israeli newspaper Haaretz called it “a political development that signals the shifting attitudes on Israel inside the Democratic Party.” Walking a political tightrope, Pelosi—a longtime AIPAC ally and recurring attendee at its conferences—hasn’t touted the endorsement.

AIPAC and J Street have gone head to head in many Democratic primary races. Earlier this month, Pelosi recorded a video message to counter AIPAC-sponsored attack ads against a Maryland congressional candidate that has the backing of both Pelosi and J Street.

Where AIPAC is a relentless defender of seemingly every action of the Israeli government and encourages a hard-line U.S. foreign policy against Israel’s rivals, J Street bills itself as “the political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” and has decried “the injustice of Israel’s occupation” and “the ongoing denial of fundamental rights and freedoms to millions of Palestinians in occupied territory.”

The difference between AIPAC and J Street came into sharp relief last week:

• AIPAC lobbied U.S. senators against signing a letter encouraging an FBI-State Department investigation of the killing of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
• J Street officially “welcomed’ the letter as pursuing “the only just and sensible solution” to resolving the controversy over a death that various investigations—other than Israel’s—have concluded was an intentional, murderous act by an Israeli soldier.

De Blasio spoke to AIPAC’s national conference in March 2019—two months for before declaring his candidacy for president. He laid out what he called a “progressive case for the state of Israel,” but condemned the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement that many progressives embrace as a means of opposing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Also that month, de Blasio scolded progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar for tweeting “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” in response to a Glenn Greenwald tweet marveling at “how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation [Israel] even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.” De Blasio said “there’s a long antisemitic tradition associated with that kind of comment.”

In distancing himself from AIPAC, de Blasio cited an AIPAC-affiliated PAC’s sponsorship of a successful primary challenger to progressive House candidate Nina Turner in Ohio. “I thought the attack on her was not only horribly unjustified, it deprived our nation of someone who could have been a huge difference maker in terms of our progressive movement,” said de Blasio.

That race pitted two black women against each other in a district with a substantial Jewish vote. In her victory speech, challenger AIPAC-backed Shontel Brown reminisced about her visit to Israel, which helped her “appreciate the vulnerability of a state, and that has given me the understanding of the U.S.-Israel relationship and I thank my Jewish brethren.”

Turner’s sin that provoked AIPAC: A tweeted message of solidarity with “If Not Now,” a group that describes itself as “American Jews organizing our community to end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system and demand equality, justice, and a thriving future for all.”

Solidarity is a verb ✊🏾 https://t.co/Kupgdtuqey

— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) May 12, 2021

Nina Turner-tweet-12May2021-Solidarity is a verb

At last week’s candidate forum, De Blasio said “the only path forward to peace in the region for both Israeli and Palestinian people to have their own states. I would fight for that, and I would certainly fight against any organization that attacks my fellow progressives.”

De Blasio, who served as New York’s mayor from 2014 to 2021, is running to represent the newly-redrawn New York 10th congressional district, which covers all of southern Manhattan and a big swath of Brooklyn.

De Blasio is running to represent the newly-redrawn New York 10th congressional district

At the Democratic National Convention 2016

Protester burn Israeli flag outside DNC, Byron Tau/ Wall Street Journal

Palestine sic flag at Democrat Convention, Social Media

Protesters burn Israeli flags outside the DNC and DNC delegates wave Palestine sic flags inside the DNC

The long-time Jewish worship of the Democratic Party is based on the false premise, that U. S. President F.D. Roosevelt was pro-Jewish and saved the world by defeating the Nazis. He is also credited with ending the Great Depression, and that is another untruth.

• FDR was pushed into having the USA enter World War Two when American military was attacked and to save Britain and Europe. At no time was it a military, or diplomatic aim to stop the Nazi Holocaust of Jews.
• It was the economic needs of the American military that drastically improved the American economy, thereby bringing on the economic recovery and end of the Great Depression.

You mean “As a Jew” who is still a spoiled 5 year old who is having a temper tantrum, of stead of a real Jew who has made Aliyah to Israel and deals with day to day life in Israel as a proud Jew.

— Yakov Butterfield (@JerusalemCats) August 10, 2020

Caroline Glick tweet 9August2020 No room for Jews in the Democrat Party unless they’re “as a Jew” Jews

AMCHA-logo
http://www.amchainitiative.org/

Campus antisemitism is highly prevalent in public and private schools with significant Jewish undergraduate populations, irrespective of school size.

  Report-on-Antisemitic-Activity-During-the-First-Half-of-2016

• More than 300 antisemitic incidents occurred at top Jewish schools in 2015.
• 70% of schools played host to one or more kinds of antisemitic activity.
• Schools with the highest incidence of each kind of antisemitic activity

Strong correlation between anti-Zionist student groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and antisemitism.

• 99% of schools with one or more active anti-Zionist groups had one or more incidents of antisemitic activity, whereas only 16% of schools with no active anti-Zionist student group had incidents of overall anti-Semitic activity.
• 57% of the schools with one or more active anti-Zionist student groups had one or more incidents that targeted Jewish students for harm, 91% of the schools with one or more active anti-Zionist groups showed evidence of antisemitic expression, and 80% of schools with one or more active anti-Zionist groups showed evidence of BDS activity.

Strong correlation between the presence of faculty who have expressed public support for an academic boycott of Israel and antisemitism.

• 81% of the schools with one or more faculty boycotters had one or more incidents of overall antisemitic activity, whereas only 17% of schools with no faculty boycotters had incidents of antisemitic activity.
• 100% of the 33 schools with 10 or more faculty boycotters had one or more incidents of antisemitic activity.
• 46% of schools with faculty boycotters showed evidence of targeting Jewish students for harm, 74% of schools with faculty boycotters showed evidence of antisemitic expression, and 62% of schools with faculty boycotters showed evidence of BDS activity.

BDS activity strongly correlates with antisemitic activity.

• 56% of schools with evidence of BDS activity had one or more incidents that targeted Jewish students for harm, whereas of the schools with no evidence of BDS activity, only 23% had incidents targeting Jewish students. In fact, schools with more incidents of BDS activity tended to have more incidents that targeted Jewish students for harm.
• 95% of schools with BDS activity had one or more incidents of antisemitic expression, whereas of the schools with no evidence of BDS activity, only 33% had antisemitic expression. Schools with more incidents of BDS activity tended to have more incidents of antisemitic expression.

Presence of SJP, faculty boycotters and BDS strong predictors of antisemitism.

• The presence of anti-Zionist student groups and the number of faculty who have publicly endorsed an academic boycott of Israel are, in combination, very strong predictors of overall antisemitic activity.
• BDS activity is the strongest predictor of incidents that target Jewish students for harm, the factor with the most deleterious effect on campus climate.

‘Slap on Wrist’ of Violent Anti-Israel Student Protesters at UC Irvine ‘Feckless Punishment,’ Say Campus, Legal Groups

by Lea Speyer 22August2016 http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/08/22/slap-on-wrist-of-violent-anti-israel-student-protesters-at-uc-irvine-feckless-punishment-say-campus-legal-groups/

The heads of major campus groups told The Algemeiner on Monday that they are outraged by the mild response of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to the violent behavior of an anti-Israel student organization on its campus.

Referring to a letter from UCI’s vice chancellor of student affairs criticizing Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for “disrupting” a pro-Israel event, Ilan Sinelnikov, founder and president of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) — whose UCI chapter was the target of SJP’s violent protest in May — said, “UCI has turned its back on the Jewish and pro-Israel campus community.”

From the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

by Lea Speyer 19September2016 https://www.algemeiner.com/2016/09/19/exclusive-new-report-uncovers-even-more-extensive-antisemitic-racist-behavior-at-university-of-tennessee-knoxville-than-previously-thought/

The image was accompanied by a poem which read: “…We will scream out the names of the martyrs and paint with their blood the proof of our claims…Do you hear our war cry…Do you see our weapons?”

Summer Awad — a 2016 graduate who was a member of UTK’s SJP chapter and is a supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — shared an image on Facebook in June featuring the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem alongside five hands representing various forms of Palestinian aggression against Israel.

The image was accompanied by a poem which read: “…We will scream out the names of the martyrs and paint with their blood the proof of our claims…Do you hear our war cry…Do you see our weapons?”

Ignore It at Your Peril

Just because Trump said it doesn’t mean it’s not true: The Democratic Party is becoming unsalvageable

By Liel Leibovitz 22August2019 • https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/289871/democratic-party-becoming-unsalvageable

This, American Zionists realized early on, is a tricky proposition in a meting pot society where, as Woodrow Wilson thundered in 1915, “you cannot dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Americans.” Conscious of the perpetually pending charge of dual loyalty, Brandeis helped engineer an ingenious solution.

“Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with patriotism,” he wrote, adding that “a man is a better citizen of the U.S. for being also a loyal citizen of his state, and of his city, for being loyal to his family… every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so.”

Put simply, Brandeis believed that if you didn’t support Israel, you either lacked knowledge or showed a great disloyalty to your own people — a view that would’ve been utterly uncontroversial, even banal, until very recently. Unless you require neither context nor reason and are inclined to hear everything the president says as hate speech, you can rest easy and understand his latest gaffe as poorly stated at worst.

So where does all of this leave us American Jews? Many of us are losing a bunch of sleep these days, feeling as if the world may be coming to an end. It’s not, but it is changing, which is history’s single defining characteristic and the thing that makes human life on this planet so terrifying and so thrilling. And, historically speaking, Jews who refused to take heed when things started changing dramatically all around them very often wound up as dead Jews.

Let us, then, observe these changes candidly and without succumbing to the pressures of screaming ideologues on either side. The party our parents voted for, the party we thought would be ours for eternity, appears to be well on its way to becoming something entirely hostile to Jews. The president we are told again and again is the single greatest menace to our community is many things, but certainly not that.

What you choose to do with these realities is entirely up to you. Decent people will likely invest their energies in divergent projects, working in good faith to create a safe and sustainable future for themselves and their children. We may still disagree. We may still find ourselves divided on important, substantive questions, from immigration to health care reform to foreign policy. Arguing, after all, is our birthright. But if we grow addicted to the narcotic effect of absurd histrionics masquerading as moral outrage on social media, and if we insist that observable reality take a backseat to our feverish fantasies and desperate hopes, we’ll find ourselves the authors of a new and particularly bleak chapter of the timeless Jewish story.

Comments:

Only if you’re a FAKE JEW or RUSSIAN AGENT have you not seen the signs…..

* The pretending that Jew-hate of Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter, and Al Sharpton meant nothing.
* The pro-PLO/anti-Israel/anti-America Leftist/Globalist takeover of American Academia and Educational Establishment.
* The championing of a provably anti-Semitic and Black Nationalist Buraq HUSSEIN 0Bola
* The stalwart defense of the pro-Persian nukes JCPOA by Kapo “Jews”
* The booing of a innocuous Plank relating to Jerusalem and G_d at the 2012 DNC.
* The burning of an Israeli flag at the 2016 DNC
* Most Democrat Representatives voted for an anti-BDS resolution, just this year

And now, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionist sentiments openly expressed by the newest elected representatives of the Party and the DNCNNYT Media-Machine, openly abetted by the voting base and “leadership” of the Party, itself. It seems that, every day, we’re treated to yet more links from Ian covering this, and from hitherto unknown individuals of that persuasion.

Just as surely as Gazans deserve the destruction and death they’ve gotten by voting for Hamas, so, too, do the “Jew-ish” “American” Democrats deserve what’s coming to them, in the very near future and from whatever quarters it’ll come, that they, themselves, voted for.

And The Ugly

Jerusalem Cats Comment: Is America in the same position as the former Soviet Union before it collapsed? Deep State and CIA of the 2000’s compared with the KGB of the late 1980’s

Are the Palestinians committed to peace?

Schieffer On Election Eve: It’s As If The Nation Is ‘Enduring Some Kind Of Curse’

November 7, 2016 9:31 PM https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/11/07/schieffer-election-eve/

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, CBS News contributor Bob Schieffer said he had never seen a campaign like the one this year – and he didn’t mean it in a positive way.

“I have seen a few, but I’ve run out of ways to say I’ve never seen one like this. It’s as if the nation is enduring some kind of curse,” Schieffer said on the CBS Evening News Monday. “What should we expect next – that it will rain frogs? I wouldn’t bet against it.”

Schieffer said this election stands out in numerous negative ways.

“We tend to call every election the most important of our lifetime, but this one might well be. Those of you who are voting for the first time, take it from me – this election is not business as usual,” Schieffer said. “This one is different – and not in a good way. Most elections believe we’re headed in the wrong direction; the world is a more dangerous place. And yet, the government is in such gridlock that it took Congress longer to approve money to find a vaccine for the Zika virus than it took the founders to write our Constitution.”

Schieffer noted that many Americans neither like nor trust Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, and that 82 percent of Americans find the campaign “disgusting.”

“The country seems at a turning point, but the divide over where to turn seems wider than ever,” Schieffer said. “Perhaps we can at least agree on one thing – the first task of whoever is elected must be to repair the damage that’s been done by this campaign to the good name of our country.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Farewell Address 

delivered 17 January 1961

[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. (2)] http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other — Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling — on my part — of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insiduous [insidious] in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research — these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress.

But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations — corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations — past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament — of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that — in that — in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations’ great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources — scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.

Thank you, and good night.

 This is the difference between an 18 year old in Israel and America.

Not So Safe Space

Eliana Rudee – Not So Safe Space 2017 contest video 1080p
2017 contest video from “Inspired by Israel” Video Contest http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/inspired-by-israel-video-contest-gallery/ on the Israel Video Network. http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/not-so-safe-space/ or https://player.vimeo.com/video/207474009
Written and Produced by Eliana Rudee, Actresses: Dana Mileguir
“Thank you to the Sderot Media Center for their footage! Published: March 20, 2017”