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The ADVANCE, September 15, 2021/Page 6A
(Site Ahumtce
A free press is not a privilege but
organic necessity in a great society.
—Walter Lippmann
COMMENTARY
out of
CONTEXT
A compilation of quotations on a variety of
issues by national, state and regional writers,
well-known personalities, just plain everyday
people and from various publications
collected by the editors of THE ADVANCE.
Quotes for our Times:
Matt Vespa, Senior Editor at Townhall.
com: The Biden Administration really didn't
see this coming in Afghanistan.
We also expect them to conduct coun
terterror operations as well. This is just in
sane; trusting terrorists to wipe out...terror
ists. It's not going to happen. In fact, back
in March, Vice News interviewed top Tali
ban commanders about democracy and
the role of women. The reaction is all you
need to know — and why the Biden White
House looks incredibly stupid right now over
these so-called commitments they're hold
ing against the Taliban. They have no lever
age.
Stephen Moore, Fox News contributor
and author: There goes grandma over the
cliff.
Seniors are by far the biggest losers
from the Biden scheme of adding trillions
of dollars to our national debt. Democrats
say they will pay for their $3.5 trillion debt
scam by taxing the rich. Uh-huh. The Wall
Street Journal recently reported that even
if you took every penny that the millionaires
and billionaires have, that still wouldn't pay
for the mountain of new spending Biden
wants. The piggy bank that they will raid is
the Social Security/Medicare fund.
Now who's throwing grandma from the
train?
Deroy Murdock, Manhattan-based Fox
News Contributor, a contributing editor with
National Review Online, and a senior fellow
with the London Center for Policy Research:
Nice guy Joe Biden has morphed into a
mean man who is calculating, callous and
cruel.
Never mind! Biden tone-deafly declared
America's chaotic, disgraceful, deadly exit
"an extraordinary success."
September 2: Remarks on natural disas
ters, followed by zero questions.
September 3: Even as Americans re
mained trapped in the hands of al Qaeda's
once and future hosts, Biden departed for
a long Labor Day weekend brimming with
rest and relaxation.
Days after shouting at his fellow Ameri
cans about decamping Kabul in shame
and leaving hundreds of his constituents
behind, Mean Mr. Biden has moved on.
Liz Peek, Fox News contributor and for
mer partner of major bracket Wall Street
firm Wertheim & Company: Gloomy Ameri
cans give Biden low marks on Afghanistan,
COVID and economy.
For many reasons, consumers are anx
ious, and that translates into a slowing of
spending and of growth, which we are see
ing now. Third-quarter expansion, based
on the Atlanta Fed's GDP Now platform,
is forecast to drop to 3.7%, from an earlier
estimate of over 6% at the beginning of Au
gust.
A lot is going wrong for Biden. Maybe
the worst news is this: a recent Emerson Col
lege poll finds that in a possible 2024 match
up, Trump would narrowly beat Biden, 47%
to 46%. That says it all.
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No, Afghanistan Is Not the
End of American Power
It’s hard to imagine more
humiliating images than what
we’ve seen in Afghanistan in
recent weeks, from the hasty
evacuation of the U.S. Embassy
in Kabul to the chaotic scenes
outside the airport.
Our surrender to a band of
AK-47-b earing guerrillas after
20 years has, understandably,
occasioned autumnal thoughts
about American power.
Even the Soviet Union, on
the cusp of full collapse,
managed to get out of
Afghanistan in good order and
leave behind a government that
endured for several years.
What does it say that we
couldn’t match that?
Writing in The New Yorker,
Robin Wright says the pullout
may serve as “a bookend for the
era of U.S. global power.”
Allister Heath, editor of The
Sunday Telegraph, argues that
“the botched exit is merely the
latest sign that the American
era is ending.” Francis
Fukuyama says the images in
Kabul “have evoked a major
juncture in world history,”
although he thinks “the end of
the American era had come
much earlier.”
There is no sugar-coating
our defeat in Afghanistan and
the abject position we put
ourselves in during the final
days. The withdrawal is a blow
to our counterterrorism
capabilities, our prestige and
our geopolitical position.
For all of that, though, no
one in the world has the
formidable advantages of the
United States, which still
outstrips everyone else,
including China, on every
material metric that matters.
Great powers don’t go away
easily. The British could be
forgiven for thinking that it’d be
all downhill after losing their
American colonies in a long
war joined by their traditional
rivals France and Spain. Instead,
British imperial power had not
yet peaked.
Our exit from Saigon in
1975, to this point the
touchstone for modern
American defeats, was followed
by Communist advances all
over the map. Yet, within 20
years, we’d win the Cold War
and ascend to unprecedented
global power.
We are still blessed with an
extraordinarily favorable
geographical position, as a
continental nation with friendly
neighbors, access to two oceans,
enormous reserves of oil and
gas, and vast amounts of arable
land.
We produce about a quarter
of global GDP, a share that has
held up over the years.
We are responsible for an
astonishing 40% of all military
spending in the world. It was
ridiculous that Biden made a
bragging point of the
evacuation, but it’s true that no
one else would have been
capable of such an operation.
We dominate the list of top
universities in the world.
There is no country people
would rather come to. A Taliban
spokesperson interviewed on
Iranian TV, when challenged
why so many people want to
flee Afghanistan, rightly
pointed out that if American
planes were taking people out
of Iran, there’d be a rush for the
exits there, too.
In his book, “Unrivaled,”
Michael Beckley of Tufts
University and the American
Enterprise Institute rebuts the
notion that China is overtaking
us.
American workers are
more productive than workers
anywhere else. China’s labor
productivity has improved,
Beckley writes, “but remains
half that of Turkey, lower than
Mexico’s, and roughly on par
with Brazil’s.”
We have demographic
challenges, but other big
powers, especially China, will
Please see Lowry page 9A
GRITTY
Is the Left
Losing Lts Grip
on California?
The Democratic
Party is rolling out its
left-wing big guns to
go to California to
support Gov. Gavin
Newsom in the recall
election scheduled
for Sept. 14.
In California, the
bluest of blue states,
where, in 2020,
challenger Joe Biden defeated incumbent
President Donald Trump by a margin of
almost 2-1, the polls are within the margin
of error showing Newsom holding on in
the recall.
Why are Vice President Kamala Harris
and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Amy
Klobuchar putting it on the line to
campaign for Newsom?
They know that what is going on in
California is a laboratory for what is going
on in the nation and in the Democratic
Party.
The beginning of Newsom’s fall from
grace was discovery of his dining at a party
at a fancy French restaurant in California
wine country, where dinners start at $450
per person, keeping no COVID-19
restrictions while he had his whole state on
strict lockdown.
This was more than an embarrassing
moment for the governor. And it was more
than a graphic picture of political hypocrisy
and double standards. It was a portrayal of
very different takes on how America works
that is now being driven home by radio talk
show host Larry Elder, who is leading the
pack of candidates challenging Newsom.
Elder is Black, from humble origins in
Los Angeles. After finishing high school in
LA’s inner city, he moved on to the Ivy
League, getting a bachelor’s degree at
Brown University and then a law degree at
the University of Michigan. He then found
Please see Nitty page 9A
COMMENTARY
How to Tell What
the Government
Fears Most
By J.B. Shurk, writer for American Thinker
“I wish it need not have hap
pened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do
I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who
live to see such times. But that is not
for them to decide. All we have to de
cide is what to do with the time that
is given us.”
I am of the opinion that we are
all a part of one of the great epochal
shifts in human history and that what
we fight to secure today will reverber
ate through society for generations.
We did not ask for this moment —
most of us, in fact, have hoped that
by quietly enduring the hardships
that come our way, our toleration of
what is intolerable would somehow
be rewarded with comfort and peace.
As with all turning points in human
history, however, the desire to ignore
obvious trespasses in order to fore
stall conflict has had the effect of en
couraging further harm until conflict
is all but certain. Like a garden hose
tied into a knot, societal pressure has
been steadily building, and every
body senses that it could pop at any
time.
As with all revolutionary mo
ments, at the root of this conflict
is an idea. In one word, that idea
is freedom. Now, governments have
been manipulating this word for as
long as humans have been demand
ing it. Lenin seized power in Russia
while claiming to “free” the prole
tariat masses. In FDR’s famous Four
Freedoms State of the Union ad
dress in 1941, the president defend
ed freedom of speech and freedom
of religion but also insisted that it is
government’s responsibility to en
sure “freedom from want” and “free
dom from fear.” In the days since the
United States Supreme Court re
frained from interfering with the State
of Texas’s decision to limit abortion
after the detection of a baby’s heart
beat, pro-abortion Americans have
insisted that a woman’s “freedom” to
terminate her pregnancy up to the
moment of childbirth supersedes
the baby’s freedom to live. So when
I say this revolutionary moment is at
its heart a conflict over “freedom,” I
must be clear that it is an ideological
battle pitting human life and free will
against the commands of collectiv
ist authorities — namely, that indi
vidual liberty is a moral imperative
being threatened by an increasingly
all-powerful globalized government
run by a small handful of decision
makers in the name of the “greater
good.”
Every interaction between gov
ernment and citizen today tests how
far individual liberty may be dimin
ished before the public pushes back.
Should authorities have had the
power to close businesses and pro
hibit public gatherings in the name of
health? What if the risk to the public’s
health is less than one percent? What
if the risk is merely one-hundredth
of one percent? If government can
interfere with liberty whenever there
is any degree of risk, can there be any
degree of liberty?
If government can make you
Please see Guest page 10A