Three winners from American Thinker

The always excellent American Thinker has three superb, thought-provoking essays I’d like to share with all of you.

“The Awful Parallel” By Mark Walker

Winston Churchill wrote a memoir about World War 2 , the personalities, circumstances and events leading to the outbreak of the war. His review of these events in “The Gathering Storm” begins after the end of World War 1 and the Treaty of Versailles, under which the Allies and the League of Nations forced draconian war debt reparations on Germany. The post-war naivety of the victorious Allies with respect to their place in the world and their responsibility to maintain the peace, as history shows, resulted in a downward spiral of denial and political pandering, both domestically and on foreign policy matters that would lead, inexorably to another war.

Tired of war and looking for a “peace dividend” the Allies began in the early 1920’s to disarm, decommission navies and armies and ignore weapons development and preparedness for war. In the meantime the onerous conditions placed on the German economy as punishment for war ruined Germany’s economy and national pride, leading to the rise of Hitler and his National Socialist Party, the Nazis.

A series of missteps and miscalculations by diplomats, and the election of increasingly socialist and isolationist politicians in the western democracies encouraged Hitler’s National Socialists in Germany to break post war treaty agreements, surreptitiously re-arm and create an armed force second to none at the time. Hitler’s diplomats went to great lengths to assuage the nervous Western governments — they lied. When the Great Depression hit Europe, the allied countries adopted Keynesian spending polices, deepening and prolonging the Depression. While the West spent money it didn’t have on social programs and waste, Hitler built his armies and annexed the Rhineland of France, all of Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia.

Churchill was a lone voice sounding a warning through the mid 1920’s and the 1930’s. Various British Prime Ministers concluding with Neville Chamberlain — who famously declared “Peace in our Time” weeks before Hitler crushed Poland — convinced themselves that negotiating with Hitler and imposing sanctions on his allies, despite all evidence to the contrary, would secure the peace. The rest is history. […]

“Birthermania!” By Monte Kuligowski

Now that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has released his ten-page report on President Obama’s purported birth certificate, we are witnessing the predicted response of the establishment national news media: yawns, sighs, and laughter — but little reporting.

After the six-month investigation by a team of forensic experts, Joe Arpaio said there is “probable cause” to believe that forgery has been committed. Those are fairly strong words. Probable cause is the legal standard for arrest and forced production of documents.

Jeff Kuhner of the Washington Times discusses the potential bombshell Obama scandal and the scandal of media silence in his piece, “Forgerygate: Ignoring Arpaio’s Report is a Scandal in Itself.” Kuhner argues that the reason for the media blackout is fear — fear of a constitutional crisis. If Obama attained the high office through deception, then everything has done as president would be subject to annulment.

The blackout by the establishment conservative press is likely also fear-based. The cowards of the conservative media fear the Saul Alinsky tactic of isolation and humiliation. The narrative has already been established: all questions regarding Obama’s eligibility have been debunked, and anyone who questions the president has a personal vendetta based in some sort of pathology. Better to play it safe and appear intelligent.

But history, when far removed from the Obama phenomenon, will not view the cowardly as intelligent or even wise.

The reason is twofold. First, there are too many oddities with Obama. And second, in context of the manifold oddities, the reasonable thing for Obama to do is end all doubt. If he had nothing to hide, wouldn’t Obama want to quickly remove doubts and restore confidence?

The only way to end all doubt is complete transparency. Complete transparency means actually releasing personal records, including his birth certificate. Actually releasing his birth certificate means making the original available for forensic authentication. With today’s forensic technology, all doubt could be laid to rest quickly. We have the ability to determine whether the original document is written on paper from 1961 and with corresponding seal, typeset, and ink.

No doubt was erased by Obama’s “releasing” a belated birth certificate via internet posting — the internet meets no legal standard of document production. Try showing an image of your birth certificate on your laptop to the processing agent when applying for a passport.

It is necessary to highlight some of the unique Obama oddities. For if the oddities did not exist, the protective response — No other candidate or president released his birth certificate for authentication, so why should Obama? — would make perfect sense. But Obama is no ordinary American. […]

“What if Trayvon Had Been White, and the Shooter Black?” By Michael Filozof

What would happen if a black man armed with a handgun confronted “suspicious persons” in his neighborhood? What would happen if the “suspicious persons” were unarmed white teens, one of them was shot dead, and the shooter claimed self-defense?

This is not an exercise in mere speculation. We know what would happen in such a case. There would be no white mobs in the street chanting “No justice, no peace!” There would be no whites holding a “million hoodie march” in New York City. There would be no white equivalent of Al Sharpton, the professional race-baiter behind the 1987 Tawana Brawley hoax, leading marches in the streets of the shooter’s hometown. There would be no Federal civil rights investigation by the Justice Department. There would be no comments from a president who seems congenitally unable to keep his mouth shut on matters involving left-wing political correctness. And there would be no national media attention from biased, left-wing “reporters.”

We know this because in fact, such an event occurred in 2009 in Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester. Roderick Scott, a black man, shot and killed an unarmed white teen, Christopher Cervini, whom he believed was burglarizing a neighbor’s car, with a licensed .40 cal. handgun.

There are many similarities between the Scott-Cervini case and the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin case in Florida. In both cases, there had been a spate of criminal activity in the neighborhood. In both cases, the shooters called 911 to report suspicious activity, yet chose to confront the unarmed suspects outside their residence and off their own property prior to the arrival of the police. In both cases, the shooters claimed that they felt threatened, and fired in self-defense. In both cases, local law enforcement applied relevant state law.

Unlike Florida, New York does not have a “stand your ground” law. New York law allows a person to use deadly force to defend his residence from home invasion only as a last resort. It does not allow the use of deadly force to prevent a property crime, and requires retreat if possible. Thus, while Zimmerman was not arrested under Florida law, Scott was tried for manslaughter.

New York law does allow a person to use deadly force anywhere, including off his own property, if he feels that his life is in imminent danger and retreat is not possible. Despite the fact that he left his own property, confronted, and shot dead an unarmed white person thought to be committing a petty property crime, Scott was acquitted by a majority-white jury after claiming that the Cervini charged at him, putting him in imminent fear of his life.

Despite the racial difference between the shooter and the decedent, there were no allegations of racial bias. Scott was not charged with a hate crime. There was no Federal civil rights investigation. There were no white protests. The case was settled for what it was: a tragedy caused by a series of poor decisions on behalf of the shooter, and a split-second decision that will forever be second-guessed. […]