That the election of November 6, 2012, has the potential to be a definitive moment in American history is now almost a truism.   This conception may sound overblown to the ignorant and disengaged, but in fact it is a great understatement.  As America is the only nation left in which freedom is still on the ballot, this definitive U.S. election means even more, in truth, than most voters may realize.  It is a referendum on the survival of modern civilization.

A recent blog post at the Weekly Standard displays the results of a BBC election poll taken in various countries around the world.  The results demonstrate that if the rest of the world were allowed to vote, Barack Obama would win in a Saddam-like landslide. 

Throughout what is left of the civilized world, Obama’s superiority to Mitt Romney, and in general Democrats’ superiority to Republicans, is the default assumption, regarded as beyond question.  One who objects to that opinion has a lot of explaining to do.  And one who dares to admit thinking the United States of America a very agreeable proposition is regarded as either an infidel or a dope. 

These two presuppositions – that the Democrats are the good guys, and that America is essentially a bad thing – should always be understood as a pair.  Together, they reveal exactly what the modern Democratic Party and the American media have spent decades trying to hide from their fellow citizens – namely, that to prefer the Democrats is to dislike America. 

That international landslide of support for Obama is a clue to what this U.S. election represents to that minority of us among foreigners who understand what anti-Americanism really means.  Other nations have their advantages – Korea’s low tax rates have helped her to grow from third-world to top-tier economy in little more than a generation; Canada’s banking system weathered the 2008 recession better than America’s – but there is only one nation in which individual freedom is regarded not as a „system” or a „policy,” but as a pre-political principle, a true foundation.  If you share this principle, then America is, at present, your only practical hope for the future of mankind.

But what is „America” to such a foreigner?  The classic comprehensive answer to that question is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.  The worthiest recent attempt at an answer is probably Mark Steyn’s After America.  Tocqueville surveyed the American scene during the flawed, faltering glory of the nation’s rise.  Steyn’s analysis, by contrast, is a (barely) premature autopsy.

What these two books, and other contributions to the tradition Tocqueville began, have in common is their shared theme: freedom. 

Great nations cannot be understood independently of the defining spiritual impulse that creates and propels them.  Any worthwhile analysis of ancient Greek civilization, for example, must contribute to our understanding of the central theme of Greece: the flowering of the human soul.  The long history of the Greek world, seen from the outside, embodies the process whereby humanity came into its own.  At last, representation became art – man’s attempt to understand his relationship to the divine, to other men, and to himself; and knowledge evolved from an acceptance of ancient rules and customs into a submission of nature’s and man’s rules to the rigors of rational inquiry.

Comparable themes will be found in the examination of any of history’s great nations.  An outsider, either historically or geopolitically, can sometimes perceive the arc of a nation’s grand theme – and the risks that endanger the development of the theme – more easily than men presently traveling that arc.  Thus, the foreigner’s perspective on the nation’s problems is sometimes more „global” – not in Obama’s sense of reducing a great nation to just another tick on the U.N. roster, but rather in the sense of seeing what the world stands to lose should this nation fall.

In America’s case, once again, the theme is freedom – the purposeful application of the notion of the inviolability of the individual to the establishment of a civil society.

The foreigner’s perspective on this is peculiar – privileged precisely as it is deficient.  Citizens are positioned to see more clearly the „small war,” the growth pains inherent in the development – and the death pangs inherent in the downfall – of their society.  An outsider, if he is thoughtful, open, and respectful of his subject, can sometimes catch sight of a crystal that perhaps is seen more easily from beyond.  (This is not to say that serious citizens cannot make the intellectual leap to that bird’s-eye view, too.  The enormous popularity of Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny is a testament to that.)

But in the case of America, the outsider (or new arrival) has another practical advantage – namely, an insight into the subtleties of decayed or extinguished liberty which may be overlooked by those still at an earlier stage of decline.  Tocqueville, a Frenchman, saw firsthand how a revolution in the name of liberty and equality can produce an outcome far murkier than the promise implied in its noblest declarations.  Thus, even in the obscurest minutiae of his travelogue of the American spirit, one senses the deep, satisfied inhalations of a man finding the fresh air he had spent his young life seeking without avail at home.

Regarding today’s America, the foreigner has lived and can warn of the practical manifestations of Tocqueville’s chillingly accurate speculation about how a constitutional republic might give way to tyranny – to what Tocqueville famously calls „soft despotism.” 

It is no accident, for example, that Steyn, a Canadian, has been perhaps the strongest, most relentless voice over these past few years on the dangers of ObamaCare.  I, too, have returned to health care again and again.  To have lived in a socialized medical system is to have witnessed the heart of the stealthy darkness Tocqueville foresaw.  Socialized medicine is the demise of individual liberty in the guise of „equal access,” a gluttonous economic shark masked as „affordability,” and a final denial of the dignity of all human life, euphemized as „universal care.”

Government health care is a perfect microcosm of what real oppression will look like on a daily basis, an important and constantly needed reminder for people still hoping to preserve the idea of freedom in their own country.  Those whose air has at least been perfumed with the (dissipating) vapors of genuine liberty all their lives can easily regard oppression as more foreign and strange than it really is.  The natural tendency among citizens of „the land of the free” to identify tyranny primarily with the nightmare world of Kristallnacht or the Ukrainian forced famine has facilitated the efforts of freedom’s enemies to push America onto its current collision course with the more quotidian brutalities of „soft” oppression. 

Inhumanity always seems more distant from us than it really is, which is why a still-humane nation can be caught so flat-footed by its arrival, as America was by the rise of a mellifluous-toned, well-dressed son of communist revolutionaries and their fellow-travelers in the global caliphate movement.

The lesson Americans most need to digest, and that many have had to learn the hard way, is one made plain and practical in the debate over government-run health care.  As we who have lived it can attest, modern socialist oppression does not bring the secret police to your door.  The old folks will not be rounded up.  Rather, the tax collectors and regulators are at your door – all the time, intractably, until their omnipresence in your payslips and personal decisions feels so normal that you no longer question the loss of property rights and self-determination, and would even suspect or hate the man who would propose to remove that smothering security blanket. 

As for the old folks, they become the subject of a neat and tidy cost-benefit analysis, cared for just as long as budgetary considerations permit, while their families are provided with a clean, guilt-free break from one of family life’s chief raisons d’être and responsibilities, in the form of „palliative care” – i.e., the death panel’s debt collector.  (I explain this here.)

As Tocqueville predicted to grim perfection, modern man will not easily submit to a yoke under the threat of harm, but he will do so all too easily under the promise of a life without anxiety or inconvenience. 

Liberty is too great a good to be relinquished knowingly.  Americans will always be prepared to defend against direct threats to their freedom.  But through its great gifts of material prosperity, peaceful coexistence, and the near-universalization of the luxury of leisure – in the Aristotelian sense of the practical opportunity to pursue happiness – liberty tends to promote a character of optimism and good faith that leaves a free people prey to those who, frustrated with the limits of self-development, seek to realize their wills through coercion.  

Old-style violent uprisings would never work in a free nation.  Modern enemies of freedom have had to devise more cunning means to their ends.  (Witness Bill Ayers.)  And so they have: producing a morally and intellectually corrupting lexicon that bears a superficial resemblance to the language of freedom (progress, individuality, positive „rights”); instituting vast property-annihilating programs in the name of creating „opportunity” and „justice”; and tarting up the class warfare methods of the Bolsheviks with the soothing vocabulary of „the middle class,” thus slowly enticing liberty down the white-picket-fenced path to death by regulatory bureaucracy. 

This last point is the vital warning from America’s foreign friends, from Tocqueville to the present.  Yes, defeating Barack Obama is necessary; he and his backers are the most highly-placed „enemy within” that America has ever faced.  On the other hand, the climate that made Obama possible was more than a momentary case of white guilt, media complicity, Bush-fatigue, or Muslim Brotherhood subterfuge.  A very substantial percentage of Americans have been tranquilized by the soporific spell of „left vs. right” party politics, which induces a belief in the legitimacy of all views that do not directly deny your right to vote, as though freedom were reducible to the maintenance of periodic elections.  (Every nation has periodic elections.)

Why did supposed conservatives, such as David Brooks and Peggy Noonan, support Barack Obama in 2008?  Brooks’ famous rumination on Obama’s well-creased pant leg speaks volumes.  For Brooks, seeming „presidential” was enough.  Being presidential, in the American sense of that term – preserving the Constitution, espousing the principle of limited government, and believing that the defense of America as a land of liberty is his defining role – is no longer even part of the equation for Brooks, for his readers, or, apparently, for tens of millions of Americans on „both sides of the aisle.” 

Treating leftist authoritarianism as one side of the nation’s healthy political debate is by definition a violation of the American founding.  Socialism cannot be put into practice to any degree without violating the Declaration’s primary rights and the Constitution’s delineations of the role of government.  By allowing leftist policy to metastasize through all branches of the federal government for generations, a large portion of the population – including, sadly, many who see themselves as conservatives – have unwittingly forsaken most of what America, as a philosophical idea, stands for.

The leftist regulatory apparatus is already woven so thoroughly into American life – redefining and delimiting America beyond the reach of the Founding Fathers, let alone of any elected official – that the sturdiest, most clear-eyed Americans of this moment have come to see the election of a new president as merely one small victory in what must be a long, almost unwinnable war.  Their perception is accurate.

The idea which we now call „individualism” was not born in America.  Nor was the goal of political liberty.  Nevertheless, these two principles have died in every other country on Earth.  There is no other nation in which these grand ideas have remained an essential part of either the political system or the moral code.  It may be difficult for an American to see what this means to those of us abroad who share these ideas. 

It means this: America is the last practical refuge of our hopes.  In every other nation, to advocate for individual liberty, to plead for property rights, or to speak out against socialism’s inherent violation of the foundations of civilization is increasingly to brand oneself an unenlightened crank at best, and perhaps a sociopath.  If American society completes its slow shift into that same perspective, then we are all doomed.  If the American majority finally comes to absorb the view, already accepted as policy by the Department of Homeland Security, that „reverence of individual liberty” and „suspicion of centralized federal authority” are indicators of an antisocial threat, then there will literally be nowhere left on Earth where one is allowed to love freedom without ostracism, or worse.  There will be nowhere left on Earth where Jefferson, Madison, or Washington may speak or be spoken of without ridicule.

Thoughtful non-Americans know from experience and reasoning that livable conditions in their own nations will be sustained, if at all, only as long as America refrains from following the West’s oppressive path to regulatory oblivion and resists late modernity’s craving for the false comforts of „soft despotism.”  Those comforts are false on two levels: first, they are gained by means of a gun aimed at you and everyone else; second, they will be short-lived.  The last gasp of freedom means the loss of all the goods that only freedom can provide – prosperity, peace, leisure. 

A man is hanging from a cliff, with only his fingers still gripping solid rock.  The prevailing impetus is all downward, but the man continues to dangle in one place as long as that grip holds out.  If he lets go, however, his fall will be short and decisive. 

Modern civilization is that man.  America is his final, desperate grip.  On November 6, 2012, that man will either be left alone to continue his brave, heartbreaking struggle for another day, or a boot will come down on his fingers.

I described America’s prospect as an „almost unwinnable war.”  Dire as this may sound, there is actually something liberating in that little word, „almost.”  The Tea Party is a testament to that feeling of liberation.   Near-defeat brings priorities into focus.   It sweeps away the smoke of the inessential, so that the path to the primary goal becomes clear.

The first, nearly completed, step is to prevent that „almost” from becoming an „absolutely.”

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What’s the explanation for Mitt Romney’s unparalleled breakout?  A few weeks ago, the Romney campaign was regarded as dead in the water.  The polls (with the exception of Rasmussen) had the campaign uniformly down, giving Obama up to half a dozen points.  Voter interest was phlegmatic at best.  A combined Chicago-media offensive appeared to have put Romney on the ropes.  The consensus was that Obama would cruise to another victory, one paralleling and perhaps even exceeding his triumph over John McCain four years ago.

Today, little more than an electoral-cycle heartbeat later, the situation is utterly reversed.  The big mo belongs to Romney.  The polls, excepting a few weird left-wing holdouts of the Reuters variety, show Romney with comfortable leads ranging from 2% to 5%.  The swing states are trending in his direction.  The expectations of the GOP are those of the 3rd Army roaring into the Reich.  As for Obama, he has displayed every sign of a man on the run – desperation moves, incipient hysteria, vast and expensive efforts to magnify minor Romney gaffes, appeals to Big Bird and Gloria Allred.  His expression in the debates was that of a man facing his karma, more haggard and haunted with each appearance.  At least one person in the campaign knows full well that the game is up.

This remarkable turnaround is unmatched in recent American political history, and as such, it requires an explanation.  Not many have been floated as of yet.  The most popular so far holds that Anne and Tagg Romney, acting as Mitt’s consiglieres, pushed aside most the campaign’s professional political operatives in a successful effort to encourage „Mitt to be Mitt.”

Everyone involved denies that anything of the sort occurred, and that may well be the truth.  Occam’s razor applies to politics as much as any other field, and the simplest and best explanation in this case is that no large-scale change occurred within the campaign or without – that in fact, things are unfolding pretty much as they were planned to.  That it’s happening this way because it was meant to.

There is no conspiracy, and there was no mistake.  What we’re seeing is an example of straightforward campaign strategy in action.  Romney has been underestimated as a politician all along.  This is true to some extent of most politicians.  The general view of politicians among political professionals, media, and academics is that they are simple folk who must be led by the hand and told what to say by trained and experienced pros, and in spare moments left in a corner with a shiny object to play with.  This may be true in some cases (I recall a Jersey pol whom I encountered at a political meeting called to obtain support for his candidacy.  His response to every question was to, without fail, turn and gaze at his campaign manager.  He was elected, served three terms, and was considered quite a success by NJ standards), but it’s not true of Romney.  As a successful businessman in a tough, complex, and cutthroat field, Romney learned as much about strategy, planning, and the vagaries of human nature as it is possible for one mind to hold, and he has not forgotten a single comma of it.

Romney’s stature as strategist was first revealed last spring, when he humiliated Rick Santorum on what should have been a day of triumph.  On March 10, Santorum won Kansas overwhelmingly, gaining himself 33 delegates.  Meanwhile, Romney had won in Wyoming, which gave him only 12 delegates.  But Romney had sent his son Matt out to the Marianas, forgotten by all other candidates, including Santorum.  Matt brought home a victory, which (along with a victory in the Virgin Islands), provided his father with another 22 delegates, ensuring that Romney actually outdid the „victorious” Santorum in overall gains.  A few more lusterless debate performances, and Santorum was history.

After that, it was clear that the primary campaign was going to be a lot more interesting than many had foreseen.  It was also clear that Romney was the man to watch – a politician who overlooked nothing, considered everything, and never missed a trick.

A pattern had already begun to emerge in the early months of the primaries.  During the „anyone but Romney” phase that the GOP was going through, a new figure on a white charger was offered every couple weeks as the great hope to take down Obama the Usurper.  Almost as soon as they popped up, down again they went.  Presidential boots proved slightly too large for Rick Perry.  Michele Bachmann was felled by a frustrating tendency for her words to outrun her thoughts, and Herman Cain by his purported eye for the ladies.

The two members of this squadron with real potential of taking the nomination were Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.  Both were similar – figures who appealed to the core conservatives of the GOP by means of images that were largely synthetic.  Newt Gingrich was the Cincinnatus willing to leave his beloved historical studies to save the country, while Santorum was Ozzie Nelson.  As is often case, these roles were a poor fit to the actual individuals.

That was the key element where Romney was concerned.  As a businessman, he’d encountered plenty of figures who were all hat and no cattle, who talked a good game but were never around when it came time to toss some change into the kitty.  It was in no way difficult to recognize many of the same traits in his GOP competition.  So he treated them the same way he would have treated a hustler back in his investment days.  He didn’t fight them, didn’t go blow for blow, didn’t so much as answer them back to any real extent.  He let them each go through their schtick, until their essential hollowness was inescapable to all but the most hardcore true believers.  He then, in the next debate, presented once again the basic Mitt Romney as the natural opposition figure.  Newt and Rick both faded. 

What Romney found himself facing in the presidential contest was very much the same thing – to a fault.  Obama, the Illinois Redeemer, missionary from the Planet Zong, groveler to sheiks, reincarnation of FDR, and harbinger of the new age, was bogus enough to make Gingrich and Santorum look like avatars of authenticity.  Romney’s problem was that a large number of voters had bought into one facet or other of this multifaceted political entity back in 2008.  The possibility existed that enough voters would remain entranced to sweep Obama into another term full of crazed spending and anti-constitutional mischief.

Obama was also a devotee of the permanent campaign.  Though instituted by Bill Clinton, this political methodology could be said to have been perfected by Barack Obama himself, whose entire life has been one single lengthy campaign.  In practice, the permanent campaign meant simply never to stand down, to remain in campaign mode at all times, to begin active campaigning as early as the close of the midterms, and essentially campaign, by one means of or another, every last week of the ensuing twenty-four months.  Not a moment could be wasted, according to this interpretation.  The permanent campaign was the new normal.  Anyone who let so much as a week slip through his hands would inevitably lose.

The difficulty with this theory was that nobody had ever bothered to actually demonstrate its validity.  It was taken as a given.  Clinton won – but against figures like Bob Dole, with the manly assistance of H. Ross Perot.  Joke elections of that type certainly cannot be said to have been a fair test of the thesis.

Evidently, Romney does not accept the concept of the permanent campaign.  He essentially gave the late summer months to Obama, to the despair of the GOP, sneers from the Dems, and bewilderment from the political pros.  Much as he did during the primaries, Romney let Obama take center stage, well aware that he wouldn’t accomplish anything with the time and opportunity he was being given, because he couldn’t.

Obama capered.  He took the messiah routine to the point of burlesque.  He turned himself into a caricature of Mr. Hope and Change, not grasping the facts that it was no longer 2008 and that no one was looking for a savior anymore.  His campaign, the national left, and the kept media carried out relentless attacks on Romney, none of which ever stuck because Romney never did anything to draw attention to them.

By the time the debates rolled around, Obama had used up all his ammo and had become one of those pop items nobody wants to see any more of – last year’s hit sitcom, a burnt-out singer, an actress on her fifth or sixth breakdown.  So it goes with messiahs who hang on too long.  

Romney may have been assisted by events, but luck favors the well-prepared.  The Benghazi terrorist raid forced the Obama campaign to release the „47%” tape at least a month prematurely.  They no doubt intended to use it during the last week of the campaign, when it would have the greatest effect, but were forced to throw it in as a desperation move to halt the bleeding over Libya.  That it failed to do, along with proving a dud at ruining Romney’s reputation.  It’s merely a footnote at this point.  (Note that nobody – not a soul, right, left, or center – criticized either Obama or his party for the breach of privacy that footage represented.  Nobody bothers any longer.  It’s now an accepted truth, like gravity, mosquitoes in summer, or darkness at night: coarseness, grubbiness, and illegality are what the Democrats do.)

After that, Obama had nothing left to throw.  In the first debate, Romney took him apart, as he had long intended to do.  From that point on, the Obama campaign was in free-fall.

Romney has realized something about the endless campaign that far more sophisticated and experienced figures had overlooked.  Namely, everything that happens before the final two months is little more than preparation.  It’s the final stretch that counts.  Why spend your money and waste energy and effort during the summer months, when nobody is paying attention?  Obama was similar to a boxer who works himself to abject exhaustion during the run-up to a championship bout, only to flop over on his face on entering the ring.  Romney, on the other hand, paced himself, prepared judicially and well, and remained fresh and ready to go the distance.

So he crushed Obama in the first debate; cruised through the second, despite a coordinated attempt to upset him (there is no criminal or civil penalty for the act carried out by Candy Crowley in cooperation with the Obama campaign – so why would they hesitate?  Anybody?); and maintained a cool and benign presidential mien in the third, a visage on which Obama was not able to leave so much as a mark.  Before the entire country, Romney transformed Barack Obama into an importunate child, which is better than he deserves, and may well be enough.

Romney is now ahead in the only polls that actually count (5 pts. up on Gallup, 4 pts. on Rasmussen), leading among independents, tied or ahead in almost all the swing states, and making serious inroads in several voting blocs long since written off and belonging to the messiah – women in particular.

Most of the political world of the early 21st century has forgotten the basics – the basics that Romney has never neglected, because he could not afford to.  Romney treated the campaign the same as he would have treated a new business back in the ’80s or ’90s: you learn everything about the industry you wish to invest in from the ground up.  You visit the factory floor, you talk to people at all levels, you understand all there is to know before you put in a dime.  That’s how he approached politics.  By grasping the basic rules, the basic schedule, the basic rhythm, all of which have been set aside, to one extent or another, by most political technicians.

If he brings this off, if he is elected on November 6, Mitt Romney will stand as the most masterly political strategist of his epoch.  He has not forgotten what others have not yet learned.

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As the Arab Spring model implodes in the Middle East, it is even more urgent that the West understand that behind this ongoing violence is the inexorable Muslim adherence to sharia law.  Sharia is the unremitting lodestar for their actions.

In his latest magisterial work, entitled Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, Dr. Andrew Bostom adds another enlightening tome to supplement The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims (2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (2008).

Honest scholarship in our politically correct world is a hard commodity to find.  Thus, a debt is owed to Bostom for his continuing contributions as he give numerous examples to prove that it is the „centrality of Islamic jihadism” (26) that motivates, inspires, instigates, arouses, and stirs its adherents toward the unrelenting goal of a global caliphate.  During the recent Ramadan, for example, there were 260 jihad attacks in 23 countries, with 1,209 dead and 1,910 critically injured.  The so-called religion of peace is extraordinarily bloody, yet leaders of the free world prevaricate about its violence. 

The culture of death, destruction, and deceit that is Islam is painstakingly exposed by Bostom.  The deep and abiding anti-Jewish animus in Islam is shown to be integral to Islam.  Neither a byproduct of Western anti-Semitism nor a result of alleged Western imperialism, to say nothing of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Muslim-inspired anti-Jewish sentiment actually dates back to before 869 A.D.

Bostom affirms that this legacy of „Muslim anti-Jewish hatred and violence” is not some aberrant vision of radical Islam, but rather is „rooted in mainstream, orthodox Islamic teachings” (83).  Bostom explodes the oft-repeated idea that „Islam’s society’s hostility is non-theological” and „not related to any specific Islamic doctrine” (74).  He proves that, a thousand years before any „serious colonial penetration of the region” (38) could influence views about Jews, there is evidence that Jews were hated by the Muslims because they stubbornly denied Muhammad’s message.

In fact, the Jews of the period even „coined their own terms for hatred directed at them by Muslims” (38).  Jews used the terms sinuth for Muslim hatred of Jews and sone for the Muslim hater, thus confirming that Islamic anti-Jewish hatred existed a millennium ago.

Another myth central to the discussion of Islam is that Jews and Christians – i.e., dhimmis – were well-treated.  Blasting the oft-repeated notion of cordial Muslim relations toward Jewish and Christian subjects in Muslim-dominated Spain, Bostom cites one pogrom after another within the Muslim world, and he underscores that Koran 9:111 „provides an unequivocal, celebratory invocation of martyrdom during jihad” (82).

Repeatedly, Bostom examines the „contract of the jizya” or „dhimma,” which „encompasses … obligatory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim” (70).  In the last thirty years, Europe has not withstood the onslaught of Muslims, who deliberately do not assimilate into society, who demand that the countries in which they reside bend to Islamic will, who hysterically call for sharia-imposed judicial decisions, who have made sharia-controlled zones that even police are afraid to enter, who have relegated women to second-class status, and who intimidate and threaten their host governments with violence. 

As Bostom emphasizes, each time that Islam gains ascendancy in an area, such transition to dhimmi status results in enslavement, forcible conversion to Islam, and death to the non-believer.

It is no exaggeration to state that there is an ongoing ideological war against the West.  In only thirty years, European support for „common Euro-Arab positions” now finds itself in a perpetual state of „dhimmitude and rabid Judeophobia” (170).  For example, Muslims living in Germany believe that the „German Constitution [is] irreconcilable” with the Koran (172).  Muslim immigrants who demand European welfare benefits actually view these entitlements as a form of jizya to be paid by dhimmis, aka the host country (188).  

Particularly revelatory is the chapter entitled „Sayonara Shari’a: Japanese Lessons, Lost?,” where Bostom relates that after World War II, „under stern American guidance” (440), Japan was forced to delegitimize its state religion of Shintoism.  In other words, the state would no longer be able to impose religious belief; nonetheless, the practice of Shintoism as a „private, demilitarized, and depoliticized personal faith” was protected (441).  Individual religious liberty was maintained but could not be imposed upon the general populace.

Sadly, this lesson, which produced a vibrant Japanese reconstruction while protecting individual rights, has been entirely ignored following the U.S.-led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Rather than neutralizing the bellicose religious-political-economic creed of Islam, we have actually helped to promote sharia imposition. 

How galling it is to learn that there is a tried and true antidote to counter the totalitarianism of state-imposed religion, but that the West ignores it?  It is vital to note that there „has never been a sharia state in history that has not discriminated … against the non Muslims (and Muslim women) under its suzerainty” (447).

Islam refuses to reform.  Thus, it consigns its followers as well as non-Muslims to an existence where no „freedom of conscience” can occur.  The modern-day sermons of jihadists receive their script lines from the ideas of a thousand years ago.  Islam, by its very nature, is unyielding. 

Freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of speech, assembly, or petition – all of which are cardinal ideas enshrined in the American Bill of Rights – simply do not exist, will never be permitted, and are tantamount to sacrilege within the Islamic world.  In fact, dhimmis possess no rights. 

Islamic law and American law are antithetical.  There can be no conciliation because sharia „compromises the tradition of equality for all under the law.”  Sharia consists of draconian punishments such as stoning for adultery and homosexuality, death for apostasy, amputation of hands and feet for highway robbery, and lashing for drinking wine.

Lest one minimize the Koranic influence in the political Islamic world, it should be „noted that Koran 3:112 is featured before the preamble to Hamas’s foundational covenant” (76).  This verse is related to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78, which describe the Jews’ transformation into apes and swine (5:60).  And at Palestinian Media Watch, one can read about the demonization of Jews through these vicious canards.  Furthermore, as Bostom points out, the Iranian theocracy sanctions Jew-hatred through its national teacher training programs (78). 

Bostom enlightens the reader with background information about the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, who played a pivotal role in Hitler’s Final Solution.  This non-Aryan was warmly welcomed (243) by Hitler because both men had the same goals: worldwide domination and the extermination of Jews. 

It behooves the West to learn from the past.  Bostom discusses the experiences of Whittaker Chambers (497) and Arthur Koestler (508), who initially succumbed to the alleged idealism of communism only to speak out once this dream of utopia revealed itself to be one of the most horrific periods in human history.  Chambers in his book Witness writes a searing expose of communism, and we would be well-served to perceive the similarities between communism’s rejection of freedom and Islam’s totalitarian system.  Bolshevism and Islam share a fanatical worldview and are „impervious to reason.”

Those who fell under the spell of communism soon learned of the dimension of its absolute control.  Millions of people were killed under Stalin.  Deliberate mass starvation coupled with purges and slavery were the hallmarks of communism.  Intellectual reasoning was destroyed.  The same thing happens in the Muslim-dominated world.  Muslims refuse to become citizens of Western countries because for them, the world, in all its entirety, is to be conquered.  Where they reside is secondary, as it is the „strong port” from which an Islamic attack is launched.  Islam, like communism, is an ideology that „is fiercely paranoid [and] conspiratorial” (505).

The jihadist is counting on American ignorance of the ideas in the Koran and of the overarching history of Muslim conquest.  As Andrew McCarthy has explained, the jihadists „make Islam appear unthreatening to limn its detractors as irrational and unracist” (47).  Thus, the jihadist controls the narrative.

Ex-communists enlightened us about the horrors of communism.  Muslim apostates keep warning us about the dangers of Islam.  Yet we ignore it „at our existential peril.”  Bostom proves that any sort of Muslim dialogue or interfaith discourse is pointless because Islam permits no other way of thinking.  At Al Azhar, the center of Islamic studies, a 2008 paper was presented that concluded with the following:

… Muslim dialogue with Jews in Italy is only possible once Israel has been eliminated.

Thus, genocide is a holy duty for the practicing Muslim, as dictated by the Koran and other theological sources of Islam.

Islamic law is totalitarianism.  There can be no freedom in the Western sense of the word, since the „Islamic understanding of ‘freedom,’ or hurriyya means perfect slavery” (524), and this slavery is between Allah the master and his human slaves.

It is vital that the West never forget that taqiyya, the Muslim doctrine that allows lying in certain circumstances, and tawriya, a doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances, are permitted as long as they advance sharia. 

As Bostom explains, Muslims who emigrate to Europe and America have the same determination to modify and change their host countries’ laws and cultural mores.  They wish to „supersede Western conceptions of human rights” with sharia.  Thus, „[u]nder the rule of Islam, there is no equality among people.  Absolutely not” (123).

Why do so many express surprise about Islamic global intentions when repeatedly, Muslim leaders exhort their followers and state that „Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror” (133)?  There is abundant evidence that Muslim leaders wish to transplant the draconian, stultifying laws of sharia onto the world. 

The Nazis murdered six million Jews and destroyed millions of other groups during WWII.  Under Stalin, Communism was responsible for the death of 20 million human beings.  Islam has the same global aspirations.  Andrew Bostom’s indefatigable quest to educate is monumental.  To receive such an encyclopedic edification is a gift.  To use it as a vantage point for action is an obligation.  To do less means that we will go down the road to dhimmitude, just as the imam wants. 

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

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Referenda on changing the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex relationships have become a recurrent feature of our electoral landscape in recent years. Voters have rejected the proposed changes every time, but the margins are narrowing; even conservative voters, particularly those of a libertarian bent, are beginning to conclude that „gay marriage” is not that big a deal, or even that redefining marriage advances freedom. They could not be more wrong: redefining marriage is indeed a big deal, which is not only a threat to liberty, but a significant step in the direction of totalitarian tyranny.

Despite thirty-plus campaigns, there has been little informed public discussion about what marriage is and the state’s interest in maintaining traditional marriage (sadly, the proponents of redefining marriage prefer to rely on name-calling and intimidation, which leaves little room for dispassionate debate). As a consequence, many voters have never heard the actual arguments in defense of traditional marriage, but only the strawmen that its opponents are fond of pummeling, most of which (on the surface) appeal to the idea of freedom. For example, I once heard a nationally-syndicated radio talk-show host, a self-identified libertarian who generally takes a conservative position, say: „not one person has been able to call in and tell me how two men or two women marrying each other will harm their own marriage” (in other words, mind your own business). Or how often have you heard something like „traditional marriage supporters are anti-freedom; they want to keep gay people from marrying the partner of their choice.” I see a third of these strawmen every Sunday outside my church, where a protester holds a sign that says: „When did I get to vote on your marriage?”

Despite their surface plausibility, none of these arguments withstand more than cursory scrutiny. Consider the case of the radio personality: of course nobody had ever successfully argued on his show that two men or two women marrying each other would harm their own marriage, because nobody anywhere defends traditional marriage on that ground; the arguments against redefining marriage are much more fundamental. The real question is whether then union of a man and women is different from that of two men or two women (hint: the answer has something to do with babies), and whether the state has an interest in fostering and protecting exclusive heterosexual relationships that it does not have in same-sex relationships. The radio host didn’t mention whether he had ever had that discussion on his show (curious, because that is what I hear defenders of traditional marriage talking about).

In a similar way, the argument that people opposed to the redefinition of marriage want to „outlaw” homosexual relationships or break up gay couples is dishonest and misleading (which is always a red flag that more is going on than meets the eye). Indeed, it is false on a number of levels. To begin with, virtually nobody today is arguing for the return of anti-sodomy laws, or advocating the forcible separation of cohabiting same-sex couples. Nor have I heard of anyone promoting laws that would somehow prevent homosexuals from calling their relationships „marriages” if they so choose. Traditional marriage supporters are simply working to preserve the legal definition of our most important social institution (older than the state and older, even, than institutional religion; more on this below) against those who themselves want to use the force of law to compel the rest of us to agree to a new definition, a definition that nobody anywhere has ever held (up until the last few years), and one which will change our understanding of that most important institution in fundamental ways. By any objective measure, the gay-marriage advocates are trying to deprive the rest of us of our liberty to hold and to express our beliefs. Ironically, the attack on traditional marriage is, at the same time, a threat against liberty itself.

This threat is not merely theoretical. The very real consequences of the encroaching tyranny of the gay marriage crowd are already becoming apparent. A couple years ago, for instance, a redefinition of marriage passed by the Maine legislature was narrowly overturned in a „Peoples Veto” referendum. A critical factor in the repeal was the attempt by gay-marriage advocates to deprive a public-school social worker named Don Mandell of his license (and hence his livelihood) because he had appeared in a pro-traditional marriage ad (this in response a coworker who had appeared in a pro-gay marriage ad and had faced no censure). There are numerous reports from around the country of teachers whose standing is threatened, or of students who are disciplined, for doing no more than expressing a pro-traditional marriage opinion. Outside of the school system we see professional photographers, Knights of Columbus halls, and even dating services facing lawsuits simply because they decline to include same-sex weddings among their services. In the case of Chik-Fil-A we have seen public officials threaten to ban a business simply because its owner has expressed his personal support of traditional marriage, which is still the law of the land in most of our country. It is not at all far-fetched to project that today’s harassment will become full-scale prosecution if the full gay marriage legal agenda is enacted (as is already the case in Canada and parts of Europe).

If that weren’t bad enough, it gets worse. The redefinition of marriage by the state would not only mean a violation of the freedom of those who disagree: it would be a giant step closer to a government that is genuinely totalitarian. Now, I know some of you are thinking that „totalitarian” in an overblown, sensationalistic term, but consider the following: laws concerning marriage have always been descriptive, describing and recognizing a pre-existent reality. Even laws regulating certain aspects of marriage (the ban on polygamy, for instance, or laws against incest) have served to protect marriage from those who would warp its traditional contours. A law that redefines marriage to mean something completely different, something it has never been, is a prescriptive law, one that prescribes or creates a new reality. This is a power that few governments, and certainly not our constitutional republic, have ever claimed in regard to marriage. It is to treat something that the state has always recognized as pre-existent, above and beyond itself, as if it were a creation of the state, to be manipulated, redefined, and at some point (why not, after all?) even abolished at the whim of the ruling power. This is why the protester’s question „When did I get to vote on your marriage?” is so off-base. Marriage has never been subject to any vote; it was here before this or any other government, and is the creation of no human government.

That’s why the consequences for liberty and for the well-being of society in subordinating marriage so completely to the state, in so radical a way, are even more serious than the abuses I mention above. Marriage properly understood is an essential prerequisite for stable, healthy families. Societies throughout history and across the world have learned this from experience, and modern sociological research, despite the barrage of propaganda to the contrary, bears it out. While marriage opponents will no doubt point to individual A or person B as an exception, we know that, on average, children raised in traditional monogamous marriages with both father and mother do better in school, are less likely to be criminals or drug-addicted, have fewer mental and emotional problems, are less likely to commit suicide, and on and on.

More than that, and perhaps of more interest to libertarians and other lovers of freedom, families are, along with organized religion, the most important „mediating institutions” between the individual and the state. Mediating institutions are groups of people large and small that help serve as a check on the government, and provide individuals with a way of influencing the state much more effectively than they can do on their own. These independent sources of authority are essential to the preservation of liberty: without them the behemoth of the state would easily crush the lone citizen. That’s why totalitarians of every stripe make the subjugation or even destruction of these institutions (especially the family and organized religion) a top priority. Giving the state the power to manipulate, redefine and hence to unmake such essential protectors of freedom must necessarily lead to an ever more powerful state, and an ever smaller place for individual liberty.

The desire of libertarians to work to preserve personal freedom is quite understandable, but the legal redefinition of marriage would do just the opposite: it necessarily means the loss of freedom to express and to act according to beliefs at odds with the gay agenda; more ominously, it will grant to the state an enormous and unprecedented power for remaking society according to its own designs. 

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Words don’t matter as much as body language when voters decide on the man they trust to lead the nation.  Despite all the policy debates, all the fact checking, all the pundits, we don’t weigh and balance and research, not most of us.  We don’t even use our forebrains.  We use the most primitive part of our brains, the part that can smell danger, that smells who is the alpha male, who is the omega, who is the rogue.  The nose knows who is the real leader.  We can smell a winner.

Mitt Romney passed the smell test for the third time last night, and Barack Obama failed. 

Choosing a president isn’t a beauty contest, although good looks help.  It is about masculinity.  It is about confidence and calm strength.  Romney was the happy warrior of the debate.  He was the guy so big he doesn’t have to pick fights or show off his muscles.  They are obvious from his stature and how he conducts himself.   Obama was the junk yard dog, trying to protect his turf by mean looks and threatening to bite.  He didn’t actually get his teeth into Romney a single time.  Obama’s attempt at a steely gaze came across as unpleasant, hostile, even silly.  He didn’t faze Romney, and he didn’t win anyone’s confidence.   He made himself smell nasty.  A snapping dog doesn’t make people feel safe.

The contest to lead the nation touches our most basic instincts.  Our brains evolved 100,000 years ago when we roved the earth in small bands, guided by elders but led by warriors.  There was no room for error, and mistakes were fatal.  Those who followed a vacillating leader were wiped out.  Those who chose a capable leader passed their genes on.  This is something people understand deep in their guts.

I have spent many hours observing wolves in the wild.  Some packs thrive, others disappear.  Some raise their pups in security because they hold onto big, prosperous territories.  Other packs are pushed into marginal areas where tough winters decimate them, and they are preyed upon by rival packs.  Being an alpha male is a demanding role.  It is not based on something as simple as size – it also requires a higher level of aggressiveness, with the guts to dominate every situation.  The alpha defends his territory through intimidation and if necessary, through battle.  The alpha male never hesitates to fight to protect his pack. 

Voters, like wolves, don’t want a leader who will fight to the death.  They do want a leader who will never run from a fight and will win every time.  They go for the one who smells like a winner.

Think of the presidential contests of the last fifty years.  Kennedy was more upbeat, confident, more the virile alpha male than Nixon, who came across as Obama does, mean, a whiner.  But when Nixon was matched against Humphrey, he was the more virile.  LBJ passed the sniff test.   Carter didn’t have much, but he beat Ford.  Reagan could have bottled it.  Dukakis smelled like a wimp, making George Walker Bush look good in comparison.  Clinton again was the more upbeat, confident, virile top dog.  Kerry, the French poodle with the rich wife, never had a chance against George W. Bush.  McCain, although a war hero and in fact the more capable male than Obama, wasn’t willing to fight the messiah and disqualified himself. 

And so we were left for the last four years with a fake alpha.  Obama has the easy virility of the charmer.  Great on promises, but not trustworthy.  Definitely not someone to go to the mat for you.  At the end of the day, for Obama, it’s all about Obama.  He and Michelle have been having a ball in the White House while 23 million Americans are unemployed, their lives in tatters.  He’s having fun being lionized by Hollywood and going to Las Vegas fundraisers, while our Libyan ambassador is denied security, is given no military back up during the 6 hour firefight in Benghazi, and is dragged through the streets.  Obama shows up for the funeral photo op. 

That is not an alpha male.  

The kids in college still think Obama’s great, because they don’t know the difference between cool and manhood.  They want the free stuff and pretty dreams he peddles.  Adults can smell something is off.

Obama has been worse than a weak leader.  He is something America has never seen, and that is why he was able to fool people.  It is why our country is such a mess.  He is a false leader.  He never believed in our pack.  He never wanted to protect our territory.  He is a leftist ideologue who wanted to bring our pack down to size and give the other packs a bigger share. 

The landslide victory and fawning press of his ‘historic’ election gave him control over both Houses of Congress.  He used the opportunity to crush our economy with Obamacare, EPA regs, and a trillion-dollar-a-year payoff to his base, that has brought our economy to its knees.  He has deprived more Americans of the ability to be self-supporting, independent adults than any time since the Great Depression. 

Obama wanted to shrink us on the world stage, and went far beyond bowing and apologizing.  He purposefully, foolishly and oh so dangerously destabilized the Middle East.  Obama got positive headlines for pushing out dictators, only to invite terror organizations – the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda – to take over Egypt and possibly Libya.  He has allowed the mullahs of Iran to achieve the brink of going nuclear.  He doesn’t really believe in the jihadi movement.  They’re the third world victims and we’re the insensitive, greedy bad guys. 

Most Americans don’t know details of foreign policy, and don’t care.  But they watched two men sit at a table last night and fight over who is qualified to lead our country.  Most of the public doesn’t know enough about Iran or Libya or Egypt to tell Romney’s facts from Obama’s fictions.  They can be fooled by a brazen and charming serial liar who tells us he’s done a great job, nothing to worry about with Egypt, Libya, Iran, move along.   Obama’s lies are echoed by a politically corrupted press.  But the public can’t be lied to any more about the economy, because they are living it.  They can’t be fooled into thinking Obama has any intention of doing a course correction and improving his performance in the next four years. 

They’ve been looking for a new alpha, a real one.  After the three debates, they’ve found him.  His name is Mitt Romney.

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President Obama was well-coached in the final Presidential debate; he came across as an articulate, aggressive debater, but he was trying too hard to dominate and came across as condescending and petty as he repeatedly attacked Romney with a „gotcha” smirk and interrupted often in ways that were all too reminiscent of Joe Biden in the Vice Presidential debate. 

As the incumbent, the President had the advantage in the final debate that focused on foreign affairs. He obviously wanted to reverse the momentum that Romney has enjoyed since the first debate.  His debate strategy, while masterful in its command of details – even when distorted and inaccurate – failed about as badly as his policies have failed over the past four years.  Mr. Romney came across as Presidential and well-informed. He was sober, serious, relaxed and well-informed. In contrast, Mr. Obama was intense, aggressive, defensive and desperate; he made accusations so petty that Romney didn’t even bother to address.  Instead, Romney stayed focused on the „big picture” and successfully linked the nation’s foreign policy weaknesses to the economic and fiscal problems that are undermining our position as the world’s superpower.

By employing a strategy of remaining above the fray, Mr. Romney avoided the pitfall of coming across as a „warmonger” or using foreign policy as a „political football.”  Staying above the fray did not mean Mr. Romney was detached, ill-prepared or uninvolved (as Obama seemed in the first debate).  Instead, Mr. Romney did not hesitate to go for the jugular several notable times. Early on, Obama launched accusations against Romney; he said, „Every time you’ve offered an opinion you’ve been wrong.” Governor Romney responded, „Attacking me is not an agenda.”  

While he agreed with the President on several foreign policy stances, Romney made it clear that the President is on the wrong foreign policy track; Romney repeated several times, „We’re four years closer to a nuclear Iran.”  In addition, Mr. Romney successfully turned attention numerous times to the connections between the President’s foreign policy failures and his failures on the economy, debt, deficit, jobs, and military readiness.

Just as Mr. Romney excelled in the second debate by succinctly enumerating the domestic failures of the President in a two-minute segment, he was equally effective in citing in brief, pointed details the major foreign policy disasters of the President. Romney went through the long list of countries in the Middle East visited by Obama early in his presidency, and pointed out that he did not visit Israel.  He quoted the President as promising those nations that America would no longer „dictate” to them.  Romney responded, „We have not dictated; we have liberated.” 

Fox News tracked the Twitter traffic during the debate and Mr. Romney’s citing of the „Apology Tour” was one of the four topics with highest Twitter traffic.  Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Obama’s Middle East policies, saying that they have produced a „rising tide of chaos” and that, while he agreed that the death of Osama bin Laden was key to eliminating al-Qaida, „We cannot kill our way out” of the problems in the Middle East.  Instead, he declared, „We must have a comprehensive strategy.”  Mr. Romney repeatedly declared that the U.S. „must show strength and leadership” and that our national debt is our „biggest security threat.”

In one of his well-practiced lines, often used on the campaign trail, Obama accused Romney of wanting the foreign policies of the 1980s, the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.  When Governor Romney reported that the Navy is the weakest it has ever been with fewer ships than at the end of World War I, the President gave one of his snarkiest put-downs.  He claimed that Mr. Romney just didn’t understand modern warfare and the need for a strategy based on „capabilities;” he said today’s military doesn’t need horses or bayonets. In a patronizing voice, he explained to Romney that he hadn’t „executed” real military situations; they are not, he declared, like „playing battleship.” Mr. Romney reminded him that the President’s own Secretary of Defense admitted that the President’s budget cuts have been „devastating” to the military. Mr. Romney talked about the past four years as a time when other nations saw an America that was not strong; they saw weaknesses. The exchange assessing America’s foreign policy epitomized the debate: Mr. Romney was able to smile throughout the debate and look like a winner whereas Mr. Obama was burdened by his abysmal record and could only resort to empty blanket accusations, such as, „Nothing Governor Romney just said is true.”

President Obama recounted several emotional stories about his interactions with people that seemed designed to enhance his reputation for compassion and his „likeability.” He even described his visit to the Holocaust Museum to declare that he was „on the right side of history.” He repeatedly described his Administration as providing „steady, thoughtful leadership.”  He repeatedly echoed his mantra that „the wealthy must be willing to contribute more.”  He called the Bush and Romney agendas, „wrong and reckless policies.”  President Obama utilized every possible opportunity to mention – in vague, general terms – the problems around the world regarding „treatment of women.”  He made snide remarks about Mr. Romney’s „overseas investments” and accused Romney of „sending jobs overseas.”  Even in his closing statement he came back to the theme of the wealthy doing more and not wanting to „go back to the policies that got us where we are.”

At the end of the debate, President Romney was smiling; he looked presidential; he looked like a winner.  His strategy worked: he focused on the big picture and avoided getting bogged down into meaningless spats over obvious distortions and misrepresentations.  Tactically, he struck the right tone and fought on the high ground of the Obama Administration’s record by tying Mr. Obama’s foreign policy missteps to his domestic and fiscal failures. None of Mr. Obama’s well-rehearsed attacks and interruptions hit their mark or rattled Mr. Romney’s composure. Neither Mr. Obama’s strategy nor his tactics will likely stop Mr. Romney’s momentum. Mr. Obama sounded like a little dog yapping at the Big Dog,

Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., is a former Presidential Speechwriter (Bush 41).  She is also author of Children at Risk and Marriage Matters (Transaction Publishers, 2010 and 2012).  She is a spokesperson for Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee.

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The new Iron Curtain may be descending farther to the east than its predecessor, but it is just as surely descending.  And Barack Obama is no Winston Churchill.  This time, instead of catcalls, the leader of the free world is applauding as Russia eradicates American values from his shores.

Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation writes that the United States must recognize that the Obama’s „reset” policy has contributed mightily to the falling of the new Iron Curtain.  He notes that Putin’s Russia is aggressively siding with the archenemies of America, from Iran to Syriato China.  But this is exactly what was not supposed to happen.  Obama represented that if he sold out American values and allies in Russia in Eastern Europe with his policy of Chamberlainian appeasement, Russian support for enemies like this malignant trio would end.  In fact, such support has only redoubled.  Meanwhile, American honor has been stained as we have failed to stand up for our values and the friends who fight to defend them in former Soviet space.

Cohen warns ominously that the attacks by Putin on these values and friends „have an unmistakable flavor of the 1920’s and 1930’s[,]” when the maniacal dictator Josef Stalin held sway and the Gulag archipelago was born.  Cohen lists a horrifying sequence of laws, rammed through a rubber-stamp legislature, that seek to crush the last vestige of democracy and to replace the ideology of Communism with one of Russian orthodoxy in a neo-Soviet dictatorship.  He calls on Obama to stand up and speak out against this final onslaught before it is too late.

But Obama is doing the opposite.  He is actually helping Putin to liquidate American outposts like Radio Liberty and USAID, depriving the U.S. of even a theoretical ability to influence events on the ground in Russia.  He has watched silently as Putin has spurned the Nunn-Lugar nuclear weapons cooperation agreement, and he has said nothing as Putin has launched a whole new wave of criminal investigations and prosecutions of leaders of the democracy movement.

And Putin has only just begun to work on that score.  Senior Russia correspondent Fred Weir reports that Putin’s newest brainstorm is to conflate the opposition activists with the terrorists who may well bring down a different type of curtain on Putin’s effort to stage a World Cup and an Olympic Games in the next few years.  Just as in Soviet times, the Kremlin is making it clear that anyone who does not support the Russian state is its enemy and must be destroyed.  The Kremlin is even going so far as to accuse opposition leaders of embezzling from their own campaign funds.  It genuinely does not seem that the Kremlin recognizes even one person as being part of a legitimate opposition political organization.

The results of Obama’s craven failure to lead on democracy have been truly devastating in Russia.  As documented by opposition pundit Leonid Bershidsky, Russia has just concluded a series of local elections across the country that saw Putin’s party of power, United Russia, not just dominate, but absolutely crush opposition candidates.  Dispirited and rudderless, two thirds of Russians stayed home and allowed the remainder to hand epic landslide victories to Putin in every category.  After failing miserably in the national contests, the opposition had staked its reputation on at least making a fight out of local contests, in which the Kremlin might be less interested, if only because they are more numerous.  Now, they have been wholly discredited and routed.

A few months ago, Russians made a bid for freedom similar to the heroic Polish uprising during World War II against the Nazis.  The world saw more than one hundred thousand Russians pour into the streets of Moscow to demand fair national elections.  Just as Russian forces stood outside Warsaw and watched the Nazis crush the Poles (then marching in to take over as their successors), Barack Obama also stood on the sidelines and did nothing to support the protesters.  Without American guidance and support, the opposition bloom withered and faded, and now it is hardly a memory.

Bershidsky writes that „electoral democracy as we know it is dying a slow, painful death under President Vladimir Putin.” But he might just as well have said under Obama.  Just as the U.S. would never have prevailed in its revolutionary war against England without the help of France, Russians can no more topple the Putin regime than they could have overthrown the Politburo without American support.  And let’s be clear: Obama is doing something much worse than just not helping; he’s actually supporting the enemies of freedom in Russia, and that leaves our friends in Russia with no hope at all.

Once Putin has restored Soviet-style rule within Russia, his gaze will inevitably turn beyond its borders.  Make no mistake: Putin views the loss of the Soviet empire as a disaster, and, starting with places like Georgia and Ukraine, he will want to restore it.  He has already shown a willingness to use military force in pursuit of such aims, marching forces into Georgia in 2008 and annexing two big chunks of its territory.  And if Obama is re-elected, Putin will see the next four years as his best opportunity to make bolder moves.  Putin can’t live forever, and Obama’s successor could be far more resolute.

The weakness shown by Obama is the same type shown by Jimmy Carter, the same type that emboldened the USSR to believe that it could seize Afghanistan.  Instead of seeing Osama’s „reset” as invitation to friendship and cooperation, Putin has predictably seen it only as an invitation to further aggression.  Americans should think carefully before they allow their votes to be a basis for repeating the mistakes of the past.

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Until recently I could not understand how anyone could still be undecided about who to vote for on November 6. I check the internet news sites several times a day; I keep up with blogs I trust; and I wear out the numbers on the remote of my favorite news channel. Well, the answer is very simple – other people have lives!

Where they get their news, and how frequently they keep up with it, makes a difference to their level of certainty. Unfortunately, this election is not one that lends itself to a last-minute brush-up on the candidates’ positions. In order to truly appreciate this election, a voter would have to have been paying attention, and very rapt attention at that, for the last four years.

I achieved this revelation after I started a modest Facebook campaign of posting neutral but patriotic quotes each day. I despised the partisan posts made by some of my friends, so I vowed I would do my best to avoid the cringe factor when mine showed up on their news feeds. Initially, this was quite successful – I generated „Likes” by friends I knew to be on both sides of the aisle, along with those on the fence. The ones that were most appreciated were also those that I considered to most innocuous. Any straying into advocating for free markets or a nonapologetic foreign policy generated less enthusiasm from a broader crowd, even though my more conservative friends were visibly on board.

This was interesting, but it made me uneasy. How to convey the gravity of the election without driving people to the alternate candidate out of sympathy or an aversion to partisan displays? When would my posts go too far and expose my very strong conservative leanings, forever cementing my bias in their eyes? Leading up to the VP debate, growing compliments emboldened me to post an evenhanded essay on things important to me, and how I felt each administration would support those priorities. The post clearly, but I thought gently, revealed my preferences. From my similarly-minded conservative friends, I received the highest praise. It was crickets from everyone else. Except one.

The day after my post, a fellow soccer mom called me and expressed her continued Undecidedness. I kept my exasperation to myself. It paid off – after an hour and a half, she moved off the fence into the Romney/Ryan camp. Part of my exasperation with her was that, of all my friends, she is one of the least likely to not have an opinion. How could this person, who never misses a chance to teach and model principles of personal responsibility to her own children, ever have a doubt about which candidate would be better for the future of America? Her first question to me was, „What is this Benghazi thing you’ve been talking about?” Stunned, I said, „You know our ambassador was murdered, right? You don’t know about that? You know the administration has been lying about it? You don’t know about that? You heard about the video that’s supposedly to blame for the attack?” Well, yes, she had heard about that.

What followed was a winding and intense conversation of mostly me reporting to her current events of the last four years, and her easily drawing conservative solutions to the mess we are in. I held back on displaying my absolute convictions on the far-left leanings of our current president, but I was knowledgeable about the facts. She came to her own conclusions. She moved to the more solid ground of Decided.

The Undecideds aren’t stupid, but they are uninformed. They may have too much going on in their lives and with their families to pay attention to the multiple indiscretions of this administration, much less do the research our media should do. I’m not going to let them off the hook; as citizens we have a responsibility to make informed choices, but perhaps a little help from a reliable friend is what is needed.

Tread carefully. Undecideds are skittish, and have an irrational fear of making the wrong choice (as if the candidates were so similar you could easily mistake one with the other). Guard against the entirely understandable impulse to take them by the shoulders and shake some sense into their ambivalent brains. Give them some facts, and then some space to think. If they have time to see with their own eyes, and hear with their own ears, and think with their own minds, we have a fair shot at hoping for a big change.

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