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Tuesday, October 31, 2017

The Trump-Russia Hoax Never Dies



Friends, you may be concerned about the indictments of Paul Manafort and Richard Gates that were issued this week by the Special Prosecutor investigating Trump-Russia "collusion".  Well, don't lose any sleep over them.  The substance of the charges has nothing to do with collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and it has absolutely nothing to do with President Trump himself.  The purpose of these charges is to capture headlines and to put pressure on Trump associates to give Mueller what he wants (dirt on Trump)...or else!  In reality, though, Mueller's case against Manafort appears to be weak, and in any case whatever nuisance charges Mueller contrives to press, President Trump has the pardon power to quash them, if need be.  Now, maybe Manafort is a sleazebag.  Stranger things have happened.  In that case, he deserves justice.  The bottom line, however, is that, lacking evidence to support their broader conspiracy theories, all the left has is threats, bluff, and spin.  Unfortunately, sometimes that's enough.  Should Mueller be fired?  Probably that would be counterproductive.  If you want my opinion, though, Trump should fire Rod Rosenstein, who is the Deputy Attorney General who brought us the Special Prosecutor in the first place.  He also gave Mueller his exceedingly vague mandate, which ensured that he could investigate Trump and friends for anything and everything, but that he wouldn't dream of prying into any Democratic scandals, corruption, "collusion", or miscellaneous malfeasance.  The terms of this inquiry are indeed an outrage, and the Obama administration's, the DNC's, and the Clinton campaign's subversion of the justice system and the intelligence community in order to blacken the name of their political adversaries ought, by rights, to be the bigger story, and the real focus of any Special Prosecutor.  Alas, such is not the case.  Anyway, to get you up to speed on the significance of the latest developments, I recommend these two excellent analyses:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453244/manafort-indictment-no-signs-trump-russia-collusion

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/10/31/that_other_plot_--_to_bring_down_trump_135406.html

Oh, and Happy Halloween!  Don't let those ghoulish lefties give you a fright...

Monday, October 30, 2017

The Left's Doomsday Weapon: Lawyers!



Behold, my latest article, published in Morning Consult (thanks to the editors!), which concerns the newest front in the left's ongoing campaign to subvert democracy.  That's right -- I said it -- the left wants to subvert democracy.  They can talk all they like about phony Russia conspiracies, but the simple fact is that liberals have no compunction about overruling the will of the people and accomplishing their goals through the courts.  Indeed, they think, and are not shy in saying, that the law and the constitution are "ever-changing".  Friends, that means that the left gets to reinterpret the law and the constitution as they please to suit their agenda.  It also means that when people like Donald Trump win elections, the left will use the courts to prevent them from exercising power.  We saw that just today, with a federal judge's injunction against President Trump's order excluding transgender people from the military.  Now, every American can decide for themselves what they think about the issue on the merits, but shouldn't the elected representatives of the people, and not unelected judges, have the final say?  Well, liberals think not.  My article is about leftist efforts to sue the pants off of energy companies, which they blame for climate change, and don't think that they'll stop there.  Gun manufacturers -- liberals have their eyes on you too.  President Trump can expect to be confronted with a Great Wall of judicial activism and obstruction as long as he's President.  The Supreme Court will have to work overtime to clear away some of this judicial troublemaking.  As conservatives, we'd like to think that winning elections will guarantee us the opportunity to accomplish our policy goals, but with the courts, lawyers, the media, the education system, Hollywood, and corporate America largely arrayed against us, nothing comes easy.  Brace yourselves, therefore, for a long, hard slog!

https://morningconsult.com/opinions/left-wants-lawyers-not-voters-shape-u-s-climate-policy/

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

After ISIS, What Comes Next?



Partly thanks to President Trump's aggressive moves against ISIS, that repulsive force is now in retreat, and as a "state" it is close to collapse.  Now is no time for complacency, however.  Behold, my latest article, which reflects on the latest developments in the Middle East, and on prospects for further progress:

http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/23/after-isis-what-comes-next/

Thursday, October 19, 2017

North Korea: Preparing for the Worst Case Scenario



Friends, the North Korean regime is, as we all know, unpredictable, volatile, and unrelenting hostile to the United States.  It is also armed with nuclear weapons and is working hard to develop the capacity to deliver them to our shores.  Complacency is not an option.  If President Trump decides we need to take out North Korea's nuclear and missile programs with airstrikes, I will support him.  Whatever we do in North Korea, though, we need the capacity to defend ourselves from ICBMs.  That is the subject of my most recent article.  Check it out, and thanks to The Daily Surge for publishing it!

http://dailysurge.com/2017/10/north-koreas-emp-threats-preparing-worst/

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Waddy Returns...Again!



Once again, this week I was interviewed by Brian O'Neil for the Newsmaker program on WLEA in Hornell.  This time we talked about the war against ISIS, gun control, media bias, the NFL anthem controversy, the Vietnam War, and a host of other issues.  No stone was left unturned.  Listen in, and be amazed!!!

http://wlea.net/newsmaker-october-17-2017-professor-nicholas-waddy/

Those Dems Just Don't Know When to Stop



Sometimes the self-delusional heights to which lefties ascend are, well, downright funny.  Some liberals, believe it or not, still haven't given up on the Clinton campaign.  This joker has formulated a way for Hillary Clinton to replace Trump in the White House...  Priceless!  The fact that so many leftists are inclined to believe this nonsense only makes it more uproarious.  Enjoy!

http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-president-lawrence-lessig-post-686077

Saturday, October 14, 2017

President Trump Defends the Flag



President Trump's radio address this week was an eloquent defense of Old Glory.  It seems incongruous that a U.S. President should have to explain why, in America, we ought to respect our own flag, but these are the times we live in...  Fortunately, in the NFL, we seem to be winning the battle.  The real litmus test will come if a Dallas Cowboys player decides to defy Jerry Jones.  Then the rubber will meet the road...  Stay tuned!

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/10/14/trump_weekly_address_respecting_the_flag_of_the_united_states.html

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Trade fairness and...the NFL?



Behold, my latest article, about an issue of trade fairness and the rule of law, combined with a few of my thoughts on the NFL anthem controversy...  Enjoy!

http://dailycaller.com/2017/10/11/amazingly-samsung-and-lg-are-as-bad-as-the-nfl/

Friday, October 6, 2017

Reassessing the Vietnam War



Thanks to Ken Burns, the Vietnam War is once again in the public eye, and I seek to set the record straight in my latest article, coming soon to a newspaper (or a conservative website) near you...  See what you think:


The Vietnam War: A Noble But Ill-Fated Crusade


Given the renewed public interest that Ken Burns' The Vietnam War has generated, now seems like an ideal time to revisit some of the lessons of that conflict. In particular, I wish to dispel two oft-repeated myths: that the U.S. effort in Vietnam was hopelessly morally compromised, and that the U.S. effort was doomed to failure. Neither of these notions, which have become conventional wisdom on the left, stand up to serious scrutiny.

First, with respect to the moral foundations of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, we must begin by acknowledging the context: in the midst of the Cold War, America was committed to a strategy of “containment”. That is, from Truman to Reagan, every U.S. President sought to prevent the spread of communism and Soviet influence by supporting non-communist governments around the world. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy decided that the U.S. needed to take a stand against communist infiltration in South Vietnam, partly because we had recently been embarrassed by the communist takeover in Cuba and the defeat of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion there. U.S. credibility was on the line: having pledged our support to those who were fighting communist subversion, we would have looked impotent and unreliable if we allowed South Vietnam to fall to the communist North.

Lest we forget, communism was a force for evil of unparalleled strength and ruthlessness. Communists held sway over a significant portion of the planet for only about 70 years, but in this time they killed approximately 100 million people. Those who suggest the appeasement of communists, or the abandonment of South Vietnam, must therefore explain where in the world they would have been willing to take a stand against such a formidable enemy – and if the answer is Georgia, or Oregon, or Connecticut, then we must ask: how much greater would the casualties have been in such a war, if the advance of communism had been allowed to proceed unhindered to our very shores? Vietnam was arguably of trivial importance to the United States, yes, but its very triviality made it an ideal location to fight a holding action against the communist menace.

The related argument that the means that the U.S. employed to fight the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army were immoral is equally specious. True, American soldiers sometimes committed war crimes, and Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. bombing raids in the North, but the more salient point is that civilian casualities always represented a failure of U.S. precautions, which were designed to preserve innocent life, whereas for the communist enemy such casualties represented deliberate murder on a lavish scale. The Viet Cong assassinated its political opponents, obliterated thousands of villages, and massacred civilian prisoners, intentionally and repeatedly, in order to terrorize the people of South Vietnam. There is no moral equivalence between the United States of America and the Viet Cong. Anyone who says otherwise has been watching entirely too much network news.

Moreover, whatever moral compromises the U.S. may have made in supporting a flawed regime in South Vietnam, the consequences of abandoning our friends and allies in that country to their fates under a communist dictatorship were infinitely worse. The fall of South Vietnam to the communist North in 1975 led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including “boat people” who died attempting to flee a communist-instigated apocalypse. Make no mistake, therefore – those who advocated a U.S. abandonment of South Vietnam, who consider themselves advocates of “peace and love,” have blood on their hands no less than the soldiers who fought there.

Finally, with respect to the notion that victory was not possible in the Vietnam War, I invite the reader to consider the events of 1972, which prove that victory was not only possible, but easily within our grasp. By 1972, the U.S. policy of “Vietnamization” had dramatically improved the fighting capabilities of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), which permitted a vast reduction in the number of U.S. troops deployed. In late March, the North mounted a massive conventional invasion of the South, hoping to take advantage of the U.S. drawdown. This invasion was defeated, and much of the North Vietnamese Army was shattered, by ARVN counterattacks, supported by U.S. military aid, advisors, and airpower. In November 1972, as if to seal this victory, the American people dealt George McGovern, the avowedly anti-war Democratic candidate for President, a historic thrashing. He won one state to President Nixon's forty-nine. The “Christmas bombings” of December 1972 gave the North Vietnamese the last push they needed to sign the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, ending the war with an American victory, i.e. a successful containment of communism in southeast Asia. All that was required to consolidate this triumph was an ongoing American commitment to support our friends in South Vietnam. It was, therefore, the ultimate abandonment of this sacred duty, instigated by leftist propaganda and communist disinformation, that led finally to North Vietnam's conquest of the South in 1975. Had President Nixon remained in office, and had Congress not underminded U.S. support for South Vietnam, it is my firm belief that that country would never have fallen.

The Vietnam War today serves as a prism through which one can view almost any question of U.S. foreign policy, national security, or even morality and popular culture, and there is still much to be learned by studying the conflict. The lessons, however, are certainly not as simple as the ex-hippies who dominate academia and the mainstream media would have us believe.

“The Vietnam Syndrome,” as President Reagan described it, which has hobbled our country for decades, persists even today. Among its most pernicious effects has been to instill in the American people the false belief that America itself is evil, and any mission we undertake overseas must be rooted in selfishness, greed, ignorance, and racism. The truth about the Vietnam War, however, is that we fought it for a noble cause, and, in the end, sadly, by ceasing to believe in that cause and in ourselves, we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History in the State University of New York and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Waddy Saturates the Airwaves Yet Again



Hi, friends.  I was interviewed by Brian O'Neil at WLEA in Hornell once again for the Newsmaker program, and you can listen to the show here:

http://wlea.net/newsmaker-october-3-2017-professor-nicholas-waddy/

We covered a lot of ground, talking about the shooting in Las Vegas, tax reform, Puerto Rican relief efforts, the failure of Graham-Cassidy, as well as reflecting on the Confederate flag and my travels in Croatia and Bosnia this summer.  I hope you enjoy it!

Sunday, October 1, 2017

For Those Keeping Score...

The collective insanity of NFL players abated somewhat this week...  Bottom line: the vast majority of NFL players agree with President Trump: it's patriotic and respectful to STAND during the national anthem. 

It's telling that we're getting some black power salutes mixed in with the kneeling, by the way.  A race-blind America is not at all what many of these leftists have in mind...

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2017/10/01/nfls-week-4-sees-more-kneeling-during-national-anthem.html