Friends, today I bring you a special Christmas treat: a WaddyIsRight Newsmaker interview and a shiny new article, all rolled into one.
My latest Newsmaker interview with Brian O'Neil covers many key developments, including: the Oval Office clash between President Trump, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer; the ongoing "Yellow Jacket" protests in France; President Trump's poll numbers; the Left's politics of vendetta; the potential presidential candidacy of Beto O'Rourke; the question of "hush money" paid to Stormy Daniels as an "impeachable offense"; climate change; the perils of legislating in the current political environment; President Trump's chief of staff dilemma; the policy of "Vietnamization"; and the historical legacy of the abdication of Britain's King Edward VIII.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTIFOzkAzdY&feature=youtu.be
Please also check out my latest article, which is an impassioned plea for President Trump to risk a government shutdown in order to force Democrats to fund his proposed border wall. Now is the time to BUILD THAT WALL!!! No more procrastinating.
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2018/12/12/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-a-government-shutdown-n2537403
Dr. Waddy: So much upon which to comment: Your observation that most Dems have not accepted the results of the 2016 election is spot on. "Heads we win, tails you lose". Its yet another proof of their essential antiAmerican totalitarianism. You made perceptive reference to their obvious expectation of his early political demise and your expression of the reality that polls show that the base which elevated Trump in 2016 is not moved from him by recent developments strongly supports your conclusion that he remains strong.
ReplyDeleteLimnbaugh's caution to "outsiders" to (as I saw it) beware the wrath of those who have striven for 50 years to penetrate to the soul of power, is being borne out in President Trump's heroically endured ordeal.
Very much like your comment that the left sees the purpose of"the law"as the support of their beliefs and the destruction of all dissent. Their fifty year continuing record supports your view.
In considering the left's convenient and tortured interpretation of the Stormy Daniels payments as election law violations I am reminded of that faction's obsequious support of William and Hillary Clinton's efforts to cover their misdeeds and the absence of the same from election law enforcement records. More later.
Dr. Waddy: I agree that the earth is probably going through some kind of very possibly periodic climate change but am not at all convinced that it is human generated or that it is not being caused by something other than carbon dioxide or even that carbon dioxide at the levels which obtain now is a significant pollutant. The much compromised American and European academy and MSM are much to be doubted in their self defined "consensi".
ReplyDeleteI'm agree with what I think you say to Tucker Carlson: that the failures he attributes to the President are part of the President's OJT. Heck, Peyton Manning was 3 - 13 as a rookie but everyone could see how good he was.
Your thought about how history could well have been different had Edward VIII stayed on the throne was sobering. I wonder if, in May of 1940, he would have sent for Lord Halifax instead of Churchill. Halifax would probably have made a deal with Hitler not for any regard for the Nazis but because he believed Britain was finished. Perhaps Parliament, anticipating the King, would have nominated Lord Halifax or perhaps the King would have rejected their choice of Churchill, perhaps even causing Churchill to take the King in hand(?). Churchill was capable of taking terribly hard decisions (eg. attacking the French fleet).
General Patton was supposed to have said "I'd rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind". I agree with you that the record of French arms, especially in WWI, does not warrant such disdain. They were bested by the clearly more able German army three times in 100 years but many countries had similar experiences. Les Boches mauled Russian, American and British forces too.
But I see French Generals are mad at Macron now; which Republic are they in, the 4th? Anyway another may be at hand. The French have made a habit of precipitous leaps into revolution followed by feckless administration and consequent reaction (eg. of course, 1789 followed by Bonaparte). Populist disgust with the dreamy left in Europe may be given an example by the possible deposing of a presumptuously idealistic regime in France.
On Vietnamization: The form of it was accomplished but I remember thinking in '73 that the Reds would be back. At some level the South was unwilling to defend itself. Perhaps they were simply fed up with fighting. Communist forces had no choice but to do as they were told.
Yes, Jack, it is hard to see the (daily escalating) assault on the Trump presidency as anything other than a naked power-grab on the part of the Left, that dearly wants to undo the results of the 2016 election. I suppose it may not have occurred to them that the result would be President Pence (who I believe would be a strong candidate in 2020). By and large, I would say the Left practices the politics of personal (and political/criminal/legal/financial) destruction as a reflex. They may be incapable of putting away their knives, even out of self-interest. Nonetheless, it depresses me that the American people do not seem to see these endless attacks on the President for what they are. Mueller's approval rating, for instance, remains high. Why on earth would that be? The MSM comes to mind...
ReplyDeleteA Halifax premiership in 1940 was certainly a good possibility. Based on what I've read, Halifax may have taken himself out of the running. But you're right -- Edward VIII would have been very likely to take a pass on Churchill. What would peace between Britain and Germany signify in the long term? Perhaps a Cold War between fascism and democracy, instead of communism and democracy? Who can say.
You think Macron could be deposed? That would be a huge shock. If so, I would expect it to come by superficially legal means, not a coup d'etat. Certainly the European establishment is on shaky ground. Can you imagine what will happen if Britain makes a clean break with the EU...and prospers??? The establishment's world will start to come apart.
Vietnamization wasn't perfect, true, but the South WAS capable of defending itself with minimal US help. It's the same with Iraq and Afghanistan today. Those regimes would probably crumble without US support, but isn't it worth a few billion dollars and a few hundred US advisors (and maybe some airstrikes) to keep friendly governments in place in critical regions? I say yes. Vietnamization provided a path to victory. We chose not to go down it.
Dr. Waddy: I didn't know that Halifax had taken himself out of consideration; I thought Churchill defeated him in Parliament. I believe that shortly after he became PM, Churchill faced a cabinet vote of no confidence and I'm not sure whether British tradition would have required that he resign had he lost. It was a very unusual, perhaps unprecedented Cabinet; Churchill's war Cabinet. Halifax might have ascended then. That was when Churchill made his stirring and perhaps decisive "if our island story is to end . . ." declaration and survived in office, thank God. What a time! I have to see the movie by and by. I'll be revisiting his haunts next month.
ReplyDeleteI'm no expert on these things, Jack, but according to Wikipedia my version (and that of the movie, by the way) is more or less correct. Halifax took himself out of contention. According to Wikipedia, the King preferred Halifax, so in that sense the abdication of Edward VIII may not have been decisive. Perhaps what was decisive to...the fate of the world was Lord Halifax's low self-esteem! Why not? I've always believed that God has a remarkable sense of humor...
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Lord Halifax was decent and patriotic but he was convinced that British leaders had to negotiate the best they could get from triumphant Germany. It may well be that he concluded that his view might not be as well founded as was Winston's. George VI's preference for Halifax puts Churchill's fortuitous ascendency into an even more miraculous light. British democracy prevailed even in that fundamentally and existentially threatening time and to its everlasting credit. Lord Halifax's apparently self effacing loyalty may have played a decisive part in the world saving British resistance to unparalleled and naked terror.
ReplyDeleteHmm. That's one way to look at it, certainly. One could also view Churchill's premiership (combined with FDR's presidency) as the greatest gifts Uncle Joe Stalin could have wished for... Personally, I think the West would have been better off playing the fascists and communists against each other. As you know, I view Churchill as overrated.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I think I perceive and know I respect your views. I think Churchill harbored a hate of Communism, formed in the 20's and 30's and informed by his encyclopedic grasp of history. But I think he swallowed that fear in the face of the existential threat he clearly saw opposed to western classical
ReplyDeleteliberalism from Nazism. His liberation from that concern, and his redirected concern for analgous Soviet expansionist conquest, unrequited in the West, was manifested in his definitive "Iron Curtain" speech.
True, Jack -- Churchill had no delusions about Marxism, or about Stalin. In fact, if his "soft underbelly" approach to the war had been adopted, perhaps Nazism AND communism would have been beaten in one fell swoop. At least Eastern Europe wouldn't have borne Stalin's yoke. My guess, though, is that either fascism or communism was going to survive the war, in some form. We picked communism. You know the score of mass murders in the 20th century better than anyone. Did we bet on the wrong horse? It's all academic at this point...
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Its fascinating to consider that and it may come down to how long a triumphant Hitler might have lived. His setbacks from Stalingrad on may well have destroyed his always tenuous health. But had Russia have collapsed . . . ? Goring would have been an equally ambitious but not quite as sly or driven successor(he was a confirmed voluptuary). Reinhard Heydrich, had he not been "assassinated" in 1942, might well have been a Putin like ruthless and opportunist successor.
ReplyDeleteLet's assume: Britain falls, with Churchill dead in the ruins of Westminster Hall, European Russia becomes a German state, Germany remains led by able monsters and America fights a long and demanding war with Japan. Nazi Europe and America then face off. The Nazi's,buoyed by their consistently rewarded adventurism and their technological brilliance(they now have nuclear weapons and ICBMs)are driven by past successes to use them. They believe they can dominate the world. Why would they want to? The thrill of power and the promise of national wealth beyond belief might explain it. Can the New World stop them?
We defeated world communism, which promised inhumanity on a scale inconceivable even with the Holocaust as proof of the appalling possibilities enabled by modern technology and the rogue philosophies perversely and unintentionally engendered by the European Enlightenment. Could we have defeated a Nazi onslaught in the 1950's? Germany was a harrowingly able, rugged and threatening opponent after its unification, a reality to which slaughtered millions can attest.
Fascinating ruminations, Jack. If you enjoy "what if" scenarios, I recommend the tv show "The Man in the High Castle." It's set in an early 60s America ruled by Germany and Japan.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the picture you paint above is plausible, but I'm not convinced that Germany was capable of defeating and occupying Britain, either in 1940 or at any point in the 1940s. Defeating Russia was certainly in the cards. After that, could Germany have been the first to obtain nuclear weapons? Maybe. Would it have used them extensively on Britain or the USA? Possibly. Would Germany instead have used its vast resources to construct a navy capable of global domination, or an air force capable of bombing Britain and the US to rubble? Could be.
As you say, much depends on how long Hitler lived. My best guess is that a more or less satisfied Third Reich would have settled for a long Cold War with the US and Britain, but who knows...
Dr. Waddy: When the American fleet arrived in Britain in WWI, thereby guaranteeing that Germany's surface battle fleet could never prevail, First Sea Lord Adm. Jellicoe apparently told American Admiral Sims that Britain was within six weeks of starvation due to the Uboat onslaught on transatlantic convoys. WWI subs were crates. Churchill said that the much improved WWII Uboat threat was the one thing that truly terrified him; he had good reason - they almost closed the Atlantic in 1941. In WWI the Germans did not realize the puissance of their new weapon. By 1940 Hitler's lack of appreciation of naval power limited Uboat production. All the resources put into Bismarck and Tirpitz (good ships, yes, but both the Brits and America had more and better) if directed to cheap Uboat construction,might well have sealed the deal. I would guess a triumphant Germany, having strangled Britain, would have built veritable schools of ever more advanced subs (my father was almost extinguished by one) to isolate North America and sink its navies (a sub can sink anything afloat) and would (with Werner Von Braun at the helm) have skipped the strategic bomber phase and gone right to flocks of nuclear ICBMs. The Brazilian missile crisis of 1959, simply a ploy to probe American capabilities and intentions, instead of enabling the launch of say, some 20 Soviet monstrosities, might well have generated a gaggle of Heydrich's nuclear enforcers. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think your prediction to be better supported.
Interesting, Jack. I too have read that Germany's U-boat offensive in 1941-42 was too little, too late. Once again Germany blew a big opportunity. As I say to my students, timing is everything, especially in war. If the Germans had fought with the same urgency in 1941 or 1942 that they showed in 1944, they undoubtedly would have won the war.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Surely the desperate straits the Germans were in by 1944 motivated in them frantic effort. But I've always thought that their self defeating overreach was largely caused by Hitler's overconfidence, brought on by his early successes. I think he had an instinct for seizing on the main chance (eg.his political triumphs and the 1940 attack through the Ardennes)which made him believe that his considerable will power , commanding undoubted German might, was a more reliable guide to victory. Had he died in July,1939 the high German Officer corps' views might have predominated and by about 1945, Germany might have been able to seal the deal(had the present leader resolved on conquest). But I think the Germans fought early in the war with an aggressiveness engendered mostly by Hitler's gangsterish badgering .
ReplyDeleteA wise analysis, Jack. Hitler more or less prodded his generals to victory in 1939-40, and thereafter he prodded them to defeat. I still say Germany could have made all the same strategic decisions and would have won the war regardless, IF they had fought a total war at any earlier stage. That too was Hitler's doing, though. He didn't want to overtax the German people. Hindsight is 20-20.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I also think Hitler's apparent admiration for Britain and its empire and his expectation that it would come to see Nazi Germany as a kindred soul, at least at first, restrained his decisive command style. By the time he realized Britain loathed him, Churchill had rallied the Brits from despair to successful resistance. Its possible, I think, that the proletarian Hitler was simply ignorant of the cultural indoctrination and its essential noblesse oblige, that was the lot of the youthful British
ReplyDeletearistocracy. He thought he had suppressed that outlook in his country but he could not do so in Great Britain and one of its exemplars bested him in will power, devotion and confidence. In the end, Hitler proved but a Private 1st Class (not a Corporal)embodying the disqualifications for command common to his class in European settings.
Dr. Waddy: Also, that's a fascinating view on Hitler's use of the German people. I always thought he had driven them mercilessly at all times (and then had the gall in his "will" to say they had let him down). The fact of the Phony War certainly does support your view.
ReplyDeleteJack, I think there's no doubt that the Germans, especially the Nazis, fundamentally misunderstood the British mindset. The Blitz is proof of that, as is Hess's fool's errand. The prospects for a fruitful alliance between Germany and Britain existed for most of the modern age, but the Germans blew it big time.
ReplyDeleteI think if you look into the economics of WWII, you'll see that the Germans didn't by any means fight a total war before 1943. Hitler was very sensitive to public opinion, and very afraid of a repeat of the "stab in the back" phenomenon from the First World War. Thus, the Germans continued churning our many consumer goods, hesitated to put women to work, and didn't exploit industries and workers in captive lands nearly as much as they should have, had they understood the existential threat they were under. In my experience, it's a very human trait not to see disaster coming...until it's too late.
Dr. Waddy: Wow, that's a view I've never seen expressed before and with such credibility. I thought Germany went to "general quarters" on 9/1/39 ( apparently Hitler donned the field gray of the German Army that day and never relinquished it). I do know there was widespread doubt and hope for quick resolution, unlike the hellish quagmire of 1914-1918, in the German population in 1939. How prescient they were.
ReplyDeleteBut that Hitler and his avatars misunderstood Britain I certainly believe. They apparently could not comprehend the tortured but, in retrospect, constant, progress, tempered by human nature, reflected in the history of the "Sceptered Isle".
I read a book on the German national psyche which maintained that after the appalling inhumanity of the 30 Year's War, Germans resolved to advance order beyond any other consideration. And though Luther exercised a physically courageous and obvious monumental influence, his appalling malevolence toward Jews and, by implication, other proscribed populations, may have warped German perceptions of justice(?).
Jack, that's certainly possible. Few national psyches are as bruised as Germany's! It's hard to generalize, though, because every German generation has processed the lessons of the war differently. You can see Merkel's embrace of the Syrian refugees, and Germany's eventual closure of the gates to those same refugees, as an interesting study in the nation's guilt complex...
ReplyDeleteFor a good overview of Germany's late adoption of a "total war" economy, check this out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany#Wartime_policies:_1939%E2%80%931945
If opening the link proves too much of an ordeal, just go to Wikipedia and look up "Economy of Nazi Germany".