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Oct 26, 2026

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( Editor: Just got kickoff Sustack)

Poltical Observer just offers a selection of Zionist self-exculpation!

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Oct 27, 2026

Four Thoughts About Israel’s Election

Oct. 27, 2026

The first thing to say about Tuesday’s election in Israel is the one that tends to be mentioned the least: The country is having one. Competitive, lawful, on schedule and with a plausible expectation of unseating the powerful incumbent.

That’s more than can be said of the Palestinian Authority under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term of office in 2005 but has bypassed elections ever since. It’s more than can be said for Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, went to war against its domestic political opponents and has ruled through fiat and fear ever since.

It’s also more than can be said for Egypt, whose president came to power in a 2013 coup and won an “election” the next year with nearly 97 percent of the vote; for Turkey, whose president stays in power by jailing popular political rivals and nettlesome independent journalists; for Jordan, a repressive dynastic monarchy; for Lebanon, whose parliamentary government cannot enforce its writ against Hezbollah and its masters in Tehran.

Yes, Israel is a flawed country that’s not above reproach. But it’s difficult to take Israel’s inveterate critics seriously when they demand a “Free Palestine” without registering the slightest audible objection to the tyrannies in Ramallah and Gaza; or when, in the name of freedom and equality, they seek to abolish the Middle East’s only functioning liberal democracy.

…

Finally: What’s at stake in this election isn’t Israel’s “standing.” Of the many intellectually flabby critiques of Israeli policy since Oct. 7, the idea that Israel should have traded its physical security for the sake of some added dollops of liberal pity is among the flabbiest. As I’ve written before, Israel doesn’t exist to showcase Jewish victimization. It exists to end it.

What is at stake is whether a people who have borne the burden of Hamas’s terror and Iran’s missiles and a nonstop state of emergency that would have broken weaker democracies and the unceasing chorus of global condemnation that is one part ignorance, two parts bigotry and three parts self-delusion should have a government worthy of their sacrifice, steadiness and courage. This week, a free and sovereign nation once again has the chance to elect one.

Political Observer.

(Editor: Just kicked-off Substack)

There is nothing quite like Bret Stephens’s Zionist Apologetics?

Poltical Observer just offers a selection of Zionist self-exculpation

Oct 27, 2026

Four Thoughts About Israel’s Election

Oct. 27, 2026

The first thing to say about Tuesday’s election in Israel is the one that tends to be mentioned the least: The country is having one. Competitive, lawful, on schedule and with a plausible expectation of unseating the powerful incumbent.

That’s more than can be said of the Palestinian Authority under the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term of office in 2005 but has bypassed elections ever since. It’s more than can be said for Hamas, which won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, went to war against its domestic political opponents and has ruled through fiat and fear ever since.

It’s also more than can be said for Egypt, whose president came to power in a 2013 coup and won an “election” the next year with nearly 97 percent of the vote; for Turkey, whose president stays in power by jailing popular political rivals and nettlesome independent journalists; for Jordan, a repressive dynastic monarchy; for Lebanon, whose parliamentary government cannot enforce its writ against Hezbollah and its masters in Tehran.

Yes, Israel is a flawed country that’s not above reproach. But it’s difficult to take Israel’s inveterate critics seriously when they demand a “Free Palestine” without registering the slightest audible objection to the tyrannies in Ramallah and Gaza; or when, in the name of freedom and equality, they seek to abolish the Middle East’s only functioning liberal democracy.

…

Finally: What’s at stake in this election isn’t Israel’s “standing.” Of the many intellectually flabby critiques of Israeli policy since Oct. 7, the idea that Israel should have traded its physical security for the sake of some added dollops of liberal pity is among the flabbiest. As I’ve written before, Israel doesn’t exist to showcase Jewish victimization. It exists to end it.

What is at stake is whether a people who have borne the burden of Hamas’s terror and Iran’s missiles and a nonstop state of emergency that would have broken weaker democracies and the unceasing chorus of global condemnation that is one part ignorance, two parts bigotry and three parts self-delusion should have a government worthy of their sacrifice, steadiness and courage. This week, a free and sovereign nation once again has the chance to elect one.

Political Observer.

(Editor: Just kicked off Substack)

Posted on August 15, 2024 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer comments from 2015 & 2024.

Here is a portion of Tett’s essay from January 16, 2015, the whole essay is more than worthy of your attention!

Headline: A debt to history?

Sub-headline: To some, Germany faces a moral duty to help Greece, given the aid that it has previously enjoyed 

…

Last summer I found myself in that spot for a conference, having dinner with a collection of central bank governors. It was a gracious, majestic affair, peppered with high-minded conversation. And as coffee was served, in bone-china crockery (of course), Benjamin Friedman, the esteemed economic historian, stood up to give an after-dinner address.

The mandarins settled comfortably into their chairs, expecting a soothing intellectual discourse on esoteric monetary policy. But Friedman lobbed a grenade.

“We meet at an unsettled time in the economic and political trajectory of many parts of the world, Europe certainly included,” he began in a strikingly flat monotone (I quote from the version of his speech that is now posted online, since I wasn’t allowed to take notes then.) Carefully, he explained that he intended to read his speech from a script, verbatim, to ensure that he got every single word correct. Uneasily, the audience sat up.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/927efd1e-9c32-11e4-b9f8-00144feabdc0

Editor: Let me quote from selected paragraphs of Jillian Tett’s latest essay at The Financial Times of August 8, 2024

Opinion: The QE retreat

Market gyrations reflect fears about the unwinding of QE

The yen carry trade is a symptom not a cause of investor anxiety

https://www.ft.com/content/c6596fdd-d184-4dee-b6ff-f70c7081003a

…

There are two lessons here. The first is that not even ultra-well-paid financiers — be they hedgies, private equity players or bankers — can really forecast the precise moments of market meltdowns. Yes, fundamental strains and cracks can be identified. But judging when these will cause a market earthquake is as hard as real geology; humility is required. And doubly so given that the rise of algorithmic trading is creating dramatically more price volatility and feedback loops.

Second, this week’s market rout was driven not so much by panic around the “real” economy as by financial dynamics. Or, as Bridgewater wrote in a client letter: “We view the widespread deleveraging firmly as a market event and not an economic one,” since “periods of structurally low volatility have always been fertile ground for the accumulation of outsize positioning” — and eventually they unwind.

…

Editor: Tett broaches the telling subject of Quantitative Easing :

Or, to put it another way, these events can be viewed as (yet another) aftershock from the unwinding of that extraordinary monetary policy experiment known as quantitative easing and zero interest rates. For while investors have normalised cheap money in recent years — and to such a degree that they barely notice the distortions this has caused — they are now belatedly realising how odd it was. In that sense, then, the dramas have been thoroughly beneficial — even if electronic trading has made that lesson more dramatic than it might have been.

…

The immediate display of this is the yen carry trade — the practice of borrowing short in cheap yen to buy higher-yielding assets such as US tech stocks. Cheap yen loans have fuelled global finance ever since the Bank of Japan embarked on QE in the late 1990s, albeit to a degree that has fluctuated, depending on US and European rates. But the carry trade appears to have exploded after late 2021, when the US moved away from QE and zero rates. Then, when the BoJ (finally) also started to tighten earlier this year, the rationale waned.

…

Editor : Instead of completely scavenging her insights, let me offer some selective quotations that might better evoke portions of her essay.

…

UBS and JPMorgan also think that about half of these have been unwound.

…

Either way, the key point is that insofar as free(ish) money was fuelling asset inflation in America and Japan, this is coming to an end.

…

Unsurprisingly, this leaves some investors hunting for other long-ignored QE distortions that could also unwind.

…

Unsurprisingly, this leaves some investors hunting for other long-ignored QE distortions that could also unwind.

…

My answer is “not now”. Although these holdings look odd by historical standards, the BoJ insists it will not sell soon. But what is most interesting is that non-Japanese investors are waking up to this issue, after ignoring — that is to say, normalising — it for years.

…

But this confidence — or complacency — has been reinforced by the Federal Reserve acting as a buyer of last resort for bonds during QE.

…

Editor: The final paragraphs:

A cynic might retort that all this mental readjustment may yet turn out to be unnecessary: if markets truly swoon, central banks will be pressured into propping up them up — yet again. Thus on Wednesday, the BoJ deputy governor pledged to “maintain current levels of monetary easing”, contradicting hints from the BoJ governor last week that more rises loom.

But the key point is this: bountiful free money is not a “normal” state of affairs, and the sooner investors realise this the better — whether they are mom’n’pop savers, private equity luminaries, hedge funders or those central bankers.

---

Julian Tett manifests integrity in both these essays!

Political Observer

Francis Fukuyama needs a History Lesson !

Posted on June 10, 2026 by stephenkmacksd

‘The West’s Greatest Innovation—An Independent Judiciary Trump is returning America to the dark days of personalist rule.’ Fukyama erases Shelby County v. Holder & RBG Telling Dissent? stephenkmacksd.com/ Jun 06, 2026 Analysis Chief Justice Roberts’s Vendetta Against the Voting Rights … Continue reading →

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Francis Fukuyama & Yascha Mounk on The World in 2025, billed as ‘a tour d’horizon’!

Posted on December 21, 2024 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer on political chatter as ‘Show Business’! stephenkmacksd.com/

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Francis Fukuyama counsils Elon Musk,in the pages of ‘Persuasion’ .

Posted on November 15, 2024 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer comments. stephenkmacksd.com/ Nov 12, 2024 Editor : The Reader must recall the auspicios debut of Francis Fukuyama? What Is Fukuyama Saying? And to Whom Is He Saying It? By James Atlas Oct. 22, 1989 … In Fukuyama’s interpretation, … Continue reading →

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On the Political Self-rehabilitation of The Neo-Conservatives: Francis Fukuyama on Putin, in The Financial Times

Posted on March 8, 2022 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer comments. I woke up last night, several times, to the sound of thunder overhead and the fact that it was raining in San Diego , after days of near summer temperatures … It is Friday March 4, 2022, … Continue reading →

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Francis Fukuyama on the 25th anniversary of ‘The End of History’, a selective commentary by Almost Marx

Posted on June 10, 2014 by stephenkmacksd

Where else but the Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch publication, would Neo-Conservatism’s reclusive intellectual pontiff, Francis Fukuyama be given space to opine on his own essay of 1989, ‘The End of History’? From a small essay to a intellectually bloated … Continue reading →

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Francis Fukuyama: a Straussian on the Trump victory.

Posted on July 13, 2026 by stephenkmacksd

Almost Marx comments Posted on November 12, 2016 by stephenkmacksd stephenkmacksd.com/ Jul 01, 2026 Beware the Straussians! Intellectual bloat, windy and self-serving re-descriptions of the past, the political present and predictions on our collective, benighted future, by the stern guiding … Continue reading →

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Americas’s most celebrated Political Charlatan Francis Fukuyama: Vin Scully’s could have done better play by play!

Posted on October 16, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

Political Cynic comments on the Fukuyama Clique and it’s diminutive cadre. stephenkmacksd.com/ Oct 07, 2025 Editor: In a bleek 2415 words Fukuyama makes his case for a his newley acquired Liberalism? Ever since the year 2016, when Britain voted for Brexit … Continue reading →

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Reposting: ‘My current Project: Excerpt from a reply to Francis Fukuyama’s essay ‘The Decay of American Political Institutions’ by Political Observer’

Posted on January 21, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

Posted on January 5, 2014 by stephenkmacksd stephenkmacksd.com/ Jan 19, 2025 ‘One of the great turning points in 20th-century American history was the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which overturned on constitutional grounds the 19th-century Plessy v. Ferguson case that … Continue reading →

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Adam Tooze, with help from Hegel & Intellectual Poser Francis Fukuyama, produces a Political/Philosophical History in Aspic, with Putin as his Anti-Hero

Posted on April 18, 2022 by stephenkmacksd

Political Cynic scoffs! The reader, before she attempts to read Mr. Tooze’s 3,415 word essay, might profit from reading Molly Fischer’s essay at New York Magazine. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/adam-tooze-profile.html Ms. Fischer’s essay at 5,224 words wallows in Fan Magazine gush, that informs the … Continue reading →

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Francis Fukuyama: a Straussian on the Trump victory, Almost Marx comments

Posted on September 3, 2018 by stephenkmacksd

Originally posted on StephenKMackSD’s Blog:
Beware the Straussians! Intellectual bloat, windy and self-serving re-descriptions of the past, the political  present and predictions on our collective, benighted future, by the stern guiding hand of the self-appointed Philosopher King! One need…

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Posted on December 12, 2017 by stephenkmacksd

Headline: The case for European conservatism above grand designs

Sub-headline: We should work at preserving what we have, rather than dreaming up new projects

Would that Mr. Garton Ash had followed his request for silence on the part of EU partisans. Mr. Garton Ash offers this evaluation of the Macron and his Jupertarian Politics, or just call it rule by decree.  Neo-Liberal Reform of France in the throws of a benighted ‘Socialism’ will only be accomplished by a leader elected with 37% of the eligible voters either abstaining or rendering their ballots null.

In his book-length personal manifesto, tellingly entitled Révolution, French president Emmanuel Macron envisages a great round of democratic consultations across the EU throughout next year, culminating in a single “Plan For Europe”.

Next for the reader to consider is the notion of ‘poly-crisis’ as the what ales the EU:

Politicians and authors are right to diagnose a deep “poly-crisis” of the European project. But when you look at their reform proposals, you find that these envisage piecemeal responses to the problems of the eurozone, the Schengen area, the democratic deficit, social protection, and so on. Once these competing proposals have been through the sausage factory of EU decision-making, the resulting actions will be even more complex and pragmatic.

Mr. Garton Ash fails to consider the wisdom of one of Europe’s most eminent historians:

J.G.A. Pocock

Profoundly anti-democratic and anti-constitutional, the EU obliges you to leave by the only act it recognises: the referendum, which can be ignored as a snap decision you didn’t really mean. If you are to go ahead, it must be by your own constitutional machinery: crown, parliament and people; election, debate and statute. This will take time and deliberation, which is the way decisions of any magnitude should be taken.

The Scots will come along, or not, deciding to live in their own history, which is not what the global market wants us to do. Avoid further referendums and act for yourselves as you know how to act and be.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n14/on-brexit/where-are-we-now

The ‘poly-crisis’ of the EU is that it is not an actual  Federation, but a Cartel with the window dressing of free democratic association. In sum, Neo-Liberalism before the fact: the brainchild of Technocrat Supreme Jean Monnet as the in-order-to of selling coal and steel. And as a capitalist bulwark against the Soviet Union. Russian revanchism simply replaces the Soviet menace, in the political present.

Even the mention of Edmund Burke revisiting his native Dublin in the present, and calling the EU ’eminently Burkean union’ identifies- recall that the free spending Burke, received a 30 thousand pound bail out from the Crown, and then voted against the Poor Law.

Many Europeans already have a somewhat conservative attitude to this eminently Burkean union. They want to defend it against the current wave of populist nationalist attacks. They want to look after the family home, mend the eurozone plumbing and erect a better Schengen garden fence, but they don’t want to redesign the whole house. And in these dark times, simply to maintain what has been built since 1945 would already be a great achievement.

Need the reader wonder at Mr. Garton Ash’s declaration of faith in the EU, while ignoring the nearly non-existent foundation for ‘the whole house’ ,courtesy of Jean Monnet and his successors? The ‘what we have’ : a cartel that is not about Federalism nor Democracy , it is about the sale of products, at the highest price: whatever the traffic will bear! Not to forget the dread Populist Menace, that is the bête noire of the respectable bourgeois political apologist, for the abject failure of The Elites. Who placed their wager on the Neo-Liberal swindle and its successor Austerity, that has been catastrophic.   

Not to forget the EU and NATO’s murderous political adventurism in Ukraine, and the troops and weapons dispatched to Poland’s border with Russia. The New Cold War is the product of the collaboration between America and the EU, and the Hoover Institution is one of the many Think Tank advocates, that churn out usable, but not very sophisticated propaganda.

Committed Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/7509d91c-db76-11e7-9504-59efdb70e12f

Posted on August 31, 2023 by stephenkmacksd

Political Cynic breathes deep, and chokes, on the incense burnt in the names of misbegotten expertise.

Mr. Bret Stephens is a political opportunist, always looking to guild his commentaries with some high sounding, and not the least pretentious opening paragraph.

Several years ago, the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison coined the term “Thucydides’ trap.” It was based on the ancient historian’s observation that the real cause of the Peloponnesian War “was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta.” Allison saw the pattern of tensions — and frequent wars — between rising and ruling powers repeating itself throughout history, most recently, he believes, with the challenge that a rising China poses to American hegemony.

This offers some insights into Graham Allison:

Graham Allison is a professor of government at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was the founding dean. He is a former U.S. assistant defense secretary and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

https://foreignpolicy.com/author/graham-allison

Graham Allison was a an integral part of The American National State, who wooed the cadre of American Political Hicks, with an evocative catch phrase.

On the actual ‘American Foreign Policy And It’s Thinkers’ Read Perry Anderson’s:

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii83/articles/perry-anderson-consilium

This paragraph acts as framing:

It’s an intriguing thesis, but in China’s case it has a glaring flaw: The main challenge we will face from the People’s Republic in the coming decade stems not from its rise but from its decline — something that has been obvious for years and has become undeniable in the past year with the country’s real estate market crash.

Stephens becomes prescriptive:

Western policymakers need to reorient their thinking around this fact. How? With five don’ts and two dos.

The Reader might observe that Allison has had actual experience as ‘ a former U.S. assistant defense secretary’, that Stephens can’t even match, nor I! Yet Stephens continues to scribble away ‘as if’ …

First, don’t think of China’s misfortunes as our good fortune.

Second, don’t assume the crisis will be short-lived.

Third, don’t assume competent economic management.

Fourth, don’t take domestic tranquillity as a given.

Fifth, don’t suppose that a declining power is a less dangerous one.

Sixth, do stick to four red lines.

Seventh, do pursue a policy of détente.

The final paragraphs:

We should not seek a new cold war with China. We cannot afford a hot one. The best response to China’s economic woes is American economic magnanimity. That could start with the removal of the Trump administration tariffs that have done as much to hurt American companies and consumers as they have the Chinese.

Whether that will change the fundamental pattern of Beijing’s bad behavior is far from certain. But as China slides toward crisis, it behooves us to try.

The New Cold War with China is of long standing, to act as if this is not a political fact, is self-serving myopia- yet for a Neo-Conservative ghoul, to play the part of The Voice Of Political Reason, is not just unconvincing, but disingenuous. The reader might ask, what expertise dose Stephens offer his readership on China, besides his list? The other Times Neo-Conservative, @nytdavidbrooks, could have written a better exercise in a proffered, for want of better descriptors, Political Realism, Political Pragmatism ?

Political Cynic

617to416

Ontario via Massachusetts · Aug. 26

I’m sorry, but Mark Carney is a lot smarter than Bret Stephens—and Carney knows that Trump’s “idiotic outbursts” are not mere bluster as Bret Stephens seems to think, but backed by extremely harmful tariffs which may cost tens of thousands of Canadians their jobs, weaken our economy significantly, exacerbate domestic tensions between provinces, and cost Canadian taxpayers billions in money needed to prop up companies and individuals who are suffering from the economic war Trump launched against us.

We also understand something neither Bret or most Americans seem to have learned, despite being presented daily with overwhelming evidence: your system of government is completely broken. It’s not just Trump, it’s your Congress, your Supreme Court, your system of elections, and your constitution. We also see that whatever Trump does, there is no effective resistance from the American people—and America’s institutions, from corporations, to universities, to law firms, to the media—mostly defer to his authoritarian demands to protect their assets, which they hold more dear than their democracy.

China has not shown such malice toward us as has the United States—and yes, it is the United States, not just Trump, because the nation as a whole is responsible for the actions the nation takes.

So Bret, before you call our policies “immoral, unwise and unsound” think a bit harder about your own government’s actions against us. If you try hard, maybe you’ll catch up to Carney.

1497Recommend

Why Critics Call Him a Hysteric

• Blunt Anti-Kremlin Warnings: He warns aggressively about Russia, such as stating Poland would shoot down Russian airspace trespassers [AI Overview].
• Historical Analogies: In 2006, he compared the Nord Stream gas pipeline to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [AI Overview].
• Intelligence Disclosures: He frequently shares warnings about potential Russian false flag operations or provocations aimed at testing NATO [AI Overview]. [1]

The Context and Defense

• Proved Right by Events: Eastern European leaders argue their historical warnings about Vladimir Putin’s revisionism were dismissed until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine validated them [AI Overview].
• The “Crying Bear” Philosophy: Sikorski states that bordering nations cannot afford diplomatic politeness when a real security threat is at their door [AI Overview]. While noting Russia lacks the immediate strength for a direct full-scale invasion of Poland, he stresses that robust defense preparations and vigilance remain vital. [1]

• Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)Polish Foreign Minister Warns of Chaotic and Conflict-Driven …Jun 18, 2026 — Radek Sikorski, Poland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister tells RUSI audience ‘this is not the world Western…
• Facebook·CBS NewsPoland’s deputy PM doesn’t believe Russia will attack his countryJun 25, 2026 — Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Radosław “Radek” Sikorski told CBS News’ Aidan Stretch he doesn’t believe Russia would have the str…44s
• ABC7 Los AngelesDeputy prime minister on Poland’s defense: ‘We are … – ABC7Jul 14, 2026 — Deputy Prime Minister Radosław Sikorski on Poland’s defense strategy: ‘We are determined not to become a Russian colony ever’ – AB…

Show all

No results found for AI Overview Radosław “Radek” Sikorski, Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister, is often labeled a “political hysteric” or “warmonger” by Russian state officials, political adversaries, and some Western critics due to his blunt rhetoric and aggressive warnings about Russian imperial ambitions.However, within Poland and across Central and Eastern Europe, his defenders view his outspoken approach as a necessary and realistic “rallying cry” rather than hysteria.Why Critics Call Him a “Hysteric”Blunt Anti-Kremlin Warnings: Sikorski frequently issues intense public warnings regarding the Kremlin. For example, he stated that Poland would shoot down any Russian aircraft or missile crossing into its airspace, telling Moscow at a UN Security Council meeting, “please don’t come here to whine about it.” Russian diplomats responded by dismissing the meeting as an extension of Western “hysteria.”Early Combative Statements: His reputation for provocative rhetoric dates back years. In 2006, as Defense Minister, he famously compared a direct Russia-Germany gas pipeline (Nord Stream) to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an analogy that a pro-Kremlin analyst at the time explicitly slammed as “hysterical.”Public Intel Disclosures: Sikorski regularly goes public with intelligence warnings. He explicitly stated that Russia is actively planning cyberattacks and “false flag operations” on its own territory to fabricate a pretext to strike a NATO state.The Context and Defense of His RhetoricA History of Being Proved Right: Sikorski and other Eastern European leaders spent decades warning the West about Vladimir Putin’s revisionism. During those years, they were routinely dismissed by Western European nations as “Russophobic warmongers.” The full-scale invasion of Ukraine fundamentally shifted mainstream European perspective closer to Sikorski’s worldview.The “Crying Bear” Philosophy: Addressing his critics directly, Sikorski argued that overstating a non-existent threat is foolish, but “crying bear when the beast is already at the door… is a rallying cry.” He emphasizes that countries like Poland, which share a physical border with the conflict, cannot afford the luxury of diplomatic politeness.Selective Use of the Word “Hysteria”: Interestingly, Sikorski uses the accusation of hysteria himself against his domestic opponents. He has publicly condemned far-right Polish factions, stating that domestic “anti-immigrant hysteria harms Poland” and wakes up dangerous political demons.WikipediaRadosław Sikorski – WikipediaRadosław Tomasz “Radek” Sikorski (born 23 February 1963) is a Polish politician, journalist and statesman who is the longest-servi…EuronewsPolish FM Sikorski: Anti-immigrant hysteria harms PolandJul 13, 2025 — “Anti-immigrant hysteria harms Poland, it awakens the worst demons, and Holocaust denial excludes us from civilised nations”, – Si…Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)Polish Foreign Minister Warns of Chaotic and Conflict-Driven WorldJun 18, 2026 — It is also not the world central Europeans expected to join after 1989. ‘ In a speech that followed the recent signing of the Nort…Show all.

Results for AI Overview Radosław Radek Sikorski, Poland s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister, is often labeled a political hysteric or warmonger by Russian state officials, political adversaries, and some Western critics due to his blunt rhetoric and aggressive warnings about Russian imperial ambitions.However, within Poland and across Central and Eastern Europe, his defenders view his outspoken approach as a necessary and realistic rallying cry rather than hysteria.Why Critics Call Him a Hysteric Blunt Anti-Kremlin Warnings: Sikorski frequently issues intense public warnings regarding the Kremlin. For example, he stated that Poland would shoot down any Russian aircraft or missile crossing into its airspace, telling Moscow at a UN Security Council meeting, please don t come here to whine about it. Russian diplomats responded by dismissing the meeting as an extension of Western hysteria. Early Combative Statements: His reputation for provocative rhetoric dates back years. In 2006, as Defense Minister, he famously compared a direct Russia-Germany gas pipeline (Nord Stream) to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an analogy that a pro-Kremlin analyst at the time explicitly slammed as hysterical. Public Intel Disclosures: Sikorski regularly goes public with intelligence warnings. He explicitly stated that Russia is actively planning cyberattacks and false flag operations on its own territory to fabricate a pretext to strike a NATO state.The Context and Defense of His RhetoricA History of Being Proved Right: Sikorski and other Eastern European leaders spent decades warning the West about Vladimir Putin s revisionism. During those years, they were routinely dismissed by Western European nations as Russophobic warmongers. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine fundamentally shifted mainstream European perspective closer to Sikorski s worldview.The Crying Bear Philosophy: Addressing his critics directly, Sikorski argued that overstating a non-existent threat is foolish, but crying bear when the beast is already at the door… is a rallying cry. He emphasizes that countries like Poland, which share a physical border with the conflict, cannot afford the luxury of diplomatic politeness.Selective Use of the Word Hysteria : Interestingly, Sikorski uses the accusation of hysteria himself against his domestic opponents. He has publicly condemned far-right Polish factions, stating that domestic anti-immigrant hysteria harms Poland and wakes up dangerous political demons.WikipediaRadosław Sikorski – WikipediaRadosław Tomasz Radek Sikorski (born 23 February 1963) is a Polish politician, journalist and statesman who is the longest-servi…EuronewsPolish FM Sikorski: Anti-immigrant hysteria harms PolandJul 13, 2025 — Anti-immigrant hysteria harms Poland, it awakens the worst demons, and Holocaust denial excludes us from civilised nations , – Si…Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)Polish Foreign Minister Warns of Chaotic and Conflict-Driven WorldJun 18, 2026 — It is also not the world central Europeans expected to join after 1989. In a speech that followed the recent signing of the Nort…Show all (without quotes):

Posted on January 18, 2026 by stephenkmacksd

Queer Atheist offers Karl Barth and Hans Kung to the reader as revelatory of what possbility might be?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jan 18, 2026

Opinion

The ‘Safe, Legal, Rare’ Illusion

By Ross Douthat

Feb. 18, 2012

And both Democrats and Republicans generally agree that the country would be better off with fewer pregnant teenagers, fewer unwanted children, fewer absent fathers, fewer out-of-wedlock births.

Where cultural liberals and social conservatives differ is on the means that will achieve these ends. The liberal vision tends to emphasize access to contraception as the surest path to stable families, wanted children and low abortion rates. The more direct control that women have over when and whether sex makes babies, liberals argue, the less likely they’ll be to get pregnant at the wrong time and with the wrong partner — and the less likely they’ll be to even consider having an abortion. (Slate’s Will Saletan has memorably termed this “the pro-life case for Planned Parenthood.”)

The conservative narrative, by contrast, argues that it’s more important to promote chastity, monogamy and fidelity than to worry about whether there’s a prophylactic in every bedroom drawer or bathroom cabinet. To the extent that contraceptive use has a significant role in the conservative vision (and obviously there’s some Catholic-Protestant disagreement), it’s in the context of already stable, already committed relationships. Monogamy, not chemicals or latex, is the main line of defense against unwanted pregnancies.

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Opinion

More Babies, Please

By Ross Douthat

Dec. 1, 2012

…

Government’s power over fertility rates is limited, but not nonexistent. America has no real family policy to speak of at the moment, and the evidence from countries like Sweden and France suggests that reducing the ever-rising cost of having kids can help fertility rates rebound. Whether this means a more family-friendly tax code, a push for more flexible work hours, or an effort to reduce the cost of college, there’s clearly room for creative policy to make some difference.

More broadly, a more secure economic foundation beneath working-class Americans would presumably help promote childbearing as well. Stable families are crucial to prosperity and mobility, but the reverse is also true, and policies that made it easier to climb the economic ladder would make it easier to raise a family as well.

Editor: Note the primary problem as presented by Douthat is couched in the long dead Ultramontane Chatter of another time and place, and held aloft by decadence? Do Karl Barth and Hans Kung of November 3, 2004 offer the reader what is utterly absent from Douthat’s New York Times chatter?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/abs/justification-barth-trent-and-kung/DC302C1F5D33297E6925A321DFB400CE

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Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

Such decadence need not be permanent, but neither can it be undone by political willpower alone. It can only be reversed by the slow accumulation of individual choices, which is how all social and cultural recoveries are ultimately made.

Queer Atheist.

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