One of the worst humans to grace the planet in the past half-century, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, has died.  I'm not qualified to parse the man's "career" or full impact on geo-political matters since taking power in the early 1990's, but what I do know about Jong-Il and his Communist Party's ideology can be nicely summed up in one photo:

This is the satellite photo that the US State Department uses in all of its briefings of North Korea .  The lighted area closer to the bottom of the picture is South Korea.  The almost entirely black region just above that is North Korea.

In the Marxist utopia of North Korea, one originally propped up by the USSR and Mao's China, there is no industry, no innovation, starving people, and Orwellian top-down control of every aspect of society.  It is a country that threatens its southern neighbor with military retaliation...for putting Christmas lights up too close to their mutual border.  (This is a real story, which you can read here.)

In the free South, Koreans are growing, thriving, investing, inventing and, oh, I don't know...eating!  One half of the Korean peninsula has electricity, one does not.  One half is free to worship God the way they see fit, and one is not.  One half is insanely aggressive with its neighbors and lords its rogue nuclear program over the heads of the entire hemisphere, and one is a nation that just wants to provide its people with security to live their lives as they see fit.

Kim Jong-Il didn't introduce Communism to the world, or even to his country, and I'm sure many far-Left proponents would argue, "He doesn't represent us.  Our collectivist ideology will work if given the proper try."  Perhaps there is some truth to that, but generally speaking, what I believe is this: the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.  Dennis Prager has articulated this premise well in a YouTube video:

State-controlled economies and societies are not simply bad ideas - I believe they are moral evils.  Conversely, limited government and personal liberty (expressed in a combination of personal responsibility and voluntary civic duty) are moral goods.

The death of Kim Jong will make little difference if his heir employs the same wicked ideology and tactics.  Still, I'm glad he's gone.

Professors Victor Davis Hanson and Peter Berkowitz, both fellows at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University, were interviewed recently on the web-cast show Uncommon Knowledge.  I often post UK video here on my site because of the tremendously insightful and important work they produce.  This interview is no exception.  Below is Part 1:

From Goldberg at National Review Online:

As someone on the interventionist side of things here at NRO (I’d use “hawkish” but I don’t think that word really makes sense in this context), I’d like to offer a little push-back on one of the main anti-intervention talking points.

Yes, Obama is being inconsistent, hypocritical, or misguided in one way or another. Not to mention Joe Biden! But I fail to see why Obama’s hypocrisy should be a huge concern to conservatives. If he’s flipping to the right policy, who cares what his old view was? And if he’s flopping to the wrong policy, it’s not the flop that should concern us, but the wrongness of the policy itself.

Anyway, the argument that we shouldn’t be intervening in Libya because we’re not intervening elsewhere is a pretty weak claim, by my lights. As I said in my column, the way Obama has gone about this requires him to make an argument about why Libya is different from, say, Bahrain based on some objective standard. That’s his mistake.

But the simple fact is that foreign policy is never a fertile ground for perfect consistency. You do what you can, where you can, when you can. If we could topple the Iranian or North Korean regimes at no cost in lives or treasure whatsoever, I’d argue for doing that tomorrow. But we can’t. This is a game opponents of any intervention always play, “What makes X so different than Y?” The easiest answer is that we have a ripe opportunity in X and not in Y (as I’ve written, I think the opportunity in Libya probably lost its ripeness a while ago).

Now, there are many good substantive arguments against intervening in Libya. I find some more compelling than others. But saying “Why not Saudi Arabia, too?” is not one of them.

He's right.  I love how the media spends more time wringing their hands over the "Why do we pick-and-choose?" question than over the fact that a maniac is killing his own people and we can use minimal effort to help topple him.

America's favorite anti-Semite, the venerable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has some (bizarre) words of warning for his (former) boy Barack Obama:

Weirded out? Me too.

According to the leader of The Nation of Islam, a group which recently promoted the existence of UFO's, President Obama is wrong for doing anything about the situation in Libya because the people protesting and rebelling there are actually happy with their leaders.  I realize this train of thought makes little sense, but who needs such a trifling thing as sense when you have bodyguards and a rhetorical cadence like Minister Farrakhan does?

As things grow increasingly violent (and bizarre) in the north African country of Libya, we need to be asking ourselves "What can/should America be doing?"  The editors at National Review have some interesting thoughts:

Qaddafi won’t go down without one last spasm of bloodletting. His goons — loyal remnants of the security forces, together with foreign mercenaries — have been gunning protesters down in the streets. This has led to calls for the imposition of a no-fly zone. We understand and share the impulse to stanch the killing. But there are two problems with the proposed no-fly zone.

One, Qaddafi’s regime doesn’t appear to be doing much of its murder from the air. If we are serious about limiting his ability to massacre his countrymen, the no-fly zone would have to become a no machine-gun zone, too — in other words an honest-to-goodness military intervention to affect events directly on the ground. Deploying our air power while Qaddafi continued to kill with impunity would make us look more ineffectual rather than less. For now (perhaps this will change if Qaddafi begins to consolidate his position on the strength of his air force), the no-fly zone seems a classic case of looking for lost keys under the streetlight; it’s the handiest way for us to intervene, not the most effective.

Two, the rebels are on the ascendancy. Absent some drastic change in the tide of events, it looks as if they will prevail. Why would we taint what would be the indigenous glory of their ouster of Qaddafi with an almost entirely symbolic Western military action? The reason that the revolts of 2011 have had a dramatic catalyzing effect across the region, when the invasion of Iraq didn’t, is that they are the handiwork of Middle Eastern populations themselves, and thus a much more appealing model of change. Indeed, it is a sign of how home-grown these rebellions have been that President Obama’s mealy-mouthed passivity hasn’t stopped them from rolling on.

And what should our strategy be going forward?

There are still things we can do at the margins to try to influence events short of a military intervention. We should recognize as soon as possible the provisional government that is forming, an entity that the rebels are creating on their own. We can make available to it the frozen assets of the Qaddafi regime and provide humanitarian aid. (If its offensive seems to be stalling out for lack of military materiel, we can always encourage the Saudis or others to give it weapons.) With luck, this provisional government can be a first step toward stabilizing Libya’s post-Qaddafi future. Our first interest in Libya is seeing Qaddafi gone; our second is preventing its immediate collapse into a failed state.

Unfortunately, the dictator’s legacy will almost certainly live on in Libya’s struggles, even if he’s deposed. He turned a country that has the resources to be a North African version of a successful Gulf state into a miserable basket case. We wish swift success to the brave Libyans seeking an appropriate end to his regime.

Qaddafi is off his rocker, and is Exhibit A for why de-centralization of power is so critically important for a healthy country to flourish.

I'm torn between skeptical optimism and down-right doom-and-gloom pessimism when it comes to all these revolutions taking place in the Middle East.  Americans have a natural affinity for revolutions commenced to overthrow dictators, but our revolution 240 years ago was one based on well-articulated principles and Judeo-Christian values.  I pray that President George W. Bush was right; that the freedom agenda will work in the Middle East if given time.

But I worry that societies previously ruled by military tyrants will not make the societal changes necessary for true representative freedom if and when an Islamic theocracy fills the power vacuum.

The definitive take on the unfolding situation in Egypt comes from the pen of Charles Krauthammer.

Today, everyone and his cousin supports the "freedom agenda." Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers who dared challenge the received wisdom of Arab exceptionalism - the notion that Arabs, as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and Africans, were uniquely allergic to democracy. Indeed, the left spent the better part of the Bush years excoriating the freedom agenda as either fantasy or yet another sordid example of U.S. imperialism.

Now everyone, even the left, is enthusiastic for Arab democracy. Fine. Fellow travelers are welcome. But simply being in favor of freedom is not enough. With Egypt in turmoil and in the midst of a perilous transition, we need foreign policy principles to ensure democracy for the long run.

No need to reinvent the wheel. We've been through something analogous before. After World War II, Western EuropeUnited States adopted the Truman Doctrine that declared America's intention to defend these newly free nations. was newly freed but unstable, in ruin - and in play. The democracy we favored for the continent faced internal and external threats from communist totalitarians. The

This meant not just protecting allies at the periphery, such as Greece and Turkey, from insurgency and external pressure, but supporting democratic elements within Western Europe against powerful and determined domestic communist parties.

He continues:

As the states of the Arab Middle East throw off decades of dictatorship, their democratic future faces a major threat from the new totalitarianism: Islamism. As in Soviet days, the threat is both internal and external. Iran, a mini-version of the old Soviet Union, has its own allies and satellites - Syria, Lebanon and Gaza - and its own Comintern, with agents operating throughout the region to extend Islamist influence and undermine pro-Western secular states. That's precisely why in this revolutionary moment, Iran boasts of an Islamist wave sweeping the Arab world.

We need a foreign policy that not only supports freedom in the abstract but is guided by long-range practical principles to achieve it - a Freedom Doctrine composed of the following elements:

(1) The United States supports democracy throughout the Middle East. It will use its influence to help democrats everywhere throw off dictatorial rule.

(2) Democracy is more than just elections. It requires a free press, the rule of law, the freedom to organize, the establishment of independent political parties and the peaceful transfer of power. Therefore, the transition to democracy and initial elections must allow time for these institutions, most notably political parties, to establish themselves.

(3) The only U.S. interest in the internal governance of these new democracies is to help protect them against totalitarians, foreign and domestic. The recent Hezbollah coup in Lebanon and the Hamas dictatorship in Gaza dramatically demonstrate how anti-democratic elements that achieve power democratically can destroy the very democracy that empowered them.

(4) Therefore, just as during the Cold War the U.S. helped keep European communist parties out of power, it will be U.S. policy to oppose the inclusion of totalitarian parties - the Muslim Brotherhood or, for that matter, communists - in any government, whether provisional or elected, in newly liberated Arab states.

Read the full column here.

Clifford D. May over at National Review has a great piece on the current "Egypt problem," including the important question of "How did we get here?"

The upheaval in Egypt would be a dilemma for any American administration. But the policies President Obama has followed over the past two years have made his task more challenging in three ways. The signature policy of Obama’s predecessor, Pres. George W. Bush, was the “Freedom Agenda.” It was, in my view, flawed in both conception and implementation (a bit more on that in a moment) but the fact is that Bush did push for democratic reforms around the world — including Egypt — and that did contribute to the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, as well as Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, and, of course, the Purple Revolution of Iraq in 2005 (perhaps, too, the Green Revolution in Iran, which began in 2009 and may not be entirely extinguished yet).

He continues:

If the Obama administration had maintained that policy, the Lotus Revolution in Egypt — and the Jasmine Revolution that immediately preceded it in Tunisia — might have been seen as waves in an American-generated tide. Instead, Obama rejected Bush’s policy. He took the view, shared by most European leaders, that in such regions as the Middle East, stability trumps liberty. As a result, those marching in the streets now do not view Obama as a proponent of hope and change.

Read the full article here.

Dr. Charles Krauthammer offers more thoughts on the developing situation in Egypt below:

In 1967 then-governor of California, Ronald Reagan, debated Robert Kennedy (who was just about to make a run for the White House) on national television.  The panel asking questions of the two politicians was comprised of liberal students from Oxford University.  Again, the sound quality here isn't ideal, but PLEASE take a few minutes and watch The Gipper handle his business against someone (RFK) who was supposed to be smarter and more well-versed in matters of foreign policy than the former actor.

Calm, cool, and collected.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is a man of ideas.  He has spent the last decade since leaving congress pursuing answers to the nation's most pressing (and long-term) problems.

Speaker Gingrich recently spoke at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C. on the topic of "America at Risk."  Below is a brief clip from his speech at AEI, which was described as follows:

Almost nine years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States has yet to confront the threat posed by the extremist and irreconcilable wing of Islam. Newt Gingrich warns that now is the time to awaken from self-deception about the nature of our enemies and rebuild a bipartisan commitment, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to defend America. Drawing on the lessons of Camus and Orwell, Gingrich will describes the dangers of a wartime government that uses language and misleading labels to obscure reality.

Newt in 2012, people. Get ready for it.

President Obama, the Feel-Good-In-Chief, has recently signed a meaningless "reduce your nukes" agreement with a corrupt regime in Russia.  But that hope-filled gesture to the Russians was just the political face to the bigger change the Obama administration announced last week.  The Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR for short, states that the United States will no longer even threaten countries with nuclear retaliation if they don't have nukes themselves.

There are two voices of reason and sanity that you must hear on this issue.

The first is from Charles Krauthammer.

Under President Obama's new policy, however, if the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is "in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," explained Gates, then "the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it."

Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up-to-date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)

However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.

This is quite insane. It's like saying that if a terrorist deliberately uses his car to mow down a hundred people waiting at a bus stop, the decision as to whether he gets (a) hanged or (b) 100 hours of community service hinges entirely on whether his car had passed emissions inspections.

The other is from Chuck Colson's daily "Breakpoint" commentary that can be heard on radio stations all across the nation every day.  Listen to it here.

An excerpt from Colson:

The administration’s new Nuclear Posture Review states that the United States will not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have nuclear weapons and that comply with the UN treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Now, that may sound good on paper, but what would happen if a country, or terrorist organization based in a certain country, launched a massive attack on the United States with biological or chemical weapons? Or even a cyber attack that could paralyze America for weeks or months, leading to massive starvation?

Well, astonishingly enough, the Nuclear Posture Review specifically renounces a U.S. nuclear response to a mass biological or chemical attack.  The administration took this position as a “carrot” approach to convince non-nuclear nations to give up their dreams of obtaining nukes.

But folks, you can offer a rat a carrot, and he’ll eat it. The problem is, he remains a rat.

As you’ve heard me say before, the role of government is to preserve order, do justice, and restrain evil. Well, this of course presupposes that there is such a thing as evil, and that humans do evil things. Obviously, we Christians know the root of this evil is original sin; it’s part of our fallen human nature. And we see it displayed on our TV screens every single night.

Any nuclear policy that fails to recognize the human propensity for evil endangers the country and flies in the face of a biblical worldview—not to mention common sense.  It is, plain and simple, utopian thinking. And Christianity, recognizing man’s fallenness, always rejects utopianism—the idea that mankind can build a paradise on earth. It inevitably leads to tyranny.

I don't want to be someone who only sees the negative in what President Obama does, but he's making it very hard on those of us who care about the safety, security, and stability of the country more than what sounds good in a University of Chicago faculty meeting.