UK Telegraph on Our Spoiled, Emasculated Societies

RUSH: I found a piece that sort of goes where I was talking about in the first hour, this generalization, realization that we've lost any kind of moral boundary, we've certainly squandered our own moral authority. We act like we don't have any moral authority. We're guilty of this, guilty of that, Obama runs around apologizing for us so we don't have the authority to stand up for what we think is right anymore, and that's what this "we must be true to our values" crap means. It's a piece interestingly enough in the UK Telegraph by a famous columnist over there by the name of Christopher Booker.

The headline is: "Our Spoiled, Emasculated, De-Spiritualised Societies in the West Are in Terminal Decline." This is exactly what I had in mind. "As we enter this new year," writes Mr. Booker, "what is the most significant feature of how the world is changing that went almost unnoticed in the year just ended? Two events last autumn might have given us a clue. One was the very peculiar nature of that state visit in October, when the president of China was taken in a golden coach to stay at Buckingham Palace, down a Mall lined with hundreds of placard-waving pro China stooges, while the only people manhandled away by Chinese security guards were a few protesters against China’s treatment of Tibet and abuses of human rights.

"Led by David Cameron, our politicians could not have fawned more humiliatingly on the leader of a country whose economy, before its recent wobbles, was predicted by the IMF to overtake that of the US as the largest in the world in 2016. While Britain once led the world in steel making and the civil use of nuclear power, the visit coincided with the crumbling of the remains of our steel industry before a flood of cheap Chinese steel, as our politicians pleaded for China’s help in building, to an obsolete design, the most costly nuclear power station in the world. ... What we were seeing in 2015, more than ever before, were the signs of one of history’s great geopolitical shifts, as the centuries-old hegemony of the West gives way to the new powerhouses of the outside world.

"In the face of every kind of new external challenge, the leaders of the EU and the USA have never looked weaker or more bemused – as over how to deal with the flood of refugees and the terrorist threat unleashed from a Middle East reduced to chaos by our vainglorious interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya."

I would take issue with that. Folks, you want to know what's causing the Middle East to -- it's Obama. For crying out loud, the West led by Obama has sidled up with bad actors in the Middle East we have never sidled up with before. We have sidled up with militant Islam. We've sidled up with the Muslim Brotherhood, and now our best buddies in the Middle East is not Saudi Arabia and not Jordan, it's Iran. You don't think that's messing things up? You don't think that's causing people panic?

Look, I'm not gonna make any defense here of Saudi Arabia. I mean, it's a despicable place. But, look, in terms of allied status, picking the lesser of evils and so forth, which you must do in foreign policy when you're dealing with people that have different circumstances, values, and objectives than you do, you still nevertheless have allies, and the Saudis to one extent or another, flawed though it may be, have always been allies. We have now changed that allied status. We are allies because of Obama with Iran. We have seen to it that by virtue of Obama's nuclear deal, that Iran now has $150 billion to do with whatever it wants, including shore up state-sponsored terrorism, rebuild their national airline, whatever it is, while getting the permission from us to go ahead and nuke up.

You want to talk about something that destabilizes a region, let the state sponsor of terrorism in the world have clear, free access to nuclear weaponry. The Saudis were not pursuing that. Jordan was not pursuing that. Egypt was not pursuing it. Al-Qaeda is, but not from the standpoint of becoming a nuclear power. They just want a couple of nukes for suitcases or however they can use it as a terrorist weapon; ditto the Muslim Brotherhood and what have you. But the king of that hill is Iran, and that's who we've sidled up with, and that's why this ISIS problem is a problem, because Iran is an ally of ISIS. That's why we're not doing anything to ISIS. We don't want to tick off Iran.

So the Saudis, yeah, they go execute some sheik and it causes problems with the Saudis. The real problem is that we have now allied with Iran, and Iran is their feared neighbor and enemy in that region. This is Shi'ite versus Sunni, in one sense. It's nuclear versus conventional in another. It was bad enough the US had ties with Israel. I mean, the whole Middle East Muslim region was outraged at that, but now, of all those Middle Eastern states, picking Iran to essentially get in bed with? I mean, Iran and us aligned is as damaging if not more so than whatever has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. You talk about a terrorist recruitment tool.

Anyway, back to Mr. Booker here. "Everywhere we see Western illusions colliding with reality, as when the reckless bid to suck Ukraine into the EU and Nato inevitably provoked a response from President Putin ... left us looking pathetically impotent." And that really is it. We look pathetically impotent in places we used to be the dominant player, and we were the dominant player because we had the moral authority to be the dominant player because we were looking out for the best interests of everybody. You can't say that about Iran. Now all of that is coming into question. But we've lost whatever moral authority we had. It's been squandered.

"Likewise, in his support for Syria’s President Assad, Putin has run rings," around not just Obama, but the European Union, too. "Just as the murderous regime in Iran ran rings round us in that recent 'nuclear deal,' so meaningless that Iran’s 'moderate' President Rouhani never even bothered to sign it." That's another thing. That deal hasn't been signed, and it doesn't have to be signed? This is the strange -- we have just tacitly agreed to let Iran nuke up at their pace, nothing's been signed, which means nothing has to be ratified. As long as Obama's in office, he can do whatever he wants. The Republicans have said they're not gonna take any steps to stop him. Corker Bill notwithstanding; it was designed to further this along.

So the nuke deal doesn't even have to be signed. In fact, the better that it's not. Since it isn't signed, it cannot be rejected or repealed. It's just there, as a statement of principles, quote, unquote. "We then saw that even more meaningless 'non-binding' deal in Paris, supposed to save the world from global warming. The very fact that it was the West that had dreamed up this scare in the first place was yet another symptom of how easily we fall for illusions; and again it was the outside world, led by China and India, that refused to buy such nonsense."

And that's the key. The ChiComs are sitting back and watching us implode. They are watching us shackle ourselves with political correctness, preserving our values. They are sitting around watching and they're betting that they're gonna be able to pick up whatever pieces. And make no mistake, the ChiComs consider us, if nothing else, an economic enemy. The ChiComs want to dominate the world. They want their economy to dominate the world, and they're just like any other communist Regime, they are willing to pounce whenever they see any kind of weakness, weakness that they can inspire, weakness that they can sponsor, weakness that they can capitalize on.

It's not like the Millennials, they just want to get along and not have anybody's feelings get hurt. It's not the real world that the Millennials live today, where nobody's insulted and nobody's feelings are hurt and everybody just gets along and so forth and no judgment on anybody ever takes place. There's a real world still out there made up of bad actors and vicious, mean people who do not intend us anything but ill. And in the past we've always recognized it, and we've always been able to defend against it and be prepared for it. And now it appears we're squandering even being prepared for it because we're jettisoning our own morality. We're jettisoning our own standards. We are diluting and watering down our own institutions that have defended and protected. It's just mind-boggling to me.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/12078365/Our-spoiled-emasculated-despiritualised-societies-in-the-Westare-in-terminal-decline.html