Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Over the last two years, many of us have been surprised and troubled at how eagerly millions of citizens have surrendered their freedoms to the shifting, contradictory, nakedly politicized diktats of various “experts” and government agencies. Coerced vaccinations, boosters, masks, and social distancing continue to be mandated and just as eagerly obeyed, even in the case of the mild Omicron covid variant. The technocratic Left currently ruling the country has wrung every ounce of unconstitutional power from the sovereign people, a large cohort of whom, especially the cognitive elites, have willingly gone along with every new crisis and command.

As the year ends, signs of a pushback are multiplying. But will such resistance reach the critical mass of voters necessary for liberating us from such “soft despotism” and its wardens?

We shouldn’t be surprised that progressives have seized the opportunity to aggrandize themselves through serial changes on the pretext of an exaggerated crisis. It has long been a truism of history that, as James Madison said in 1788, “there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of power, than by sudden usurpations.”

Nearly half a century later, Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw an even more insidious stealth despotism that could arise in American democracy: “An immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure [the people’s] gratifications and to watch over their fate.” And he prophesized that the bureaucratic regulatory state would be the instrument of this “soft despotism”: a power “absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild” that “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform.” The goal is “to keep [the people] in perpetual childhood,” for this power is “well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.”

The last hundred years have seen such a regime gradually become reality. Crises such as the Great Depression, Two World Wars, and other conflicts and recessions provided the pretexts for expanding and concentrating the powers of federal agencies and their “network of small complicated rules.” And like children, too many citizens have accepted these encroachments, willingly ceding their autonomy and freedom to overseers who bribe them with the redistribution of other people’s money, and with promises “alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate” from the cradle to the grave ––what we call “entitlements” but think are unalienable rights.

Moreover, our unprecedented wealth has obscured the dangers of this dependence and weakening of the habits of self-government. But the contrary bad habits of prioritizing comfort, pleasure, and security insidiously erode our tolerance for risk and suffering, the nonnegotiable, eternal constants of human existence. The covid pandemic has graphically revealed this intolerance for risk, which the “managerial elite” has exploited to leverage more power and authority.

Hence the government and its agencies such as the CDC hyped the dangers of an infectious disease whose victims overwhelmingly comprised the elderly already dying of something else. It didn’t take long to see that the typical victim was 80-years-old and possessed multiple comorbidities like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Children and the young––unlike during the Spanish flu––were spared. Masks, lockdowns, and social distancing were mostly pacifiers for soothing anxiety and creating the illusion of control, rather than protecting the vulnerable, even as those measures damaged the economy, impaired education, and multiplied “deaths of despair” like suicide and addiction.

Meanwhile, in Sweden and in states like Florida, the absence of such mandates did not lead to “super-spreader” events, but rather fewer fatalities than countries like England or states like New York with their draconian lockdowns.

These outcomes will surprise no one who understood from the start that after a few months of uncertainty in early 2020, the issue was not the pandemic, but how the pandemic could provide the pretext for expanding government power, and damaging a president whose policies pushed back against the progressives program to “fundamentally transform” the United States. And the way to do that is to erode our unalienable rights and our political freedom, the indispensable tools for checking tyranny and holding office-holders accountable to the people.

Now, however, there are multiple signs that voters are getting fed up with the whole covid endless crises triggered by variants and spikes in infections, a datum that creates big dramatic numbers and increases, but isn’t as significant as death rates. They’re sick of their children’s schools serially opening and shutting, demanding useless masks, and making grammar school kids eat lunch outside in the cold. They’ve had it with the endless parade of “experts,” especially government functionaries unaccountable to either the voters or the market, playing the endless loop of virus porn.

Nor are they fooled by the Dems’ proposed electoral “reform” legislation, which would hijack elections from the states, and put into law many of the shady practices we saw in the 2020 presidential election. And for a year they’ve watched Biden’s feckless incompetence weaken the nation’s prestige and interests abroad as both decline in the face of Iran’s march to a nuclear weapon, China’s threatening Taiwan and our regional allies, and Russia’s positioning tens of thousands of troops and weapons on its border with Ukraine––all the consequences of our shameful skedaddle from Afghanistan that cost 13 dead American troops, left behind billions of dollars in materiel, and stranded hundreds of American citizens and Afghan allies.

Finally, growing numbers of voters have soured on progressives’ “cancel culture” and strong-arm tactics––their “relentless moral condescension, the messianism of mass protests, physical intimidation, social ostracism and demands that you simply shut up”––as the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger describes the treatment of renegade Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, who stopped their Build Back Better binge of green pork and welfare lucre.

Throw in the Biden administration’s abysmal record of failure on every important issue like inflation and border security, and things are looking grim for the Dems. Biden’s approval numbers have been tanking for months, and now even usually reliable constituencies are disgruntled.  An Economist and You.gov poll finds fewer than 3 in 10 adults under 30 approve of the job Biden’s doing. A Zogby poll’s approval numbers for independents, the most critical swing-vote, are particularly ominous. They favor Republican control of Congress by 23 points. And another critical constituency for Democrats, Hispanics, are moving towards Republicans. According to a Wall Street Journal poll in early December, Hispanic support in Congressional races is split evenly at 37% for each party.

As of now, these portents suggest a midterm “shellacking” of the Dems, as Barack Obama called the debacle of the 2010 midterms that hamstrung his ambitions to remake America. And Obama was a well-liked president with tons of voter good will, not a cognitively impaired mediocre grifter.

But let’s not be hasty. The Dems still possess the commanding heights of media, entertainment, popular culture, sports, government agencies, and universities. They’re still addled by their humiliation at the hands and tweets of Donald Trump, and still thirsting for revenge against him and his supporters, the “bitter clingers,” “deplorables,” and “smelly Wal-Mart shoppers” who refuse to accept the superiority of self-proclaimed “brights” who feel entitled to push them around.

The ruling elite are not going to surrender power without a fight, and we’d better be ready. Next year will determine whether “soft despotism” is our future, or the love of freedom and our unalienable rights will triumph once again.

“It’s 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union,” recalled Euronews last week, and for many around the world, the official demise of the USSR on December 25, 1991, was the greatest historical event of their lifetime. A Christmas Day two years earlier, on the other hand, may hold more significance for Americans in 2021 and beyond.

On December 25, 1989, Romanian soldiers executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena. The pair came up through Communist youth movements and in 1965 Nicolae became general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party and ruled in the best Stalinist tradition.

The Securitate, the regime’s secret police, sewed division among the people and built a vast network of informers. Midnight arrests, torture, and assassination were common. During a 1977 miners’ strike, the Securitate subjected union leaders to five-minute X-rays that caused cancer and killed off strike leaders. By the end of the 1970s, as this account explains, Romania was one of the most oppressive states in the world.

Ceausescu bulldozed churches, monasteries and entire neighborhoods in Bucharest. Nicolae and Elena lived like royalty as the people lined up for the barest necessities. During the 1980s, as the economy went south, Ceausescu ramped up arrests and torture.

In the city of Timisoara, the Securitate attacked pastor Laszlo Tokes for criticizing the regime, and on December 17, 1989, the people organized an anti-government demonstration. Ceausescu ordered police and Securitate to fire on the crowds, killing nearly 100 protesters. Ceausescu gave a speech blaming anti-Romanian forces but the crowd heckled the dictator. Mass protests then broke out across the country and the military sided with the people.

Ceausescu fled in a helicopter but the pilot forced a landing and soldiers took the couple into custody. Nikolae and Elena were swiftly tried for crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. As troops prepared the execution on Christmas Day, the still-defiant Elena assailed a soldier with the worst things possible to say in the Romanian language. The trooper promptly cuffed her across the face.

The troops stood the pair against a wall and unleashed their Kalashnikovs against them. Years later, squad member Ionel Boyeru, an elite paratrooper, had no regrets. Members of his family were among the millions persecuted by Ceausescu, whose loathsome regime models current developments in America.

At the close of 2021, the United States is ruled by a Junta, headed by the puppet Joe Biden and communist in all but name. Should that be doubted, consider the White House choice for comptroller of the currency in the treasury department. Lenin scholar Saule Omarova aimed to replicate Soviet banking in America. The proud Soviet apologist is hardly the only omen.

The Biden Junta is all about dividing the people on the basis of race and vaccination status. The Junta’s chief white coat supremacist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, tells Americans to disinvite unvaccinated family members to Christmas gatherings.

Those less than worshipful of the Junta are branded “domestic terrorists,” and worse.  Gen. Mark Milley, who appointed himself commander-in-chief, regards Trump supporters as brownshirts. In effect, Milley is zampolit-in-chief and military bosses are purging the ranks of conservatives, Christians, without regard to their merit as soldiers.

On the economic side, the Biden Junta bloats the nation’s already fathomless debt and boosts inflation. The people are raising their voices against the addled Joe Biden, who knows what “let’s go Brandon” really means. As the misery index increases, the outcries are certain to surge, but there’s a problem.

As Victor Davis Hanson notes, the left “suddenly announced that should it lose congressional power in 2022 or the presidency in 2024, democracy was all but doomed.” The Junta thus construes those striving for peaceful change through elections as fomenters of a coup. Critics of the Biden Junta have already been vilified as racists, terrorists and violent extremists. That lays groundwork for the military action against them, in the style of Timisoara.

Back in December of 1989, as Ionel Boyeru explained, “They made us sign a statement saying we didn’t agree with what was happening, and vowing we would support and protect Ceausescu.” They took him down instead, and they knew it was the right thing to do.

That day joyous Romanians openly celebrated Christmas for the first time in decades and the next year the nation held free elections. All good news, but there’s a footnote. The vile Nicolae Ceausescu is the only Communist dictator in Europe who got what he deserved.

Josef Stalin, murderer of more than 20 million, died of a heart attack on March 5, 1953. Albania’s Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha died of complications from diabetes on April 11, 1985. Erich Honecker, Communist dictator of East Germany and builder of the Berlin Wall,  died of cancer in Chile on May 29, 1994, at the age of 81. From the grave, their victims still cry out for justice.

4. ΔΕΙΤΕ ΤΟ ΠΑΡΑΚΑΤΩ “ΒΙΝΤΕΟ”! ΑΞΙΖΕΙ!.. ΓΡΑΨΤΕ ΚΑΙ “ΚΤΥΠΕΙΣΤΕ” ΤΟΝ ΤΙΤΛΟ!..

5.

Çağrı Erhan 

2022’de dış politika önceliğimiz normalleşme.

02.01.2022

Geçen yılın son ayında yapılan açıklamalar, 2022’nin Türk dış politikası için “normalleşme yılı” olabileceğini işaret ediyor. Birleşik Arap Emirlikleri, Suudi Arabistan, Mısır, İsrail ve Ermenistan ile ilişkilerin belli seviyelerde iyileştirilmesi için atılan adımların sıklaştırılacağı, bazı alanlarda ise yeni adımlar atılacağı anlaşılıyor.

İlişkilerimizi normalleştirmeyi planladığımız devletlerle daha önce yaşadığımız problemlerin sebeplerini hatırladığımızda, bu devletlerin önceki tutum ve tavırlarının çoğunda köklü değişiklikler olmadığını görüyoruz. Mesela Ermenistan, Azerbaycan’ın kazandığı zafer sonrasında Karabağ üzerinde hak iddia edecek durumda değil belki ama bu ülkenin anayasasında Türkiye topraklarının bir bölümünden hâlen “Batı Ermenistan” olarak söz ediliyor. 1915 olaylarının “soykırım” olduğu iddiası Ermenistan’ın neredeyse değişmez varlık sebebi olarak orada duruyor. Mesela İsrail, Filistin topraklarında yasa dışı Yahudi yerleşimleri kurmayı sürdürüyor. Kudüs’ün bir bütün olarak kendi başkenti olduğu iddiasını sürdürüyor. Mesela Mısır, muhalefete karşı çok sert tutumunu sürdürüyor. Müslüman Kardeşler mensuplarına ağır cezalar veriyor.

Bu örnekler de gösteriyor ki, “normalleşme” çabasının motivasyon kaynağı geçmişteki problemlerin ortadan kalkmış olması değil. Asıl sebeplerden birincisi ekonomik. Türkiye ekonomik olarak hassaslaştığı bir dönemde hem dış politikadaki kriz alanlarının sayısını azaltmak istiyor hem de dış ticaretine menfi tesir eden süreçleri sıfırlamak arzusunda. Mesela Suudi Arabistan’la geçen yıllarda yaşanan gerilim dolayısıyla Türk ihraç ürünlerinin sadece bu ülkeye değil, birçok Körfez ülkesine girişlerinde gayriresmî engeller çıkarılmıştı. Keza BAE ile gerilimden dolayı bu ülkeden Türkiye’ye yatırım sermayesinin girişi yavaşlamıştı. Benzeri şekilde Mısır makamları ülkedeki Türk yatırımcılarına çeşitli teknik zorluklar çıkarmaya başlamıştı.

Normalleşme arzumuzun bir diğer sebebi, Türkiye’nin başkalarıyla yaşadıklarından yaralanmaya çalışan fırsatçıların oyunlarını boşa çıkarmak. Türkiye’nin aynı anda hem Suriye, hem Mısır, hem İsrail’le sıkıntı yaşadığı bir dönemde, Yunanistan ve GKRY Doğu Akdeniz’de bazı kazanımlar elde etmenin peşine düştüler. Türkiye’nin dışlandığı yeni mimariler kurmaya yeltendiler. Dışarıdan ve içeriden gelen tüm engelleme çabalarına rağmen Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan’ın güçlü liderliği sayesinde Türkiye, Libya deniz yetki alanları sınırlandırma anlaşmasını yaptı, Akdeniz’de güçlü bir askerî varlık gösterdi, arama ve sondaj çalışmalarını artırdı, Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti ile son derece yakın bağlar kurdu. Mısır ve İsrail ile normalleşme olursa, Doğu Akdeniz’deki Yunan-Rum planlarının başarı ihtimali ortadan kalkar. Yine de Yunan-Rum oyununun etkisizleştirilmesi sadece normalleşmelere bağlı değil. İki şeyin daha yapılması lazım: Birincisi, Doğu Akdeniz’deki arama ve sondaj faaliyetlerini hedefe ulaşana kadar artırarak sürdürmek. Gerekirse yabancı ortaklarla konsorsiyum oluşturmak. İkincisi ise Doğu Akdeniz’deki tüm ekonomik hak ve menfaatlerimizi teminat altına alacak yasal düzenlemeleri geciktirmeden yapmak.

Normalleşme hedefinin üçüncü saiki ise ABD ile ilişkilerin tekrar rayına oturtulması niyeti. İki devlet başkanının geçtiğimiz yıl yaptığı görüşmelerde, Türkiye ile ABD arasında diyalog mekanizmalarının kurulması kararlaştırılmıştı. Türkiye 2021’in son günlerinde ABD’ye bir diplomatik kâğıt yollayarak, bu mekanizmanın ne şekilde kurgulanacağına dair kendi önerilerini sunmuştu. Şimdi Amerikan tarafının buna karşılık vermesini ve heyetler arasındaki görüşmelerin gecikmeden başlamasını bekliyoruz. Lakin bir gerçek var ki, ağır yara almış olan Türk-Amerikan ilişkilerinin düzelmesi o kadar kolay olmayacak. Bu noktada Türkiye, bazı ülkelerle ilişkilerini normalleştirmek suretiyle onların ABD’deki lobilerinden yararlanmayı, en azından bu lobilerin Türkiye aleyhtarı kampanyalara olan desteklerini azaltmalarını temin etmeyi hedefliyor. İsrail lobisinin Türkiye’nin aleyhine çalıştığı bir dönemde ABD’de Türkiye lehine sonuçlar elde edilmesinin zorluğu ortada. Keza Suudi Arabistan ve BAE’nin tuttuğu lobi firmalarının Türkiye karşıtı çalışmalarının da önüne geçilmek isteniyor.

Türk dış politikası uzmanlarının bir bölümü normalleşme “radarında” Avrupa Birliği’nin de olduğunu söylüyorlar. En son başlığın Haziran 2016’da açıldığı müzakere sürecinin 2022’de yeniden başlaması pek mümkün değil. Ankara istese de, AB’nin “normalleşmeye” gayet mesafeli durduğu açık. Önce AB’nin lokomotifi Almanya’nın yeni hükûmetinin Türkiye’ye nasıl baktığını görmemiz lazım. Şansölye’nin 2022’nin ilk aylarında gerçeklemesi planlanan ziyaretinde işin rengi anlaşılır.

Normalleşme demişken, 2022’de Suriye ile başlatılabilecek bir diyaloğun, başta Türkiye’deki Suriyelilerin memleketlerine dönüşünün kolaylaşması ve Suriye’nin kuzeyindeki PKK yapılanmasının etkisizleştirilmesi olmak üzere önemli sonuçları olabileceğini de unutmamak gerekir.

Tüm normalleşmelerin bir yıla sığması elbette imkânsız. Ama görünen o ki, 2022’nin Türk dış politikası söyleminde “düşmanların sayısını azaltma, dostların sayısını artırma” yaklaşımı yeniden popüler hâle gelecek.

TÜRKİYE GAZETESİ