Catherine Austin Fitts has had an exceptional career. From being the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under George H. Bush, to starting up her own investment brokerage firm and managing a five-hundred-billion-dollar investment portfolio, she is an internationally recognized investment banker.

After years of research, she has raised significant questions about the government’s handling of money, claiming that over twenty-one trillion dollars is unaccounted for and has been siphoned off by various agencies to fund international operations, both military and non-military “off the books.”  She claims these actions are detrimental to the well-being of the public.

The interview with Fitts by Tucker Carlson is amazing in the breath of topics covered and the information provided to the general public. One key area is her concern about the push by governments towards the elimination of a cash economy. Such a move will all but eliminate the mobility and freedom we have today as it will be easy for any government to simply freeze anyone out of the economy. Think back to the action by the Canadian government during the truckers strikes during Covid. By the “flip of a switch,” the Canadian government made sure the protesting truckers lost access to their funds in banks, use of credit cards: they could not get gas, purchase food, etc. That is the end result of the elimination of a cash economy.

In this case, Mr. Carlson wisely allows Fitts to do the overwhelming majority of the talking as he is clearly dealing with an individual who is his superior intellectually.

Be sure to visit www.Solari.com, Fitt’s foundation/website for weekly news that very well may change your perspective on the world.

https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-catherine-fitts

My favorite wife recently returned from a business trip to Barcelona and brought me a nice bottle of white port. I knew of the existence of white port but had never sipped any, relying on the traditional ruby port at the appropriate time.

White port comes, unsurprisingly, unlike ruby port, from white grapes and is lighter in taste with a nice golden color. While ruby port has a strong taste in grapes, the white taste if more floral with hints of citrus. This makes white port more of a dessert wine or as a fortified aperitif and is excellent if served cold.

The bottle she brought was from the Ferreira concern which was founded in 1751. What made the gift even better was that it was under the Dona Antonia label and had been aged for ten years. Like red port, armagnac and calvados, a ten-year span helps to ensure that a product is going to provide a very enjoyable treat. I have tasted one- and three-year-old bottles of calvados, and it was a good lesson in tasting a cooking product from a product designed to please.

White port may be a bit more difficult to find, but it is worth the effort and I do not believe you will be disappointed. Enjoy!

The recent movie, Nuremberg, centers around two characters; Dr. Douglas Kelley, who spent many hours interviewing and interacting with the twenty-two defendants during the first Nuremberg trial and Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring.

Dr. Kelley in 1945 was 35 years old at the time of his work at Nuremberg, upon which the movie is based. He was a U.S. Army psychiatrist with an excellent reputation. His goal was to understand the mind set of the defendants in terms of how they viewed the war crimes they faced and how they could participate in the conducting of those terrible crimes. He interacted with those individuals for only one month, but that month changed his life forever. After those interviews, he gradually became more introverted, subject to flare ups of anger, and more argumentative. His career which held so much promise became short-circuited as he disagreed with fellow doctors and administrators; he was no longer invited for interviews; his scholarly papers were ignored and not published and he became a pariah. In 1958, he died by suicide.

What was it that changed the course of Kelley’s life? It was that month when he spoke with the twenty-two defendants and found a secret that he believed was totally opposed to the image that most people had of those defendants. It is a secret that has haunted generations as they studied the horrors of the Third Reich.

Dr. Kelley concluded, contrary to popular opinion, that the defendants were ordinary individuals; some brighter than others, some more vain, but all profoundly human. They were not devils or demons, they were not mad; in most cases they could be your next store neighbors until the right conditions were created. Dr. Kelley believed that it was not madness that enabled those men to participate in such crimes, but rather from a moral decay disguised as duty. We must remember that numerous commanders of the Nazi killing squads (the Einsatzgruppen) were medical and legal doctors and others possessing the finest intellectual educations in their fields. In their minds, their “work” was noble and ridding the earth of unhealthy and deadly enemies of their race.

In this book, 22 Cells, he saw that the “gradual process of moral desensitization, in which obedience and ambition eroded empathy” enabled those men (and so many others), to commit war crimes on a scale previously unknown. His belief in that process led him to believe that in any society, if the conditions were right, those actions could be repeated and that knowing that society had to take steps to safeguard such a recurrence. Naturally, such a view was not very popular in the victor nations who saw themselves as being not only the physical but also the moral victors of the war.

Long before Hannah Arendt went public with the phrase, the banality of evil, Dr. Kelley had spoken that way of what he had learned in Nuremberg. Like Kelley, Arendt paid a price using that phrase, yet there has never been any evidence to the truth of those words. They paid the price for staring into the darkest portion of the human mind. Will we learn from what they found? Try asking the average teenager of today who fought who in World War II. Ask them who fought in our Civil War. Some may say that Nazi Germany was an aberration, a fluke of history. If that is to be believed, what about the Armenian genocide, the Ukraine famine of the 1930’s, the intentional famine in China under Mao, the muti-year war in the Congo, the slaughter in Rwanda. Need I go on? Their ignorance is not their fault, but someone will have to pay the price for that ignorance. Perhaps not in this decade, perhaps not in the next, but there is always a price to pay for such ignorance.

There can be no finer example of the banality of evil than the book written by the commandant of Auschwitz and one of the greatest mass murders in history, Rudolph Hoss. Written while awaiting trial, he does not attempt to deflect blame or plead some sort of extraordinary circumstances for his actions. Instead, he paints a picture of a very bland, ordinary man simply doing his duty as he was ordered. A good family man, loving father, his main concern was to please his superiors everyday. He was the perfect face of the banality of evil.

For further reading, please consider The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz, The Nuremberg Interviews by Leon Goldensohn, The Mind Doctor of Nuremberg by Kendrick D. Erasmus, and Marriage & Fatherhood in the Nazi SS by Amy Carney, Death Dealer by Rudolph Hoss.

For too long the public school system in the United States has had a virtual monopoly in the education system. Unfortunately, their “product” (educated individuals) does not meet the standard necessary to properly function. Not only can the “product” not read or do math up to minimal standards, the “product” is woefully misinformed about history, civics, and their responsibilities as citizens. In response some states have expanded the use of Charter Schools and home schooling has also begun to grow, spurred on during the pandemic when parents realized what was being taught to their children. The United States spends more per child than any other nation on the earth and gets back the lowest return. We do not have to repeat the dismal figures of failed school districts where a minute percentage of children can read or do math to grade level. Recently the University of California, San Diego has reported that in just five short years, the number of first-year students who need remedial math has increase 30-fold. Whereas in 2020 less than 1% of students needed remedial math, the number has jumped to one in eight. These terrible numbers are not at a day care center, but at a university! How did those students even manage to gain entry? Is there any reason to believe that the students are any better prepared in English or history or any other topic? And I have not even mentioned the damage that has been done by the progressive cause de jour, DEI with its deadly view of the value of the United States.

But all is not lost as there are those who have found a way to use social media as a tool to counter the failure of our public schools. One such option is Prager U, founded by Dennis Prager just a few short years ago. The site offers over 3,500 videos in their digital vault aimed at presenting a well-balanced presentation on topics such as history, religion, government, the workings of government, the economy and more.

The ability to reach out across the airwaves to individuals around the world is amazing.

• 1 in 3 Americans has watched at least one Praeger video.
• Seventy percent of minds are changed on at least one topic after watching.
• Five million views of Prager content every day.
• Twenty-five percent of survey respondents identify as non-conservative.

And they did this without a single cent to taxpayer money.

No matter where you live, no matter is you are liberal, conservative or whatever, a visit to PragerU will be an interesting adventure. We very often exist in a bubble of those who agree and think as we do and PragerU may just expand deflate your bubble. Dare you?

The recent “No Kings” demonstrations have brought to mind the last time a President truly acted like a King, and no, it was not the current occupant of the Oral Office. Rather it was President Biden who exercised the one power that is unrestricted, unpoliced, and total in the hands of the President: the power to pardon.

While all Presidents have this unique power, none in the history of the United States has pardoned his siblings, siblings-in-law, son, twenty-five hundred convicted drug convictions, and unindicted government officials for unmentioned crimes. Additionally, he overrode the federal judicial system, ignored the decisions of juries, and granted clemency to nearly every federal death row inmate. His decision was based on his personal moral view of the death penalty and went against the stated federal law. All of these actions took place just hours before he left office and in spite of a promise not to pardon his own son.

The power to pardon is not limited in the United States to the President; Governors of states also hold such power, but their power is limited by each State’s Constitution. Abuses have occurred, such as Virginia’s Governor Terry McAuliffe. In order in 2016, he allowed by fiat 206,000 convicted felons who had completed their terms to regain the ability to vote, hold public office, serve on a jury and function as a notary. There was moral outrage across the state and the state Supreme Court stated that such a blanket action was beyond the scope of his ability. In the end, the outgoing governor McAuliffe got around the state Supreme Court by issuing “individual grants of clemency.”      Finally, we have the question of should any President have so much power and what are the options for any attempt to limit his pardoning power.

The attached article gives us a fascinating look into the thinking of the Founding Fathers when they gave such unlimited power to the President. Although not in the Constitution, there were discussions as to a recourse should any President abuse his pardon power to such a degree that it went beyond all norms, and that recourse was impeachment. Yet President Biden in issuing his pardons just hours before he left office avoided even a discussion of impeachment. Imagine if a future President should decide to empty all the Federal prisons of their inmates, or “only those inmates who supported his own political party?.”  Given the actions of President Biden, we may all look with trepidation as each future President is about to leave office.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/unpardonable

You have probably not heard of John O’Sullivan, but since the 1990’s, he has been studying, writing about, and warning about the growing movement on the Left toward what we now call “wokeness”. His newest book, Sleepwalking into Wokeness: How We Got Here is reviewed by Steven F. Hayward in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

O’Sullivan has been observing and writing about the growing movement which is a combination of the Frankfurt School, the movements of the 1960’s and nihilism. He has pointed out that believers in the current movement have and will be unhappy and angry as they view the world through the exact opposite of rose-colored glasses. Traditional Liberals could, occasionally take pride in their victories before they found a new cause which could take some of their energy. The “woke” movement goes a step further down a dark path in that there can never be any victories to celebrate as each battle only goes to expose another sub-subgroup that seeks acknowledgement and which claims to be the martyr de jour.

The review by Steven F. Hayward is crisp and an easy read. If you want to better understand how we got to this point, click on the link below. It will be worth your time, and you will understand the negative forces that create such noise in our society.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/ahead-of-the-curve

If you are a fan of Winston Churchill, you should enjoy some new books which were written by Churchill himself.  These books give an insight into the actions and challenges Churchill faced and which he used to create his image and world.  Churchill once wrote that, “A man’s life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action.”  Yet his life was filled with both Thought and Action, from his adventures in Cuba, India, the Sudan all the way through his “years in the wilderness”  while supporting himself by documenting his life and thoughs and successfully marketing them to sustain his life of Action.

While at Sandhurst, Churchill was fascinated by an ancient Greek who was argumentative, who had a nagging wife and was such a nuisance  that he was forced to commit suicide. What did Socrates have that made his fame last for so long?  Since the secret was not found in the Queen’s regulations, this man of Thought read widely and asked his mother to send him a steady stream of books to him while he was in India.  In short, Churchill was always seeking, always learning so as to create the man he thought he should be. His ego was large, and no one can say his all of his ideas were brilliant or even correct, but he learned from each step and help to mold and save the world he had inherited.

It is unfortunate however, that the cost of the printed word continues to escalate nearly as quickly as college tuition.  Two of the three books reviewed retail for one hundred dollars, and this shall unfortunately limit their circulation. Given the moral and intellectual level of so many politicians who attempt to guide us today, ignore their self-serving multi-million-dollar book deals and invest in one of more of these three volumes and enjoy the wit, wisdom and adventures of a titan of history.

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/reading-winston-churchill

During the sixth century B.C., exiles from the island of Samos traveled to Sparta looking for aid. As was the custom in Greece, they made a long and flowery speech justifying their need. They then waited for the Spartans to rule on their request, but one Spartan said that he did not remember the first half of the speech and did not understand the second half. The exiles stood there for a moment and then left to plan their next step.

The next day, they came back again carrying an empty grain sack. They said, “The sack needs grain.”  The chief Spartan said, “There was no need to say, “the sack.” and gave them grain.

That is why the word Laconic is brought to us from the Spartans.

Source: Impossible Histories by Hal Johnson

King Richard the Lion-Hearted insulted Duke Leopard during the Third Crusade by not allowing the duke’s banner to fly at the same level as Richard’s (who was of course a King and not a mere Duke).  Later, on Richard’s journey home, he was captured and held for ransom, which totaled thirty tons of silver.  After the ransom was paid, the duke received one-third of the ransom which he used to build walls around Vienna as protection against Ottoman raids.

Those walls were still there in 1529 when the Ottoman’s decided to besiege Vienna after capturing Hungary and most of the Balkans. The Ottoman’s defied the terrible rains and brought their siege cannons all the way from Istanbul to the walls of Vienna but were exhausted by the effort.  The Ottomans needed a quick and easy siege, but the walls were too strong and after a final attempt, the Ottomans retreated, defeated by those walls.  The Ottomans were to return in 1683 and were again defeated by those walls and the relieving Polish army led by King John Sobieski.

That ransom paid for the walls and if there had not been the walls, Vienna would have fallen to the Turks.  If it had fallen, Vienna would have been a Muslim city and Back, Mozart, Beethoven, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others would not have created the music, philosophy and science that they did.

When you throw a stone into a lake, the ripples move out and so it is with life; you never know what the results of your actions will be so act wisely.

From the earliest moments that any Communist seized any degree of power, be it during the Russian Revolution or in China, Albania, Korea, etc., they have exhibited the will, desire, and ability to use the most barbaric tortures on real or suspected enemies. Reading of their tortures one can often look at the tortures and punishments of medieval times in Europe, the Middle East or Asia as the work of amateurs,
How many MILLIONS suffered traumatic mental injuries, maiming and death at the hands of those who supported a regime based on Marxist “science”? How few of those who inflicted those terrible tortures were ever brought to justice? When the Nazi empire was brought down, there was at least an effort to bring to justice the architects and supporters of the regimes. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said when Communist regimes fall. That is a great mistake, for the extensive list of their crimes is not brought into the light of day, to educate the next generations who may be swept away by the lofty ideals of those criminals.