Cancer -Like Anti-Semitism has spread throughout the Islamic World

February 17, 2019

by Dr. Fareed Zakaria

https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2019/2/14/anti-semitism-has-spread-through-the-islamic-world-like-a-cancer

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.)

In recent weeks, attention has focused on two freshman Democratic members of Congress, Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), both of whom are Muslim and have made critical statements about Israel and its most ardent American supporters. Their tweets and comments have been portrayed by some as not simply criticisms of Israel but rather as evidence of a rising tide of anti-Semitism on the new left.

I don’t know what is in the hearts of the two representatives. But I believe that Muslims should be particularly thoughtful when speaking about these issues because anti-Semitism has spread through the Islamic world like a cancer. (Omar and Tlaib are not responsible for this in any way, of course, but they should be aware of this poisonous climate.) In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League did a survey in more than 100 countries of attitudes toward Jews and found that anti-Semitism was twice as common among Muslims than among Christians, and it’s far more prevalent in the Middle East than the Americas. It has sometimes tragically gone beyond feelings, morphing into terrorist attacks against Jews, even children, in countries such as France.

It might surprise people to know that it wasn’t always this way. In fact, through much of history, the Muslim Middle East was hospitable to Jews when Christian Europe was killing or expelling them. The great historian Bernard Lewis once said to me, “People often note that in the late 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of thousands of Jews fled Arab countries. They rarely ask why so many Jews were living in those lands in the first place.”

Bernard Lewis and Henry Kissinger

In his seminal book, “The Jews of Islam,” Lewis points out that in the Middle Ages, when polemics against Jews were commonplace in the Christian world, they were rare in the Islamic world. In the early centuries of Islamic rule, he writes, there was “a kind of symbiosis between Jews and their neighbors that has no parallel in the Western world between the Hellenistic and modern ages. Jews and Muslims had extensive and intimate contacts that involved social as well as intellectual association — cooperation, commingling, even personal friendship.” One shouldn’t exaggerate the status of Jews back then — they were second-class citizens — but they were tolerated and encouraged to a far greater degree in Muslim societies than in Christian ones.

Things changed in the Muslim world only in the late 19th century, when, according to Lewis, “as a direct result of European influence, movements appear among Muslims of which for the first time one can legitimately use the term anti-Semitic.” Muslims worried that the British, who came to rule much of the Middle East, were favoring the small non-Muslim communities, especially Jews. Muslims began importing European anti-Semitic tropes such as the notion of blood libel, and noxious anti-Semitic works started to be translated into Arabic, including the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

What supercharged all these attitudes was the founding of Israel in 1948 and the determination of Arab leaders to defeat it. In their zeal to delegitimize the Jewish state, men such as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser promoted all kinds of anti-Semitic literature and rhetoric. Arab states became vast propaganda machines for anti-Semitism, brainwashing generations of their people with the most hateful ideas about Jews. Even the supposedly secular president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, declared in 2001 that Israelis were “trying to kill all the values of the divine religions, with the same mentality that brought about the betrayal and torturing of Christ and in the same way that they tried to betray the Prophet Muhammad.” Religious states such as Saudi Arabia were just as bad, if not worse.

Decades of state-sponsored propaganda have had an effect. Anti-Semitism is now routine discourse in Muslim populations in the Middle East and also far beyond. While some Arab governments have stepped back from the active promotion of hate, the damage has been done.

It should be possible to criticize Israel. As Peter Beinart has written, “establishing two legal systems in the same territory — one for Jews and one for Palestinians, as Israel does in the West Bank — is bigotry. . . . And it has lasted for more than a half-century.” It should be possible to talk about the enormous political influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. I recall senators privately worrying that if they supported the Iran nuclear deal, AIPAC would target them. (Of course, this is true of other lobbies and is not the only reason senators voted against the deal.) These are legitimate issues to vigorously debate and discuss in the United States, just as in Israel.

Unfortunately, by phrasing the issue as the two new representatives sometimes have, they have squandered an opportunity to further that important debate.

 

Dr. Fareed on DAVOS without America

January 28, 2019

The atmosphere at the 2019 World Economic Forum reflects the global picture perhaps more genuinely than in years past, and the painting is not very pretty. The mood here is subdued, cautious and apprehensive. There’s not much talk of a global slowdown, but no one is confident about a growth story, either. There is no great global political crisis, yet people speak in worried tones about the state of democracy, open societies and the international order”. — Dr.Fareed Zakaria

A Davos without America mirrors a world without America: The United States has withdrawn from the world.

DAVOS, Switzerland

https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2019/1/24/a-davos-without-america-mirrors-a-world-without-america

The atmosphere at the 2019 World Economic Forum reflects the global picture perhaps more genuinely than in years past, and the painting is not very pretty. The mood here is subdued, cautious and apprehensive. There’s not much talk of a global slowdown, but no one is confident about a growth story, either. There is no great global political crisis, yet people speak in worried tones about the state of democracy, open societies and the international order.

The White House scrapped the official U.S. delegation’s trip to this year’s conference — an outgrowth of President Trump’s spat with Congress — providing a perfect metaphor for the broader outlook: The United States has withdrawn from the world.

Meanwhile, Europe is distracted, divided and despondent. Of the continent’s three major leaders, only one, Germany’s lame-duck Chancellor Angela Merkel, even showed up. British Prime Minister Theresa May did not attend because of turmoil over Brexit. French President Emmanuel Macron chose not to come because he faces ongoing populist protests from the right and left. In this environment, there is a gaping absence of leadership in Davos from the usual defenders of liberal democracy and the rules-based international system.

This does not mean that any new global leaders have stepped into the void. Contrary to some speculation, China is playing a more muted role at the forum than in the past. It sent a respected statesman, Vice President Wang Qishan, with an anodyne message aiming to reassure the world that Beijing seeks “win-win” solutions and global cooperation. This probably reflects the reality that — politically and economically — China faces its own challenges at home, with slowing growth and President Xi Jinping trying to tighten his grip over China’s vast society. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a tougher-than-expected fight in upcoming national elections, so he didn’t show up, either.

It is not really the dawn of dictators, few of whom came, perhaps a reflection of the fact that global norms and fora like Davos still do not celebrate strongmen. Although Western democracies may be flagging, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan hold a much weaker hand than most people realize. They, too, along with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, stayed home. Jair Bolsonaro, the new president of Brazil, did attend and gave a much-anticipated speech, but it was barely six minutes long — and was received with decidedly mixed reviews.

The one area of consistent optimism among the attendees remains technology. Executives from multinational corporations such as Novartis and Cargill spoke about the next great technological opportunity — leveraging artificial intelligence to make their companies far more efficient and productive. This is a trend that they see as inexorable, forcing them to adapt or watch the competition grow. Executives and experts alike foresee that another layer of white-collar jobs could be at risk — those involving routine analytic skills. But chief executives here voiced optimism that it will all work out.

Businessmen and executives are more openly pessimistic about trade. They worry that a U.S.-China trade war could spill over across the world. Whether it happens, it seems clear that the great expansion of globalization is over. For the past 15 years, there has been no significant forward movement on trade, and many minor setbacks. This hasn’t yet translated into large-scale protectionism and tariff wars, but it is a new stagnancy.

If the West is divided, so are other regions. Almost no Arab leaders showed up to last weekend’s Arab League meeting in Beirut, relegating the summit to even greater irrelevance than usual. Latin America is now split between leaders such as the right-wing Bolsonaro and the new leftist president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The leaders of several smaller countries (all of whom insisted on staying off the record) described the world as adrift and lacking in any collective purpose, with only voices about narrow self-interest and conflict being heard. “When the Americans are engaged, we have a sense of direction,” one of them said to me. “We might disagree on some points, but at least there is a larger conversation, some efforts at cooperation. Now the only energy is negative — worries about retreat, trade wars. That’s not a world in which it is easy for us to move forward. We are all stuck.”

This, then, is the post-American world. Not one marked by Chinese dominance or Asian arrogance. Not an outright anti-American one, but one in which many yearn for a greater U.S. presence. One in which countries are freelancing, narrowly pursuing their own interests, and hoping that the framework of international order remains reasonably stable. But with no one actively shoring up the international system, the great question remains: In a world without leaders, will that system over time weaken and eventually crumble?

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Is the West’s future really so gloomy?

December 23, 2018

by Dr. Fareed Zakaria

https://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2018/12/20/is-the-wests-future-really-so-gloomy

Emmanuel Macron has been the great hope for those who worry that global politics is being dominated by populism, nationalism and racism. In his presidential campaign last year, Macron was able to rally France around a message of reform and multi-lateralism, staying firmly wedded to the European Union and other international alliances and institutions. Last month, he brought together 65 world leaders for a major gathering dedicated to global governance.

Now Macron has been humbled by the “yellow vest” street protests. He was forced to backtrack on some of his reforms and adopt new budget-busting subsidies in an attempt to mollify the mob. And there is the mess in Britain as it keeps trying (and failing) to Brexit; Italy’s budgetary woes; and the embrace of illiberal democracy in Hungary and Poland. It all adds up to a depressing picture of Europe and the West.

But are things really so gloomy? As Politico’s Matthew Karnitschnig points out, support for the E.U. is at its highest level in decades. And on closer examination, while the forces of populism continue to surge in some places, the story of the past few months has mostly been one of pushback. Consider Poland and Hungary, in many ways the poster children for the populist-nationalist movement. In Poland, efforts to reshape the country’s Supreme Court ignited massive national protests, and Europe’s high court ordered that the move be reversed. On Monday, Warsaw complied.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary

 

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s latest authoritarian steps — changing labor law and judicial authority — have also triggered widespread protests, uniting the nation’s opposition forces as never before. The street rebellion has the feel of a generalized opposition to the ruling party, which has predictably used tear gas on the mostly peaceful protesters, decried them as anti-Christian and accused George Soros of organizing the whole affair.

In France, news of Macron’s demise is premature. Yes, his poll numbers are way down, but voters still prefer him to the far-right Marine Le Pen by a wide margin. He has a five-year term, his party controls the legislature, and most analysts agree that his reforms are inevitable if France is to compete for investment and generate growth. He may end up a one-term president, but he will still have spearheaded the most important changes in France in a generation.

In Italy, the new coalition government had introduced a populist budget that promised a universal basic income and early retirement, only to meet the steely opposition of the E.U. And it was the populists who blinked. This week, Rome retreated from those measures and announced a budget conforming to the guidelines set by Brussels. It feels like a flashback to 2015, when Greek populists were compelled to enact the very program they campaigned against.

Britain’s May Prime Minister is caught in a political maelstrom

“Proponents of Brexit sold the country a fantasy that it could get the benefits of access to the European Union’s market without the costs of having to obey its rules. As time passes, more and more Britons are coming to realize that they cannot have their cake and eat it, too.”–Fareed Zakaria.

Britain remains more complicated, but the basic story is that every time the country comes close to actual Brexit, it pulls back, appalled by the costs. Prime Minister Theresa May has tried to do a soft Brexit, and while the compromise has earned her the scorn of the hard-line Brexiteers, they cannot topple her. Perhaps they don’t want to because then they would be saddled with May’s impossible task. Proponents of Brexit sold the country a fantasy that it could get the benefits of access to the European Union’s market without the costs of having to obey its rules. As time passes, more and more Britons are coming to realize that they cannot have their cake and eat it, too.

And finally, look at the United States, where a president who proudly embraces populism and nationalism reigns. In November, the Democratic Party had its strongest gains in the House of Representatives since the Watergate wave of 1974. President Trump has faced additional resignations from important members of his administration — some under ethical clouds, others tired of the chaos. Most significant, there are now 17 separate investigations into Trump and his associates, some of which have already produced indictments. And that does not include the series of congressional inquiries certain to begin once the Democrats take control of key committees in the House. For two years, Republicans have ruled Washington, giving them control over all information from government sources and all powers of subpoena and oversight. That ends Jan. 3.

I don’t mean to minimize the populist wave that is still coursing through the West and other parts of the world. But concern should not give way to despair. There are many people in every country who oppose the politics of anger and identity. They are also strong. They need to run fast but not run scared.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group

 

The Threat to Democracy — from the Left

September 17, 2018

by Dr. Fareed Zakaria

It has become commonplace to hear cries on the left to deny controversial figures on the right a platform to express their views. Colleges have disinvited speakers such as Condoleezza Rice and Charles Murray. Other campuses were unwilling or unable to allow conservative guests to actually speak, with protests overwhelming the events.

For several years now, scholars have argued that the world is experiencing a “democratic recession.” They have noted that the movement of countries toward democracy has slowed or stopped and even, in some places, reversed. They also note a general hollowing out of democracy in the advanced, industrial world. When we think about this problem, inevitably and rightly we worry about President Trump, his attacks on judges, the free press and his own Justice Department. But there is also a worrying erosion of a core democratic norm taking place on the left.

It has become commonplace to hear cries on the left to deny controversial figures on the right a platform to express their views. Colleges have disinvited speakers such as Condoleezza Rice and Charles Murray. Other campuses were unwilling or unable to allow conservative guests to actually speak, with protests overwhelming the events.

A similar controversy now involves Stephen K. Bannon, who, in recent months, has been making the rounds on the airwaves and in print — including an interview I did with him on CNN. Some have claimed that Bannon, since leaving the administration, is simply unimportant and irrelevant and thus shouldn’t be given a microphone. But if that were the case, surely the media, which after all is a for-profit industry, would notice the lack of public interest and stop inviting him.

The reality is that the people running the Economist, the Financial Times, “60 Minutes,” the New Yorker and many other organizations that have recently sought to feature Bannon know he is an intelligent and influential ideologist, a man who built the largest media platform for the new right, ran Trump’s successful campaign before serving in the White House, and continues to articulate and energize the populism that’s been on the rise throughout the Western world. He might be getting his 15 minutes of fame that will peter out, but, for now, he remains a compelling figure.

The real fear that many on the left have is not that Bannon is dull and uninteresting, but the opposite — that his ideas, some of which can reasonably be described as evoking white nationalism, will prove seductive and persuasive to too many people. Hence his detractors’ solution: Don’t give him a platform, and hope that this will make his ideas go away. But they won’t. In fact, by trying to suppress Bannon and others on the right, liberals are likely making their ideas seem more potent. Did the efforts of communist countries to muzzle capitalist ideas work?

Liberals need to be reminded of the origins of their ideology. In 1859, when governments around the world were still deeply repressive — banning books, censoring commentary and throwing people in jail for their beliefs — John Stuart Mill explained in his seminal work, “On Liberty,” that protection against governments was not enough: “There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose . . . its own ideas and practices . . . on those who dissent from them.” This classic defense of free speech, which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes later called the “freedom for the thought that we hate,” is under pressure in the United States — and from the left.

Bannon says Trump is facing a ‘coup’. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon called the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times “a crisis” for the Trump administration. (Reuters)

 

We’ve been here before. Half a century ago, students were also shutting down speakers whose views they found deeply offensive. In 1974, William Shockley, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who in many ways was the father of the computer revolution, was invited by Yale University students to defend his abhorrent view that blacks were a genetically inferior race who should be voluntarily sterilized. He was to debate Roy Innis, the African American leader of the Congress of Racial Equality. (The debate was Innis’s idea.) A campus uproar ensued, and the event was canceled. A later, rescheduled debate with another opponent was disrupted.

The difference from today is that Yale recognized that it had failed in not ensuring that Shockley could speak. It commissioned a report on free speech that remains a landmark declaration of the duty of universities to encourage debate and dissent. The report flatly states that a college “cannot make its primary and dominant value the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility or mutual respect. . . . it will never let these values . . . override its central purpose. We value freedom of expression precisely because it provides a forum for the new, the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox.”

The report added: “We take a chance, as the First Amendment takes a chance, when we commit ourselves to the idea that the results of free expression are to the general benefit in the long run, however unpleasant they may appear at the time.” It is on this bet for the long run, a bet on freedom — of thought, belief, expression and action — that liberal democracy rests.

American Foreign Policy: Trump’s Helsinki Debacle

July 19, 2018

The case for censuring Trump

by Jonathan Alter

Jonathan Alter is an MSNBC analyst and columnist for the Daily Beast.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-case-for-censuring-trump/2018/07/18/13f226ce-8acc-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.283b2ed56636&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1

“In Trump’s case, censure would not be a substitute for impeachment but a possible precursor to it. At a minimum, advocating censure would be a movement-building effort that would bring tone and focus to the amorphous “Check Trump” themes that Democratic candidates will use before the midterms. It would embed Helsinki in the campaign and help keep that ghastly episode fresh even after attention shifts elsewhere.”–Jonathan Alter

Sixty-four years ago, the U.S. Senate censured the bullying demagogue Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin for conduct that “tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.” McCarthy lingered in the Senate for another 2 ½ years., but the censure essentially ended his early-1950s “Red Scare” reign of intimidation and character assassination.

Now President Trump, with his craven performance opposite Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, has brought his office into dishonor and disrepute. In doing so, Trump has presented a gift to congressional Democrats who dread campaigning on impeachment for the midterm election in the fall. The promise to censure Trump if Democrats retake the House would likely appeal more to voters than vowing to undo the 2016 election through impeachment.

For all the bipartisan condemnation of what has been called the “Helsinki humiliation,” censure isn’t part of the discussion. It should be.

“Timid Senate Republicans remain too frightened of their constituents to sanction their President”.–Alter

The Senate will not be a fruitful place to look for it. Timid Senate Republicans remain too frightened of their constituents to sanction their president. Under the most common reading of the rules, censure in the Senate would take 60 votes — a high bar unless special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation turns up five-alarm evidence involving the president.

The House, by contrast, requires only a simple majority to approve a motion of censure. If Democrats take that chamber this fall, they could censure Trump as early as January. He would obviously use it to try to rally his base. But even if the vote were largely symbolic, a resolution officially condemning Trump on national security and other grounds would be worth the trouble.

Censure would provide at least some measure of accountability for Trump, and it would be a repudiation-by-proxy of Putin. Along with strengthened sanctions against Russia, censure would send a strong message to the world that the U.S. president’s assault on NATO and capitulation to the Kremlin do not reflect the policy of the full U.S. government.

Last year, a small band of House liberals tried, with little notice, to censure Trump for blaming “both sides” after white supremacists sparked violence in Charlottesville. He deserved censure then, but today’s grounds are even stronger.

Censure, by either the Senate or the House, is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and it has no legal force. But its rare use — only two dozen or so times in the nation’s history — makes it an especially stinging reprimand. Among presidents, only Andrew Jackson has been censured (for withholding key documents about the Bank of the United States), though his censure was later expunged. In 1998, when President Clinton was embroiled in a sex scandal involving a White House intern, many Senate Democrats favored voting for censure and moving on. But the Republican-controlled House was hellbent on impeaching him, instead. Republicans paid a price for that overreach, as today’s Democrats may well note.

In Trump’s case, censure would not be a substitute for impeachment but a possible precursor to it. At a minimum, advocating censure would be a movement-building effort that would bring tone and focus to the amorphous “Check Trump” themes that Democratic candidates will use before the midterms. It would embed Helsinki in the campaign and help keep that ghastly episode fresh even after attention shifts elsewhere.

Some liberals may insist that impeachment must be part of Democratic campaigns in the fall. But most candidates know that moderate voters in flippable states and districts would prefer to see Mueller’s evidence first. Pushing impeachment now — without rock-solid evidence of the “treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary to win a two-thirds vote for conviction in the Senate — plays right into Trump’s hands.

Pushing censure doesn’t do that. An official reprimand of the President requires no evidence of collusion — beyond the sickening sight of two heads of state colluding on the world stage. Helsinki might become a useful wedge issue for Democrats. When asked what to do about Trump, they can say they favor censure now on national security grounds and want to wait for Mueller’s findings before considering what to do next. That answer would put Republican opponents on the spot. If GOP candidates oppose censure, they would be essentially saying they think the Helsinki humiliation was no big deal.

As Democrats prepare for possible control of one or both houses of Congress, they must develop their long-atrophied parliamentary muscles. That means planning hearings, investigations and bills to fix a multitude of Trump administration abuses. But they shouldn’t neglect the power of public shame, even for the most shameless man on the planet.

 

Ronald’s Out, Donald’s in

July 18, 2018

by Dr. Fareed Zakaria

ttps://fareedzakaria.com/columns/2018/7/13/ronalds-out-donalds-in

President Trump’s trip to Europe is being portrayed by both him and his critics as revolutionary. He tells us that he single-handedly and miraculously got members of NATO to increase their defense spending sharply. His critics claim that he single-handedly wrecked the Western alliance by sowing doubt and discord among America’s closest partners.

Neither assertion is really true. Trump’s demands are, in fact, familiar American demands. President Barack Obama routinely asked the same of NATO allies. His first defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, chose to deliver his “farewell” speech in Europe — weeks before leaving office — on precisely this subject. He predicted a “dwindling appetite . . . in the American body politic . . . to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling . . . to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.” And he warned that “future U.S. political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”

Trump’s loud charge against Germany this week — that it has become too dependent on Russian natural gas — does have considerable merit. The Germans have eagerly signed up for an energy relationship with Russia that is strategically dangerous. Trump gets some of the dynamics wrong. It is not so much that by importing large amounts of natural gas from Russia, Berlin can be blackmailed. The Russians are equally dependent on German cash. But the new pipelines being built could allow Russia to threaten Eastern European countries by withholding energy supplies or jacking up prices, and Moscow has used and abused this energy card in the past.

Again, however, Trump’s complaint was often voiced by the Obama administration. And in neither of these cases is there any indication that Trump’s crude and aggressive approach has produced any results. If anything, it has made some Europeans feel that they have to push back. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas reminded Trump that Germany is a vassal neither of Russia nor of the United States.

The real revolution, however, is in what Trump is doing with his foreign policy at home. He is continuing with his project, by intent or instinct, to remake the Republican Party. His approach abroad appears to be designed to create a new Republican foreign policy that is much closer to the party’s historical roots — distrustful of foreigners, alliances and treaties — and, in many senses, flatly isolationist. In his rallies, Trump describes America’s closest allies as “our worst enemies” and says they “kill us” on both security and trade. “We’re the schmucks,” he bemoans about America in its dealings with NATO and the European Union.

Jonathan Chait writes in New York magazine that “Trump is training his base to hate NATO and like Putin.” Indeed, Trump has been remarkably successful: Fifty-one percent of Republicans now believe the United States shouldn’t defend NATO allies unless they increase defense spending. Even more astonishingly, Trump seems to have reversed Republican attitudes toward Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin. At a recent rally, Trump said, “You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people.” Republicans are now twice as likely as Democrats to express a favorable opinion of Putin, and 56 percent of Republicans want to cooperate and engage more with Russia.

The Republican Party has proved remarkably malleable ideologically. The party of law and order now has deep distrust of the FBI. The party of free trade is now far more solidly behind protectionism than the Democrats. The party that celebrated President Ronald Reagan’s optimism about immigrants now contains a majority that supports separating families at the border and criminally prosecuting undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s political genius continues to be that he recognizes that the base of the party is ripe for this ideological revolution — that while the old Reaganite formula may still be subscribed to by Republican elites in Washington and New York, it’s not embraced out there in the grass roots.

Five years ago, one establishment Republican wrote that “the specter of isolationism is stalking the Republican Party. . . . It is hardly certain that isolationist sentiment will prevail. But it is critical . . . that national-security Republicans can answer the questions being raised, restore a coherent party platform and thereby thwart the new isolationism.”

Those words were written by John Bolton, now Trump’s national security adviser. It seems even the most stalwart national-security Republicans have accommodated themselves to the Trump revolution.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group