Tag: United States

Native Privilege

Mike Coté1 Comment

Native Americans have experienced a great deal of historic tragedy, but that does not merit extraordinarily special treatment in the present.

There are many things which, in the modern progressive worldview, are the original sins of the United States of America: chattel slavery, racism, imperialism, militarism, and more. But perhaps the one with the most actual historical backing is the treatment of American Indians by the European colonists and their descendants. To be clear, I do not buy the idea that Native Americans were actors without agency in this conflict, nor do I believe that the large-scale depopulation faced by the continent’s pre-contact inhabitants should be considered a genocide. The first is disproven by the multisided melees that characterized the complex relations between settlers and natives, while the second is shown to be untrue by the fact of novel disease transmission – something not understood by either party at the time.

Despite the falsity of these major claims, there is some truth to the idea that American Indians have been ill-treated by our nation in the past. We have broken treaties, forced internal migrations, and engaged in shady dealmaking. None of these are good, even if they are not as evil as what progressives contend. Making amends for these wrongs and treating Native groups as equal members of American society is what has been and will continue to be done. It is also key to deal with official tribes as the semi-independent nations they are – hence the treaty-making. All of these things are happening and have been for decades. This has been a bipartisan effort through the legislature, the executive branch, and the courts. In fact, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Republican appointee, has been one of the most stalwart defenders of Native treaty rights in the entire judiciary.

But this is not enough for progressives, who seem to want to undo centuries of history and return to an idyllic pre-contact utopia that never existed. In support of that quest, they are using government and cultural institutions to privilege American Indians in a manner that cements them at the tippy-top of the intersectional hierarchy and caters fawningly to their every desire.

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Suez 2.0?: The Houthis v. International Shipping

Mike Coté1 Comment

The geopolitics of 1956 can feel ancient, but, 67 years later, history may be repeating itself.

The biggest geopolitical story of 2023 is, inarguably, in my opinion, the Hamas attack of October 7 and its aftermath: the ongoing war in Gaza. That story has gathered in various other strands – the rise of Iran in the region, Israeli internal politics, American partisanship and the Middle East – while spinning out other yarns – the cross-border tensions with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the impact on the potential Arab-Israeli warming, the response of the Egyptian government to Palestinian refugees, and the further moral depravity of the United Nations. But the most significant of those subsidiary tales has thus far been the Houthi assault on commerce in the Red Sea. That story is already making an enormous impact across the world and could signal far greater issues in the future.

So, who are the Houthis and what are they doing in the region that is causing such wide-ranging effects?

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Compendium #3

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This site is not the only place to find my writing; I have been published at numerous other outlets across the web. In this recurring series, I’ll post some choice passages from these outside pieces and show you where to find the rest. Think of this as a mere tasting of the full smorgasbord. Without further ado, here’s Compendium #3, covering October 2023 through early December 2023.

Accusing Israel of Genocide Is a Moral Outrage, National Review, October 26, 2023

In this piece for National Review, I discussed the bogus claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in its war with Hamas, as well as the idea that it was a state founded on that infamy. In reality, Israel is the target of a genocidal ideology, not the perpetrator.

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A Modest Proposal – United Nations Edition

Mike Coté1 Comment

** This is the first in a recurring series, in which I offer some modest proposals – in the venerable tradition of Jonathan Swift – for American and international politics. **

The United Nations – that paragon of international diplomacy, antisemitism, dictator-worship, and uselessness – has been a waste of time since its inception. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi stated, with respect to the spaceport of Mos Eisley, that “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”; clearly, he has never seen the UN complex in Turtle Bay. Every year, thousands of foreign diplomats, including some of the planet’s most vile leaders and their toadies, descend on this unfortunate neighborhood in midtown Manhattan for a circus of the absurd. Year-round, the UN is populated by bureaucrats galore, who, when not spending their time attacking America and its allies (notably the world’s only Jewish state), squander money on idiot boondoggles, promote evil autocracies to the Human Rights Council, and publish antisemitic school textbooks for Gazan kindergartners.

The UN has failed to maintain peace, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity since its foundation, in which it was intended to do all of those things. In many cases, it has dramatically worsened the conditions it was meant to ameliorate; “peacekeepers” in Haiti caused a cholera outbreak during their daily breaks from raping locals, other UN-funded troops failed to stop genocidal massacres in Rwanda and Bosnia, and, most recently, UNRWA workers in Gaza joined with Hamas in taking Israelis hostage. For all of its failings, at least the League of Nations had the good sense to close shop after it fell on its face for two decades. The United Nations is going on 80 and it still hasn’t figured out that it causes more problems than it has ever solved. Oh, and the United States is this organization’s largest benefactor, most powerful member, and its physical host.

It’s beyond time we all said enough. Enough of the anti-Americanism. Enough of the corruption. Enough of the failure. Enough of the blithering idiocy couched in diplomat-speak. Enough of the vaunted “international community.” Enough of the United Nations. In that vein, here is my modest proposal as to how we should move forward.

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War Is Hell

Mike Coté2 Comments

Far too many observers of the Israeli retaliation against Hamas see war as a theoretical construct, not a battlefield reality.

The famed Union Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman is widely credited with popularizing the phrase “war is hell.” And he would certainly know, seeing action at some of the war’s bloodiest battles and captaining the controversial March to the Sea, where Union soldiers would run roughshod over Confederate lands from Atlanta to Savannah. That march, replete with the utter devastation of civilian infrastructure, farmland, and property, helped break the back of the Confederacy and has remained a textbook example of total war. The term ‘total war’ itself was a product of World War I, which saw entire societies mobilized for what they all saw – and some experienced – as existential combat. The sequel, which killed even more people and included the most heinous act of genocide in the modern era, was the last of these sorts of conflicts – or so many thought.

After the end of the Cold War – which was itself something of a totalizing rivalry – the mood in the West was triumphant, not just over Soviet Communism, but over History itself. Gone were the days of existential conflict, replaced by a world of progress where genuine alternatives to the liberal democratic capitalist world order were nowhere to be found. These naïve optimists were, however, flat out wrong. Alternatives to the American order have reared their ugly heads: from the CCP’s brand of techno-totalitarianism, to Vladimir Putin’s throwback imperialism, to the militant antisemitic Islamism of Tehran and Hamas, oppositional ideologies abound. And those ideologies are more than happy to engage in totalizing, existential conflict. We have seen that in Ukraine for the past 600-plus days, and we are seeing it in Israel now.

Make no mistake, the Hamas terror of October 7, combined with its genocidal ideology and the support of regional powers like Iran, poses an existential risk to the Jewish state. If Hamas is not utterly annihilated, Israel will face a future of constant attack from all fronts meant to eradicate the nation itself – and massacre its population in the process. Hamas and Iran have made this into a total war; Israel has recognized that reality and is responding in kind. And that’s where we run into problems.

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