Earlier today on X someone brought up Neville Chamberlain in relation to those currently running the world and I noted that (a) the Holocaust hadn’t started by the end of his tenure and (b) he was quite right that a Second World War would end Britain’s dominant position in the world; that he wasn’t necessarily wrong in the narrow sense. And this all got me thinking. I know, dangerous! But in light of the rise of neo-Nazi anti-Semitism on both the Left and the Right, I think it is good for us to sort of think the whole matter over again.

First and foremost, the world is a tricky place. It doesn’t lend itself to the hard and fast a lot of the time. In the light of history, we know Churchill was right – that every effort should have been made from Hitler’s rise to oppose and eventually destroy his regime. But that is hindsight. All credit to Churchill for correctly perceiving the sort of man Hitler was but, also, good to keep in mind that Churchill always sought dragons to slay. It was heroic and cast him in the starring role where he could display his unique dragon-slaying talents. Bottom line is that in 1933 and, indeed, up until March 1939 with Hitler’s occupation of Prague (or November, 1938 if you want to use Kristallnacht at the clarifying moment), the true nature of Hitler could only be guessed at, not known. And as far as things went to that point, he was no worse than Stalin. In other words, the grounds for a holy crusade were insufficient until later. It was only when he did something without the slightest justification and without even attempting to get some sort of international agreement on it (so, taking Prague or killing Jews simply for being Jews) that it could be clearly understood that Hitler wasn’t just a bad man, but an existential threat. And even at that point, the Holocaust wasn’t happening – and could not be imagined by any sane person.

Chamberlain was highly condemned after he left office – by the Labour party and by Churchill. It is mostly via the books Guilty Men (anonymously co-authored by Labour, Liberal and Conservative politicians) and Churchill’s The Gathering Storm that we perceive Chamberlain. These books are not fair to Chamberlain – nor were they intended to be. They were written to make a case – in Guilty Men a case against Tories and in The Gathering Storm a case against Chamberlain specifically. And they made their cases very effectively – and not dishonestly, especially in the case of Churchill’s book. But they still were cases – legal briefs, as it were. They weren’t the whole story and they weren’t cross examined by the defense. At least, not until decades later when confidential government documents and Chamberlain’s personal papers became available.

Chamberlain, though, wasn’t a coward nor was he an idiot. He had the word from the military Chiefs of Staff: there was no way Britain could stop a German conquest of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain had started British rearmament in 1935 so he knew that force had to be confronted by force. But he also knew that, by and large, the British people didn’t want to fight. That, indeed, the whole WWI thing was perceived as a mistake (and it was for Britain; they never should have sent a mass army to Flanders to chew German barbed wire). If there was some price to be paid which would get Hitler to sit down and shut up, Chamberlain figured it was still cheaper than a war which would destroy Europe and Britain’s Empire even if successful. Remember: as far as being homicidal and oppressive, by Munich Hitler was still no worse than Stalin, and nobody was calling for a crusade to end Stalin’s regime. The einsatzgruppen and death camps were still in the future. And so he did what he did. And went to war when it was clear that only military force would stop Hitler. And he’s been condemned at the bar of history ever since.

And we are supposed to learn from that history, but we don’t. Part of the problem is that ever since WWII, in order to get us to go along with massive defense appropriations, a national security State and endless wars we never get to win, they keep telling us that each new threat is a new Hitler. That if we don’t get on the ball and stop this guy, then its WWIII!!! And we’re all GONNA DIE!!!! This might make for clever propaganda but in the long run it has led to American’s getting fatigued with the effort. The expenditures of blood and treasure haven’t made us safer, freer or more prosperous. The latest iteration of this is, of course, Putin – if we don’t stop him in Ukraine then all of Europe will fall! For goodness sake, the man can’t even move his armies forward twenty miles in a straight line over the course of an entire summer’s campaign. He’s not about to roll into Warsaw, Berlin and Paris. Plus there is no indication he wants to take more than Ukraine, and maybe not even all of it. I mean, sure, if his armies do finally gain a strategic breakthrough he’s going to wring every ounce of advantage out of that…but, for now, that just isn’t happening. And it doesn’t look like it will happen any time soon.

But we get the Putin/Hitler thing endlessly and we’re called traitors if we don’t support an open-ended commitment to Ukraine even at the risk of a shooting war with Russia. And while we’ve been making a boogie man out of Putin, a real Hitlerian threat has arisen that we’re not fighting. Indeed, very large numbers of Americans are actively applauding this threat…and are joining it on its journey to anti-Semitic hatred and violence that would make Himmler proud. That threat is Islamism.

As I said earlier, in 1933 you simply couldn’t know. You could – and should – hate Hitler right away for the sort of things he was openly doing from the start, but you still couldn’t know where it was going. That there was a madman in charge of a major European power who’s ultimate goal was the death of every single Jew in the world…and the enslavement of those he considered to be inferiors. But now it is 2025 and we have the example of 1933-1945 in hand…and we’ve got people in the Muslim world who are using the exact same terminology as Hitler’s Nazis…who are denying the basic humanity of Jews. Who’s goal is the murder of every single Jew in the world…and the enslavement of everyone who isn’t Muslim. Is this all Muslims? It doesn’t matter. No more than it mattered if the Nazis represented all Germans. In the end, people who deny the humanity of others and propose mass murder and slavery as a solution to global problems should be stopped at the earliest opportunity. This is the lesson we were supposed to learn from WWII…not that every tin pot dictator is an existential threat, but that existential threats are existential threats and the quicker you end them, the better. That is, we know now that on January 30th, 1933 the Anglo-French alliance should have invaded Germany and killed Hitler and his Nazis. They couldn’t know they should…but if any of us could go back in time, that’s what we’d tell them they have to do. That any costs associated with doing this will be vastly less than the costs to come if action isn’t taken.

Now is the time to imagine you’re a time traveler from 2100…and your job is to tell us that the Islamists and associated neo-Nazi anti-Semites have to be destroyed, regardless of cost, because any such cost will be less than letting them go on. But that isn’t happening – mostly because we so distorted the history of WWII and its run-up and have so relentlessly ignored the rise of neo-Nazism in the Muslim world and the West that we simply don’t know what to do as a people.

To be sure, some people do – Trump is very clear on it: Putin isn’t Hitler and the stupid war in Ukraine should end. All Muslims aren’t Islamists so its ok to cut deals with the reasonable side of it…but the Islamists have to go. The anti-Semites – foreign and domestic – we see infecting our cities and colleges have to go. And Trump’s reward for seeing the world as it is: he’s a stooge of Putin and Israel. No, it doesn’t have to make sense. Stupid lies never have to. They just have to get the point across in an easily swallowed manner…and people are looking for an easy scapegoat for things not working perfectly.

And that brings us to the origin of the problem: the lack of apparent sense in it all. You have to think about how Marxism and anti-Semitism gained purchase. The world emerged from a Royalist system of life and thought in the 19th century and started along the path to voting to decide. Voting was the cure all, you see? That is how it was sold, and continued to be sold: if we can just vote, its all gravy! Surely a government we vote on will reflect our values and implement policies in accordance with our desires, right? How else could it be?

Well, it didn’t work out like that at all. The elected leaders would argue endlessly in parliament and in the streets but nothing went right and like clockwork it was revealed that those in government and business were giving and taking bribes. You couldn’t appeal to the King for justice – he had either been overthrown or made into a political eunuch. Various shadowy factions seemed to be in control and perverting the will of the people, at least as people perceived it (and most people perceive their own views as the general will – that is, they assume most people want what they want and can’t imagine anyone trying to get something else except in service of corruption or other evil). The Marxist and anti-Semitic agitators provided the answer – and it was a similar answer: a cabal of rich people were running the world in secret and had to be overthrown. And these rich people promoted perversion, addiction and crime to further their schemes of control. Sound familiar?

America was mostly protected against this because our strictly limited government for the longest time did ultimately reflect our values. Because it couldn’t do otherwise – our values were written into the government document. We could say what we want. Bear arms. Live where we want. Go where we want. Hard work lead to success. The kooks were here by the middle of the 19th century but nobody was paying much attention to them…until things started to not be as we wanted. The massive wave of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries wasn’t voted on…it just happened. Big business subsidized it to get cheap labor. Nobody was fighting to create a Federal Reserve…it was enacted at the behest of the rich but it wasn’t a popular movement. Year by year more and more things started to happen that nobody voted for and we were told we just had to go along with it and, for the most part, we did because America was so strong that it seemed acceptable to have a few odd things here and there. It was only when things started to go bad that the Marxist and anti-Semite conspiracy theorists started to gain traction…call it the end of the Vietnam War for the start point…the beginning of lunacy becoming mainstream…where Americans seriously started to think there was a shadowy cabal running the world.

And you have to keep in mind that there is some reality in this – it isn’t Jews or the Capitalists doing it…but there are rich people who do pervert society for their own ends. And some of them are Jews (some Catholic, some Protestant, some agnostic…but the Jews are always the easy target because they are small in numbers and can thus be cast as alien demons much easier). There really are people who get things nobody wants them to have via bribery. Nobody ever wanted some guy to be paid $100,000 to study Marxist lesbian poetry in El Salvador…but the guy got paid. How? Why? One of a million such things. How did this happen? How in heck does Mega Corporation X get to fire 10,000 Americans and hire 8,000 H1B foreigners to replace them? Who said? When was this debated?

It is corrupt. It is suicidal. So amazingly stupid that no sane person would agree to it…and so the insanity must be part of a Larger Conspiracy. Because of this the Marxist and the anti-Semite never lacked for supposed evidence of the Conspiracy. You just had to ignore the fact that most rich people are just people living their lives as are most Jews. It is so much easier to find a scapegoat – that much everyone knows, almost instinctively. Anyone with sense knows that the problem isn’t caused by The Rich or The Jews…but by individual people. Such people might need to be hanged, but you don’t hang their second cousin with them just because they share a bank account or a religion. That’s just stupid – only an idiot would believe that. But even knowing this doesn’t protect a person from falling for it…because it really is so easy. It requires no thought. And if you join the Marxist or anti-Semitic camps (which are rapidly melting into one camp), you’re welcomed heartily and each assertion of Marxist or anti-Semitic thought is lauded and rewarded and you’re now part of the Club…with the new fear of being ostracized for dissent.

And this concentration on The Rich or The Jews or any other group deflects from our real problem: getting after those who actually have done things to destroy our nation and world…and those who propose to destroy us all. Some anti-Semite idiot ranting and raving about the Rothschilds is taking time away from looking into who is giving to the Tides Foundation, a major money launderer for the overall Left. The moron Commie on a tear about how much money Musk has is taking away time better spent asking how much Chinese government money is now invested in the USA, and which Americans – of all political stripes – are benefitting from it. If you want a conspiracy theory, then the conspiracy is people who donate to Tides and who take Chinese money trying to make sure we don’t notice it. That we talk about anything but it. That we hate each other with a passion rather than uniting to ask them uncomfortable questions.

And that is just it – all of it. The solution to our problems: going after those individuals who are causing them. Even though that is hard. Even though it will mean taking down some of our own. Especially even though it is so much easier to allow the problem people to distract us with nonsense conspiracy theories (and, yes, malevolent money goes into funding these things…these days, I’m quite confident a lot of Chinese, Russian and Iranian money is spent on line promoting the hatred and fear). Find the real enemy and then destroy him. Don’t get distracted. Do it. Trump is doing it. Bondi is doing it. Bongino is doing it. So, too, is DeSantis doing it. Plenty on our side are…hampered at every turn by supposed allies of ours who are actually, IMO, paid shills who want us arguing with each other about nothing. We do have enemies we must beat…but they aren’t The Jews or The Rich or a shadowy cabal…they are right out there, funding attacks on us and trying to sow division in our ranks. Don’t let them. Don’t get distracted. Don’t fall for nonsense.

One of the objections to MAGA Tariffs is, “who wants to work in a factory?”. It is usually delivered with snark by someone who probably doesn’t know how to change a tire but it is also a real issue – and not nearly the only one we have in re-shoring production to America.

A couple days ago on X I saw a post by a guy who described the time he decided to build a steel mill. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t have too much problem on the tax and regulatory sides. It was there, of course, and some communities do NIMBY such things to impossibility, but the pragmatic facts of life are that some community is going to welcome your mill with open arms and knock down barriers to construction. No; his problem was that he couldn’t get the machines in America. That is, the tools that allow you to make steel.

One thing our Knowledge Workers don’t know (well, one of the very, very many things they don’t know) is how complex industrial processes are. Another guy on X did note that most of these Knowledge Workers would be reduced to drooling confusion if they tried to do the math he does day in and day out to get engineering projects completed. There are, for instance, a large variety of steels and they are all made with different elements added at different times to get the desired results. It takes thought, planning and skill to get this done. And, of course, the right machines. None of which are made in the USA these days.

Imagine that – the USA used to be the world’s premier steel maker and when WWII kicked in we massively expanded our productive capacity so that at the end of it all, we produced more war material than the entire Axis combined – equipping our own large military force on a lavish scale while also sustaining the military forces of our allies. Can’t do it these days, guys. We can’t even try to do it. We can’t make the machines to expand production and we don’t have sufficient people with the basic skills to install and run those machines. We can attend a 2 hour powerpoint meeting discussing our diversity targets, but not much else.

So, the question is actually two-fold: who is to work in these factories and how are we to obtain the skills for the work to be done?

We’re probably going to have to import some skills. That is, if we find we simply don’t have enough skilled people (and we almost certainly don’t) then we’re going to have to shop for them around the world. But, don’t get upset – this is not like importing Third World peasants as we’ve been doing. We’re looking for people with know-how who are willing to become Americans. Like if we want to build a shoe factory in the USA, might be smart if we just pinched a couple shoe factory foremen from Vietnam. They’d probably be delighted to come. Same thing with people who know how to make machines to produce steel and so on and so forth. Once we have the people with the skills, we can then really set to work. But with what workers? I might be ok with a Vietnamese guy running the shoe shop floor, but I don’t want to import the workers from Vietnam. I want Americans working there. How do I get them?

Positive and negative incentives. We’ll tackle negative first.

We have huge numbers of fit people on welfare. Another huge pool of people isn’t fit because it is drug-addled. We must disincentivize the ability of people to sit on their butts swiping the EBT cards…and also disincentivize the ability of people to wander our streets in a drug-induced haze.

Whole bunch of ways to do this – first off, get rid of EBT cards. Why in heck are we making it easy for these people? Paper food stamps. Next, food stamps are only good for basic staples: meat, vegetables, bread, milk, cereals. That’s it. You want a coke? Not with the stamps. You want some cheetos? Not with the stamps. For goodness sake you aren’t using your welfare benefits to go to a restaurant. And while you’re on it – I want you harassed beyond reason to get a job. If you can’t find one after a period of time you’ll be called in to do grunt work cleaning streets and so forth. Nobody gets to sit on their backside getting fed unless they are physically incapable of work. And all of this stops if you do one, simple little task: get a job.

Secondly, stop letting bums be bums. No, you can’t sleep on the streets. No, you can’t be unwashed…so dirty that you could be used as a Walking Dead extra without makeup. No, you can’t be drunk or high in public. And we’re going to harass you even worse than the welfare bums…you’re going to be rousted, ticketed, and spun six ways to Sunday…until you sober up and get a job. Sure, we’ll help. For the welfare bums there will be skills training – including such things as housecleaning and managing finances. For the druggies there will be treatment to get off the sauce. But for both the primary thing will be to make it a gigantic hassle to not have a job. You get what you pay for: right now we’re paying for laziness and druggies. We’re going to have to start paying for sober workers.

Now, some positive reinforcement! For our druggies and welfare bums, there will be a skills deficit, especially early on. Keep in mind that for some welfare people, they’re third generation or more – its been a long while since anyone in the genetic line held down a job. Point blank: these people are at the start only going to be marginally employable and simply won’t be able to make enough money. That’s where we step in and say if you are showing up your 40 hours a week and doing the best you can, we’ll make up any difference between income and basic cost of living. We’re not just helping these people – we’re trying to build a culture of work and responsibility so the kids of these people will start on a higher level and need ever less support to get rolling.

For others – especially youngsters – it is a different set of incentives. Like this: if you are willing to go to college to learn a technical trade (like, say, architecture) then if you’ll work part time in construction while going to school, we’ll free ride or at least heavily subsidize your college tuition. We won’t do a thing for people looking for a “Knowledge Worker” degree…but if your goal is a career where you actually do something, we’re going to help you out…and you’re going to learn the nuts and bolts of how things are done in the real world. The basic thrust here – and people can come up with other incentives – is to make it smart to learn how to do things. To make, mine and grow things. Heck, I’ll take a willing kid out of the ghetto and send him to a college to learn agricultural science while having him work the fields nearby for an existing farm. Think about what we’re totally getting in that exchange. He’s no longer in a place that produces druggies and gangbangers, he’s replacing the illegal working the fields and he’s learning both the theory and practice of agriculture which is going to turn him into someone who is tremendously useful in improving American agriculture going forward. On and on like that.

It is not snap of the fingers and America is Great Again. It is going to take some work. Some thought. A willingness to fail and then just start all over again with a new approach. The first step is what Trump is doing – Tariffs and cutting government waste. That is going to prove the easy part.