Letter from Francis P. Sempa
‘Harry Levine Got It Wrong’
I have been writing about history and foreign policy for 40 years for national and international publications, and many readers have disagreed with my policy views and interpretations of historical events, but until now no reader has ever accused me of “dishonest writings.”
Harry Levine claims that I omitted George Washington’s qualifications regarding his warning against permanent alliances. Mr. Levine should read more carefully. Here is what I wrote that Washington said in the Farewell Address: “We should ‘steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,’ while trusting to ‘temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.’”
As far as Washington’s commitment to honoring existing commitments with foreign countries, perhaps Mr. Levine is unaware that Washington as president ignored an existing treaty with France in order to stay neutral in France’s war with Great Britain because remaining neutral was putting America First.
Finally, Mr. Levine implies that Washington would join with those state and local officials who encourage active obstruction of federal laws passed by Congress regarding illegal immigration and would oppose the Trump administration’s attempts to faithfully execute those laws.
Perhaps Mr. Levine should read about how Washington handled the Whiskey Rebellion when citizens sought to resist federal excise taxes between 1791 and 1794.
Mr. Levine should do his homework before calling someone “dishonest.”
Francis P. Sempa
Columnist, “The ‘Right’ View”
Ms Sempa uses all the standard deceptions of propaganda – half truths, facts out of context, misleading comparisons. One article made the false-equivalency of Trump’s high-seas murder of drug mules with Obama’s authorization of strikes on the leadership of Al Qaeda conducted under the post 9/11 Authorization of the Use of Force act of Congress. Readers of the FJ are led to believe that fishermen recruited to smuggle cocaine are the equivalent threat of the terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 attack in New York City. That’s a slight to the families that lost loved-ones on 9/11, some of whom live in Cooperstown.
Another piece of propaganda justified Trump’s renaming the Kennedy Center, citing the historically revisionist fact the building was envisioned as a “National Cultural Center.” Congress named the proposed building the Kennedy Center five years before it opened. It has always been the Kennedy Center and will surely revert to the name soon enough.
Mr. Sempa writes, “Finally, Mr. Levine implies that Washington would join with those state and local officials who encourage active obstruction of federal laws passed by Congress regarding illegal immigration and would oppose the Trump administration’s attempts to faithfully execute those laws. Perhaps Mr. Levine should read about how Washington handled the Whiskey Rebellion when citizens sought to resist federal excise taxes between 1791 and 1794.” I don’t think Mr. Levine set out to defend Washington’s behavior during the Whiskey Rebellion. I do think his letter expresses differences with Mr. Sempa’s interpretation of Washington’s address. Mr. Levine suggests that Washington, was without question a better soldier and statesman than Trump and was formulating within the context of his own experiences at the moment of the address a vision of nationhood that makes alliances based on protection and advancement of that vision. George Washington did plenty of things wrong; his answer to the Whiskey Rebellion may have been one of many. He had slaves; he betrayed the Haudenosaunee. Still to me, Washington’s concept of alliances was one that supported his dedication to a vision of nationhood very young in its formulation and in the context of many inconsistencies and hypocrisies that all manner of people have spent 250 years working to dispense or improve. Washington was flawed, as we all are. But Washington was a statesman sincerely working for a better path forward for his people; Trump is a dishonest hack who cares about no one but Trump. Therein lies a difference that can’t be discounted. Since Mr. Sempa, who makes sure we know all his credentials at the top of this letter here, is an historian and thus ostensibly knows how to do research, perhaps he should research what myriad conservative judges, including Trump appointed judges, have to say about just how “faithfully” the Trump administration is executing laws with regard to immigration. For just one example among many, check out Trump appointed judge, John Totrud’s, scathing ruling of the Trump administration’s lawlessness. I’d also suggest that any person who can assert that Mr. Trump, who pardoned hundreds of lawless and violent criminals who stormed our Capitol and attacked the police officers protecting it because he ginned them up with his claims of a stolen election that wasn’t stolen, knows what it means to “faithfully” execute laws is – well – dishonest.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is apparently alive and well in certain parts of upstate New York. Trump is not just a bad president, Mr. Northrup writes, but a “murderer” for killing drug cartel members who bring deadly drugs like fentanyl–which has killed more Americans than Al Qaeda–into the U.S. Presumably, Mr. Northrup applies the term “murderer” to the brave military personnel who carry out such strikes on the high seas (or are they “just following orders”). And he envisions a time when the Trump-Kennedy Center will be renamed the Kennedy Center again, after a president he presumably admires–a president whose administration was complicit in the killing of South Vietnamese President Diem, that tried repeatedly to kill Fidel Castro, and who appointed his brother as Attorney General to “faithfully execute” the laws and to protect the president from his scandalous behavior. Meanwhile, Ms. Kennedy writes about George Washington’s “concept of alliances”–it was pretty straightforward, the U.S. should have no permanent alliances, only temporary ones for exigencies that may arise. It was a concept very similar to Britain’s Lord Palmerston who famously said that Britain had no permanent friends or permanent enemies, only eternal interests. The same goes for the United States. Ms. Kennedy calls President Trump a “dishonest hack who cares about no one but Trump,” and apparently wants a government where unelected federal judges, not Congress and the President, make immigration policy. Finally, the president’s pardon power is absolute. You may disagree with certain pardons of a president, but to accuse him of not faithfully executing the laws by pardoning or commuting offenders is simply wrong. I wonder what Ms. Kennedy thinks about the thousands of Biden autopen pardons and commutations of major drug and gun offenders in the last days of his administration, not to mention the pardon of his son.