We spend summers in Maine, returning to Arizona in October Last September I started seeing lots of posts in my Facebook feed from a guy named Graham Platner, mostly yelling about genocide in Gaza and using the usual code phrases regarding Jewish influence. Seems he was running for the Democratic nomination for Senate. I thought he was just some nut who'd get wiped out in the primary. Instead he drove the incumbent Democratic governor, a solid progressive, out of the race and won the nomination.
That's despite:
- the Jew bashing
- the Commie loving
- the Nazi tattoo wearing(1)
- the phony background story
- enlisting in the Army, not because of patriotism or a sense of duty, but because he liked killing people
- mocking the death of his fellow soldiers
- the rape fantasies (to be fair he said he'd only rape to establish dominance not as a sexual thing)
- sexually assaulting a Republican woman
No, what it took to finally drive him out of the race was sexually assaulting a Democratic woman. Tells you a lot about the state of the Democratic party in Maine. None of the other stuff mattered - and the Jew bashing was seen as a positive by D voters. You could also already tell how bad Platner was just by looking at the Senators endorsing him early on - The Bum (Sanders), The Cherokee Princess (Warren), The Dirtbag (Gallego), and The Callow Youth (Murphy).
Actually, it's a bit misleading to say it was the sexual assault on the D lady that did it. The truth is that a week ago, polls in Maine showed Susan Collins (R) edging ahead of Platner in the Senate race. Usually, Collins trails the D challenger, only pulling ahead in the final couple of weeks of the campaign, but here she was beginning to open a lead on Platner in early July, spelling his doom. Time for the D's to pull the plug in time to insert another candidate, so time to come forward with the sexual assault claim.
Platner is a bad indicator of where the Democratic party is headed in Maine but there was another story, undercovered in the media, that really tells you about the danger Maine Democrats (and those similarly situated elsewhere) pose to our democracy.
In early 2025, a Republican State Representative, Laurel Libby, posted a photo of a local high school track meet on Facebook. One of the winners in the girl's competition was a boy who claimed he was a girl. The representative stated in her post that this was wrong and boys should not be allowed to compete in girls competitions.
The Maine House of Representatives is narrowly controlled by Democrats, 75 to 72. The House voted on party lines to censure the Republican representative and, until she apologized, banned her from speaking and voting in the House. Not even one Democrat representative saw anything wrong with this action.
Rep. Libby filed a federal court action seeking an injunction against the House for stripping her constituents of representation in the legislature. In the District Court, a Biden appointed judge saw nothing wrong with the silencing of Rep. Libby and refused to grant the injunction. Libby appealed to the First Circuit but a three judge panel of Biden appointees saw nothing wrong and declined to grant the injunction.
It finally took an appeal to the United State Supreme Court to get Libby's request granted (Sotomayor and Jackson dissenting). After the Supreme Court action, the legislature
What happened to Rep Libby is as much an indicator as Platner's primary win, of how radical Maine Democrats have become. Libby was opining on a public issue, taking a position that all polling shows is the majority position of all Americans nationwide. Yet every Maine representative voted to silence her, and Democratic appointees at the District and Appellate Court levels refused to intervene.
What has become ever more evident over the last few years is that Democrats have convinced themselves they are entitled to use all measures to suppress dissent, and will use any excuse to do so. To them, democracy is when they win everything. They oppose diversity in viewpoints. Look at their hysteria over losing control of just one social media platform - twitter when Elon Musk purchased it. They have an insatiable need to control every avenue of opinion, every institution, every organ of government. What happened in the Maine state legislature in 2025 is just the front of the new wave of repression. If the Democrats attain a trifecta at the federal level and stuff the Supreme Court with radical justices, a plan they have adopted as their goal, in the future elected opposition figures like Rep. Libby will be successfully suppressed. There is no "moderate" wing of the Democratic Party left.
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(1) Best quip I saw on this was that Platner's autobiography is called Maine Kampf.
Time we had a little zydeco music (a fusion of Cajun and rhythm & blues) here. It's a cousin to Dr John's style of music. This is Buckwheat Zydeco from 1985, a cover of Lee Dorsey's 1961 original. Buckwheat Zydeco (aka Stanley Dural Jr) had a long career, winning five Grammy's between 1985 and 2010.
On this date in 1969 the initial withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam began as ordered by President Nixon a few weeks earlier. This first phase involved 25,000 troops from the approximately 540,000 currently in that country. By the fall of 1971 troop levels were down to about 190,000. The last American forces left by early 1973. South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnam communists in April 1975, ending a thirty year civil war.
After completing my July 4 post on President Coolidge's speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I went on to read and listen to a couple of other historic speeches celebrating America's independence. One of these was Frederick Douglass' magnificent 1852 oration What To The Slave is The Fourth of July? While doing so I came across on YouTube an NPR presentation of the speech, produced in 2020 and recited by descendants of Douglass. It is highly edited to be deliberately simplistic and misleading in order to ensure NPR listeners miss the point more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made Pearl Harbor. As a reminder, at the time, NPR still received taxpayer funding so you paid for this piece of agitprop. Since then NPR has continued its descent into madness, naming authoritarian Katherine Maher as its CEO (for more on Maher read The "Real Trouble").
I've written of Douglass several times over the years; about his relationship with President Lincoln as well as the misuse to which he's been subjected to in our current educational system (Lincoln Douglass); on his Freedman's Monument Speech in 1876; as part of a prior July 4 post (citing to his 1852 speech); after reading his first autobiography (see Readings On Slavery). Douglass was a courageous and thoughtful man who could eloquently express complex and provocative ideas. His story should be known to all Americans.
The 1852 speech had two purposes. One is a lengthy, searing, and accurate indictment of American slavery and the complicity of white American society in its horror. It is to this topic that the NPR edited version of the speech, which has 1.6 million views and 2,700 comments, is exclusively devoted to (the NPR version also contains a coda, the reflections of Douglass' descendants regarding today's America, a topic to which I will return to after discussing the speech). The second, ignored by NPR, is Douglass' case that the Constitution is a "glorious liberty document . . . entirely hostile to the existence of slavery". The reverence with which Douglass regards the Constitution (and the Declaration, as he states elsewhere in the speech) would undermine what NPR is trying to accomplish. It also decontextualizes the speech though it is important to understand why Douglass is making this argument. And it adds a false contextualization placing it as somehow linked to the death of George Floyd and the riots and protests that occurred in its aftermath.
The speech was given on July 5, 1852 at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, NY, the city Douglass moved to in 1847, an event organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. Two years before, slavery became "nationalized" with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850, heightening sectional disputes over slavery, as many in the free states who had not been engaged in the slavery issue now felt they had been made complicit by the passage of the Act. More importantly for purposes of the 1852 speech, Douglass had split with the mainstream of the abolition movement and its leader and his former mentor, William Lloyd Garrison, over the interpretation of the Constitution. Garrison's organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society, the leading abolitionist group, had taken the view that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document and the only solution was to dissolve the Union and for the free states to form a New Union under a new Constitution. In 1851 the Anti-Slavery Society passed a resolution denouncing any paper opposing this belief.
After escaping slavery Douglass initially agreed with Garrison but as he studied the Constitution and the Declaration came to the conclusion they were anti-slavery documents and had broken with Garrison and started his own newspaper the North Star to promote his views. It was to address this controversial dispute within the abolitionist movement that Douglass spent so much of his speech on this topic. In the Coda to the NPR version one of the young people asserts that Douglass was speaking to those who already agreed with him but, in fact, the purpose of the Constitutional argument was to persuade a divided audience. For more on contemporaneous views of the Constitution consistent with Douglass' reading see Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States 1861-1865 by James Oakes and Natural Law and the Antislavery Constitutional Tradition by Justin Buckley Dyer.
Douglass' speech can be broken into three parts.
The first section expresses hope that America, as a young nation, can find the correct course of action and to express admiration for the Founding generation.
The second to highlight contradictions and hypocrisy regarding white Americans and slavery. The excerpts in the YouTube video are only a sampling of the examples given by Douglass.
The final section expresses his belief that the Constitution is a glorious liberty document that provides the blueprint for the end of slavery.
At the end of the post you will find excerpts from the first and third sections.
As you can see all of the excerpts in the NPR video are from the second section with the exception of one passage from the conclusion of the speech; "Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have
this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this
country". The following sentences are not included; "There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall
of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of
slavery is certain." The video contains nothing from Douglass' conclusion explaining why he does not despair, because it would undercut what NPR is trying to sell you.
And that brings me to the context in which the video was made and the significance of the coda portion.
The video was posted on YouTube on July 3, 2020 and it was specifically linked to the death of George Floyd several weeks before. NPR's description reads:
In the summer of 2020, the U.S. commemorated Independence Day amid nationwide protests for racial justice and systemic reforms in the wake of George Floyd’s death. That June, we asked five young descendants of Frederick Douglass to read and respond to excerpts of his famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”. It's a powerful, historical text that reminds us of the ongoing work of liberation.
The description notes that the video consists of excerpts but the title of the video and the description if you do a Google search implies it is the full text. The description also pulls a sleight of hand. Douglass' speech is about slavery and its relation to the Constitution but NPR links it to the "ongoing work of liberation". Like the video, NPR never directly states what that work is, nor its relation to Douglass' speech and the propositions set forth there. Instead the description and the video artfully avoids any discussion of Douglass' proposition as it must because NPR's viewpoint is that the U.S. was defective from its founding. The video is edited and put together in support of the thesis of the infamous 1619 Project, while the opening and closing of Douglass' speech are a refutation of its thesis. That Douglass' argument is both a refutation of the argument of the 1619 Project as well as of the similar historical arguments of John C Calhoun and Alexander Stephens, Southern politicians who argued that slavery was a "positive good", illustrates that we have entered into a world of strange ideological alliances in 21st century America.
The video was released in the midst of not just "protests" but also in the midst of riots and violence that resulted in thirty deaths in the short term and the most property damage (much of it to minority owned businesses) of any riots in American history.(1) The impacts were worse longer term. As it turned out that large cities governed for decades by NPR-type Progressives were hotbeds of racism, those mayors and city councils withdrew police and let loose their paramilitary wings. Prosecutors resisted filing charges or reduced charges against those causing violence and destruction and leftist groups raised bail and paid for lawyers to defend the perpetrators. One result was a massive increase in violence in minority areas. The increase in black homicide victims of violence over baseline of recent years for the period from May 2020 to the end of 2022 amounted to more than the total number of black lynching victims from 1882 to 1968 (for more on that tragic history read Strange Fruit). In what way was that liberation? How did the protests and violence contribution to any positive solutions? In what way is the current situation of Black Americans similar to that of the slaves Frederick Douglass was discussing? None of that is addressed. It is simply implied that they are the same.
And that is the saddest thing in the video - the coda. These young people seem to believe nothing has changed since Douglass' speech. But why? They've clearly absorbed in their upbringing and education the notion of oppression, one even saying "pessimism is a tool of white oppression". We have a 20 year old claiming he is "exhausted" and near the end another says "we are still slaves to the notion that it will never get better". That last remark is double-edged. In the context of the video I think he's saying it has not gotten any better since Douglass's speech but we shouldn't lose hope it will get better. I also see it as a warning to everyone in that video that they have been slaves to that notion even though objectively things are much better than 1852.
For decades we've lived in a country where opportunities for minorities are plentiful and, in fact, privileged in education, government employment and contracts, and the corporate world. The "system" which did once work to maintain white supremacy is gone and had been for many years. The "system" now works the other way. Yet the very education system which is part of those growing opportunities, teaches the opposite - that things haven't changed and further, those same educational system at the K-12 levels in cities with large minority populations is failing those populations, failing to generate the pipeline of students who can take advantage of those opportunities. More than 40 years ago, Eddie Murphy parodied this attitude on Saturday Night Live:
But what use is it to teach children that the deck is stacked against
them, when they, in fact, have opportunities if they can seize them?
In doing research for this post, I came across a 2014 article by a history professor who has studied Frederick Douglass in which he complains that the version of What To A Slave Is the Fourth of July? being used to teach in our schools is the same as that presented by NPR. In other words, a deliberately truncated version, omitting Douglass' context and view of the Constitution. It is part of an effort to undermine the very foundations of this country and to indoctrinate the next generation that an end to the U.S. as we know it is the only solution. Knowing that Douglass held the Declaration and Constitution and those who wrote those documents in such high regard is too dangerous for students. They might draw incorrect conclusions.
The technique here is to keep everything vague, except to instill the feeling of massive racism and oppression. The discussions we need are "what are the specific problems we are trying to solve" and "how would proposed solutions specifically help to solve them". And that is always avoided, instead we are flooded with generalities and statements built upon false assumptions.
Excerpts from opening section of the speech:
The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought, that America is young.
To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when, to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems un fashionable in our day.
Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men too—great enough to give fame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.
They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.
They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times
[Douglass begins the transition to the present day and the plight of slaves.]
How unlike the politicians of an hour!
My business, if I have any here today, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now.
Closing section of speech:
And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape; but I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe.
Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.
Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single proslavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain.
I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up, from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other.
Excerpts from address by President Calvin Coolidge, Address on the Celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Philadelphia, July 5, 1926.
It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new
theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but
rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles
which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be
sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter
of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation
to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters
of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear,
whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge
that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an
adequate defense and protection.
But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a
new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and
more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that
which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had
aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A
separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by
the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable
desire to be the master of his own destiny.
But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took
on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held
toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility. It was in
no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum
to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no
scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but
they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the
hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that
marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the
informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty
loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the
courage to dare to maintain them.
It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but
because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that
July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in
history.
This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration
of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its
preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government.
These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source
of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the
governed.
A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will
wither if it roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of
Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of
material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular
sovereignty, the rights of man - these are not elements which we can see
and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in
the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the
faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to
endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not
continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.
It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress
since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have
given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may
therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.
But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men
are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable
rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be
made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or
their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically
is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no
equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who
wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They
are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than
those of the Revolutionary fathers.
Ours is a government of the people. It represents their will. Its
officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for
criticizing the principles of our institutions. The real heart of the
American Government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from
that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that
cause that we must ascribe all our results.
It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made
their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a
free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the
unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a
mere influential few. They undertook to balance these interests against
each other and provide the three separate independent branches, the
executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the
Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one
might encroach upon the other. These are our guarantees of liberty. As a
result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from
confiscation, the people have been free from oppression, and there has been an ever-broadening and deepening of the humanities of life.
No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of
Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people.
We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material
things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created
them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all
our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to
a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage
which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers
who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must
cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We
must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We
must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame,
the altar fires before which they worshiped.
Is there any prominent 21st century national political leader whose reputation has fallen as far, and as fast, as Angela Merkel's?
Merkel, Germany's Chancellor from 2005 to 2021, was often referred to as "The Leader of the Free World". Though this started during the second Obama administration, the use of the phrase accelerated during the subsequent Trump presidency, intended both as boost to Merkel and a slap at Trump.
Merkel, born in East Germany, and trained in theoretical physics and mathematics, became politically active with the fall of the Berlin Wall, rising quickly in the politics of the reunified country as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, becoming a government minister by 1991.
This photo is from a 2017 Politico article titled The New Leader of the Free World, praising the Chancellor:
Today, not only is Merkel, as the leader of the world’s fourth-largest
economy, the most powerful woman on the planet, she’s also a bulwark of
stability in a time of global turmoil. Merkel is often dubbed “the
leader of the free world” in a dig at Donald Trump, an American
president she has greeted with eye-rolls s in person and firm rebukes on issues from climate change to refugees to Neo-Nazis. And the label seems to fit: As populism rises in Western countries and
the United States retreats from the world, it’s Merkel who is offering
the steady, strong leadership that once emanated from Washington.
Let's look back on her major initiatives from the perspective of 2026.
On foreign policy, she advocated a closer relationship with Russia, supporting the construction of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, despite warnings, including from Donald Trump, that the pipeline would make Germany more dependent on Russia and more susceptible to its influence.
At the same time, Merkel oversaw the degradation of the German military from the formidable fighting force of the Cold War era to a shadow of itself. Again, she was warned against this in light of the growing threat by others, including Donald Trump. Instead, Germany, like other NATO members, reduced spending knowing they could count upon the U.S. in a pinch.
When an emboldened Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 those warnings proved prescient with Germany left in a weakened military posture and embarrassingly dependent on Russia energy supplies.
Which brings us to her failed energy policy. An emphasis on climate change combined with the aftermath of Japan's Fukushima nuclear incident in 2011, somehow resulted in Merkel's decision to close and demolish all German nuclear plants, resulting in increased coal use and significantly higher energy costs. The closure of the nuclear plants is simply one of the most idiotic energy policy decisions of any country in this century.
And that energy policy brings us to Merkel's economic policy. In the early 21st century, Germany's economy was a powerhouse. It no longer is due to the combined impact of two of Merkel's initiatives. Encouraging closer relationships with, and investments in, China, along with dramatically higher energy costs reducing the competitiveness of German industry, reducing exports and driving reduction or relocation of energy-intensive industries. Germany is now one of the worst performing economies of the major producing countries.
Finally, we come to immigration. Merkel's decision in 2015 to suspend EU regulations and allow over one million Muslim refugees into Germany, which with knock-on effects resulted in more than six million refugees from these countries over the decade. The result is increased societal turmoil, increases in crime, and failures in assimilation, leading to political instability, particularly in the countries of central and western Europe. Merkel took these actions despite stating in a 2010 speech that Germany's attempts to build a multicultural society had "utterly failed".
The problems with all of these policies were identified at the time but most attempts at neutral analysis were derailed by ideology, anti-Americanism, and then by the ascendance of Donald Trump. None of the accolades Merkel received look good today.
