Public education is PC-centric

Public education is PC-centric

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

BluRidgeNow Online

March 18, 2018

Long ago, my parents taught me that America’s future was its children, and that getting a good education was the path forward. They also taught me that the person most responsible for getting there was me. That was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

My 10th-grade English class was a writing class taught by Miss Irene Jennings. She was so short we called her “The Mouse.” She was a strict disciplinarian — in my mind, a tyrant. I didn’t like her, and I had no interest in learning how to write well.

The conflict came to a head early. She returned a writing assignment of mine with an “F.” I knew I had given the assignment short shrift, but I also knew it was of “C” quality. When I confronted her after class, she agreed with me, but she said I was capable of far better, that I was lazy, and that she would continue to fail me until I performed up to my potential.

At dinner that night, I vented my outrage to my parents. My dad said we would go and talk to her. She told us what she had told me. He thanked her and we departed. I felt vindicated until my dad unloaded on me. He told me he wanted to see every one of my writing assignments from that point forward. I was trapped. My final grade in English that semester was a “B” — an earned “B.”

Although it took me time to realize it, The Mouse and my Dad had taught me an invaluable lesson, one far more important than writing.

Can you imagine what would happen if a modern-day teacher deliberately failed an under-performing, able student? She would be crucified — by the parents, the PTA, the school administration, the school board and political correctness advocates of all stripes. And that means teachers today and the systems in which they work have capitulated to an evil that casts a dark cloud over not only public education but also over the competence of the nation’s citizens and future leaders.

Political correctness has seeped into the nation’s education system at every level. Its effects are ubiquitous and deleterious. It travels on cat’s paws unless challenged. When challenged, it goes to DEFCON 1, charging those who have the temerity to confront it with discrimination, its ultimate weapon.

National education policy and local school performance have been transmogrified by political correctness. The worst of it dates to the enactment in 2002 of the No Child Left Behind Act that passed Congress with large bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. At the signing ceremony, the president said that “you must show us whether or not every child is learning.”

By the time Barack Obama took office, it was clear the law was not working well. Another bipartisan bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by him. Predictably, it retained the previous statute’s fatal flaw.

The current law is called the Every Student Succeeds Act. It supposedly will work because it gives individual school districts more flexibility about things like student testing. Don’t bet any of the ranch on that outcome.

The real problem, which the doctrine of political correctness deliberately disguises, is that there are too many schools, too many teachers and too many students who are destined to fail, regardless of how much money is available. Accepting that reality, while striving to open the door to success for every student who is willing and able to succeed, is essential to put public education back on the right track.

When federal law proceeds from the precept that NO child shall be left behind, or that EVERY student must succeed, it means the central focus of the school administrators, the PTA, the elected school board and, most importantly, the teachers is on the least-able, worst-performing students. That’s because unless they perform, the teachers and the schools are in jeopardy.

That’s the insidious way bureaucracies work. That’s political correctness gone mad!

Economics professor Walter Williams of George Mason University has written that many college-bound high school graduates are not prepared for or belong in college. Many must take remedial courses, and many of those never graduate. But admitting such students, Williams wrote, “gets the nation’s high schools off the hook. ... (They) can continue to deliver grossly fraudulent education — namely, issue diplomas that attest that students can read, write and compute at a 12th-grade level when they may not be able to perform at even an eighth- or ninth-grade level.”

Thank God for Miss Jennings, the Mouse who really roared, and the public education system that supported her.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Bipartisanship a mixed blessing

By:  LeRoy Goldman

Columniust

BlueRidgeNow Online

Times-News

February 18, 2018

In case you haven’t noticed, bipartisanship has broken out in Congress. It recently passed a two-year budget deal that was the product of weeks of intensive negotiations among congressional Republicans and Democrats.

The compromise was the antithesis of what we witnessed earlier in the failed efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare, and the successful effort to cut taxes. Both of those efforts were the handiwork of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Not only were the Democrats excluded from the process, so, too, were most rank-and-file Republican members of Congress.

In both cases, McConnell used the arcane budget reconciliation process in order to attempt to pass the bills in the Senate without having to achieve the 60-vote supermajority. His effort failed on Obamacare when Sen. John McCain voted to kill the bill.

McConnell’s effort succeeded on the tax bill, but at a terrible price. The measure is tilted too heavily toward the super wealthy and corporations. Moreover, it will add $1 trillion to the national debt. No Democrat voted for it.

But having used up the once-each-fiscal-year chance to pass bills with only 51 votes in the Senate under budget reconciliation, McConnell had only two choices for anything else: Do nothing or work with the Democrats. Wisely, he chose the latter with respect to the recently passed budget deal as well as the open-process immigration legislation now being debated in the Senate.

Doing that is a big-time change for the better. The budget deal passed 71-28, way more than the 60-vote threshold for the required supermajority. But more important than the fact that the bill passed is how it passed.

Both those who voted for the bill and against it were made up of significant numbers of both Republicans and Democrats. More importantly, most of the bipartisan group who voted against the budget deal were the extremists in both parties, including Democrats like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Republicans like Mike Lee of Utah.

The measure passed the House in the same way. The final vote was 240-186. Both groups were made up of significant numbers from each political party. And, like the Senate vote, it was the extremists who were on the losing side, like Black Caucus Democrat Maxine Waters of California and Republican Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows of North Carolina.

You don’t have to be a congressional savant or clairvoyant to understand that the way to marginalize the extremists in both parties, and thus enable Congress to do the nation’s business, is for the two leaders in each chamber to work together. Bipartisan majorities are built from the middle out, not from the extremes in.

But, as heartening as it is to see the fruits of bipartisanship, that doesn’t necessarily mean the results are always in the national interest. Bipartisan majorities can sometimes get things wrong or leave vital work unaddressed.

The budget deal, and to a much larger extent the recently passed tax cut, have the same problem — red ink. The budget deal is projected to increase the deficit by $320 billion and the tax cut is projected to increase the national debt by $1 trillion.

That’s not to say the budget deal and the tax cut should not have been enacted. It is to say the nation’s escalating deficit and debt are way too high and out of control.

Moreover, there is no mystery surrounding why this is so and why Washington won’t fix it. The “why” is found in the uncontrolled escalation of four federal mandatory programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest payments on the debt.

Every president and every Congress since Lyndon Johnson has recognized this growing clear and present danger to the American economy and way of life. None has had the courage to confront the American people with the pain involved in reining in these entitlement programs.

Remember the Simpson-Bowles Commission? Its purpose was to propose ways to solve this problem. Its 2010 report did just that. Before its ink was dry, President Barack Obama and most members of Congress, regardless of political stripe, ran from it like scalded dogs.

Donald Trump’s no different. On June 16, 2015, he said, “Save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security without cuts.” That’s political legerdemain.

A good barometer of the current over-stimulation of a full-employment, low-inflation economy is the imploding stock market correction. It puts an ominous warning shot across the bow of America’s burgeoning debt and predicts punishing interest rate hikes.

Washington politicians who put their job security ahead of their oath of office deserve the retribution that the ballot box offers.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Give The Man A Chance

Give The Man A Chance

By:  LeRoy Goldman

BlueRidgeNow Online

January 21, 2018

“Give the man a chance” is one of the most impactful lines uttered by Dr. Jack Ryan in the taut thriller “The Hunt for Red October” about a Soviet, first-strike nuclear submarine.

Ryan, the film’s protagonist, believes the captain of the Red October, Marko Ramius, intends to defect and hand the Red October over to the Americans.

Ryan attempts, but initially fails, to persuade the skipper of an American attack submarine, the Dallas, that Ramius intends to defect. Dallas’ skipper, Bart Mancuso, has been ordered to destroy the Red October.

Suffice to say, fate intervenes and Mancuso realizes Ryan may have it right. Ryan confronts him and says, “Give the man a chance.”

That’s what President Donald Trump deserves, and too frequently the press denies him that chance.

Let’s start where we all agree. The federal government is hopelessly broken. That has been the case for the better part of a quarter-century, and it makes no difference which political party rules the roost inside the Washington Beltway.

The underlying cause of Washington’s dysfunction resides not within the Beltway but here in the heartland of the nation. That’s where you find the growing legions of radicals of the left and right who share the same ideological fervor — take no prisoners.

Their fanaticism has turned compromise into a dirty word. To these radicals, compromise and surrender are synonyms. Thus, none of us should be surprised that Congress and the president apparently cannot agree on a 2018 budget, cannot agree on what to do about DACA and broader immigration reform, cannot agree on the necessity to raise the national debt limit, or any other issue of legislative significance.

It was in this hyper-partisan context that President Trump did something extraordinary in a meeting with congressional leaders on Jan. 9. Typically the press is invited into such a meeting for only a few minutes at the beginning. But not this time. The president allowed the press to remain and the cameras to roll for about an hour.

We got to see the back and forth on a complex and controversial subject, DACA and immigration. We saw a president who was clearly in charge of the meeting, who repeatedly emphasized that the issue could only be resolved by compromise, who said he was willing to support a substantive agreement on both DACA and broader immigration, and who said he was “prepared to take the heat” that would inevitably attend any such agreement, including his willingness to allow natural terrain be the wall where possible.

However, during the meeting, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked the president if he would support a “clean” DACA bill. To Feinstein and other Capitol Hill veterans, a “clean” bill meant one without any other provisions, such as enhanced border security that she and everybody else knew was essential to the president and the GOP.

Thus the ever wily Feinstein’s question was a ploy designed to see if she could entrap President Trump. He, not being familiar with the term “clean” bill, responded affirmatively — until it quickly became clear what Feinstein was up to. At that point, the president put the meeting back on its bipartisan trajectory.

But rather than the ensuing press coverage of the meeting being focused on the growing bipartisan accord the president had so carefully and skillfully tried to cultivate during the meeting, the press chose to hammer him for his vacillation and ignorance.

For example, Cristiano Lima writing in Politico stated, “Trump’s meeting with lawmakers was marked by shifting policy stances from the president … .”

In the Washington Post, Ed O’Keefe and David Nakamura wrote that “Trump appeared to contradict himself” and that “Trump seemed to indicate he would support a proposal from Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) for a ‘clean DACA bill’ … only to be quickly corrected by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)”.

And Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker in the Washington Post wrote that “he also muddled through the policy by seeming to endorse divergent positions … .”

Give me a break! Instead of the mainstream press reporting on what was a clearly successful, presidentially led effort, to find common ground and to take the heat on the contentious issues of DACA and immigration reform, the president was portrayed as ignorant.

This sort of shameful reporting does violence to the essentiality of a free press. It exposes the bias of selective reporting that is designed to cleverly shoehorn a predetermined conclusion into what necessarily should be an illumination of what actually transpired. That amounts to an assault on the press by the press.

It doesn’t give the man a chance, and that’s something we should all oppose, but don’t. Shame on us.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

The odd man out is no shocker

 

The odd man out is no shocker

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

TimesNewsOnline

December 17, 2017

 

Scrooge, the Grinch or Donald Trump. If determining which of the three is the odd man on his way out were a multiple choice test, I suspect most of you would correctly guess what’s coming.

You’re right, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

In addition to the Gospel of Matthew, my Christmas favorites are “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” by Dr. Seuss and “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. In their very different ways, they enable us to know the true meaning of Christmas.

The child in me still treasures the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Other than its unconscionable and repetitive self-promotion of NBC television programming, it remains a heartwarming tradition.

And this year it had something new, and for me, something special. Not only was there a new helium balloon, it was the one that I’ve been waiting for ever since I first read Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” to our sons back in the ’70s.

As the Grinch came into view on 34th Street on Thanksgiving morning, the key thing for me was the Grinch’s grin. Would it be a faithful rendering of Dr. Seuss’ illustrations in the original?

It was, and that meant that the Grinch’s expression conveyed two mutually opposing thoughts. That signature grin tells us that he’s up to no good, but that he’s not evil.

And, while the Grinch successfully steals what he wrongly believes is Whoville’s entire Christmas, Christmas survives, and the Grinch is profoundly transformed when he hears Cindy Lou and Whos down in Whoville singing on Christmas morning. That’s when he realizes that the “stuff” he grabbed is only meaningless “stuff.” That’s when his heart grows three sizes.

In Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” Ebenezer Scrooge’s countenance is nothing but foreboding. For him, Christmas is humbug. For him, life is only about the acquisition of wealth — his own. Unless we look very carefully, there is no evidence that Scrooge is redeemable.

But there is one sliver of hope. However grudgingly, Scrooge is willing to grant his beleaguered employee, Bob Cratchit, a paid day off work on Christmas Day so that he can spend it with his family and his dying son, Tiny Tim.

Transforming Scrooge is going to take much more than the joyous singing in Whoville that the Grinch heard on Christmas morning. It’s going to require confronting Scrooge with the fear of God.

As Scrooge sleeps on Christmas Eve, that fear arrives in the form of spirits who take Scrooge back to his desolate and lonely childhood, then to Bob Cratchit’s family and two emaciated children named Ignorance and Want, and finally to an unattended grave, Scrooge’s grave.

Shock and terror produce Scrooge’s epiphany. He awakens on Christmas morning a changed man, a man who becomes Tiny Tim’s second father.

No, the Grinch and Scrooge and are not the odd men out, but President Trump is. Perhaps he believes he’s America’s savior. His campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, suggests such a glorious role for his presidency.

But his campaign and his first year in office are in fact the mirror opposite of his promises. They foretell his doom.

The truth is that President Trump is unfit to serve. He is incapable of fulfilling the oath of office he took last January that requires him to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.

Trump’s behavior is an ongoing assault on the pillars of our Constitution. He has attacked free speech, a free press and freedom of religion. He has attacked the independence of the federal judiciary. He has demonstrated ignorance of the Constitution’s doctrine of separation of powers.

He has surrounded himself with sycophants. He has undercut the nation’s intelligence and national security apparatus. He has insulted and disparaged America’s allies while giving a pass to undemocratic oligarchs like Vladimir Putin.

He has soiled his unique bully pulpit by disparaging women, African-Americans and Hispanics.

And worse, he can’t help it. Late last month, the New York Daily News editorialized, “The president of the United States is profoundly unstable. He is mad. He is, by any honest layman’s definition, mentally unwell and viciously lashing out.”

It’s simply a matter of time before Robert Mueller presents a compelling case of obstruction of justice and/or abuse of power against the president. At its heart will be the spoken words, tweets and actions of Trump himself.

All of this reminds me of President Richard Nixon’s prophetic words the night before he resigned: “Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

In 2016, the American people were forced to choose between two thoroughly corrupt and despicable candidates. Unbelievably and thankfully, Donald Trump’s legacy will be that he successfully destroyed both of them.

Merry Christmas.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Perhaps a Thanksgiving miracle?

Perhaps a Thanksgiving miracle?

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Tines-News Online

November 19, 2017

Perhaps a quarter-century of deadlock in Washington is ending. And amazingly, the issue that now gives hope is one that has been at the center of Washington’s descent into recrimination and paralysis — health care. Maybe it’s the key that unlocks what has shackled and crippled presidents and Congresses since Bill Clinton took office.

President Clinton asked his wife to take the lead on health care reform in 1993. She failed miserably. She devised a plan so complex that no one could understand it. It was a sitting duck for the devastatingly effective Harry and Louise television ads that the health insurance industry ran against Hillarycare.

More importantly, its collapse set the stage for the Republican tidal wave in the 1994 election that put Newt Gingrich and the GOP in control of the House for the first time in 40 years. By the end of the Clinton presidency, the House had impeached him.

Immediately following his historic victory, President Barack Obama unwisely decided to make health care reform his top priority and to do so on a partisan basis. In 2009, the Democrats had a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate. Thus Obamacare was rammed through Congress without any Republican support, assuring the upheaval that followed.

Upheaval’s name was “Repeal and Replace.” During the Obama presidency, two consequential things occurred: partisan stalemate at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and a series of Republican election victories that has brought the GOP to its high-water mark not only in Washington but also in the states.

In 2010, the Republicans recaptured the House. In 2014, they took the Senate. They also defeated about 1,000 Democrats in state legislative chambers and won numerous governorships. And to almost everyone’s surprise, they won the presidency last year. Voter opposition to Obamacare fueled the meteoric rise of the GOP.

But delivering on their promise to repeal and replace Obamacare has been an unmitigated disaster for the Republicans. So much of a disaster that the election results earlier this month make evident that it now threatens their control of Congress in 2018 and the White House in 2020. Without a major course correction, the GOP is headed into oblivion.

However, that the course correction now appears possible. And we can thank Sen. John McCain for that.

Recall that McCain returned to the Senate in late July after having had surgery for brain cancer. His return occurred just as Senate Republicans were attempting to pass their version of the legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare. However, like the House version of the same measure, it was deeply unpopular, principally because its enactment would result in millions of Americans losing their health insurance.

On July 25, McCain took the Senate floor and delivered a stinging rebuke to both Republicans and Democrats. In it, he said:

“The Obama administration and congressional Democrats shouldn’t have forced through Congress without any opposition support a social and economic change as massive as Obamacare. And we shouldn’t do the same with ours. ...

“Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. ...

“I will not vote for the bill as it is today. It’s a shell of a bill right now. ...

“Let the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee under Chairman (Lamar) Alexander, and Ranking Member (Patty) Murray hold hearings, try to report a bill out of committee with contributions from both sides.”

At 1:29 a.m. on July 28, McCain voted against the Republican bill, known as Skinny Repeal, thus killing it. An hour later, a petulant President Donald Trump tweeted, “3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode, then deal. Watch!”

Thanks to McCain’s courage and then Alexander and Murray’s willingness to work together, regular order has broken out. Their committee has held hearings, workshops attended by more than 60 senators, and executive sessions on a bipartisan bill to stabilize the collapsing individual insurance market in Obamacare.

Their bill would also extend cost-sharing subsidies to insurance companies through 2019, thus enabling millions of Americans to retain their health insurance. In addition, it would enable states to obtain waivers to shape their own health insurance programs.

Their bill has two dozen co-sponsors equally divided among Republicans and Democrats. That means the bill is filibuster-proof!

The enactment of this bipartisan fix is the necessary precondition to the larger bipartisan overhaul that must follow. However, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will not bring the bill up unless the White House signals that Trump will sign it.

That signal would be worthy of Thanksgiving.

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at tks12no12@gmail.com.

Has gerrymandering met its match?

How the Supreme Court decides this case is a very big deal.

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

BlueRidgeNow Online

Times-News

October 15, 2017

Has gerrymandering met its match?

The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments on a gerrymandering case out of Wisconsin, Gill v. Whitford. On first blush, it would appear this case is no big deal. At one level, it’s simply a matter of whether Republicans went too far drawing the district maps in 2011 for the Wisconsin Legislature. But how the court decides this case is a very big deal.

Not only might the decision break new ground with respect to cases involving partisan gerrymandering, it is also possible that it might eventually break new ground with respect to how the Supreme Court has ruled in cases involving racial gerrymandering. It’s important to know that the court has rigorously avoided deciding cases of partisan gerrymandering but has shown no reluctance to rule on gerrymandering cases involving race.

Although the court has made a clear dichotomy between partisan and racial gerrymandering, the two are deeply intertwined. Together they are responsible for significant and deleterious gerrymandering in virtually every state. Pervasive gerrymandering has brought the U.S. House of Representatives to its knees. In fact, most House seats are so gerrymandered that only one party can win them.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been interpreted to require the creation of majority-minority congressional districts. Most of these many districts are represented by African-Americans or Hispanics, and virtually all of them are Democrats. The underlying premise for such districts was that it was the only way to circumvent racial discrimination. Happily that circumstance no longer obtains.

However, and surprisingly, the systematic creation of these majority-minority districts has enabled the Republicans to win more districts than would have otherwise been the case in many states, as minorities are packed into fewer districts. The net effect is that more and more seats are gerrymandered by both parties. Members from these districts, both Republicans and Democrats, have no incentive to reach across the aisle. What they do worry about is an even more extreme primary opponent.

Gerrymandering has turned democracy on its head. Instead of us picking our congressman, the members of Congress and their allies in the state legislatures draw the district maps so that they pick who gets to anoint them.

North Carolina is a perfect example of this undemocratic stranglehold. North Carolina is a swing state, evenly balanced between Democrats and Republicans. In 2016, Donald Trump carried it narrowly, by 3 percent, and Roy Cooper ousted Republican Gov. Pat McCrory by less than 1 percent. Yet the incumbent party won in every congressional district, and the margins of victory ranged from an insurmountable 56 percent to an eye-popping 69 percent. All 13 of the districts are the product of either partisan or racial gerrymandering.

If the Supreme Court were to find the map drawn by the Republicans in Wisconsin to be unconstitutional, the stage would be set to reverse partisan gerrymandering, and surprisingly it might revive efforts to strike down racial gerrymandering, too. Putting the matter right requires both steps.

At the oral arguments on Gill v. Whitford, all eyes were on Justice Anthony Kennedy. Unfortunately, that’s because the other eight justices appear to have closed minds on the issue. The four conservatives appear to have no interest in permitting the court to involve itself in partisan gerrymandering, while the four liberals appear to stand in opposition.

Justice Kennedy, however, based on an extension of his thinking in a similar case in 2004, Vieth v. Jubelirer, may be ready to join the liberals and enable the court to begin to curb partisan gerrymandering. That would be the first of the two necessary steps to begin stuffing the gerrymandering genie back in the bottle.

The necessary second step would have to await another case that would challenge the constitutionality of racial gerrymandering. The arrival of such a case is not far-fetched. About 20 years ago, the Supreme Court decided three cases alleging that North Carolina’s two majority-minority districts were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander driven by the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

The challenge was brought by an improbable individual, Robinson Everett, a Duke law professor and a moderate Democrat. Everett deeply opposed discrimination against blacks, but he was just as deeply opposed to race-conscious policies that were designed to benefit one race over another. More importantly, he believed the majority-minority districts violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Robinson lost 5-4 when then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who had previously voted to end racial gerrymandering, switched her vote.

If Justice Kennedy has decided the time has come to join the liberals and turn the corner on partisan gerrymandering, it’s just possible that in the not-too-distant future he might join the conservatives and turn the corner on racial gerrymandering. Hopefully he’s a switch hitter!

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:  

EmailMe

Mushroom clouds over North Korea?

Mushroom clouds over North Korea?

By

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

BlueRidgeNow.com

September 17, 2017

North Korea has been known as the “Hermit Kingdom” since the 17th century. But under the rule of Kim Jong-un since 2011, and his father and grandfather before him, North Korea’s isolation, brutality and quest for weapons of mass destruction have come to dominate its existence.

North Korea has the world’s fourth-largest army. Much of its military might is located just north of the 38th parallel and within 35 miles of Seoul, where there are about 150,000 Americans, including about 25,000 American troops.

The North Korean military arsenal massed near Seoul is protected by a vast labyrinth of underground caves and bunkers that house artillery and rocket launchers. It also houses immense quantities of chemical weapons such as nerve gas. An assault by North Korea against the South would be devastating.

North Korea is the most repressive nation in the world. Freedom is forbidden. Kim’s regime makes extensive use of political prison camps.

North Korea derives several billion dollars of hard currency annually from abroad to fund its development of nuclear weapons and ICBMs by exporting hundreds of thousands of its citizens as slave laborers to dozens of countries around the world. Additional hard currency to fuel the regime’s aggressive nuclear and long-range ballistic missile program comes from illicit arms sales to nations such as Syria and terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

And now, after years of failure by the U.S. to prevent North Korea from having the ability to threaten the American homeland with nuclear missiles, Kim has ballistic missiles that can reach us, has almost certainly detonated a hydrogen bomb, and will soon be on the verge of arming his ICBMs with hydrogen warheads.

When one listens to American military and diplomatic experts opine on North Korea, their refrain frequently suggests the U.S. has few, if any, good options to prevent Kim from acquiring nuclear first-strike technology. In code, many of them are saying, therefore, that we should do nothing. James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, recently told CNN, “I don’t think a denuclearized North Korea is in the cards.” That’s music to Kim’s ears.

A logic that suggests we can’t prevent an adversary from acquiring nuclear capability that threatens us, and that we can’t take action once such an adversary has that capability, is perverted and dangerous.

A careful analysis of this nation’s prosecution of war, since the Korean War in 1950, leaves way too much to be desired. Our intelligence community missed totally the entry of nearly 300,000 Chinese troops in the Korean War. Many regard that as the most colossal intelligence blunder in this nation’s history.

In Vietnam, what our experts believed was Soviet and Chinese communist expansion was in fact a civil war that, even with more than a half-million troops, we lost.

In Afghanistan, we are now in the 17th year of attempting to do what Alexander the Great, the British Empire and the Soviet Union failed to do. Like them, we will fail.

In Iraq, we thumped our chests at the outset of war by proclaiming “shock and awe” and left years later with a failed nation ripe for international terrorists.

So let’s give these experts in the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and academia their due, a grain of salt.

There are two paths forward. There is no doubt that China can oust Kim. It could do so in many different ways. For example, turning off the flow of oil from China to Pyongyang would be checkmate for Kim.

President Donald Trump should send Jon Huntsman, former ambassador to China, to Beijing. He speaks Mandarin, and the Chinese leadership knows and respects him.

Huntsman’s message to them should be unmistakably clear: Kim and his regime must be replaced immediately or it will be annihilated by the U.S. If Huntsman can convince Beijing that its choices are either unpalatable or horrific, they may see the light.

If China rebuffs the offer, this nation should employ sufficient military might, including the use of nuclear weapons, to do what Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said is possible: the “total annihilation” of North Korea.

Such an assault cannot simply be restricted to Kim’s nuclear facilities. Doing only that assures a devastating counter response against South Korea by Kim. No, the assault must necessarily destroy the entirety of Kim’s regime and his ability to make war.

The U.S. waited to respond until after Pearl Harbor and after 9/11. Waiting until after Chicago and Los Angeles amounts to criminal negligence.

The eradication of Kim would have additional beneficial consequences. It would change totally the working assumptions in places such as Teheran, Damascus, Raqqa, Kabul, Islamabad, Beijing and Moscow. How nice is that?

Times-News columnist LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:

EmailMe