America has just been defeated in Afghanistan by a  band of Islamic barbarians.

How was it possible?

A new booklet by Daniel Greenfield, published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center,* explains how.

It recounts how America’s top military brass …

… have betrayed their oaths and imposed on the service men and women under their command an alien ideology that attacks our Constitution, preaches hatred for our country and sows racial division in the military ranks.

In his Introduction, David Horowitz asks:

If the troops tasked with fighting our Marxist and Islamist enemies in a dangerous world are indoctrinated with hatred for their country, their Constitution, and its values, who will defend us?

Having read the booklet, we are convinced that the outcome of the war in Afghanistan could not have been other than defeat.

No one could read it and believe that the fighting forces of the United States, under the “Biden” administration, are able or willing to defend us.

Unless there is a change of government soon, the Age of America is over.

*Disloyal: How the Military Brass is Betraying Our Country by Daniel Greenfield, David Horowitz Freedom Center, PO Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499. $4.50

The “moderator” – more accurately called the “challenger” – at last night’s presidential candidates’ debate did a very bad job.

Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page:

Lester Holt’s actions at the first presidential debate were inexcusable. And also unsurprising.

The day when media lefties were patient enough to believe that the system would work without being this blatant are over. They’ve been open this election about rejecting even the illusion of objectivity.

The only question is why do Republicans continue to allow mainstream media figures to moderate presidential debates? Lester Holt decided to debate Trump. But you can increasingly expect this kind of behavior from any media figure below a certain age to whom the concept of journalism is a dead and incomprehensible notion. Or rather, to them it means that it’s their duty to attack Republicans.

2012 should have buried this. And I don’t know why we’re still dealing with this in 2016.

A debate between two candidates, one Democrat and one Republican, is the only time that the GOP has unquestionable leverage to get its way by rejecting mainstream media moderators. There are still a handful of journalists working for the big news networks who could be trusted to be fair, but most of them are over 70. There’s obviously no future in that. I can’t think of a single media figure who has any remote credibility in this regard except maybe Tapper.

It’s the right of Republicans to demand independent, professional moderators who can be trusted to do their job of asking questions and checking the time, instead of offering false fact checks and trying to debate the candidates. Lester Holt’s antics should be the final nail in the coffin of the mainstream media moderator.

Hillary Clinton’s replies were so glib, so well rehearsed, it seemed obvious to us that either her campaign had supplied the questions to Holt, or Holt had let her campaign know them in advance. Or perhaps they colluded even more closely. 

Holt baited Donald Trump. But Trump should not have let himself be put on the defensive. He could have brought up Hillary’s easily hacked private server when she talked about cyber attack. She opened the door wide for him to talk about her insistence on bombing Libya. Then he could have attacked her on Benghazi. He repeated himself too much, wasting time. He should have raised the Clinton Foundation corruption without waiting for a question about it.

Still, some good news came out of the fiasco. This is our abstract of a Breitbart report:

From a “flash poll” after last night’s debate by Pat Caddell, the Democratic pollster: “95 percent of the people we contacted told us they were not going to change their vote based on the debate. Two percent of voters, previously undecided, switched to Trump after the debate. No undecideds went to Clinton. Trump won on the most critical factor, on whether Clinton or Trump was more ‘plausible’ as president, 46 percent to her 42 percent. That for him is really what this debate was really about. On ‘Who showed that they care about people like you?’ Trump won 49 percent to 44 percent for her. Trump, as the challenger in this race, gained what he needed. Like most debates, this debate did not shift the race. What it did do was show Trump as a strong leader. Trump really helped himself out tonight.”

Hope so!

We very much like Daniel Greenfield’s Independence Day column at Front Page. From which we quote:

Independence Day is a commemoration, but it is not a mere commemoration. The struggle is not over. …

It is not our capacity for obedience that makes us true Americans, but our capacity for disobedience. …

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were acts of rebellion against the entire order across what was then seen as the civilized world.

American greatness came about because we were willing to break the rules. It was only when we began following the rules, when as a nation we made the maintenance of the international order into our notion of the greatest good and when as individuals we accepted the endless expansion of government as a national ideal that we ceased to be great.

When we think of great Americans, from Thomas Jefferson to the Wright Brothers, from Andrew Jackson to Daniel Boone, from Theodore Roosevelt to today’s true patriots, we think of “damned rebels” who broke the rules, who did what should have been impossible and thumbed their noses at the establishments of the day. American greatness is embodied in individual initiative. That is why the Declaration of Independence places at the center of its striving, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

It was for these individualistic ends of freedom that government had to be derived from the consent of the governed, that a war was fought that changed the world and it is these ends that we must celebrate.

Rebellion does not always mean muskets and cannon. Long before the War of Independence, we had become a nation of rebels who explored the wild realms of forests and streams, who forged cities out of savage lands, who argued philosophy and sought a higher purpose for their strivings, who refused to bow to their betters out of an accident of birth. And at our best, we are still rebels today.

When we dissent from the system, we rebel. When we refuse to conform, when we think differently, when we choose to live our own lives instead of living according to the dictates of our political rulers and pop culture arbiters, then we are celebrating the spirit of freedom that animates the Fourth.

When we defy the government, when we speak out against Obama and the rest of our privileged ruling class, when we demand the right to govern ourselves, when we fight to hold government accountable, when we question what we are told and the need to be told anything at all, then we are keeping that old spirit of rebellion alive.

We are still fighting for our independence from government every day and every year that we choose to live as free people.

That is the glorious burden of freedom.

Freedom is not handed to us. It is not secured for us by politicians. Like the Founding Fathers, we are made free by our fight for freedom. Preserving their legacy cannot be meaningfully recreated through any means other than the committed struggle for the same ideals.

This Fourth of July, celebrate by continuing to be a rebel, question and challenge the left’s worship of government. And don’t stop on the Fifth or in July. Or in any year or any decade or any century.