The Nazis had “Special Forces” who spoke fluent Polish. They put on Polish army uniforms, sneaked into Poland, then sneaked back into Germany and blew up a German radio station near the Polish border. Hitler flipped into a hysterical tirade and promised revenge. With phony pretext safely in hand, Hitler then invaded Poland.

In June 1950 North Korean troops invaded South Korea. Wait a minute! Every Communist news medium from western Czechoslovakia to Mainland China reported the exact opposite. They reported the warmongering American puppets of South Korea had launched a surprise attack upon the peace-loving peasants of North Korea. How, then, did they explain that those peace-loving peasants of theirs almost immediately rolled their tanks into the capital of South Korea’s warmongering puppets, Seoul?

That’s easy if you own all the media. The Communist press simply added one line to the Big Lie: “The scene of action was soon transferred southward.”

Whatever happened to that wonderful organization, the Burlington Liars’ Club, of Burlington, Vt.? Every New Year’s they used to publish the biggest lies of the previous year, things like, “It was so cold on our camping trip in Canada that our words froze and we had to hold them over a candle and melt them to hear what we were saying.” Nazis and Communists do even better, and with a straight face.

When intellect and adventure combine: Barry Farber presents myriad stories of his unique life in his new book, “Cocktails with Molotov: An Odyssey of Unlikely Detour”

And now America has joined the club. Having cheered on the valiant resistance of WND, Fox News, the Weekly Standard and precious few others in the American media, you might sense a touch of exuberance slathered in amongst these words. Apparently the redwood tree of Obama-team liars tumbled to the Boy Scout knives of the truth-tellers on Friday, May 10, when it became apparent that the media – though it may be pro-Obama – is also very strongly pro-media. There was a line in Gore Vidal’s drama “The Best Man” in which the key player loudly lamented, “I don’t mind being a bastard, but why am I such an inept bastard?”

Warning to all future presidential spokespeople, like Jay Carney: The White House press corps will take your lies. They consider pro-Obama lies a worthy cause. But they won’t tolerate inept lies. They want you to save those for the 9-year-olds, and come out with your raised hands the appropriate shade of red when you’re caught telling a “Benghazi“!

Did you ever enter a college football stadium aglow with lust for vengeance because of what that enemy team did to your team last year, and then wind up hoping those inept enemies will score once or twice so they can at least walk to the showers and not be carried on a stretcher? That was my feeling watching Jay Carney last Friday. They tell us the game of life consists not necessarily in winning, but in playing a poor hand well. Jay was dealt the worst hand by his Obamistic bosses than anybody else since President Eisenhower was caught lying to Khrushchev about the American U-2 spy plane, not knowing that the Soviets had the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, alive and well as their prisoner.

Poor Jay reminded me of a good-ol’-boy down home who never told the truth. Once, said someone who knew him, he did tell the truth, but he thought he was lying!

Don’t forget: The initial talking points had far too much for Obama’s nervous system about “al-Qaida-connected …”; “jihadists …”; “Islamic extremists …” No, no! Don’t forget: The terrorists were all supposed to have been dumped by the Obama forces into the ashcan of history well before the oncoming election. The talking points offered forth by U. N. Ambassador Susan Rice on five separate TV shows the Sunday after Benghazi contained not a milli-squidgen of such inconvenient history.

Poor Jay! Is there an award somewhere for haplessness? Give it to Jay in private. He reminded me of that old Myron Cohen story: The traveling salesman gets home unexpectedly a day early, opens his bedroom closet door and sees a naked man in there. “What are you doing here?” thundered the salesman. “Everybody’s got to be someplace,” whimpered the nude.

I was for Nixon in 1968. I’m grateful to the left who elected him. The left was so angry at Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey for going along silently with Lyndon Johnson on the Vietnam War they ruined Humphrey’s chances by repeating, “Where were you in ’64?” “Where were you in ’65?” “Where were you in ’66?” I have no such challenge for the White House press corps, suddenly livid and aroused against Obama and Carney.

I greet them with the words that might have eliminated the need for Watergate if uttered by the left in 1968, thereby electing Humphrey over Nixon.

I don’t put on a flint-faced frown and bludgeon the White House press corps with questions like, “Where were all you inquisitive guys before May 10?”

These two words will work better:

“Welcome, Brother!”

What we were willing to argue about was, did the German people know – or did they know the full extent – of Nazi atrocities, the concentration camps, the crematoria etc.? Considering the madness of that regime, the secrecy of its ways-and-means and the terror with which it lashed the German people, there were many Americans willing to believe that the German people really didn’t know all that much about Hitler’s “Final Solution to the Jewish question.”

Did that thought occur to anybody else during the testimony at the trial of abortionist Dr. Kermit Gosnell? Now the horror is sitting on America’s front porch in broad daylight. And America has a new four-letter word more powerful than the other one – namely, “snip,” which, when administered to a newborn’s spinal column with scissors can make a born-alive infant appear born-dead. The pessimists believe there’s a “Dr. Gosnell” in every American town. I’m an optimist. I believe there’s a “Dr. Gosnell” only in cities of 100,000 or more population.

What did Germany do about its dreadful secrets? It lost the war and became the strongest democracy in Europe and Israel’s best friend. What are we going to do about ours? I have an answer that sounds absurd, but no more absurd than Germany becoming a strong democracy and Israel’s best friend!

If basketball’s Jason Collins can come out of his closet and proclaim he’s gay, I can come out of mine and proclaim that abstinence works. I’ve been there, done that, and survived. And I don’t need a congratulatory phone call from the president. The attention of a few readers will more than suffice.

How dare the masses ridicule us into oblivion merely because they’re too cowardly to face the consequences of unintended pregnancy!

The dates are important. Mine are: High School, 1945-1948; College, 1948-1952.

We were thunderous. We who were heterosexual were thunderously so, thunderously desirous. We boys were thunderously relentless. Thank God, our girls were equally thunderously resistant. They developed the world’s best oral contraceptive. They opened their mouths and said, “No!” If you insist on laying on medals, don’t squander one on us boys of that era. Give double to our girls. We boys never meant to remain abstinent. It just worked out that way.

I went from kindergarten through high school without awareness of one single case of unintended pregnancy! (I could say the same for college, but the college population was too massive to make the point.) The closest we came was that morning (I think I was about 15) when the teacher greeted us with a pasty-faced smile and said, “You’ll notice Mary Lou’s seat is vacant. The most wonderful thing has happened to her. Her grandparents up in Asheville have invited her to spend the rest of the school year with them up in those beautiful mountains, and she’s so thrilled. Now, here’s her address, and you should all write her and let her know how happy we all are for her!”

The story about the “thrilling mountains of Asheville” kept me believing it for 20 years. I’ll concede, that one was likely a pregnancy. And that was the only one.

Abortion? Never! There were zero Catholics in that Southern school, so why was abortion dismissed as a solution? Before the overlay of pro-abortion propaganda could be applied, it was too obviously the taking of a life.

We’ve all seen the contempt and anger flame-throwered upon anyone who seriously suggests abstinence in those thunderous early years. Those are insufficient reasons why I should surrender my generation’s achievement of doing without sex, no matter how badly we craved it, until a time when it fit more appropriately and less menacingly into our lives.

It was a heated “abortion” debate back in the 1970s, and it was in New York where pro-abortion feeling was considered a cardinal symptom of civilization, and the punishment for espousing “Right-to-Life” was a lot nastier than it was in more gentle parts of the country.

A pro-life speaker was doing his best to maintain a coherent presentation despite the hate-filled interruptions. “What gives you the right even to speak about this?” hissed a woman pro-abortion activist. “You’ve never been a woman!”

“You’re quite right, Madam,” said he, dignity intact. “I’ve never been a woman.

“But I have been a fetus!”

Who among us has not thought, “If only I could think outside the box, like Gates and Jobs and Zuckerberg! If only! Then rainbows wouldn’t be something I’m constantly chasing. They’d be more like house pets, curled up in my lap, changing colors on demand.” Then you return to your inside-the-box mode, where you seem to be serving a life sentence. Soon you get over your “box fit.” Then you learn that the man who got the idea of putting wrinkles into hairpins became a multi-millionaire. Then you feel rotten again.

Actually all of us can go outside-the-box for something, maybe not profitably, but maybe you’ve hit upon some fruitful trick you learned along the way. Outside-the-box is a coveted destination. Let’s go there together on a topic that unites us all: the inexplicable mess America is in. It’s inexplicable only if you insist on remaining inside the box.

My wife, Sara, and I were married the year Obama was elected. He seemed to me to be doing so many things that damaged America.

Examples:

Refusing tax cuts, even though presidents Coolidge, Reagan and both Bushes proved tax-cutting increases revenue.

Ridiculing the very concept of slashing expenses.

Strangling small business with over-regulation.

Making sure “the rich” were re-introduced as official “enemies of the people,” a little like the Jews were in Hitler’s Germany and East Indians were in Idi Amin’s Uganda.

Billions after bad billions squandered in “green” ventures.

The transmogrification of health-care inadequacies into health-care disasters, both medical and economic.

Sara said something like, “You’re assuming Obama wants a better economy and a better America. I don’t assume any such thing!” I began to wonder where she hid her tinfoil millinery. “Liberate your mind,” Sara advised. “Give it wings, give it permission to fly. I believe Obama is at heart a Marxist who wants American capitalism to fail!”

I think I lost my audio. My mind couldn’t stretch that way. I remember Wendell Willkie, Tom Dewey, Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon (1960), Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jerry Ford – even those losers were patriotic Americans who wanted the best for us.

Sara then reminded me of an old radio show somebody had reincarnated from the days when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate, in which the host asked how he felt about the Constitution. “… the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties,” said Obama. “Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”

That was the giveaway. Sara had never been closer to communism than when visiting her niece in West Germany. (That’s West Germany!) I’d spent as much of my journalistic life as possible in every communist country I could get into. Sara seized the tick of Obama’s heartbeat. I missed it.

Once your little bird of a brain learns to fly, help it zoom. Are you ready for more altitude? Let’s say you give in to Sara’s theory that Obama is a Marxist at heart and wants American capitalism to collapse. I envisioned an evil goatee-stroking revolutionary plotting sedition from his mysteriously gained perch in the Oval Office.

No. Soar higher!

Can you escape the “Box” sufficiently to conclude that, far from an evil revolutionary bomb-thrower such as was pictured in American cartoons in the 1920s, Obama sincerely believes capitalism is harmful to America and – in his mind – he’s courageously helping America by speeding the collapse of capitalism!?

Could Adolf Hitler have viewed himself as a liberator? Hardly. His conquests were too disparate. He conquered monarchies and military dictatorships as well as progressive democracies.

I have interesting news, however. Though an absurd camera-mugger who deserved the taunt “the Sawdust Caesar,” Italy’s Benito Mussolini did consider himself a do-gooder and so did many victims of his aggression! You’re advised to confirm this with your Libyan and Ethiopian friends somewhere outside those countries and in a low voice. Their educated classes will admit that whatever is modern in those countries was brought by the Italian invaders. With Albanians, however, you need not tiptoe. If Albanians nearby get the drift of what you’re talking about they’ll stage a Mussolini rally on the spot.

The Albanians hated their King Zog and welcomed Mussolini’s troops, who built them a modern capital. Mussolini may have made Italian trains run on time, but he gave Albania its first railroad!

When no less an economic and business authority than Doug Johnson (author of “No Tomorrows: How to Halt America’s Imminent Collapse and Return to the American Dream”) said on radio word for word what my wife, Sara, had said about Obama, I went into the parlor and surrendered to Sara my sword in capitulation.

I’m not that nice a guy, but I’m a deep believer in Ogden Nash’s recipe for a good marriage:

To keep your marriage brimming,
Drink deep from the loving cup.
And when you’re wrong, admit it,
And when you’re right, shut up!

I’m referring not to the religion of Islam, only to those inside that religion who wish us harm.

It used to be understood that “The innocent must suffer with the wicked.” There were good Germans and Japanese in those cities we set aflame. Now it’s, “The wicked get a free pass for fear some among the good will get their feelings hurt if we act rationally toward those who seek to kill us.”

Haven’t we had just about enough now from the political correctness that leaves us as helpless as the sturdiest professional handcuffs? Obama didn’t invent political correctness, but he refined it to the point where Danish Lutherans are considered just as likely to attack us as Quran-thumping jihadists. Remember the phrase, “Agonizing Reappraisal”? Step 1 of this loud and public Agonizing Reappraisal is to admit what fools we’ve been – well intended, but ineffective, disastrous, suicidal. Every jot-and-tittle of political correctness as applied to Islam must be dumped into sulfuric acid and sprayed across Death Valley. Imagine pretending the threat is somewhere other than where the threat obviously is!

Do you remember why America rounded up and interned 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent right after Pearl Harbor? It was the Ni’ihau incident. Japanese pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi, after bombing Pearl Harbor, crash-landed his damaged plane on the tiny Hawaiian Island of Ni’ihau. Included among the island’s 125 inhabitants were one Japanese and two Hawaiians of Japanese descent. When the dazed pilot came to he told his three Japanese compatriots, “America is finished. Japan is the new power. You must join us.”

And “join us” they did, with gusto. The pilot and his three local allies took hostages and set up a little “regime,” interrupted by a loyal Hawaiian-American hero, Ben Kanahele; he and his wife killed Nishikaichi, ending the “takeover.” When word of the incident reached President Roosevelt the fear crystallized that any Japanese anywhere who had a chance to aid Japan would do so.

America has since apologized and paid reparations to the survivors among the interned Japanese. I bring it up to contrast America’s instinct for self-preservation then and now. That policy was based on one lone incident involving three Hawaiians of Japanese ancestry. Look how many incidents now bulge out of the Islamic scrapbook. We’ve got the shoe-bomber, underwear-bomber, Times Square-bomber, subway-bomber, Ft. Hood shooter, Boston Marathon-bombers and, of course, 9/11 – the dreary roll call continues. How were the American people induced to buy the fiction that militant Muslims present no more of a threat that anybody else?

The FBI and New York police are found keeping certain mosques under surveillance, monitoring the sermons, etc. And Americans are enraged at this invasion of privacy! Were they enraged when the FBI used to hang out in Little Italy in the day of the Mafia? Under today’s rules they’d probably be dispatched to the Norwegian Seamen’s Home in Brooklyn! Haven’t we proven since 9/11 how tolerant we are of those who want us dead? Haven’t we gone to war five times since 1991 to defend Muslims? Will America’s brotherhood awards be displayed at America’s funeral?

Rep. Peter King of New York is too valuable to waste in Congress. He’s heard the thundering silence of America’s Muslims since 9/11. Where is the audible apology, the confessions of shame at what their Muslim brothers did to America and vow to continue doing, the unsolicited proclamations of loyalty? Where are the “Allah Bless America!” exhortations? Somebody in Washington wants Peter King to shut up. He wanted hearings. They gave him one. He wanted more; nothing doing!

Nothing Congressman King nor those of us who admire him have in mind threatens one innocent Muslim. America’s pretty good at telling friend from foe regardless of nationality. During World War I, our greatest air ace was a German-American named Eddie Rickenbacker. Another German-American was pretty helpful to our side in World War II. The name was Eisenhower.

At the moment no innocent Muslim in America need be intimidated. The rest of us are terrified that one of our words might be interpreted as “hate speech.”

After 9/11 there was about a week when we felt free to say anything, until political correctness hardened our speech arteries again. Maybe Boston will grant us a free-speech license of longer duration.

I interviewed my Russian-born grandfather shortly before he died and played it on my radio show. Thousands of listeners wanted a copy, mostly to hear Grandpa’s rich Russian-Yiddish accent saying “God bless America. There’s no place else like America!”

I loved it when the uncle of the Boston bombers, Ruslan Tsarni, spoke about America with the same accent and emphasis as my grandfather.

There is no other country like America and very few even close. America is special; the intellectuals call it “American Exceptionalism.”

Don’t handle America with “correctness.”

Handle with care.

It’s reliably reported that beheadings used to be the “sport” that filled the seats in the stadium in Afghanistan. You need not go that far to find inhumanity on the playing field. When the average player screws up in football you can hardly tell he’s not there for the next play. It’s all too fast, too many players running around. But the solemn march of the baseball manager out to the pitcher’s mound after a series of disastrous mis-pitchings can only mean the public execution of a pitcher’s reputation, underscored by his long, lonely walk from the mound back to the dugout, or to the showers, or to the minors.

Alfred Hitchcock once said that New York state “killed” the circus when it demanded a net under the high-wire acts. I wouldn’t go if it weren’t for that law. I don’t go to see anybody killed or maimed. I want to see spectacular talent in mid-air – I’m prepared to cheer the successful completion of what look like miracles of human motion, and I’m prepared to forgive the rare – and, in New York, survivable – blunder.

Those of you who support the president and see this as a slow-moving missile targeting the Obama record might be quick to say, “No. No Big-Guys ever go to the Oval Office to fire a president. There’s no pitcher’s mound in the White House.” Sorry, you don’t get rid of me that quickly. I remember when a gang of “Big-Guys” in the Republican Party converged on the Oval Office in July 1974 to send President Richard Nixon to the dugout for keeps.

The agonizing part of the “Mission-to-the-Mound” is precisely which blunder it is that breaks the camel’s back. Any pitcher can give up a hit, a few doubles; even a homer doesn’t always lead to middle-of-the-inning disaster. I’d love to see a moving picture of my abdominal muscles when the pitcher is having it rough. One more hit, one more double, two more runs scored, when will it strike? On the screen my gut would look like a bowl of spaghetti in a typhoon over an earthquake. And the picture would be identical if it were our pitcher or their pitcher. Humanity overrules team partisanship.

I’ve done time in countries where the art of ignoring the 800-pound gorilla is literally a survival art. Take the old Yugoslavia; a Communist country allied to America and the West. The standard of living in all Communist countries was low enough to end all arguments. The people learned to brag about how much better Yugoslavia’s living standard was than its Communist neighbors, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania. But people disappeared who mentioned the gorilla of non-Communist neighbors Italy and Austria, who lived vastly better than the Yugoslavs even though they lost the war and Yugoslavia won!

I feel “Yugoslav” again. Everybody knows, many talk, but almost nobody rants, raves, stomps and screams about how poorly America is doing and how poorly it’s doing it. Hillary Clinton is at this moment the front-runner for the Democratic nomination next time and therefore the front-runner for the presidency.

Can you name one Clinton foreign policy success as four-year secretary of state? Answer yes and you’re either a great scholar or a great liar. There was an “Arab Spring” in early 2011. We expected a necklace of pro-American Arab countries headed toward freedom. Instead, from Tunisia, where it began, through Libya, Egypt and Yemen, they hate us. Nothing has improved, and Egypt is in the grip of the Muslim Brotherhood. We’ve even failed to slow the rate of slaughter in Syria. Or slow down Iran’s race for the Bomb. North Korea is untamed. South America is a hotbox of toxic anti-American weeds. Hillary’s biggest blunder may be seeming to believe Russia and China might someday be our friends. Naivete can be terminal.

The debt unpayable. The deficit irreducible. The economy. Unemployment. The abject failure of the “Green Adventures,” like Solyndra and electric cars, costing taxpayers billions and enriching Obama’s cronies; the mind-blowing extravagance of presidential and vice presidential vacations that seem to sneer and say, “You see. I told you they’re brain-dead.” The absurd game of pretending that sequester hurt where it didn’t. America, who kept Hitler guessing when we would strike, now lets the Taliban know exactly when we’re getting out.

The student takes his paper to the teacher and says, “I don’t think I deserve a zero on this test.” The teacher replies, “I don’t either, but it’s the lowest grade I’m allowed to give.”

Worst of all, still no movement toward the Mound. Instead, re-election!

Dodger Sandy Koufax, Jewish, wouldn’t pitch on Yom Kippur, the highest of the Jewish High Holy Days. On one such occasion, Don Drysdale was pitching for him and getting annihilated. Singles, doubles, homers; the works. Eventually, manager Walter Alston made his “Mission-to-the-Mound.” As he approached, before Alston could say a word, Don Drysdale said, “I’ll bet today you wish I were Jewish, too!”

The first news mention I heard told of Coach Mike Rice throwing balls at his players’ legs and heads and showering them with verbal abuse. I thought a war I wanted to fight had just broken out. I thought softness, a harmful partner of political correctness, was damaging America, and I wanted to join the cause of the tough coaches and beat back the caterwauling mollycoddlers.

By the time I got to the battlefield, though, I realized that Rice’s toughness was not my kind of toughness and his language was not my kind of language, so I didn’t sign on. But as long as I’m up I may as well fight anyhow.

For decades now we’ve been throwing out the mouth with the mouthwash. When I was inducted into the Army it hadn’t been that long since the cadre – the NCOs who train new recruits – were allowed to hit the trainees whose beds weren’t properly made, whose shoes had scuff marks, whose marching and drilling skills were sub-par, etc. The older soldiers thought the elimination of physical abuse was the end. “Thank God World War II is over and we won it,” went the beer talk. “The Mama’s Babies have taken over the Pentagon!”

Whatever the cadres missed by being unable to hit us was more than compensated for by the escalation of their verbal abuse. It wasn’t anti-black or anti-Jewish, or anti-gay. It was strictly anti-anybody who hadn’t been in the Army as long as they had. The most afflicted were the cadre-men who’d fought in Korea and returned stateside to train us. They’d been trained in a harsh military culture, then fought a tough war, and now returned to an army they considered something like the Boy Scouts. One of our sergeants got so upset with our performance on the drill field he went berserk. It took other cadre-men – six of them – to restrain him and get him to the post hospital!

There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the training of, for example, Navy SEAL Team 6. Or the rest of America’s existing military. In the all-volunteer military, those who choose it take it lap it up and throw it back. So we have a small number of well-trained defenders and many millions of young men and women totally clueless to military discipline. History will tell us if ditching the draft was smart.

I thought our treatment as new U.S. soldiers was barely civilized, but over the years the harshness and verbal abuse and harassment did its job. What was its job? Occasionally, a friendly officer would explain “The Plan.” “The Army wants to break you – rip apart your individualism, your pride, your self-esteem, all of that – and reduce you to a blank slate upon which the Army and the Army alone will write its message!”

The Army is, after all, a fascist organization assigned to defend freedom. We’ve long ridiculed the German army’s maniacal fixation on “obeying orders.” Misplaced derision. One reason for our victory was that we turned out more troops better capable of better obeying more orders. So, you lose a little self-esteem now to boost your chances of surviving on the battlefield. That calls for harshness and some anger.

What’s Rutgers’ excuse?

It was not pleasant being remolded into military discipline. But it was fascinating watching it turn young Americans from a mob into a disciplined fighting force that could out-militarize the bad guys. Life goes better when the good guys are the strongest.

You should have been there. The Army drafted “gang member” kids from the toughest streets of the big cities. “Oh, no!” they’d shout when the compulsory haircut came due. “Ain’t no (multiple-expletives) mother gonna touch my hair!” The Army started with two holding him down during the haircut. If needed, as in the case of the berserk sergeant, more and more backup could be mobilized. The great part was 12 weeks later watching that same defiant street thug – now a gleaming, polished soldier – holding down the new “tough” kids who “waddn’t gonna get no damn haircut from no damn …” and so on.

I felt mistreated in the Army, but for a purpose. Defending America is a purpose. It’s a purpose higher than playing better basketball. It may take a while, but hatred of Army harshness usually mellows into gratitude. I completed basic training in early 1953. If, God forbid, disaster descended upon America, I would today be of more value to my family, my neighborhood, my city and my country than if I’d never undergone that “mistreatment” known as tough military training.

American generals have had nicknames like “Howling Mad” and “Blood and Guts.” I can think of famous coaches who were firm, who were tough, who were disciplined.

I can’t think of any who were famous for being angry.

I don’t long for more Americans who long for more territory, curse other nations with ethnic slurs or cry continually for military retaliation. I do long for more Americans imbued with military discipline.

John Dos Passos nailed it when he wrote, “The war wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the army.”

They probably don’t teach “doin’ right” like that any more. Some flint-faced parents probably got the whole program obliterated as being “religious.” I remember that “Go to church!” was a staple recommendation.

Anyhow, the real world offers a lot of that kind of moral ammunition. Countries where people vote, start businesses, speak, travel and worship freely make out a lot better than the dictatorships. For decades free West Berlin, right alongside Commie-enslaved East Berlin, drove the Communists nuts. So did free Hong Kong nestled into the bosom of Communist China. The Soviet Union never did figure out how to explain the prosperity of free Finland alongside drab, dull and dictatorial Russia.

But the mother of all such invidious comparisons has to be South Korea right there next to North Korea. Same people, same history, same language. Yet the average income of the free and democratic South Koreans is 17 times that of the North!

Actually, it’s profane to talk about income when millions, yes, millions of North Koreans have starved to death. Communism’s answer to starvation? A propaganda campaign claiming science has “proven” it’s healthier to eat just one meal a day. At night satellite pictures show a vibrant “lit-up” South Korea while the neighboring North is locked down in blackout.

There’s good news from Korea. Don’t dig out the New Year’s Eve horns and party hats just yet, but, just as the Mideast has become an American disaster, kept silent only by a media whose home address is Obama’s back pocket, Korea tells us of a change that veterans of that war may find too good to be true.

America doesn’t quite mess up everything every time. The very definition of military ineptitude was our ally, South Korea, when the Communists attacked in June 1950. Helpless, hopeless, hapless, South Korean military failure cannot be overstated. When the Communist North Koreans attacked and U.S. President Harry Truman realized he had to rush American troops from occupation duty in Japan to defend South Korea – or forfeit the world to the aggressors – entire units of the South defected to the invading Communists from the North. You’ve heard the term “bug out,” as in, “Where are our allies whose country we’re defending?” “Oh, they’ve bugged out!” That vocabulary enrichment was a gift from the South Korean army.

That was 1950. And while America was taking heavy casualties trying to defend South Korea, we took even heavier “casualties” trying to defend our defense of South Korea politically. Our critics and enemies, foreign and homegrown, ridiculed us mercilessly. “Why are you trying to defend South Korea against North Korea? They’re both terrible dictatorships! The South’s ruler, Syngman Rhee, is a right-wing dictator and the North’s Kim Il-sung is a left-wing dictator. Why risk one American life trying to defend South Korea?”

And most Americans didn’t know how to answer that question. About the best you heard back was something like, “Uhh, the North is Communist, right?”

One American who did know how was Leo Cherne, director of the International Rescue Committee, dedicated to spiriting prisoners of dictatorships into democracies worldwide. “True, we’re not defending freedom in South Korea,” admitted Leo. “What we’re defending is the possibility of eventual freedom, something which will be lost once Communism takes over.”

North Korean propaganda told us the present dictator’s father, Kim Jong-il, decided to take up golf and scored six holes-in-one on his first round! Leo scored six holes-in-one with that one shot!

Today South Korea is a democracy with a booming world-class economy and an army of people who – like Israelis – know who they are and what they’re fighting for. The refugee community from North Korea in the United States is almost unanimously convinced that the twerpy little dictator Kim Jong-un, grandson of post-World War II Kim Il-sung – is just “making noise” to build his image among his much older generals, and has zero intention of starting a war against South Korea and the United States. More importantly – and this is hard for any American veteran of the Korean War to comprehend – the odds are now not just amended, but upended! Just as the South had no chance against the North militarily, the solid opinion now is that the South has, along with its economic and democratic maturity, achieved such a tremendous military advantage that no North Korean in his right or wrong mind would pick a fight.

Look outside: It’s October 1942 again. Our enemies are on top, except for that little slap-dash of good news from the Pacific island of Guadalcanal we were wresting from the Japanese.

May South Korea do for America’s spirits now what Guadalcanal did in 1942!

America’s most decorated Marine hero, Gen. “Chesty” Puller, thought he was kidding when he told his embattled troops during a difficult moment in Korea, “They’ve got us surrounded, men. Don’t let any of them get away!”

Media of ours and friends of mine are hailing the “success” of Obama’s visit to Israel as if it were as joyous as the liberation of Paris, as game-changing as the nuclear bomb and as important as the unconditional surrender of the bad guys in World War II. Me? I thought it was pretty cool.

There was an overhang in the atmosphere that, though we didn’t like to talk about it openly, Obama hadn’t really passed his deity exam yet to qualify as God, but now, finally, he did and we can all unlimber and rejoice. Well, as Hollywood’s incomparable Sam Goldwyn once said, “Include me out!”

Barack Obama until just the other day was the most anti-Israel president in America’s history. His idolaters wail, “What a leader we’ve got! He was anti-Israel, then suddenly he changes and, wow, look how hopes for the Middle East are spiraling upward!”

This is what’s so numbing about the Obama phenomenon. When Romney loses to Obama, the with-it crowd likes to remind Republicans, “Times change. Demographics change.” When Obama twice wins the Jewish vote, after proving his anti-Israel DNA, nobody talks of “change.” Change is robbed of the credit. All credit then goes to “this charismatic young genius who knows how to carry his base and everybody else’s base, too!”

Try pointing out that younger American Jews are also vulnerable to a magnetism different from that of their more Holocaust-and-jihad-aware elders; point out that younger generations shed loyalty like snakes shed skin, and you’re suddenly a racist denying Obama his due.

I wish I didn’t have to keep returning to Egypt’s “Museum of Victory” example, but an ungenerous world offers no alternative. Between Cairo Airport and the Nile Hilton, there’s a “Victory Museum” dedicated to the Egyptian defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War – on the level! President Franklin D. Roosevelt once told New York’s Jewish Rep. Sol Bloom, “I am tired of hearing the whining of Jews.”

You don’t have to be Martin Luther King to have a dream, and you don’t have to be Franklin Roosevelt to be tired of something. I get tired of Obama’s defeats being energetically presented as victories, and I dream of a change!

Does it ever occur to anyone that Obama shifted his Israeli stance because he was beaten? Obama not only failed to cause Netanyahu’s defeat at the Israeli elections, his ratings are sinking and, except for his back-pocket dwellers, the whole world sees his policy is a failure in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and Iran. Only those Sunni-dominated countries that need a strong American ally and have no choice but to pretend America is still credible, namely Jordan and Saudi Arabia, still strike up the band when Obama’s plane lands.

Israel, not Obama, was the big winner last week. Remember now the stage magician who said, “Notice that at no point do my fingers leave my hands! Has Israel given up one square inch of new territory? Has Israel stopped or dismantled one Israeli house or even garage in the disputed-but-not-disputable Israeli territories. Is any such move as the above even expectable? The only “Obama victory” was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s airport “apology” to Turkish leader Recep Erdogan for killing nine Turks enroute to attack Israel by breaking the blockade of arms to Hamas in Gaza. If Israel apologized to every enemy enroute to attack her, she’d be in the same kind of perpetual apology as the Tibetans are in perpetual prayer. If this act made Obama great, then Israel must be greater than we think. Netanyahu’s apology was an act of “rakhmones” – something between pity and charity – so Obama didn’t have to leave empty-hearted.

There are 12 Jewish senators, all Democrats. Chuck Hagel’s anti-Jewish and anti-Israel record would glare through even the darkest desert night. But all 12 of those senators voted for Hagel. That’s what Israelis are smiling at.

A European Jew was once hectoring an American Jew on all the great achievements of European Jews. “Are you aware we had synagogues in our major European cities before Columbus discovered America? All our great Jewish scholars were European. All our great Jewish liturgical collections are in Europe. What do you American Jews have better than we European Jews?” asked the cocky European.

“Christians,” answered the American Jew simply. “We American Jews have the greatest Christians that Jews have ever been fortunate enough to live among.”

And which senators arose in the effort to smite anti-Semite Chuck Hagel? They didn’t have names like Blumenthal, Schumer and Lautenberg. They had names like Graham, Ayotte and McCain.

If you see Chuck Hagel, congratulate him. Tell him how much he’s done for the Jewish people just by not being one.

The lowly earthworm never seemed to learn. And neither do we. I’m trying to change. I resolved that, whenever a new power-figure appeared on the world stage, I would stand my ground and refuse to accept the unsolicited rantings about this new figure. I’d gone from pre-teen to senior citizen taken in by political gamesters, sometimes sinister and catastrophic.

I hope none of the Roman Catholic faithful will find this attitude disrespectful. I’ve just lived through too many deceptions. Example: When Yuri Andropov succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as ruler of the USSR all we heard was that Andropov loved American things, especially the novels of Jacqueline Susann (“Valley of the Dolls”). In other words, a good ol’ boy, right? Not quite.

I understand how people can be successful. I understand how people can be gullible. But I’ll never understand how people can be as successful and gullible at the same time as Americans. Fidel Castro swore he’d hold free elections in Cuba within one year of his 1959 takeover. And what was our reaction? “Bravo, Fidel! What a guy!” But it’s now 2013.

They told us Mao was merely an “agrarian reformer.” Sorry. Mao’s bitterest enemies, the Chinese Nationalists, were the real “agrarian reformers.” Their founder, Sun Yat-sen, put it into a position paper that would fit on a bumper sticker: namely, “Land to the Tiller.” Mao was a mass-murdering Communist thug. But enough Americans thought he was a land reformer!

Earlier they told us Stalin wanted nothing more than “to preserve the gains of the working class.” The typical American would demand more details from his used-car dealer than we demand from the liars who bend us to their agenda like silly-putty too silly for anything else.

On Day 1 of Pope Francis’ reign we heard conflicting narratives about the new pope. We heard that this new pope would be bad news for Fidel Castro and all the left-wing dictators.

We also heard that Pope Francis was a “pope of the people,” a minister to the poor, a pope who despised the gap between the super-rich and the super-poor. Could one of those comments on Pope Francis possibly have been that he favored “Liberation Theology”? And isn’t that nothing but slum-and-jungle Marxism?

Who is it who’s trying to tell us Cardinal Bergoglio’s ascendancy to pope is “bad news, indeed, for Fidel Castro and all the other left-wing dictators”? I hope that’s true; I just want to know whose lip-prints are on the instruments playing that tune.

This is the time and place to remind the forgetful of the debt all freedom-lovers owe the Roman Catholic Church beginning after World War II when the Soviet Union was thought of as “our gallant Russian allies” (which they were!) and their leader, Josef Stalin, was “Uncle Joe.” While we were luxuriating in the victory over Germany and Japan, the Catholic Church in Eastern Europe, which had been handed over to the Soviets by America and Britain, was fighting with bare fingernails to survive under Communism.

True, Catholic churches in Latin America were opulent while surrounding populations were in grinding poverty, but that’s all the Communists want to talk about. What about the fight against Soviet oppression? As early as 1948 Hungarian Cardinal Josef Mindszenty was sentenced to life imprisonment. His crime: opposing the secularization of Communist Hungary’s Catholic schools. When the Hungarians rebelled against Soviet oppression in 1956, Cardinal Mindszenty was liberated by the anti-Communist Freedom Fighters and hustled off to refuge in the American Embassy in Budapest.

Even earlier, in 1946, in Communist Yugoslavia, Roman Catholic Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac was put on trial for treason. Despite Communist dictator Tito’s popularity, the power of the Church blistered through and the Communists had to release Stepinac, who in 1952 was elevated to cardinal while the Communists of Yugoslavia smoldered.

In 1980 we saw the Roman Catholics of Poland – without firing a shot! – defeat the Communist Party and, through Lech Walesa’s Solidarity, turn Poland into a free country.

OK. Nobody’s expecting Pope Francis I to go charging into Communist North Korea with his bare hands and toss out the regime. Or even the much weaker Cuba. All I ask is, again, who exactly is trying to tell us Pope Francis is bad news for the Communists? May we hear a little bit more, please?

Good luck, Your Holiness. We hope some of the narratives about you are true!

Shortly after World War II, Stalin was asked if he feared the influence of the pope in postwar Europe. “The pope?” smiled Stalin. “How many divisions does the pope have?”

Pope Pius XII replied, “My son Josef will meet my divisions in Heaven.”

Or maybe soon in Latin America

One of our most effective columnists, Paul Hollrah, who served twice on the Electoral College and beat the Democratic establishment and got voting booths into Oklahoma, says “The game is over!” and he may quit writing. A female Army veteran tells me how discouraged she is about America after being denied a rather unspectacular job because, it was alleged, her writing skills were inadequate. She’s a Harvard graduate and we met thanks to an article she wrote in the Reader’s Digest.

Is this America, or the Losers’ Lounge?

They say the only art form invented in America is jazz. They’re wrong. We also invented the pep talk, credited largely to the famous Norwegian-born football coach of Notre Dame, Knute Rockne. (If you want to achieve insider’s rank, pronounce the “K” in “Knute”!) The only trouble with pep talks is, they sound too much like pep talks. And, if you lower your voice and use reason, logic and history to lift team spirits, they’re not really pep talks anymore.

I’m as bummed out at America’s decline as I can arrange to get. The biggest bummer is the high number of Americans who are not bummed out at all, but rejoice that at last we have a president who knows how to give things away! Some of my best friends really think it’s over for America. I belong to the faction that can differentiate among a sneeze, bronchitis and double-pneumonia. I feel our need is closer to Kleenex than to the emergency room.

Dictatorships seem to be more aware than free countries that defeatism leads to defeat. In bad-guy armies, soldiers have been shot dead by their officers just for grousing and grumbling about the way things are going at the front. In Nazi Germany death was actually “rationed.” Local newspapers were allowed to print only a limited few daily death notices of young men lost in Hitler’s wars.

Look around. If America’s losing, who’s winning? Certainly not our old adversary in what used to be the Soviet Union. There’s no illegal immigration problem in Russia. Communist China, perhaps? “60 Minutes” is only rarely likely to win my geo-political praise, but I’d gladly volunteer to hug Morley Safer OR Lara Logan in return for more programs like that of March 3 when they exposed “mile after mile after mile after mile” (four times!) of empty buildings and ghost cities somebody screwed up and built in eastern China. The 1956 Hungarian Revolution that changed Communism and the world was precipitated by one incident of public disorder in front of the Communist Parliament in Budapest, Oct. 23, 1956. In Communist China there are an average of 200 incidents of public disorder every day!

Could those Mideast nations in the grip of the Religion-of-Peace be exciting your envy? Tell us your opinion when you’ve been there; that is, if you get back! Syria, anybody?

It’s much better losing when you’re not losing to anybody. The world has become an ethnic house-of-horrors where nobody’s winning. So, who do we surrender TO, Glenn?

America’s looking better. Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal tells us American business is sitting on mountains of money, and America seems to be where the world still wants to live. One more election might fix it all!

One perk of talk radio I hadn’t thought of until it blessed me is the ability to quench life-long curiosities. In the Battle of the Belgian Bulge of 1944, our surrounded “Battling Bastards of Bastogne” were offered sweet surrender terms by the Germans. “Surrender, and your troops will eat well and sleep warm tonight. Refuse, and you die!”

The historic answer from American Gen. Anthony McAuliffe was said to be “Nuts!” For years I wondered if it were really “Nuts!” or something stronger! In my first year in radio I interviewed the general and asked him if it were really “Nuts!” He assured me it was. And that’s a good reply to those who say America is great and to those who say America is through.

During World War II, an American Air Force chaplain was flying with his men on a bombing mission over Germany. The plane was badly shot up, port engine smoking, one starboard engine shut down. Part of the tail shot away. Flak coming through the belly and exiting through the top.

The chaplain wormed his way up to the cockpit and told the pilot, “Captain, it looks pretty bad. The men back there are all cussing.”

The pilot replied, “Padre, get back to me when they quit cussing and start praying!”

Mark Twain gave us a pretty good pep talk; “Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. No one was there.”

We need just a little more of that bravery from the Bulge.

The British were not braver than the French at the Battle of Waterloo.

They were just brave for five minutes longer.