We must name the radical threat, self-defense is essential and other commentary

Centrists: We Must Name the Radical Threat

A “Lebanese-born U.S. citizen” whose brothers, “members of the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah,” had been killed by an Israeli air strike, brought the war “home” when he tried to blow up a Michigan synagogue Thursday, note the editors of The Free Press. But the “media chose to report the story” as if “the brothers were merely innocent victims of Israeli violence.” Despite three other Islamist terror attacks in the same week, “so many struggle to see what is in front of their own faces,” namely that global “militant movements” are waging war against “Western societies, Jews, and liberal democracy.” This war “cannot be won by pretending it does not exist,” because “a society that cannot name its enemies cannot protect itself against them.”

Libertarian: Self-Defense Is Essential

“People at the scene who were willing and able to end the threat without waiting for police to arrive” stopped both terror attacks last Thursday observes Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. At Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., Ayman Ghazali “drove his incendiaries-laden truck into the synagogue” only to be “confronted by security.” Under fire from two guards and with the truck jammed in a hallway, he killed himself. At Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., ROTC students took down Mohamed Bailor Jalloh after he opened fire on their class. With “political violence of various flavors” rising nationwide, “it’s a good time to take your own safety seriously,” since “government officials can’t always be in place to defend us when malicious people attack.”

Left Coast watch: It’s Newsom’s Gas-Price Spike

“Who’s rooting harder for higher oil prices — Gavin Newsom or” the liberal press? snarks The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley. Newsom blasts the “Iran price spike,” yet California gasoline-cost surges under him outpace the US average, with the gap now at $1.80. “Call it Mr. Newsom’s price spike.” Cali’s “anti-fossil fuel policies” have triggered oil production to plunge 40% and a quarter of the state’s refining capacity to “shut down.” Even now Newsom’s regulators are “trying to drive through a major increase in the state’s cap-and-tax allowance prices,” which would spark even more shutdowns and higher prices — with national impact: “The U.S. will become more dependent on foreign jet fuel and more vulnerable. Maybe the press could start raising alarms about that risk.”

Conservative: China Explains Trump’s ‘Chaos’

Look beyond the seeming chaos of “President Trump’s second-term foreign policy” to see a single organizing logic,” argues Scott Taylor at The Hill: Trump “is systematically repositioning American geopolitical power in anticipation of a confrontation with China.” From the Panama Canal to Greenland to Venezuela to Iran, he’s shaping a “new geopolitical reality.” With Maduro’s “removal from Venezuela” and Iran’s “leadership decapitated,” China must worry where will its oil imports “come from now.” Other moves have “laid waste” to all of China’s “scheming” to “exploit” US “vulnerabilities that make Taiwan’s defense politically unsustainable.” “The post-1945 liberal international order is gone,” but Trump is ensuring that America writes “the next world order the same way it wrote the last one.”

Liberal: Detoxifying the Democratic Brand

Their “party’s brand has become so toxic to overcome in so many places that Democrats” seem shut out of states like Nebraska and Montana, explains Matt Yglesias at The New York Times. Why not “try to change their brand”? “Abandon unpopular issue positions while sticking to their guns on more popular ones,” as Donald Trump did in 2016 and since — shifts that “helped to turn former swing states like Iowa and Ohio into solid red states.” For Dems now, polling shows that “dropping support for the use of race as a factor in college admissions” along with “embracing merit pay for K-12 teachers,” “being more open to fossil-fuel production” and culture-war moderation can score big. “Rank-and-file Democrats” do “want fighters, but the point of fighting is to win.” Be willing “to cross some of today’s progressive ideological taboos.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board