LET'S FIGHT BACK

LET'S FIGHT BACK
GOD BLESS AMERICA

Monday, April 30, 2018

Alex Jones Confronted By Jeff Bezos' Thugs At Globalist Amazon/Whole Foo...

Fox & Friends 4/29/2018 - Fox News | Breaking News April 29, 2018

Sean Hannity 4⁄30⁄18 Sean Hannity April 30, 2018 Fox News

ALEX JONES (FULL SHOW) Sunday 4/29/18: News, WH Correspondents Dinner Tr...

The Rush Limbaugh Podcast Monday - Apr 30, 2018 - Hour 1

Levin Show 4/27/18 - Mark Levin Show April 27,2018 Full Podcast

The Pursuit of Happiness


the AZEL

PERSPECTIVE

Commentary on Cuba's Future, U.S. Foreign Policy & Individual Freedoms - Issue 124
 


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Eudemonia is an anglicized Greek word commonly translated as happiness in the broad sense of human well-being. It is defined as “the good composed of all goods; an ability which suffices for living well.”  It is a key concept in modern psychology and moral philosophy. Essentially, eudemonia is having a good life.
In Aristotelian ethics, eudemonia is used for the highest human good, and philosophers have since been preoccupied with defining what a quality life is, and how to achieve it. My aim here is only to argue how a quality life is incompatible with Marxist doctrine.

For philosophers, the difficult question has been what sort of life counts as a quality life. That is, to specify what activities and what institutional frameworks enable us to have a good life. For Aristotle, the good life is one of “virtuous activity in accordance with reason.” An unvirtuous individual cannot be happy. Happiness entails a sense of justified pride in ourselves, and justified pride necessitates virtue.

It is important to keep in mind that “virtue” in ethics is more than a moral concept and includes other qualities such as the exercise of honesty, wisdom, courage or justice. In short, a good life requires good character and rational virtuous activity. How are these best achieved?

Marxist doctrine requires a range of economic and social systems characterized by state control of the means of production.  And, a state is an institution that claims for itself monopolistic use of force in a given territory and demands that citizens submit to its mandates. It is not often well understood that a confiscatory attack on someone’s property is an attack on that person. To see this, consider what happens if the individual tries to defend against the state’s attack on his property.

Totalitarian states such as North Korea or Cuba create a social framework in which our choices of actions are constrained, thus thwarting our opportunity to become virtuous by exercising independence in choice and action. The coercive commands of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes interfere with our exercise of practical judgment, substituting the goals of the state for our own. This fails to recognize that our lives are lived, and our virtues developed, by identifying and evaluating our own tradeoffs, and acting according to our ends.

Communist states usurp our individual authority to exercise our own judgment. We cannot live a virtuous life, that is, we cannot have a quality life, without being able to exercise practical judgment and reason.  And yet, Marxists governments postulate that they seek to make their citizens virtuous.

Under the Soviet Union, the new Soviet man was to be selfless, learned, healthy, muscular, and was to behave consistently with Marxist prescriptions. He was not to be driven by crude impulses of nature but by conscious self-mastery, rejecting his innate personality.  Similarly, Che Guevara in “Man and Socialism in Cuba” demanded that "Society as a whole must become a huge school and, in that way, we can see the new man who begins to emerge in this period of the building of socialism." These experiments resulted in dystopic societies.

To undertake the role of forming virtuous citizens, Marxist states must be unvirtuous as a matter of institutional practice. For example, they must establish educational institutions that regiment thought. They must substitute the states rationality for the judgment of the citizenry, imposing on them the state’s conception of virtue and the pursuit of the state’s ends.

Marxist states, in replacing individual judgment with coercive force, are corrosive to the virtues of the citizenry.  This is to say they decrease our quality of life. Free and equal persons have the moral right not to be forced or coerced without justification.

Social virtues do not flow from the state but from our free interactions.  Free individuals, and not the state, are the necessary social framework for the development and exercise of virtuous activity in accordance with our reason. The virtues that lead us to have a good life can only be developed by living in freedom.

Please let us know if you Like Issue 124 - The Pursuit of Happiness on Facebook this article.
We welcome your feedback.
Abrazos,
 
Lily & José
 
(click on the name to email Lily or Jose)
This article was originally published in English in the Miami Herald and in Spanish in El Nuevo Herald.
 
José Azel, Ph.D.
José Azel left Cuba in 1961 as a 13 year-old political exile in what has been dubbed Operation Pedro Pan - the largest unaccompanied child refugee movement in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

He is currently dedicated to the in-depth analyses of Cuba's economic, social and political state, with a keen interest in post-Castro-Cuba strategies. Formerly, a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami, Jose Azel has published extensively on Cuba related topics.

In 2012 and 2015, Dr. Azel testified in the U.S. Congress on U.S.-Cuba Policy, and U.S. National Security.  He is a frequent speaker and commentator on these and related topics on local, national and international media.  He holds undergraduate and masters degrees in business administration and a Ph.D. in International Affairs from the University of Miami.

José along with his wife Lily are avid skiers and adventure travelers.  In recent years they have climbed Grand Teton in Wyoming, trekked Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Machu Pichu in Peru.  They have also hiked in Tibet and in the Himalayas to Mt. Everest Base Camp.

They cycled St. James Way (
El Camino de Santiago de Compostela) and cycled alongside the Danube from Germany to Hungary. They have scuba dived in the Bay Islands off the Honduran coast.

Their adventurers are normally dedicated to raise funds for causes that are dear to them. 
Watch Joe & Lily summit Kilimanjaro.

Books by Dr. José Azel
In Reflections on FreedomJosé Azel brings together a collection of his columns published in prestigious newspapers.  Each article reveals his heartfelt and personal awareness of the importance of freedom in our lives.  They are his reflections after nearly sixty years of living and learning as a Cuban outside Cuba. In what has become his stylistic trademark, Professor Azel brilliantly introduces complex topics in brief journalistic articles.
Buy Now
En Reflexiones sobre la libertad José Azel reúne una colección de sus columnas publicadas en prestigiosos periódicos. Cada artículo revela su percepción sincera y personal de la importancia de la libertad en nuestras vidas. Son sus reflexiones después de casi sesenta años viviendo y aprendiendo como cubano fuera de Cuba.  En lo que ha resultado ser característica distintiva de sus artículos, el Profesor Azel introduce con brillantez complejos temas en  breves artículos de carácter periodístico.
Compre Aqui
Mañana in Cuba is a comprehensive analysis of contemporary Cuba with an incisive perspective of the Cuban frame of mind and its relevancy for Cuba's future.
Buy now

 
Pedazos y Vacíos is a collection of poems written in by Dr. Azel in his youth. Poems are in Spanish.
Buy now
To friend, follow or email author click on the icons below:
Copyright © 2018 Azel & Associates, All rights reserved.
If you are receiving this email it is because we met you at some point on an adventure.

Our mailing address is:
Azel & Associates
440 Sawgrass Parkway, Suite 106
Sunrise, FL 33325

Saturday, April 28, 2018

It's kind of funny to see how the far left media try in some why to trip up Sarah Sanders, but without any success.

לוחמי יחידת המסתערבים עוצרים חשוד בסחר באמצעי לחימה

The Five 4⁄27⁄2018 Fox News Friday April 27, 2018

The Five - April 27, 2018 - FoxNews

YOUR WORLD WITH NEIL CAVUTO 4/27/18 | BREAKING FOX NEWS APRIL 27, 2018

Special Report With Bret Baier - April 27, 2018 - FoxNews

Lou Dobbs 4⁄27⁄18 ¦ Breaking Fox News ¦ April 27, 2018

OUTNUMBERED OVERTIME 4/27/18 | BREAKING FOX NEWS APRIL 27, 2018

The Ingraham Angle April 27, 2018 FoxNews

Tucker Carlson Tonight 4⁄27⁄18 Tucker Carlson Tonight April 27, 2018 F...

Sean Hannity 4/27/18 | Fox News Live April 27, 2018

The Savage Nation - April 27 2018 [HOUR 2, HOUR 3] Lou Pate fills in for...

ALEX JONES (FULL SHOW) Friday 4/27/18: North and South Korea Meet, Scott...

The Rush Limbaugh Show 4/27/18 | Rush Limbaugh Video April 27, 2018

Levin Show 4/27/18 - Mark Levin Show April 27,2018 Full Podcast

Friday, April 27, 2018

From The Religion Of Peace

Shalom Cuba


 




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April, 2018


A publication of the Cuban Studies Institute
NEWS
Vietnamese leader visits Cuba, signs agreements with Havana
The General Secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party arrived to Cuba for a two day state visit in Havana, where he was welcomed by Cuba's President, intending to further strengthen the bilateral relations between the countries....
Read story »
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Hezbollah Operations in Colombia 
A report from a joint investigation between the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Colombian intelligence reveals that Hezbollah, under orders from Iran, is responsible for trafficking drugs, laundering money, and recruiting possible ‘lone wolf attackers’ in Colombia...
Read story »
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Cuba’s Ladies in White Win 2018 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty 
The Ladies in White have been awarded the 2018 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, given every two years by the Cato Institute to an individual who has made a significant contribution to the advancement of human freedom... ..
Read story »
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SPOTLIGHT
Miguel Diaz-Canel vows to defend Castro revolutionary legacy
Miguel Diaz-Canel, began his term on Thursday with a promise to defend the socialist revolution led by the Castro brothers since 1959...
Read story »
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The Cuban regime takes a historic blow at the United Nations 
Diplomats representing eleven missions to the United Nations in Geneva (Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States) took to the floor to denounce Cuba’s arbitrary decision...
Read story »
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Rubio wants more Cuban military companies under U.S. sanctions 
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told el Nuevo Herald he expected the State Department to expand a list of sanctioned entities controlled by the Cuban military...
Read story »
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The Five 4⁄26⁄2018 Fox News Thursday April 26, 2018

Fox & Friends 4⁄26⁄18 Breaking Fox News ¦ April 26, 2018

Your World w/ Neil Cavuto 3/26/18 | Fox News Today | Breaking News Trump

Special Report With Bret Baier - April 26, 2018 - FOX NEWS

Lou Dobbs 4⁄26⁄18 ¦ Fox Breaking News Today April 26 2018

Outnumbered Overtime April 26, 2018 - Fox News

The Ingraham Angle - April 26, 2018 - Fox News

Tucker Carlson Tonight 4/26/18 - Breaking Fox News - April 26, 2018

Sean Hannity 4/26/18 - Sean Hannity April 26, 2018 Fox News

The Savage Nation with Michael Savage - April 26 2018 [HOUR 2, HOUR 3]

ALEX JONES (FULL SHOW) Thursday 4/26/18: Ben Garrison, Sabo, Viral Video...

Rush Limbaugh Podcast Thursday April 26, 2018

Levin Show 4/26/18 - Mark Levin Show April 26,2018 Full Podcast

Thursday, April 26, 2018

The Five 4⁄25⁄18 ¦ Breaking Fox News ¦ April 25, 2018

Fox and Friends 04/25/18 | April 25, 2018 Fox Friends And News Today Bre...

Your World with Neil Cavuto April 25, 2018

Special Report with Bret Baier April 25, 2018

Lou Dobbs 4⁄25⁄18 ¦ Fox Breaking News Today April 25 2018

Outnumbered Overtime April 25, 2018

Tucker Carlson Tonight 4/25/18 - Breaking Fox News - April 25, 2018

Sean Hannity 4/25/18 | Breaking Fox News | April 25, 2018

Tucker Carlson Tonight 4/25/18 - Breaking Fox News - April 25, 2018

The Savage Nation - April 25 2018 [HOUR 2, HOUR 3] Lou Pate fills in for...

�� Alex Jones Show • Commercial Free • Wednesday 4/25/18 ► Infowars Stream

Rush Limbaugh Podcast - April 25,2018

Rush Limbaugh Podcast - April 25,2018

Levin Show 4/25/18 - Mark Levin Show April 25,2018 Full Podcast

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

The Five April 24, 2018 - Fox News

Fox & Friends 4/24/18 | Breaking Fox News | April 24, 2018

Your World With Neil Cavuto Fox News April 24, 2018 breaking news

Special Report with Bret Baier April 24, 2018 - FoxNews

Lou Dobbs 4/24/18 | Breaking Fox News | April 24, 2018

Outnumbered Overtime 04/24/18 | Fox News | April 24, 2018

The Ingraham Angle April 24, 2018 FoxNews

Tucker Carlson Tonight 4/24/18 - Breaking Fox News - April 24, 2018

Sean Hannity 4⁄24⁄18 ¦ Breaking Fox News ¦ April 24, 2018

The Savage Nation - April 24 2018 [HOUR 2, HOUR 3] Brian Sussman fills i...

ALEX JONES (FULL SHOW) Tuesday 4/24/18: The Master Plan, News, Headlines...

The Rush Limbaugh Podcast Tuesday - Apr 24, 2018

Levin Show 4/24/18 - Mark Levin Show April 24,2018 Full Podcast

Why the Left Loves Mass Immigration

Top Drawer Musical



  
THE CUBAN IS BRINGING TOP DRAWER BACK TO MIAMI!


ONLY $25 WITH DISCOUNT CODE: CUBA


WHEN:      Saturday, April 28th at 8:00 PM & Sunday, April 29th at 4:00 PM

WHERE:    American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora
                1200 Coral Way
                Miami, FL 33145


TICKETS:  
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/top-drawer-tickets-44929911575


TOP DRAWER: Stories of Dysfunction and Redemption from Park Avenue to Havana, is Adelaide Mestre's award-winning show about her journey to Cuba to seek out her deceased father’s piano, left behind when her family fled in 1960. The show takes place in both the past and present, as the audience follows her on her quest to reclaim her family’s heritage. In flashbacks, she chronicles her life growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her mother, a thrice married, opera-singing socialite with impossible top-drawer standards, and her father, a gay, Cuban, manic-depressive concert pianist.

In story and song, she shares about her parents doomed love affair, her father’s struggle with his homosexuality, and his eventual tragic suicide. On her journey, she learns of a famous speech her grandfather gave against Castro, and recovers old recordings of her father playing the piano with an orchestra in Havana in 1954. With sentiment and humor, she spins a tale of dysfunction and redemption and, ultimately, shares her discovery that art can be a kind of alchemy that transmutes loss and abandonment into freedom. TOP DRAWER will make you laugh, cry and maybe even...sing.

Written and performed by Adelaide Mestre with Doug Oberhamer at the piano. Directed by Coco Cohn, and produced in association with Pat Addiss and Mary Cossette.

 Seating is limited, so get your tickets today!




 

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The Five 4⁄23⁄18 ¦ Fox News Today April 23, 2018

Fox & Friends 4/23/18 | Breaking Fox News | April 23, 2018

Your World With Neil Cavuto 4/24/18 | Fox News Today April 24, 2018

Outnumbered Overtime Fox news April 23, 2018

Lou Dobbs 4⁄23⁄18 ¦ Fox Breaking News Today April 23, 2018

The Ingraham Angle - April 23, 2018 - The Ingraham Angle 4/23/2018 - Fox...

The Ingraham Angle - April 23, 2018 - The Ingraham Angle 4/23/2018 - Fox...

The Ingraham Angle - April 23, 2018 - The Ingraham Angle 4/23/2018 - Fox...

Tucker Carlson Tonight 4/23/18 - Breaking Fox News - April 23, 2018

Sean Hannity 4/23/18 | Breaking Fox News | April 23, 2018

Michael Savage 4/23/18 - The Savage Nation Podcast April 23,2018

ALEX JONES (FULL SHOW) Monday 4/23/18: News, Hillary Speech, Zach Detain...

The Rush Limbaugh Podcast Monday - Apr 23, 2018

Levin Show 4/23/18 - Mark Levin Show April 23,2018 Full Podcast

Monday, April 23, 2018

Students Hate Trump Sending Troops To Border...Don't Realize Obama Did Too

The Greg Gutfeld Show 4/21/18 | Breaking Fox News | April 21, 2018

Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo 4/22/18 | Breaking Fox News ...

Chris Wallace Fox News Sunday April 22, 2018

ALEX JONES (FULL SHOW) Sunday 4/22/18: Big News, ZACH BREAKING DEEPSTATE...

When Democracies Falter


 
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the AZEL

PERSPECTIVE

Commentary on Cuba's Future, U.S. Foreign Policy & Individual Freedoms - Issue 123
 


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Democracies end when they become too democratic. This is the central argument of Andrew Sullivan in a vitriolic, pre-election anti-Trump article in The New York Magazine (May 2016). Sullivan, who Forbes magazine has ranked among “The 25 Most Influential Liberals in the U.S. Media,” builds his highbrow case on a tortuous reading of Plato and the Founding Fathers.
The article warns that in our hyper-democratic times, as the authority of elites fades, establishment values cede to popular ones; the emotional component of politics becomes inflamed, and reason retreats because there are fewer elite arbiters to establish what is actually true or relevant. He concludes that we need elites to protect democracy from its own destabilizing excess, and urges anti-democratic measures to save democracy from itself.

Democracy is in crisis, but the cause is not “too much democracy” as claimed by Sullivan.   The Democracy Index 2016, a yearly report on the state of democracy worldwide provides the data. The Index scores countries in five categories: electoral process, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture.  Based on the scores, each country is classified as: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime, or authoritarian state.

Over the last 10 years, 81 of the 167 countries covered by the Index (48.5%) have declined in their overall democracy scores. Currently, only 4.5% of the world’s population, in 19 countries, can be said to live in full democracies. In 2016, for the first time, the United States was downgraded to a “flawed democracy” as confidence in the functioning of public institutions declined during the Obama administration.

This years’ Democracy Index titled “The Revenge of the deplorables” highlights how the political classes in Europe and the U.S. have lost touch with the people they represent, and often express contempt for sections of the electorate: “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic-you name it…” (Hillary Clinton, September 2016.)

Surveys by Pew Research, Gallup, Eurobarometer, the World Values Survey, and others, document a growing deficit of trust in political elites. That is, distrust in government, political parties, politicians, the media, etc. According to Pew, only 19% of Americans trust government to do the right thing “always or most of the time.”  This erosion of public trust is down from 77% in 1964.  Today, most Americans (55%) think that ordinary citizens would “do a better job of solving problems” than elected officials. 

The Index draws on the June 2016 Brexit vote in Britain and the November U.S. election to make the case that both votes represented a rebellion against out-of-touch-elites. The votes show that “society’s marginalized and forgotten voters, often working class and blue collar, do not share the same values as the dominant political elite…”

However, many in the leftist political elites consider the Brexit vote and the election of Mr. Trump “nothing more than outbursts of primal emotions and visceral expressions of narrow-minded nationalism.” Instead of seeking to understand the causes of the popular backlash against the political establishment, the elites have sought to delegitimize the Brexit and Trump outcomes by disparaging the values of those who supported them.

The leftist political elites fail to see anything encouraging in the increased political engagement of ordinary people. Some have even questioned whether ordinary citizens should be trusted to participate in important decisions such as the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union. To them, increased popular participation is a threat to democracy.

Yes, the Founding Fathers, mindful of the turbulent Roman and Greek experiences, were fearful of democracy. But they also understood that the cause of disagreements is freedom itself; in Madison’s words: “Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire.” The backlash against political elites is not a threat, but a vindication of democracy.

The answer to what has been called a “democracy recession” is not anti-democratic measures.  Democracies do not end, as Mr. Sullivan argues, when they become “too democratic.”  Democracies falter when the people are excluded.

Please let us know if you Like Issue 123 - When Democracies Falter on Facebook this article.
We welcome your feedback.
Abrazos,
 
Lily & José
 
(click on the name to email Lily or Jose)
This article was originally published in English in the Miami Herald and in Spanish in El Nuevo Herald.
 
José Azel, Ph.D.
José Azel left Cuba in 1961 as a 13 year-old political exile in what has been dubbed Operation Pedro Pan - the largest unaccompanied child refugee movement in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

He is currently dedicated to the in-depth analyses of Cuba's economic, social and political state, with a keen interest in post-Castro-Cuba strategies. Formerly, a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami, Jose Azel has published extensively on Cuba related topics.

In 2012 and 2015, Dr. Azel testified in the U.S. Congress on U.S.-Cuba Policy, and U.S. National Security.  He is a frequent speaker and commentator on these and related topics on local, national and international media.  He holds undergraduate and masters degrees in business administration and a Ph.D. in International Affairs from the University of Miami.

José along with his wife Lily are avid skiers and adventure travelers.  In recent years they have climbed Grand Teton in Wyoming, trekked Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Machu Pichu in Peru.  They have also hiked in Tibet and in the Himalayas to Mt. Everest Base Camp.

They cycled St. James Way (
El Camino de Santiago de Compostela) and cycled alongside the Danube from Germany to Hungary. They have scuba dived in the Bay Islands off the Honduran coast.

Their adventurers are normally dedicated to raise funds for causes that are dear to them. 
Watch Joe & Lily summit Kilimanjaro.

Books by Dr. José Azel
In Reflections on FreedomJosé Azel brings together a collection of his columns published in prestigious newspapers.  Each article reveals his heartfelt and personal awareness of the importance of freedom in our lives.  They are his reflections after nearly sixty years of living and learning as a Cuban outside Cuba. In what has become his stylistic trademark, Professor Azel brilliantly introduces complex topics in brief journalistic articles.
Buy Now
En Reflexiones sobre la libertad José Azel reúne una colección de sus columnas publicadas en prestigiosos periódicos. Cada artículo revela su percepción sincera y personal de la importancia de la libertad en nuestras vidas. Son sus reflexiones después de casi sesenta años viviendo y aprendiendo como cubano fuera de Cuba.  En lo que ha resultado ser característica distintiva de sus artículos, el Profesor Azel introduce con brillantez complejos temas en  breves artículos de carácter periodístico.
Compre Aqui
Mañana in Cuba is a comprehensive analysis of contemporary Cuba with an incisive perspective of the Cuban frame of mind and its relevancy for Cuba's future.
Buy now

 
Pedazos y Vacíos is a collection of poems written in by Dr. Azel in his youth. Poems are in Spanish.
Buy now
To friend, follow or email author click on the icons below:
Copyright © 2018 Azel & Associates, All rights reserved.
If you are receiving this email it is because we met you at some point on an adventure.

Our mailing address is:
Azel & Associates
440 Sawgrass Parkway, Suite 106
Sunrise, FL 33325