It has been a while. My life has been filled with family, friends and festive fun as I hope, gentle reader, has yours. Even this, the first post of 2017, is something of an accident. A young photographer friend of mine responded on Facebook to President Trump's inaugural speech as follows;

Now I am genuinely confused. How do you eradicate an idea unless it's made from bricks?

I replied but soon realised my post was not Facebook material. So here it is for your review and correction. Please let me know in the comments how you would change or add to my draft plan for POTUS to eradicate radical Islamic terrorism as a threat to the USA . 

1. You begin by naming it. [Done, in the Inauguration speech].

2. You stop making excuses for it.

3. You deport its supporters and ensure proper screening of future immigrants from the countries where it is rife.

4. You publish a threat list of such countries; naming, shaming and withdrawing all aid from them and restricting their citizens' travel to the US until they qualify to be de-listed.

5. You ensure Saudi Arabia – the heart of Islamic darkness and Western civilisation's most important current enemy – is on that list.

6. You allow citizens of threat list countries to trade freely with yours so that their isolation is only political. Trade is always good and almost never the legitimate concern of government because countries don't trade — their citizens do.

7. You override all "Green" opposition to allow free enterprise to open every oil field, fracking site and nuclear plant it can on US and US-friendly territory to make your country energy independent and weaken the Arab oil states on the threat list.

8. You lean diplomatically on its sources of funds (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Iran, the EU — which funds Hamas in Israel).

9. You arm the West's only ally in the region — Israel — to the teeth and back it loyally in eliminating with extreme prejudice the enemies who threaten it.

10. You purge its cultural Marxist allies and apologists from US academia — there is no reason to fund treason from taxes; let them sell their indoctrination in the free market if they can.

11. You equip and train special forces and deploy drones to kill anyone who practises or promotes it.

12. You cease aid to any country or body (e.g. the UN) that provides support to it.

13. You announce that you will never intervene in a threat list state militarily to facilitate regime change. No more overthrowing one Arab fascist to make way for another. In making this announcement you acknowledge that President Putin was right to support the recognised government of Syria rather than back first the rebels who proved to be Al Qaida and then the rebels who turned out to be ISIS. You announce your intention to seek President Putin's advice in future such situations.

14. You close the UN nest of vipers in NYC (and redevelop the land as Trump-branded condominiums to help recover some of the millions wasted on funding US enemies there for decades).

15. You deploy a fleet in the Mediterranean to sink the smugglers boats, kill the smugglers and land any illegal migrants you may rescue back to their port of embarkation. You order that fleet to destroy any ports still allowing smugglers to operate after having given them fair warning.

16. You ask President Putin to deploy the Black Sea fleet on a similar mission.

17. You insist that freeloading parasites like Germany and France pull their weight in the defence of Western civilisation by putting troops in harm's way alongside Americans and Brits where necessary and paying their NATO dues of 2% of GDP (including arrears back to its foundation) or lose the protection of the US nuclear umbrella.

18. You ignore as irrelevances anyone who finds the above shocking because there is no question the majority of the American public will support all of it.

Today the Free World has a leader who has the balls to do it and "Mad Dog" Mattis in charge of the US military. US "liberals" may be trembling histrionically today but the terrorists they have succoured around the world should be genuinely afraid.

The Enlightenment West is as powerful as it chooses to be. All it has to do is quit the self loathing political correctness and believe in itself again — as its despised  "ordinary" people have never ceased to do. You may say the above programme is not libertarian and you would be right. It is a plan for the US as currently constituted, not as I would wish it to be. In a libertarian America, for example, there would be no state funding of universities and so it would be up to their owners to decide whether to employ Marxists and other enemies of the Enlightenment - and up to students and their families to decide if they want to pay for an anti-Western education that equips them for nothing productive.

In the meantime, drain that swamp, Mr President. Gentle reader, please discuss.