So we had an election and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump won it. If I had all the ink that’s been spilled on why and how Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I’d be an ink tycoon. Much of what passes for analysis focuses on alleged “foreign meddling” in the election. There certainly was some of that. There always is.  But some meddlers get more attention than others.

Mainstream anti-Trump opinion leaders claim that the Russian government, at the direction of president Vladimir Putin, intervened to affect the outcome. Through various means, including but not limited to cyber attacks on the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, they believe — although the belief remains unsupported by any publicly revealed evidence — that the Russians illicitly put a thumb on the scale, advantage Trump.

I don’t doubt that Putin preferred Trump to Clinton, or that he acted in furtherance of that preference. Whether or not he went to the lengths asserted is a different question. The fervid denunciations of pols and pundits seem geared more toward stirring up a new Red Scare than toward shedding real light on the subject. They smack of excuse-making and  a desire to incite hysteria.

But while we’re talking about foreign meddling in US elections … what about Israel?

Every four years, American presidential aspirants prostrate themselves before the Israeli lobby. They visit Israel. They refer to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “my good friend.” They compete to see who can most convincingly thump a lectern and proclaim the strongest “commitment” to funding and defending a foreign state and its ruling political party (Likud) at the expense of US taxpayers.

There’s a reason for that. Israel and supporters of a “hard line” (versus Iran, versus the Palestinian Arabs, etc.) Israeli regime put a lot of work and a lot of money into propagandizing for — and in effect buying — the most supportive US government they can get. This year one Israel-focused donor alone — casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — spent $25 million boosting Trump’s campaign and another $40 million helping congressional Republican candidates.

There’s little doubt that US policy toward Israel is Adelson’s primary motivator. He’s married to an Israeli, owns a pro-Likud newspaper in the country, spends big money helping Likud hold on to power there, and puts on a quadrennial party in the US to see which presidential candidates can most convincingly kowtow to Netanyahu’s every whim.

Any presidential candidate who spoke of and acted toward Vladimir Putin and Russia the way most of them speak of and act toward Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel would be treated as presumptively a sinister agent of a foreign power. Not, to my mind, without justification.

Clinton’s margin of defeat was almost certainly far smaller than the number of American voters captivated by pro-Israel propaganda and brought out by pro-Israel campaign spending. Where’s the outrage at this clear-cut and ongoing meddling in US presidential elections by — or at the very least on behalf of — Israel?

Apparently some meddlers are more equal than others.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “About That Foreign Meddling in US Presidential Elections …” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 12/24/16
• “About that foreign meddling in US presidential elections …” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kingston, Jamaica Observer, 12/28/16
• “About That Foreign Meddling in US Presidential Elections …” by Thomas L. Knapp, Key West: The Newspaper, 12/30/16

The Hill reports that capital punishment is fading away in America. Government employees have ceremonially killed fewer prisoners this year (20) than in any year since 1991, and fewer criminals (30) have been sentenced to death than in any year since the option became available again in 1976 (after a US Supreme Court ruling resulted in a four-year national moratorium).

There seem to be several reasons for the precipitous decline, ranging from difficulty getting the drugs used in executions (manufacturers and pharmacies don’t like the stigma) to increased court scrutiny of sentencing. Whatever the reasons, it’s good news. Capital punishment should be brought to a speedy and permanent end in the United States.

I’m not saying that there aren’t crimes worthy of death. In fact, I heartily support the killing of violent criminals in defense of self or others at the scene of the crime.

But once a criminal has been apprehended, disarmed and caged, killing him or her isn’t self-defense any more. Execution is just the gratuitous, vengeful taking of a human life for public show. And no matter how much lipstick the practice’s supporters put on the pig to try and turn it into something else, that’s all it will ever be.

Capital punishment is also completely incompatible with the notions of “limited government” that most libertarians and some conservatives claim to support, not to mention the basic civil liberties that both libertarians and liberals publicly sustain. If the state can decide with impunity that someone needs to die and then kill that person in cold blood, what CAN’T the state do?

This would be true even absent the growing number of death row inmate exonerated by new evidence. Who knows how many innocents have been sacrificed to Moloch before the mistake could be discovered and corrected?

Capital punishment seems to be going away, but it can’t go away fast enough. Even as the Libertarian and Democratic Parties finally added opposition to the death penalty to their platforms this year, majorities in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma voted, to their shame, to retain the barbaric practice.

The US is part of a shrinking club of evil, a club composed mostly of favorite holiday destinations like North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Guinea, Mongolia and Nauru became the latest three nations to abolish it in 2016.

Surely we’re better than this. In 2017, let’s show it by finally and forever ceasing the evil practice of capital punishment.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “Capital punishment: Can we cut it out already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, New Haven, Connecticut Register, 12/22/16
• “Capital punishment: Can we cut it out already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Torington, Connecticut Register Citizen, 12/21/16
• “Capital punishment: Can we cut it out already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Middletown, Connecticut Press, 12/21/16
• “Capital Punishment: Can we Cut it Out Already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 12/23/16
• “Capital Punishment: Can we Cut it Out Already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Key West: The Newspaper, 12/23/16
• “Capital Punishment: Can we Cut it Out Already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 12/25/16
• “Capital Punishment: Can we Cut it Out Already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 12/26/17
• “Capital punishment: Can we cut it out already?” by Thomas L. Knapp,  Oshkosh, Wisconsin Northwestern, 12/27/16
• “Capital punishment — can we cut it out already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pahrump Valley, Nevada Times, 12/28/17
• “Capital punishment: Can we cut it out already?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fayette, West Virginia Tribune, 01/02/17
• “Capital punishment: Can we cut it out already?” Montgomery, West Virginia Herald, 01/04/17
• “A shrinking club of evil: U.S. should end its membership,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Bucks County, Pennsylvania Courier Times, 01/06/17

[Note: Yes, it’s a Christmas column six days before Christmas. Remember, Garrison Center content is submitted to newspapers. Editors don’t wait until Christmas Eve to start putting together their papers’ December 25th editions. This is going out today so that they have plenty of lead time to use it if they’d like to!]

It’s popular in some politicized evangelical Christian circles (that is, among the American “religious right”) to spend every December moaning about a “war on Christmas.” Unless they get to fill the commons with their religious displays — and theirs only — and unless the cup from their preferred coffee vendor refers to their religious holiday — and theirs only — and so on and so forth, they consider themselves beset by the forces of evil.

I’m content to be a practicing Christian. I was brought up with fairly traditional middle American Protestant Christmas celebrations and still enjoy them very much (in recent years I’ve also enjoyed Roman Catholic Christmas Midnight Mass a time or two).

But I don’t see any kind of “war on Christmas” in the preferences of others to celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Festivus or Yule or just “holiday break.” The festival goes back to well before the time of Jesus; his birth story is just the container some of us have chosen to put it in.

This time of year marks the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the turn toward coming spring. The days begin to get longer instead of shorter.

Peace on Earth, good will toward men. These are laudable aspirations for the time of hope and renewal represented by the December holidays of so many faiths and cultures over the millennia. And as 2016 becomes 2017, they make great New Year resolutions.

Try as we might, humankind has never conquered poverty, sickness, suffering or war. But we should never stop trying.

After nearly 400 years of opportunities to get those things right, the Westphalian nation-state has proven a failure on all counts. In the 20th century, governments murdered somewhere north of 170 million people and kept billions more in varying degrees of servitude, squalor and penury. So far the 21st century has likewise been one of unremitting war, creeping tyranny and ubiquitous kleptocracy.

It’s far too much to hope that the emerging voluntary, decentralized forms of governance powered by technological progress will finally and forever displace the state in 2017. But the writing is on the wall. Government as we know it is going away.

As we close out one year and look to the next, let’s re-dedicate ourselves to replacing the modern nation-state with something better. Something (or, more likely, things) more peaceful, more empowering, less oppressive and less deadly.

Merry Christmas — or whatever you prefer to call it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

• “Peace on Earth, by whatever name,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kingston, Jamaica Observer, 12/21/16
• “Peace on Earth to us all, by whatever name,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Montgomery, West Virginia Herald, 12/21/16
• “Peace on Earth, by whatever name,” by Thomas L. Knapp, St. George, Utah Daily Spectrum, 12/21/16
• “Peace On Earth, By Whatever Name,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 12/21/16
• “Peace on Earth, by whatever name,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pahrump Valley, Nevada Times, 12/21/16
• “Peace on Earth, By Whatever Name,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Los Angeles, California Eastside Sun, 12/21/16
• “Peace on Earth, by whatever name,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Arizona Republic, 12/21/16