9. James Carafano
Dr. James Carafano is a 25-year army veteran, a director at the Heritage Foundation, and a noted national security expert. His most recent book is 2008′s Private Sector, Public Wars.
James was on one of the heaviest panels of the Weekend. Moderated by Larry Greenfield, “America in Decline?” also featured Bob Lieber, Bill Gertz, and Daniel Pipes. After Lieber gave a historical perspective on the history of the concept of America in Decline, Gertz focused on the long-term threat of China, Pipes discussed the threat in the Middle East, and then James laid out some of our most serious domestic threats. He named three (and be CERTAIN to watch his talk embedded below where he elaborates on them):
- Our defense industrial base is atrophied — we no longer have the capability to produce planes, ships, and other armaments like we once did.
- We are unable to educate our children to compete in math, science, and engineering.
- Our model of immigration is not working. It used to be that each successive generation would rise higher than the one before it. Now with this new wave of immigrants we do not see the children of low-skilled immigrants going to college.
I got to talk with James twice during the weekend and had dinner with him on Saturday night. We discovered one issue in particular that we both cared about a great deal was the misguided push to start scaling back the military budget. And so I was eager to republish a post of James’ from The Foundry in which he argued this vital issue.
James’ speech starts at 37 minutes in.
