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The Best and Worst of Times
Darrell Castle speaks to the best and worst of times as a good description of our times, today.
Transcription / Notes
THE BEST AND WORST OF TIMES
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 31st day of October in the year of our Lord 2025. Yes, this is Halloween day, a traditional spooky, bad news day, but I have decided to use this spooky day and borrow a bit from the classic novel written by Charles Dickens entitled “A Tale of Two Cities”. Mr. Dickens opened his novel with “It Was the Best of Times; It Was the Worst of Times” and that is a pretty good description of our times, today.
Dickens wrote those words in 1859 as the title and opening of his novel which was set in London and Paris during the French Revolution. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.” That sounds so much like today because the more things change the more they stay the same and as we all know technology constantly changes but human nature does not. The setting of Dickens’ novel was an age of radical opposites that faced each other much like today, but today they are not cities but political divisions.
Here in present-day America, we have opposing forces and contrasting views everywhere you look. In New York City, for example, there seems to be a very good possibility that the people of that once great city will elect a man named Zohran Mamdani as mayor in the upcoming election. The man is often described as a communist as well as an Islamic fundamentalist at the same time. Those two terms are, of course, contradictory because communism was founded and still is based on atheism while Islam is obviously based on a belief in God.
He does seem to have some radical ideas based on economic theories which have been failures everywhere they have been tried. He is not the first to suggest that public transportation be free without any corresponding explanation of where he would get the money to pay for it. See folks, nothing government does is ever free because someone always pays and the politicians want the people to give them the authority to decide who they will steal the money from. I suppose that is true democracy whereby the mob is empowered to loot anyone not voting with the majority. Once again it proves the wisdom of the founders who believed in individual rather than collective rights.
Just wind the clock back a century or so and you will find the words of Thomas Paine who wrote a revolutionary pamphlet called Common Sense. One article or series of articles in the pamphlet was called The Crises. He began that section with the words, “These Are the Times That Try Men’s Souls” and that phrase seems more appropriate today than ever. That phrase is especially true here on Halloween Day as many vitally important things hang in the balance such as NYC and whether that city will ever be great again or whether it will continue its slide into the abyss.
So, Mr. Mamdani is an example of the worst of times. The best of times is an amazing contrast whereby the people of Argentina, after decades of socialist experiments, which left that once powerhouse of an economy in a state of collapse decided to change course. What could be more wonderful than the joy of seeing voters reject the allure of socialism for the second time. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has led his party to a landslide victory in the elections held last Sunday. Radical spending cuts and free-market reforms defined the two years of his presidency and the people of Argentina have endorsed his efforts and decided to continue the road to recovery. That’s the very good news from Argentina.
The bad news or at least I have decided to see it as bad news is that Donald Trump agreed to extend a $40 billion loan to Argentina which has defaulted three times since the year 2000.
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A New Monroe Doctrine
Darrell Castle talks about the military actions taken by president Trump against the nation of Venezuela as well as some other South American and Latin American nations. Is stopping drug trafficking and importation of narcotics into the United States all there is to it?
Transcription / Notes
A NEW MONROE DOCTRINE
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 24th day of October in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about the military actions taken by President Trump against the nation of Venezuela as well as some other South and Latin American nations. I argue that there is more involved in these actions than an effort to stop drug trafficking and also assert that countering the import of narcotics into the United States is at best a side benefit of the action against those countries.
The original Monroe Doctrine has been the policy of the United States for a little over 200 years, but it has been more or less abandoned in recent years. Is Donald Trump trying to reassert that doctrine with his military efforts in the Western Hemisphere, I think he is and I will make my case today. First, let’s look at the Monroe Doctrine and what it was originally intended to be.
It was first formulated or at least spoken of by President James Monroe in 1823 during his state of the union address to congress. He laid out before congress a foreign policy position that opposed European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. Essentially, he just told the Europeans, and at the time Spain was the primary nation, that we will leave you alone in Europe and not interfere in your affairs and in return this hemisphere is off limits to you. Intervention in the affairs of nations in this hemisphere by foreign powers would potentially be treated as a hostile act against the United States. This doctrine was the grand foreign policy strategy during the 19th century.
The Spanish American War at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th was the capstone or high-water mark of that policy when the United States removed Spain from its last two remaining colonies in this hemisphere. The 20th century brought with it two world wars and an America victorious and willing to intervene anywhere and at anytime it wanted to. Instead of non-intervention in European affairs the U.S. now has in the neighborhood of 750 military bases on foreign soil all over the world.
The doctrine has been argued about and debated since the Spanish American War, but now everything is different and far more dangerous because of nuclear weapons and the reality that one mistake by one psychopathic leader could unleash a worldwide catastrophe. We also have a new war called the war on drugs that has been raging since President Nixon proclaimed it in the early 1970’s. That war has been fought, lost and fought again since then by almost every president since Nixon. Every president at least pays lip service to stopping the scourge of drugs coming into the United States. It seems that each time one drug is somewhat controlled a new, even worse one takes its place. Cocaine, fentanyl, and other synthetic opioids for example.
Unlike other presidents Trump seems to be approaching the problem as an actual war rather than using war as a turn of phrase. He has stated that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels he has designated as terrorist organizations. The Trump administration delivered that notice to congress after a strike on an alleged drug boat from Venezuela. There have been several strikes since then all against supposed drug boats. The scene is usually a high-speed boat carrying several people speeding across the Caribbean when a drone unleashes a hellfire missile and the boat and all its contents disappears.
Designating a group as a terrorist organization is more than just saying we don’t like those people. It deprives that group of many of the niceties of American law such as due...
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Day of Rejoicing
Darrell talks about the peace agreement or ceasefire orchestrated by President Trump to end the slaughter in Gaza and return the hostages to their families.
Transcription / Notes
DAY OF REJOICING
Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 17th day of October in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about the peace agreement or ceasefire if you prefer, orchestrated by President Trump to end the slaughter in Gaza and return the hostages to their families.
Yes, it was a glorious day anticipated for two years and on the day they arrived 65,000 people gathered in Hostage Square to welcome them home. Many did not survive but for those who did it was indeed an emotional and glorious day. Imagine the joy of seeing your loved one who survived two years of captivity underground in the tunnels of Gaza. For two years you didn’t know whether he was alive or dead and what suffering he might be enduring.
The peace might not hold and it might be just a temporary pause in the slaughter but the hostages are home and for that moment it was glorious. Everybody around the world celebrated and called Donald Trump a hero. When Trump spoke to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, one of the speakers referred to him as a giant of Jewish history. Everybody celebrated except of course the ceasefire protestors in America. It seems that what they had been screaming about for two years was somehow not enough. I suspect that they see their only policy which is, Trump is bad, slipping away. If they had no policy at all that would be good because the more policies your politicians have the poorer you are. No policy is usually the best policy.
Can’t you just let yourself be happy for one moment because these hostages are free. For more that 730 days since October 7, 2023, when Hamas kidnapped about 250 people from Israel, they endured a terrible ordeal, and finally about 20 of them were released. In total, 120 made it home alive and 130 did not survive the ordeal. The scene of their return reminded me of the films about when the survivors of the Holocaust stepped off the trains and entered freedom.
These dates the dates of the start of the war and the end, carry significance in the Jewish calendar but I don’t pretend to understand it, and I wonder if Hamas understands it. For the hostages after years of captivity, starvation, physical abuse, and torture, hidden away in oxygen deprived tunnels their conditions reminiscent of those described by the Psalmist in Psalm 107: 10-14.
“Some sat in darkness, in utter darkness, prisoners suffering in iron chains, because they rebelled against God’s commands and despised the plans of the Most High. So, he subjected them to bitter labor; they stumbled and there was no one to help. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness, and he broke away their chains.”
So, there is or was peace if only for a moment but it was a sweet smell at last. How did it happen when so many had tried but no one had succeeded at this level. I can see several differences between Trump’s approach and all the others, but let’s let Victor Davis Hanson speak about it for a moment. I’m paraphrasing him but for one thing, Trump approaches negotiations from a position of strength rather than weakness. Remember the one hostage who said than when Trump was elected they started treating them better. No more spitting on them and forcing them to dig their own graves because they were obviously afraid of him. Trump was very successful in cutting off the money supply to Hamas and the other Iranian proxy terrorist armies. His sanctions on Iranian oil were squeezing the country’s ability to make war and supply the proxy armies.
His attack on the Iranian nuclear enrichment sites destroyed or at least set back the Iranian efforts at building a nuclear weapon and that took away the threat that Neta...
