This past weekend, Dick and I went to Symphony Hall with two of our grandchildren to enjoy the Boston Pops. Among the highlights of the festive holiday performance was a reading by Karen MacDonald of A Soldier’s Carol: The Christmas Truce of 1914. Through a combination of music and story, the nine-minute narration recreated the events of the truce that occurred on Flanders Fields 100 years ago this Christmas.

In 1914, during the first Christmas of WWI, British, French and German troops engaged in an impromptu suspension of the horrors of mud and death amongst the 400-hundred-odd miles of trenches on the Western Front.

As Boston-based actor Karen MacDonald narrates to the audience, “Imagine a landscape of mud. Nothing but mud, as far as the eye can see. A no-man’s land of black rats and unrelenting rain, barbed wire and the shapes of fallen soldiers.”

A lone German soldier stands and starts to sing. Then wary and unarmed, his enemies slowly join in. Throughout Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day the soldiers come out of their trenches to help bury one another’s dead, to play football and to exchange gifts. Read more here from the WSJ on this little-known, spontaneous interlude of WWI, which would resume the next day and continue for another four brutal years.

The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow writes, “There are plenty of reasons to criticize President Obama and his cast of liberal but incompetent hawks, However, he’s got Cuba policy right in contrast to Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and most of the GOP presidential wannabes. It long ago was evident that the embargo had failed and deserved to be replaced. (And that America’s embassy should be reopened, as the president has also proposed.) If conservative Republicans believe in recognizing reality and getting results, as they claim, they should back trade and engagement with Cuba.”

Obama has presided over a failed presidency. In fact he is one of the least prepared and least competent presidents in modern history. Voters apparently agree, based on this November’s election outcome. Come 2016, the voters will have an opportunity to vote into the White House a more seasoned, prepared and small business-friendly president.

For the majority of Americans, the top priority is keeping America safe and prosperous. Americans know that the Fed has bought the unbalanced economic recovery America has enjoyed in recent years. The Fed has accomplished the rebound with an ultra-low interest rate policy that benefits big government, big corporations, and Wall Street (borrowers all) at the expense of individual retirement savers (interest rate crumbs).

Americans are also keenly aware that it is America’s small business risk takers who provide the majority of our country’s new jobs. Finally on the safe and prosperous front, the majority of Americans also know that beyond getting thousands of Americans killed and maimed and families destroyed, America has benefited little if at all from the Afghanistan, Iraq and Libyan military adventures. Shouldn’t it be a no-brainer that a 2016 presidential aspirant might find a warm reception from voters with a basic no-frills “Safe and Prosperous” platform, one constructed to actually achieve both safety and prosperity for all Americans? At its heart such a platform would be opposed to foreign military adventurism (i.e. nation building), and pro America’s small business, risk-taking job generators. We’re talking focus and the big picture here. We’re talking maximum safety and prosperity for all of us. And we’re talking eschewing political posturing that supports any special interest group.

The Cato Institute (Debbie and I are benefactors) is America’s #1 think tank in support of just the above general philosophy. Over the past year, I have posted often on the scholarly work of Chris Preble, Justin Logan, Dan Mitchell and, of course, Doug Bandow, to name a few. All of my postings are available to you here at richardcyoung.com. Were I advising presidential candidates, my first course of action would be that they spend a day at Cato with the four scholars listed above.

Reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba is the correct move. Allowing Americans to travel to Cuba and encouraging commerce between the two countries makes a lot of sense. President Obama is generally on the right track with Cuba, but it’s a narrow track. As always, the president misfires when he ventures too far from script.

Regarding Obama’s pronouncements on Cuban’s access to technology, Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes in the WSJ, “Even the humblest Cuban peasant would split his sides laughing if he heard those statements, which none did because they do not have access to anything other than Cuban state television.”

Mary continues, “It’s true that the Cuban people lack access to technology, but Mr. Obama’s suggestion that it is because of the embargo is a howler.”

Back in November 2012 National Geographic ran a feature article on Cuba. NG wrote, “About 80% of Cuba’s labor force works for the state. The workplace philosophy this inspires: they pretend to pay us, while we pretend to work.”

According to NG: “Many Cubans no longer practice their professions because years of study—in engineering, medicine—produced salaries in a currency that’s worthless.”

Thanks to Bush/Obama policies like no child left behind and Obamacare, America today is on a Cuba-like course. Debbie and I spend enough time outside the United States to have a pretty good feel for what currency debasement is all about. Your American mini-dollar does not spend real well in places like Paris and Lucerne. Talk about sticker shock!

The Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell explains that if the goal is bigger government and more red ink, than higher taxes are a solution. Dan is America’s foremost scholarly, think tank advocate against big government and pro Federalism leading to innovation, diversity and experimentation.

In his “The Best-Ever Argument for Federalism,” Dan writes, “The nation with the most decentralization and federalism is Switzerland, and that country does very well notwithstanding having different languages and cultures.”

Looking at America, Dr. Mitchell harks back to Thomas Jefferson: “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.”

Merry Christmas from Dick and Debbie and the wonderful Boston Pops Orchestra.