LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: I have a holiday weekend version of the Morning Briefing for you. Veterans, thank you for your service!

WOULD THERE BE AN AMERICA IF ROME NEVER FELL? Thinking about history in its potential alternative outcomes is not a common topic of discourse these days, but doing so remains a superb tool for eliciting a deeper understanding of what did happen and why. Think — What if the South had won the Civil War?

So consider the Brit popular historian Tom Holland:

Holland is an immensely popular public historian who has attracted great controversy for speaking with brutal candor about Islam, Western liberals and sundry other topics. More recently, he offered some arresting thoughts in this “Unbelievable” interview about the true character of the ancients and how Christianity changed the course of history, philosophy, politics, economics and, perhaps most significantly, what we today understand to be moral.

Holland is no Bible-thumping Fundamentalist, yet he declares “I was wrong about Christianity” and the ancients. That declaration alone ought to be sufficiently tempting to check out this HillFaith post.

HISTORY: Rare memo: Confederate general, ‘hater of…negroes,’ called Democrats ‘his party.’

This should surprise no one who’s read Gone With The Wind.

JEFF DUNETZ: Corn Continues To Thrive In The Swamp.

For more than a decade, the federal government’s Renewable Fuel Standard has required refineries to blend biofuels into their gasoline. The most popular biofuel by far is ethanol derived from corn. It has accounted for 87 percent of the RFS’s blending requirements since 2007.

The architects of the RFS claimed it would benefit the environment. When burned, ethanol produces fewer carbon emissions than traditional gasoline. So if car drivers started using ethanol blends en masse, America’s emissions would drop dramatically — or so corn lobbyists claimed.

In reality, ethanol blends have harmed, not helped, the environment. About 40 percent of the American corn supply is now devoted to ethanol. Farmers have converted previously untouched prairies into corn fields to meet the demand for the crop. Ethanol’s total emissions — including those from corn production — are 28 percent higher than emissions from regular gasoline, according to the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force.

Worse, the chemical runoff from the fertilizer used to grow ethanol crops despoils waterways. Runoff around the Gulf of Mexico has created a Massachusetts-sized “dead zone” totally uninhabitable to marine life.

But: “Last month, President Donald Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency to allow the year-round sale of gasoline that contains 15 percent ethanol.”

Dumb.

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: The Silence of Mueller’s Trump-Russia ‘Canaries.’ “No evidence has surfaced indicating that President Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. Still, two years later, the president’s opponents insist the truth is out there.”

DID TRUMP JUST APPOINT DEEP THROAT TO RUN DOJ? Oh man, this is giving “Byzantine” new meaning. If you aren’t reading The Last Refuge regularly, you aren’t keeping up, my friends.

BECAUSE IT’S ON THE LEFT: David Harsanyi: Here’s The Anti-Semitism The Media Doesn’t Want To Mention.

The 2018 midterm will bring many new faces to Washington, but few will find as much adoration as Ilhan Omar. One of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, Omar, who will represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, is a Somali refugee with a celebrity aura and an uplifting story.

What went curiously unmentioned in all the flattering post-election coverage, however, was that Omar, who replaces Keith Ellison — a former acolyte of anti-Semitic minister Louis Farrakhan — also has some exotic notions about the Jewish people.

In a 2012 tweet, for instance, the Democrat explained that “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel.”

Meanwhile, the other Muslim woman headed to Congress is Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants who wants to cut aid to the Jewish state because supporting it “doesn’t fit the values of our country.”

Writer David Steinberg identified 105 news stories written in the immediate aftermath of Omar’s victory, and not a single one mentioned that she believed Jewry possessed mind-control abilities or that Israel was “evil.” No one called on the Democratic Party to distance itself from this rhetoric.

No one at the partisan Anti-Defamation League, ostensibly tasked with stopping anti-Jewish libel but in reality busy hyperventilating over every far-flung right-wing bigot with a handful of supporters, paid her any attention.

Like I said. Well, if you think of the press, and the ADL, as Democrat super-PACs, you won’t go far wrong.

BRAVO: Israel Conducts Daring Special Forces Raid Deep Into Gaza, Kills Top Hamas Commander.

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THE IMPACT OF WORLD WAR ONE, REMEMBER THIS:

But the most profound transformation wrought in America by the Great War was in the nature of government itself. Woodrow Wilson came to the presidency in 1913 as the prince of the Progressives, and he at once began to assemble the scaffolding of a new administrative state through the Federal Reserve Act. His efforts were aided by constitutional amendments to secure the levy of a national income tax, to institute the popular election of U.S. senators, and to impose a national prohibition on alcohol. Entrance into the Great War widened the scope of administrative control, justifying the creation of a Fuel Administration, a Food Administration, a War Labor Policies Board, a War Industries Board, and a Shipping Board, which created an Emergency Fleet Corporation to build dry docks and piers, commandeer privately owned vessels, and even seize enemy ships. That control reached even into the schools: In Philadelphia, the School Mobilization Committee organized 1,300 public and parochial schoolboys as farm workers. The war, complained Randolph Bourne, licensed the Progressive state to become “what in peacetime it has vainly struggled to become — the inexorable arbiter and determinant of men’s businesses and attitudes and opinions.”

Indeed.

YOU WERE EXPECTING INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY?:  Boston Globe Defends Mobbing of Jewish Republican.

So now comes Tom Mountain, a Jewish Massachusetts Republican official who, on Friday, November 2 was blocked from his own office by a group of Democrats wearing Jewish prayer shawls while chanting that Republicans are the party of White Nationalism and are responsible for the mass murder of Jews in Pittsburgh. Mountain, understandably annoyed, told reporters that these people were “a disgrace to the Jewish people” and “an embarrassment to this country.” The mob of Democrats refused to let him through and the police had to physically haul them off.

Globe headline? “Mass. GOP official calls Jewish protesters ‘a disgrace’ and an ‘embarrassment.’”

Had the Globe any integrity at all, they would have reported – in either the headline or the lede – that Mountain himself is a Jew.

Jews have always been famously internally disputatious, going back at least to the Maccabean era, when more traditional Jews emerged victorious over Hellenizers in the war that led to the restoration of Jewish rule in Judea under the Hasmoneans now celebrated during Hanukkah. The Holocaust and the emergence of Israel created a few decades of general solidarity, but the reaction of left-wing Jews to a massacre of Jews by a neo-Nazi in Pittsburgh–to blame American Jewish Republicans, and, bizarrely, Netanyahu and Israel, complete with calls in mainstream outlets to excommunicate Trump supporters, suggests that those days are over.

Mainstream Jews of moderate liberal to moderate political proclivities, a majority of American Jews, are going to have to choose between the modern-day Hellenizers whose actual religion is a pastiche of left-wing cliches, and those who are loyal to something akin to traditional Judaism. I don’t doubt the traditionalists will win in the end, if only because they are producing far more Jewish progeny per capita than are left-wing secularists. Unfortunately, in the meantime the leftists are proceeding to destroy formerly mainstream American Jewish institutions. The small denomination known as Reconstructionism, once the most intellectual branch of American Judaism, has devolved into a theological joke, much larger Reform Judaism is on the brink, and the once-respected (albeit liberal-leaning) Anti-Defamation League has become a center of partisan progressive hackery. I’ve been sounding apocalyptic about this lately, but let me repeat: a Neo-Nazi murdered eleven Jews, and the immediate and continuing reaction of a very vocal segment of American Jewry has been to use the occasion to attack fellow Jews.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Why Did Facebook Fire a Top Executive? Hint: It Had Something to Do With Trump.

Facebook Inc. FB -1.97% executive and virtual-reality wunderkind Palmer Luckey was a rising star of Silicon Valley when, at the height of the 2016 presidential contest, he donated $10,000 to an anti-Hillary Clinton group.

His donation sparked a backlash from his colleagues. Six months later, he was out. Neither Facebook nor Mr. Luckey has ever said why he left the social-media giant. When testifying before Congress about data privacy earlier this year, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg denied the departure had anything to do with politics.

Mr. Luckey, it turns out, was put on leave, then fired, according to people familiar with the matter. More recently, he has told people the reason was his support for Donald Trump and the furor that his political beliefs sparked within Facebook and Silicon Valley, some of those people say.

If Mr. Luckey needs a good attorney with a winning record, may I recommend Kurt Schlichter?

BUT OF COURSE: In Palm Beach County, Democrats Argue To Count Votes Cast By Non-Citizens.

During review of provisional ballots to determine whether a recount is justified in the tight Florida governor, senate, and agriculture commission races, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher identified a voter as a non-citizen and declared that the ballot would not be counted.

Attorneys representing the Democratic candidate for senate Bill Nelson and the Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum objected. A copy of the uncertified transcript shows the interaction.

Chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party Michael Barnett attests to the validity of the transcript. He told The Federalist that several Republican lawyers and party officials heard the back and forth between the canvassing board and attorney’s from the Gillum and Nelson campaigns.

“I would think this is something we could all agree on—that non-citizens shouldn’t vote, but evidently that’s not the case with Democrats,” Barnett said.

The Democrats mean to win. Does the GOP?

POINTS AND FIGURES: 45 Years; 66 years; 73 Years; 100 Years; 153 Years; 235 Years.

NARRATOR: “IT WON’T.” Venezuela to OPEC: “Petro Will Become the Digital Currency of Oil Transactions Worldwide.”

RICK MORAN: Illegal Alien, Released in NJ, Charged with Triple Murder in Missouri. “Advocates of sanctuary policies really don’t care if you live or die.”

HE’S THE HACKIEST OF HACKS: “Thanks, objective journalist John Harwood, for always popping up with the Democrat response. Every time.”

COFFEE! IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO:  America Runs on Dunkin’ – And Now, So Does a Tiny Home.

WELL, AT LEAST THE MASKS ARE GONE, AND WE KNOW WHAT WE FACE:  In Palm Beach County, Democrats Argue To Count Votes Cast By Non-Citizens. Are you guys sure that that “hanged, cut down while still living and their entrails burned before their eyes” thing is really off the table? Come on. Punishment should be cruel and unusual!  And it’s nothing to what these chapeaus de derriere are putting the nation through.  Or what will become of the nation if they have their way.

A CHARISMATIC SOCIALIST USING RELIGION TO GATHER IN FOLLOWERS.  THE RICH BOUGHT INTO IT, BUT AS ALWAYS IT WAS THE POOR AND UNCONNECTED WHO PAID THE PRICE:  Peoples Temple: The Long Goodbye.

THIS DOESN’T END THE WAY THE LEFT THINKS IT ENDS (WAIT, THAT’S STARTING TO SOUND FAMILIAR):  All of a sudden, Mexico is warmly welcoming the migrant caravan…

WE CAN FACE THIS NOW, OR IT CAN EXPLODE IN OUR FACES LATER. THE LEFT HAS STOPPED RESPECTING OUR ELECTION PROCESS: Their professors have told them lies against “systemic injustice” and the internal colonization of men and women who reject socialism. So they actually think they’re redressing a wrong.  Kind of like fake but accurate. Until they get over their brain washing they’re awful citizens and tainted officers. It’s Not Quite Kristallnacht, but It’s Not The Fourth of July Either.

LORD, I KNOW I ASKED YOU TO MAKE OUR ENEMIES RIDICULOUS, BUT YOU DIDN’T NEED TO MAKE THEM DOWNRIGHT INSANE:  CNN gearing up to sue over Jim Acosta’s suspended White House press pass.

NATIONALISM IS A BETRAYAL OF PATRIOTISM? HOW???? HOW CAN INTERNATIONALISM BE PATRIOTISM IN ANYWAY SHAPE OR FORM? THE LEFT’S CONTORTIONS TO EXPLAIN AWAY THEIR OWN SIMILARITIES TO THE NAZIS AND THEIR CRAVEN BETRAYAL OF THE WEST AREN’T FUN ANYMORE. IGNORE HIM, MR. PRESIDENT. MONSIEUR MACRON IS JUST NOSTALGIC FOR THE SOUND OF GERMAN BOOTS IN THE BOULEVARDS. WHAT INTERNATIONALISTS SOLD FRANCE TO IS SLOW DEATH. I GUESS HE THINKS FAST SUICIDE WAS BETTER:  Macron “Nationalism” Comment Insult On Veterans Day.

AND THE BELLS ARE STILL TOLLING:  One Hundred Short Years…