Category: Polemics

I have offloaded a good deal of my political linkage, 'rantage,' and commentary onto my FB page. But given the state of the Republic, it is important to punch back against the destructive Left in every venue and from every platform. So I will continue to post political material here.  You may try to avoid the political, but don't expect it to reciprocate.  You may seek to evade the totalitarians and retreat into your private life, but it is the nature of  totalitarians to seek total control.  Retreat into your private life, and you  may wake up one day to find that there is no private life.

Free speech! Use it or lose it. But the Constitution that protects our rights is just paper without a certain backup element:

Here is something I wrote about Senator Graham on 31 March 2016:

To understand liberals you must understand that theirs is a mind-set according to which a  conservative is a bigot, one who reflexively and irrationally hates anyone different than he is.  This is why conservatives who insist on securing the borders are routinely labelled 'xenophobes' by liberals and by some stupid 'conservatives' as well, an example being that  foolish RINO Lindsey Graham who applied the epithet to Donald Trump when the latter quite reasonably proposed a moratorium on Muslim immigration into the U.S. 

And here is what I wrote on 30 June 2016:

If you refuse to vote for Donald Trump because he is in several ways a loathsome individual, then I pronounce you a fool in point of the political.  You don't understand that politics is a practical struggle, not a gentlemanly conversation.  It is not about perfection or ideological purity or choosing the Good over the Bad.  It's about better or worse in the ugly concrete circumstances in which we presently find ourselves.

The argument of George Will and others of the 'bow-tie brigade' is patently lame, as lame as can be.  They will do what they can to stop Trump the vulgarian know-nothing.   In so doing they support Hillary.  When this is pointed out, the response is that  after four years of Hillary, we will elect a 'true' conservative to the White House.

This ignores the fact that after four years of Hillary it may be too late.  Four more years of illegal immigration from the south; four more years of largely unvetted Muslim immigration, including Syrian refugees; four more years of erosion of First and Second Amendment rights; four years in which Hillary can make 2-5 Supreme Court appointments; four more years of attacks on civil society, the buffer space between the individual and the state apparatus;  four more years of sanctuary cities and the flouting of the rule of law; four more years of assaults on the likes of the Little Sisters of the Poor and others who stand in the way of the pro-abortion agenda; and more.

Here is another question for George and Bill Kristol and the rest of the bow-tie boys: who will be your candidate? David French? Lindsey Graham?  Jeb!?

But Senator Graham has found his cojones!  His performance yesterday in defense of Judge Kavanaugh was magnificent. He is coming to learn that politics in the age of post-consensus politics is not a gentlemanly debate conducted under an umbrella of shared principles according to the Marquess of Queensberry rules, but a bare-knuckled slug fest against vicious and destructive swine who are out to subvert the Constitution, upend the rule of law and violate every norm of decency and common sense. 

No quarter to them!

Here:

The posture of these NeverTrumpers is transparently self-serving. It preserves their intellectual credentials as “conservatives,” and simultaneously takes them out of the line of fire from an increasingly vicious Left whose goal is to destroy Trump and his presidency, and—incidentally—conservative America. Sitting on the fence affords them new career opportunities—appearances on CNN and MSNBC and columns in the New York Times. All that’s required is that they avoid taking sides in the political war that is engulfing the country. All this reminds me of a memorable Trotsky sneer about liberals, whom he accused of being reluctant to step into the stream of political conflict because they were afraid to get their moral principles wet.

Right. The principles of the Never-Trumpers are for discussion but not for implementation.  The members of the bow-tie brigade love to yap and scribble, and they do it at a very high level, as witness Goldberg's Suicide of the West, which I recommend to you for its insights; but they wilt at the prospect of bringing their principles to bear upon political reality and "getting them wet."

Up until now I had considered Goldberg to be the least offensive of the Never-Trumpers, but having read Horowitz's piece, Goldberg has dropped a notch in my estimation.

Cum ira et studio.

A take-off on a line from Tacitus, sine ira et studio, "without anger and partiality."  There is a place for righteous anger as there is for partiality and polemic. Schlichter's rant ends thusly:

You’ve talked and talked and talked about principles, but as James Comey and Robert Mueller and your gal Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit undermined every principle this country was founded on, all you did was clutch pearls about how Trump is icky. This country is in real danger of breaking apart, of actual conflict, but all you can think of is recovering your cheesy little seat on the Beltway bench.

No one’s fooled. And no one cares. Which ought to scare the hell out of you. Because when the liberals figure out that you have zero credibility with us real conservatives, you’ll stop being their useful idiot. You’ll just be a plain old idiot.

Still and all, I retain a soft spot in my heart for Never Trumper Mona Charen.