Category: Politics

Joe Biden: Creep, Clown, Opportunist, and Ignoramus

As as all of those things, a 'worthy' representative of the contemporary hard-Left Democrat party. Ben Shapiro has his number:

More importantly, however, Biden's characterization of "English jurisprudential culture" as "white man's culture" is profoundly disturbing. English jurisprudential culture is rooted in the belief in the rule of law, due process of law, equal rights under law; English jurisprudential culture is responsible for preserving the natural rights we hold dear, rights which were imperfectly but increasingly extended over time to more and more human beings, particularly minorities. No less a leftist figure than Barack Obama explained just that in 2009, saying he sought a system at Guantanamo Bay that "adheres to the rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system."

Protection of individual rights — and in particular, minority rights — lies at the heart of English jurisprudence. Yet Biden boiled down those rights to racial privilege. And the attempt to reduce the fundamental principles of our civilization to a mask for racial hierarchical power is both false and frightening. It suggests that those principles ought to be undermined for purposes of disestablishing that supposed hierarchy. Get rid of English jurisprudential law, presumably, in order to fight racism.

townhall.com
 
When You Don't Appreciate Your Civilization
Last week, former Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the Biden Courage…

There is a Place for Polemic: A Characteristic Facebook Salvo

The trouble with people like 'Beto' the 'white Hispanic' blockhead, and Miss Occasional Cortex, is not just that they oppose the sound ideas that Dr. Hanson elucidates below, but that they could not even explain these ideas as a preliminary to a reasoned critique of them.

And another thing. There is a lot of leftist palaver these days about 'democratic norms' and their breaking by Trump & Co. But there is nothing 'democratic' about Deep State machinations aimed at removing from office a duly and DEMOCRATICALLY elected president.

And a lot of what these operatives call 'norms' are just their entrenched insidious practices. A practice does not get to become a norm just in virtue of its being normalized by elitist deep state careerists. What has become 'normal' may or may be normative. But one cannot expect this distinction to penetrate the shallow pates of the Democrat wannabes and their childish supporters. . . .

patriotpost.us
 
Proposed Voting Changes Are About Power, Not Principles
Progressive candidates and new Democratic representatives have offered…

The Central Dividing Line in American Politics

The central dividing line, according to Samuel Huntington, is between cosmopolitanism and nationalism.  The former comes in two unpalatable flavors, neo-conservatism and cultural Marxism.

The neocon mistake was to imagine that our superior system of government could be imposed by force on  peoples riven by tribal hatreds who do not share our values and are depressed by an inferior religion. The folly of that should now be evident. One cannot bomb the benighted into Enlightenment.  Besides, our moral stock is at an all-time low.  Given our decadence and immorality how can we presume to teach Muslims how to live?

The mistake of the multi-culti cultural Marxists is to imagine that comity is possible without commonality, that wildly diverse sorts of people can live together in peace and harmony. Or at least that is one mistake of the politically correct multi-cultis.

Along comes Trump. Whatever you think of the man and his ostentation, self-absorption, slovenly speech, occasional feel-ups of members of the distaff contingent, and all the rest, he is a powerful vehicle of a necessary correction away from both forms of cosmopolitanism/globalism toward a saner view, a nationalist view. And, contrary to leftist slanders, there is nothing white or white supremacist about it.

Donald J. Trump is the somewhat unlikely vehicle of a necessary correction.  Without course correction the cliff is up ahead to be approached either by Donkey Express (Hillary and her ilk) or more slowly but just as surely by Elephant (Jeb! and colleagues). We should be grateful to Trump for having destroyed both the Clinton and Bush dynasties.

So how does the Left respond? In their usual vile and thoughtless way by the hurling of such epithets as sexist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, racist, fascist . . . you know the litany. According to Chris Mathews of MSNBC, Trump's inaugural speech was "Hitlerian."

The alacrity with which these leftist bums reach for the Hitler comparison shows the poverty of their 'thought.' 

Victor Davis Hanson on Quiet America’s Resilience

Conservatives such as Victor Davis Hanson have a sense of history and are respectful of its lessons. Leftists are a species of retromingent who piss on the past and seek its erasure. That is why they tear down historical monuments. Leftists confuse the world with their utopian fantasy of what they would like it to be. They are deracinated u-topians, Nowhere Men or rather Nowhere Children. The conservative stands on the terra firma of a reality antecedent to his hopes and dreams, adjusting the latter by what experience has taught him is in the realm of the possible. The fundamental metaphysical error of contemporary leftists is their denial of objective reality. But this objective reality has a way of biting in the ass the fools who piss on the past. (Am I warming to my theme?)

The Democrat Party in Meltdown

Here:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the unofficial leader of the Democrat Party. AOC is the perfect standard bearer for how the Party is evolving. She has zero real-world experience (beyond making martinis and margaritas). She hasn’t the slightest idea what’s she’s talking about. Her Green New Deal is little more than a utopian hallucination. Nevertheless, she is the most popular Democrat. More than anyone else, she defines the party.

Democrats’ fascination with AOC shows that they place no value on experience, maturity, or judgment. She did not invent chaos, but she embodies it, particularly mental chaos.

Beyond nihilism the Democrat Party is motivated by hate and the negativity. Their decision rule is, “If Donald Trump is for it, we’re against it.” If his goal is to “make America great again,” they’ll do everything they can to prevent that from happening.

They hate Donald Trump first and foremost because he won. They hate him because he is the exact opposite of who they are. He is positive, they are negative. They hate his supporters because they caused him to win.

Read it all.

Democrat Swamp Targets Miss Occasional Cortex

I would have thrown this onto my Facebook page except that I've already loaded it up with eight entries today.

Don Surber:

She is the inevitable result of years of pushing communist indoctrination on middle class progeny. She believes all the goop about climate change, income inequality, open borders, and the superiority of woman and minorities.

Now [that she] in a position of power, they want her dead because her populism makes her the Red Trump, which makes her the bigger threat. They are taking her down.

We shall see. I myself hope the knucklehead remains the face of the Democrat Party.  She is more of a threat to them than the pea-brain behind the Botoxed-up face of Nancy Pelosi.

Charles R. Kesler on Trump 2020

Includes a perspicacious analysis of President Trump's Second Inaugural (emphases added):

Perhaps the most striking moment, sending a kind of premonitory shudder through the Democrats and offering a clear preview of the 2020 contest, was Trump’s warning against socialism. “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight,” he declared, “we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” He had Venezuela at hand as an example of socialist folly and evil. He didn’t have to mention that the Nazis were socialists, too. From their dreams of socialism, a Green New Deal, and Medicare for All, the Democrats in the chamber suddenly seemed…woke. They sat there, stunned, or at least silent, realizing that soon they would have to face this man in the ring. As Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.” And Trump was only sparring.

At the end Trump returned to D-Day, to those “young men of 18 and 19, hurtling on fragile landing craft toward the most momentous battle in the history of war,” and to those whose lives and freedom they saved, including the two Holocaust survivors in the gallery. Why did those young men do it? Trump asked. “Their cause was this nation and generations yet unborn…. They did it for America. They did it for us.” They chose greatness, and freedom, and life, as we should, too. Let the Democrats run on infanticide, socialism, and porous borders.

Can you imagine Romney or one of those miserable never-trumping milque-toasts issuing a clear statement like that?

Conflict Resolution, Troubling Trends, and ‘Liberal’ Bias

This from a New York Times article:

“People are making up stories about ‘the other’ — Muslims, Trump voters, whoever ‘the other’ is,” she said. “‘They don’t have the values that we have. They don’t behave like we do. They are not nice. They are evil.’”

She added: “That’s dehumanization. And when it spreads, it can be very hard to correct.”

Dr. Green is now among a growing group of conflict resolution experts who are turning their focus on the United States, a country that some have never worked on. They are gathering groups in schools and community centers to apply their skills to help a country — this time their own — where they see troubling trends.

They point to dehumanizing political rhetoric — for example President Trump referring to the media as “enemies of the people,” or to a caravan of migrants in Mexico as riddled with criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners.”

I beg to differ. When we conservatives point out that Muslims do not share our values, we are not making up stories about them. We are telling the truth.  Our classically liberal, American, Enlightenment values are incompatible with Sharia. That is a fact. It is not an expression of racism, xenophobia, or any sort of bigotry.  It is not even a judgment as to the quality of their values.

And because Muslims have different values, they behave differently.  This is perfectly obvious, and to point it out should offend no one. 

Does every Muslim uphold Sharia? No. The great American Zuhdi Jasser does not. But he is an outlier.

To describe Muslims and their values and patterns of behavior is not to 'dehumanize' them. They are human all right; it is just that their values and views make living with them them difficult if not impossible. There can be no comity without commonality.

'Liberals' make the mistake of thinking that 'deep down' we are really all the same and want the same things. That is plainly false.

Trump exaggerates and is careless in his use of language. He is a builder and a promoter, not a wordsmith.  He speaks with the vulgar, but the learned who are not hopelessly biased against him know how to 'read'  and 'translate' him. I will give one example, and you can work out the others for yourself if you have the intelligence and moral decency to do so.

"The media are enemies of the people." Translation: the mainstream media outlets with the exception of Fox News are dominated by 'progressives'  and coastal elitists whose attitudes and values are at odds with the "deplorable" (Hillary's term of abuse) denizens of fly-over country who "cling to their guns and religion" (Obama's abusive phrase). 

The values that patriotic Americans cherish are routinely ridiculed and rejected by left-wing media poo-bahs.  In this sense, they are enemies of the people.

Contrary to what 'liberals'  maintain, Trump is not launching an attack on the Fourth Estate as such.  He is attacking the blatant and pervasive left-wing bias of most of their members, bias which is evident to everyone except those members and the consumers of what cannot be called reportage but must be called leftist propaganda.

Article here.

The State of the Union

President Trump gave a great speech last night. I agree with Malcolm Pollack's commentary.

Obviously you can’t please everyone, and there will be many of us who will take issue with some of what Mr. Trump put forward last night. (In particular, I think he is far too enthusiastic about increasing legal immigration, for reasons I won’t go into here.)

That excess of enthusiasm struck me as well, for reasons I too won't go into now.  I have plenty to say in my Immigration category.

The Political Malpractice of the Democrats

(Cross-posted at my FB page where comments are allowed.)

Leading Democrats have reversed themselves on the need for a border wall to help secure the U. S. Mexico border. Notice, I said 'help secure.' No one thinks that a physical barrier suffices to insure border security.

It should be noted, though, that many of those voices loudly condemning a border wall as cruel or ineffective have previously gone on record about our need for thorough border security.

In 2005, Barack Obama declared, “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the U.S. undocumented, undetected, unchecked, circumventing the people who are waiting patiently, diligently, lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer knew the dangers of illegal immigration back in 2009. “People who enter the United States without our permission are illegal aliens and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who enter the U.S. legally,” he said.

Even Hillary Clinton said in 2014: “I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in and I do think you have to control your borders.”

Our leading Democrats were for it before they were against it. How should we interpret the reversal? Two possibilities.

A. Clinton, Schumer, and the rest did not mean what they said when they said they were for border security. They felt safe saying it because they knew no decisive action would be taken, and that the stream of Hispanic illegals would continue unabated to their political advantage. Saying what they did not really mean, or only half-meant, allowed them to posture as patriots concerned with the security of the homeland while reaping the benefits of illegal immigration.

B. They meant what they said, but reversed themselves to oppose the hated Trump.

I incline toward (A). What say you?

 
A wall divides lawmakers over securing the country
It is obvious that for many, cynical politics are prioritized over the…

Three Lockean Reasons to Oppose the Democrats

The main purpose of government is to protect life, liberty, and property. Subsidiary purposes are subordinate to the Lockean triad.  The Democrats, however, are anti-life, anti-liberty, and anti-property.  So if you value life, liberty, and property, then you must not vote for any Democrat. The Republicans in their timid way do stand for life, liberty, and property.  And they are becoming less timid under Trump's tutelage. Lindsey Graham, for one, has recently located his manly virtue and put it to work during the Kavanaugh confirmation. So the choice is clear. Vote Republican, never vote for any Democrat, and don't throw away your vote on unelectable third-party candidates.

I will now briefly list some, but not all, of the reasons why the Democrats are anti-life, anti-liberty, and anti-property.

Anti-Life.  The Dems are the abortion party. They support abortion on demand at every stage of fetal development. They are blind to the moral issues that abortion raises. They wrongly think that abortion is merely about women's health and reproductive rights. To make matters worse, they violate the beliefs of fellow taxpayers by their support of tax-payer funding for Planned Parenthood which is an abortion provider.

Anti-Liberty. The Dems are opposed to free speech, religious liberty, and gun rights.  They regularly conflate free speech with 'hate speech' and religious liberty with 'theocracy.'  And this while going soft on genuine theocratic regimes such as Iran's. All of this puts them at odds with the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. And in general we can say that contemporary Democrats  are anti-Constitutional inasmuch  as an open or living constitution, which they advocate, is no constitution at all, but a mere tabula rasa they hope to deface with their anti-American leftist ideology.

Anti-Property. Today's Democrats, as hard leftists, are ever on the slouch toward socialism, which, in full flower (to put it euphemistically) requires central planning and government ownership of the means of production.  That is where they want to go even though, as stealth ideologues, they won't admit it.

But let's assume that the statement I just made is exaggerated and that Dems really don't want socialism as it is classically defined. Still, they are anti-property in various ways.  They think that we the people have to justify our keeping whereas government doesn't have to justify its taking. That is precisely backwards. They don't appreciate that the government exists for us; we don't exist for the government. They confuse taxation with wealth redistribution. And by the way, government is not us, as some idiots such as Thom Hartman say.  'The government is us' is as perversely knuckle-headed as 'Diversity is our strength.'  The latter stupidity is plainly Orwellian. What about the former? Pre-Orwellian?  Both are Pelosi-stupid, which is the ne plus ultra of stupidity.

Finally, you need to understand that private property is the foundation of individual liberty.

Is it politically sane to want both to crush and to tolerate opposing tribes?

George Packer in The New Yorker on tribalism:

I hear myself say this and think, A solid analysis. At the same time, I hear a Republican reply, Pure tribalism. You’re just proving your own point. I want part of my brain, even a small part, to be always attuned to the frequency of other tribes, ready to pose the essential questions: How would this sound coming from them? How do they see you? I try to keep two thoughts in my head at the same time: the other tribe needs to be crushed, and I have to talk and listen to them. The first thrives on rage, the second on tolerance. These are contradictory states of being, and extremely difficult to maintain in tension, but a sane politics requires both. The alternative isn’t victory but self-destruction. After all, we have to live together.

Surely the above is incoherent. I cannot both tolerate you and seek to crush you.  Toleration does not imply approval, but it does imply a willingness to put up with you, your beliefs, your expressions of your beliefs, and at least some of  the actions flowing from them.  If I tolerate you, then I let you be, which is obviously incompatible with crushing you either physically or politically.

Packer tells us that a sane politics requires both rage and tolerance.  On the contrary such a politics would be insane.

Packer tells us we have to live together. True. But he offers no proposal as to how to do so peacefully.

Secession is out of the question. If so, we are just going to have to battle it out in this age of post-consensus politics. It won't be pretty. Let's hope that political means suffice to beat back the Democrats.  If we can beat some sense into them, then perhaps we can keep the Republic together. 

It’s All Over for the Never Trumpers

One part of them acknowledges President Trump's manifold accomplishments, in particular his two SCOTUS victories, and will vote for him in 2020. The rest have or will let their mindless hatred of Trump the man drive them out of the Republican Party or out of conservatism altogether.  Victor Davis Hanson:

The character assassination of Brett Kavanaugh by unsubstantiated rumor and gossip put Never Trumpers in a bind, or rather split them in two. Kavanaugh was nominated by the hated Trump, but his record and endorsements by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society mainstreamed the choice. 

[. . .]

To destroy a judge like Kavanaugh reflected that the New Left’s hatred of Trump had always been incidental to its essential loathing of conservatives in general. For a remnant group of Never Trumpers to oppose Kavanaugh, then, reflected the elevation of their own personal hatred for Trump over the critical elevation of a principled jurist to the Supreme Court. Supposedly, Kavanaugh was soiled by a Trump handprint, and therefore it was better to have a more liberal court than see Trump get any credit for taking the court in a direction only previously dreamed of by conservatives.

Never Trumpers had always assured their former conservative colleagues that Trump would either fail or prove liberal. But he has done neither. And as far as his demonstrable crudity and uncouthness, the hearings showed that the Democrats were far crueler and crass in deed than Trump was in word. So perhaps half of the small minority of Republican Never Trumpers, in horror at the Antifa tactics of the Democrats, retreated to the old adage of “hang together or hang separately.” Those who doubled down by joining leftists in opposing the Kavanaugh nomination revealed that they have crossed their Rubicon and now are either orphaned or unabashedly part of the new progressive Democratic party — at least until their useful obsequiousness no longer serves current progressive agendas.

Not a Job Interview, but a Neo-Bolshevik Show Trial

Pat Buchanan:

Yet, in tossing out the “Catechism of Political Correctness” and treating the character assassination of Kavanaugh as what it was, a rotten conspiracy to destroy and defeat his nominee, Trump’s instincts were correct, even if they were politically incorrect.

This was not a “job interview” for Kavanaugh.

In a job interview, half the members of the hiring committee are not so instantly hostile to an applicant that they will conspire to criminalize and crush him to the point of wounding his family and ruining his reputation.

When Sen. Lindsey Graham charged the Democratic minority with such collusion, he was dead on. This was a neo-Bolshevik show trial where the defendant was presumed guilty and due process meant digging up dirt from his school days to smear and break him.

Our cultural elites have declared Trump a poltroon for daring to mock Ford’s story of what happened 36 years ago. Yet, these same elites reacted with delight at Matt Damon’s “SNL” depiction of Kavanaugh’s angry and agonized appearance, just 48 hours before.

Is it not hypocritical to laugh uproariously at a comedic depiction of Kavanaugh’s anguish, while demanding quiet respect for the highly suspect and uncorroborated story of Ford?

It is time to wake up and realize that Democrats are not fellow citizens but domestic enemies and ought to be treated as such.