Politics – Page 39 – Maverick Philosopher

Trump: For and Against

A regular reader, professional philosopher, and Trump supporter writes that he is "very puzzled" by my position on Donald Trump. The occasion of his puzzlement is my linkage to a vitriolic anti-Trump piece by C. W. Cooke at NRO.

But what exactly is supposed to be so terrible about Trump? So terrible as compared to anyone else who has any chance of winning the [Republican] nomination or the election? For the most part, he [C. W. Cooke] seems to be focused on issues of character or history: Trump is 'an entitled mess' with a 'questionable' record, he merely pretends to be religious, etc. He fails to even address the real reason for Trump's appeal.

What's so bad about him? Well, for one thing he is vicious and narcissistic. He is in some ways like Brian Leiter who is also a New Yorker and who is on record as justifying his offensive behavior because he is one. Like Leiter, Trump viciously attacks people without provocation and then acts hurt and wronged when a reply in kind is made, sometimes to the point of threatening a law suit in retaliation. Trump's attack on Carly Fiorina's appearance is a clear example, one of many. He did not criticize her on something over which she has control such as personal hygiene, but because she is not beautiful. And he did it in public. Is this the sort of person we want representing the greatest country that has ever existed? If nothing else, it shows very bad judgment on his part.

And then there is the fact that the man is mendacious. Many of us conservatives are sick of the brazen liars in politics. Obama and Hillary are prime examples. It is now well-known that Obamacare was rammed though on the basis of repeated lies. There is no doubt that both Obama and Hillary are liars in the strict sense of that term. Why would we want another presidential liar? Trump clearly lied when, 'channeling' Code Pink, he claimed that Bush the Younger lied about WMDs in Iraq. The man seems incapable of controlling his mouth.

You say all politicians lie? But are they all liars? There is a difference. Are they all brazen liars in the Obama mold? It may be a good idea to make some distinctions here. In any case a defense on the ground that all politicians lie is pretty weak.

Is Trump a conservative or a leftist? We expect Obama and Hillary to lie: they are leftists. Truth is not a leftist value. What matters to a leftist is power and winning. That sounds just like Trump. Winning is what counts; otherwise you are a 'loser.' Winning by any means. The end, winning, justifies the means, e.g., lying about George W. Bush, a morally decent man, even if inept.

Vicious, petty, petulant, narcissistic, and how about unprincipled? Ted Cruz is rooted in sound conservative principles. Trump is about as principled as Hillary, which is to say devoid of principles except for the supreme 'principle' of personal ambition. Anything to win. When Cruz pointed out that Trump had reversed himself on key positions, he called Cruz a liar when the mendacity is all in the Trumpster's court. He cannot take any criticism; he can only flail about and lash back.

Not only is he unprincipled, his proposals are little more than vacuous bluster. He says he will build a wall. That's great. I'm all for it. But he also says that the Mexicans will pay for it. How exactly? He said something last night about trade deficits. But how is this supposed to work in detail? We got nothing last night. In all fairness, his people have made some detailed proposals here. Perhaps the Donald should bone up on his own position statements.

Trump has some good ideas but he is incapable of articulating them in a way that could appeal to any reasonable person and persuade fence-sitters. For example, he has called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration. That is a sound idea easily defended. But he can't defend it or even articulate it. For example, to properly articulate the proposal one has to add some qualifications. Suppose an American citizen who is a Muslim visits a relative in Turkey. Does the Trump proposal prevent him from returning to the USA? It had better not. And Trump had better make this clear.

A typical business-type, he seem incapable of thinking in any abstract way grounded in principles. If I wanted to persuade you of the reasonableness of a moratorium on Muslim immigration, I would start with the idea that there is no legal or moral right to immigrate. I would then make points about the purposes of immigration and right of a nation to defend its culture and values, and in so doing select immigrants on that basis. I would explicitly point out that there is nothing 'xenophobic' about an immigration policy that excludes unassimilable elements and favors certain countries of origin over others. I would point out that at the present time there is no net benefit to Muslim immigration. I would make sure that people understand that moratoria, by definition, are temporary. And so on.

Is Trump capable of this? Is he capable of persuading anyone not already a member of the choir? I see no evidence of it. Instead of calmly making a case for those of his proposals that are reasonable, he alienates people with incendiary rhetoric, vicious and wholly unnecessary personal attacks, bluster and braggadocio. These are not just 'academic' points I am making. They pertain to electability. Hillary must be stopped. Trump, I fear, won't be able to stop her because of his manifold defects as a candidate. He won't be able to persuade enough people to support him. It is a good bet that many conservatives will stay home out of disgust.

You say he is a builder. Excellent. But what does he build? Casinos. So we need more casinos? What we really need in this country is moral renewal. But a moral low-life like Trump is not the man to lead it.

People are inspired by the fact that he's giving them a _voice_ for the first time. They can't speak plainly about the evils of immigration and multiculturalism, for example, and he talks about it. The country is facing existential threats, and pretty much everyone in power, including mainstream 'conservatives', pretends that it's all great. In this situation, what matters is that someone is standing up for the beliefs and values of ordinary people who've been silenced.

Here I am in broad agreement with my reader. Trump's appeal is a populist appeal. He 'channels' people's 'inner Jacksonian.' He does give people a voice and says for them what they cannot say for themselves free of reprisal. People are sick and tired of political correctness. They are disgusted by the liberal-left scum who have been allowed to infiltrate our institutions.

But the question is not what explains Trump's popularity; the question is how to stop Hillary. Can Trump stop her? I don't know. And I don't know whether Cruz has a better shot at stopping her.

But if Trump gets the nomination I will of course vote for him. Politics is always about the lesser of evils.

Want more? Read here how Trump got beta'd last night.

Help in Resisting ‘Trumptation’

C. W. Cooke provides some:

. . . Trump is an entitled mess whose business record is so questionable that he managed to bankrupt a casino; that he is an unashamed fraud who didn’t even wait to be elected president before folding on Planned Parenthood and Obamacare, exactly like the “feckless” Congress he is running against; that he is feigning religiosity to appeal to people he believes are rubes; and, above all, that whatever he may be pretending now, he has spent a lifetime screwing the little guy. They must repeat verbatim his previous words on amnesty; they must outline in detail how his policies will make life worse for everyone; and they must point out that a Trump nomination designed to “mix things up” will result, eventually, in more of the same.

Would You Vote for Hillary Because She is a Woman?

According to Heather Wilhelm, feminists are teetering on the brink of a "nervous breakdown":

Why, the chorus goes, is Bernie cast as the future, while Hillary gets painted as “the establishment”? Hillary Clinton is a woman, didn’t you notice? She is by her very nature oppressed; by definition, she cannot be the establishment. Never mind her questionable treatment of the many women who accused her husband of sexual assault; never mind her current classified e-mail quagmire, in which she may have put national security at risk. She is a woman, America. Everything else is chump change.

This lefty-feminist thinking is that women can no more belong to the establishment than blacks can be racists. Why? Because this is true by definition.

At this point I must plug my posts on the illicit use of 'by definition.' Here and here. ("Why must you?" Because it is my self-imposed task people to enlighten people.)

The problem here is that too many women, like too many blacks, are tribal, though not as tribal as blacks. Of course, women are not literally a tribe. Nor is it the case that all women are 'tribal' any more than all blacks are tribal. What do I mean when I say that women, many women, too many women, are 'tribal'? I mean that they place their self-identification as women at the top or near the top of more reasonable and less divisive self-identifications. Any woman who would vote for Hillary just because she is a woman or would place Hillary's being a woman near the top of her reasons for voting for the former Secretary of State is tribal in my sense.

You should vote for the candidate that you think best serves the common good. So if you support Hillary because you think she will best forward the 'progressive' agenda, and you believe in that agenda, then I won't call you 'tribal.' But I will question your judgment. If you really believe in the 'progressive' agenda, shouldn't you be supporting Sanders?

Trump’s America

I thought he would have 'flamed out' by now, but he is still going strong. Might The Donald be on the way to becoming il Duce of America? I ascribed Trump's traction to conservative inaction and Obama's overreach. But cultural factors need to be considered. And who better than Charles Murray to do the job? His WSJ piece begins like this:

If you are dismayed by Trumpism, don’t kid yourself that it will fade away if Donald Trump fails to win the Republican nomination. Trumpism is an expression of the legitimate anger that many Americans feel about the course that the country has taken, and its appearance was predictable. It is the endgame of a process that has been going on for a half-century: America’s divestment of its historic national identity.

For the eminent political scientist Samuel Huntington, writing in his last book, “Who Are We?” (2004), two components of that national identity stand out. One is our Anglo-Protestant heritage, which has inevitably faded in an America that is now home to many cultural and religious traditions. The other is the very idea of America, something unique to us. As the historian Richard Hofstadter once said, “It has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.”

What does this ideology—Huntington called it the “American creed”—consist of? Its three core values may be summarized as egalitarianism, liberty and individualism. From these flow other familiar aspects of the national creed that observers have long identified: equality before the law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and association, self-reliance, limited government, free-market economics, decentralized and devolved political authority.

As recently as 1960, the creed was our national consensus. Running that year for the Democratic nomination, candidates like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey genuinely embraced the creed, differing from Republicans only in how its elements should be realized.

Today, the creed has lost its authority and its substance. What happened?

Hillary to Play Race Card After Crushing Defeat

Hillary took a shellacking yesterday in the New Hampshire primary, losing to Bernie Sanders by 20 or so points. Time to pull out the race card:

Clinton is set to campaign with the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, unarmed African-Americans who died in incidents involving law enforcement officers and a neighborhood watch representative, respectively. And the campaign, sources said, is expected to push a new focus on systematic racism, criminal justice reform, voting rights and gun violence that will mitigate concerns about her lack of an inspirational message.

Remember Trayvon Martin? He was the black child on the way to the candy store who was brutally murdered by the racist white Hispanic, George Zimmerman.

Trayvon Martin entries

Sanders’ Unsustainable Socialism

Among other things, Bernie Sanders supports free tuition at all public colleges and universities, medicare for all, and an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. Are such socialist proposals implementable? Are they economically feasible? A necessary but not sufficient condition of practical implementation would have to be a major curtailment of the influx of illegal immigrants and a serious reform of the system of legal immigration. And yet when we look at his immigration policy, we see that Sanders wants to allow all immigrants, legal or illegal, to purchase health care under the Affordable Care Act; that he supports sanctuary cities, and that he opposes building a physical barrier along the southern border.

It's a bit of a paradox: you cannot combine socialism with porous borders and sanctuary cities. 'Freebies' such as free tuition will attract too many legal and illegal immigrants. If you want to be 'liberal' with citizens, you cannot also be 'liberal' with non-citizens. And of course what is free for some will not be free for others, for those who are footing the bill. There are only so many fat cats, and they will not allow themselves to be fleeced.

A second, sharper, form of the paradox. A welfare state cannot work without strict border control. Equally, a welfare state cannot work without large numbers of people willing to work at physically demanding and relatively low-paying jobs such as re-roofing houses in Phoenix in the summer. Where are these people going to come from? Presumably from outside: the existing population, having had their work ethic eroded by welfare state benefits, will not want to work at the demanding jobs. So a welfare state needs strict and also lax immigration controls. There is also the problem that an aging population the members of which will most of them live for many years in retirement on supposed 'entitlements' is not sustainable without plenty of young immigrants.

Feel the 'Bern' yet? Feel the tension? It would be wonderful if turkeys flew around ready-roasted or were delivered by government drones on major holidays. But who is going to foot the bill?

At the other end of the political spectrum, the libertarians are also in a bit of a bind. "Open the borders!" John Stossel once said. That would work only on condition that you first dismantle the welfare state. But the welfare state is here to stay. The only question is whether we can contain it or roll it back a little.

So choose. You can't have both a robust welfare state that provides 'free' health care, education, and so on while also having a liberal immigration policy. You will have noticed, if you went to Sanders' site, that he refuses to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. After all, that would be 'xenophobic' as liberals (mis)use the word.

But the question of Sanders' socialism is moot. He won't get the Democrat nomination. Hillary will get the nod. And no, she will not be indicted, no matter what further evidence of her wrongdoing turns up. It is really very simple. Obama will not allow his 'gains' to be overturned or be in any way mitigated by a Republication administration. The rule of law counts for nothing for those who believe that their ends — noble and worthy in their own eyes — are to be achieved by any means.

So it will come down to a contest between Hillary and Rubio, and Hillary will win. Cruz is a brilliant man and would make a good president, but he is not electable because of his personality. Rubio is more personable, more of a regular guy. Trump will flame out. He is essentially an empty suit riding a short-term populist wave, to mix some metaphors. In any case, there is no way the Republicans would allow his nomination.

Those are my predictions. I hope I'm wrong about Hillary winning. She is Sanders writ small, a gradualist Sanders if you will, who cunningly hides her true convictions in the manner of the stealth ideologue that Sanders is too honest to be. I am assuming, perhaps falsely, that Hillary has convictions and is not merely out for personal gain. It might be better to say that she either has no convictions or leftist convictions.

Why Do So Many Christians Support Donald Trump?

The faults of Trump the vulgarian are legion. He is nasty, petty, petulant, egomaniacal . . . no true conservative . . . . So why do so many conservative Christians support him? Here is the answer.

By the way, he acquitted himself well last night, coming in second to Ted Cruz. And he graciously allowed that he was "honored" by his fine showing in Iowa. I would like to see a Cruz-Trump ticket, or a Trump-Cruz ticket. What I'd really like to see is an indictment of Hillary for her crimes. That won't happen, however. Obama's Department of Social Justice won't allow it.

Bernie for President

I support the superannuated socialist Sanders for president — of Sweden.

(Adapted from a Rubio riff from last night's Republican debate. Always give credit where credit is due. Thou shalt not steal.)

Sanders is a decent human being as far as I can tell. He is not a stealth ideologue like the disgusting Hillary who hides her actual views behind a tsunami of blather. And unlike Hillary the Mendacious, he is not just out for his own advancement. Sanders is sincerely concerned for the welfare of working men and women. But while he has the courage of his convictions, he has the wrong convictions. Like so many leftists, he will not learn from experience. Socialism has proven to be a miserable failure, and worse than that: in many places it has led to mass murder and the gulag. But the Left is utopian in addition to being totalitarian, and so you cannot expect leftists to learn from experience.

Experience is of the present and the past; leftists live in and for the future. Incapable of appreciating a genuine Transcendence, they believe is an ersatz transcendence to be attained by 'progressive' politics. It's an illusion, but one definatory of the leftist worldview.

Michael Bloomberg?

The former mayor of New York City threatens to run on a third-party ticket. I just now heard Hugh Hewitt on the Charlie Rose show encourage him on the ground that he would siphon votes from Hillary. Hewitt might be right given Bloomberg's leftist views. Herewith, an edited re-post from 18 June 2012.

Michael Bloomberg on the Purpose of Government

(CBS News) New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg shrugged off criticism of his controversial public health initiatives, saying that "if government's purpose isn't to improve the health and longevity of its citizens, I don't know what its purpose is." [emphasis added.]

Bloomberg most recently put forth a plan to ban the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces from the city's eateries, street carts and stadiums. The proposal has been sharply criticized, in some cases by beverage and fast food companies as a case of government overreach.

He's also been criticized for previous efforts to, among other things, ban smoking in public places and the use of trans-fats in restaurant foods. Some have gone so far as to mock has as being like a "nanny."

But on "CBS This Morning," Bloomberg fired back, saying, "We're not here to tell anybody what to do. But we certainly have an obligation to tell them what's the best science and best medicine says is in their interest.

In this startlingly incoherent outburst, Bloomberg betrays the liberal nanny-state mentality in as direct a way as one could wish. And it is incoherent. He wants to ban large drinks, pop corn, milk shakes and what all else while assuring us that "we're not here to tell anybody what to do." He blatantly contradicts himself. Does the man think before he speaks?

But the deeper problem is that he has no notion of the legitimate functions of government. Apparently he has never heard of limited government. Border control is a legitimate constitutionally-grounded function of government. One reason the borders must be controlled is to impede the spread of contagious diseases. So government does have some role to play in the health and longevity of citizens. Defense of the country against foreign aggressors is also a legitimate function of government and it too bears upon health and longevity: it is hard to live a long and healthy life when bombs are raining down.

Beyond this, it is up to the individual to live in ways that insure health and longevity if those are values for him. But they might not be. Some value intensity of life over longevity of life. Rod Serling, for example, lived an extremely intense and productive life. Born in 1925, he died in 1975 at age 50. His Type A behavior and four-pack a day cigarette habit did him in, but was also quite possibly a necessary condition of his productivity. That was his free choice. No government has the right to dictate that one value longevity over intensity.

A government big enough and powerful enough to provide one with ‘free’ health care will be in an excellent position to demand ‘appropriate’ behavior from its citizens – and to enforce its demand. Suppose you enjoy risky sports such as motorcycling, hang gliding, mountain climbing and the like. Or perhaps you just like to drink or smoke or eat red meat. A government that pays for the treatment of your injuries and ailments can easily decide, on economic grounds alone, to forbid such activities under the bogus justification, ‘for your own good.’

But even if the government does not outlaw motorcycling, say, they can put a severe dent in your liberty to enjoy such a sport, say, by demanding that a 30% sales tax be slapped on all motorcycle purchases, or by outlawing bikes whose engines exceed a certain displacement, say 250 cc. In the same way that governments levy arbitrary punitive taxes on tobacco products, they can do the same for anything they deem risky or unhealthy.

The situation is analogous to living with one’s parents. It is entirely appropriate for parents to say to a child: ‘As long as you live under our roof, eat at our table, and we pay the bills, then you must abide by our rules. When you are on your own, you may do as you please.’ The difference, of course, is that it is relatively easy to move out on one’s own, but difficult to forsake one’s homeland.

This is why we shouldn't surrender our country to nanny-state, gun-grabbing, liberty-bashing soda jerks like Bloomberg and Hillary.

The nub of the issue is liberty. Do you value it or not? How much? Over nanny-state security?

Does Bloomberg even see the issue?

Trump’s Traction and Conservative Inaction

Donald Trump's 'traction' is largely due to conservative inaction. I leave aside for the moment that other source of Trumpian traction: the abominations of the Obama administration.

Conservatives are long on talk but short on action. Donald Trump, an alpha male with the billions to be beholden to no one, whose style of self-presentation is reminiscent of il Duce, has populist appeal because he looks to be someone who might finally get at least one thing done, say, stem the invasion of illegals from the south. And stop talking about it.

What have conservatives accomplished since the days of Ronald Reagan?

And yet the conservative case against Trump is devastating.

Here is a severely practical consideration: there is no way Trump can beat Hillary. He has alienated too many groups, women and Hispanics to name two. Add to that the fact that large numbers of conservatives will stay home, and Hillary is in like Flynn. Mark my words.

Let's hope that Trump does not get the Republican nomination. But if he gets it, you must vote for him. For the alternative is far worse. Politics is a practical business. It is not about maintaining your ideological purity, but about getting something accomplished in murky and complex circumstances. It is always about the lesser or least of evils. Trump would be bad, but Hillary worse.

While the 'bow-tie brigade' at National Review and the rest of the conservatives are so right about so much, they are too concerned with being respectable members of the establishment to know how to fight against the Alinskyite left. Hence their measured statements, their pious invocation of the Constitution, their refusal to give as good as they get. They don't realize that politics is not a gentlemanly debate, but war conducted by other means.

Andrew Jackson, Revenant

An excellent article by Walter Russell Meade. Study it, muchachos. Yes, this will be on the final.

A revenant is one who has returned from the dead or from a long absence.

Has Old Hickory come back as Donald Trump?

Though I despise contemporary liberalism and leftism (any difference?), that doesn't quite put me on the Jacksonian right. Meade:

Lynch law and Jim Crow were manifestations of Jacksonian communalism, and there are few examples of race, religious or ethnic prejudice in which Jacksonian America hasn’t indulged.

[. . .]

Jacksonians are neither liberal nor conservative in the ways that political elites use those terms; they are radically egalitarian, radically pro-middle class, radically patriotic, radically pro-Social Security.

I am too much of an intellectual, and too much of an old-time liberal, to be a Jacksonian. At the bottom of the Jacksonian bucket are the rednecks and know-nothings. You know the type. The guy who shoots out the windows of a convenience store because he thinks the proprietor is a Muslim when in fact he is a Sikh. He doesn't know the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu because he doesn't read books. He is too busy swilling Budweiser at NASCAR events and tractor-pulls. (He had hisself a coupla Buds but he was none the wiser.)

At the bottom of that same Jacksonian bucket are the jingoists who confuse jingoism with patriotism. "My country right or wrong." And while I believe that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence sense, and all deserve equal treatment before the law, I am no radical egalitarian. I am an elitist, but in the best possible sense of that word. People are obviously not equal in respect of any empirical attribute. You could put it like this: we are all equal before God, equally wretched, but among one another plainly unequal spiritually, mentally, morally, and physically. But my elitism has nothing to do with inherited privilege or blood lines and the like. It is an elitism grounded in talent and ability and the individual's free development of his talents and abilities. True, you did nothing to deserve your God- or nature-given talent, but you have nonetheless a right to its possession and development. If you develop your talents in accordance with the old virtues and become unequal to others in respect of the three Ps (position, power, and pelf), then so be it. Material equality, as such, is not a value.

And I am certainly not radically pro-Social Security.

But if comes down to a fight with vile and destructive leftists, you can bet I will be on the side of the Jacksonian good old boys, locked and loaded. Meade concludes:

Whatever happens to the Trump candidacy, it now seems clear that Jacksonian America is rousing itself to fight for its identity, its culture and its primacy in a country that it believes it should own. Its cultural values have been traduced, its economic interests disregarded, and its future as the center of gravity of American political life is under attack. Overseas, it sees traditional rivals like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran making headway against a President that it distrusts; more troubling still, in ISIS and jihadi terror it sees the rapid spread of a movement aiming at the mass murder of Americans. Jacksonian America has lost all confidence in the will or the ability of the political establishment to fight the threats it sees abroad and at home. It wants what it has always wanted: to take its future into its own hands.The biggest story in American politics today is this: Andrew Jackson is mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it anymore.

Chris Hedges

I saw Chris Hedges on C-SPAN the other night. Four years ago I heard him in the same venue and was much impressed by what he had to say about pornography. Oxymoronic as it may sound, I'd say Hedges is a decent leftist. Decent but delusional, as witness this opening paragraph of The Creeping Villainy of American Politics:

The threefold rise in hate crimes against Muslims since the Paris and San Bernardino attacks and the acceptance of hate speech as a legitimate form of political discourse signal the morbidity of our civil society. The body politic is coughing up blood. The daily amplification of this hate speech by a commercial media whose sole concern is ratings and advertising dollars rather than serving as a bulwark to protect society presages a descent into the protofascist nightmare of racism, indiscriminate violence against the marginalized, and a blind celebration of American chauvinism, militarism and bigotry.

Who accepts hate speech as a legitimate form of political discourse? And, more importantly, what do leftists mean by 'hate speech'? Suppose I call for a moratorium on immigration from Muslim lands, or, more precisely, a moratorium on the immigration of Muslims from any land. Is my call 'hate speech'? Not to any rational person. You may disagree with this proposal but it is reasonable and prudent given the state of the world, and numerous reasons can be given in support of it. It reflects no hatred of Muslims, but a sober recognition of the threat they pose to our culture and values, a culture that we of course have a right to defend.

This suggests that leftists use 'hate speech' in such a broad way that it includes any speech with which they disagree. Should we conclude that leftists are opposed to free speech and open debate and free inquiry? I am afraid so. In this respect they are just like the orthodox Muslims they quite strangely defend. They think they own dissent. And surely it is passing strange for so many of them to defend Islam given the pronounced 'libertine wobble' of so many leftists. Don't these people defend homosexual practices and alternative sexual lifestyles generally? They would be the first to lose their heads under Sharia. Do our lefty pals perhaps have a death wish?

Trump and ISIS

The party line on Donald Trump is that he is an 'agent' of ISIS, a 'recruiter' for them. A typically supine liberal-left line in response to a real threat. Spouting the party line as Hillary did in the recent Democrat 'debate' is analogous to saying in the late '30s or early '40s that any opposition to Hitler would only 'recruit' more Nazis.

There are already enough ISIS members and other Muslim terrorists to destroy our way of life. There is no need to recruit more. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. On a very conservative estimate, 10% of them support Islamic law (Shari'a). Other estimates are as high as 25%. 10% of 1.2 billion = 120 million, a sizeable number! But of course not all of them would participate actively in terrorist activities. Suppose only 1% of them would. That would still leave 1.2 million. And of these, only a few need to get through with a little luck and the right weaponry.

The Left's Insensitivity to Danger boggles the mind of the rational.

As for the much-maligned Donald Trump, Conrad Black speaks in his defense.

The Quality of The New York Times

Here is the first comment on Ross Douthat's December 16th column. The comment has been awarded 'verified' status, meaning that ". . . it is earned based on a history of quality [read: high quality] comments." Ready?

The following means Douthat knows he is neing dishinest, but it is debatable by he and his buddies, so ok, and, he is not accountable. It is like a talisman to negate reaponsibility for dishinonest: pure phony conservative. "Of course one can dispute how much of this was actually Obama’s fault, and argue over what might have been done differently. "

But anything to say, phony conservative hack style, liberals suck. Douthat's god.

And why is Trump popular?Cathartic howl? Typical cute Douthat rhetoric with all the depth teo dimensions can bring, yeah sure, like the nazis were a cathartic howl. Trump is popular, six months in, because he is reaping what the republican Party has sown and real american republican trash, his countrymen who Douthat respects less than Star Wars dolls,(Haravrd baby!) like the guy and think he is better than the other chump clown .1% lackeys. This, requires daily lies from Douthat and lie he does.

Yet another proof that the only good NYT combox is a closed NYT combox. Or: the best arguments against an open NYT combox are the contents of one.

As for the quality of the Opinion Pages themselves, they are piss-poor with only two or three exceptions, Douthat being one of them. He is worth reading. The aptronymically-appellated Charles Blow comes across as an affirmative action hire. I saw him on C-SPAN once. A very nice man with a beautiful wife, and I'm sure he means well.

By the way, if you are a conservative you ought to do everything in your power to defund the Left, and that includes not subscribing to the Rag of Record.

David Horowitz on Donald Trump

Here:

Donald Trump’s great contribution is saying the unsayable; putting things on the table that would otherwise be buried; calling a spade a spade in a time when political correctness has made us unable to discuss things that have to do with our basic national survival. This is the crux of the issue. Every time he creates a controversy like this he also tells this country that its emperors, Republican and Democrat, have no clothes. That they prefer propriety over defending the country. That they are dedicated only to keeping the lid on a cauldron of threat and challenge they have allowed to boil over.

This is why Trump is so popular. This is why people overlook his gratuitous insults, exaggerations, egomania, and all the rest. Clearly, a moratorium on Muslim immigration is just common sense given the Islamic threat and the incompetence of our leaders in dealing with it. But no mainstream Republican has the courage to call for it. They are, let us say, 'pc-whipped.' One of those whom the cognitive aberration known as political correctness has infected is former Vice President Cheney. Here is Diana West on Cheney:

Cheney says that Trump's proposed ban "goes against everything we believe in," and cites "religious freedom" specifically, which, he notes, is a "very important part of our history."

It should be (but isn't) self-evident by now: Continued Islamic immigration will ensure that "religious freedom" is exactly that – "part of our history." In the past. Something we read about in books. It is a clear-cut matter, even if seems to have escaped the vice president's ken (despite his waging two wars in the Islamic world): There is no religious freedom in Islam. Nada. Zilch. Rien. Geert Wilders isn't kidding when he says, the more Islam in society, the less freedom there is in society.

This central feature of Islamic law, this central feature of Islam — namely, the absence of religious freedom — turns the vice president's appeal for Muslim immigration on the grounds of our history of "religious freedom" into so much emotionalism, so much puffery. In other words, it may puff up the old self-esteem — what a kindly, generous, beneficent personage am I — but when the inner smile dies our republic and Constitutional liberties are still imperiled by Islamic immigration waves that carry with them a transformative sharia demographic.

To put it very simply: you cannot grant religious freedom to a religion one of whose central aims is to stamp out all freedom of religion.