Views on the News
Views on the News*
March 3, 2018
There is a lot of concern in Washington about the low
level of trust in government. Pew Research
found last May only 18% of Americans had even a sliver of faith in the federal
government, something which shouldn’t be surprising since it’s been
hovering in the 20’s since 2006. Pew seemed relatively surprised at the
downward trend since 75% of Americans trusted government in the 1950’s. The hardworking
men and women of this country look at Washington, D.C., and see story after
story of corruption, lack of transparency, and mismanagement. Officials have lost sight of their
mission to serve We, the People. People make a fatal error in comparing
the government to private industry.
When private industries fail, individuals are
able to find alternatives relatively easy. Government alternatives exist
via the private sector, but the government is loathe
to surrender power. The system is
failing, but it isn’t known what solution will be picked as the answer. People who have
the misfortune to live in low-trust societies tend, paradoxically, to want
more, not less government. A
recent Reason.tv report notes that “it turns
out that government may be growing not in spite of our lack of confidence in
it, but because of our lack of confidence in it. This self-defeating spiral
will only get worse if the United States fails to stem its slide toward being a
low-trust country.”
Americans didn’t trust the authoritarian Obama (or the
authoritarian Hillary Clinton), so they elected Trump, instead of less
authoritarian candidates. People
see the failures of the FBI and other law enforcement entities, and want to
give more power to government in hopes
of keeping them safe, instead of less power. Incumbents get
re-elected all the time, despite criticism of their policy and votes on FISA or
ObamaCare or the farm bill or new regulations on
financial institutions. Local
and state governments want people to trust them, despite obvious cronyism
issue. There
are examples where Americans perform better than the government. A civilian helped stop the Sutherland
Springs attack last November. Locals
got together to help people after Hurricane Harvey. There are churches and non-profits doing
what they can to fight poverty without government assistance. Private
entities are better than any kind of government bureaucracy because they are
accountable. There are
countless stories of businesses failing because they didn’t embrace
change. There are other stories of
businesses thriving because they embraced innovation, and worked hard to regain
the public’s trust after scandal or poor customer service. People will fail;
government institutions will fail; but which do you trust more to make changes;
it’s individuals because the government has no real inclination to change
its ways.
(“Americans don’t
trust the government because it’s failing” by Taylor Millard
dated February 25, 2018 published by https://hotair.com/archives/2018/02/25/americans-dont-trust-government-failing/
)
Liberals really do hate ordinary people and the
distinction between the "dumb masses" and their enlightened
selves renders life meaningful. Disdain
for ordinary folks is not just an ancillary trait of liberalism, it’s
fundamental to its nature. At
its heart, liberalism is a gnostic religion, and the
essence of that religion is the believer's faith that he possesses the means of
changing the world for the better. The belief that the world must be
changed requires there to be a mass of individuals whose lives are in need of
change. Following this logic, it is the liberal,
not those deplorables in need of change, who knows
what must be changed. For liberals, there must be a mass of people in need of
this knowledge for life to make sense.
Above all, liberalism is a hubristic faith.
Its followers share the fatal flaw of pride in their own intellectual
capacity. This is why liberalism appeals so strongly to those in
the knowledge trades: teachers, journalists, writers, psychologists, and social
workers. The sense of "knowing more than others"
is its strongest attraction, particularly to the young, who otherwise know so
little. Liberalism confers, or seems to confer,
almost immediate power and authority to those who embrace it. The problem for the liberal is
that most people do not want to be transformed. They want life to be
better but not qualitatively different. It is
only the liberal, or the "progressive," who welcomes revolution and relishes
the violent tactics necessary to bring it about. For the
progressive, it is an article of faith that the masses will resist change and
must be forced to swallow it. This is a crucial difficulty, and it gives
rise to all sorts of persuasion, nudging, compulsion, and outright violence.
If the masses don't know what's good for them,
they must be made to change. In other words, liberalism is a
temper, not a philosophy. It has no fixed content;
it can be either communistic or fascistic,
racially "progressive" or virulently anti-Semitic, pacifistic
or militaristic, but in one respect, it never changes. It exerts
control and demands obedience. At its core, liberalism can be defined in gnostic
terms as the human mind's idolizing of itself. The liberal mind
really is what the liberal mind has been waiting for. What it seeks is not, however, goodness,
or security, or higher living standards, or even better health care. What it seeks is the celebration of its own brilliance.
"Smug" is a small word
that perfectly captures the nature of the progressive mind. This gnostic
trait is the source of all of the damage liberalism has wrought for more than
300 years. From the French Revolution to the
Third Reich, from Stalinism to North Korea, liberalism has brought with it
repression of liberty, death camps, and executions on a mass scale.
What's often not well understood is the fact that violence and repression
are inevitable because liberalism seeks to change what does not wish to change,
and it does so not for the purpose of making things better, but as an attempt
to confirm the superiority of the liberal mind and its ability to manage
society. Most
Americans find this conception of existence repulsive. Most Americans follow the true path of love, marriage,
childbirth, hard work, and faith in God and country. Liberals actively
seek to destroy this conception of existence because it rejects their mission
of transforming society. It's either the true
path or liberalism, because both cannot be true. To succeed, liberalism must
acquire and retain clients in need of change. It
is not in the interest of the liberal to solve problems. What
the liberal needs is continually to discover new problems and hold them up as
in need of solution. There are fewer pawns lately,
what with President Trump's determination to actually solve problems rather
than exploit them. As the 2018 and 2020 elections draw nearer,
there will be an explosion of media accounts of victimization. It will be
theater nonstop, and it will express perfectly the liberal's need to transform
the world whether it wishes to be transformed or not. There is a point
at which liberalism's hubris turns into bloodlust. The act of
exerting force becomes reflexive and then pleasurable. Every smug
theorist of liberalism has morphed into a vicious mass murderer: Lenin, Stalin,
Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung were all brilliant
theorists who grew to savor violence.
It is chilling to realize how imperiled we are
in the USA. No country is now at greater risk than America, where
the young have been warped by state education and the nation intentionally
divided along lines of race, class, and sex. Our task as
conservatives is to speak out against liberalism, with its inevitable tendency
toward compulsion and violence, and to offer an alternative that is truer and
more generous. The alternative of
liberty and freedom is not the construct of the human mind, but the natural
condition of mankind wrought by our Creator.
(“Leftists versus the
People” by Jeffrey Folks dated February 24, 2018 published by
American Thinker at https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/02/leftists_versus_the_people.html
)
It becomes more and more obvious by the day that we are
rapidly heading towards a second American civil war. As the leftists
become a smaller and smaller minority, their frustration and desperation are
driving them to more and more extreme positions, and more and more frequently,
to violence of word and deed. The middle ground has disappeared under
this rising tide of angry, threatening rhetoric. Debate is no longer an option. The left demands
we agree with them, or suffer dire consequences. In the aftermath of the school shooting
in Florida, the recent concerted attacks, mostly from the rabid running dogs in
the “mainstream” media, on
the 2nd Amendment, the NRA (National Rifle Association), and the supporters of
both, epitomize this. Instead of focusing on the shooter, and how he managed to
pull off his barbaric, insane massacre, the left pounced on the tragedy as a
means to push for “common sense gun control”. Using still traumatized students, already
brainwashed and indoctrinated by their leftist “educators”, and terrified liberal parents,
they fed them “questions” and
turned them loose like attack dogs on a Republican senator and a representative
of the NRA. The fact that the NRA had absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy made
no difference, nor did the fact that what the shooter did was already totally
illegal. They were made to
appear more guilty than the murderous psycho, a
psycho, by the way, well known to law enforcement for threats and violence, but
allowed to engage in those behaviors unmolested. What the left
means by “common sense” is, their
definition of what is right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair, allowable
and forbidden. Anything else
is rejected out of hand and is not up for discussion. What the left
mean by “common sense gun control” is only one thing:
complete gun confiscation. Most
conservatives and constitutionalists are aware of a number of facts regarding
the right to keep and bear arms, though many have had trouble seeing the basic,
underlying relationship among them all. They know that
the big, Democrat-run cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., have the
strictest gun control laws in the country, and yet have appallingly high murder
rates, with minorities constituting the majority of perpetrators and victims. Many, too, are
aware that places where concealed carry is lightly restricted, crime rates go
way down. This is not just a
phenomenon limited to America. Both
the UK and Australia confiscated private firearms and saw their crime rates,
especially violent ones, skyrocket. Contrast this with Switzerland where
firearm ownership is mandatory. Those who have studied history, especially that since 1900, are aware that strict gun control and confiscation
were common to all the brutal, murderous, totalitarian dictatorships worldwide,
especially the communist ones. The
sometimes hard to see threads tying these facts all together are involvement of
leftist/progressive/communist/fascist individuals and organizations, and the
ultimate aim of not gun control, but gun confiscation, the disarming of the
civilian population and thus, people control. An unarmed
citizen has been accurately described as a subject. Who
is funding and organizing these supposedly student-organized “protests” and “marches” is not something the “mainstream” media has any interest in doing.
They’re
pushing the fiction, the Big Lie, that children in high school are
spontaneously doing this themselves. It stinks of Soros money and meddling, but
since the “mainstream” media
is actually the Ministry of Leftist Propaganda, we may never know. Clearly, the
hysterical demands for “common sense gun control” from
leftist media and left-leaning politicians is aimed at, panicking the public
into believing there is an immediate, life-threatening crisis; creating fear and
hysteria in the already fearful and hysterical Democrat base, aimed at phony
scapegoats like the NRA and Republicans; using this to pressure Congress into
submitting to unjustified demands for what amounts to undercutting the
Constitution, and another step towards total gun confiscation. However,
in a change from the past, a majority of We, the People, are not sitting back
quietly and allowing ourselves to be ridden roughshod over by the anti-freedom,
anti-Constitution left. It’s likely that most of the
left’s current efforts will fail. It’s also
likely that being frustrated in this will drive them to even more outrageous
lies, threats, and acts of violence. Most Americans are too young to remember
the assassinations and attempts of the 1960s and 1970s, virtually all of them
committed by deranged leftists. They’ve
forgotten too that nearly all of the mass murders in the last couple of decades
were by registered Democrats or their supporters. It’s
only a matter of time, it seems, before it happens again, only this time, it
may be the spark that sets the nation on fire.
(“Rabid Running Dogs” by
Michael Oberndorf dated February 25, 2018 published
by Canada Free Press at http://canadafreepress.com/article/rabid-running-dogs
)
President Trump is already making announcements about his
next campaign. I feel comfortable saying that he has this thing in the bag.
Trump is an uncouth, mean-spirited,
delusional narcissist hated by the media. So was Richard
Nixon in 1972, and he won re-election that year in the biggest landslide in
American history. Like
Nixon's, Trump's appeal among his base is foolproof. Even the slightest accomplishment can be
presented as evidence of his deal-making savvy. Every promise he has failed to keep on
health care, trade, immigration, or The Wall can be answered away by invoking
the specter of his enemies. The same media that made Trump's rise possible by investing
his every moronic utterance with world-historic significance is trying
desperately to pose as a check on his authority. The 2016 election was the story of CNN
allowing Trump to phone in his extemporized thoughts on nothing in particular
while Rand Paul and Jeb Bush sat waiting in the wings with their boring white
papers on criminal justice reform. Now
Chris Cuomo thinks the pain the first lady no doubt experiences upon being
informed of her husband's adultery is uproariously funny. The press is made
up of dilettantes, and their ability to influence voters' decisions has never
been more limited. For Trump
to lose, the Democrats will have to find an even marginally appealing
candidate, preferably one younger than Abraham at the birth of Isaac. I continue to
believe that their best bet is Oprah Winfrey, but she has made it clear that
she no interest in running. Bernie
Sanders, who could also beat Trump, will be 80 years old in 2020. Joe Biden, who is not lacking in charisma
of a kind, will be 78. The most
popular Democrat governor in the country is John Bel
Edwards of Louisiana, a pro-life, pro-gun throwback figure who is as repulsive
to the party's committed base of 22-year-old Teen Vogue
editorial interns as he might be attractive to voters in purple states, but he
has never hinted at wanting to run. Instead, the governor most likely to get
involved is California's Jerry Brown, another octogenarian whose appeal would
be as mysterious to most Americans as it indeed is to the average resident of
the Golden State. Of senators
likely to run, the most viable is Kirsten Gillibrand
of New York, but by "viable" I
mean capable of winning a general election, not capturing the Democrat
nomination. For the first time since 1992, the Democrat Party is going to be forced to
decide what it stands for, not simply what it is against. Is Clintonism
still the way forward, or is the next Democrat president going to be something
this country has not seen since Lyndon Johnson, a genuine fighting progressive
in the White House? For the powers
that be in the Democrat Party, the answer is obvious. There is no
reason to believe that the DNC led by Tom Perez will be any less in the tank
for the party's neoliberal establishment than it was under Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, who more or less openly colluded with Hillary Clinton against Sanders.
The only way Gillibrand
will make herself acceptable to leadership is by
abandoning her principles. If she
decides that single-payer health care is aspirational
rather than imperative and that the war in Afghanistan worth fighting after
all, she might be a goer. If she looks like the genuine article,
she will be stonewalled in favor of Terry McAuliffe, who will raise more money
than any candidate in history and lose by at least 100 electoral votes. The same goes for Elizabeth Warren, whom
the party finds useful so long as she is in opposition, like Sanders. Kamala Harris has a better chance of
being the nominee than either of these women for precisely the same reason that
she would fare worse in a general election, namely her gruesome obsession with
punishing opponents of abortion. She
would be acceptable to the NARAL wine-and-cheese crowd in a way that is not
quite imaginable for Warren, who considers pocket-book issues more important
than anything else. A contest between a generic neoliberal and Trump would be a
battle of airs and grievances, a duel for feigned moral superiority utterly
divorced from practical moral and economic questions. It would be phantasmal, like the rest of
our political life. Only a
progressive candidate who could articulate the ways in which the Trump
administration is a continuation of all the ills, the shocking accumulation of
unimaginable power and wealth by a handful of large tech companies, the
relentless financialization of the economy, the
absence of meaningful and well-remunerated full-time work, the crippling debt,
the social breakdown that has made family life a privilege for the upper-middle
class, of his last three predecessors would meaningfully alter the terms of the
engagement. In a contest of images, don't bet against the reality TV star,
Donald Trump.
(“Why Trump will win in
2020” by Walter Kauzlarich dated February 28,
2018 published by The Week at http://theweek.com/articles/757831/why-trump-win-2020
)
The liberal national news media have been predicting for
months that Republicans will likely lose their Senate majority in this
year’s midterm elections, and suffer losses in the House, too. It’s
a bit premature to place your bets on the 2018 congressional sweepstakes, for several reasons: forecasts that the economy will take
off later this year as a result of the GOP’s massive tax cuts, increasing
incomes and jobs, not to mention that the Democrats are having problems of
their own. The Democrats
voted overwhelmingly against the tax cut plan in December, predicting it will
add over $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit, and benefit only the rich,
and that the issue would be a major weapon against the GOP in the fall, but
that’s not what’s been happening since President Trump signed the
tax cuts into law. Millions of workers are getting
raises and bonuses; capital is flowing back to the U.S. from overseas companies
that are investing in new plants here at home; and there are reports of new
factories being opened, or expanded, in the Midwest and elsewhere in the
country. The new tax law is
rising in popularity as businesses trumpet bonuses and bigger paychecks. Republicans are united in touting the tax
cuts and slamming moderate Democrats who voted against them. As voters
have begun to see more income in their paychecks, political polls are finding
growing support for the tax cuts. Democrats
are defending 10 Senate seats in key states that Trump carried in the 2016
election, including four that he won by double-digits: Indiana, North Dakota,
Missouri and West Virginia. Republicans
cling to power in the Senate by a slender 51-to-49 seat majority. Republican
strategists believe the tax cuts will be the winning issue that will fatten
their margin in the upper chamber. The Democrats who fought against the tax cuts chose partisan
politics, and they may pay the price at the ballot box. Democrats need to flip 24 seats
to take back the house. There are
19 Republican seats rated Toss Up or worse. Democrats
will need to win all 19 of those seats and pick off five other seats in the
Lean Republican column. Realistically, Democrats will not win
100% of the seats in Toss Up or worse. As for the Senate, Democrats need only
two seats to take control of that chamber, and there are three GOP seats in the
Toss Up column: Arizona, Nevada and Tennessee. While it’s
possible for Democrats to win the two seats they need, it will also be an
uphill battle. Democrats are
defending 26 seats compared to Republicans who are only defending eight. Democrats must
also defend 10 seats in states that Trump won. Five of those seats are in states Trump
won by 19 points or more. You won’t hear this on the nightly network news, but
liberal Democrats are having their own troubles, from leftist extremists. I’m betting that Republicans
are going to do better than expected on November 6th.
(“Why Republicans Will Keep
Control of Congress in the Midterm Elections” by Donald Lambro dated March 2, 2018 published by Town Hall at https://townhall.com/columnists/donaldlambro/2018/03/02/why-republicans-will-keep-control-of-congress-in-the-midterm-elections-n2455687
)
There is so much published each week that unless you search for it, you will miss important breaking news. I try to package the best of this information into my “Views on the News” each Saturday morning. Updates have been made this week to the following sections:
· Latin America at http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/fp/latinamerica.php
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY
http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/