Category Archives: Conservatism

Iran: Conservatives Don’t Get That Obama Lies And Steals For His LEGACY

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Iran

Providing material support for a state sponsor of terrorism, incentivizing hostage-taking, aiding and abetting Hezbollah: These are some of the angles conservatives have come up with in mustering outrage over the revelation that, as WSJ has reported, “The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.”

I support negotiating for the lives of compatriots imperiled by the US government’s policies. (See “AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS,” written for antiwar.com, in 2004.)

Obama, however, likely had to bribe the Iranians to release the American prisoners because they harbor no particular good will toward him. He signed the Iran nuclear deal without considering American interests. However, for his legacy to stand, as the president who marked “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” (Obama as quoted in my new book), he has to portray the Iranians as having been swayed by his diplomacy. For his legacy, Obama has to paint a picture of himself a president who managed to restore comity between America and her Arab adversaries. To that end, Obama has lied and stolen to pacify the Iranians behind the scenes and to make them appear genial toward the US.

The same thinking went into Hillary’s refusal to beef up security in Benghazi. This from a 2012 column, “Standing Armies Commandeered by Cowards,” on the subject:

In the fullness of time, I believe, it will transpire that the woman who cracks the whip at Foggy Bottom had decided to leave the U.S. embassy in Libya undefended.The open community center Hillary was running there was meant to signal that the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, was a success. (Recall, Libya was “a war of the womb,” a product of the romantic minds of three women who fantasized about an Arab awakening. This estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids began, as in Greek mythology, with the Gorgon sisters. Medusa’s posse included Samantha Power, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. They helped Hillary devise the casus belli for the war.)

The Libertarian Book Of TRUMP by ilana mercer

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton

The latest column, “The Libertarian Book Of TRUMP,” is now on Townhall.com, America’s “top source for conservative … commentary.” An excerpt:

In a new book, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” I argue that Donald J. Trump is the quintessential post-constitutional candidate.

In the “Opening Statement,” titled “Welcome To The Post-Constitutional Jungle,” oldies will recognize a nod to the Guns N’ Roses classic, “Welcome to the Jungle,” as well as to broadcaster Mark Levin’s coinage.

We inhabit what Levin has termed a post-constitutional America. The libertarian (and classical conservative) ideal—where the chains that tether us to an increasingly tyrannical national government are loosened and power is devolved once again to the smaller units of society—is a long way away.

Where the law of the jungle prevails, the options are limited: Do Americans get a benevolent authoritarian to undo the legacies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and those who went before? Or, does the ill-defined entity called The People continue to submit to Demopublican diktats, past and present?

The quintessential post-constitutional candidate, Trump’s candidacy is for the age when the Constitution itself is unconstitutional. Like it or not, the original Constitution is a dead letter, having suffered decades of legislative, executive and judicial usurpation. The natural- and common law traditions, once loadstars for lawmakers, have been buried under the rubble of legislation and statute. However much one shovels the muck of lawmaking aside, natural justice and the Founders’ original intent remain buried too deep to exhume. The Constitution has become just another thing on the list of items presidential candidates check when they con constituents.

The dissembling words of many a Republican presidential candidate notwithstanding—for most promise constitutionalism—a liberty-lover’s best hope is to see the legacy of the dictator who went before overturned for a period of time. The toss-up in the 2016 election is therefore between submitting to the Democrats’ war on whites, the wealthy and Wal-Mart, or being bedeviled by mainstream Republicans’ wars on the world: Russia, China, Assad and The Ayatollahs.

Or, suffering all the depredations listed and more if Candidate Clinton is victorious.

Thus the endorsement over the pages of “The Trump Revolution” is not necessarily for the policies of Trump, but for The Process of Trump.

Until such time when the individual is king again, and a decentralized Constitution that guarantees regional and individual autonomy has been restored—this process of creative destruction begun by Donald Trump is likely the best Americans can hope for. Put differently, in this age of unconstitutional government—Democratic and Republican—the best liberty lovers can look to is action and counteraction, force and counterforce in the service of liberty …

… Read the rest. The complete column, “The Libertarian Book Of TRUMP,” is now on Townhall.com.

2016 GOP Convention Roundup: ‘Americanism, Not Globalism, Will Be Our Credo’

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Elections, Republicans

Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Neoconservatism, Republicans, UN

“Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel” is the current column, now on The Unz Review. An excerpt:

Prominent neoconservative Bill Kristol shared his election-year hallucinations with the nation. From the ashes of the Republican primaries would rise a man to stand for president against victor Donald J. Trump, a Sisyphean task that has been attempted and failed by 17 other worthies.

This individual is David French, an attorney, a decorated Iraq War veteran, and writer for the decidedly “Against Trump” National Review. Curiously, Kristol’s independent candidate is a “devout social conservative,” an evangelical who questions the merits of “de-stigmatizing” homosexuality, rejects the progressive premise upon which the transgender, potty wars are being waged, and would keep women out of combat.

Why, then, would a “relatively secular faction within the Republican Party,” the neoconservatives, make common cause with the Party’s fundamentalist wing? Jeet Heer, senior editor at the New Republic, asks this question—a riddle familiar to students and scholars of American conservatism.

The alliance, or, rather, the master-servant relationship between neoconservatives and the Religious Right is an old one. Political evangelists have long since been brought to heel by the Washington-based neoconservatives. “Most on the Religious Right have hardly resisted such cooptation, having perhaps nowhere to go financially, politically or professionally,” wrote Dr. Paul Gottfried in The Conservative Movement, his 1993 prophetic, forensic examination of the roots of the conservative crack-up.

French is vested in an aggressive, expansionist foreign policy. His impressive military credentials, in his role as a tool of democratic internationalism, are meant to provide a stark contrast to Trump’s nativism. At least as Kristol sees it.

French is no American Firster in the way Donald Trump is. For a man can don the uniform and fight Caesar’s wars, but that doesn’t necessarily make him someone who puts his country first—unless one conflates the interests and well-being of ordinary Americans with wars of choice plotted by the New York-Washington axis of power. This error is not one Mr. Trump commits. While the presumptive Republican Party’s nominee clearly has great affection for America’s veterans, he doesn’t love all the wars they’ve been ordered to fight. …

… Read the rest. “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel” is now on The Unz Review.