Category Archives: Morality

President Trump And The Racism And Anti-Semitism Obsession

Anti-Semitism, Constitution, Donald Trump, libertarianism, Morality, Paleolibertarianism, Race, Racism

A friend—a brilliant scholar of Objectivism—expressed concern over my support (albeit waning support) for Donald Trump. He pointed out in an email that the president was “slowly, but surely, abandoning that outsider stance and was becoming part of the very system he fought against.”

It’s hard to disagree.

However, I had hedged my words in the book, The Trump Revolution, which stands up quite well, since I supported Trump’s “creative destruction” or “process,” more than anything else.

My friend points to Trump sending more troops to Afghanistan (“well, at least he’s committed to no nation-building”). He laments that “it was like pulling teeth to get POTUS to condemn the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville; yes, they had the support of the ACLU, just as they had the support of the ACLU when similar groups marched on Skokie”:

I’d be the first to defend their rights to march. But his initial response seemed so tepid to me; he finally was able to utter the words Obama wouldn’t: “Islamic terrorist”, but he couldn’t seem to utter the phrase “neo-Nazi” in his condemnation of those brown-shirt nutjobs who were chanting “Jews will not replace us” and who thought he wasn’t racist enough because he gave his beautiful daughter to that “bastard Kushner”. The whole thing reminded me of the Nuremberg rallies. …
Now, don’t get me wrong: “Antifa” are not interested in freedom. They are like the Red Stalinists who were for Hitler when Stalin and Hitler were “allies” and then against Hitler when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.

But I’m just puzzled that you’re not concerned by this scent of anti-Semitism that keeps emerging from some of Trump’s constituency; it seems like he doesn’t want to come down hard on them because he’s starting to act more and more like a politician: afraid of alienating a group of disaffected and disenfranchised voters who most obviously voted for him, and who he will need in any bid for re-election.

My response to the last is that I’ve never looked to the Leader to utter feel-good moral fatuities. A leader in the American tradition should stick to the Constitution. Moreover, the race meme and its use in American politics sickens me. Seriously, I support people’s right to hate me, even not to serve me. Maybe I
am that radical a propertarian. I want my president to shut up about race and uphold the Constitution, which he has failed miserably to do. I’m a minimalist gal.

My friend goes on to emphasize that he’s “a little puzzled not to have read much in [my] columns about this troubling issue. For me, a lot of it came out of the Bannon wing (despite Bannon’s valuable opposition to the neocons), but for me, there is no love lost with his ouster.”

My reply: I’ve never railed against anti-Semitism. So long as your mitts stop at my face, I don’t care if you hate me qua Jew. Maybe it’s naïve, but … I confess to hating the Left even more than caring about anti-Semitism.”

My friend was sadly right to have feared

that Trump would be absorbed by the very system he opposed, because it’s just in the nature of politics. Now with his amping up of the war in Afghanistan and his tepid responses to Jew haters, I’m extremely concerned. Help me out here.

Like my friend, my concern is more with War and the Deep State. I don’t see Jews becoming targets for more than verbal aggression. I certainly can no longer look up to Trump: His nepotism; his kids in the White House, his wars, no tax reform, no free market in medicine, no wall. All those issues consume me more than his reaction to the words of a fringe group.

UPDATED (9/6/017): Mad Max Gets Totaled By Tucker

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Government, History, Morality, Neoconservatism

For his foreign policy prescriptions, neoconservative Max Boot got totaled by Tucker Carlson of Fox News. Boot-type neoconservatives center their foreign policy around their ideas of what is moral and what is immoral.

A libertarian or classical conservative ought to base foreign policy on the ROLE OF GOVERNMENT. The Constitution doesn’t give government the right to force ideas on its own citizens, much less on the citizens of the world. Let the peoples of the world fight their own battles of ideas. Morality in foreign policy is a prescription for ever accrediting empire.

Constitutionalism in foreign policy is what Americans ought to seek, not morality.

Boot may sound like Tocqueville with a stretch, but given a chance to enact his policies he’d act like Robespierre. This neoconservative’s attachment is to a Jacobin heritage – expressed in a powerful, centralized, universalist state that aggrandizes abstractions and subordinates communities to a national general will.

UPDATED (9/6/017): Mad Max wants to go home.

UPDATE III (6/26): Republicans STILL Stupidly Stoic After Attempted Murder By Left

Conservatism, Democrats, Donald Trump, GUNS, Morality

Congressmen and their staff were shot at “as they were practicing for tomorrow’s annual charity baseball game. Congressman Steve Scalise, a member of House leadership, was shot and badly wounded.” Which prompted President Trump to go into Democrat-appeasing moral relativism mode. Hear Trump:

We may have our differences, but we do well, in times like these, to remember that everyone who serves in our nation’s capital is here because, above all, they love our country.
We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans, that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace, and that we are strongest when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.
Please take a moment today to cherish those you love, and always remember those who serve and keep us safe. God bless them all, God bless you, and God Bless America.

Or was this Ivanka the president was channeling? Moral clarity was needed. But any moral clarity displayed by the president during the campaign has evaporated, in favor of obsequious pandering. Not to mention breaking of promises: Libertarian Gabb Sean says that “Ever since Trumps was elected, it’s been a matter of what promises he’ll break this week.”

All in all, Democrats are running rings round Trump. If he doesn’t act, Democrats will take the House and Trump will be impeached.

On TV, Conservatives ponderously warned about the perils of “political violence,” all as their ranks are shot at and their spokespersons prevented from speaking. An alt-leftist tries to kill Republicans and this signals to the “stupid party” (M. Stanton Evans’ coinage for Republicans) that it’s time to suck-up to the “evil party” (Democrats). As we speak, the Antifa sick fucks have even stabbed a police horse.

After the Alexandria shooting, politicians consider armed security for THEMSELVES, but not a Wall or a Muslim moratorium for The People.

Bernie Sanders, Huffington Post and other alt-leftist outfits and detritus deny that violence is in their blood; that their brethren encouraged violence. Just the other day did Bernie Sanders roar in his sub-intelligent, foreboding manner that Christian doctrine has to be made to accept that the faithful can be saved through Mohammad, Jehovah, Buddha, etc. Force Christianity to be more inclusive?

Did you know that “more than 12,000 tweets have called for Trump’s assassination since the inauguration”?

The operative word in the Left’s worldview is “force.”

UPDATE I (6/17/017):

Stupid and evil combine forces; Republicans are desperate to retain membership in the DC “smart” set.

Republicans reach out to Democrats in unity after their pals were almost killed. When’s the Republican apology tour?

UPDATE II (6/19/017): Republicans continue to collaborate in the “Problem Solvers Caucus,” following the ATTEMPTED MURDER OF REPUBLICANS, last weeks. Well of course.

What stupid, stupid losers.

Fear not, founders Republican Tom Reed (NY-23) and Democrat Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5). You’ll be invited to all the good parties; you’ll get book deals (to write sub-intelligent drivel about so-called non-parhttps://twitter.com/IlanaMercer/status/878471033409359872tisanship); and you’ll be interviewed by press popinjays.

UPDATE (6/26): Anti-Trump hate-crimes map.

 

 

The Inevitability And Irreversibility Of Government-Sponsored Health Care

Christianity, Conservatism, Healthcare, Morality, Political Economy, Socialism, The State, Welfare

Unz Review columnist Dr. Boyd D. Cathey muses about another government power-grab called Trump Care. Naturally, he hopes it’ll be slightly better than the one to precede it. Dr. Cathey hearkens back to a different, inegalitarian time when the principle of noblesse oblige drove the faithful and the wealthy to take care of the needy. With the triumph of 19th century liberalism and the fanaticism of progress, the quest to level society saw the Church robbed of its lands and traditional role. Conditions soon arose that predisposed the downtrodden to Socialism, Communism and the modern welfare state.

Long, sad story; the end of history, but in a bad way.

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey:

“A large portion of ‘news talk’ yesterday and this morning has been about the repeal of Obamacare and its replacement by a Republican-sponsored medical program. The one thing that is crystal clear is this: whenever a new entitlement is enacted by Congress, whatever it may be, it is almost impossible to completely undo or repeal it.”

“If we consider, beginning at least a century and a half ago, the history of legislative initiatives—and not just in what is called euphemistically ‘welfare,’ but also in such areas as ‘voting rights’ and, generally, ‘civil rights’—passage of legislation, even if stoutly opposed and unpopular at the beginning, usually stands. I can think of only one major piece of social or political legislation, actually an amendment to the Constitution—the 18th Amendment, or “Prohibition Amendment”—that was ever repealed.”

“So, it should not surprise us that the Republican majority, especially in the Senate, will probably end up tinkering with rather than completely undoing the massive power grab by the Federal government known as Obamacare. Even in the House of Representatives many ‘moderate’ and establishment GOP solons fear an active backlash from frenzied Leftist demonstrators and, even more, negative characterizations and attacks by the Mainstream Media [MSM].”

“We shall be fortunate, in these circumstances, to get a modified bill out of the House, and who knows what the pusillanimous scaredy-cats in the Senate will do.”

“Right now, to listen to various pundits, it is the pre-existing conditions question that appears to be the sticking point. That is a central feature of Obamacare: that those already sick and already with an illness would be covered by healthy participants. But then, as anyone can see, this is not insurance we are talking about, but, rather, just another form of taxing the healthy to pay for the sick.

“The present Republican plan appears to separate those two groups of people, sets up a separate special fund for the pre-existing ill, with the hope that then the healthy folks remaining in the program can get much cheaper rates. State waiver permission would be given for those states that wish to operate the program differently.”

“It remains to be seen whether this approach will get through the layers of lobbyists influencing Congress and the abject fear that too many Republicans have of the MSM.” …

“… In any case, government-sponsored health care in one form or another is probably here to stay. And therein lies a long history of modern society that affects us all every day. …”

“IN CENTURIES PAST, it was institutions like the Church or local familial communities (especially here in the US) who were responsible for caring for the sick. My friend, the late Spanish scholar Rafael Gambra once prepared an extensive study of the Spanish Pyrenees commune of Roncal. For nearly 1000 years Roncal was almost a self-contained and self-governing entity, owing allegiance to the Kings of Navarra, but administering most of its local services by itself. The Church possessed about a third of the land, the municipality owned about one-third, and the rest was in private hands. Those families without a freehold had the right to graze their stock on both Church and municipal land. The Church, as part of its mission, maintained a kind of primitive medical facility, with both religious sisters and doctors who looked after the inhabitants. Payment was most often in goods, and, for the poor, the Church did not charge. That system was destroyed by the triumph of 19th century liberalism (in 1839) that expropriated all Church lands and municipal lands, then selling them to Madrileno capitalists. The result was that thousands of the poor, who had once had a stake in places like Roncal, were displaced and forced to migrate to industrial cities like Barcelona, where they found harsh impersonal jobs in factories at dirt level wages. And from that condition arose the eventual appeals of Socialism and Communism—and the modern welfare state–to the downtrodden.”

ObamaCare Lite: