Schooling Beck On Trump’s Nullification Promise

Constitution, Donald Trump, Elections, Glenn Beck, Law, Liberty

“Schooling Beck On Trump’s Nullification Promise” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Former Fox News Channel broadcaster Glenn Beck, now of The Blaze TV, has been warning theatrically of an inchoate catastrophe should the country choose Donald J. Trump “as its next president.”

Trump “will be a monster much, much worse” than Barack Obama, says Beck. …

… “Where are the people who say we stand with the Constitution,” protested Beck. Trump fails to talk about the Constitution in depth, he blathered.

True. Trump is not a TV talker. Moreover, all candidates who talk about the Constitution “in depth” are dishonest. For there is no Constitution left to talk about. That thing died over the course of centuries of legislative, executive and judicial usurpation. That’s why when Iraqis were composing their Constitution (after no. 43 destroyed their country), the late Joe Sobran recommended we give them ours because we don’t use it.

Mention of the Constitution means nothing. It’s on the list of items candidates check when they con constituents. Beck went on to OMG it about Trump saying this: “President Obama’s irresponsible use of executive orders has paved the way for him to also use them freely if he wins the presidential race.”

Amen—provided Trump uses executive power to repeal lots of laws, not make them. We live under an administrative “Secret State.” Very many, maybe most, of the laws under which Americans labor ought to be repealed. The only laws that are naturally inviolable are those upholding life, liberty and property.

Trump, thankfully, has proclaimed: “the one thing good about executive orders: The new president, if he comes in – boom, first day, first hour, first minute, you can rescind that.”

Beck has protested. He apparently accepts the inherent legitimacy of Barack Obama’s executive orders. Beck also seems to believe that the Constitution, or some other higher order, demands that people continue to labor under burdensome government edicts forever after, and that to promise repeal is the act of a progressive.

“Ted Cruz,” countered Beck, who has since endorsed candidate Cruz, “is the guy who says he’s for certain principles and will be tethered and tied to them, exactly like Ronald Reagan was.”

Well, another of Eland’s discomforting observations about Reagan is that he “enhanced executive power through questionable means. Although presidential signing statements, accompanying bills passed by Congress, had been around since George Washington, Reagan began to use these signing statement to contravene or nullify Congress’s will without giving that body a chance to override a formal presidential veto.”

There’s nothing necessarily progressive about overturning laws that have been passed.

There is nothing sacred about every law an overweening national government and its unelected agencies inflict on the people. “At the federal level alone,” the number of laws totaled 160,000 pages,” in 2012. By John Stossel’s estimation, “Government adds 80,000 pages of rules and regulations every year.” According to the Heritage Foundation, “Congress continues to criminalize at an average rate of one new crime for every week of every year.”

America has become a nation of thousands-upon-thousands of arbitrary laws, whose effect is to criminalize naturally licit conduct. …

Read the rest.“Schooling Beck On Trump’s Nullification Promise” is now on WND.

Encourage Affirmative OSCARS, So Hollywood Can Go Belly-Up

Affirmative Action, Celebrity, Economy, Film, Hollywood, Race

Spike Lee, CNN has reported, is calling for quotas or racial set-asides in Hollywood, which is currently being convulsed by the idea that the Oscars are way too white. First, I like the idea of Hollywood’s self-righteousness being turned against its own, being hoisted by their own petard. Excellent. Let the pious pea brains of Hollywood devour each other and become mired in recrimination. I also welcome set asides and quotas for black actors—more of Gabourey Sidibe as the love interest.

Look, if black actors per se were in great demand among the movie-going public, moviemakers would be rushing to recruit them for more roles. It’s called market forces. Cultural arousal patterns are more likely involved. Perhaps strapping electrodes to a white man’s genitals, and shocking him each time Pamela Anderson appears on the screen will turn him on to black actresses for good. Somehow I doubt it. Hormones are politically incorrect. You can take away college placements and Oscars from white guys, but changing cultural and sexual preferences is a lot harder.

In any event, bring it on. If Affirmative OSCARS and racial set asides in film drive the industry into bankruptcy—that can be quite a cultural cleansing. There is so little talent in that cesspool as it is.

Sarah Palin’s Pearls Before Swine

Donald Trump, Elections, Political Correctness, Sarah Palin

Some of the bons mots delivered by Sarah Palin in Ames, Iowa, where she endorsed Donald Trump, were doggone terrific. My earlier prediction was premature. Palin ditched the handlers that had dogged her and deformed her style, and went back to being the wild girl from Wasilla, Alaska:

What the hell would the establishment GOP Machine know about conservatism?

We’re mad; have been had. … Doggone right, we’re angry, time to drill, baby, drill down.

Trump has gone rogue.

Safety nets have been turned into hammocks.

They’re wearing political correctness like a suicide vest.

Complicity is on both sides of the aisle.

Trump’s not an elitist; he respects hard hats.

UPDATED: Sarah Palin’s Devolution: Will It Rub Off On Donald Trump? (I Was Wrong)

Donald Trump, Elections, Sarah Palin

Regarding Sarah Palin’ endorsement of Donald Trump: She’s a great personality as an Alaskan, a mom, a hunter, runner, oil and gas ace (expertise she has never “tapped”), Big Oil enemy. For the rest, Palin’s life has taken on a reality-show flavor. And the spontaneous ability to connect with an audience has been replaced with a weird, disjointed quality.

Whoever has been choreographing poor Mrs. Palin’s public appearances of late has destroyed her natural charm. For some time now, Palin has been modulating her voice during appearances to sound like a preacher, lending it the cadence of a crazy person’s voice.

The there’s the governor’s propensity for rambling, run-off sentences, peppered with grating gerunds. Pearls of wisdom are often lost in the prolix.

And please don’t attack me for Palin’s devolution. Starting with “Sensational Sarah,” I’ve written oodles in praise of the original Palin persona, recommending that she “fashion herself as an expert, not as a generalist. On energy and environmental issues Palin is indeed an ace. When it comes to the ins-and-outs of the oil and gas industry—ownership, extraction, contracts and leases—Sarah Palin is as sharp as a tack.

As to Ms. Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump; let’s see.