At Simi Valley, Jingoism, Military Offensives, Military Build Up & An Arms Race Trump

Elections, Foreign Policy, Iran, libertarianism, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Republicans

The second primary season Republican debate took place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. It didn’t disappoint. It was, as one commentator ventured, the Super Bowl of politics.

The matinee sported the least popular candidates, cobbling together a meager one percent in the polls (two are at … zero). The debate, however, was probably the more substantive of the two sessions. (Alas, as beautifully as CNN had staged the Presidential Library, the rendition of the national anthem was G-d awful. Apparently, they could not find a decent singer in Simi Valley, although, according to Yelp, there are plenty performing arts and opera studios in the vicinity.)

CNN certainly put Fox News to shame. Unlike the first primetime Republican debate, in Cleveland, Ohio, where anchor Megyn Kelly took center stage and singled out Donald Trump for a splenetic attack; CNN’s Jake Tapper (moderator), chief political correspondent Dana Bash, and Hugh Hewitt of the Salem Radio Network, concentrated the debate on the issues and the individuals behind the lecterns. (As always, nothing their in-house studio pundits predicted or advised prior to the debate transpired.)

Ms. Bash briefly did a Kelly, when she attempted to tap Jeb Bush’s anger over a quip Donald Trump had once made about Jeb’s Mexican wife influencing his perspective on immigration. Trump refused to grovel. This was good. However, he did show contrition over unkind cuts he had made about Carly Fiorina’s face. Fiorina could have cracked a smile (or maybe she couldn’t, given the possible nip-and-cuts to The Face).

Fiorina—whom media types like moron S. E. Cupp keep calling “Carly,” for some reason—is indubitably a clear and logical thinker, with a facility with the English language. What a shame that her words are those of a consummate neoconservative who wants to commit the country to a buildup of a military that is already the largest in the world, America’s, and an arms race with China and Russia.

The matinee featured two senators and two governors: the sitting senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, and the former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum, as well as the sitting governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, and former New York Governor George Pataki.

Pataki, it was noted, had refused to take the Trump Pledge, saying that even if Trump were the Republican nominee, he, Pataki, would not support him.

Jindal’s introduction bears repeating:

“I don’t have a famous last name. My daddy didn’t run for president. I don’t have a reality TV show. I’ll tell you what I do have, I’ve got the backbone, I’ve got the bandwidth, I’ve got the experience to get us through these tough times, to make sure that we don’t turn the American dream into the European nightmare.”

When challenged about his violation of Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment—against attacking fellow Republicans—Bobby Jindal responded speedily to say Donald Trump, whom he has been savaging, was neither a Republican or a conservative and would eventually implode. About the man currently in office Jindal’s remark had me laughing:

“Obama has declared war on trans fats and a truce with Iran. Think about that. He’s more worried about Twinkies than he is about the ayatollahs having a nuclear weapon.”

Jindal on immigration: Without assimilation immigration is invasion.

Lindsey Graham’s case of War Tourette’s is only getting worse.

Ask him about immigration and the answer is: We’ll fix it by going to war against ISIS.

Ask him about the economy and the answer is: 10,000 American boots on Iraq’s blood-soaked soil.

Ask him about the year of the political outsiders and his chances as an insider and the answer is: Let’s get on with winning a war, any war. Give me waaaaaaaar.

Follow up with, “Why do Republican voters view your service in government as a liability and not an asset?” and Graham replies: “Obama is making a mess of the world … I am so ready to get on with winning a war …”

With Lindsey, all roads lead to war.

It didn’t help that Graham derisively paired libertarians with vegetarians when appealing to the different constituencies that would warm to his war-all-the-time Tourette’s.

Graham is the consummate globalist. He did, however, surprise by declaring that birthright citizenship was “bastardizes citizenship.” Unlike equal-opportunity fencer Scott Walker who perceives a problem on the Canadian border, Graham, who decried birthright tourism, conceded to never meeting an illegal Canadian. Too true.

American and European governments have settled comfortably into a pattern of using the funds they extract from their overburdened taxpayers to promiscuously promote the welfare of citizens the world over. This flouts the mandate of every government! In this context, Santorum made a very important point relevant to all the communities currently being flooded by the decree of D.C., Brussels and Berlin:

“This debate should not be about what we’re going to do with someone who’s here illegally; this debate should be about what-what every other debate on every other policy issue is in America. What’s in the best interest of hardworking Americans? What’s in the best interest of our country.”

That’ll be the day.

As was the case with the Republican candidates in the previous election cycle (Mitt Romney included), no foreign policy learning curve is evident among this crop.

Indeed, by the time the two grueling sessions ended, well into the night, all 15 Republican candidates—bar Rand Paul and, to a degree, Donald Trump—had asserted that American exceptionalism lay in leading the world not in technological innovation, comity, commerce and as exemplars of individual rights—but by projecting America’s military power the world over. Somehow, the candidates viewed the US government’s bankruptcy as having no bearing on their unanimous plans for an arms race with Russia and China and renewed military offensives in the Middle East.

Rand Paul came as close as possible to the libertarian ideal on all wars, the drug war too: refrain from a rash foreign policy, engage with Russia and China, talk to the Mullahs before you “bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran” (a jingle popularized by jingoist John McCain), leave drug policy to the states (not ideal, for consumption is to be left to the individual, but better than most). To not have signed on to the bombing of Assad was a good thing. Have we learned nothing about the perils of toppling dictators, only to see the rise of barbarians worse than their predecessors?

That was Rand Paul. He did alright.

Sadly, Trump fell for the Hugh Hewitt gambit: Instead of standing with Ron Paul’s foreign policy (and capturing the Left), Trump went on to condemn the Republicans on the podium for their (short-lived) wisdom of voting against the bombing of Syria.

Rand Paul and Donald Trump excepted, all subscribe to the hackneyed lies about the root-causes of Middle-East instability and why the region’s populations are on the move (naturally, the magnet of western welfare went unmentioned): They assert Bashar Hafez al-Assad needs to be removed, when in fact he was the source of stability in Syria, much as Saddam Hussein was in Iraq.

If Assad is the reason Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan populations are emigrating en masse (NOT)—then America’s lack of a more energetic involvement in Iraq and Syria the candidates consider the solution to the problem.

Neoconservatives are still in the business of creating their own parallel reality and forcing us to inhabit the ruins.

Unless in defense of the realm, Americans are not keen on more of the same foreign-policy folly. Let us keep our military mitts to ourselves. Let us defend our own borders. That, it would seem, is the prevailing sentiment among Republicans, although not among the establishmentarians who occupied the Reagan Library for the debate.

Oh, and did I mention that, while he’s demeanor was very good, Donald Trump made absolutely no attempt to show some familiarity with the issues? Trump might want to rethink this approach, for it belies the candidate’s claim to have surrounded himself with the best people possible, or to have good judgement.

ET TU, Glenn Beck?

Conservatism, Elections, Glenn Beck, Media, Race, Republicans

Glenn Beck is insufferably sanctimonious and impossible to listen to as a broadcaster. Since the Glenn guy is not working with much, to put it charitably, he has been unable to discern the reasons for the support Donald Trump has garnered among GOPers. This backing lies in Trump’s following being able to viscerally, if not intellectually, sense the following:

To understand why his campaign has legs, it is necessary to grasp the difference between The Donald and The Career Politician. Why so? Because although his supporters can ill-articulate these differences, they live them and feel them viscerally. Their reaction to Mr. Trump is informed by a sense of Trump the private citizen, the businessman, the anti-politician. As such, they grasp that Trump’s reality, incentives and motives sharply diverge from those of the professional politician. His reasons for doing what he’s doing are different.

Differently put: A successful politician and a successful businessman represent two solitudes, never the twain shall meet—except when the capitalist must curry favor with the politician so as to further his business interests, a reality brought about by corrupt politics. Trump’s donations to both parties fit a pattern forced by the regulatory state, whereby, in order to keep doing business, business is compelled to buy-off politicians.

MORE IN MY “Trump Should Triangulate.”

“Radio host Glenn Beck doubled down in his game of race-card Blackjack against Trump supporters,” reports WND:

“Beck took to Facebook Tuesday night and reiterated his stance against the GOP front-runner’s base: it is composed of fake tea party members who dislike President Obama because he is black. …”

WND cites Trump supporters in their own defense:

“I have been a Tea Party member for years and I support Trump. I despise the ‘Republicans’ who lie to us just to get elected then work with Obama. You say that you just don’t understand why people support Trump. You say ‘he is just a TV star’. Ronald Reagan was ‘just a TV star’ and he was the best President ever,” wrote Rick Henry. “I have watched you since you first started babbling about being a conservative … and you still just continue to babble foolish things.”

“Americans are tired of being told they suck and they are stupid. They are tired of being put behind non-Americans in our own country. Donald is saying he will fix that. You are assuming the American people are stupid. If you want Ted Cruz as the nominee you need to get Ted Cruz to open his mouth and speak the truth to the American people,” added Deb Medley-Kammerer.

Slick Republican strategist Rick Wilson, by the way, is a regular on CNN and is more disgusting than cretin S.E. Cupp, if not nearly as dumb as her. “Wilson recently accused Breitbart’s editor-in-chief Alex Marlow of covering the billionaire real estate mogul for website traffic. He also asked Ann Coulter on Twitter if Trump pays her ‘more for anal.’ The tweet was quickly deleted.”

MORE @ WND.

‘Purging America’s Heroes’

America, Founding Fathers, History, Nationhood, South-Africa

My book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot,” warned that just as Saint Mandela’s ANC purged South Africa’s founders (Boers and Britons) from public life—so, too, would America’s Founding Fathers be consigned by similar forces to the dustbin of history.

To wit, an excerpt from “Tot Siens (Farewell) To The Taal (The Language),” Chapter 2 of “Into The Cannibal’s Pot”:

“He who controls the past controls the future.” So wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ANC now commands past, present and future. … It may be a trifling issue to deracinated sophisticates, but landmarks in the country’s founding history are slowly being erased, as demonstrated by the ANC’s decision to give an African name to Potchefstroom, a town founded in 1838 by the Voortrekkers. Pretoria is now officially called Tshwane. Nelspruit, founded by the Nel Family (they were not Xhosa), and once the seat of the South African Republic’s government during the Boer War, has been renamed Mbombela. Polokwane was formerly Pietersburg. Durban’s Moore Road (after Sir John Moore, the hero of the Battle of Corunna, fought in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars) is Che Guevara Road; Kensington Drive, Fidel Castro Drive. Perhaps the ultimate in tastelessly hip nomenclature is Yasser Arafat Highway, down which the motorist can careen on the way to the Durban airport. …

Patrick J. Buchanan, who just gets better with age, on “Purging America’s Heroes”:

… All were white males. All achieved greatly. All believed that the people whence they came were superior and possessed of a superior faith, Christianity, and hence fit to rule what Rudyard Kipling called the “lesser breeds without the Law.”

Acting on a belief in their racial, religious and cultural superiority, they created the greatest nation on earth. And people who got in their way were shoved aside, subjugated, repressed and ruled.

As for the Confederates of the Lost Cause, they yielded to superior force only after four years of fighting, but their battle flag has ever after been seen as a banner of rebellion, bravery and defiance.

And those tearing down the battle flags, and dumping over the monuments and statues, and sandblasting the names off buildings and schools, what have they ever accomplished?

They inherited the America these men built, but are ashamed at how it was built. And now they watch paralyzed as the peoples of the Third World, whom their grandfathers ruled, come to dispossess them of the patrimony for which they feel so guilty.

The new barbarians will make short work of them.

[SNIP]

I depart from Pat on the matter of William Tecumseh Sherman. What’s his claim to greatness? Waging Total War on the South and on the Plains Indians? Corralling what remained of them onto reservations?

Take down any graven image of Gen. William Sherman. I’m fine with that.

Refugees, Not Europeans, Benefit From The Engineering Of A Single European Identity

EU, Europe, IMMIGRATION, The State

“Europe rediscovers borders,” writes Kevin D. Williamson, and I would urge that so should we. “[T]he free movement of people called ‘al-Nasseri’ across the Mediterranean and over the Bavarian Alps” has been slowed some, with Germany and Austria… announcing “the implementation of border checkpoints.”

Checkpoints, of course, are not borders; they are what government erects when it wants to be seen to be doing something (I sound like Sir Humphrey Appleby of BBC’s “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” satires). A Brownian Motion of sorts.

And to what avail are checkpoints if you are going to eventually allow a deluge of Middle-Eastern men safe passage into your communities? As Mark Krikorian points out,

… it’s important to note that refugees from the Islamic world cannot be properly vetted. I don’t mean only that the Obama administration has a frivolous approach to “violent extremists,” or that the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t shown itself especially competent in this regard. Rather, it is impossible to weed out jihadists from a refugee flow. Who are we going to check with, the Damascus police department? It’s not like any document claiming to be from Syria can be relied on; fake Syrian passports, for instance, are in great demand.

Back to Kevin:

… Berlin has pleaded for “solidarity” in the face of the crisis, studiously avoiding the question “Solidarity with whom?” Sweden, with its population of just 9.6 million, is expecting somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 applications for refugee status. …
… Poland has shocked polite society by making it clear that it would prefer a small number of refugees, if any, and that they be Christian rather than Muslim. …
… Different peoples have different countries for a reason, and that’s why there are — or should be — fences or their equivalents. Whatever your assessment of the merits of Switzerland vs. Syria, Switzerland is Switzerland because it is full of Swiss people, and Syria is Syria because it is full of Syrians. As in the United States, the fingers-in-the-ears refusal of responsible European authorities to recognize this basic fact of life — that human beings are not interchangeable widgets …

Question: Weren’t most writes at National Review once for the collectivist super-state that is the European Union?

The quest to engineer a single European identity is at the heart of the crisis (as is the US’s foreign policy). “It remains unmistakably true,” wrote classical liberal philosopher David Conway, that “from its postwar beginnings to the present, the principal advocates and architects of European union have been uniformly animated by collectivist objectives that are deeply anti-liberal in spirit and form.”

“The EU already has rights to legislate over external trade and customs policy, the internal market, the monetary policy of countries in the eurozone, agriculture and fisheries, many areas of domestic law including the environment and health and safety at work,” and it has extended its rights into “justice policy, especially asylum and immigration.”

And it is this illiberal impetus that has allowed bureaucrats in Brussels to usurp the authority of previously sovereign states and make policy for the Continent (while being immune from its repercussions). Were it not for the rigid controls the EU exerts over its satellite states—each European country would be likely to respond to “refugees” in a manner consistent with the wishes of the voters, rather than that of the bureaucracy and its crooked beneficiaries.