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.

The Perils Of The Female Franchise

Democrats, Elections, Feminism, Gender, Republicans

You and I know Republicans are not to be equated with freedom, smaller government or anything remotely libertarian. Ditto Democrats. It is safe to say, however, that the voting public considers a vote for a Republican to be a vote for less government and more freedom from the state. Assuming support for a Democrat is a reliable proxy for a greater proclivity for statism—we can all agree that women have been—and continue to be—a hindrance to liberty. As I once said, I’d give up my vote if all women were denied a vote.

Via CNN come the latest numbers on how the ladies lean:

Against Bush, Clinton leads 59% to 37% among women, while Bush holds an advantage among men, 51% Bush to 44% Clinton. Against Fiorina, the only woman among the major candidates for the Republican Party’s presidential nominations, women break 60% for Clinton to 39% for Fiorina, while men are about evenly divided, 48% for Fiorina, 46% for Clinton. The largest gender gap — 34 points — comes in a match-up between Clinton and Trump. Women favor Clinton by 23 points, 60% to 37%, while men break in Trump’s favor by 11 points, 53% to 42%.