Category: Culture

John Stossel:

America is often described as a society without the Old World’s aristocracy. Yet we still have people who feel entitled to boss the rest of us around. The “elite” media, the political class, Hollywood and university professors think their opinions are obviously correct, so they must educate us peasants.

OK, so they don’t call us “peasants” anymore. Now we are “deplorables”—conservatives or libertarians. Or Trump supporters.

The elite has a lot of influence over how we see things.

It turns out that Trump used the same gestures and tone of speech to mock Ted Cruz and a general he didn’t like. It’s not nice, but it doesn’t appear directed at a disability.

I only discovered this when researching the media elite. Even though I’m a media junkie, I hadn’t seen the other side of the story. The elite spoon-fed me their version of events.

Another reason I don’t like Trump is that he supported the Iraq war—and then lied about that. Media pooh-bahs told me Trump pushed for the war years ago on The Howard Stern Show.

But then I listened to what Trump actually said.

“Are you for invading Iraq?” Stern asked.

Trump replied, “Yeah, I guess … so.” Later, on Neil Cavuto’s show, Trump said, “Perhaps (Bush) shouldn’t be doing it yet, and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations.” I wouldn’t call that “support”—the way NBC’s debate moderator and many others have.

I was stunned by how thoroughly the media have distorted Trump’s position. That’s a privilege you get when you’re part of the media elite: You get to steer the masses’ thinking.

At the second debate, we all know that Trump walked over to Hillary Clinton’s podium, as if he was “stalking Ms. Clinton like prey,” said The New York Times. CNN said, “Trump looms behind Hillary Clinton at the debate.”

Afterward, Clinton went on Ellen DeGeneres’ show and said Trump would “literally stalk me around the stage, and I would just feel this presence behind me. I thought, ‘Whoa, this is really weird.’”

But it was a lie. Watch the video. Clinton walked over to Trump’s podium. Did the mainstream media tell you that? No.

The ruling class has its themes, and it sticks to them.

When Clinton wore white to a debate, the Times called the color an “emblem of hope” and a Philadelphia Inquirerwriter used words like “soft and strong … a dream come true.” But when Melania Trump wore white, that same writer called it a “scary statement,” as if Melania Trump’s white symbolized white supremacy, “another reminder that in the G.O.P. white is always right.”

Give me a break.

The ruling class decides which ideas are acceptable, which scientific theories to believe, what speech is permitted.

Rick Esenberg writes about a comment from one of my favorite Democrats, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, beginning with some music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFvtMp7hRF8

The Rolling Stones released Street Fighting Man in 1968, while the world what seemed to be gripped by revolutionary fervor.  That fervor would soon die out and, even Mick Jagger seemed to recognize that it would never go far. His revolutionary narrator was not about taking control of anything but rather someone whose name was called “disturbance.” He would “shout and scream” and “kill the king” and “rail at all his servants.” But it seemed like an impotent rage. Nothing would change.

Over the weekend, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke tweeted out what some took to be his own call for fighting in the streets. Accompanied by a picture of a bunch of CPAs trying to pose as an angry mob, the most frequently cited Clarke tweet read:

It’s incredible that our institutions of gov, WH, Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch. Pitchforks and torches time

There were other tweets referencing “pitchforks and torches” because, if twitter is about anything at all, it is about getting the right slogan. The legacy media, of course, guppied on this, expressing consternation that a law enforcement officer would support — not to put too fine a point on it — breaking the law.

Was that what Clarke intended? Twitter is the ultimate in post-modern communication because its brevity often forces the reader to construct the meaning of the text, but, of course, it isn’t.  His subsequent teasing about the sale of garden implements at Home Depot immediately suggested that he was speaking metaphorically. On Monday, Clarke wrote a blog post confirming that he was speaking in hyperbole.

But let’s put Clarke and his tweets aside. What about that metaphor? Is it really “pitchfork and torches” time?  As in 1968, there certainly seem to be people who believe so. This is, we are told, a “Flight 93 election.”

The anger among people on the Republican side — often directed at other conservatives who can’t quite get their heads around a Trump presidency — is bitter and consuming.  At a Trump rally in Green Bay Monday night, a putatively conservative crowd chanted “Paul Ryan sucks” — turning against one of the brightest lights in our  movement because he is now less than enthusiastic about a Republican nominee who is not conservative and who has arguably become toxic  to the Republican cause.
The willingness of some conservatives to not merely support Trump as the lesser to two very bad evils but to tie themselves into knots to pretend that he isn’t who he seems to be suggests that this election has become political total war. There are no rules.

Indeed, Trump’s very presence on the ballot seems like the act of an angry mob. Whether or not conservatives should rally around him in the general election, the very idea that Donald Trump ought to have been nominated is an idea whose name is called disturbance. It certainly seems like an act of either desperation or nihilism — the electoral equivalent of burning downtown Ferguson.  It was less a rational decision than a collective tantrum.

Should we be tearing ourselves apart in this way? Whether or not we support Trump, do we really have to abandon our principles in order to support the Republican nominee?

I fully appreciate what is at stake with a Clinton presidency. The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, the further consolidation of power in Washington and the executive, the administrative imposition of the goals of the cultural left and erosion of freedom of speech and religion — all of these will continue. It is only the threat of this type of damage that can make a vote for Trump conceivable.
But there is danger in exaggerated rhetoric and in the GOP’s ongoing fratricide. The danger is not, as the mainstream media and their “serious people” would have it, that there will be actual violence. The danger is to a conservative movement that is defined by such hyperbole and self-consuming rage. In short, we are hurting ourselves.

I don’t want to be angry. I want to win.  I want to advance conservative ideas. Unfortunately, winning — and for that matter “conservative ideas” — are precisely what nominating Donald Trump was not about. This has left us all with a conundrum. Whether winning nevertheless means continuing to support his flailing campaign (2016 is not the last election) is a far more difficult question than many of us recognize.  Do  conservatives support the GOP’s our despicable and not conservative — but perhaps not left wing — nominee to avoid the election of their corrupt — and left wing — nominee?

However you answer that question, rhetorically storming the barricades is not an exercise of power but a confession of weakness. Forming a circular firing squad in which we attack some of the best among us is self destructive. We “scream and shout” because we believe there is nothing else we can do. It may feel good to indulge in white hot anger — to call Paul Ryan a RINO and boycott Charlie Sykes as a “liberal” — but it’s straight up nonsense.  It does not reflect reality — things are bad but not that bad — and destroying the village to save the village rarely makes sense.
Self righteous outrage sets us against ourselves. And it marginalizes us because — just like in 1968 — most people do not want fighting in the streets — metaphorical or otherwise.

To paraphrase John Lennon from that same year, “we’re all doing what we can.”

Oh, he means …

This year is a perfect example of the fact that government is far too large and therefore the stakes are too high in elections, and one wonders what it will take — assassination(s)? Riot(s) after Nov. 8? — to make people realize that. When government and politics become careers, government grows. When government can close a business and take away people’s livelihood, government is too big.

Everything bad happening in politics today is the result of the excessive size of government, including (some people’s opinion of) excessive campaign spending and efforts to bring in donations, the increasing nastiness of campaigns, people from the same party turning on each other, people from opposite parties turning on each other … the list could really depress you if I went on.

Craig Shirley and Frank Donatelli recall …

In 1987, when he was informed that Democratic presidential aspirant Gary Hart was accused of extramarital activities, President Ronald Reagan reportedly quipped, “Boys will be boys. But boys will not be president.” In all matters, Reagan was wise.

For years, we have looked with skepticism at political operatives who claim to know what Ronald Reagan would have done in any given situation. The truth is, nobody can know. All we can do is study him. But what we do know is that Reagan was full of grace and charm and kindness, and it’s good to recall that as this sad campaign season winds down.

America’s 40th president was an essentially decent man. When Nancy Reynolds, a Sacramento press aide and close friend, began working for Reagan when he was governor of California, he had a heck of a time getting used to the idea of going through the doorway in front of a woman. When Ms. Reynolds, holding the door for the governor, questioned why, Reagan replied, “My mother told me ladies go through the door first.”

When writing in his private diary, Reagan could not even bring himself to write “hell.” Instead, he wrote “h–l.”

In 1983, two years after John Hinckley Jr. shot the president in the chest, Reagan quietly tried to reach out to the would-be assassin, not with a presidential pardon but an act of private Christian forgiveness. He was only dissuaded when doctors said the mentally disturbed young man would misunderstand Reagan’s gesture. Still, Reagan prayed for him.

Reagan was once caught on a hot microphone, although what he said seems quaint, almost genteel, by today’s standards. When he was asked for a sound check during the taping of a 1984 radio commentary, the president joshed, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” The technicians all laughed, but soon after, liberal elites came down with manufactured vapors.

Over the course of his life, the Gipper sent thousands of letters to fans, friends and even opponents, many of whom remember his personal grace. During his stay in the hospital, recovering from the assassination attempt, nurses were astonished to find Reagan one day on his hands and knees, cleaning up some water he had spilled. The leader of the free world was wiping the floor so no one else would have to do it.

Reagan was insulted plenty of times over the course of his career, burned in effigy, sworn against, cursed and more—but in each instance, he turned away the invective with a smile and a quip. He was tough on issues, but rarely people, and certainly not personally. He wasn’t mean and didn’t engage in ad hominem attacks.

Reagan did call out extremists in the conservative ranks. He supported William F. Buckley Jr., who led the purge of the conspiracy-minded John Birch Society and spoke out against anti-Semitic elements in the conservative moment. He opposed the Briggs Initiative, a 1978 California ballot measure aimed at banning homosexuals and gay-rights supporters from working at public schools.

Reagan believed in the politics of addition, not subtraction. He looked for ways to add to his support by exuding optimism and preaching growth policies. He wanted to unify, not divide. At the Detroit Republican Convention in 1980, he made an open appeal to Democrats and Independents to join his “community of shared values.” That night, he also cited Franklin Roosevelt—to a hall full of Republicans.

This wasn’t some campaign facade that Reagan had acquired for political reasons. He had always had it. In his famous 1964 speech, “A Time for Choosing,” Reagan paraphrased the admonition that Barry Goldwater had given to his own son: “There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start.”

In one of his final public speeches, at the 1992 Republican convention, Reagan said that he hoped history “will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears. To your confidence rather than your doubts.” He undoubtedly did.

Ripon College Prof. Brian Smith:

Glenn Beck said recently in an interview on “Meet the Press” that he was gravely concerned about whether the new president could govern effectively. How can we all come together, he asked, after such a bitter and divisive election?

The divisiveness has gotten even more extreme due to recent claims by several women that they were molested by Donald Trump, and in light of the Wikki leaks of purported emails by Hilary Clinton indicating that what candidates say in private may be different from their public positions.

Will 40% of the electorate whose candidate loses say, “That is not my president”? Will the Congress continue to be gridlocked no matter how many seats change hands? Will representatives in the losing party announce from the beginning that they will fight to make the winner a one-term president and do all they can to block his or her agenda before even considering it?

The percentage won’t be 40 percent, it will be more than half. Hillary Clinton seems unlikely to get half of the popular vote. (The rest being Hillary’s “deplorables” and others.) Donald Trump certainly will not get half of the popular vote. So more than half of the electorate will be disenfranchised after Nov. 8. And as for the losing party, their purpose to defeat the winner will be just like Republicans in 2009, Democrats in 2001, Republicans in 1993, Democrats in 1981, Republicans in 1977 … you get the picture. Since the first purpose of politics is to win, and politics is a zero-sum game, Smith’s previous paragraphi is a seriously naïve point of view.

This divisiveness has very serious implications for the future of the nation. Many commentators have not been addressing this concern in the heat of a closely contested and nasty campaign, but it is a very critical question with far more lasting effects than who wins on Nov. 8.

When asked at the end of his remarks what was the solution, Beck responded by saying reconciliation among citizens, beginning at the local level.

Here is where the moral and religious leaders of the country have a crucial role to play over the next several weeks, before and after the election. They have the moral stature to speak credibly to our “better angels” and to remind us that we all are citizens of the same country with a responsibility to come together and treat one another with respect.

Respect, of course, is a two-way street. Opponents of Barack Obama can cite a long list of things that have gotten worse in this country since Obama took office, including Obama’s rhetoric against his political opponents. Hillary has doubled down on this (“deplorables”?), and has not apologized for anything she’s said and done. Trump has done the same thing to his political opponents, including those within his supposed own party. Exactly how do you get past that — an apology? Saying you really didn’t mean it?

Beyond the rhetoric, the Democrats and Republicans (sometimes but not always including Trump) can’t even agree on what the problems are (for instance, police shootings), and if you can’t agree on the problems you’re wasting breath talking about solutions.

Some clergy already have taken sides in the partisan struggle, appearing at party conventions or endorsing particular candidates at rallies. Others participated in Pulpit Freedom Sunday recently, calling for an end on IRS restrictions on clergy from endorsing candidates without losing tax exempt status for their churches.

No matter what one thinks of these tactics, there is a larger and more important role for religious leaders of all faiths to play at this critical time. They need to speak to the deeper moral bonds we as a people share with one another and that protect the vitality of our republic.

The Founding Fathers wanted a separation of church and state. They also wanted religion to play an important role in educating citizens with a moral conscience so that they could work for common goals in society. Without that foundation, they knew the new republic would not survive.

We are at a critical moment in our history. Some feel we have not been this divided politically since the eve of the Civil War. It may not be that dire, but many certainly have lost almost total respect for those who disagree with them politically, and this bodes harm for effective government after the election.

Again, respect is a two-way street. Hillary’s “deplorables” were described by Obama eight years before as “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Why not a Pulpit of Reconciliation weekend in the next few weeks in which clergy of all faiths remind us that we have far more in common than what divides us and that respectful dialogue is needed to keep us together as we face a challenging future?

This is not a violation of the clergy’s role. It is fulfilling clergy’s responsibility to the nation as moral leaders, a role our Founding Fathers expected of them.

Scripture teaches us, “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). Let us hear from religious leaders some vision right now, some hope for political reconciliation.

Ironically, both major candidates for president are not particularly religious. That should make a bigger difference to Republicans than Democrats.

Kurt Schlichter writes about this guy:

So, that man in “Freedom of Speech,” the famous Norman Rockwell painting of an America exercising one of the liberals’ least favorite rights, stands up in 2016 to say his peace and … it will not end well. You see, to liberals, what our guy has to say isn’t important – what’s important to liberals is to shut him up. It’s to punch down upon him with cheap mockery so he’s beaten into submission. It’s to use shame to silence him and every other irredeemable deplorable in order to consolidate their progressive death grip upon America’s throat.

This will not end well.

See, a republic with democratic features like the United States can’t function without the possibility of discussion. It needs citizens to have the ability to rationally debate the issues, to be heard so that they can perceive the process as fair and one where they are equal participants. But that’s exactly what liberals, with tactics like political correctness, Jon Stewarty snark, and the outright lies of their vinyl-body-suited mainstream media chorus, seek to prevent. Discussion can only exist where customs and norms demand that all voices be heard, that the points of the opposition are at least characterized as something resembling what they are, and that no one is excluded from participation by the fact that they possess views of which the majority – or a powerful minority – disapproves. But instead of that, today we have a liberal elite that gleefully bludgeons people with opposing views into silence, and then pats itself on its collective back for its enlightenment.

This will not end well.

Take our guy in the painting. He stands and says, “Well, I don’t know about this idea of letting men into ladies rooms with little girls.” And, of course, the freakshow left doesn’t address the very real problems that come with allowing grown men into restrooms with little girls. Facts merely enrage them. So there won’t be any discussion of the problem of weirdos and perverts taking advantage of this idiotic liberal nonsense that this normal guy – like any normal person – would worry about. No, instead he’ll get berated by some screaming genderfreak activist with a half-shaved head and looming daddy issues bellowing “Hate criminal!” and demanding our guy be fired from his job down at the plant for felony wrongthinking.

Then maybe whoever that loser is who replaced Jon Stewart, that pioneer of E-Z snark masquerading as comedy, will get a clip of our guy speaking and play it on his show. There’s nothing funnier than a rustic presuming to speak out as if his views matter! Then the host will make a funny face – I mean, how can anyone be so insane and stupid to think that maybe having grown men lurking around little girls as they use the potty could go wrong? – and that goofy smirk will cue the skinny-jeaned audience to go into paroxysms of laughter. Not laughter because it’s funny or clever, mind you, but laughter that demonstrates social solidarity among the kind of smug people who drink pretentious, awful craft beers and think the “P” in “IPA” stands for “pumpkin spice.”
Maybe John Oliver will do a 10 minute rant about him and how Jesus probably told him that dudes shouldn’t be alone with little girls in toilets. Maybe Samantha Bee will scrunch up her tired, sour apple doll face and point out how this guy probably didn’t even go to Yale and where did he get that jacket anyway, at Wal-Mart?

And maybe our guy will sit down and hold his tongue. And then maybe he’ll remember how he went to a Tea Party to politely register his dissent and how he was dumped on for daring to try and be heard. Then maybe he’ll vote for Donald Trump because maybe if he’s a little louder and a little ruder then perhaps someone will listen to him about not turning his little girl’s bathroom into a social experiment, about the illegal aliens like the one who ran into his truck and didn’t have insurance, and about the rumor going around that his job down at the plant may be moving to Juarez next year.

But then, those concerns apparently aren’t worthy of attention. The news covers, day in and day out, some overeating foreigner and drug lord baby mama who Donald Trump was mean to a couple decades ago, but no reporter ever asks our guy about his problems. And they don’t merely ignore him. They come after him, jamming things down his throat like gender neutral bathrooms and murderous Muslim refugees and Wall Street scams that mean he gets about .001% interest on that money he saved just like the experts told him to. And he’s expected to just take it.

This will not end well.

Our guy was in Fallujah as a Marine, and when he wakes up shivering and calls the VA for help no one answers. President Faily McWorsethancarter hasn’t had time to fix that travesty in eight years, yet he somehow found plenty of time to party at the White House with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Leonardo has a jet and the president’s private email. Our guy has an F-150 with a smashed-in quarter panel and a busy signal. When he dares complain, they call him stupid, racist, and obsolete. He’s struggling to pay his mortgage yet they call him “privileged” because his great-great-great-great-great grandfather came from Glasgow. And he takes it, for now.

But this will not end well.

When the combined weight of the D.C. establishment and the media and Hollywood defeats Donald Trump, progressives face a decision point. They can change their ways and return America’s culture to how it was, where everyone gets a chance to participate, or they can double down on the new rules of mockery and exclusion to consolidate their own power.

But they are likely too foolish to realize the danger to our country as we know it, too blindly confident that they can play by one set of rules while forcing everyone else to play by another. Instead of seeking unity, they will do the opposite – more exclusion, more ostracism from self-determination for the people they consider unworthy. Despite a narrow win, they will claim a massive victory over people like our guy, a mandate to complete the subjugation of Americans like him. After all, he’s deplorable. He’s irredeemable. He’s unworthy of respect. His interests are unworthy of representation. The elite will heave a sigh of relief that the threat has passed, that with Felonia von Pantsuit in the Oval Office our guy and those like him can be safely ignored.

But this will not end well.

Our guy and millions upon millions of others will get angry. Not merely miffed as with the Tea Party, not a bit perturbed as with Trump. Angry. Coldly furious not only that they have been exiled from their own republic but because they have been relentlessly insulted, abused, humiliated – and forced to pay for it all.

Because the elite will have made it clear that the system really is rigged against those outside their caste, and that there is no way for people like our guy to be heard merely by trying to be part of the existing political system. And instead of meekly submitting, millions and millions of people may begin to look to step outside of the system as currently constituted.

And this will not end well.