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November 2017

MY SAY: VETERANS DAY

Some words stir the soul when I think of those who served and serve in defense of our nation.

President Ronald Reagan on Veterans Day November 11, 1985 at Arlington Cemetery

“It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country, in defense of us, in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two lives — the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember.”

President Franklin Roosevelt in a letter to the families of fallen soldiers:

” He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom might live and grow and increase its blessings. Freedom lives and through it he lives in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.”

Hannah Senesh, World War 2 hero and martyr and poet who was imprisoned and tortured but did not reveal the secrets of her mission to save Hungarian Jews. She was tried and executed. From her poem “Blessed is the Match”:

“Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake.”

God Bless our Veterans….rsk

Remembering Stalingrad 75 Years Later It is now fashionable to demonize Russia, but most Americans have forgotten key aspects of 20th-century history, including the Russians’ fight to stop the march of Nazi Germany. By Victor Davis Hanson

Seventy-five years ago this month, the Soviet Red Army surrounded — and would soon destroy — a huge invading German army at Stalingrad on the Volga River. Nearly 300,000 of Germany’s best soldiers would never return home. The epic 1942–43 battle for the city saw the complete annihilation of the attacking German 6th Army. It marked the turning point of World War II.

Before Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler regularly boasted on German radio as his victorious forces pressed their offensives worldwide. After Stalingrad, Hitler went quiet, brooding in his various bunkers for the rest of the war.

During the horrific Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted more than five months, Russian, American, and British forces also went on the offensive against the Axis powers in the Caucasus, in Morocco and Algeria, and on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific.

Yet just weeks before the Battle of Stalingrad began, the Allies had been near defeat. They had lost most of European Russia. Much of Western Europe was under Nazi control. Axis armies occupied large swaths of North Africa. The Japanese controlled most of the Pacific and Asia, from Manchuria to Wake Island.

Stalingrad was part of a renewed German effort in 1942 to drive southward toward the Caucasus Mountains, to capture the huge Soviet oil fields. The Germans might have pulled it off had Hitler not divided his forces and sent his best army northward to Stalingrad to cut the Volga River traffic and take Stalin’s eponymous frontier city.

By the time two Red Army pincers trapped the Germans at Stalingrad in November, Russia had already suffered some 6 million combat casualties during the first 16 months of Germany’s invasion. By German calculations, Russia should have already submitted, just like all of the Third Reich’s prior European enemies except Britain.

Instead, the Red Army drew the Germans deeper into the traditional quagmire of Russia until the 6th Army was low on supplies, freezing in the winter cold, and trapped more than 1,500 miles from Berlin. How did the Red Army not only survive but go on the offensive against the deadly invaders?

In part, it had no choice. Germany was intent on not just absorbing Russia, but wiping it out or enslaving millions of its citizens. In part, Britain and the United States under the Lend-Lease policy began sending huge amounts of material aid, providing everything from boots to locomotives. In part, Red Army soldiers were terrified of their own communist strongman, Josef Stalin.

Diversity Visa Lottery: A Game Of “Russian Roulette” American sovereignty and security dismantled under the guise of “diversity.” Michael Cutler

On Tuesday, October 31, 2017 New York City suffered a deadly terror attack on a well-known and heavily used bike path in lower Manhattan, just blocks from what, in the wake of the terror attacks of 9/11, had come to be known as “Ground Zero.”

The perpetrator of this heinous savage attack is a 29-year-old citizen of Uzbekistan, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, who reportedly legally immigrated to the United States in 2010 subsequent to winning the Diversity Visa Lottery.

Consequently, attention immediately turned to the Diversity Visa Program that annually enables approximately 50,000 aliens annually to enter the United States as lawful immigrants.

Aliens who participate in this visa lottery are citizens of countries that send the United States the smallest number of lawful immigrants. These aliens do not need to possess any special skills or abilities and do not need to have any family ties to the United States.

There is no application fee for this category of immigrant visa. Under this program apparently being “diverse” is all that matters. This does absolutely nothing to benefit America or Americans and therefore must be terminated.

The State Department provides a table for Fiscal Years 2007-2016 for “Immigrant Number Use for Visa Issuances and Adjustments of Status in the Diversity Immigrant Category.”

Clearly, more than 16 years after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the “All Clear” has not sounded and the “War on Terror” continues on as more innocent victims are slaughtered. Nevertheless, there are members of Congress who have recently questioned the legal authority known as AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists) being used by President Trump to deploy members of the U.S. Armed Forces to wage war against ISIS, Al Qaeda and related deadly terrorist organizations. AUMF was passed by Congress just days after the attacks of 9/11.

Ironically, the latest deadly terror attack in New York City was carried out even as some members of Congress were publicly questioning AUMF, incredibly complaining that it gives President Trump too much discretion to deploy our armed forces to fight terrorist organizations that seek to kill as many Americans as possible, especially within our own borders.

Those politicians must not have gotten the memo that wars and armed conflicts do not end because leaders unilaterally wish that the wars or conflicts would end. Wars only end when both sides agree to a cease-fire or a more permanent solution is reached. Peace can only be achieved when the aggressors are forced to cease hostile actions. Invariably, this requires the demonstration of unwavering resolve. This requires the use, or threat of use, of overwhelming force.

The United States has no alternative.

News Nanny: The Race to Censor Internet News If we don’t fight now, conservatives will vanish from the internet. Daniel Greenfield

How can you tell that internet censorship is really taking off? Easy. It’s becoming a business model.

Steven Brill is raising $6 million to launch News Guard. This new service will rate news sites on their trustworthiness from green to red. Forget politically unbiased algorithms. The ratings will be conducted by “qualified, accountable human beings” from teams of “40 to 60 journalists.” Once upon a time, journalism meant original writing. Now it means deciding which original writing to censor.

“Can trust be monetized?” The Street’s article on News Guard asks. But it isn’t really trust that’s being monetized. It’s censorship. It’s doing the dirty work that Google and Facebook don’t want to do.

The Dems and their media allies have been pressuring Google and Facebook to do something about the “fake news” that they blame for Trump’s win. The big sites outsourced the censorship to media fact checkers. The message was, “Don’t blame us, now you’re in charge.”

Facebook made a deal with ABC News and the AP, along with Politifact, FactCheck and Snopes, to outsource the censoring for $100K. When two of these left-wing groups declare that an article is fake, Facebook marks it up and viewership drops by 80%.

Facebook is reportedly considering adding the Weekly Standard to its panel of fact checkers. Even if that were to happen, it would be the difference between putting the New York Times without David Brooks or the Times with David Brooks in charge of deciding what you can read on Facebook. Adding a token conservative who is acceptable to the left doesn’t change the inherent bias of the system.

Not only does the roster of fact checkers lean to the left, but so do its notions of what’s true and false. For example, Snopes and Politifact both insist that General Pershing’s forces never buried the bodies of Muslim terrorists with pigs. But General Pershing specifically stated in his autobiography, “These Juramentado attacks were materially reduced in number by a practice that the Mohamedans held in abhorrence. The bodies were publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig.”

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in France: October 2017 “We are still in a state of war.” by Soeren Kern

Article 57 of the French Civil Code states that the name chosen by parents must be in “the best interests of the child.” If the public prosecutor thinks the name “Jihad” is contrary to the law, he can ask a judge to order the name to be changed. If the parents are unable or unwilling to choose a new name, the judge has the right to choose a name.

Of the 1,900 French jihadists fighting with the Islamic State, as many as one-fifth have received as much as €500,000 ($580,000) in social welfare payments from the French state, according to Le Figaro.

Henda Ayari, in an interview with Le Parisien, gave detailed public testimony accusing Tariq Ramadan of sexually assaulting her in Paris. She said that Ramadan believes that “either you wear a veil or you get raped.”

October 1. A 29-year-old illegal immigrant from Tunisia stabbed two women to death at the central train station in Marseille. Witnesses heard the assailant shout “Allahu Akbar” as he lunged at the women with a 20-centimetre (eight-inch) knife before threatening soldiers, who shot him dead. The man, identified as Ahmed Hanachi, was using seven different identities and had a long criminal history. He had been arrested in Lyon for shoplifting just days before the attack, but those charges were dropped due to a lack evidence. He was released, despite not having the documents needed to live in France. Why he was never deported remains unclear.

October 2. Five people were arrested in Paris after police found four makeshift bombs at a building in the 16th arrondissement, one of the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods. Police said there was no one living in the apartment block who might be considered a target for jihadists. Interior Minister Gérard Collomb surmised that the bomb was simply meant to create fear: “Blowing up a building in a posh neighborhood shows that no one is safe…that it could happen anywhere in France.” He added: “This shows that the level of the threat in France is extremely high…yes, even if the Islamic State has suffered military setbacks, we are still in a state of war.”

October 2. The trial began of Abdelkader Merah, the 35-year-old brother of Mohamed Merah. In March 2012, Mohamed in March 2012 had gone on a nine-day shooting spree in southern France, killing three soldiers and gunning down a teacher and three children at a Jewish school before being shot dead by police. Abdelkader stands accused of “knowingly” helping to facilitate the “preparation” of the attack, in particular by stealing the scooter used for the three separate shootings. He appeared alongside 34-year-old Fettah Malki, accused of giving Mohamed Merah a bulletproof jacket, an Uzi submachine gun and the ammunition he unloaded on his victims. Abdelkader Merah faces a possible life sentence while Malki could get 20 years in prison.

October 5. Six gas canisters attached to a “crude detonator device” were found under several trucks at a cement company in Paris. The trucks, parked in the French capital’s northeastern 19th arrondissement, belonged to Franco-Swiss cement company Lafarge-Holcim. Lafarge is being investigated over claims that it paid taxes to the Islamic State and other armed groups in Syria to keep a plant running in a war zone. The company admitted that it resorted to “unacceptable measures” to continue operations at a now-closed cement factory in northern Syria in 2013 and 2014, after most French groups had quit the war-torn country.

October 6. A French woman who travelled three times to Syria in support of her jihadist son was sentenced to 10 years in prison for being part of a terrorist conspiracy. Christine Rivière, 51, was sentenced for her “unfailing commitment” to jihad and for helping a number of young women travel to Syria to marry jihadists, including her son, Tyler Vilus. Rivière, a Muslim convert who was nicknamed “Mama Jihad,” said of her son: “I didn’t want to push him to die a martyr, but that could happen. Then he would be in heaven, near Allah.”

October 6. French prosecutors charged three men in connection with a makeshift explosive device made of gas canisters, placed inside an apartment block in western Paris. Amine A, his cousin Sami B, and Aymen B., were charged with “attempted murder in an organized group in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and placed in pre-trial detention. All three were arrested on October 2, two days after the device was found in the exclusive 16th arrondissement. Amine A., 30, and Aymen B., 29, are both on the terror watch list.

October 9. French police and intelligence services are surveilling around 15,000 jihadists living on French soil, according to Le Journal du Dimanche. Of these, some 4,000 are at “the top of the spectrum” and most likely to carry out an attack.

October 10. President Emmanuelle Macron announced a plan to open immigration offices in Niger and Chad to identify persons eligible for asylum on lists provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and bring them directly to France. The stated aim is to “better prevent an influx of economic migrants” who are not eligible for asylum. In all, France will take in 10,000 people, not only from Niger and Chad, but also from Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, by October 2019.

October 11. Interior Minister Gérard Collomb announced the dismissal of the central government’s top representative in the southern Rhône region, after a report criticized “errors of judgement” and “serious faults” in handling foreigners whose papers are not in order. The report was commissioned after 29-year-old Tunisian Ahmed Hanachi stabbed two women to death at the central train station in Marseille on October 1.

October 11. A 20-year-old woman was arrested in Rouen on suspicion that she may have played a role in a jihadist attack on a church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. On July 26, 2016, two jihadists had broken into the church and murdered Father Jacques Hamel while he was celebrating mass. While leaving the church, they were shot dead by the police. A few hours later, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. Police say that shortly before the attack, the woman had been in contact with one of the jihadists.

October 12. A French intelligence agent accidentally sent a text message to the mobile phone of a jihadist, inadvertently warning him that he was under surveillance and being monitored, according to M6 television. The target, a “proselytizing Islamist” living in Paris, responded by directly calling the agent and informing him of his mistake.

October 12. The interior ministry announced that France will maintain border checks with its European neighbors until April 30, 2018, because of “persistent” terror threats. The 1985 Schengen Agreement ended passport checks and other protective measures on borders, but after the jihadist attacks in Paris in November 2015, France resumed them.

France: A Decomposing Civilization by Giulio Meotti

France’s authorities and elites are tearing up, piece by piece, the country’s historical, religious and cultural legacy so that nothing remains. A nation dispossessed of its identity will see its inner strength broken.

No French terrorist who went to cut off heads in Syria lost his citizenship. The magazine Charlie Hebdo is now receiving new death threats, and no major French publication expressed solidarity with their murdered colleagues by drawing Islamic caricatures. Many of the French intelligentsia have been dragged in courts for alleged “Islamophobia”.

The martyrdom of Father Jacques Hamel at the hands of Islamists has already been forgotten; the site of the massacre is still waiting for a visit from Pope Francis as a sign of condolence and respect.

France “sacrificed the victims to avoid fighting the murderers”. — Shmuel Trigano, sociologist.

France is about to commemorate the victims of the terror attacks of November 13, 2015. What has been achieved in the two years since the attacks?

The French authorities are sending compensation to more than 2,500 victims of the jihadist attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis, who will be compensated with 64 million euros. Important victories were also attained by anti-terrorism forces. According to an enquiry by the weekly L’Express, in the last two years, 32 terrorist attacks were foiled, 625 firearms were seized, 4,457 people suspected of having jihadist links were searched, and 752 individuals were placed under house arrest. But the general impression is that of a country “frailing from within”.In 1939, a Spanish anti-Fascist journalist, Manuel Chaves Nogales, fled to France, where he witnessed the collapse of the French Republic under German assault. His book, The Agony of France, could have been written about today. Nogales wrote that while the German soldiers were marching through Paris, the French were swarming out of movie theaters, “just in time for the apéritif at the bistro”.

Vietnam Veterans Set the Record Straight After PBS TV Series Whitewashes Communism By Tyler O’Neil

This week, Vietnam veterans sent a letter to PBS, Ken Burns, and Bank of America setting the record straight about the Vietnam War.PBS’s new documentary TV series, “The Vietnam War,” produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and funded by Bank of America, left out key aspects of the war, including the communist connections of North Vietnamese dictator Ho Chi Minh and the brutal repression after the war, veterans alleged.

“The whole cause of all this agony and bloodshed was the aggressive North Vietnamese invasion of the South. If it hadn’t been for that, none of this ever would have happened,” Lewis Sorley, a Vietnam War veteran, historian, and director at Vietnam Veterans for Factual History (VVFH), told PJ Media in an interview Wednesday. “Burns never seems to find that worth mentioning or condemning and I wonder why.”

Sorley alleged that Burns and his fellow filmmakers “had clearly decided that they wanted to tell the standard left-wing narrative of an unwinnable, unjust war.” The PBS documentary also obscured the evil of communism throughout the war and afterward. The veteran suggested that presenting the American and South Vietnamese forces as heroic would be “anathema” to the filmmakers.

In the letter VVFH sent to PBS, Burns, and Bank of America, Vietnam veterans emphasized four key omissions and distortions with broad-reaching consequences. The documentary presented a view of the war “very negatively slanted against both the nation of South Vietnam and American involvement there” that “exacerbates” the current cultural polarization in America today.
1. “Blustering, blundering jingoism.”

First, the documentary portrayed “U.S. support for South Vietnam as blustering, blundering jingoism,” with “Burns’ choice of music, graphics, and interviewees” demonstrating “a bias in favor of the militant leftist anti-war cliches of the 1960s.”

Although Sorley took part in a three-hour interview for the documentary, he only appeared “four times” in the actual program, for only “about half a minute each.” He remembered the interviewer giving off “very dismissive” body language. “The person interviewing me was offended by my understanding of the nature of the war and how it was conducted.”

In a 1980 survey, 91 percent of Vietnam veterans said “I am glad I served my country.” A full 66 percent said they would serve again, even knowing the outcome of the war. According to VVFH, the Burns documentary “demonstrates a prejudice against” these veterans and “the more than 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers killed by the Soviet-equipped and trained North Vietnamese Army and its Viet Cong subordinates.”
Why They Died: The Motivations of American Soldiers in 12 Great Wars
2. Minimizing Ho Chi Minh’s communism.

Perhaps more subversive, the PBS series “minimizes Ho Chi Minh’s life-long dedication to ruthless Leninism, his years of Soviet training and professional work as a covert communist subversive, and the mass atrocities of his supporters in North and South Vietnam.”

In the 1920s and 1930s, Ho worked for the Comintern in Moscow and advised Chinese Communist forces, returning to Vietnam in 1941. According to VVFH, the PBS documentary brushed aside this history, presenting Ho as a Vietnamese freedom fighter.

“Ho Chi Minh, as far as they’re concerned, was a nationalist,” Sorley told PJ Media. “His lifelong devotion to international Communism is largely glossed over.” The historian noted that North Vietnam enjoyed support from Communists in China and the Soviet Union, so portraying Ho as a nationalist is extremely deceptive.
3. Ignoring South Vietnam’s valor.

The VVFH letter also attacked Burns’ documentary for ignoring “the actions of leftist U.S. politicians in cutting off funding for vital military supplies for the South Vietnamese Army” and restraining U.S. air power.

Sorley presented the war’s outcome as the result of the U.S. holding back support while the Soviets continued backing Ho. In his telling, the South Vietnamese fought heroically, and could have won with the right help.

In his interview, Sorley told PJ Media that the South Vietnamese proved very effective in the war, pushing back the Easter Offensive in the spring of 1972, when most of the American troops had already gone home. While many credit U.S. air power for securing the South Vietnamese victory, General Creighton Abrams said the resolve of the South Vietnamese won the day.

“I didn’t see anything in Burns’ portrayal” about that offensive, or about the valor of the South Vietnamese, Sorley said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Former Asst. FBI Director: Clinton Crimes 20 Times Bigger than Watergate By Debra Heine

Former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom unloaded on James Comey, Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama Thursday, charging that major crimes “20 times bigger than Watergate” are being swept under the rug while Attorney General Jeff Sessions “is in a coma.”

Appearing on Fox News’ Varney & Co., Kallstrom told the host that it “was obvious to anybody that knows anything” that former President Barack Obama was not going to let James Comey indict Clinton.

“It turns out — unfortunately — he was a political hack,” Kallstrom said flatly. “I think he maybe started out in an honorable way. His opinion of himself is sky high — just an unbelievable guy with just an arrogance about him…. It got him in trouble because I think he thought he was Superman and he found out that he wasn’t.”

Kallstrom blamed the Clintons for Comey’s descent into hackery.

“The dogs are always going to bite your heels when you’re dealing with the Clintons,” he explained. “Look how long the public, the American people have been dealing with the crime syndicate known as the Clinton Foundation… just look at what’s in the public domain. The Clintons have been taking advantage of their stations in life for so long.”

“Back in ’95, ’96 — somewhere around there — Bill Clinton let our guidance technology for our ICBM missiles go to China. Things like this that are very devastating,” he pointed out.

And then a few years down the road, “we sell 20 percent of our uranium,” Kalstrom added, referencing the corrupt Uranium One deal that routed millions of Russian dollars to the Clinton Foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on the federal government’s Committee on Foreign Investment.

Kallstrom also questioned why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was appointed to his position.

“What does he do as soon as he gets in there? He appoints a special counsel. Who is it? It’s Bob Mueller. Roll the tape backwards. Bob Mueller is the FBI director, Rosenstein is the U.S. attorney in Baltimore prosecuting people involved in this case.”

Kallstrom charged that Rosenstein was basically put in place at the DOJ by the Democrats, complaining that Sessions was forced to recuse himself while “this huge forest fire is burning up his real estate.”

“You don’t have to put your brother in there like Kennedy did,” he noted. “But put somebody in there that agrees with the policies you’re trying to put together. Then Rosenstein throws this hand grenade at you by naming this counsel — which is B.S. — and putting Mueller, who has a conflict of interest 20 miles wide, in on the job.”

He added, “I don’t know if it’s a conspiracy, but it sure smells like one.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Your Papers, Please: How a Muslim Arab Became an Irishman By Michael Walsh

The case of Ibrahim Halawa has not attracted much attention in the United States, but as the shape of things to come in Europe, if the cultural Marxists have their way, attention must be paid. This headline from the New York Times says it all: “After 4 Years in Jail, Release Looms for Irishman in Egypt.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/09/your-papers-please-how-a-muslim-arab-became-an-irishman/

Banish the thought of good ol’ Paddy, who tied one on during a visit to the pyramids, punched out one of the local cops, and did some time in the slammer for excessive Hibernian exuberance and unwelcome cultural diversity. This “Irishman” is quite different:

A young Irish prisoner punched the air and wept with relief at a prison courthouse near Cairo on Monday, as a judge acquitted him on all charges relating to a 2013 political protest that turned violent.

The acquittal brought a likely conclusion to a four-year jail ordeal that turned the Irishman, Ibrahim Halawa, 21, into one of the most prominent foreigners trapped in Egypt’s harsh judicial system.

Mr. Halawa’s plight drew broad public sympathy in Ireland and sharp criticism from human rights groups that described his trial, along with that of at least 480 other people, as a travesty, not least because Mr. Halawa was 17 when arrested.

In Britain, the Independent took a similar tack: “Irishman cleared of charges in Egypt after four years in prison.” From the story:

Mr Halawa was born in Ireland and grew up in Firhouse, a suburb of Dublin. His family would travel to Egypt regularly to see relatives and they were in Cairo on holiday in August 2013. A month earlier Egypt’s military had overthrown Mohammed Morsi, the country’s democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood president, and thousands of people took to the streets against the coup.

Three days after the massacre, Mr Halawa and his three sisters — Omaima, Fatima and Somaia — joined another protest but took shelter in a mosque when the situation became violent. All four were arrested when security forces stormed the mosque.

Mr Halawa was just 17 when he was arrested. His sisters were released on bail three months after their arrests and quickly fled the country but Mr Halawa was held in prison. He was charged with murder, arson and illegal possession of weapons and put on trial alongside nearly 500 other people. His sisters were tried in absentia in the same court.

In other words, some high-spirited Irish siblings were out for a lark when they just so happened to wander into a violent protest and had to “take shelter” in a handy mosque. That’s the way the media—including the Irish media—tells it, anyway. In fact, the Halawas are the children of Ireland’s most prominent Muslim cleric, sheikh Hussein Halawa of the Clonskeagh mosque in Dublin; according to reports, the imam is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, although he denies it.

In other words, the only thing “Irish” about the Halawas is an accident of birth.

Today, however, Ireland is being consumed by the notion—heavily promoted by its mainstream media—that it’s “too white,” that what the Land of Saints and Scholars needs is more “immigration” from the non-Christian Third World, the better to reduce its whiteness and further weaken the influence of the Catholic Church. And what better way to promote that meme than to call an Egyptian Muslim an “Irishman”?

This is what happens when nationality—especially the ethnic nationalities of the European nation-states—is confused with citizenship. The first is intrinsic: say the word “German” or “Swede” or “Italian” and we all have an image in our mind’s eye; it may be a “stereotype” of a fat man in lederhosen, or a blue-eyed Viking, or Marcello Mastroianni, but we know immediately what is meant.

NeverTrump Makes a Left Turn By Julie Kelly

National Review in February 2016 published “Against Trump,” a special issue that made a reasoned case for why conservatives should oppose Donald Trump’s nomination as the Republican candidate for president. Nearly two-dozen conservative writers and influencers weighed in; most of them cogently—and correctly—explained that Trump was not a “true conservative.” He had supported progressive causes in the past (including abortion and single-payer health care), and did not possess the intellectual mooring that conservatives value. Some writers faulted Trump for his boorish, impulsive temperament and populist rhetoric.

It was a measured assessment by fair-minded people, some of whom—such as Cal Thomas and Thomas Sowell—have helped attract millions of devotees to the conservative movement. Young, energetic newcomers, including Ben Domenech and Katie Pavlich were also featured. Some highlights:

Ben Domenech (editor, The Federalist): “Conservatives should reject Trump’s hollow, Euro-style identity politics. But conservatives have far more to learn from his campaign than many might like to admit. The Trump voter is moderate, disaffected, with patriotic instincts. He feels disconnected from the GOP and other broken public institutions, left behind by a national political elite that no longer believes he matters.”

Mark Helprin (novelist): “He doesn’t know the Constitution, history, law, political philosophy, nuclear strategy, diplomacy, defense, economics beyond real estate, or even, despite his low-level-mafioso comportment, how ordinary people live.”

Katie Pavlich (editor, Townhall): “Trump’s liberal positions aren’t in the distant past—he has openly promoted them on the campaign trail. Conservatives have a serious decision to make. Do we truly believe in our long-held principles and insist that politicians have records demonstrating fealty to them?”

Of course, Trump went on to win both the nomination and the election. Several of the writers, grown-ups who love their country more than they love proving they were right, managed to move on in life, staying true to their conservative principles while praising and criticizing the president as the occasion warranted.

But a handful of other alleged conservatives, who joined forces before the general election to form the “NeverTrump” movement, saw an opportunity. Rather than keeping a much-needed policy check on an unpredictable president and gobsmacked Congress, they positioned themselves as “conservative” Trump foes, and, in the process, boosted their number of followers on social media and number of appearances on cable news shows.

People such as Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, and Bret Stephens have carved out a niche for themselves as the go-to source for reporters to get blistering commentary about Trump, or his administration, or his family, or his congressional allies, or his voters. Kristol’s number of Twitter followers has nearly tripled, as he churns out hourly rants that veer from impeachment pleas to far-fetched conspiracy theories on Russia, Mike Pence, and Trump’s inner circle. They promote the darkest narrative, not just of Trumpism, but of Republicans in general, mimicking the same, weary warnings Democrats have shrieked for decades—that Republicans are racist, sexist, homophobic, and plain stupid. These self-proclaimed guardians of America’s modern conservative legacy have ceased talking about anything of substance. They are as reactionary and emotive as high school sophomores.

It is all Trump, all the time. In the process, they have abandoned both their party and their principles.