RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.steynonline.com/9552/wokeness-at-warp-speed

A few months ago I observed to Tucker Carlson that the difference between “Bush Derangement Syndrome” and “Trump Derangement Syndrome” was that the former was largely contained to a visceral loathing for the President himself, whereas the latter has been extended to anyone who voted for him – ie, the half of the electorate comprised of “racists”, “fascists” and “white supremacists”. Now TDS rampages on, to consume half the Democrats, too.

Say what you like about Nancy Pelosi, but she took back the House by running the Dems as a “moderate” party that talked about things like voter concern over health care. A year on, and most of what the party’s presidential candidates are yakking about – busing, the needs of trans-African-Americans, open borders to all six-and-a-half billion Undocumented-Americans around the world – is bonkers. The Democrat platform is a twitchy reflex that, whatever Trump is for, they’re against. So he wakes up every morning, tweets his rubber hammer at their kneecaps, and they respond accordingly. He doesn’t even have to hold any particular position: The actual Trump is utterly indifferent on the matter of “gender fluidity” and, from his experience as a businessman in Canada and Scotland, is not ill-disposed toward socialized health care. But the Trump of their fevers is a transphobe who wants to shove granny off a cliff, and that’s who they’re running against.

So the party of Big Government will no longer cooperate with the biggest government of all. Behold Eric Garcetti, mayor of a city the middle class is fleeing, where less and less works, where traffic is at a standstill, and you can’t get out and walk because the sidewalks are full of tent cities, human feces and flesh-eating viruses. And his priority is non-cooperation with ICE. And notice his artful pitch: Democrats have long abolished the distinction between “immigrants” and the millions who just walked into the country, which is why the Mayor sells his position to “Angelenos” as simply that of being a “good neighbor”. Are Mexico and Guatemala “good neighbors” to the United States? Does a “good neighbor” just move into the house next door and then demand you support him in his lawlessness?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/16/gop-look-like-peter-thiel-charge/

On July 14, the National Conservatism Conference started in Washington DC as the first public attempt to say what conservatism is after the Donald Trump election. It’s fitting that it’s organized by a new outfit, the Edmund Burke Foundation, created in January 2019 and chaired by Yoram Hazony, the scholar who became famous in 2018 for his book “The Virtue Of Nationalism,” and advised by Rusty Reno, editor of First Things and Chris DeMuth, the prominent conservative scholar of public policy (all three of whom are speakers at the conference).

A large number of other journalists, intellectuals, and scholars will give speeches—some famous, some not (here’s the list). The first striking thing is the absence of politicians speaking about the future of conservatism. Apparently, we are looking for ideas elsewhere, despite the GOP’s historic electoral victories in 2016. The exceptions are Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), recently famous for proposing a bill to use the federal government to enforce free speech requirements on social media corporations, and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Redefining and Popularizing Conservatism

The conference is nevertheless emphatically political, aimed not merely at redefining conservatism, but at making the case that it is a preferable alternative to the liberalism prevailing in elite institutions in America. The speakers are aiming to popularize new ideas to inspire politicians and political organizations.

In short, they want a new GOP fit for the political world shaking up after the 2016 election. There is something admirable and even noble about this attempt, but we should also see what the new ideas are and where they tend.

To start with, let us talk about Peter Thiel’s keynote address, which circulated widely. Thiel rarely makes political statements, but he shocked everyone by supporting Trump in 2016 and giving a passionate speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC). Now, he’s doubling down on some of his most surprising, unconventional ideas, which finally have their chance to become part of a party platform.

Thiel took aim at the most prestigious liberal institutions in our times: Silicon Valley and academia. He claimed they are only good for elite liberals and have become bad for America as a whole and directly inimical to the conservative half of America.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/donald-trump-and-the-racist-tweets/

There’s a difference between racist and just stupid.

What does “racist” even mean anymore?

Racism is the headline on President Trump’s Sunday tweets — the media-Democrat complex assiduously describes them as “racist tweets” as if that were a fact rather than a trope. I don’t think they were racist; I think they were abjectly stupid.

Like many Americans, I am tired of being lectured about racism by racists and racialists, individuals whose full-field explanation for all life’s issues is this matter of genetic happenstance that should be increasingly irrelevant in a pluralistic society.

Is it “racist” to tell people who have contempt for the country — who abhor the common culture that makes us American — that they ought to go back to where they came from? It has nativist and reactionary overtones, but I don’t think it is racist. I’ll grant this much, though: It is closer to actual racism than the Left’s usual demagogic claim: I am a racist if I extend to a non-white nincompoop like Ilhan Omar the courtesy of taking her seriously as an individual and a public official, as if it were her race rather than the idiocy of what she says that moves me to dissent.

It would be racist to tell the progressive “Squad” that they don’t belong in our country because of their race or ethnic roots. I don’t understand Trump to have done that. He is attacking their radicalism, which they wear like a badge of honor.

I don’t believe Trump is a master strategist who did this to force Speaker Pelosi and other mainstream Democrats, at their electoral peril, to embrace the radicals. That’s just the lemonade that Trump supporters are trying to make of the president’s never-ending supply of lemons. In any event, while it is beneath a president to carp in Trump’s juvenile way, I have less heartburn in principle with a president’s attacking radicalism than I do with a congresswoman’s claim that any criticism of her is an implicit criticism of immigrants, women, black people, etc.