RUTHFULLY YOURS

Presidents can fire attorney general. Such was the case of the late Attorney General Gerald Walpin who was fired without time or reason when his investigations showed chicanery by one of Michelle Obama’s friends…..rsk

Most Americans won’t have heard of Luther Strange, though that might be about to change. Next week the Alabaman ascends to the top of what by that point could be one of the most consequential GOP organizations in the country.

That would be the Republican Attorneys General Association, the umbrella group for the states’ conservative prosecutors—and a new force to reckon with in American politics. Attorney general races don’t get much national attention, but these days they should. Under a Hillary Clinton presidency in particular, Republican AGs may prove the most effective check on both an overweening federal government and growing abuses by liberal prosecutors.

“Health care, immigration, climate regulations—the AGs are acting as a last line of defense, but also in an agenda-setting capacity,” Mr. Strange told me at a recent meeting in Washington, D.C. “And we’ll be in an even stronger position to do this after Election Day.”

His words are a nod to the extraordinary transformation Republican AGs have undergone in the era of Barack Obama. Not many years ago, those AGs had little to do with each other and were focused on policing occasional state crime. But the combination of the president’s growing federal overreach, and a new generation of activist, conservative law dogs, has inspired a powerful and cohesive new AG movement.

Members include the likes of Florida AG Pam Bondi, who helped oversee a coalition of states that sued the federal government over the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Or Oklahoma’s Scott Pruitt, who has plowed the way in lawsuits against federal overreach in health care, water regulations and endangered species listings. Or Michigan’s Bill Schuette, whose state successfully challenged the feds on its costly rules on power-plant emissions. Or Texas AG Ken Paxton, whose legal efforts put a hold on President Obama’s immigration plan.

Republicans currently hold 27 AG seats, and they are likely to emerge from Tuesday with more. In Missouri, a young dynamo, the 36-year-old Josh Hawley, looks poised to beat Democrat Teresa Hensley. Mr. Hawley, a law professor and Becket Fund for Religious Liberty alumnus, has run on a promise to defend working Missouri families against “Washington bureaucrats.”

In North Carolina, state Sen. Buck Newton is in a tight race against Democrat Josh Stein, in a contest that may hinge on the upticket re-election fortunes of Donald Trump and Gov. Pat McCrory. Republicans are also feeling more confident they’ll hold on to West Virginia, where rebel AG Patrick Morrisey (the first GOP AG in the state since 1933) is defending against liberal activist Doug Reynolds. And in Indiana, Republicans expect to hold a seat with the election of Curtis Hill, who’d become the Hoosier state’s first African-American AG. If it’s a good night, RAGA could end up 29-strong, a record.

They’ll need that strength, particularly under a Clinton presidency. With Republicans near certain to hold the House, and potentially the Senate, Mrs. Clinton will undoubtedly build on Mr. Obama’s extralegal habit of ruling via executive order or regulation. The GOP AGs will be the primary way for conservatives to challenge those edicts, in court. Under a Trump presidency, they will be an invaluable tool in dismantling some of the Obama federal behemoth. CONTINUE AT SITE

The current election—regardless of its outcome—reveals something tragic in the way modern conservatism sits in American life. As an ideology—and certainly as a political identity—conservatism is less popular than the very principles and values it stands for. There is a presumption in the culture that heartlessness and bigotry are somehow endemic to conservatism, that the rigors of freedom and capitalism literally require exploitation and inequality—this despite the fact that so many liberal policies since the 1960s have only worsened the inequalities they sought to overcome.

In the broader American culture—the mainstream media, the world of the arts and entertainment, the high-tech world, and the entire enterprise of public and private education—conservatism suffers a decided ill repute. Why?

The answer begins in a certain fact of American life. As the late writer William Styron once put it, slavery was “the great transforming circumstance of American history.” Slavery, and also the diminishment of women and all minorities, was especially tragic because America was otherwise the most enlightened nation in the world. Here, in this instance of profound hypocrisy, began the idea of America as a victimizing nation. And then came the inevitable corollary: the nation’s moral indebtedness to its former victims: blacks especially but all other put-upon peoples as well.

This indebtedness became a cultural imperative, what Styron might call a “transforming circumstance.” Today America must honor this indebtedness or lose much of its moral authority and legitimacy as a democracy. America must show itself redeemed of its oppressive past.

How to do this? In a word: deference. Since the 1960s, when America finally became fully accountable for its past, deference toward all groups with any claim to past or present victimization became mandatory. The Great Society and the War on Poverty were some of the first truly deferential policies. Since then deference has become an almost universal marker of simple human decency that asserts one’s innocence of the American past. Deference is, above all else, an apology.

One thing this means is that deference toward victimization has evolved into a means to power. As deference acknowledges America’s indebtedness, it seems to redeem the nation and to validate its exceptional status in the world. This brings real power—the kind of power that puts people into office and that gives a special shine to commercial ventures it attaches to.

The father of embattled Hillary Clinton campaign honcho Huma Abedin once told a Saudi Arabian newspaper that Muslims have the right to “take up arms” in jihad and that “every self-respecting Muslim is an Islamic fundamentalist.”

Syed Zain Abedin, a Saudi-sponsored Islamist scholar, revealed in a lengthy interview with a Saudi correspondent that he agreed with jihadists that “Islam permits the use of forceful means,” and that carrying out martyrdom operations may be necessary in the cause of Allah.

“There are occasions when Islam calls for the ultimate sacrifice,” he said, as long as it is done in “the cause” of Allah and not for selfish reasons such as individual suicide.

Abedin also said Muslims have a “relentless obligation” to convert non-Muslims in the West to Islam, though he counseled Muslims living in non-Muslim majority countries to be patient in going about Islamizing their hosts. As the minority, they do not have the numbers for “conquest” and have to be aware of “certain strategic necessities, certain political imperatives.”

He pointed out that even after Western political systems are “subdued,” it may take hundreds of years before citizens formerly living under those secular systems fully accept Islam.

“The immediate goals and targets for Muslims to pursue when they are the majority in any society are distinct from the goals and targets they should pursue when they are living as a minority in any society,” Abedin explained in the 1991 interview with the Saudi Gazette, a leading daily newspaper published in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

He advised winning over the “kuffar, the deniers,” with “little acts of kindness.” Whatever the tactics, he added, “There can be no let-up” in converting them to the “Islamic way.”

“Muslims have to continue to formulate their attitudes and behavior on the assumption that kufr is not a fixed, but a volatile and transcient category. Today’s nay-sayers may well be tomorrow’s yes-sayers,” Abedin said. “This happened daily in Makkah (Mecca), the historical Makkah. Why would it be different in today’s Makkah, in today’s situation where Muslims are a persecuted and despised minority?”