March 8, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
PAT BUCHANAN’s Vision: What He Foresaw and Understood – And Its
Significance in the Age of Trump
Friends,
Back this past November Patrick J. Buchanan
celebrated his 80th birthday. For those of us who have known him
over the years and counted him as a friend it appears as if time has stood
still, it seems only yesterday that Pat was holding forth on national
television, on “Crossfire,” and that he was running for president, first as an
insurgent Republican against George H. W. Bush in 1992 (he received 23% of the
GOP primary vote that year), against Bob Dole in 1996, and then as the Reform
Party candidate in 2000.
Who can forget his memorable address at the 1992
Republican National Convention: although too many Republican voters and
conservatives refused to admit it at the time—indeed, found that speech far too
apocalyptic or “negative”—was it not, in retrospect, spot on? A veritable and
accurate vision of what was looming ahead for this nation, and a warning, a
kind of shot across the bow, of the GOP elites who adamantly refused to oppose and in
large measure have continued to refuse to oppose in any effective manner the
progressivist revolution occurring in America?
In a sense it was like the late Enoch Powell’s “rivers
of blood” speech in England, foreseeing the decline of that once-great nation
and the invasion of swarms of Muslims who would change the face of the country,
and the accompanying cowardice and utter decay of Great Britain’s
once-stouthearted governing class, imprisoned in their own anteroom of
extinction.
Pat had crossed over the Rubicon. But back then too
many citizens did not see, did not understand what was occurring in our
country. Pat did.
His newspaper columns, always concise,
well-written and on target, predicted and heralded accurately what was
happening to and in America. Even more, his thirteen published books, written
over some forty years, have crystallized and elaborated as hardly anyone else
has what the Founders’ and Framers’ old republic was actually about, the
manifold attacks on it, and what was required to preserve and restore it.
Consider the titles of some of them:
The Great Betrayal: How American Sovereignty and Social
Justice Are Being Sacrificed to the Goals of the Global Economy (1998), a powerful indictment of soulless global finance
capitalism which was destroying the American heartland and native American
industry.
A Republic, Not An Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny (1999), a clarion call against the extremes of American
overextended internationalism, against the madness of globalism, and a summons
for “America to come home” and address its own very serious and growing
problems.
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and the
Conquest of America (2006), written ten years
prior to the present rancorous debate over immigration, a powerful warning concerning
the future of the United States—and in a sense, a follow-up to an earlier book,
Death of the West: How Dying Populations
and Immigrant Invasion Imperil Our Country and Civilization (2002).
And, perhaps the most incisive, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America
Survive until 2025? (2011), in which Pat “shouted from the rooftops” like
Cassandra at the Siege of Troy: “[Am] I destined to prophesy truth, but not to
be believed until too late?”
These works, unvarnished and in their developed
fullness, were a call for America to return to its wellsprings, to recover what
was being lost, and a warning of what would happen if not.
In a very real and palpable sense Pat Buchanan
foreshadowed the “Make America Great Again” counter-revolution which saw Donald
Trump elected president in 2016. In a certain way, the Trump candidacy was not really
about Donald John Trump or his abrasive personality. He was rejected by the GOP
elites and makers-and-shakers, he was shunned by Wall Street, he was attacked
by the highly paid Republican consultant class and dismissed by the “holier-than-thou”
party-plutocrat Never Trumpers, because of what he represented.
Like the dragon Fafnir in Richard Wagner’s Siegfried who mutters, “I’ll keep what
I hold—let me slumber,” they preferred to, as Milton has Satan say in Paradise Lost, “reign in Hell, than
serve in Heaven.” Better to guard position and wealth and the remnants of
power, even if only as a collaborationist in the ongoing revolution—and all the
while professing to the rest of us that they were the opposition to what was
occurring.
Trump was a larger-than-life symbol elected by the “small people,”
the dairy farmers in Wisconsin, the construction workers in Ohio, the middle
class people—the “deplorables”—who had seen their social fabric shattered and
their family units severely stressed, and who, in their desperation finally
reached the breaking point in November 2016. Neglected and scorned by both
parties, clinging to an economy that had largely passed them by, inhabiting a “fly
over country” (to quote leftist novelist Philip Roth) beset by economic depression,
opioids, and cultural breakdown, they opted for a bull-in-a-china shop, because
no simple establishment conservative was willing or capable to engage in the “slash-and-burn”
tactics so desperately required.
They knew Trump was far from perfect, that he
was not an Insider who knew the ways of the immense house of political prostitution
and poltroonery, otherwise known as Washington DC. And intuitively they understood that he might
have to accede to certain demands of office, that he would be fiercely attacked,
and that once he had torn the scab off to reveal the evil and fearsome
machinations of the firmly-rooted Deep State, there would be all Hell to pay.
And so, despite his manifest failings—including most critically
his selection of some horrid advisors and counselors who seek to undercut his
stated agenda from within, and his at times apparent unwillingness to “go for
the progressivist jugular” –Donald Trump’s very presence at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue opened a door ajar, revealed the ugly and demonic face of the Deep State
which had increasingly exerted its control over us all. It is there for all to
see—the raving and unleashed “presstitutes” at CNN, The New York Times and The
Washington Post—the unhinged solons in Congress who hope to topple the
president through endless investigations and manufactured crimes and infamy—the
near totality of academia that froths at the mouth at the mention of his name (while
incubating generations of crazed lunatic students).
With or without Donald Trump, that door ajar has
opened just a crack, and our enemies in the Deep State—the Media, establishment
Democrats now in control of the House of Representatives, the cowardly
Republicans still subservient to their Big Business donors, the decrepit and
rotting “conservative movement,” Hollywood, academia—all know that things will
never quite be as they were once before 2016.
Try as they may those militants of the Deep State
are hard pressed to put the genie back in the lamp. Via social media (and they are attempting to
regulate that too) and other means of communication, a popular and national
opposition exists and will not easily go away. And just as in Europe, it will
continue to challenge the managerial control, the authoritarianism so implicit
and real that once envisaged a steady march to triumph.
Yet, that counter-revolution, that reawakening,
is by no means a guarantee of victory for those who would make America great
again. The epigones of the establishment, the unhinged progressivists, the smug
Never Trumpers, and the self-erected arbiters of our culture have unleashed a
vigorous and vicious response. We may be witnessing the first stages of a real and armed civil war.
As we look back at recent history, as we examine
how we reached this point in our national epic, as we raise—if only slightly—the
specter of real counter-revolution, let us recall and salute the lifetime of
labor and service of Pat Buchanan, who continues to write some of the most incisive
commentary around. Indeed, he is still a prophet, as he continues to look presciently
into both the present and the future.
I pass along today four recent columns by Pat:
the overriding themes remain the same, the language always crisp and to the
point, the urgent appeals broadcast to us all for us to do our duty and not to
fall by the wayside.
***********
Can Trump Stop the
Invasion?
By Patrick J. Buchanan Friday - March 8, 2018
In its lead editorial Wednesday, The New York Times called upon Congress to amend the National Emergency Act to "erect a wall against any President, not just Mr. Trump, who insists on creating emergencies where none exist." Trump "took advantage" of a "loophole" in the NEA, said The Times, to declare "a crisis at the border, contrary to all evidence."
The Times news desk, however, apparently failed to alert the editorial page on what the top story would be that day. "Record Numbers Crossing to U.S., Deluging Agents" was the page-one headline. The Times quoted Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection: "The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point. ... This is ... a border security and a humanitarian crisis."
Reporter Caitlin Dickerson explained what is behind CPB's alarm: "The number of migrant families crossing the Southwest border has once again broken records, with unauthorized entries nearly double what they were a year ago." She continued, "More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high ... newcomers continue to arrive, sometimes by the busload, at the rate of 2,200 a day."
Only if one believes in open borders is this not an emergency, not a crisis. Consider the budgetary impact alone of this invasion.
The majority of
migrants breaching the border are from Mexico and Central and South America.
Most do not read, write or speak our English language, are not college
graduates and arrive with few skills.
Almost all will enter the half of the U.S. population that consumes more
in social benefits during their lifetime than they will ever pay in taxes.
With the U.S. debt over 100 percent of gross domestic product and the deficit running at nearly 5 percent of GDP, at full employment, the burden the migrant millions are imposing upon our social welfare state will one day collapse the system. For these folks are coming to a country where education K-12 is free and where, if the Democrats take over, pre-K through college will be free. These folks will be eligible for city, county, state and federal programs that provide free or subsidized food, rent, housing and health care.
All were enacted for the benefit of U.S. citizens. Uninvited, the Third World is coming to partake of and enjoy them. With 328 million people here now, approaching twice the number as in 1960, how many more can we take in before government sinks under the weight of its beneficiaries?
And there is a larger issue.
If, as appears probable, President Trump is not going to be able to build his wall and all the security measures taken in this century have proved inadequate to stanch the invasion of America, how does the invasion end?
Or is this the endless invasion, where the future is decided on our 1,900-mile border with Mexico and we, as the last superpower, are a pitiful, helpless giant too morally paralyzed to stop it?
The resolution and determination of Third World peoples to come to America, even if they have to break our laws to get in and stay, is proven. And if there is no matching national will to halt the invasion, and no truly effective means that would be acceptable to our elites, the migrants are never going to stop coming. And why should they?
Politically, this invasion means the inevitable death of the national Republican Party, as peoples of color, who vote 70-90 percent Democratic in presidential elections, become the new majority of 21st-century America. The bell will toll for the Grand Old Party when Texas votes like California in some presidential election. That is game, set, match.
What is remarkable is how our cultural elites are giddily embracing what most of the advanced world is recoiling from.
The Times that berates Trump for trying to secure the border with his wall constantly bewails the rise of ethnic nationalism, populism, tribalism and "illiberal democracies" in Europe. But the rising "isms" of the new Europe are driven by popular fear and loathing of the very future The Times cannot wait to embrace.
Japan's population of 127 million, the second oldest on Earth, has begun to shrink. But there seems to be no desire in Japan to import millions of East or South Asians or Africans to replace the vanishing Japanese.
Does China look upon its diversity as its greatest strength? Hardly. Beijing is repopulating Tibet with Han Chinese, and has set up "re-education camps" to de-program Uighur Muslims and Kazakhs in the west so they sever their birth attachments to their ethnicity and faith and convert into good communists.
In the U.S., the ball is now in Trump's court. If he cannot get a Democratic House to fund his wall and the forces now on the border are being overwhelmed by the migrants, as CPB reports, how does he propose to halt the invasion?
And if he does not stop it, who will? And what does failure mean for America's future as one nation and one people?
With the U.S. debt over 100 percent of gross domestic product and the deficit running at nearly 5 percent of GDP, at full employment, the burden the migrant millions are imposing upon our social welfare state will one day collapse the system. For these folks are coming to a country where education K-12 is free and where, if the Democrats take over, pre-K through college will be free. These folks will be eligible for city, county, state and federal programs that provide free or subsidized food, rent, housing and health care.
All were enacted for the benefit of U.S. citizens. Uninvited, the Third World is coming to partake of and enjoy them. With 328 million people here now, approaching twice the number as in 1960, how many more can we take in before government sinks under the weight of its beneficiaries?
And there is a larger issue.
If, as appears probable, President Trump is not going to be able to build his wall and all the security measures taken in this century have proved inadequate to stanch the invasion of America, how does the invasion end?
Or is this the endless invasion, where the future is decided on our 1,900-mile border with Mexico and we, as the last superpower, are a pitiful, helpless giant too morally paralyzed to stop it?
The resolution and determination of Third World peoples to come to America, even if they have to break our laws to get in and stay, is proven. And if there is no matching national will to halt the invasion, and no truly effective means that would be acceptable to our elites, the migrants are never going to stop coming. And why should they?
Politically, this invasion means the inevitable death of the national Republican Party, as peoples of color, who vote 70-90 percent Democratic in presidential elections, become the new majority of 21st-century America. The bell will toll for the Grand Old Party when Texas votes like California in some presidential election. That is game, set, match.
What is remarkable is how our cultural elites are giddily embracing what most of the advanced world is recoiling from.
The Times that berates Trump for trying to secure the border with his wall constantly bewails the rise of ethnic nationalism, populism, tribalism and "illiberal democracies" in Europe. But the rising "isms" of the new Europe are driven by popular fear and loathing of the very future The Times cannot wait to embrace.
Japan's population of 127 million, the second oldest on Earth, has begun to shrink. But there seems to be no desire in Japan to import millions of East or South Asians or Africans to replace the vanishing Japanese.
Does China look upon its diversity as its greatest strength? Hardly. Beijing is repopulating Tibet with Han Chinese, and has set up "re-education camps" to de-program Uighur Muslims and Kazakhs in the west so they sever their birth attachments to their ethnicity and faith and convert into good communists.
In the U.S., the ball is now in Trump's court. If he cannot get a Democratic House to fund his wall and the forces now on the border are being overwhelmed by the migrants, as CPB reports, how does he propose to halt the invasion?
And if he does not stop it, who will? And what does failure mean for America's future as one nation and one people?
********
Is the American Century Over For
Good?
By Patrick J. Buchanan Friday -
March 1, 2019
"Politics stops at the water's edge" was a tradition that, not so long ago, was observed by both parties, particularly when a president was abroad, speaking for the nation.
The tradition was enunciated by Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan in 1947, as many of the Republicans in the 80th Congress moved to back Truman's leadership in the Cold War against Stalin's empire. The tradition lasted until the mid-1960s, when the left wing of the Democratic Party turned viscerally, and even violently, against the war in Vietnam and President Lyndon Johnson.
Republican Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush I, with the support of conservative Democrats, led America to final victory in the Cold War. Yet except for brief intervals, like the rallying around George H. W. Bush after the triumphant Gulf War of 1991 and George W. Bush after 9/11, true national unity has never been restored.
Were proof needed, this week provided it.
President Trump flew to Hanoi, Vietnam, to meet North Korea's dictator. Subject of negotiations: Kim Jong Un's nuclear weapons, including his missiles that may be able to reach our homeland.
How did the Democratic Party wish the commander in chief well on his mission for America? During Trump's first full day in Hanoi, a committee of Nancy Pelosi's House held a public hearing featuring ex-Trump lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer and felon who cut a deal with the prosecution for a reduced sentence.
The city loved it. Cable and network TV coverage went gavel to gavel. Cohen's testimony crowded out the Trump-Kim summit and even news of aerial clashes between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers that have fought three wars since independence, 70 years ago.
What were the headlines Trump came home to after refusing to lift sanctions on North Korea, in return for meager concessions Kim offered?
"Cohen Paints Trump as Crooked" was the
banner atop page one of The Washington Post. Cohen's depiction of his old boss
was boldly quoted above: "He is a racist. He is a con man. And he is a
cheat."
"Cohen Accuses Trump of Lies and Cover-ups" ran the page-one headline in The New York Times.
"Cohen Declares Trump a Racist, Cheat and Conman" read the huge headline in the Financial Times.
"Cohen Says Trump Guided Coverup" was at the top of page one in The Wall Street Journal.
Trump is denounced for calling media the "enemy of the people." Yet that media, in news columns as well as editorials, routinely describes him as a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, Islamophobe and bigot.
Indulging its hatred of Trump is a preoccupation, an obsession of this capital city. Those headlines reveal not only the news judgment of the editors but the agenda of the elite who turn to them first every morning. That agenda is the breaking of this president; his disgrace and fall; and, if impeachment proves not possible, his crushing defeat in 2020 and subsequent indictment. Our so-called Dreamers in Washington, D.C., look to the triumphal return to power of the establishment the American people threw out in 2016.
Yet the alliance that seeks to bring down Trump is formidable: deep-state leakers and media collaborators; the Democratic Party and House; most of America's commentariat; and the cultural elites in the arts, academia and Hollywood.
How far beyond normal politics have the divisions in our society gone? As the Covington Catholic kids found out, wearing a MAGA hat is now seen as a racist provocation.
In the play unfolding, Cohen's testimony to the House committee was scene one of act one.
Next comes the Mueller report, though it appears Robert Mueller and his team, after investigating for two years, have found no collusion between Trump and Vladimir Putin in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or the Clinton campaign. Hence, the hopes of Trump haters are being redirected to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Subjects of investigation: the Trump Organization, the Trump Inaugural Committee, the Trump Foundation, the Trump family and any entity with which Donald Trump has been associated in 40 years.
Again, as the president is chief of state and head of government, he cannot be indicted. He must first be removed from the presidency. But to remove him, Democrats have to impeach him in the House and convict him in a Republican Senate. If they cannot, they will have to defeat him at the polls.
In 1968, George Wallace of Alabama tore the Southern populist right out of the Democratic Party. Liberals Gene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern then savaged Vice President Hubert Humphrey from the left. The Grant Park rioters did the rest. Nixon, leading a minority Republican Party, had a compelling argument: "If the Democrats cannot unite their own party, how can they unite the nation?"
Today, a watching world is asking: If you Americans are at war with yourselves over race, religion, morality, culture and politics, if you cannot unite yourselves, how can you unite the world? And around what?
Maybe the American Century is really over.
"Cohen Accuses Trump of Lies and Cover-ups" ran the page-one headline in The New York Times.
"Cohen Declares Trump a Racist, Cheat and Conman" read the huge headline in the Financial Times.
"Cohen Says Trump Guided Coverup" was at the top of page one in The Wall Street Journal.
Trump is denounced for calling media the "enemy of the people." Yet that media, in news columns as well as editorials, routinely describes him as a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, Islamophobe and bigot.
Indulging its hatred of Trump is a preoccupation, an obsession of this capital city. Those headlines reveal not only the news judgment of the editors but the agenda of the elite who turn to them first every morning. That agenda is the breaking of this president; his disgrace and fall; and, if impeachment proves not possible, his crushing defeat in 2020 and subsequent indictment. Our so-called Dreamers in Washington, D.C., look to the triumphal return to power of the establishment the American people threw out in 2016.
Yet the alliance that seeks to bring down Trump is formidable: deep-state leakers and media collaborators; the Democratic Party and House; most of America's commentariat; and the cultural elites in the arts, academia and Hollywood.
How far beyond normal politics have the divisions in our society gone? As the Covington Catholic kids found out, wearing a MAGA hat is now seen as a racist provocation.
In the play unfolding, Cohen's testimony to the House committee was scene one of act one.
Next comes the Mueller report, though it appears Robert Mueller and his team, after investigating for two years, have found no collusion between Trump and Vladimir Putin in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or the Clinton campaign. Hence, the hopes of Trump haters are being redirected to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. Subjects of investigation: the Trump Organization, the Trump Inaugural Committee, the Trump Foundation, the Trump family and any entity with which Donald Trump has been associated in 40 years.
Again, as the president is chief of state and head of government, he cannot be indicted. He must first be removed from the presidency. But to remove him, Democrats have to impeach him in the House and convict him in a Republican Senate. If they cannot, they will have to defeat him at the polls.
In 1968, George Wallace of Alabama tore the Southern populist right out of the Democratic Party. Liberals Gene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern then savaged Vice President Hubert Humphrey from the left. The Grant Park rioters did the rest. Nixon, leading a minority Republican Party, had a compelling argument: "If the Democrats cannot unite their own party, how can they unite the nation?"
Today, a watching world is asking: If you Americans are at war with yourselves over race, religion, morality, culture and politics, if you cannot unite yourselves, how can you unite the world? And around what?
Maybe the American Century is really over.
******
Why Autocrats Are Replacing
Democrats
By
Patrick J. Buchanan Tuesday - February 19, 2019
"If you look at Trump in America or Bolsonaro in Brazil, you see that people now want politicians who are tough enough to do what they promise," said Spanish businessman Juan Carlos Perez Carreno. The Spaniard was explaining to The New York Times what lay behind the rise of Vox, which the Times calls "Spain's first far-right party since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975."
Indeed, the growing impatience of peoples with elected leaders and legislators who cannot or will not act decisively explains two realities of our time: the eclipse of Congress and the rise of autocracy worldwide.
In condemning President Donald Trump's decision to declare a national emergency and use Pentagon funds to build his wall, Beltway elites have charged the president with a multitude of sins against the Constitution. He has usurped the "power of the purse" that the Founding Fathers invested in Congress. He has disregarded the "checks and balances" of Madisonian democracy. He is acting like an imperial president.
Yet the decline of Congress is not a recent phenomenon. And the principal collaborator in its fall from grace, from being "the first branch of government" to the least esteemed, has been Congress itself, its own timidity and cowardice.
Contrast, if you will, the now-inveterate torpor and inaction of Congress with how presidents, declared by historians to be great or near great, have acted. Thomas Jefferson seized upon Napoleon's sudden offer to sell the vast Louisiana territory for $15 million in an act of dubious constitutionality by Jefferson's own judgment. History has validated his decision.
Andrew Jackson — "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" — shoved aside a Supreme Court ruling denying him the right to transfer the Indians of Florida to the middle of the country.
Abraham Lincoln arrested Maryland legislators to prevent a secessionist-minded legislature from meeting, violated the habeas corpus rights of thousands, ordered Chief Justice Roger Taney arrested, shut down newspapers, and, in January 1863, declared free all the slaves of every state still in rebellion against the Union.
"I took Panama!" said Theodore Roosevelt, whose agents helped rebels shear off the province from Colombia to build his canal.
FDR ordered some 110,000 Japanese, 75,000 of them U.S. citizens, into detention camps in 1942 for the duration of the war.
Without authorization from Congress, Harry Truman ordered U.S. troops into South Korea in 1950 to resist the invasion by North Korea, calling it a police action.
Though a Republican House voted against attacking Serbia in 1998, Bill Clinton continued his 78-day bombing campaign until Belgrade yielded up its cradle province of Kosovo.
Yet while presidents have acted decisively, without congressional authorization and sometimes unconstitutionally, Congress has failed to defend, and even surrendered, its legitimate constitutional powers. Congress's authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations" has been largely ceded to the executive branch, with Congress agreeing to confine itself to a "yeah" or "nay" vote on whatever trade treaty the White House negotiates and sends to the Hill.
Congress's authority to "coin money" and "regulate the value thereof" was long ago transferred to the Federal Reserve.
Congress's power to declare war has been ignored by presidents since Truman. Authorizations for the use of military force have replaced declarations of war, with presidents deciding how broadly they may be interpreted.
In declaring the national emergency Friday, Trump rested his case on authority given the president by Congress in the National Emergencies Act of 1976.
The Supreme Court has usurped Congress' powers with impunity.
While the civil rights acts of the 1960s were enacted by Congress, the desegregation of America's public schools was simply ordered by the Warren Court in 1954. In the '60s and '70s, Congress sat indolent as busing for racial balance was imposed on countless school districts by federal judges.
As the Supreme Court, for decades, exploited the establishment clause of the First Amendment to de-Christianize all public schools and public places, Congress did nothing. A triumphant court then moved on to declare abortion and same-sex marriage constitutional rights. Yet Congress had the latent power, in Article III, Section 2, to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and every other federal court. But the big stick the founders left for Congress to corral a runaway Supreme Court was never picked up, never used.
High among the reasons Trump was elected was that, for all his flaws and failings, he was seen as a doer, a man who "gets things done."
And high among the reasons that autocrats are on the rise is that the centrist parties being shoved aside are perceived as having failed the people in their most basic demands — fewer migrants, more secure borders, preservation of national identity, putting their own people and their country own first.
Whatever may be said of the autocrats, be it Trump, Putin or Xi Jinping, they are not talkers but doers. They act.
And they may very well own the future.
*****
When Democracy Fails to Deliver
By Patrick J. Buchanan Tuesday
- January 22, 2019
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible ... make violent revolution inevitable," said John F. Kennedy.
In 2016, the U.S. and Britain were both witness to peaceful revolutions. The British voted 52-48 to sever ties to the European Union, restore their full sovereignty, declare independence and go their own way in the world. Trade and immigration policy would henceforth be decided by a parliament elected by the people, not by bureaucrats in Brussels. "Brexit" it was called. And British defiance stunned global elites.
Two and a half years later, Britain is still inside the EU, and no one seems to know when or whether the divorce will take place — a victory of London and European elites over the expressed will of the British people. Appalled by the Brexit vote, these elites played a waiting game, broadcasting warnings of what could happen, to panic the British public into reconsidering and reversing its democratic decision.
Losing candidates and losing parties accept defeat and yield power.
Establishments have agendas they do not regard as subject to electoral repudiation or repeal. Defeated, they use their non-electoral powers to prevent unwanted policies from ever being implemented.
Call it limited democracy.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected president when a spirit of rebellion against America's failed elites roiled both parties. Both the Trump campaign and the Ted Cruz campaign, which ran second in the Republican race, offered anti-establishment ideas. So, too, did the Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic primaries.
Trump's defining agenda was basically this:
He would build a wall across the Mexican border to halt the flood of illegal migrants. He would extricate us from the half dozen Middle East wars into which Bush II and Obama had plunged us. He would abrogate the trade deals that had seen imports from NAFTA nations, China, the EU and Japan replace goods made in the USA. He would halt the shuttering of tens of thousands of U.S. factories and the hemorrhaging of millions of manufacturing jobs. He would call off the new cold war with Russia.
Halfway through this presidential term, where are we? Part of the U.S. government has been shut down for a month. The wall has not been built and may never be. President Trump's decision to pull 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria has met massive resistance from our foreign policy establishment. Trump is being pushed to confront Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea and to trash the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty that Ronald Reagan negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev. And we are being pushed toward a new Mideast war with Iran.
This was the establishment's agenda, not Trump's.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible ... make violent revolution inevitable," said John F. Kennedy.
In 2016, the U.S. and Britain were both witness to peaceful revolutions. The British voted 52-48 to sever ties to the European Union, restore their full sovereignty, declare independence and go their own way in the world. Trade and immigration policy would henceforth be decided by a parliament elected by the people, not by bureaucrats in Brussels. "Brexit" it was called. And British defiance stunned global elites.
Two and a half years later, Britain is still inside the EU, and no one seems to know when or whether the divorce will take place — a victory of London and European elites over the expressed will of the British people. Appalled by the Brexit vote, these elites played a waiting game, broadcasting warnings of what could happen, to panic the British public into reconsidering and reversing its democratic decision.
Losing candidates and losing parties accept defeat and yield power.
Establishments have agendas they do not regard as subject to electoral repudiation or repeal. Defeated, they use their non-electoral powers to prevent unwanted policies from ever being implemented.
Call it limited democracy.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected president when a spirit of rebellion against America's failed elites roiled both parties. Both the Trump campaign and the Ted Cruz campaign, which ran second in the Republican race, offered anti-establishment ideas. So, too, did the Bernie Sanders campaign in the Democratic primaries.
Trump's defining agenda was basically this:
He would build a wall across the Mexican border to halt the flood of illegal migrants. He would extricate us from the half dozen Middle East wars into which Bush II and Obama had plunged us. He would abrogate the trade deals that had seen imports from NAFTA nations, China, the EU and Japan replace goods made in the USA. He would halt the shuttering of tens of thousands of U.S. factories and the hemorrhaging of millions of manufacturing jobs. He would call off the new cold war with Russia.
Halfway through this presidential term, where are we? Part of the U.S. government has been shut down for a month. The wall has not been built and may never be. President Trump's decision to pull 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria has met massive resistance from our foreign policy establishment. Trump is being pushed to confront Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea and to trash the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty that Ronald Reagan negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev. And we are being pushed toward a new Mideast war with Iran.
This was the establishment's agenda, not Trump's.
We have lately
learned that after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, a cabal inside the FBI
initiated a counterintelligence investigation to discover if Trump was a
conscious agent of a Kremlin conspiracy.
Who made this call? Who approved it? Did the FBI discover that Trump is
a patriot, or another Alger Hiss? We have not been told by the FBI after two
years of investigation. Why not?
We do know that the dirt-diving arm of the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, hired a British former spy with KGB connections to cook up a "dirty dossier" that was used to persuade the secret FISA court to approve the surveillance of the Trump campaign.
Foremost among these was "the New Journalism." Yet there seems a massive media disinterest in a conspiracy that might portray Trump as the victim of dirty campaign tricks.
Which brings us back to the larger question: While populists have won elections and carried out peaceful revolutions, often the policies for which they have successfully worked are never implemented.
In the 1975 book "Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories: Why the Right Has Failed," this writer sought to explore and explain the forces that so often deny the right the policy fruits of its political victories. "The essence of press power lies in the authority to select, elevate and promote one set of ideas, issues, and personalities and to ignore others," this writer wrote. "The press determines what 'people will talk and think about' because of the monopoly it holds over the news and information flowing out of Washington."
Among the reasons for Trump's political success, such as it is, is that today's conservative media did not exist back then, nor did the new social media that he has mastered so well.
Yet still, the left's power over America's character- and culture-forming institutions remains overwhelming. It dominates public schools and teachers unions, mainstream churches, college and university faculties, media and entertainment, TV and film.
What is taking place in the West today might be described as a struggle between the capital and the country it rules. England voted to leave the EU; London voted to remain.
In the last analysis, Kennedy was surely right. People who see the policies they have voted for rejected again and again, by the very elites they defeated, will inevitably turn to other means to preserve what they have.
The "yellow vest" protests in Paris show us that.
We do know that the dirt-diving arm of the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, hired a British former spy with KGB connections to cook up a "dirty dossier" that was used to persuade the secret FISA court to approve the surveillance of the Trump campaign.
Foremost among these was "the New Journalism." Yet there seems a massive media disinterest in a conspiracy that might portray Trump as the victim of dirty campaign tricks.
Which brings us back to the larger question: While populists have won elections and carried out peaceful revolutions, often the policies for which they have successfully worked are never implemented.
In the 1975 book "Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories: Why the Right Has Failed," this writer sought to explore and explain the forces that so often deny the right the policy fruits of its political victories. "The essence of press power lies in the authority to select, elevate and promote one set of ideas, issues, and personalities and to ignore others," this writer wrote. "The press determines what 'people will talk and think about' because of the monopoly it holds over the news and information flowing out of Washington."
Among the reasons for Trump's political success, such as it is, is that today's conservative media did not exist back then, nor did the new social media that he has mastered so well.
Yet still, the left's power over America's character- and culture-forming institutions remains overwhelming. It dominates public schools and teachers unions, mainstream churches, college and university faculties, media and entertainment, TV and film.
What is taking place in the West today might be described as a struggle between the capital and the country it rules. England voted to leave the EU; London voted to remain.
In the last analysis, Kennedy was surely right. People who see the policies they have voted for rejected again and again, by the very elites they defeated, will inevitably turn to other means to preserve what they have.
The "yellow vest" protests in Paris show us that.
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