Progressive vs Conservative What are the Differences

Donald Trump: Destroyer of the old globalist order

OCTOBER 10, 2016 BY BOOKWORM 1 COMMENT 

A friend told me something very significant: This election is not between leftist and conservative or Democrat and Republican. It is, instead, an election pitting the globalists against the populists (or patriots, if you prefer).

On the one hand, the Hillary hand, you have people:

• who don’t care that jobs are being lost in America, as long as jobs are being gained in India;
• who don’t care that illegal aliens are pouring into America because the globalists think borders are irrelevant;
• who are comfortable with one of the highest corporate tax ratesin the First World because they think American corporations (aka, employers) shouldn’t have an unfair advantage against other worldwide corporations, including those propped up by socialist governments;
• who think the Constitution is burdensome and antiquated;
• who believe that government is the answer, no matter the question;
• who judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character;
• who refuse to defend America against unnamed terrorists because it’s morally wrong for America to act in her own defense without UN pre-approval, and who therefore accept endless low-level terrorism;
• who think that the biggest threat facing the world is climate change, never mind that the bulk of the apocalyptic climate change predictions have been proven wrong; and
• who generally think Americans are rubes, Europeans are the gold standard, third world nations must be kept helpless, and Muslims are victims of unemployment (which makes it kind of ironic that these same people are so comfortable with keeping Americans unemployed).

On the other hand, the Trump hand, you have people who, while not lacking in compassion when they see Third World struggles abroad, think that, in airplane parlance, you must first secure your own oxygen mask before taking care of those less able than you. These are people

• who insist that America, as a sovereign nation, can secure its borders so that Americans are safe from predators, terrorists, resource hogs, and unfair job competition;
• who make sure that American employers, large and small, are competitive so that American workers can have jobs — at which time we teach those skills to other nations that need to help their economies grow;
• who name America’s enemies so that we can fight them (something that is a truly internationalist approach because, in this existential war, America’s enemies are the enemies of freedom, security, and decency in every corner of the world);
• who refuse to see America become subordinate to the UN;
• who judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin;
• who are certain that the American Constitution is the gold standard for governance because it elevates individual liberty over government control, an ideology that, until attacked from the Left, created the most free, most wealthy, most powerful,most generous nation in the history of the world (and I mean generous in terms of money given and in terms of blood spilled to help those less fortunate around the world);
• who have noticed that the climate change predictions that the Left has seized upon to force redistribution of wealth both inside and outside of America fail to pass minimal tests for scientific relevance and trustworthiness; and
• who know that, overall, the American people are damn fine people who have an inalienable right to a government that supports their liberty, rather than one that subordinates them to the career politicians’ endless dreams of perpetual power.

Although the bulk of globalists are Democrats, there is another significant constituent group in this globalist party:  Traditional GOP power players. They too believe in open borders, the UN, high taxes, European virtue, anthropogenic climate change, and the fact that it’s better to let Americans die in endless low-level terrorism than to mention the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” They are aligned with the Democrats, although simply less strident. James Taranto long ago classified them as people who share Democrat values, but just want to try to keep America’s books better balanced. They are, in other words, cheap Lefties. Their antipathy to Trump comes about not only they really do dislike his personality and politics, but because they are desperate for approval from the globalist media and the globalist D.C. establishment.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out before, and I’m not just talking about Brexit, which saw a majority of Britains rise up against globalism and in favor of patriotism. I’m talking about the 1980 election between Carter and Reagan.

Back in 1980, Carter was the candidate wedded to a globalist detente (and yes, it was an idea that a Republican dreamed up), one that believed that winning existential wars was for fools. Instead, detente said that if Washington just held to an exquisite balance between the major powers, whether in building up weapons systems, fighting proxy wars, fighting propaganda wars, or fighting trade wars, Americans could get on with their lives — perpetually insecure but still going through the motions of being a free, safe nation. All of this, of course, required high taxes to pay for the big government necessary to keep this exquisite detente balance.

And then Reagan messed the whole delicate balance up when he came along with an explosive new idea:  Detente is for sissies. America has won two world wars before and she can win a third, the Cold War, by being herself:  big, bold, and free. The starting point is to name enemies (“Evil empire”), lower taxes so that government doesn’t sit on money that can unchain the American economy, and believe in America, Americans, and the American Constitution. Reagan’s presidency was imperfect, but it was also an era of spectacular economic growth at home and it sounded the death knell abroad for the evil that was the Soviet Union.

Those of us around in 1980 vividly remember the media attack on Reagan. The funniest one, in retrospect, was the charge that Reagan was “just an actor” — this from the same political party that can’t get enough of actors spouting their political opinions about candidates, national security, climate change, etc. We were warned about other things, though:  that he was crazy, unstable, stupid, untried, a loose cannon, just a talking head, a decadent man who had divorced his first wife, etc.

Reading that list, does any of it sound familiar to you? We live in a sleazier, bigger, bolder, more degraded internet age, and Trump is a less polished man than Reagan so the attack is more savage and biased, but it’s still the same old, same old.

Reagan also caused a schism in the Republican party, not as severe as the one now, but still pretty darn good. Because he was a populist, he lost the elite Republicans but gained those Democrats who didn’t think Carter’s internationalist policies and lack of faith in America served them well economically or kept them safe.

Today’s example of the globalists’ frenzied fear that their hegemony is nearing its end comes from Foreign Policy magazine which, like The Atlantic, decided to abandon its pretense of neutrality and endorse Hillary.  I’ll get to the laughable endorsement in a minute but, first, let’s talk about Foreign Policy itself.

Doesn’t that name — Foreign Policy — sound magisterial? With that name, Foreign Policy must be a scholarly publication with weight and heft, staffed by people with significant working experience (perhaps for the State Department or CIA) around the world.

Well, not so much.  For starters, it’s owned by the Washington Post — Jeff Bezo’s WaPo, a publication that hews further Left than ever before in its Left-leaning history. That already gives you an idea about its political orientation.

There’s also (for me at least) the little problem of FP‘s entirely predictable anti-Israel stance. It seems as if every writer, Jewish or not, was incubated in the anti-Israel animus of J Street. In 2011, the magazine looked at Israel, a thriving country by any metric, with individual liberty, a strong defense, and incredible economic growth, and labeled it a failed state.

In 2011, the magazine looked at Israel, a thriving country by any metric, with individual liberty, a strong defense, and incredible economic growth, and labeled it a failed state.  JoshuaPundit made mincemeat of the facts underlying the claim and highlighted the antisemitic animus that was driving FP‘s approach to Israel:

So how did the brainiacs at Foreign Policy justify this? How did presumed foreign policy expert Elizabeth Dickenson square this circle?

Simple. They titled the entry ‘Israel/West Bank’ and cited some figures from a biased EU-funded British study about how ‘tens of thousands of Palestinian families risk being forced to leave their homes as a result of Israeli policies’ and that half the children ‘suffered from water-borne diarrhea’, linked to an article from that equally unbiased source, al-Jazeera!

Just one problem. Aside from the fact that the figures are obviously cooked, the study and the article both focus on a part of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) known as Area C. This is the part of Judea and Samaria where the major Jewish communities are, and is fully under Israeli administration. And guess what? Only an estimated 4% of the ‘Palestinian’ population of Judea and Samaria lives there…if that much. So there aren’t ‘ten of thousands of Palestinian families’ facing eviction and the ‘water-borne diarrhea’ figures of children are so small as to be negligible…unless of course, you have an agenda.

Foreign Policy is a particularly fact challenged source, especially when it comes to the Middle East and it’s home to Israel bashers like Stephen Walt, co-author of the scurrilous ‘The Israel Lobby’. They have a perfect right to publish whatever horse manure they choose, but I have a problem with them issuing this kind of propaganda and calling it ‘journalism’. At this point, the Israel Derangement Syndrome is so pronounced among ‘journalists’ like Dickenson that they can’t even be bothered to make up lies that are remotely credible. And they ought to be ashamed of that.

Two years later, FP, faced with the growing Obama debacle in Syria, was doing its best to cover up the Syrian sex jihad (until it could be covered-up no more):

In an article titled “Are Young Women Really Racing to Syria’s Front Lines to Wage Sex Jihad” (originally published under the cutesier title “Sorry, the Tunisian Sex Jihad is a Fraud”), one David Kenner writes:

It’s the story that launched 1,000 headlines. And it’s not hard to see why: Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou announced last week that Tunisian women were traveling to Syria to wage “sex jihad,” where they were having sex with “20, 30, [or] 100″³ militants, before returning pregnant to Tunisia.

There’s only one problem: There’s no evidence it’s true. The Tunisian Interior Ministry has so far failed to provide any further information on the phenomenon, and human rights activists and journalists have been unable to find any Tunisian woman who went to Syria for this purpose.

Let’s consider the evidence surrounding the sex jihad for a moment: For approximately one year, a wide variety of Arabic and other foreign media, news channels, newspapers, and websites—both for and against the war in Syria—have been reporting on the sex jihad; I have personally watched several video interviews of many different men and women, of various nationalities, talking about their experiences with the sex jihad; Tunisia’s former Mufti created controversy by condemning it; and now a governmental official, the Tunisian Interior Minister, is formally on record mentioning it.

If you check out the people behind FP, you see that the routine ignorance, hostility to America’s friends, and support for civilization’s enemies makes sense. FP’s CEO is David Rothkopf. He does have an impressive resume, including time spent working for — wait for it — the Clinton Administration, which he joined in 1993 as Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Policy and Development. Moreover, as a Democrat, he twice voted for Obama. When Rothkopf writes articles, as he does often, they’re for the WaPo,New York Times, CNN, etc. So let’s just say that the man at the top ofFP is not neutral. He has tight ties to the Clinton administration, the Democrat party, and the elite world of D.C. politics and the Ivy League.

David Rothkopf thinks it’s fine that Hillary violated national security laws. Indeed, he thinks it’s the work of a fascist government to prosecute those who violated those laws — provided those people are Hillary Clinton: