Trump and the Latino Vote

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Trump would not have to change his policies to capture 40 to 50 percent of the Latino vote (which is quite different from “Latino” spokespeople on television and the Jorge Ramos crowd), as opposed to simply articulating them:

1) The “new” Democratic party not only show signs of a new more insidious anti-Semitism. But as we’ve seen from comments by Senator Feinstein, Harris, and Hirono, and the surreal and barbarous statements coming out of Virginia and New York on third-trimester abortion (and near infanticide), it is now becoming anti-Catholic to a degree not seen in decades in America. Why would a devout Catholic wish to side with such bigotry? Trump is on the right side of the abortion and the religious-discrimination issues.

2) Hispanic unemployment is at record low levels in a growing economy. One can see the realities by simply driving around small towns in Central California where the flurry of activity and demand for labor are unprecedented, and workers have a range of options and leverage not seen in the 21st century. Even slight decreases in border crossings are force multipliers in the empowerment of Mexican-American and other Hispanic citizens in efforts to boost wages and gain options in employment. Trump’s policies did much of that, visible even in highly regulated and less dynamic California. Few middle-class commuters wish to endorse the New Green Deal that would mandate soon ending chain saws, leaf blowers and the workers’ daily commute.

Read the full article here.

Angry Reader 02-01-2019

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

Dear Dr. Hanson,

I am most definitely an “angry” reader, but in no way angry with your writing! I respect and value what you have to say, and read virtually everything you post on the Internet. Thank you for all you do.

I address you because you always have a view that is rational, interesting and adds immeasurably to the discourse; you seem to ‘get it.’

Like many other conservatives, I’m sure, my anger is boiling over from this latest insult and assault on conservatives: The Incident of the Covington Boys. Of course, it’s “just” the latest attack, but it’s so blatant, so vitriolic, so shameless, so widespread. Why, oh why, is there no way we can mount a coordinated defense/response/redress? Why do we have no “Tea Party” moment? Why is there no organization that reflects the other half of this country? Why is there no way to let the parents of Nicholas Sandmann know how proud so many of us are of their son and his literal stance? Why is it only Leftists are capable of implementing their agenda? Is it because we’ve kept our collective heads in the sand and just expected “others” would play by the rules? Is Pat Buchanan correct in his statement this date that the country votes, but the elites do as they please (e.g., Brexit, The Wall). Is it hopeless?

I am old and probably won’t see the end of this malaise. But I wish I could DO SOMETHING!

Any ideas??

Thanks again,

Linda Barr

Pe Ell, Washington

_____________________________________________________________________________

Dear Not Really Angry Reader Linda Barr,

You describe a paradox in which 55 percent of the country is socially and economically conservative and yet 90 percent of our influence creators—Hollywood, network news and programing, the mainstream media, the Internet and social media, foundations, universities, professional sports, most big corporations—are leftwing. The result is that the old silent majority is like some ancient defiant sandstone rock jutting out on the beach, as the relentless surf insidiously pounds it and wears it ever so slowly away.

My only advice is not to remain silent. Everyone, each according to his or her station, has a role to play. This is not time for timidity or reticence.

Third-trimester abortion is not normal but virtual infanticide. The New Green Deal is a prescription for disaster. Free college and cancellation of student debt are insults to millions who went to work at 18, did not drift in and out of college, and oppose Pajama Boy culture, and yet are asked to pay for the debts of the more advantaged. Medicare for all is Medicare for no one, and the pathway to managed and rationed care and worse to come. Wealth taxes and higher income and estate taxes will inevitably, despite the rhetoric, fall on the upper middle-class, given that billionaires are mostly on the side of the Left and find exemptions. Abolishing ICE and open borders mean the end of U.S. sovereignty.

These new progressive agendas are frightening and we must say “they shall not pass.”

Sincerely,

Victor Hanson

Much Has Changed for the Better Since 2016—Not That Trump Will Get Credit

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

The news obsesses over the recent government shutdown, the latest Robert Mueller arrest and, of course, fake news—from the BuzzFeed Michael Cohen non-story to the smears of the Covington Catholic High School students.

But aside from the weekly hysterias, the world has dramatically changed since 2016 in ways we scarcely have appreciated.

The idea that China systematically rigged trade laws and engaged in technological espionage to run up huge deficits is no longer a Trump, or even a partisan, issue.

In the last two years, a mainstream consensus has grown that China poses a commercial and mercantile threat to world trade, to its neighbors and to the very security of the United States—and requires a strong response, including temporary tariffs.

The world did not fall apart after the U.S. pulled out of the flawed Iran nuclear deal. Most yawned when the U.S. left the symbolic but empty Paris Climate Accord. Ditto when the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Read the full article here.

On Assimilation

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

The idea of rapid assimilation, integration, intermarriage, and Americanization was once melting-pot clear. Immigrants arrived in the U.S. eager to find something better (whether economically, politically, culturally, or socially) than what they left behind.

So they accepted the premise that the general core of American customs, traditions, and protocols, such as free-market economics, protections of private property, the chauvinism of a middle class, legal transparency, due process, an independent judiciary, the rule of law as defined by the Constitution, republican and consensual government, freedoms as outlined in the Bill of Rights, separation of church and state — within a general landscape of both Christian predominance and tolerance of competing faiths, rationalism, and ongoing expansion of civil rights.

To do otherwise and reject such a menu, was seen as an absurd paradox: Why would an emigrant leave an apparently less pleasant place simply to replicate its institutions in his new home and thereby contribute to re-creating the original problems that he had fled from? (That is not to say that people are rational, as Texans and Floridians discover when some California refugees start imposing their destructive California tastes upon arrival in the very no-income-tax, less regulated, and smaller-government states they sought out.)

Read the full article here.

The Progressive Race to the Bottom

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

The old Democratic party championed the working classes, wanted secure borders to protect middle-class union wage earners, and focused generous federal entitlement help on the citizen poor. Civil rights were defined as equality of opportunity for all.

That party is long dead. An updated Hubert Humphrey or even Bill Clinton would not recognize any of the present “Democrats.”

Even the old wing of elite liberals is mostly long gone, with its talk of legal immigration only, opposition to censorship, pro-Israel foreign policy, let-it-hang-out Sixties indulgence, and free speech.

It was superseded by grim progressives who are not so much interested in a square, new, or fair deal for the middle classes, as an entirely different deal that redefines everything from the Bill of Rights and the very way we elect presidents and senators to an embrace of identity politics as its first principle.

Read the full article here.

Attack of the Techno-Lynch Mob

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

The Covington Lie offered the perfect occasion for the electronic mob to pounce—after temporarily licking its wounds following the BuzzFeed fake news hysteria. And it did so without shame or even much regret after the fact, as Jason Leopold, the BuzzFeed fabulist, ceded center stage to a kindred serial prevaricator, Nathan Phillips. The latter in his 15 minutes of fame did not make a major statement that was not contradicted by an earlier statement or by the facts.

The entire psychodrama boiled down not to what the facts on the ground showed, but rather who each party was perceived innately to be.

On the one side, the suspects were seen as rambunctious teenage kids (thus easy targets not especially schooled in the arts of rhetoric or repartee).

They were white (enough said) and smiling (indicative of their smirking privilege and lack of victim status).

Read the full article here.

The Issue Is Not Roger Stone’s Lurid Personal Life but Equality under the Law

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

The issues of special Robert Mueller’s indictment of Roger Stone have nothing to do with his personal life. His sexual habits should be of no concern to anyone. And what is so funny about the Internet jokes about (a still presumed innocent) Stone enjoying rape once he’s in prison?

The issues are instead threefold: One, given that Stone has said so many contradictory things, were his public statements lies and his sworn statements true, vice versa, neither or both?

Two, why after 21 months, is the special counsel still hounding minor transitory Trump officials (Stone was fired from the Trump campaign way back in August 2015) in hopes of flipping them to find proof of almost anything against Trump? Stone, like all other Americans indicted by Mueller so far, is not charged with any crime close to “collusion.” We are now well past the descent of this investigation into “show me the man, and I’ll show the crime.”

Three, the Stone indictment raises real questions of equality under the law.

Read the full article here.

Angry Reader 01-23-19

victorhanson

From An Angry Reader:

Re: IMPEACH TRUMP

Dear Sir:

I just read your article in the opinion section of the Albuq. Journal today.

I guess I want to ask you if you approve of the President of our Country, the role model for our children, going out there every day lying, cheating, and manipulating everything money that Trump wants for his own account.

He will not turn over his tax returns. Why? He’s hiding something.

He doesn’t understand that even his family were immigrants. We all were.

He has no compassion or empathy for anyone, especially if you’re brown or black.

If you need proof, it’s there every day. Just open your eyes and watch the TV and read the paper.

Everyone with half a brain is DISGUSTED with Trump and his behavior on every level. I can’t wait until he gets impeached.

We are all DISGUSTED. And if you are not, you really need to talk to your mother and your wife and your daughter.

They need you to challenge his rhetoric, not support it. They are looking to you for your perspective.

It’s a great opportunity to show them how much of a man you are. Support them. Be kind to them. Believe in them.

Please retract your article.

Here is my personal mobile # if you would like to talk about it. 505-XXX-XXXX

Thank you for reading my email.

James L. Lester, RT, BSN, MbA
Medical Practice Consultants, Inc.

————————————————————————————————————

Dear Angry Reader James L. Lester,

I congratulate you on incorporating lots of our all too familiar characteristics of the Angry Reader.

You included the all-capital words of outrage.

You sign off with the usual array of titles to suggest authority and expertise.

There is the standard ad hominem (I am culpable and so must talk to my family for therapeutic guidance). Even my manhood is at stake if I do not denounce Trump (63 million are thus also emasculated?).

There is the usual leftist effort to censure opposition ideas (“Please retract your article”). And finally, there is simply no argument, just a serious of adolescent and unsupported assertions.

I wish all presidents might turn over their tax returns; few do. Barack Obama weaponized the IRS against his opponents, and never reported the gift from Tony Rezko of a radically discounted lot until exposed. Ditto Hillary on Cattlegate, in which against 1-4 trillion odds she parlayed $1,000 into $100,000 and never paid capital gains taxes on the profit—again, until caught.

I am afraid I have zero confidence in the news; just this weekend they presented the two latest examples of fabricated stories with the supposed proof that Michael Cohen was ordered to lie by Trump about the dates of the Trump organization’s business dealings in Russia, and the psychodrama of the Covington school kids on the DC mall. In both cases, the stories were unverified and yet used by the electronic lynch mob, pundits, and talking heads to hang Trump and the kids before the jury of facts and evidence weighed in and discredited the sources. The current progressive mob is sort of like the cowards who swarm the proverbial Western jail, eager to hang the suspect before he can be tried. Only in our culture there is no sheriff with a double-barreled shotgun to hold off the Internet mob and so they usually drag out and lynch their prey.

As for compassion, it can be defined a variety of ways. One might think how a 3% annualized GDP and peacetime unemployment at 3.7-9% has given millions a chance of a good job and with it respect and dignity—in a way not true since 2007.

Victor Davis Hanson, BA, PhD, JD (Honorary) etc. etc.
The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, etc. etc.

Should the FBI Run the Country?

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Since the media would doubtless answer that loaded question, “It depends on the president,” let us imagine the following scenario.

Return to 2008, when candidate Barack Obama had served only about three years in the U.S. Senate, his sum total of foreign policy experience. And he was running against the overseas old-hand, decorated veteran, and national icon John McCain—a bipartisan favorite in Washington, D.C.

During the campaign, unfounded rumors had swirled about the rookie Obama that he might ease sanctions on Iran, distance the United States from Israel, and alienate the moderate Arab regimes, such as the Gulf monarchies and Egypt.

Stories also abounded that the Los Angeles Times had suppressed the release of a supposedly explosive “Khalidi tape,” in which Obama purportedly thanked the radical Rashid Khalidi for schooling him on the Middle East and correcting his earlier biases and blind spots, while praising the Palestinian activist for his support for armed resistance against Israel.

Read the full article here.

The Mueller Squirrel Case

victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently indicted yet another peripheral character in his Trump probe, Russian attorney Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, for alleged money laundering in a matter quite separate from Trump.

Like almost all of Mueller’s indictments of the past 20 months, the charges against Veselnitskaya had nothing to do with his original mandate of finding any possible Trump–Russia collusion. No matter; within minutes, Veselnitskaya’s name was injected into the media cycle as if the fact that she was Russian and connected to the name Mueller were de facto proof that Trump was guilty of something — if not collusion, something worse.

If Mueller was not a special counsel, and if he was not looking for anyone deemed useful to flip to find dirt on Donald Trump, then Veselnitskaya would have been just another daily Washington foreign influence-peddler being courted with impunity by her American influence-peddling and often equally suspect counterparts.

To date, in almost every one of his indictments of Americans, Mueller has gone after Trump staffers, often quite minor, for alleged crimes that either were committed well before Mueller began his investigations, or came as a result of plea bargaining in exchange for providing expected dirt on Trump, or were the result of government surveillance or the use of government informants, or all of that and more. And all that sensationalism, through leaks and insinuations, was packaged by the media as “bombshells” and “watersheds” and “turning points” ad nauseam for 20 months.

Read the full article here