Tag: America First

TBT: VP Vance: A Worthy Successor

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It’s hard to believe that a year ago, we were gearing up for a presidential election.  Now Trump is back in office—woooooot!—and he has a worthy successor in the wings.

It’s going to be tough sledding in the years ahead, but it’s reassuring to know that we have a legitimate successor ready to roll in 2028.  Vance’s incredible speech to the various heads of Europe’s governments earlier this year was a call to government accountability—and for Europe to wake up.  It was not an attack on Europe, per se, but a powerful plea for its leaders to do something to improve the lives of their people.

I’m excited to see more from Vance in the years to come.

With that, here is 17 July 2024’s “VP Vance: A Worthy Successor“:

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TBT^18,446,744,073,709,551,616: Happy Birthday, America!

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It is wild looking back at the past year’s posts, and seeing how liberty keeps rallying to victory every time it seems near to death.  A year ago, the future seemed uncertain; today, it seems as though a light is shining through the fog.  Yes, America still has problems—lots of them—but we’re finally experiencing competent leadership that—gasp!—puts Americans first.

So it is that, at 249-years-old tomorrow, it seems that, at long last, America is back.

With that, here is 4 July 2024’s “TBT^4,294,967,296: Happy Birthday America!“:

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VP Vance: A Worthy Successor

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After the usual will-they-won’t-they of the vice presidential selection drama, President Trump delivered yet again, picking Ohio Senator and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance as his running mate.

The Vance pick is symbolic on a number of levels.  As a US Senator, he has focused on improving the lives of the forgotten men and women that President Trump champions.  He has rejected the siren song of the Establishment Uniparty.  He is very clearly the conservative populist in the Senate.

I receive an e-mail newsletter from The New York Times each morning at my work e-mail.  I am not fan of The New York Times, but I likely signed up for it because I needed to access some article for my students.  Regardless, the Tuesday, 16 July edition of The Morning newsletter makes a claim with which I agree:  in picking Vance, Trump was, essentially, picking his successor.

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TBT^4,294,967,296: Happy Birthday, America!

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Today the United States celebrates its 248th birthday.  Things seem to be looking up from a year ago.  The Usurper Biden short-circuited during last week’s presidential debate, while President Trump came across as a restrained but effective pugilist.  As I told my neighbor, one of the two came across as presidential; it’s pretty clear which one.

Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News has been a Godsend for open discourse and dialogue.  Not only did he interview Vladimir Putin—perhaps the most important interview of the century—he’s hosted dozens of guests from all across the political spectrum and from all over the world, many of whom would have been too spicy for Fox News to touch.

Across the pond, Nigel Farage is shaking up an otherwise dull parliamentary election with his revitalized Reform Party.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.  It’s starting to feel a lot like 2016 again—and a lot like 1776.

With that, here is 6 July 2023’s “TBT^65,536: Happy Birthday, America!“:

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Election Day 2020

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Well, here it is:  Election Day 2020.  I got up early this morning to get to the polls around 6:50 AM, and there was already a line twenty-deep waiting at the door.  I voted around 7:25 AM, so it wasn’t too terribly long of a wait.  When I left, there was still a long line out the door, and I live in a town with less than 1000 people and two voting precincts.

Immediately after voting, I felt energized.  I may be naive, as my blogger buddy jonolan claims, but I can’t help but feel optimistic this morning.  Hopefully that optimism bears out across the country, and holds up as the results come in.

I remember in 2016 a sense of despair that the fix was in, which slowly gave way to the magic of a Trump upset.  This year I am more anxious about the aftermath of the results than I am about the results themselves (although I am praying fervently for an unexpected Trump landslide).  A narrow victory for either candidate is probably the worst possible outcome (ergo, my aforementioned prayers for a convincing, incontestable Trump victory).

Of course, if my prayers are answered and Trump wins resoundingly and Republicans dominate Congress again, there won’t suddenly be peace on the streets.  As I noted in “Progressivism and Political Violence,” the progressive Left will resort to anything—including violence—if it’s electorally denied access to the legitimate organs of power.

With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court is now solidly conservative-constitutionalist.  If Republicans control the presidency and a convincing majority in the House and Senate, the Left will grow even more enraged, unhinged, and violent.  Never mind they can take a bite at the congressional apple again in two years; they will array every force and tactic at their disposal to destroy us.

We must remember, too, that electoral victory does not equate to cultural victory.  The Left dominates the institutions and entertainment.  Leftist dogma increasingly shapes our basic assumptions about the world.  Those assumptions run deep, infecting even conservative Christians, the very group equipped intellectually and spiritually to resist such corruption.

But Leftism, for all its falsehoods and inconsistencies, is seductive to untrained minds and to well-meaning hearts.  It whispers sweet lies and promises.  In this way, it is truly demonic; indeed, it is satanic.  Satan appears as a being of light; his ugliness and wickedness only reveal themselves later.  Such has been the course of Leftism in American history.

But for now, let’s focus on winning that electoral victory.  If you haven’t already, get out and VOTE for Trump and Republican candidates at every level.  Let’s win the levers of power—and then begin the much harder work of repairing our broken culture.

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One Final Appeal

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The 2020 election is tomorrow, and the fate of the country hangs in the balance.  Yes, such melodramatic rhetoric crops up in every election, but it’s very real this time around.

By this point, many Americans have made their choices, but I implore undecided conservatives and centrists to cast their votes for President Trump—and for Republicans at every level.  Sure, there are still some RINOs in our midsts, but a semi-reliable RINO is better by far than a reliably destructive progressive.

Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell might not always vote the way we would like them to, but there’s no denying they’ve been effective at supporting President Trump’s agenda in deed, if not always in words.  But actions speak louder than words; I can put up with a token denouncement from McConnell if he keeps packing the courts with conservative constitutionalists and playing procedural hardball with the Democrats.

Of course, the main attraction is Trump himself.  If he were any other person in American history, we’d be lauding him as the greatest president of a generation.  But because his style is combative and pugilistic, conservatives are all too eager to denounce him as “reckless.”  The irony is that Trump would have been unable to accomplish everything he has in his first term if he didn’t possess that scrappy sensibility.

I had a conversation last week with a conservative friend who agonizingly arrived at the point where even though he dislikes Trump’s style, he realizes the Democrats have nothing to offer but death and destruction.  Voting for the Democrats was never on the table for him, but he felt he could not morally support the President—until he thoughtfully considered the president’s record.  As he put it, “‘Peace in the Middle East’ used to be a joke.  Then Trump actually did it.”

Trump is the obvious choice for peace, prosperity, and national renewal.  Joe Biden is a puppet of the progressive Left, which will shunt him out of office in favor of Kamala Harris—a calculating, cruel, corrupt politician lacking any scruples whatsoever—at the first opportunity.

Don’t let that happen.  Vote for Trump, vote Republican, and vote to Keep America Great!

MAGA!

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Second Presidential Debate Review

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Last night was the second and final presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden.  Overall, it was far more measured in tone and richer in substance than the first debate, and it accomplished what President Trump needed to do:  reassure squishy independents and critical undecided voters that he’s not just a loose cannon, but can actually govern, and govern well.

I also found the moderator to be surprisingly fair.  The questions obviously were slanted in favor of the Democrats, as these questions always are (again, who cares about climate change anymore?), but she gave President Trump the opportunity to respond to criticisms, and also had some tough questions for Biden.

President Trump did what he should have done in the first debate:  he gave Biden the rope with which to hang himself.  It was Biden who brought up China and Ukraine, which opened the door for Trump to attack Hunter Biden’s lucrative salaries from foreign companies and governments—the result of Biden’s influence peddling.

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Trump’s One-Two Punch

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Trump won in 2016 running on a strong “America First” platform.  A major component of America First-ism is prioritizing the interests and the well-being of American citizens first—before the interests and well-being of foreign-born workers and immigrants, legal or otherwise.  The appeal and the concept aren’t difficult to understand:  a government should, chiefly, operate in the interest of its citizens before anyone else.  We can discuss the best immigration policies as a nation, but those policies should always place American citizens at the forefront.

It’s such a simple and pure political philosophy, it’s a wonder it comes under such fire.  But such is the world of globalists—who want cheap labor and sacrificial offerings to Efficiency—and progressives—who think anyone who is white and cares about having a job is a racist.  Take out the mercenaries (the former group) and the insane (the latter group) and you have reasonable people, those folks that might quibble around the edges of America First doctrine, but can’t disagree with its fundamental premises.

Trump has been better than most of his predecessors on immigration, though his waffling and equivocating—likely the product of Jared Kushner’s influence—have soured his some of his earliest supporters.  His turn on Jeff Sessions and the former Attorney General’s ultimate defeat in the Alabama Republican primary this summer seemed to many Trumpists to be a betrayal of immigration patriotism.  Sessions was, indeed, the leading voice in the United States government, pre-Trump, in denouncing open borders and unlimited immigration.  With Sessions leaving the national scene, immigration patriots and restrictionists have reason to worry.

That said, it bears remembering that Trump won the presidency campaigning on building a wall, prioritizing Americans over foreign workers, and keeping American industries at home.  No one in meaningful national politics (other than Jeff Sessions and Pat Buchanan) was beating that drum prior to Trump.  Trump tapped into a deep well of resentment over the Obama administration’s decade of putting middle-class Americans last, and several decades of neglect and open scorn from national politicians.

I also don’t expect Trump to reverse the postwar consensus overnight, or to get the whole loaf all at once.  I think Trump’s basic instincts are to put Americans first, while weighing the complexities of various interest groups and economic factors.

But Trump is at his best when he cuts the Gordian Knot and drives to the heart of the issues.  If Americans are losing jobs to foreign visa holders, well, make those visas less valuable.  He’s done that with an executive order barring H1B visa holders from working in federal government jobs, and barring the government from using contractors who use H1B visa holders.

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The Tuck for President

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The 2020 election is looming, and while Trump is struggling at the moment, I am praying that he can pull out another victory and another four-year term.  The stakes are high:  a Trump victory, at minimum, allows us to forestall a progressive Armageddon for another four years; it also undermines both the Never Trumpers (who can no longer write off Trump’s 2016 victory as a “fluke”) and the ultra-progressives.  I don’t think the modern Democrat Party has much of a moderate wing left, but that small, dying minority might be able to convince the Party that going full-on progressive is a bad move.

A Trump defeat, however, would be catastrophic.  Z Man wrote Tuesday that a “Democratic sweep” would essentially mean the end of elections in America—at least, the end of meaningful national ones:

More important, there is no electoral option either. The Democrat party is actively cheering on this lunacy. Joe Biden is running an extortion campaign, where a vote for him means an end to the violence and Covid lock downs. How realistic is that when his party is cheering for the mayhem, promising to take it to a new level after they win the final election. It is not hyperbole to say that a Democrat sweep in November means the end of elections. What would be the point?

Trump’s defeat would also embolden the Jonah Goldberg/David French neocons of Conservatism, Inc., who are essentially abstract ideologues offering token resistance to the Left.  There’s a reason the joke “The Conservative Case for [Progressive Goal Here]” exists, because National Review tends to put up tortured, weak resistance to the progressive fad of the moment, before finally caving and accepting the latest lunacy as a “bedrock conservative principle.”  What conservative site goes around pitching “magic mushrooms” as conservative—and has done so repeatedly?  The conservative publication of record possesses the quality and depth of a college newspaper.

Regardless, Trump’s defeat would mean not just Biden’s marionette presidency, in which ultra-progressive handlers pull the strings; it would also mean a return to boring, ineffectual, tired, defeated neoconservatism.  National conservatism, social conservatism, traditionalism, populism—these movements and others, which have enjoyed a renewal since 2015, would wither on the vine—or see themselves pruned from “respectable” Beltway “conservatism.”  That would only hasten the victory of progressivism in the absence of any real opposition.

But there is hope.  2020 looms large, but 2024 is is not that far away.  On the Right, there is a good bit of speculation about who will fill Trump’s shoes.  VDare offers one compelling option:  Tucker Carlson.

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Populism Wins

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A major lesson of the 2016 election was that the neoliberal consensus of the prior thirty years was not the panacea its advocates claimed.  Trump’s candidacy was premised on the notion that the national government should work for the interests of the nation’s people, not on behalf of globalist concerns and aloof cosmopolitan elites.  Government could be reformed to strengthen the nation, rather than operating as the piggy bank for and protector of internationalists.

It’s interesting to reflect how entrenched the assumptions of neoliberalism were prior to 2015-2016.  When Trump began his historic campaign, virtually no one on the Right was talking about tariffs, other than Pat Buchanan (and a long essay on the necessity of a trade war with China that Oren Cass wrote for National Review in 2014).  The outsourcing of jobs overseas was assumed to be a short-term sacrifice that would result in more efficiency (ergo, lower prices on consumer goods) and more skilled jobs here.  We were a “nation of immigrants,” so we’d better throw the doors wide open.

With Trump’s election, a long-dormant populist wing reemerged, consisting both of conservative Republicans and disgruntled Democrats.  Tariffs became an important foreign and domestic policy tool.  A trade war with China soon began, and the United States renegotiated the NAFTA agreement with Mexico and Canada.  Manufacturing jobs began returning to the United States, and immigration laws began to be enforced (so long as those Hawaiian judges didn’t get in the way).  The economy, rather than contracting as the free trade hardliners warned, grew exponentially, and even now is recovering at a remarkable clip after The Age of The Virus temporarily sidelined it.

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