Category: Editorial O’ The Day

Sorry, there will be no return to normalcy under Joe Biden

As the presidential campaign enters its final phase, one of the messages of the Biden campaign is that putting him, a 47-year veteran of national politics, into the White House will return us to something approaching normal. With Biden in charge, all the Trump craziness will expire, and things will be safe, sane and familiar.

In fact, there’s no chance of this happening. If Biden wins, things won’t go back to “normal.” You probably won’t even hear less from Donald Trump. And in a lot of areas, like foreign policy, it turns out the establishment’s version of normal wasn’t all that normal anyway.

Many of my lefty friends want Biden to win not so much over policy as because they have a visceral reaction to President Donald Trump. They hate the sight of his face, the sound of his voice, even the mention of his name. Electing Biden, they expect, will sweep Trump off the national stage.

But will it?

We are a long way from normalcy

Trump was big on the national stage long before he was president. Why would he go away after the election is over? He’ll still have tens of millions of (probably angry) followers, deep pockets and a huge megaphone.

There has already been some talk of Trump starting his own television network to rival Fox News, and/or his own social media platform — the latter made more plausible by the heavy censorious hands of those running Twitter and Facebook — and I suspect that Trump would regard a 2020 loss as a setback, not a defeat.

 Grover Cleveland came back to win a second term after losing the White House, Trump might reason. Why not me? He’ll probably hold campaign-style rallies around the country starting right after the election.

And the deep toxicity of national politics, which grew worse after the 2016 election but which has been brewing at least since the turn of the millennium, is not going to go away. In fact, a lot of what we’re hearing from Biden supporters suggests that it will get worse under a Biden administration.

Democrats are already calling for a Biden administration to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices until Democrats have a majority, to pack the Senate by admitting Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., as states, and even to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” in which Republicans will be dragged in front of the public and forced to confess the error of their ways. And, of course, abolishing the Electoral College. None of that is normal.

COVID-19 won’t simply disappear

Of course, maybe a “return to normal” really just means an end to worries about the coronavirus, which has in fact turned the world upside down. Biden is running commercials suggesting that tens of thousands of deaths from coronavirus are Trump’s fault.

That’s a pretty weak argument, given that Europe is doing no better than the United States, and arguably is doing worse.

Politicize things as much as you want — and Biden, who accused the president of xenophobia after Trump’s January order banning flights from China, and continued to hold mass rallies for two weeks afterward even after many states declared emergencies, is on thin ice here in claiming Trump acted too slowly — the coronavirus isn’t going away no matter who is in the White House on Jan. 21. It’s an aspect of nature, over which politics has very little influence.

So forget talk of a return to normal under Biden. It’s not going to happen. At most, you can vote for the flavor of abnormal that you prefer. Good luck!

Media’s double standard on the Second Amendment

The Colorado Springs Gazette covered the tragic killing of a Patriot Muster supporter by smearing the protest’s organizer, John Tiegen.

(You know Tiegen from “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” the movie based on the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens. Tiegen and others guarding the compound fought off Ansar al-Sharia terrorists while pleading for help that never came.)

Though BLM/Antifa counter-protesters broke down a barrier and launched cans at the Patriots, they remained peaceful. However, as they were leaving, they were accosted in an ugly confrontation that culminated in the shooting death of one of their own. The shooter was immediately arrested and later charged with second-degree murder.

On the following Monday, Oct. 12, in a front-page feature entitled “Protest leader known in Springs,” the Gazette appeared to blame Tiegen for his death.

The article reprimanded Tiegen for being on a rooftop at an earlier BLM protest in Colorado Springs. It ominously described a rifle held by another man as “military-style” and noted a “sighting scope, like those used by military snipers.”

These are misleading terms used to scare us about guns. Some 16 million AR-15s are legally owned by Americans for self-defense and sport. While it has military roots, it is clearly a civilian firearm and not a machine gun. I wonder if the reporter would describe the Jeep Wrangler as a “military-style” vehicle?

Note that no shots were fired from that rooftop, no laws were broken and no arrests were made. Their choice of the roof guaranteed no confrontations ensued. Tiegen himself was holding a dog, not a gun.

Though the Gazette portrayed Tiegen’s presence as threatening behavior, isn’t it just as plausible to reason that Tiegen was there to keep someone from doing something stupid?

In fact, law enforcement counts on Tiegen’s power to persuade to keep the peace. For example, the reporter found this “coded” warning posted by Tiegen before the protest: “P.S. For Mechanical pencil that offers a concealed eraser, top lead advance and removable Clip no more than .15 mm lead allowed in each. City of Denver ordnance (sic).” Continue reading “”

‘It’s Not That We Love Donald Trump So Much. It’s That We Can’t Stand You.’

Dear confused liberal,

If you are a liberal who can’t stand Trump, and cannot possibly fathom why conservatives would ever vote for him let me finally fill you in.

It’s not that we love Donald Trump so much. It’s that we can’t stand you. And we will do whatever it takes — even if that means electing a rude obnoxious unpredictable narcissist (your words not ours) to the office of President of the United States — because the only thing we find more dangerous to this nation than Donald Trump is you.

How is that possible you might ask? Well, you have done everything in your power to destroy our country. From tearing down the police, to tearing down our history, to tearing down our borders. From systematically destroying our schools and brainwashing our kids into believing socialism is the answer to anything (despite being an unmitigated failure everywhere), while demonizing religion and faith, and glorifying abortion, violence, and thug culture.

From calling us racists every time we expect everyone of any skin color to follow our laws equally, to telling us that our “tolerance” of lifestyles we don’t agree with isn’t nearly enough — no we must “celebrate” any lifestyle choice or gender option (forget science) you throw our direction or you think it’s fine to calls us homophobic or some other degrading slur you decide is okay to call us — ironically all while lecturing us on hate speech. While you gaslight us about 52 genders, polyamory, grown men in dresses sharing public locker rooms with little girls, and normalize the sexualization of young children, you simultaneously ridicule us for having the audacity to wish someone a “Merry Christmas” or hang a flag on the 4th of July, stand for the national anthem, or (horror or horrors) don a MAGA hat in public. So much for your “tolerance.” (See why we think you are just hypocrites??) Continue reading “”

BLUF:
According to its founders, NATO was created for three reasons: to keep the always aggressive Russians “out” of Europe, to keep the often isolationist Americans “in” to help protect it, and to keep the supposedly restless Germans “down” in order to avoid a replay of their invasions that ignited both world wars…….
That third mission seems ossified and silly now. But it is not entirely forgotten, and it may explain why many in Europe — and some in Germany itself — are worried when any American soldiers leave Germany.

A sort-of goodbye to Germany?

Victor Davis Hanson

President Trump recently ordered a 12,000-troop reduction in American military personnel stationed in Germany. That leaves about 24,000 American soldiers still in the country.

A little more than half of the troops being withdrawn will return home. The rest will be redeployed to other NATO member nations such as Belgium, Italy, and perhaps Baltic and Eastern European countries.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be furious. She claims the redeployments will “weaken the (NATO) alliance.” German commercial interests chimed in that the troop withdrawals will hurt their decades-old businesses serving U.S. bases.

Perhaps, but Merkel surely cannot be surprised. Six years ago, all NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Yet only eight of 29 so far have kept their word.

Germany spends only about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. As NATO’s largest, wealthiest and most powerful European member, it sets the example for the rest of the alliance. Continue reading “”

Biden clears a low bar, but now he can’t go back into hiding

HE did it, he really did it. Joe Biden got through the biggest speech of his life cleanly and coherently, without stumbling or mumbling or getting that faraway dazed look in his eyes.

That sounds like an incredibly low bar because it is, but it reflects the honest and serious debate about Biden’s fitness. His age, 77, past health problems and the obvious signs that his faculties have been diminished raised the unprecedented possibility that he would not be able to carry out one of the routine performances of a major party nominee — give an acceptance speech.

Coming into his party’s virtual coronation, the test was not whether he would give a good speech or a bad speech. It was whether he could give a speech at all.

So congratulations to Biden for clearing a fundamental hurdle. Now the bar is raised and he should be treated as any other candidate. He can start by releasing his health and medical reports, which he has so far refused to do.

Most important, there is no excuse for him to hide any longer in his basement. Hidin’ Biden must be a thing of history. Continue reading “”

Whew. When you’ve lost the Washington Post…………

The NRA is a cesspool. That doesn’t mean it should be dissolved.

Opinion by Ruth Marcus
⇒ Deputy editorial page editor⇐

I loathe the National Rifle Association. With its reflexive opposition to even the mildest gun regulation, it is complicit in the deaths of thousands.

And yet, I worry that New York Attorney General Letitia James has gone too far in her bid to dissolve the organization. Even assuming that the facts laid out in the state’s lawsuit against the NRA are true — and I believe every word about chief executive Wayne LaPierre’s jaw-dropping greed — the right remedy is fixing the NRA, not dismantling it.

The NRA has a First Amendment right to its misguided understanding of the Second. Forcing its dissolution has disturbing implications — made even more disturbing by the fact that the attorney general seeking that step is a Democrat who vowed during her campaign to “take on the NRA” and labeled it a “terrorist organization.” In this country, we don’t go after entities because of what they advocate.

James’s lawsuit against the NRA does not mention ideology, even if it strains credulity to think that James would have gone after the ACLU or Planned Parenthood with equal zeal if there were similar facts. Still, the facts as alleged are jaw-dropping — and, if you were a donor who dug deep in defense of gun rights, should be enraging. Continue reading “”

Blowback due in charges vs. Missouri couple

By now all America knows Mark and Patricia McCloskey from the video showing the St. Louis couple holding legal firearms as they defended themselves and their home from a crowd of protesters trespassing on their property. A politically motivated prosecutor has charged the couple with unlawful use of a weapon.

The felony count is because they pointed their weapons at protesters. McCloskey said he did so because he was “scared for my life,” and that of his wife. No shots were fired. Yet now prosecutor Kim Gardner is charging them on grounds they made the trespassers fear for their safety.

The good news is that there’s been plenty of official blowback. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson tweeted that “We will not allow law-abiding citizens to be targeted for exercising their constitutional rights.” He has promised a pardon if they’re convicted.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt is working to get the case dismissed, noting that, in addition to the U.S. and Missouri constitutions, Missouri law recognizes the “castle doctrine.” This allows residents to use force against intruders, including deadly force, based on self-defense and the notion that your home is your castle.

Gardner contends that those who surrounded the McCloskeys were “peaceful, unarmed protesters,” and the couple were therefore interfering in the crowd’s First Amendment rights. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Gardner that the guns they carried may be a reason events didn’t turn violent.

“I really thought it was Storming the Bastille, that we would be dead and the house would be burned and there was nothing we could do about it,” McCloskey told KSDK in an interview.

Even if the charges are dismissed, or the McCloskeys are pardoned after being convicted, again we have a public official responsible for upholding law and order wink at a mob while treating law-abiding citizens as criminals. If police cannot be counted on to deal with mobs, it’s even more vital that law-abiding Americans are free to exercise their Second Amendment right to protect themselves.

The Four Horsemen of America’s Apocalypse

It takes a lot to build a civilization, and though it is much easier to destroy a civilization, it takes a lot to do that, too.

But now we have four roots of evil that are guaranteed to do so.

No. 1: Victimhood.

The first is victimhood. The more people who regard themselves as victims — as individuals or as a group — the more likely they are to commit evil. People who think of themselves as victims feel that, having been victimized, they are no longer bound by normal moral conventions — especially the moral conventions of their alleged or real oppressors.

Everyone knows this is true. But few confront this truth. Every parent, for example, knows that the child who thinks of him or herself as a perpetual victim is the child most likely to cause and get into trouble. And criminologists report that nearly every murderer in prison thinks of himself as a victim.

On a societal scale, the same holds true — and being on such a larger scale, the chances of real evil ensuing are exponentially increased. One of the most obvious examples is Germany after World War I. Most Germans regarded themselves as victims — of the Treaty of Versailles; of a “stab in the back” German government; of the British, Americans and French; and, of course, of the Jews. This sense of victimhood was one of the most important factors in the popularity of the Nazis, who promised to restore German dignity.

That millions of black Americans regard themselves as victims — probably more so today than at any time in the past 50 years — can only lead to disaster for America generally and for blacks specifically. While victims generally feel free to lash out at others, they also go through life angry and unhappy.

No. 2: Demonization.

The second of the four ingredients of this civilization-destroying witches’ brew is demonization — demonizing a group as inherently evil.

That is being done now with regard to the white people of America. All — again, all — whites are declared racist. The only difference among them is that some admit it and some deny it. The notion that whites are inherently evil has long been associated with Louis Farrakhan. But it has apparently migrated out from his relatively small following to many blacks, even those who might consider Farrakhan a kook. Former President Barack Obama, hardly a Farrakhan follower, described America as having racism in its DNA. That is as close to inherently and irredeemably evil as it gets; you cannot change your DNA.

In that sense, not only are whites demonized, but America is, too. Unlike traditional liberals, the left regards America as a moral cesspool — not only racist but, according to The New York Times, founded to be so. The New York Times has created a history of America that declares its founding not in 1776 but in 1619, when the first black slaves arrived. The American Revolution was fought, according to this malign narrative, not merely for American independence but in order to preserve slavery, a practice the British would have interfered with. This “history” will now be taught in thousands of American schools.

The combination of victimhood and demonization alone is dangerous enough. But there are still two more horsemen galloping toward the looming apocalypse.

No. 3: A Cause To Believe In.

Most Americans throughout American history found great meaning in being American and in being religious — usually Christian. Since World War II, we have lived in a post-Christian, post-nationalist age. Until very recently, Americans would have found the expression “for God and country” deeply meaningful; that term today, on the left, is risible and execrable.

But people need something to believe in. The need for meaning is the greatest human need after the need for food. Leftism, with all its offshoots — feminism, environmentalism, Black Lives Matter, antifa — has filled that vacuum. In Europe, communism, fascism and Nazism filled the hole left by the demise of nationalism and Christianity. Here it is leftism and its offshoots.

No. 4: Lies.

The fourth and most important ingredient necessary for evil is lies. Lies are the root of evil. Ironically, slavery itself was made possible only because of the lie that the black was inferior to the white. Nazism was made possible thanks to the lie that Jews were not fully human. And communism was built on lies. Lenin, the father of Soviet Communism, named the Soviet communist newspaper “Truth” (“Pravda”) because truth was what the Communist Party said it was.

The New York Times, CNN and the rest of the mainstream “news” media are becoming our version of Pravda.

Objective truth doesn’t exist on the left. The universities have already declared “objective truth” as essentially an expression of “white privilege.” See what happens to a student who says in class, for example, that “men cannot give birth.”

The public self-debasement demanded of anyone who differs with the left — like New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees just did when he said not standing for the national anthem desecrated the flag and those who have died for it — happens almost daily. The only difference between this and what dissidents underwent during Mao’s Cultural Revolution is that the self-debasement here is voluntary — thus far.

Last week, when this Jew saw a store in Santa Monica with a sign reading “black-owned business” so as to avoid being destroyed, it evoked chilling memories.

That’s how bad it is in America today.

The Duration: Things of Which I Am Mightily Tired

Snippy self-satisfied pundits who tweet out news stories with prissy little swipes referencing something said three weeks ago by someone they hold in superior contempt. Just post the gad-dang story without preening your feathers.

Masks.

People who don’t wear masks.

People who wear masks walking the dog, making you feel stupid for not wearing a mask, but c’mon, man

People who were tweeting three weeks ago about how this was basically Ebola-TB-HIV-Norovirus that would turn every hospital into a stinking morgue because we had six, maybe seven ventilators in the country, and are still striking the same apocalyptic tone on a day when this happens:

The inexplicable disappearance of my favorite TP brand. It just ceased to exist. Same with Purell. Did they reset the Matrix and someone forgot to load certain brands?

Plastic shields at store checkouts. We all wonder if those are up for keeps now.

Busybody news stories about the things we shouldn’t be doing, as if we should all be riding stationary bikes for an hour every day while watching self-improvement documentaries about “self-care strategies.”

Morose news stories about how we shouldn’t feel positive, because everything sucks, which would be more compelling if the author hadn’t been preaching the gospel of Miserabilism before this struck.

Broad assertion of powers over everyday life in the name of Science, because we all know Isaac Newton was one of the authors of the Constitution and slipped the “Trust the Models” clause in somewhere in invisible ink, and it has absolute authority.

Anything having to do with Joe Biden, which seems like a review of a play that has been running on the East End since 1967.

TV shows full of people living ordinary lives as we knew them, because they seem like documentaries of Jazz-Age Flappers doing the Charleston a week before the crash of ’29.

And so forth. In short:

Joe Biden doesn’t get why gun rights are a bulwark against tyranny

Oh, Plugs understands RKBA alright enough. He, like other elitists, can’t stand that it confounds their tyrannical desires for power so they have to try an discount its effectiveness. And it does have effect on them, or they wouldn’t be so adamant about gun bans.

As Joe Biden’s flailing campaign headed toward a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire, the former vice president managed to get off some doozies. Perhaps most memorable was the time he jokingly dismissed a student questioner at one of his events as a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier.” But the man who first held federal office during the Nixon administration also managed to reveal his ignorance about one of the key arguments for gun rights.

“Those who say ‘the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots,’ a great line, well, guess what?” Biden lectured his audience in the “Live Free or Die” state. “The fact is, if you’re going to take on the government, you need an F-15 with Hellfire missiles. There is no way an AK-47 is going to take care of you.”

Even though we believe that the Biden candidacy is fated to pop soon, the argument he made is such a prevalent misrepresentation of why gun rights supporters view the Second Amendment as a bulwark against tyranny that it’s worth addressing.

Yes, of course, critics are right that civilian gun owners wouldn’t be able to overthrow completely a government willing to deploy a vast, expansive, and technologically elite military force. But that’s not the point. Our founders believed that every man has the fundamental right to resist tyranny.

Furthermore, one doesn’t need to defeat the government in armed civil war for an armed populace to still serve as a bulwark to tyranny. What matters is that citizens can put up a fight. An armed populace dramatically increases the cost of imposing and maintaining tyranny. Sure, perhaps a tyrannical future president could subdue a resistance, even in a country with more guns than people, such as America, but it would require months of bloody conflict, substantial military losses, and a protracted political nightmare.

Contrast this to a scenario in which an unarmed citizenry is completely at the government’s mercy, able to sweep in and crack down on its people with immediacy and ease. It’s clear that just imposing a higher cost to repression in and of itself is a check on would-be tyrants, even if the people couldn’t, in fact, overthrow the government successfully.

Just consider what has happened in other countries such as China and Russia, where citizens are disarmed and left helpless.

In China, the tyrannical government under Xi Jinping has launched a brutal crackdown on the Uighurs, rounding up people of the Muslim ethnic minority and putting them in reeducation camps. It’s an international outrage and human rights disaster. But it’s also one that would have been less likely to have happened if the 1 million Uighurs had AR-15s at home.

A similar scenario has unfolded in Russia, where Vladimir Putin’s regime has allowed a vicious, anti-gay purge to occur in the Chechnya region. Surely those innocent gay men facing electroshock torture would disagree with Biden’s assessment that a citizenry’s ability to offer armed resistance to tyranny isn’t worth protecting.

For a man who is running on his half-century of experience in politics, it’s amazing that Biden doesn’t understand the Second Amendment or its supporters.