Friends, Tuesday night's State of the Union address confirmed why you and I voted for Donald Trump in the first place. He respects American traditions and values, yes, but he's also ready and willing to shake up the system, to challenge entrenched interests and break up decades-old political logjams. I meant what I said in the title to this post: the SOTU made Trump seem larger than life and infinitely more mature and visionary than the Dems, who came only to scoff and to snicker. He challenged both parties to act together, to compromise, in the national interest. My latest article considers whether the Democrats might heed his call, even in a small way. Check it out:
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2019/02/07/will-petty-democrats-spurn-trumps-call-to-greatness-n2540976
Dr. Waddy: I think your view plausible and well supported; perhaps he can get some grudging cooperation from them. But I tend to think that any substance will be the outcome of contention and conflict between irreconcilable parties.
ReplyDeleteThe Dems would have savaged Mr. Rogers had he unforgiveably denied Hillary her due.
I think the President was masterful at SOTU. He played those leftist brats with the consummate skill of a , well, grown up person.
I was appalled but not surprised by the unalloyed hate written all over Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's face when the President condemned the socialism so very fashionable now among those convinced that Donald Trump is "for it" so to speak - on his way out for sure. Too,just by the way, these vicious dreamers expect to insulate and exempt themselves from the less than desireable consequences even they realize socialism imposes. But AOC, with her fanatic antipathy and her absurd "Green New Deal" puts one in mind of Pol Pot. I'm sure he would approve of her fantastic aspirations and would be generous with practical advice on how to force them on an unforgiveably backward and recalcitrant people like Americans. It is much to be wished that she seizes the Dem helm with dispatch and guides them to electoral disaster.
Jack, I view the mixed Dem reaction to our glorious President's invective against "socialism" as the most intriguing and fateful moment in the whole SOTU. It's a line that works very well with many older Americans, who remember and understand what socialism can entail, but for youngsters like AOC the Marxist menace apparently inspires no dread. Trump may have to educate some Americans on what socialism is, therefore, but if he pursues this line faithfully and insistently throughout 2019 and 2020, I think we may have found a winning message, i.e. one that has the power to save America.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: I always find it useful to remember that people like Mao were once members of the human race. Their depraved ideas, combined with the power to advance them, wrought inhuman calamity without limit. We have people like that holding forth in the U.S.now. Were they to acquire the means they would destroy our lives in their Quixotic determination to bring about "equality of results" and to avenge past wrongs and perceived injustices. You need not line people up against a wall to do them penultimate destruction (though there are certainly some in the leftist gang who have advocated just that). Less "equality" for proscribed "classes"would do just fine these days ("after all, we aren't Bolsheviks").
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Also, by the by: I can well imagine the drama of the President's historically justified excoriation of socialism,backed as it was by the certainty that we have been Nemesis to that benighted dream. That issue, into which the Dems are precipitating themselves to an indefensible stance, combined with their now overt advocacy for the unlimited killing of infantile human beings, could well be their undoing. Bob Dole once said," if I'm President I won't outlaw abortion, I'll just talk about it constantly "; he was right - anunrelenting and completely revealing public stand against this ghoulish practice bids fair to sting the American conscience to the quick and bring civilized, human limitation of it to realization. I think Jefferson said words to the effect of " when I think of slavery, I quake to think that God is just". Our President would do well and just to substitute "abortion" in a similar lamentation and to place responsibility for infanticide's disgraceful present proliferation squarely on its apologists and its enablers - the Dems. If these two issues bring them down our country is redeemed.
ReplyDeleteJack, it will be interesting to see how prominent the abortion debate is in 2020. My guess would be...not too prominent. I think both parties fear the issue and would rather dodge it. Frankly, I also think Trump may be a "soft" pro-lifer. In the end, though, one more conservative justice=the end of Roe vs. Wade. People should vote accordingly.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: One afterthought: I'm not at all sure that eager young American socialists are unaware of the undeniably historically proven human costs of the imposition of their irresponsible fantasies. I think they have a blind spot: they think that those liable for past "oppression" will be those most negatively effected by their enlightened totalitarianism and they delight in that prospect. And I don't think they care if there is some spillover of oppression to the innocent; they are the first to condemn collateral damage in U.S. military operations but consider themselves morally exempt from such scrutiny.
ReplyDeleteI will hazard some after-afterthoughts. It depends what you mean by "young American socialists". If you mean the self-declared socialists, who rabidly proclaim their Marxist creed and join Antifa demonstrations to prove their mettle, then I would agree that they are capable of almost anything, and in fact they would happily accept some collateral damage if they could make but one member of the Trump family cry in the process... If, however, you mean all the "compassionate", PC, fuzzy-headed, left-leaning snowflakes who make up the bulk of the millennial generation, I'm not sure they have the stomach for real nastiness, or even for voting, in most cases. Youth turnout was way up in 2018, yes, and to the Dems' advantage, but it was still abysmally low, by senior citizen standards. That's another way of saying that a lot of the socialism-lite we might perceive in the younger generation is just hot air. The whippersnappers do little to bring "social justice" to fruition, and I suspect there's every prospect that they might wise up in time.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: Excellent points. I remember how, in a documentary about youthful radicals in the '60's, a seasoned activist said "most of you don't know what the hell you are talking about: when eyes and teeth start flying because people are being hit in the head with 2 by 4's, most of you will break and run". You are right in citing recent low voter turnout among the young; before too long, many of them, now married, beparented and property owning, will see things somewhat differently, as they will have realized what life is all about. As for the hard cores, we can defeat them if we resolve to do so. 1968 and 1972 bear witness to the fecklessness of a radicalism which actually thought itself viable, in an America which continues to afford virtually anyone willing to live a positive life, a good life. But we must beware of the fringe gaining a beachhead and an undeserved victory. Would we tolerate a reprise in America of reprehensible Naziism? Of course not and we must be equally decisive with its moral equivalent, inhuman Marxism.
ReplyDeleteHear hear! The true socialists and radicals, I think, are few in number. The horrible truth is that, despite their odiousness and rarity, they dominate many of our key institutions. Presumably, they do so by rigorous self-screening and rampant discrimination against anyone insufficiently "pure". They are the Jesuits of our time. One can't but admire their zealotry and guile.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: When the Nazis invaded Russia Hitler told all German soldiers that they would not be held liable for perceived war crimes there. Barbaric German conduct in Russia bears the mark of that exemption from civilization. Similarly, Marx declared his acolytes free of traditional standards and that has given them, to this day, demonstrated leave to employ "any means necessary".
ReplyDeleteYes, Jack -- impassioned dedication to a cause does seem to convey extreme license to violate traditional norms. Sleight of hand works just as well, though: bring the enemy's crimes to the attention of the masses, and make the crimes of "the movement" invisible.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: That tactic certainly has the same fell effect. Principles developed (ironically in the extreme) in the rarified atmosphere of the reading rooms of the 19th century British Library by Marx have , in implementation, proven inhuman beyond measure and thoroughly condemn themselves thereby. In 2019 we can see this clearly and our resolve to oppose those who yet embrace them, is utterly right.
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