Tag Archive for: MAGA

The Intellectual Foundations of MAGA

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Republicans are dumb. They are easily led suckers, voting against their own best interests, manipulated by dangerous demagogues. This accusation is accepted as fact by most Democrat voters and is relentlessly reinforced by the media Democrats rely on. From MSNBC, Democratic strategist James Carville says Republicans “have a lot of stupid people that vote in their primaries.”  From New York Magazine, “Is DeSantis Just Not Dumb Enough for Republicans?” From Vanity Fair, “Is the Sheer Stupidity of Republican Politics Breaking Through?”

Even some conservative columnists can’t criticize the Democrats without taking a shot at those stupid Republicans. Daniel Henninger, writing for the Wall Street Journal, characterized national politics this year as “The Stupid Party vs. the Evil Party.” As for the leader of the Republican Party, we have this from The New Republic, “Trump Is an Extremely Dumb Fascist.” And as James Carville said, “When stupid people vote, you know who they nominate? Other stupid people.”

Rather than challenge the “stupid” stereotype, David Brooks, the New York Times’ thoroughly housebroken token conservative, has tried to contextualize it, recently stating on PBS Newshour that “this is a working class party,” referring to the Republican base in the Trump era.

The narrative is widespread and clear. Republican voters, MAGA voters in particular, are universally stigmatized by America’s mainstream thought leaders as uneducated rubes. As Obama once famously sneered, they are “clinging to their guns and religion.”

The perception being marketed as a truism in America is that MAGA Republicans are at best incapable of supporting a coherent national political agenda and, at worst, are willfully supporting dangerous policies that will put an end to democracy in America.

All of this is utterly false. There is a coherent intellectual and moral basis for the MAGA agenda, and there is basic agreement among MAGA Republicans over not only the broad themes but also many of the policy details that define that agenda.

Immigration policy is an obvious example where the MAGA position—restoring control of who enters the nation and basing legal immigration on merit—has a clarity that is completely lacking in the current de facto policy. Since Biden took office, nearly 8 million people have illegally crossed into America from Mexico, entering the country with minimal screening across a border that has been thrown wide open. Cities are going bankrupt trying to support them with food, shelter, healthcare, and education. At the same time, drugs pour across the open border, a primary cause of over 110,000 drug overdose deaths in 2023.

The MAGA position is both humane and realistic. It is impossible to admit everyone into the United States who wants to live here. There are an estimated 700 million people in the world who live in extreme poverty. An estimated 2 billion people live in conflict zones. Just allowing 10 percent of these people into the United States would nearly double our population. That’s the reality.

What is humane is to control the border and strictly regulate admittance to the U.S. so that people around the world will stop trying to get here. Then they would no longer be victims of human trafficking or risk dying during their trek. At the same time, fewer Americans would die of drug overdoses. While vigorous debate might take place over how many immigrants the U.S. should admit legally, under MAGA policies, whoever did immigrate would have skills that America needs. The MAGA strategy would be to use immigration to enhance America’s economy, bringing in people who will adopt our traditions and create wealth and opportunity for all Americans. A strong America will retain the capacity to be a force for stability around the world, offering an inspiring example of success for other nations to emulate.

Trade policy is another fundamental plank of the MAGA agenda. And here, the “free trade” mantra has been taken too far by both parties. America’s manufacturing capacity has been hollowed out, leaving the nation dependent on imports for vital medicines, finished goods, strategic minerals, even computer chips. For decades, as American companies have moved operations offshore to escape overzealous regulations and find cheap labor, millions of Americans have lost good jobs.

In fear of MAGA trade policies, there is a howling chorus of neoliberals claiming “protectionist” mandates will crash the global economy. The problem with this claim is that the global economy is already in danger of crashing. Nations have built their economies on the basis of exports to the U.S., and they need to rebalance their economies to develop domestic markets. And to stimulate an economy stripped of good jobs, America is about to hit $35 trillion just in federal government debt, well in excess of the nation’s entire GDP. Adding state and local government debt and unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and public sector pensions will easily vault the estimated total government debt in America to over $160 trillion. It can’t go on.

Restoring American manufacturing and reducing America’s trade deficit do not have to spell the end of free trade. But judicious use of tariffs, particularly on imported goods that are subsidized by their governments, and modifying the tax code to discourage American companies from divesting their American operations are elements of what MAGA adherents call fair trade. It can be free, but it also has to be fair. And again, if America doesn’t successfully navigate this rebalancing, the trade deficit and federal debt will crash the economy, dragging the world economy down with it.

One might at least consider the moral and intellectual worth of these economic arguments concerning trade and federal deficits, but not according to the Los Angeles Times. When MAGA Republicans dug in their heels over federal spending earlier this year, Jonah Goldberg, writing for the LA Times, said “the GOP’s stupidity and hypocrisy are showing.” But stupidity, Mr. Goldberg, is thinking that America’s debt binge can go on forever.

Examining what defines MAGA politics must include foreign wars. An illustrative example of how Americans are being trained to think was evident on CBS News last week, where in coverage of the war in Ukraine, the reporter displayed a map of Eastern Europe and said a Russian victory would “bring the Russians to NATO’s doorstep.”

For anyone slightly familiar with the last fifty years of European history, this remark is blatantly deceptive propaganda. In 1989, on the brink of its peaceful dissolution, the Soviet Union still controlled what was referred to as the Warsaw Pact, and the Central European borders of NATO stopped on the eastern frontier of West Germany and Austria. Yugoslavia and Finland were neutral. Since that time, NATO has expanded eastward to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (formerly Czechoslovakia), Romania, Bulgaria, parts of the former Yugoslavia, and East Germany (reunited with Germany). Ukraine, which might have remained neutral, was never on “NATO’s doorstep.” The doorstep was moved east. Acknowledging this does not equate to Russophilia. But it’s a pertinent fact that belongs in any honest discussion of the war over there today.

It would be foolish to suggest that America should abandon foreign entanglements altogether. But just as with free trade vs. fair trade, there is a long way to travel between frequent, expensive interventions with a devastating cost in human lives and “isolationist” foreign policy. If it is realistic and prudent for the U.S. to maintain a strategic and technological military supremacy over other major nations, then wouldn’t that goal be better served by not squandering resources on countless, endless, unresolvable conflicts everywhere on earth?

Why was it necessary to invade Iraq? We had the regime all bottled up, with no-fly zones north and south. About all Iraq still had left back in 2003 was the military wherewithal to serve as an effective regional counterweight to Iran. That would come in handy just now. Does anyone think people in the Middle East are better off since the U.S. and its allies went in and removed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or, for that matter, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya? The dead can’t answer. The living endure chaos and violence without end. Where is the moral worth in this outcome, or the brilliant strategy? The MAGA foreign policy would be to minimize foreign interventions, putting those resources instead into research and development to maintain a decisive technological edge. We cannot, and should not, try to do it all.

A final, fundamental pillar of MAGA concerns environmentalist extremism, which, even more than mass immigration, has crippled the ability of most Americans to afford a decent standard of living. Energy independence and cheap energy have been abandoned to be replaced with “renewable” wind and solar energy projects that degrade thousands of square miles from upstate New York to the California coast. Equally impractical and oppressive are environmentalist-inspired restrictions on not just drilling but mining, logging, farming, ranching, new roads, freeways, and housing. Every essential in America is artificially in scarce supply, and this is the real reason for inflation. There’s no end in sight. The MAGA policy would be to deregulate all of these essential industries, forcing corporations to compete again on price, and to redirect public investment into practical infrastructure and away from costly “green” solutions that are neither green nor solutions.

There is a common thread in all of these mainstream, uniparty, establishment policies that MAGA threatens. Money. American corporations and American billionaires make more money when there is unrestricted immigration. It drives down wages. More people in America also means more shortages—particularly as long as the U.S. remains in the grip of extreme environmentalists. More people and less home building means higher prices, making home ownership out of reach for more Americans. But it creates a tremendous opportunity for corporate investors to buy up the nation’s housing stock and turn America into a nation of renters. And the scarcer that housing gets, the better their real estate investments perform.

So-called “free trade” is also an obvious moneymaker for America’s multinational corporations and globalist billionaires. Moving America’s industrial base into nations with cheap labor and minimal regulations is extremely profitable for the movers. But it destroys the workers it leaves behind. As for foreign wars, one of America’s most respected presidents, Dwight David Eisenhower, warned the nation in his farewell address as president of the “military industrial complex.” His warnings are more relevant than ever.

MAGA voters have been tagged as stupid, dangerous simpletons, ready to vote for politicians that will plunge America into a new dark age. To reinforce this smear, MAGA voters are depicted as intolerant bigots, and news reports focus on the polarizing issues of abortion, transgenderism, sexism, racism, and gun violence, to name just some of the big ones. On these issues as well, the MAGA perspective is rooted not only in intellectual coherence, but also in common sense. But these issues, while also of critical importance to our future, are also a distraction, chosen to trigger an emotional response that dominates the psyche. The real threat that MAGA poses to the establishment is financial, involving immigration, trade, war, and “environmentalism.”

In all four cases, the MAGA position is founded on a solid intellectual and moral foundation, aspiring to the optimal well-being of all Americans and ultimately to the benefit of everyone else in the world as well. MAGA Republicans are not dumb.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

The Trump Distraction

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Whether it’s due to actual incriminating words and actions, or due to endless assaults without merit, or some combination of both, there are millions of Americans for whom Donald Trump has no credibility. Beyond the damage this has wrought on Trump’s personal and political life, this has dire consequences for the nation. It has enabled the special interests who oppose policies that Trump supports to fatally stigmatize those policies by associating them with Trump.

It’s a dirty trick, but politics is a dirty business. Every political sentiment that special interests who run the country find objectionable is labeled “Trumpism,” and hence becomes toxic.

This game of distraction is bigger than Trump. Americans are beginning to realize that they’ve been betrayed by their elites. The globalist agenda of open borders, unfettered movement of capital, the rejection of traditional values, the rejection of meritocracy, the deliberate overreaction to “climate change,” and the heedless accumulation of debt to fund the development of foreign economies—including the Chinese military—has been accepted and promoted by virtually every major institution in America: unions, corporations, academia, K-12 public education, the media and entertainment industry, Democrats, and most Republicans. They profit by this agenda, and in so doing elevate the cost-of-living at the same time as Americans are deprived of good jobs.

When Trump entered politics in 2015, he exposed and rejected this agenda in its entirety. Within a few years, tens of millions of Americans who hadn’t considered these issues as part of a connected whole, if they’d even considered them at all, were awakened and voting for a politician that was committed to dismantling the entire globalist project.

Trump’s continued relevance promises to blur even further the conventional dividing lines in American politics. What is the significance of Left vs. Right, when communists and corporations in 21st-century America are working together to advance big government globalism; they both support an authoritarian, collectivist, micromanaged society. There is ample evidence for this seeming paradox.

On most of the big issues of our time, including the rejection of traditional moral values, the centrality of “climate change” as a transformative economic and political agenda, and the need for affirmative action, racial redress, and open borders, communists and corporatists share a surprisingly congruent agenda. Only on the issue of private property do they diverge, and even that may be illusory when considering the realistic prospect of publicly held corporations with activist directorates and activist shareholders owning and controlling virtually the entire economy.

Trump blew the lid off this whole artificial dichotomy, and from coast to coast, Americans are still digesting the implications. No wonder there is a coordinated, ongoing corporate obsession with race and gender disparities, paired with a constant effort to nurture tribalism. Because if you take away a polarizing perspective on race and gender, what can unite the grassroots on the Left with the grassroots on the Right may be bigger than what divides them.

The common thread in the globalist agenda is that it will disproportionately harm middle and low-income Americans regardless of their group identity. Children need a father and a mother. Climate change policies that enrich corporations and empower leftist bureaucrats will impoverish everyone not wealthy enough to be indifferent to the crushing cost. Abandoning meritocracy in favor of quotas will destroy America’s ability to compete and innovate at the same time as it will breed cynicism and alienation. Unregulated immigration drives down wages and bankrupts social services.

It is no wonder, then, that Democrats, establishment Republicans, and corporate globalists want to distract us by turning us all into alleged bigots and anti-bigots who consume one another in endless conflict. Without this massive distraction, how would globalists get away with destroying America’s standard of living while enriching themselves?

It is an opportunistic, debilitating lie to define everyone as either a victim or an oppressor in order to get everybody fighting. It is a devious, epic, diabolical fraud and hidden agenda that must be exposed at every opportunity. But there is also a positive message, promoting hopeful solutions, that is desperately necessary in order to avoid radicalization.

There are alternatives to every one of the pillars of corporate globalism that must be promoted without apology and unequivocally. The traditional family is the backbone of society. Fossil fuel, hydroelectric power, and nuclear energy are absolutely necessary to grow a healthy and prosperous economy, not only in America but even more so in the aspiring nations of the developing world. Domestic manufacturing to maintain self-sufficiency in essential products creates good jobs and is vital to national security. Immutable colorblind standards based on merit are the only fair and legitimate way to allocate opportunities in all aspects of society. Immigration must be strictly regulated to protect the interests of American citizens, even if that conflicts with the interests of global corporations.

With these principles forming an uncompromising foundation, opponents to globalism have an appealing, prosperity-oriented narrative that will attract wavering adherents of MAGA as well as reluctant globalists. These principles offer common sense and hope. They offer calm unity. They can reject extremism of all types, whether it’s classic racism or teaching transgender ideology to prepubescent students in the public schools. And they embody a love for America.

Apart from Trump and the MAGA movement, emphasizing all these policies—pro-family, pro-conventional energy, and pro-meritocracy—have not been the common currency of Republicans. Instead, with good reason, they’ve been stereotyped as waffling on immigration, lukewarm on climate realism, AWOL on expressing the problems with race and gender quotas, and, all too often, antagonistic to pro-family sentiments. No wonder they are barely relevant. And no wonder Trump’s enemies get away with accusing him of catering to ethnic-nationalists and conspiracy theorists. They claim nobody else is out there, and in one important respect, they’re right. The MAGA movement, despite its potential to become the center of gravity in American politics, lacks a critical mass of committed leaders with the voice and visibility to give it an undeniable presence.

This may sound inaccurate and harsh, but it isn’t. Those Republicans with access to major donors and establishment recognition use Never-Trump rhetoric as a smokescreen to obscure their commitment to the globalist agenda. At the same time, too many MAGA Republicans have either drifted into peripheral and often extreme territory, or they emulate Trump’s rhetoric while lacking any underlying sincerity. The focus of the MAGA movement, if it is to earn the massive tide of votes that realignment requires, needs to convert its unifying principles into a pragmatic agenda that thousands of candidates from the local to the national level articulate and fully intend to carry out. At the least, that agenda must embrace restoring quality and apolitical public education, dramatically reducing crime, and lowering the cost of living through managed immigration, deregulation of domestic industries, and realistic energy policies. Focusing on those priorities will win elections.

The one candidate who appears to agree with Trump on these critical and winning issues is Vivek Ramaswamy. Among all politicians on the national stage whose policies emulate Trump’s, he is the only candidate that has the brains, the youth, and what appears to be the uncompromising passion.

Ramaswamy also offers Americans an example, which he emphasizes in his campaign speeches, of how Americans can unify as a single, colorblind culture. There is no reason why any American citizen, of any color, cannot read the founding documents of America and be inspired by them. There is no reason why any American, regardless of ethnic background, cannot appreciate America’s unique commitment to individual rights and free enterprise and private property, and understand its transcendental value. There is no reason why Americans of all races cannot view America’s history not as “deeply flawed,” but instead as an illustrious story of evolution from an inspiring beginning to what it is today – through perpetual refinement—a nation of unparalleled opportunities for everyone willing to work hard.

America’s destiny can be to remain a leader and an example to the world, while caring for its own citizens in a way that doesn’t alienate the world, but inspires other nations to do the same. America’s destiny can be to invest in practical, prosperity-oriented projects at home and abroad, to maintain technological and military preeminence, and to blaze a trail into the solar system. This is a vision that every American needs to know they can share.

It will be a shame, and a national tragedy, if the allegedly toxic Trump and MAGA distraction, piled atop the race distraction, the gender distraction, the “trans” distraction, and as if that isn’t enough, the distraction of a horrific proxy war in Eastern Europe, prevents the American people from seeing the future being prepared for them. Globalism as it is being currently prosecuted is death to America. It can and must be rejected.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in American Greatness.

The American Left is Racist, NOT President Trump

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Here we go again. Politicians and pundits are falling all over each other trying to condemn President Trump yet again for some insensitive, allegedly racist Tweets.

As Hong Kong teeters on the brink of mass insurgency against the fascist mainland government, and Iran’s brutal theocracy accelerates their nuclear weapons program, the top story this week is “Trump is a racist.”

How do the news anchors and commentators who spew this Trump-bashing pablum, day after day, year after year, do so with a straight face?

If we must obsess over race and identity, and apparently we must, it is the American Left where you will find the racists, not the White House.

First of all, since the Tweets were deleted, here is their exact text:

“So interesting to see how ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose government are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly…

…and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how…

…it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

Three Tweets, posted at 5:27 a.m. on July 14th, 2019

The one inaccuracy, in these tweets, the implication that all four of these congresswomen are immigrants (only one of them is an immigrant) should not blind anyone to Trump’s message: There is no evidence whatsoever that the nations from which these “progressive Democrat Congresswomen,” presumably AOC, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley (or their families or ancestors) originated, offer anything that the United States might emulate in order to become a better nation.

These women are invited to visit Latin America, the Middle East, or Africa, and find even one nation where they would rather live.

Democrats are the Racists

More to the point, however, it is not President Trump, but rather these congresswomen, and by extension, the entire extreme Left wing of the Democratic Party, who have made RACE the currency of their political careers.

Among her countless gaffes, inaccuracies, and astonishingly ignorant proclamations, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that “Latinos must be exempt from immigration laws because they are ‘Native’ to US’.” Nothing racist about that.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of “Impeach the Motherf*cker” notoriety, has demanded Speaker Pelosi dole out House committee assignments based on race. Nothing racist about that.

Ilhan Omar, who among other things has claimed that “Israel has hypnotized the world,” and that “may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” also said “This is not going to be the country of the white people.” Nothing racist about that.

As for Ayanna Pressley, she’s on record as saying “I’m not naive. All politics is about identity.” Along with “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need any more black voices that don’t want to be a black voice.” Nothing racist about that.

And what about House Speaker Pelosi, the white-bashing white aristocrat who said that “her grandson’s birthday wish was to have brown skin and brown eyes”? Does anyone respect this pandering nonsense?

Meanwhile, the racist, anti-white rhetoric of the Democratic Party, echoed by the leftist media and leftist “woke” corporations, is matched by policies that harm the very people of color these Democrats supposedly champion.

Does anyone truly believe there isn’t a causal relationship between fifty years of welfare spending and the destruction of the black family, where only one third of black households with children have a father and mother? Ah, but the “traditional family” is obsolete!

Does anyone really think affirmative action – an explicitly racist practice – does “people of color” any favors, when it lowers academic standards to admit them into universities where they lack the academic skills to compete with their classmates? Ah, but create undemanding “ethnic studies” majors and turn them all into left-wing activists!

The biggest crime committed by the racist Democrats is the destruction of America’s public schools, where the leftist teachers unions have stifled innovation and accountability. The worst impact of the union grip on public education has been felt in low income “communities of color.” Ah, but don’t fix the system, just demand more money from taxpayers!

President Trump is Not a Racist

What President Trump has done is to challenge the narrative, built up over the last 50 years and getting worse all the time, which claims white people can’t say anything critical to “people of color.” All white people can do is be sorry, hand out more benefits, and do whatever else they’re told (by Democrats) to do. To object to anything coming out of the mouths of Democrats “of color” is a “racist” transgression that ends careers and destroys reputations.

The problem with silencing an entire generation of white people in the name of fighting racism is that while they have been silent, extreme environmentalism, anti-white racism, and creeping socialism have swept across American culture, taking over our schools, universities, entertainment and media industries, our corporations, and government at all levels. Unchecked, this will destroy the country.

It’s not racist to point out that mass immigration of unskilled people who are overwhelmingly non-white will result in social and cultural turmoil, so long as the entire culture is now geared towards teaching them a leftist lie that they are victims of white oppression.

It’s not racist to point out that the reason for disparate educational outcomes, where Whites and Asians outperform Blacks and Hispanics, is more likely caused by the destruction of the traditional two parent family than by racism.

It’s not racist to explain that affirmative action was an indulgence we could afford when “protected status groups” only comprised 10 percent of the population, but is something that will destroy our institutions when “protected status groups” comprise more than half the population.

It’s not racist to assert that the racist use of racial quotas in hiring, promotions, academic admissions, and contract bids, will exclude the more qualified in favor of the less qualified, sowing bitterness and cynicism into the hearts of everyone affected by it, at the same time as it undermines the capacities of every school, business, and government agency in America.

It’s not racist to question why the overwhelming majority of immigrants to America for the past several decades speak Spanish, when we are supposedly trying to “celebrate diversity.”

And it’s definitely not racist, or condescending, or inappropriate, to condemn in the harshest terms the socialist drivel and ignorant vitriol that passes for policy agenda, simply because it comes from congresswomen “of color.”

One of President Trump’s greatest gifts to the American people is that he doesn’t care if socialist demagogues and their allies call him a racist. He has given voice not to racism, but to a long overdue pushback against Democratic demagogues who shut down debate by screaming “racism” at anyone who questions them.

It is the Democrats, in their divisive and racially obsessed rhetoric and in the impact of their supposedly well-intentioned policies, who are the real racists.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

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