End of the Marxist Left. 100 years. 1917-2017.

We date the century of Marxism from the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the success of the American counter-revolution in 2017, because we see Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States – the most powerful position in the world – as the coup de grâce for the atrocious era.

The idea that people should be organized by governments and that the collective is more important than the individual has proved in practice to be a bad one. The experiment took the lives of hundreds of millions of individuals.

The Marxist Left has failed. The ideology that energized it is discredited. There will be no new Communist states.

Those who still believe that their lives should be ordered and sustained by government – regardless of the high price that must be paid by the loss of their freedom – are sure to find the change hard to accept.

However, Donald Trump’s movement is spreading. It has inspired and encouraged new political parties in Europe, and they are gaining strength. They want a “Europe of nations and liberty”.

     A meeting of the leaders of populist European parties

The parties still in power see that a change is happening, fear it, but do not understand it. They had a vision of a united states of Europe – which they tried to implement through the creation of the disastrous European Union – and ultimately a united states of the world. They wanted to abolish nations. They wanted a mingling of peoples. They invited the Third World, in particular Muslims, to come to Europe.

And all round them rebellious voices, growing ever louder, are demanding a return to nationhood, to secure borders, to self-determination, to individual freedom – to resisting the encroachment of Islam.

It seems that just one European politician in power “gets it”:

Breitbart reports:

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says U.S. President Donald Trump’s election marks the end of an era, and Berlin will move quickly to secure “close and trusting trans-Atlantic cooperation based on common values” with the new administration. Steinmeier wrote in Bild newspaper on Sunday that “with the election of Donald Trump, the old world of the 20th century is finally over” and “how the world of tomorrow will look is not settled.” He says with any power change there are “uncertainties, doubts and question marks”, but a lot more is at stake “in these times of a new global disorder”.  Steinmeier says he will promote free trade and joint efforts against extremism with Washington. He added he’s certain Germany will “find interlocutors in Washington who know big countries also need partners”.

He will go to President Trump. He will speak of partnership and trade. But what he will really be seeking is enlightenment. And unless he is truly willing to yield power to the people, he will hear nothing for his comfort.

The “Women’s March”, organized to protest against Donald Trump’s rise to power, is glaring proof that the Left no longer knows what it is for.

Most of the marchers could only name what they were against: “Trump”.

Who funded the march? Some 50 of the participating groups are funded by the subversive George Soros.

Only one of the organizers of the American march knew exactly what she wanted.

The Gatestone Institute says of her:

Linda Sarsour [is] a self-described ‘Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American-Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist’, who serves as “the Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York, co-founder of Muslims for Ferguson, and a member of Justice League NYC”,  her march bio relates.

She is working for the establishment of Sharia law in America. She tweeted:

Her following carried this banner:

And wore hijabs made out of the American flag:

But as yet Islam is not a serious threat to America itself. The Islamic State needs to be destroyed, and President Trump has declared his intention to crush it.

In Europe, the rulers of the old order will be overthrown and replaced. Europe will return to being a continent of nation states. Then the new leaders must deal with Islam, the enemy the Left let in.

As the Marxist Left was the terror of the last century, Islam will be the terror of the 21st. century. It is a barbarism that must be opposed and defeated by Western civilization – now recovering its strength and self-confidence.

Tony Blair was a prime minister of post-Thatcher Britain for 10 years (1997-2007).

As such, he was a prime member of the leftist elite that has done so much harm to the world. They call themselves the “globalists”. They expected to extend their rule over the whole world, modeling their new world order on the corrupt undemocratic European Union.

But the first and only genuine workers’ revolution in history has brought a patriotic capitalist, Donald Trump, to power in America. And the British people voted to leave the European Union. And now the days of the globalist cabal are numbered.

They won’t go quietly. They are beginning to make a clamor. They think that somehow they can mount a serious threat to the new US government and all the new patriotic governments that will soon be elected in Europe.

They call the rise of the people against them “populism”. Well, so it is. It could also be called democracy. The demos – the people – have voted, or soon will vote, to reclaim their countries and their liberty.

So it’s “populism” against “globalism”.

The weak outgoing US president, Barack Obama – a globalist – is promising to be the leader of an American resistance movement against the Herculean incoming president, Donald Trump.

And Tony Blair is setting himself up as Obama’s counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic.

Nick Hallett at Breitbart reports:

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to invest £9.3 million of proceeds from his lobbying business in a new institute that he is setting up to fight populism.

Mr Blair said last month he was creating the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) aimed at combatting populism and “making globalisation work”. On Wednesday, he confirmed he has given £9.26 million net assets of his company Windrush Ventures limited to the new institute …

Mr Blair said last month the TBI would be a “platform” offering “thought leadership” on anti-populist, pro-globalisation policies.

He added it would “build a new policy agenda” for what he called the “centre ground” of politics, as well as allowing “a reasonable and evidence based discussion of the future which avoids the plague of social media-led exchanges of abuse.”

Oh, those pestilential social media, which ordinary people use to spread their opinions – and information that the globalist-supporting mainstream media do their best to keep hidden!

In terms of actual policies, he hinted it would champion the continuation and strengthening of the European project, and also open borders.

He said:

Part of its focus will plainly be around the European debate; but this will not be its exclusive domain. It has to go far wider than that since in many ways the Europe debate is a lightning rod for the whole of politics.

Mr Blair has said several times that Britain should consider holding a second referendum on Brexit, just in case the public change their minds and want to remain in the European Union.

In October, he said:

If it becomes clear that this is either a deal that doesn’t make it worth our while leaving, or a deal that is so serious in its implications that people may decide they don’t want to go, there’s got to be some way, either through parliament, through an election, possibly through a referendum, in which people express their view.

He is a true believer that the globalists’ new world order is the only way for the human race to go if it wants to save itself from “serious implications”. To him, Brexit was a disaster of the same order as Trump’s election was for Obama and his party.

They both seem to believe that because they once had the power of government, they themselves are intrinsically powerful.

We expect they can be little more than a nuisance, and that only for a short time, and then – no more of Obama and Blair.

President-elect Trump said yesterday in his “Thank-you” speech in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that the movement he leads is spreading world-wide.

It is. And although the left-biased press wants to depict it as a “far-right” organized threat, it is in fact a genuine grass-roots movement against the all-too-established globalist ruling elite.

Among the ideas that the various groups which make up the populist movements stand for there are – and are sure to be – some that we do not agree with. There are even things President-elect Trump seems to favor that we do not agree with  – eg. minimum wage, and letting his daughter Ivanka almost bring Al Gore back into respectability by chatting with him about “man-made climate change”. But if the movement stops the invasion of the West by Islam – which requires the overthrow of the ruling elites of Europe, the reinstatement of the nation-state as an ideal, the disintegration of the EU, and ultimately the destruction of the UN – we will regard the occasional ideas and actions we don’t like as side-issues and complaint about them as nit-picking.

In Italy even groups on the Left are rising against the tyranny of the EU and the government that connives with it.

Chris Tomlinson writes at Breitbart:

Following the results of the Italian referendum Sunday night, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Rome demanding that Italy leave the European Union.

Left wing protesters gathered outside the parliament of the Eternal City after it was confirmed that the No vote had defeated the government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and their plans to reform the Italian Senate. Protesters held banners telling the government to respect the vote …

Many of the protesters also demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister, who at a press conference after the announcement of the result, said he would tender his resignation to Italian President Sergio Mattarella explaining, “When you lose, you cannot pretend that nothing has happened and go to bed and sleep. My government ends here today.”

The result of the referendum could lead to snap elections as early as February and the growing popularity of the Eurosceptic Five Star Movement* has many worried the Italians could vote to leave the political bloc as Britain had done earlier in the year.

Tensions heated up between protesters and police stationed outside the parliament and ultimately the authorities decided to shut the protest down.  Three individuals were taken into custody by police as other demonstrators yelled “shame on you” to the officers.

One of the student leaders of the protest, 27-year-old Michele Sugarelli, said:

Brexit was not a vote against Europe, it was a vote against the EU, which takes power from the people and makes decisions against their interests. We want the same thing. We want change in Italy and in Europe. We want opportunity for young people, and we want the EU to finish.

Another protester named Pietro described the police tactics saying: “They are being violent because they are afraid. Now is a moment when the elite could fall. People don’t want any more economic sacrifices while the government preserves the interests of the banks and big corporations.”

A student named Lorenzo, who spoke at the protest said: “Everyone talks about young people, but when we actually raise our voice, this is the result.” He went on to note: “I don’t think the EU will survive the next few years. In Italy, everyone hates this thing called the EU. It is falling apart and we hope it happens quickly.”

*From Wikipedia:

The Five Star Movement –  Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S)  – is populist, anti-establishment, environmentalist, anti-globalist, and Eurosceptic.  Its members stress that the M5S is not a party but a “movement” and it may not be included in the traditional left-right paradigm.

We cheer it on, even though we do not like its environmentalism.

… blessed by the governing elites of Europe and the United Nations?

The supremacist and totalitarian movement called Islam, whose declared intent is world conquest, has become an extremely serious threat.

Its unarmed armies of believers are marching into Europe without encountering the least resistance. Democratically elected European governments have actually invited them in. In Europe they will proliferate, while the indigenous populations shrink, and before long they will be majorities in all western European countries, able to use the democratic process to take over government. Once that has been achieved, there will be no more democracy.

This movement of conquest and total subjugation is passionately encouraged by the UN. 

Virginia Hale reports and comments at Breitbart:

The incoming Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) told a room of policymakers in Europe on Wednesday that “migration is not the problem but the solution”, and said politicians should ignore voters.

Speaking in Lisbon at the Vision Europe Summit, António Guterres said European nations have no right to control their borders and that they must instead take in floods of the world’s poorest people.

“The idea that management of migration is a matter of national sovereignty is extremely limited.”

An idea cannot be “extremely limited”. He means that in his opinion the power of sovereign nations to control who comes into their territory ought to be  – not just “extremely limited” but – non-existent.

“The truth is that in the meantime, the real controllers of international mobility are the smugglers and criminal organisations. It must be recognised that migration is inevitable and will not stop,” the socialist told the crowd of policymakers and researchers.

Regarding priorities for the UN, when he takes over from South Korean Ban Ki-moon as Secretary-General, Guterres said he already has “several items to put on the discussion table to drive positive developments” with regards to the goal of making Europe accept more migrants.

This will take place in the form of “develop[ing] legal migration opportunities as the only way to fight against criminal networks”, he hinted.

Guterres insisted that every European Union (EU) nation must be forced to “share the burden” of mass migration.

Despite having used the word “burden” to describe giving residence to large numbers of aliens, the 67-year-old went on to declare: “We must convince [Europeans] that migration is inevitable and that it is the multiethnic societies which are multicultural and multireligious who are building wealth.”

The UN’s next head acknowledged he is “not convinced that it will be easy, given the state of [public] opinion”. Calling for politicians to put “tolerance” and “reason” at the heart of their decision making, Portugal’s former prime minister urged lawmakers to prioritise “values” over respecting voters’ wishes.

He stated: “When elected officials hesitate to choose between values and the next election, I would advise them to choose values. If they go for short term [electoral gain] they will lose both, because there will always come a time when they lose an election  At that point, it becomes very hard to recover the values that have been abandoned.” …

What “values” would those be? Just one. And not so much a value as a sentiment. PITY. The sentiment at the heart of Christianity – which ruled half the world with utmost cruelty for a thousand years.  

And wherever did he get the idea that where the Muslim hordes have poured into European countries, those countries are “building wealth”? What is actually happening is the exact opposite, as the author points out:

Far from being linked to wealth, data from different European countries support the idea that non-European migrants are a net cost to nations’ treasuries. In the Netherlands, 65 per cent of non-European migrants who arrived during the 1990s are still living on welfare.

And Virginia Hale goes on to quote a professor who dares to say that the Muslim populations which are replacing the indigenous Europeans are mentally inferior. He doesn’t use that term. He calls it “lower  intellectual competence”, but the two phrases mean the same thing.

The research of University College London psychology professor Dr. James Thompson shows Europe is being harmed by mass migration from poorer countries, as on average the newcomers’ intellectual competence is much lower than that of natives.

Partly as a result of their culture and partly due to genetics, he notes that the difference in intelligence results in migrants having “lower status, lower wages and higher resentment” at perceived differences.

“On the latter point, if the West cannot bear to mention competence differences, then differences in outcome are seen as being due solely to prejudice,” Thompson warns.

Being made poorer and stupider are two of the ways in which “Europe is being harmed” by the immigration of millions from the mainly Muslim parts of the Third World. The vast increase in crime, especially rape, is not mentioned. Nor the appalling terrorist attacks carried out by the Muslim warriors of jihad.

Enforced conformism, harsh subjugation of women, floggings and amputations and stonings to death, all the horrors of totalitarian enslavement are still to come.

About all of which the incoming Secretary-General of the UN, António Guterres, and the current crop of European leaders such as those of Germany, France, Holland, Sweden, Austria, the EU, are either in denial or unperturbed.

Since America, in its recent elections, rejected the sort of thinking on migration those persons represent, Europeans may be encouraged to use their democratic right, while they still have it, to vote their betrayers out of power.  

And after that the Western nations – led, we ardently hope, by President Trump – will destroy the UN. 

Why are the parties of the Left obsessed with race and sex? Why – in other words which they would not accept – are they such racists and sexists? They will not accept that that’s what they are because to their minds the worst thing you can be is a “racist” or “sexist”. No matter who their political enemies are, or what they stand for, just be being their political enemies they deserve, and get, the worst of insults: “Racist!” “Sexist!”

The Democrats, utterly routed in the recent American elections, are seriously considering electing a Muslim anti-Semite – Congressman Keith Ellison – to the chairmanship of their Party. They seem to think that might make them more popular.

At the same time, they express outrage that Republican President-elect Donald Trump has put Steve Bannon in charge of his transition team, because, they falsely allege, he is “an anti-Semite”.

The Democrats see no contradiction between what they’re doing with Ellison and what they’re saying about Bannon. No irony.

In actuality, the Left as a whole is anti-Semitic. A majority of Jews seem not to have noticed the fact, but it is a fact all the same. The British Labour Party has become blatantly anti-Semitic. The Left isn’t troubled by this happening in its midst, because anti-Semitism has, ever since the Holocaust, been the one racism that it not only permits but has made very nearly compulsory.

So we come back to the question why. How did these self-destructive obsessions come to be the strongest orthodoxies of the Left?

To the American Left they are not just orthodoxies but axioms.

Stephen Dinan writes at the Washington Times:

As the(Democrats’] majorities in Congress slipped away and they ceded the lead in governorships over the past six years, President Obama and his top lieutenants comforted themselves with the changing demographics that they said would make it impossible for a Republican to win the top job. …

[The fact that a Republican has won it] is a major let-down for a party that, a little more than a decade ago, was basking in predictions of an emerging, long-lasting Democratic majority, based on the party’s ability to build a coalition of expanding minority populations such as black, Hispanic and gay voters, young people and women.

Now why would somebody, simply because he is black, or Hispanic, or gay, or young, or a woman (yes, he can be!), want to live under Leftist dictatorial government?

He – or she – wouldn’t necessarily want to at all, in fact. As individuals, black and gays and women – even some of the young – can think for themselves. But the intellectuals of the Left do not understand that. In their minds, your political opinions can – or should – be formed strictly according to those they expect of your race, your sex, your age, your social status. (If, for instance, you are black BUT a conservative, a Republican, an American constitutionalist, you are anomalous and treacherous, and deserve nothing but isolation, punishment, and correction.)

The Left, in its patronizing elitist way, developed the idea during the last century that its surest way to permanent dictatorial power world-wide, was by “empowering” the “wretched of the earth” – instead of the Marx-designated “proletariat” which became too darned well-off in the capitalist West – to make revolution and place them, the elitists themselves, permanently in power as their proxy dictators.

So who qualifies as the “wretched of the earth”? In the first instance, it was the peoples of the Third World, very many of them blacks and Hispanics. The sexually unconventional and (very patronizingly indeed!) women, even if they belonged to the First World, were added in later. Now also counted in are convicted criminals, terrorists of the Left, rebellious minors, hobos, and lunatics.

And who are these revolutionary hordes to rise against? Well, who remains outside of those categories? Whites. Men. The law-abiding. Heterosexuals. Mature adults. The industrious. The sane. The educated. Most people in the Western world.

As communist world-government is the ideal of the Left, the nation-state must be brought to an end. That’s why the Democratic candidate for the presidency – Whatshername – was all for “open borders”.

If a nation-state has open borders, it has no borders. If it has no borders, it is not a nation-state. A nation-state only exists if its law runs throughout a territory defined by borders.

President-elect Donald Trump wants, above all else, to preserve and strengthen the nation-state of America, as his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” attests. 

And so the Democrats, and all the Leftist ruling elites everywhere, are calling him  a “racist”. (As well as a “sexist”. That word stands beside “racist” as pepper stands by salt.) And if you’re a racist-and-sexist, you are also, synonymously, a bigot, xenophobe, Islamophobe, white supremacist, and even perhaps an anti-Semite in the bad meaning of that ambiguous term.

Obviously, Donald Trump is for the nation state. He is a nationalist. But “nationalist” has acquired connotations of bigotry, making it one of those synonymously wicked things to be.

“Patriot” fares little better with the social justice warriors who are intent on reforming the language.

Perhaps a new term is needed for those of us, the majority of  the citizens of the West, who are patriots. Whatever our color and derivation and sex and age, we want our country to be great. We want to use its language. We want to honor its achievements. We want to keep it safe from invaders.

Perhaps we could be called “nationists”.

Here is Donald Trump’s Gettysburg Address, delivered October 22, 2016.

It is in large part a description of what he would do to cure the extreme corruption now rotting the US system of government.

What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again.

It is a contract between myself and the American voter – and begins with restoring honesty, accountability and change to Washington.

Therefore, on the first day of my term of office, my administration will immediately pursue the following six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, DC:

● FIRST, propose a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress;

● SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health);

● THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated;

● FOURTH, a 5 year-ban on White House and Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they leave government service;

● FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government;

● SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections.

On the same day, I will begin taking the following 7 actions to protect American workers:

FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.

SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

THIRD, I will direct my Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.

FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly impact American workers and direct them to use every tool under American and international law to end those abuses immediately.

FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward.

SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the· money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.

Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.

SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

THIRD, cancel all federal funding to Sanctuary Cities.

FOURTH, begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.

FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered extreme vetting.

Next, I will work with Congress to introduce the following broader legislative measures and fight for their passage within the first 100 days of my Administration:

1. Middle Class Tax Relief And Simplification Act. An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief, and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with 2 children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from 7 to 3, and tax forms will likewise be greatly simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35 to 15 percent, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10 percent rate.

2. End The Offshoring Act. Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

3. American Energy & Infrastructure Act. Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over 10 years. It is revenue neutral.

4. School Choice And Education Opportunity Act. Redirects education dollars to gives parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends common core, brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and make 2 and 4-year college more affordable.

5. Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act. Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

6. Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act. Allows Americans to deduct childcare and elder care from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-side childcare services, and creates tax-free Dependent Care Savings Accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

7. End Illegal Immigration Act. Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full understanding that the country Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a 2-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a 5-year mandatory minimum for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

8. Restoring Community Safety Act. Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating a Task Force On Violent Crime and increasing funding for programs that train and assist local police; increases resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

9. Restoring National Security Act. Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester and expanding military investment; provides Veterans with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening procedures for immigration to ensure those who are admitted to our country support our people and our values.

10. Clean up Corruption in Washington Act. Enacts new ethics reforms to Drain the Swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our economy, security to our communities, and honesty to our government.

This is my pledge to you. And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a government of, by and for the people. 

The contract presents a fair prospect for the future: a more prosperous, more secure, free America.

Do most voters want such a country?

Or do they want a dictator, and under her rule, low economic growth, higher national debt, more terrorism, more crime, more government control, and continuing corruption?

Waiting to know is a period of dread.

And it is for individual freedom, not communism!

Karl Marx was wrong. When at last the working class rises, it is not for socialism, internationalism and equality: it is for capitalism, the nation-state and liberty.

Donald Trump’s movement – he and his followers are calling it a revolution – is a genuine proletarian uprising, perhaps the first in history. It is very hard to find an historical precedent for a downtrodden class actually rising spontaneously in protest against the ruling class without being incited to it by dissident members of the ruling class itself.

The libertarian Ilana Mercer writes at Townhall about “the disenfanchisement of the poor whites of America”:

The present ideology on immigration considers all whites, rich or poor, a privileged, “fungible monolith”. This outlook brooks little or no consideration of lives lived in penury for over a century. In particular: It overlooks the descendants of poor white Southern sharecroppers who did not own slaves, but were devastated by the War Between the States both “in human and economic terms”. Even now, this sizeable segment of the South has yet to recover; its attainments with respect to education and income mirror those of the region’s African-Americans, with one distinction: poor whites are barred from affirmative action programs.

These are the people – this is the DEMOS – whose chosen leader Trump is. Sure, he is a rich man, but he is not a member of the ruling elite – he is a builder. A very successful builder. No, he does not phrase his ideas felicitously. He does not develop an argument. He utters cries, he repeats himself. He expresses the half-formed, inadequately worded, but deeply and painfully felt opinions and desires of unconsidered people.

He speaks often of the plight of the poor blacks in the inner cities of America. And the poor Latinos. He is far from being a “racist” – the favorite boo-word of the Left.

The Ivy-League conservatives and leaders of the Republican party do not, many of them, “get it”. They feel threatened, along with their fellow members of the ruling class in the laughably named “Democratic Party”.

But there are a few who do.

Steven Hayward (yes, the same admirable Steven Hayward of PowerLine) writes at the Weekly Standard:

Win or lose, [Trump] has divided and may yet shatter the conservative movement …

Hayward says he does not believe Trump will win. He is interested in why a number of intellectuals he highly respects wish that he will.

Several Claremont eminentos appear prominently on the recent list of “Scholars and Writers for Trump,” including Charles Kesler, Larry Arnn, Thomas West, Hadley Arkes, Brian Kennedy, and John Eastman. … It is also worth adding that the Claremonsters on this list are typically at odds with many of their fellow signatories who hail from the “paleocon” and libertarian neighborhoods of the right — another indication of the extraordinary ideological scrambling effect of the Trump campaign.

Knowing my own deep Claremont roots — I earned a Ph.D. from the Claremont Graduate School while working at the Claremont Institute in the 1980s — several people have asked me to explain: “How is it that a group known for its emphasis on the idea of high statesmanship, and on the importance of serious political rhetoric, can champion Trump?” …

The Claremont sympathy for Trump needs to be better understood, because it differs fundamentally from the typical candidate scoring mentioned above. If Trump can’t live up to the idiosyncratic Claremont understanding of the meaning of his candidacy, the Trump phenomenon nonetheless opens a window onto the failures of conservatism that made Trump’s candidacy possible and perhaps necessary. Even if you reject Trump, there are vital things to be learned from him if we are to confront the crisis of our time. …

What is that crisis? It’s not the litany of items that usually come to mind—the $20 trillion national debt, economic stagnation, runaway regulation, political correctness and identity politics run amok, unchecked immigration that threatens to work a demographic-political revolution, and confused or unserious policy toward radical Islamic terrorism. These are mere symptoms of a much deeper but poorly understood problem. It can be stated directly in one sentence: Elections no longer change the character of our government. …

The closer source of the Claremont sympathy for Trump (though it should be noted that they are far from unanimous — several Claremonsters are Never Trumpers) is found in another aspect of the Claremont argument about which there is near-complete harmony among East, West, and everyone in-between: the insidious political character of the “administrative state”, a phrase once confined chiefly to the ranks of conservative political scientists, but which has broken out into common parlance. It refers not simply to large bureaucracy, but to the way in which the constitutional separation of powers has been steadily eroded by the delegation of more and more lawmaking to a virtual “fourth branch” of government [the bureaucracy]. …

Who should rule? The premise of the Constitution is that the people should rule. The premise of the administrative state, explicitly expressed by Woodrow Wilson and other Progressive-era theorists, is that experts should rule, in a new administrative form largely sealed off from political influence, i.e., sealed off from the people. At some point, it amounts to government without the consent of the governed, a simple fact that surprisingly few conservative politicians perceive. Ronald Reagan was, naturally, a conspicuous exception, noting in 1981 in his first Inaugural Address, “It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”  …

The salient political fact is this: No matter who wins elections nowadays, the experts in the agencies rule and every day extend their rule further, even under Republican presidents ostensibly committed to resisting this advance. We still nominally choose our rulers, but they don’t reflect our majority opinions. No wonder more and more conservatives regard the GOP leadership in Washington as “collaborationists” with Democrats. …

Marini [Prof. John Marini of the University of Nevada, Reno, “a Claremont Institute stalwart”], a Trump supporter, told me last week, “Public opinion is in the hands of a national elite. That public opinion, the whole of the public discourse about what is political in America, is in the hands of very few. There’s no way in which you have genuine diversity of opinion that arises from the offices that are meant to represent it.” A good example of the defensive crouch of Republicans accepting the elite-defined boundaries of acceptable opinion was Sen. Ted Cruz’s comment shortly after the 2012 election that conservative social policy must pass through “a Rawlsian lens”,  an astonishing concession to the supercharged egalitarian philosophy at the heart of contemporary leftism. …

Trump’s disruptive potential explains therefore his attraction for Claremonsters. More than just a rebuke to political correctness and identity politics, a Trump victory would be, in their eyes, a vehicle for reasserting the sovereignty of the people and withdrawal of consent for the administrative state and the suffocating boundaries of acceptable opinion backing it up. A large number of Americans have responded positively to Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” because they too see Trump as a forceful tribune against the slow-motion desiccation of the country under the steady advance of liberalism. …

The Trump disruption thesis is not held uniquely by the Claremonsters. David Gelernter offered a version of this argument in the Wall Street Journal last weekend, and Victor Davis Hanson has been arguing along these lines for months. …

The exacting demands of statesmanship have seldom been put better than by Hillsdale’s Thomas G. West, one of the most fervent Claremont pro-Trumpers, in a 1986 essay: “A president who would successfully lead the nation back to constitutional government must have the right character, be able to present the right speeches, and undertake the right actions to guide the people to elect a new kind of Congress.” Last week, I asked West whether and how Trump could measure up to this understanding of what is necessary today. West points to what he calls Trump’s “civic courage”, i.e., his intransigence in the face of relentless attacks, his willingness to call out radical Islamic extremism by name while noting the guilt-infused reluctance of Obama and Hillary Clinton to do so, his willingness to question the bipartisan failures of foreign policy over the last 25 years, and his direct rebuke to the collapse of the rule of law in cities with large black populations. West thinks Trump’s breathtaking stubbornness and shocking candor are the ingredients for the kind of restorative statesmanship the times demand. …

That Trump can be made out to be the only candidate since Reagan who has represented a fundamental challenge to the status quo puts in stark relief the attenuation of conservative political thought and action over the last 20 years and the near-complete failure of aspiring Republican presidents to marry their ambition to a serious understanding of why the republic is in danger. …

Lincoln famously said in 1854, “Our republican robe is soiled.” We need only capitalize one word to adapt it to our time: “Our Republican robe is soiled.” The cleanup is going to be excruciating. But nothing is more necessary and important.

As intellectuals ourselves, we heartily agree. And we want Donald Trump to win.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Left in power has been brutal. Throughout the West, in government, in the media, in the academy, in the law courts, in society generally, wherever the Left is dominant, it is aggressive, dishonest, unjust, discriminatory, uncivilized. It is dour, it is harsh, it is smug, it is solemn, and with all that it is also boring.

The unmannerly Left has given rise to the unmannerly Alt Right.

These are extracts from a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, telling the clucking old women of both sexes and all ages who want to get rid of the mocking Alt Right what they must do to achieve that end:

Now, various media and political figures have tried to define the alt-right, with varying degrees of accuracy, over the past few weeks. Which is to say no accuracy at all.

Hillary Clinton, just before reading out some of my headlines, called the alt-right an “emerging racist ideology”. Of course, she also constantly hallucinates about a “vast right wing conspiracy” …

According to Vox, the alt-right is “a movement lurking in Reddit and 4chan threads and in community blogs and forums, a movement of right-wingers who openly argue that democracy is a joke”.

This is typically nonsensical bilge from Vox, given that the alt-right were also apparently responsible for the outcome of the Brexit referendum.

Salon is more succinct. “The alt-right, also known as white nationalism.” …

Almost everything you read about the alt-right is wrong. It isn’t just white nationalists. … And the movement certainly isn’t led by me — although the media seems determined to crown me its queen. …

Just to be clear, I don’t consider myself a member of the alt-right. …

Of course, to the mainstream media, reporting accurately on the alt-right, and understanding the movement’s nuances instead of just shrieking “RACISTS”, is tantamount to leading the movement. …

Yes … there are racists in the alt-right — but the movement is much bigger than just them.

The left’s motivations in branding the alt-right as skinheads with Twitter accounts are easier to understand when you realize that the left is responsible for creating it in the first place, as I’ll explain in a moment.

The problem is, they’re smearing an entire political generation as racist, and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.

The inability of the establishment right to decipher the movement is slightly different — they just don’t get it. I don’t think any of the people at National Review are bad people — they just don’t understand what they’re seeing. They don’t get cultural politics, they don’t get Millennial politics, and thus they don’t get the alt-right. The only tools they have to understand the movement are those handed to them by the political left. …

The media desperately wants to define the alt-right by the worst 5 percent of its members. They take the genuinely anti-semitic racists  …  and use them to define the whole movement. The left is obsessed by white supremacy, which in reality makes up an infinitesimally small number of people.

I see two primary motivating factors behind the rise of the alt right.

The first is a millennial generation that’s fed up with identity politics and its hypocrisies.

I see old-school conservatives who have had enough of mainstream politicians ignoring their concerns about immigration and cultural politics. I see intellectuals desperate to discuss dangerous, forbidden ideas as the left tries to make the overton window narrower and narrower.

And millennials are proving phenomenally talented at converting their parents, who might be disaffected republicans or tea partiers with Alt-Right thinking. …

The second is anti-white racism.

Progressives in America today believe that you can’t be racist unless you’re white, or unless you have what they call “prejudice plus power”. This argument, dreamed up in gender and African studies departments, does nothing more than give people an excuse to attack others for their gender, their sexual orientation, or the color of their skin, in the same way that eugenics gave people an excuse to view others as subhuman nearly a century ago.

Ironically so-called white privilege is the privilege to be discriminated against.

The idea that women and minorities, who have advocates for their special status in every university, every political party, and every media organization don’t have power behind their prejudices is also, frankly, absurd.

Racism is everywhere in America today. So is sexism. It’s in our university faculties.

But it’s not the racism you think.

It’s on the pages of the Washington Post. It’s on the pages of The Guardian. It’s in Hollywood. It’s on MSNBC.

Let me read you some statements which highlight the sort of casual racism and sexism that is deemed acceptable by the establishment today.

“The Beginning Of The End For Angry White Males.”

“Feminists Don’t Hate Men, But It Wouldn’t Matter If We Did.”

“When Whites Just Don’t Get It”

“As A White Man, I’m Surprised More Women Aren’t Tweeting The Hashtag #KillAllWhiteMen”

“Women Should Speak First In Class, Says SMU Professor. Really, Do Men Have To Speak At All?”

These are headlines from The Guardian, The New York Times, The Independent, The National Post, and the Chicago Tribune.

The key question behind all this is: are we going to have identity politics for everyone, or identity politics for no-one?

At the moment, we have identity politics for everyone except white men. If you advocate for men’s issues, The Guardian will call you a misogynist and a sexist. If you advocate for whites, The Guardian and National Review, and everyone else will call you a racist.

Meanwhile, other groups – women, gays, blacks, Muslims – are not only allowed to advocate for their group’s interests, but allowed to be openly racist and sexist towards white men.

When they do so, they receive support from the Silicon Valley’s tech giants, who manage an increasing share of our lives. When a parody group called the Feminist Software Foundation tried to create a browser extension that took all instances of “white men” in articles and changed them to “Jews” — making Guardian articles read like Mein Kampf — the extension was banned from both Chrome and Firefox.

Not for antisemitism, you understand. But for showing the Left up as racists.

I’d prefer we had no identity politics at all and that we judged people, as someone once said, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. But if you’re going to have identity politics, you have to have them for everybody.

You might not like the result.

The younger, millennial members of the alt-right are, for the most part, not white nationalists. But they’re being pushed toward racial humor by the progressive left.

The left is responsible for me. The left is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. The left created the alt-right.

If you’re on the Left, and you’re looking out at the alt-right with horror, and want to destroy it, guess what? You probably can.

Here’s the bad news: your current tactics aren’t working, and are in fact having the opposite of their intended effect. Name-calling, public shaming, and tearing your hair out over Pepe the Frog* is simply ineffective and is enlarging the ranks of the troll army every day you continue to do it.

Here’s the good news: there are a few simple things you can do to nuke the movement.

I’m happy to tell you what they are, because I know you’re not going to do any of them.

But I want to you to listen, because I want you to understand how your actions created this phenomenon.

The first thing you have to do is stop being hypocrites.

Double standards are everywhere in coverage of the alt-right. Whenever confronted with a left wing or minority- radical movement, the Establishment will wring its hand about addressing the “root causes”. But they accuse anyone who does the same for the alt-right as necessarily endorsing the worst of its proponents.

Just look at the media’s coverage of Black Lives Matter, and how it gives a pass to horrifying behavior, behavior that goes far beyond what the alt-right does on Twitter. Oh, someone with an anime avatar tweeted a racial caricature at you? That’s nice — Black Lives Matter has killed police officers.

And they’re still being championed by the mainstream press. Is it any wonder that people sympathize with the alt-right, when they’re at the losing end of such a blatant double standard?

And again you push older people to the alt-right. Who do you think stopped giving millions of dollars to Mizzou following their Black Lives Matter protests? Here is a hint — it wasn’t jobless gender studies majors, or young engineers whose job was replaced by an H-1B visa holder, it was established donors ranging in age from 40-65.

It’s double standards that are at least in part fuelling the alt-right, and not Donald Trump. If you think the alt-right is going to evaporate with the God Emperor, think again.

The genie is not going back in the bottle. And I don’t care if I just appropriated the culture of some Arab country by saying that, or infringed on a Disney company trademark for that matter.

Here’s one for Hillary Clinton: you gotta stop calling half the country racists.

Establishment columnists argue that responding to racism with racism is wrong, but this is an oversimplification of what’s going on with the alt-right. …

The millennials in particular are simply responding to real racism with trolling, as a means to expose the double standard. When the double standard disappears, I expect this “performative racism” if you like, will too.

Performative racism doesn’t mean racism-lite. It means memes. It means jokes. It means 19 year old boys saying stuff to get a reaction. …

What I do see is a lot of young people trying to get a reaction. That’s the Troll Manifesto: find something that a person in power is sensitive about, rightly or wrongly, and joke about it relentlessly until they acknowledge you. …

People ask why the alt right has to be so mean and why I make mean remarks about people.

Because it’s fun! And progressives made it fun by finger wagging.

The Left has demonized and censored people who speak about taboo issues respectfully and seriously. … If you’re going to get ostracized for having un-PC views no matter how you present them, why not be an asshole about it?

To stop the mayhem, the establishment needs to do one very simple thing: stop punishing people for jokes. Stop punishing people for ideas. And stop other people from doing so as well. The bigger of a taboo you make something, the more attractive it is for young pranksters.

I’m going to read out a quote from early alt-right intellectual, the Jewish entrepreneur and writer Curtis Yarvin:

“If you spend 75 years building a pseudo-religion around anything – an ethnic group, a plaster saint, sexual chastity or the Flying Spaghetti Monster – don’t be surprised when clever 19-year-olds discover that insulting it is now the funniest thing in the world. Because it is”

The establishment has done exactly that. They’ve built a religion around left-wing identity politics, complete with blasphemous words and excommunication. And, surprise surprise, shattering those quasi-religious taboos has become hilarious for a huge section of the youth.

The thing I most hate about the Left is that they want to stop us laughing – to prescribe which jokes are okay and which are not okay to make in public and to draw artificial lines around certain subjects. I find all sorts of inappropriate things funny. Islam, trannies, AIDS.

These are all innately hilarious things. Now and again I even enjoy a good rape joke — especially if I’m the butt of it. Telling me I’m not allowed to laugh at something does not make it unfunny. …

Sir Tim Hunt, a British chemist … was working on the cure for cancer before he abruptly became the target of a feminist sting operation.

They deliberately and maliciously took a section of his speech to a room of female South Korean scientists out of context, in which he jokes about women in laboratories “falling in love and crying all the time”. The comment was meant to mock outdated sexist attitudes, but it was presented by feminists as a serious claim on the part of Tim Hunt.

The lie was swallowed by the academic establishment, which forced Hunt to resign from his position at University College London. It took months and months of relentless efforts from conservatives and moderates to clear his name. ..,

There are countless others.  … There was also Razib Khan, a geneticist who lost an opportunity at the New York Times over his views on human biodiversity, and now writes for the alt-right Unz Review.

These are the people being driven into the arms of the alt-right by the excesses of the left.

As well as jokes, there’s something else that establishment elites need to stop demonizing as racism: national pride. During the 2015 election in England, a left-wing candidate for parliament called people who fly the English flag “simpletons and casual racists”. And this is nothing compared to some of the things said by university academics about displays of national pride.

The globalist elites, who assemble in places like Dubai, Davos, and whatever unfortunate country hosts the Bilderberg Conference, don’t have a nation.

Whether they’re from Istanbul, London, or Beijing, global elites tend to dress the same, act the same, talk the same, and think the same. They look at what’s different and unique about their home countries, and squirm in embarrassment.

We don’t.

If you want to draw people away from the alt-right, this has to stop. If you want to identify with the jet setting, cosmopolitan, nationless elite, that’s fine. I like being rich and powerful too.

But stop looking down on people who want to stay true to their roots, and remember the national values and traditions that made our progressive, globalized civilization possible. Because for every national flag you take down to replace it with the faceless and sinister logo of the European Union, the International Olympics Committee or the United Nations, ten more will fly upwards in protest.

This is what and who we are.

Leftists will insist that racism underpins national pride, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Most members of the alt-right, even the serious ones, will agree that they want everyone to have national pride, not just western countries.

And they’re right — the instinct for belonging, for a sense of common identity, is universal. The global elite’s foolish quest to suppress this instinct is one of the reasons why the alt right, as well as the populist nationalist right, have gained so much ground so quickly.

Millennials have grasped an issue that the globalists have been ignoring for a long time: that immigrants should come to America from hellholes to better their family, not to turn America into the hellholes they fled from.

If there’s one thing that fuels anti-establishment sensibilities of all kinds, it’s the idea that the truth is being suppressed.

Sometimes the alt-right gets accused of flirting with conspiracy theories. Sometimes they do, mostly with a nod and a wink.

But other times they are right to be suspicious.

Straight white men have been lied to and lied about in this country for decades, whether it’s the wage gap myth or the hysterical witch hunts and kangaroo courts on campuses that police sexual misunderstandings between horny teenagers.

The politically correct establishment suppresses the facts.

Just look at the way the media behaves after a terrorist attack. Witness the desperation with which they avoid mentioning the name and backgrounds of the attackers, who are nearly universally Islamic. That’s if they can be bothered to interrupt an Obama speech to cover terrorist attacks in the first place.

America just suffered three terror attacks in 12 hours this weekend. Hillary couldn’t decide if it was a bombing, Bill de Blasio wouldn’t call it terrorism, and no one other than right-wingers were willing to label it “Islam”. Once again, everyone but the right look ridiculous.

Meanwhile, these are the same people who call white men racists and rapists without any evidence. …

And, of course there are those truths that are increasingly impossible to ignore. Like the fact that all cultures are not equal. Some are homophobic, anti-semitic. Some, as the German city of Cologne and the English town of Rotherham tragically found out, are rape cultures. And unlike college fraternities, it’s actually real this time.

I am of course referring to the fact of Muslim culture, which as it stands today is utterly incompatible with western liberal values. It amazes me that so many otherwise-sound libertarians and conservatives fail to grasp this simple fact, or brand it racist.

If you want to preserve capitalism, it’s probably unwise to let a million hardline bolsheviks into your communities. Likewise, if you want to preserve what the Left claims are the best things about western culture — tolerance, women’s rights, gay rights, religious freedom — it’s time to close the door on Muslim immigration. There is no gray area.

Everyone’s heard the old cliche: when you attempt to suppress something, you drive it underground. Well it’s true. But it’s even worse when you drive talented, skilled people underground. Because then they find each other. And they start building a rebel army. Everyone fired from their jobs, or suspended from their university, or kicked off social media becomes another soldier in their ranks.

The alt-right is a cultural rebel army. …

The good news is, the alt-right in its broadest definition isn’t in fact to any degree traditional white nationalist …

A huge proportion of the alt-right today are millennials, ranging from teenagers up to the younger members of Generation X. Primarily white, but also consisting of increasing numbers of minorities. Jews fed up with the pro-Islam attitudes of elites. Asians who are now being penalized by affirmative action. Black groups like the Hoteps, fed up with Black Lives Matter.

These aren’t white nationalists — they’re drawn to the alt-right because of the hypocrisies of identity politics, and by the joy breaking the rigid taboos of the establishment. …

White males are responsible for everything that the left have advocated for in the past: gay rights, women’s rights, civil rights, tolerance, the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the welfare state, and so on and so on.

They are right to be confused at being named Satan by the progressive left. …

I’m under no illusions that the left will abandon what have become some of its core operating principles. … What motivates the left now is anti-white hatred, particularly of straight men. …

“Systemic racism and “white privilege” are bullshit, unfalsifiable and bonkers pseudoscientific concepts designed to disempower white men in the societies and civilization they’re primarily responsible for creating.

Unless the left abandons this insane hatred – and as I say, I doubt they will – the alt right will continue to grow, and in the future we can expect to hear more and more about the horrors of cartoon frogs*.

 

*See the Wikipedia entry on Pepe the Frog. Extract: “The campaign website for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton released an article stating that Pepe was associated with white nationalism.”

Ilana Mercer is a “paleolibertarian” writer with whom we often closely agree. In an article at Townhall – where most of the conservative and Republican writers tirelessly abuse the Republican candidate for the presidency! – she praises the speech Donald Trump made in Mexico two days ago, and the speech he made later the same day in Arizona on the important subject of immigration:

Following Donald J. Trump’s sublime immigration address, critics — essentially all Big, Crooked Media — charged that Trump’s Arizona speech represented a sharp departure from the tone he took earlier that day, with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. A reversal, if you will.

Nonsense. With President Nieto, Donald Trump was at once patriotic, forceful and diplomatic.

In close to two decades of analyzing American politics, I’ve yet to hear an American leader address his Mexican counterpart as forcefully as Mr. Trump addressed President Nieto. Trump came across as a man-of-the world, to whom interfacing with foreign dignitaries was second nature.

It’s always been the case that Americans in power collude with Mexicans in power to bully and manipulate a powerless American People into accepting the unacceptable: The imperative to welcome torrents of unskilled illegal aliens, at an incalculable cost to the safety of America’s communities, the solvency of its public institutions, and the sustainability of the environment.

Strolling through the ancient Mayan and Toltec ruins with President Vincente Fox in 2006, George W. Bush was not talking up American interests. He was plotting amnesty with an unholy trinity comprised of John McCain, Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter. Sly [Vincente] Fox was the silent partner.

What a pleasant surprise it was for this long-time political observer to witness a Mexican president, clearly cowed by The Donald, make no mention of America’s bogus obligation to take in Mexico’s tired, poor, huddled masses yearning for U.S. welfare.

If President Nieto harbored the urge to make manipulative appeals to American “permanent values”, so as to lighten his political load, there was no evidence of it. It’s fair to infer that on that occasion, a show of unparalleled strength and patriotism — Mr. Trump’s — extinguished the bad habit. …

Naturally, the network nits failed to notice just how reverential and conciliatory Nieto was. He expressed hope that differences would be bridged and that the ideas of freedom and prosperity would form that bridge. Indeed, a surprisingly respectful President Nieto voiced his wish to work constructively with the next president of the United States. There would be challenges to meet and opportunities to realize, but these would be met by the two nations as friends, neighbors and strategic partners.

And lo — again, it swooshed by CNN dimwits — Nieto even stipulated his willingness to review policies that had not worked and allay attendant misunderstandings. Here was an indication Mexico was no longer negotiating from the old manipulative position of strength, facilitated by America’s traitor class. For Nieto now faced a different kind of American leader, one who declared he was looking out for the forgotten American masses.

For the first time in a long time we heard how important the U.S. was to Mexico … and not only as a willing taker of those hungry, huddled, Mexican masses. While Nieto spoke openly about keeping the hemisphere competitive, he was willing to improve trade agreements to benefit workers of both countries. When President Nieto did cop to some disagreement with the Republican candidate, he nevertheless emphasized a willingness to find common ground.

As for the sui generis Trump: He went straight to the nub of the matter. He loves the United States very much and wants to ensure its people are well-protected. Yet poignantly did Trump acknowledge President Nieto’s fellow-feeling toward his people. The Republican standing for president then merged the aspirations of both leaders, by emphasizing their shared quest to keep “the hemisphere” prosperous, safe and free.

At the same time, Trump was uncompromising about NAFTA. He called for reciprocal trade and denied that the trade deal (really “a mercantilist, centrally planned, maze of regulations”) had benefited Americans at all.

What Mercer here put in brackets is the vitally important criticism of NAFTA that has long needed to be made.

As if to herald his immigration speech later that day, Trump then enumerated five shared goals. They are (not in the order presented):

1. End illegal immigration, not just between Mexico and the U.S., but from Central and South America. It adversely impacts both Mexico and the U.S. For those embarking on the dangerous odyssey, it’s a humanitarian disaster.
2. Dismantle the drug cartels, jointly, and end their free movement across the Southern border.
3. Improve NAFTA to reflect today’s realities, while keeping “our hemisphere” competitive and prosperous, with the aim of improving pay standards and working conditions within.
4. Keep manufacturing capabilities in “our hemisphere”. Libertarians will disagree with Trump on this matter, but … prosperity in one’s own country makes the individual less likely to relocate in search of better economic prospects.

Ultimately, as long as the U.S. remains a relatively high-wage area, with a generous, tax-funded welfare system — it will experience migratory pressure from low-wage Mexico. … Migratory pressure flows from low-wage to high-wage regions; from the Third World to the First World. Alas, migratory equilibrium will be reached once First World becomes Third World.

This Trump seeks to forestall with his most important stipulation:

5. “Having a secure border is a sovereign right. The right of either country to build a physical barrier or wall” to stem the tide of illegal migration, weapons and drugs is incontestable and must be recognized.     

Number 4 is a point of real contention. As she notes, libertarians will not agree with it. We do not agree with it. We are strongly for free trade; Trump is for protectionism. Mercer herself is for free trade. Her argument here seems to be that whatever makes the country more prosperous is good for the individual, and Trump’s protectionist proposals might do that. As the good of the individual is a chief concern of libertarians (and of us libertarian conservatives), it’s a good argument, but it depends on that “might”. The arguments for free trade deny that “might”. But certainly the rule-of-law nation-state is the best protector of the individual’s liberty, so nationalism – or call it patriotism – is perfectly consistent with libertarianism.

Mercer explains fully why she welcomes the arrival of a non-libertarian candidate for the presidency on the political battlefield in her book The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed, of which this is (most of) the Amazon blurb: 

Donald J. Trump is smashing an enmeshed political spoils system to bits: the media complex, the political and party complex, the conservative poseur complex. You name it; Trump is tossing and goring it. The well-oiled elements that sustain and make the American political system cohere are suddenly in Brownian motion, oscillating like never before. An entrenched punditocracy, a self-anointed, meritless intelligentsia, oleaginous politicians, slick media, big money: these political players have built the den of iniquity that Trump is destroying. Against these forces is Trump, acting as a political Samson that threatens to bring the den of iniquity crashing down on its patrons. It is this achievement that the author of The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed cheers. By [his] drastically diminishing The Machine’s moving parts, the author hopes Trump might just help loosen the chains that bind the individual to central government, national and transnational. In the age of unconstitutional government — Democratic and Republican — this Trumpian process of creative destruction can only increase the freedom quotient. We inhabit what broadcaster Mark Levin has termed a post-constitutional America, explains Ilana Mercer. The libertarian ideal — where the chains that tether us to an increasingly tyrannical national government are loosened and power is devolved once again to the smaller units of society — is a long way away. In this post-constitutional jungle, the law of the jungle prevails. In this legislative jungle, the options are few: Do Americans get a benevolent authoritarian to undo the legacies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush and those who went before? Or, does the ill-defined entity called The People continue to submit to Demopublican diktats, past and present? The author of “The Trump Revolution” contends that in the age of unconstitutional government, the best liberty lovers can look to is “action and counteraction, force and counterforce in the service of liberty”. Until such time when the individual is king again, and a decentralized constitution that guarantees regional and individual autonomy has been restored — the process of creative destruction begun by Mr. Trump is likely the best Americans can hope for. A close reading of The Trump Revolution will reveal that matters of process are being underscored. Thus the endorsement over the pages of The Trump Revolution is not necessarily for the policies of Trump, but for The Process of Trump, the outcome of which might see a single individual weaken the chains that bind each one of us to an oppressive, centralized authority and to the system that serves and sustains it.

And this is a quotation from its pages:

The D.C. Comitatus [is] now writhing like a fire-breathing mythical monster in the throes of death.

May Trump deliver the coup de grâce!

Political parties in the Western world are undergoing dramatic and permanent change.

In America, Donald Trump has changed the Republican Party. It will not go back to being what it was before he became its most popular candidate for the presidency.

The Democratic Party was always a racist cabal, and now it’s a criminal racket under the dictatorship of the Clintons. They have been “nudged” towards the wilder shores of Leftism by the surprising popularity of the  “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, who stood against Hillary Clinton for the presidential candidacy – but was not allowed to win, of course.

The Libertarian Party’s support is growing. There is even talk of it replacing the Republican Party. In any case, the Libertarians want the two-party system to fade away and new parties – chiefly their own – to enter the competition for power with a fair chance of winning.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for the presidential elections, says: “I think 30 million people here are up for grabs that are probably Libertarian; it’s that they just don’t know it.”

In Europe, new parties are emerging and old ones re-emerging in new forms and with new policies, in response to the governing elites’ disastrous immigration policies, by which millions of Muslims have poured into the continent from the Third World, bringing their customs of violence and misogyny with them.

In Britain, the established political parties are showing signs of disintegration and possible re-alignment.

Our British contributing associate, Chauncey Tinker*, writes:

Jeremy Corbyn, the present unpopular leader of the Labour Party, will cling on to power until he feels a suitable loony leftie has appeared who can replace him. Corbyn is not having a great time being the leader but he cares about the loony left’s future in politics and he is not going to hand power back to the centrist Blairite arm of the party in a hurry. He repeatedly says he has the mandate of the “party membership”, and he actually really seems to feel duty bound not to disappoint them. I do think winning general elections is not the biggest priority in his mind, its much more about representing the real loony left. 

The former leader, Ed Miliband, made a disastrous decision to open the membership to anyone with £3 to spare, so changing the party membership, allowing the proper lefties to take over (and there are suggestions that some mischievous Tories also pitched in) and I don’t think they can easily undo this, without splitting the party in two. They are still joining at an astonishing rate apparently, even though the membership fee has been increased to £25 to try and stop this. But it looks as if it will ensure a majority vote for Corbyn.  

Could the party split in two? There has been quite a lot of speculation about it. The Blairite / loony left ideological split has been going on since Tony Blair arrived on the scene.  However I can’t help feeling that the Blairites have just lost faith in their own cause. Corbyn’s chief rival for the leadership, Owen Smith, seems in many respects to be not really that far away from Corbyn; but – so far at least –  without the tendency to seem like a supporter of Islam. And I have yet to hear him suggest that the government should print money and give wads of it to poor people. As such he maybe doesn’t deserve to be thought of as a loony leftie, just a normal leftie. There’s a short clip of him talking in the Telegraph (see here). He would certainly win the votes of the “always voted Labour, always will” types, and might even stand a chance in a general election – although apparently he has hinted in favour of a second referendum on Brexit, which might well be a vote loser considering at least 52% voted to leave the European Union.   

If they did split Labour it would be a huge breath of fresh air for UK politics, and give the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) a chance to get a foot in the door with more MPs. I think UKIP’s chances right now would be good if it were not for the fact they are also in disarray. Nigel Farage has resigned the leadership, and I don’t find the frontrunner Steven Woolfe impressive. But maybe he will improve.  

Overall its just deeply uninspiring on all fronts, and the new Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May,  looks almost unshakeable with this rabble of an opposition.

It seems possible that she could even reunite the Conservative Party after the deep divisions within it over Brexit. But for how long?

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* Chauncey Tinker was a computer programmer for many years.  He writes: “I had always had a keen interest in current affairs but around 2012 my interest turned to real alarm.  I began to read about the Islamic religion and became increasingly troubled by what I learned, especially in view of the ever increasing presence of Islam in the West.  By 2013 I was beginning to realize just how much the mainstream media is dominated by a certain warped and narrow way of thinking (far away from my own fairly libertarian views), how freedom of speech was being eroded and stifled by “political correctness”.  More alarmingly still I also began to notice how governments were beginning to pass laws that could actually criminalize views that dissented from theirs. Determined to challenge this trend, I left my computing career and began to study current affairs full time. I began my blog late in 2015.”