For us, the arguments against Britain’s membership of the European Union are strongly persuasive. They are political arguments: for British self-determination; for the continuation of the nation state as a good in itself; for throwing off the burden of dictatorship by corrupt bureaucrats.

But what of the economic arguments? Is it better for Britain to remain in the EU or to leave? Is it better for the world economy for Britain to be in or out?

George Freidman, who founded the private intelligence firm Stratfor, and is internationally recognized as an authority on world affairs, writes at Mauldin Economics:

In looking at Friday’s market decline, it is clear that the investment community was surprised at the outcome of the referendum in the U.K. What is most surprising is that they were surprised. There were two competing views of the EU. One view regarded the European Union as essential to British economic well-being. The other saw the European Union as a failing institution, and saw Britain being pulled down if it remained.

The European Union has been caught in long-term stagnation. Eight years after the financial crisis it is still unable to break out of it. In addition, a large swath of Europe, especially in the south, is in depression with extremely high unemployment numbers. An argument could be made that these problems will be solved in the long run and that Britain should be part of the solution for its own sake. The counterargument is that if the problems had been soluble they would have been solved years ago.

For a financial community, there is a built-in desire for predictability. It can make money in good or bad markets and economies. It has trouble making money in uncertainty. Therefore, the financial community was inherently biased toward Britain remaining in the EU because it gave them predictability. There was a subconscious assumption that everyone had the same bias toward maintaining the status quo. This was not just the view of the global financial community. It was one shared with other elites – political, journalistic, academic and the rest.

Someone I know, who has many friends in Britain, told me that she didn’t know anyone who favored a British exit. That was true. As the graduate of an elite college she is in touch with similar people around the world. This enclosure has profound social indications to consider, but in this case it created a psychological barrier to anticipating what was coming. When everyone you know thinks an idea is rubbish, it is hard to imagine that there is a majority out there that you haven’t met that doesn’t share your views.

There was also a sense of contempt for the opponents. The leaders, like UKIP leader Nigel Farage, were odd from the elite point of view. Their rhetoric was unseemly. And their followers by and large did not come from the places in London where the elite did. Their views were not the liberal, transnational views of the supporters of the EU. They led much narrower, harder lives and did not know the world as the pro-EU people did. So they were discounted. There was an expectation that the elite, who had governed Britain for so long, were dealing with an annoyance, rather than a peaceful rising against them. Thus, in spite of the polls indicating the election would be extremely close, the “remain” supporters could not believe they would lose.

The reporters of leading British media were talking to their European and American counterparts. The politicians were doing the same. And the financial community is on the phone daily with colleagues around the world.

The challenge that was posed in the U.K. referendum is present in many countries around the world, albeit in different forms.

What has become universal is the dismissive attitudes of the elite to their challengers.It is difficult for the elite to take seriously that the less educated, the less sophisticated and the less successful would take control of the situation. The French Bourbons and the Russian Romanovs had similar contempt for the crowds in the streets. They dismissed their lack of understanding and inability to act – right to the moment they burst into the palaces.

The analogy should not be overdone but also should not be dismissed. The distance between what I will call the technocratic elite and the increasingly displaced lower-middle and even middle class is becoming one of the major characteristics of our time. This elite did not expect “leave” to win because it was clear to them that the EU would work itself out. They didn’t know anyone who disagreed with them – a measure of how far out of touch they had become with the real world. And above all, they were dismissive of the kind of people who led their opponents.

Not understanding their own isolation and insularity; not grasping the different world view of “leave” supporters or that they couldn’t care less if the financial institutions of the City moved to Frankfurt; not grasping the contempt in which they were held by so many, the elite believed that “leave” could not win. …

In the end, the financial decline on Friday resulted from the lack of imagination of the elite. And it is that lack of imagination that led them to believe that the current situation could continue. That lack of imagination, the fact that the elite had no idea of what was happening beyond their circle of acquaintances, is a far greater crisis in the West than whether Britain is in the EU or even if the EU survives.

We are living in a social divide so deep that serious people of good will and a certain class have never met anyone who wants to leave the EU or who supports blocking Muslim immigration or perhaps even who will vote for Donald Trump. …

No one had the right to believe that this couldn’t happen. No one should believe that it will be confined to Britain. No one should believe that it won’t happen again. The days when the elite could assert that the EU is going to be just fine in the face of evidence to the contrary are over.

This new wave in politics, this force arising directly from the “silent majority”, is transforming the political scene not only in Europe but throughout the West.

As it is a movement that favors capitalism, it will bring greater prosperity to greater numbers of individuals if it continues to succeed. The next victory needs to be the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States.

Donald Trump’s statement on Britain’s EU referendum:

The people of the United Kingdom have exercised the sacred right of all free peoples.

They have declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy.

A Trump Administration pledges to strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense.

The whole world is more peaceful and stable when our two countries – and our two peoples – are united together, as they will be under a Trump Administration.

Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence.

Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first.

They will have the chance to reject today’s rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people.

I hope America is watching, it will soon be time to believe in America again.

May the rafters ring with many rounds of cheers! Britain has voted to leave the European Union.

After hours of anxiety as the polls went on indicating a defeat for “Brexit” (the campaign for Britain to exit Europe), good news came at last – all the more glorious for being sudden and unexpected.

Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, made a very good victory speech:

Prime Minister David Cameron, who had argued passionately for a “remain” vote, has announced that he will resign.

To add to our pure delight, we find cause for Schadenfreude too. The hard Left is bitter and furious. The Guardian, for instance – which recently carried an op-ed by the evil George Soros urging Britons to vote to remain – headlines: “Nigel Farage’s victory speech was a triumph of poor taste and ugliness.” The typical snobbery of the Left on full display as disappointment bites.

And the prospect of yet more joy looms ahead. The (London) Times (which has dispensed with its paywall for 24 hours so its opinion on this enormous event can be easily accessed) promises:

The dream of a united Europe is over. … Britain decided to walk away “without a shot being fired”, as Nigel Farage put it when dawn broke this morning.

Brexit will strike terror into the hearts of European governments and force a dramatic rethink of the organisation which aimed to bind nation states tightly together in the name of peace and prosperity.

Britain, the EU’s second-largest net funder, is the first country to walk away and the fear of contagion is real. Most European leaders also know they would struggle to win an in-out referendum. That is why they are so desperate to avoid one. …

The British referendum had already forced even Jean-Claude Juncker, the arch-federalist president of the European Commission – the institution which proposes all those directives and regulations – to admit that the EU meddled too much in everyday life.

There will be many declarations around the continent today that the show must go on and the British must not be allowed to bring the whole edifice crashing down. …

However, Europe’s ruling elite knows that the EU has to change. …

There were already some signs that senior EU figures grasped the seriousness of the situation. Donald Tusk, president of the European council, the forum for national leaders, said this month that European elites had to awaken from dreams of “all kinds of Utopias” such as the idea that nation states could be banished. “Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our euro-enthusiasm,” he said.

Breitbart sees it this way:

Brexit: Britain Votes with Trump, against Hillary, Obama 

British voters chose to “leave” the European Union on Thursday, defying the polls — and President Barack Obama, who had urged Britain to “remain” in the EU. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also urged Britain to stay in the EU. Only Donald Trump had backed the campaign to leave.

Republican strategists had panned Trump’s decision to travel to the UK in the midst of campaign turmoil, and in the wake of his blistering attack on Hillary Clinton earlier this week.

Now, however, it looks like a risk that paid off handsomely, in the currency of foreign policy credibility.

Obama’s advice may have pushed some voters to “leave”. In April he warned British voters they would be at the “back of the queue” in trade with the U.S. if they left the EU. …

Trump, who happens to be in Scotland to open a golf resort, promised in May that leaving the EU would not put Britain at the “back of the queue”, and said: “I think if I were from Britain I would probably want to go back to a different system.” He reiterated that support last week, telling the Sunday Times: “I would personally be more inclined to leave, for a lot of reasons like having a lot less bureaucracy. … But I am not a British citizen. This is just my opinion.”

Perhaps this will prove to be a turning point; marking the limit to the leftward trend which has been taking the West back into medieval darkness; and the start of a return to the values of the Enlightenment.

Newspapers are losing money and many are struggling to survive.

What a relief it will be if most if them don’t make it.

Kurt Schlichter explains why at Townhall:

What’s super sad is that when I started counting all of the mainstream media reporters I respect I didn’t run out of fingers. Most of them are just what Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds memorably labeled “Democrats with Bylines“. And that’s literally true – something like 90% of them are, in fact, Democrats. And they act like it. So when Trump refuses to play nice with them, or I hear about another round of lay-offs, the best I can summon up, if I’m in a generous mood, is a half-hearted “Meh”.

The MSM, of course, wants to have it both ways. It wants to be hailed as an institution composed of crusading truth-tellers whose integrity and willingness to speak truth to power make them the cornerstone of a free society. Except most of them are really partisan hacks who lie endlessly for the liberal politicians they suck up to. Their relationship with Democratic politicians is less speaking truth to power than sexting their masters. When it comes to covering for their progressive pals, it’s “50 Shades of Newsprint” and the MSM eagerly chomps down on its ball-gag.

They don’t even bother hiding their agenda – apparently they noticed that no one believed their protestations of objectivity anyway and decided it wasn’t even worth the effort to fake it anymore. …

Though Schlichter is no fan of Donald Trump, he notes how the MSM hacks “misreport and misrepresent” him:

When [Trump] – quite correctly – suggested that there was something weird about Obama’s inability to place the blame for radical Muslim terrorism on radical Muslim terrorists, this became “Trump Says Obama Supports Terrorists”. When he pointed out some troops (Trump says he was referring to Iraqi troops) in the Middle East were corrupt (sadly, some were), this became “Trump Calls All American Soldiers Thieves”. If Trump says he inhales oxygen, the headline will be “Trump Admits He’s Just Like Hitler”.

But with Hillary or Obama, it’s the reverse. At best, they report on facts that manifestly demonstrate her guilt of multiple felonies and misdemeanors, yet make sure to undercut their own reporting by asserting she can’t possibly be indicted.

The media can’t shut up about Trump U, but the $16 million the Bill and Hillary Graftatron 2016 nabbed from Laureate U? Apparently all the news isn’t fit to print.

The MSM is shameless. For example, when some gay Democrat radical Muslim slaughters LGBT clubgoers and then Anderson Cooper attacks the (Republican) Florida attorney general for not being sufficiently open to same sex marriage, it’s pretty clear whose team CNN is on. …

So we’re supposed to bewail the travails of these people? We’re supposed to get all fussy when Trump stands up to them and pulls their credentials? Note that’s “pull their credentials”,  not “bar them from his rallies”.  … Ewwww. This is the greatest atrocity in all of human history – Trump denying his active opponents a back stage pass to facilitate their lying about him.

But what really, really grates about these ardent defenders of the First Amendment is their ardent hypocrisy when it comes to the First Amendment. They … bemoan the fact that Trump thinks it should be easier to sue journoliars who lie about him because the MSM feels the First Amendment should allow them to lie about him with impunity  …  Apparently these things set us firmly on the road to fascism.

But what doesn’t the MSM think sets us firmly on the road to fascism? Liberal attorneys general persecuting and prosecuting people for “denying” the leftist lie about global warming. The IRS targeting Obama’s political enemies for advocating against liberal policies. The abusive sham government investigation of people speaking out for Governor Scott Walker. These actual campaigns of very real government suppression of dissenting speech are apparently cool with the MSM because the targets are on the MSM’s enemies list.

And how about the media cheerleading for the repeal of Citizens United. At the end of the day, Citizens United allows the government to put people in jail for criticizing politicians – the case involved the government’s ban on a movie talking smack about Hillary Clinton. Of course, the ban on free speech that Citizens United found unconstitutional – because it was a ban on free speech – excludes one key group.

Want to guess who?

Media companies.

Yeah, the MSM thinks the government being able to jail other people for speaking out is terrific as long as this constitutional catastrophe doesn’t apply to itself. The MSM is happy to defend only its free speech, and to the last drop of other peoples’ blood. …

But what do you expect from the kind of people who join the MSM? Instead of the colorful ink-stained wretches of the past, today’s journalists are social justice twerps whose daddies can shell out north of $59,000 to get a degree in what old school reporters learned on the job – though old-school reporters didn’t have the dubious benefit of leftist indoctrination and diversity seminars. Today’s cloistered creeps utterly missed the anger among normal Americas that led to Trump, but then they don’t think much of normal Americans. …

No wonder public regard for journalists hovers somewhere between “Raw Sewage” and “Herpes”, yet they still assume they are better than everyone else. …

Sure, technology is causing disruption in the industry, but the MSM would be better able to weather the storm if everyone didn’t hate it and want to lock it out of the tornado cellar. Trump being mean to you? Aw, poor babies. …

Obama described the massacre carried out by Muslim mass murderer Omar Mateen as “an example of the kind of homegrown extremism that all of us have been concerned about”. But there’s nothing “homegrown” about Omar Mateen. Omar was fighting for a foreign ideology. He just happened to be born in this country. Being born in America does not make him a domestic terrorist.

So Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page. He goes on to say:

One of our biggest errors in the fight against Islamic terrorism has been to treat it as a domestic terrorism problem. Islamic terrorism is not domestic terrorism. Not even when its perpetrators, like Omar Mateen or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood killer, are born in the United States.

What distinguishes domestic terrorism from international terrorism is not the perpetrator’s place of birth. …

Domestic terrorists seek political change in the United States. International terrorists seek to damage the United States. They are interested in domestic politics only to the extent that it serves their larger agenda for damaging the United States.

Islamic terrorists are not seeking domestic political change the way that Bill Ayers was. They are not domestic elements, but foreign elements. And yet we treat them as if they were domestic terrorists.

Our current strategy of trying to prevent radicalization while assuming that what Islamic terrorists want is to destabilize our political system by “dividing” us is a domestic terrorism response. It might or might not be effective if we were dealing with a domestic terror threat, but we aren’t.

Contrary to what Obama claims, Islam has not always been a part of our history. It isn’t part of us today. … Even the most radical left-wing terrorist has something in common with us. The Islamic terrorist has nothing in common with us. He does not share any part of our worldview. He did not emerge from some fork in the road of our history like the left-wing terrorist did. He does not seek to modify our system, but to utterly destroy it and replace it with something completely alien. …

The solution to Islamic terrorism is to stop treating it as a domestic problem. Once upon a time we viewed Islamic terrorism as a foreign problem. When the World Trade Center was first bombed, we did not think in terms of radicalization. We saw foreign enemies infiltrating the United States and plotting against us. We didn’t worry what made them that way. Their mindset was not our problem.

After 9/11, we began treating Islamic terrorism as a domestic problem. The process really took off under Obama. The only accepted view now is that Islamic terrorism has to be countered at a domestic level. We have to work with Muslim groups to counter radicalization while making them feel as included as possible in our society. This same program has failed miserably in Europe. It will fail in America.

The only answer to Islamic terrorism is to treat it as a foreign threat. To quarantine its carriers and to build barriers against the entry of the alien virus of itsideology.

We must recognize that Islamic terrorism is not a domestic insurrection, but a foreign act of war and that it must be fought abroad by force and at home through border control.

As Donald Trump says it must.

D. C. McAllister makes the same point about there being no such thing as “home grown” Islamic terrorism in an article at The Federalist. She rightly points out that the motivation is religious:

It is imperative for us to understand that the driving impulse of a man like Mateen is religious in nature. A lot is being said about how he beat his ex-wife and that he made homophobic comments to coworkers, but this behavior is part of his belief system, which allows men to beat their wives, to put homosexuals to death, and to slaughter unbelievers en masse. …

Mohommed Bouyeri, who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, explained his motivations when he said, “What moved me to do what I did was purely my faith. I was motivated by the law that commands me to cut off the head of anyone who insults Allah and his Prophet.”

It is important to understand this core motivation of Islamic terrorists in order to identify and stop them. If we continue to characterize these mass killings as events disassociated from Islamic doctrine and faith, placing the blame totally on personal hateful impulses, we will fail to identify our enemy. If we can’t identify him — if we can’t name him — we won’t know him, which means we can’t defeat him.

We will also fail to recognize that this is an act of war by a group of people who have no wall of separation between the religious and the political. …

It is, in reality, a religious war, driven by religious doctrine (in this case radical Islam), and carried out with religious impulses. Continuing to call this a hate crime and failing to grasp what actually defines and motivates these people will blind us to their methods, practices, and plans.

It will also cause us to look inward at ourselves instead of outward at the enemy storming our gates. We will wrongly assume we have contributed to the hate in some way, that we have done something to make them lash out and attack us. We will then erroneously conclude that there is something we can do to make them not hate us anymore. This is what leads to political correctness and weakness when we need to be bold and courageous.

The fact is we can do nothing to appease radical Islamists. They are not motivated by our policies, words, and actions, no matter how much they reference them to manipulate us. They are motivated by who we are: We are unbelievers. We are, by our very nature an offense to them. That goes for all of us, whether we are straight, gay, male, female, black, or white. We are in this together, facing an enemy who wants to kill us equally. Our response, therefore, should be a unified one, standing together against a common foe.

That foe does not act alone. Because these individuals are motivated by [what they believe is] a divine directive and act with a communal mindset, they don’t need orders from the leaders of the Islamic State to act.

[In any case] those orders have been issued. In 2014, the chief spokesman for the Islamic State called for all supporters to kill unbelievers “in any manner or way, however it may be’.

“Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict,” said Abu Mohammed al Adnani. “Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.” …  If they want to target U.S. military members because that’s their particular bugaboo at the time, then they are free to do that. Or they can target a gay nightclub, killing homosexuals with the same hand of judgment as their brethren in the Middle East who execute homosexuals by the thousands. …

They don’t need marching orders or emails with instructions. They don’t need a green light from ISIS headquarters. All they need is the courage and the opportunity to do what Allah has commanded — because, according to their faith and doctrine, it is the right thing to do.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant Islamist from Jordan who ran a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan, said Allah commanded them to strike unbelievers (the Kuffar), to –

Kill them and fight them by all means necessary to achieve the goal. The servants of Allah, who perform Jihad to elevate the word of Allah, are permitted to use any and all means necessary to strike the active unbeliever combatants for the purpose of killing them, snatch their souls from their body, cleanse the earth from the abomination, and lift their trial and persecution of the servants of Allah. The goal must be pursued even if the means to accomplish it affects both the intended active fighters and unintended passive ones such as women, children and any other passive category specified by our jurisprudence. 

So obviously a beautiful top-notch religion, Islam. As almost all Western political leaders keep telling us it is. They say we are lucky to have Muslims in our midst. Obama says they have contributed much to America.

He does not tell us what Islam as such has contributed. And we find it hard to think of anything  – other than agony and death.

Advancing Islam is beginning to realize that Donald Trump is likely to be the next president of the United States.

He has given Muslim terrorists good reason to fear him. And they do. 

The best proof is to be found in their denials that they do.

PJ Media reports:

The Al-Battar Media Foundation … is reportedly the media operation of elite ISIS Libyan unit Kalibat al-Battar al-Libi.  The first statement [it released] today featured a selfie of [Omar] Mateen … credited with killing “gay crusader infidels in the city of Orlando, America” and putting “horror, fear and heartbreak” in “the hearts of the infidels” during the “great blessed battle successfully carried out by one Muslim man”.

The statement goes on to slam “hypocrites in whose heart is a disease” and “fear of infidel Trump winning the presidency”. 

The sincere believer is not afraid of the head of infidel America, but is struggling as the almighty Allah commanded him, and waits for the victory of Allah… the blessed battle has made the infidels [feel] horror and fear and panic.

Fear of Trump:

The old ripe-rotten Republican Party, personified by Mitt Romney, is doing all it can to destroy Donald Trump and so prevent a new Republican Party from coming into existence.

From the Political Insider:

Romney is attacking conservative businessman Donald J. Trump. Because Trump is self-funding his campaign, the GOP establishment and political class can’t control him. And that makes Romney angry!

Romney’s full speech was leaked, and included shameless and untrue attacks, such as:

Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat. His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president. And his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.

But in one tweet, Donald Trump’s son Eric embarrassed Romney in a huge way.

The lack of loyalty is truly astonishing!

Right!

Mitt Romney tried with his ideas, his personality, his policies to gain the presidency, and he failed.

Andrea Tantaros in March, 2016, on Mitt Romney:

How staggeringly stupid the anti-Trump Republican grandees are showing themselves to be – Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Bill Kristol and the rest of them. Because Donald Trump and his style offend their patrician taste, they are trying to abort the new Republican Party that Trump would usher in and set on its new course for a new age. 

They are helping Crooked Hillary Clinton to come to power: she who has sold out her country over and over again. She sold its favors to foreign companies and powers when she was secretary of state through the transparent ruse of getting them to donate vast sums of money to the Clinton Foundation. She allowed its enemies to find out its secrets by using an unsecure server for her emails. She callously let one of its ambassadors and three of its soldiers be killed by Muslim terrorists. She insisted on destroying the frail stability of Libya so that now it is in chaos, with thousands of refugees fleeing from its shores to Europe, many drowning on the voyage. And she is notoriously a bare-faced liar. Is such a person to be trusted with the security and well-being of the nation?

Surely not. But Romney and his anti-Trump conspirators are willing to let her rather than a patriotic, competent, fellow Republican gain the presidency.

They are not only disloyal, they are stupid. Even the smartest among them is being, in this supremely important instance, simply but prodigiously stupid.

Straight White Men banned From Equality Conference reads a headline. And the article contains the declaration: “One cannot deny the privileges that straight white men have in today’s society.”

Can’t one? What are they exactly? They are not named. But let’s assume the statement is true. Who grants those privileges? Is there a body, a committee, a secret cabal, that allots them? Is it the Bilderbergers? The Elders of Zion? A convention of Harvard finals clubs? The Finnish Sons of Odin? PEGIDA? The Pacific-Union Club of San Francisco? Or “God”?

Or is White Privilege a specter conjured up by the imagination of the envious, the resentful, the grudging, the failing, the self-pitying and the paranoid? All of them would see success as “privilege”.

It is the “white” as accusation that gives the clue.

The specter has been conjured up by racists. America wanted so much to make up for a past of race discrimination that it elected a totally unqualified black president. And the black president has deliberately made race a stinging issue throughout the land.

A most unintended consequence. An unforeseen development. An enormous irony.

“Racist!” is now considered the worst of insults. Of course anyone can hurl it at anyone just to be nasty. It’s a cuss word. It needs no cause in the speech or behavior of the accused.

But in the unwritten lexicon of political correctness authored and held under continual review by the Left; in the abstract agoras of popular discourse – the media, both mainstream and social; in the institutions of higher learning, where the deep thinkers are – the academies; in the universal legislature of fashionable opinion – Hollywood, it is the law that only Whites can be “racist”.

And the worst of Whites are Republicans. And the worst of Republicans is Donald Trump. Ergo, Donald Trump is the worst racist.

Yet try as they might, the Left, the media, the professoriate and its furious disciples, the propagandists of the entertainment industry cannot find anything useful that Trump has said against Blacks.

However …

Ann Coulter writes:

Annoyed at federal judge Gonzalo P. Curiel’s persistent rulings against him in the Trump University case (brought by a law firm that has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches by Bill and Hillary), Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that maybe it’s because the judge is a second-generation Mexican immigrant.

The entire media — and most of the GOP — have spent 10 months telling us that Mexicans in the United States are going to HATE Trump for saying he’ll build a wall. Now they’re outraged that Trump thinks one Mexican hates him for saying he’ll build a wall.

Curiel has distributed scholarships to illegal aliens. He belongs to an organization that sends lawyers to the border to ensure that no illegal aliens’ “human rights” are violated. The name of the organization? The San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association – “La Raza” meaning THE RACE.

Let’s pause to imagine the nomination hearings for a white male who belonged to any organization for white people – much less one with the words “THE RACE” in its title.

The media were going to call Trump a racist whatever he did, and his attack on a Hispanic judge is way better than when they said it was racist for Republicans to talk about Obama’s golfing.

Has anyone ever complained about the ethnicity of white judges or white juries? I’ve done some research and it turns out … THAT’S ALL WE’VE HEARD FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS.

The New York Times alone has published hundreds of articles, editorials, op-eds, movie reviews, sports articles and crossword puzzles darkly invoking “white judges” and “all-white” juries, as if that is ipso facto proof of racist justice.

Two weeks ago – that’s not an error; I didn’t mean to type “decades” and it came out “weeks” – the Times published an op-ed by a federal appeals judge stating: “All-white juries risk undermining the perception of justice in minority communities, even if a mixed-race jury would have reached the same verdict or imposed the same sentence.”

In other words, even when provably not unfair, white jurors create the “perception” of unfairness solely by virtue of the color of their skin. …

I have approximately 1 million … examples of the media going mental about a “white judge” or “all-white jury”, and guess what? In none of them were any of the white people involved members of organizations dedicated to promoting white people, called “THE RACE”. …

The model of a fair jury was the O.J. [Simpson] trial. Nine blacks, one Hispanic and two whites, who had made up their minds before the lawyers’ opening statements. (For my younger readers: O.J. was guilty; the jury acquitted him after 20 seconds of deliberation.) At the end of the trial, one juror gave O.J. the black power salute. Nothing to see here. It was [police officer] Mark Fuhrman’s fault!

In defiance of everyday experience, known facts and common sense, we are all required to publicly endorse the left’s religious belief that [male] whites are always racist, but women and minorities are incapable of any form of bias. …

At least when we’re talking about American blacks, there’s a history of white racism, so the double standard is not so enraging. What did we ever do to Mexicans? Note to Hispanics, Muslims, women, immigrants and gays: You’re not black.

Other than a few right-wingers, no one denounced now-sitting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for her “wise Latina” speech, in which she said “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging”.

But Trump is a “racist” for saying the same thing.

Six months ago, a Times editorial demanded that the Republican Senate confirm Obama judicial nominee Luis Felipe Restrepo, on the grounds that “as a Hispani”, Restrepo would bring “ethnic … diversity to the court”.

You see how confusing this is. On one hand, it’s vital that we have more women and Latinos on the courts because white men can’t be trusted to be fair. But to suggest that women and Latinos could ever be unfair in the way that white men can, well, that’s “racist”.

The effrontery of this double standard is so blinding, that the only way liberals can bluff their way through it is with indignation. DO I HEAR YOU RIGHT? ARE YOU SAYING A JUDGE’S ETHNICITY COULD INFLUENCE HIS DECISIONS? (Please, please, please don’t bring up everything we’ve said about white judges and juries for the past four decades.)

They’re betting they can intimidate Republicans – and boy, are they right! The entire Republican Brain Trust has joined the media in their denunciations of Trump for his crazy idea that anyone other than white men can be biased. … 

The NeverTrump crowd is going to get a real workout if they plan to do this every week between now and the election.

What do Republicans think they’re getting out of this appeasement? Proving to voters that elected Republicans are pathetic, impotent media suck-ups is, surprisingly, not hurting Trump.

We appreciate Coulter’s sarcasm. It’s not surprising at all, of course. The more the Republican establishment attacks Trump – led in the outcry by Speaker Paul Ryan who says Trump’s objection to Judge Curiel is “textbook racism” – the more votes Trump can be sure of getting.

In return for fawning on the Leftist leadership of the United States for the last seven and a half years, Leftist  journalists (a large majority) have no doubt been accorded many types of ego-flattering, career-enhancing privileges. And that on top of the joy of following their own inclinations anyway.

If after January next year the leadership will no longer be Leftist (a possibility looking more like a probability with each passing day), they’ll have a hard choice to make. Either they must report fairly, accurately, objectively at last; or, if they cannot and will not, be prepared to find themselves at a disadvantage in competition with others who can and will.

Those who decide to make the necessary adjustments will need to begin soon.

Right now would not be too soon.

Of course true objectivity is impossible, as Roger L. Simon points out in an article at PJ Media. But fairness and accuracy can be genuinely attempted, and the attempt if genuine enough will bring a report nearer to the impossible ideal.

Donald Trump, while detailing his veteran donations at a news conference, thoroughly dissed the press and called a reporter “sleazy”. …

Well, of course Donald did because they are mostly sleazy, all of them, including me. I’m particularly sleazy when I’m reporting, slightly less so when I’m writing an opinion piece. And that’s the point — it’s all opinion when you examine it closely, reporting not so much. Nothing is really objective. It can’t be. We’re all biased for one obvious reason — we’re human. Ever meet an unbiased human? It was probably a corpse. An old one. …

Reporters are most sleazy when they pretend to be objective, following diligently in the footsteps of the Grey Lady herself and her onetime motto “All the news that’s fit to print”. Only the Times chose what news [was] fit, not to mention what news “fit” on the front page and what on page twenty-four. Bias anyone? (It took years for theTimes to put Auschwitz on the front page.) Trump knows this behavior well since he’s been manipulating the press for years. Call him Charles Foster Trump.

(After Charles Foster Kane of Citizen Kane – the movie portrait of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.)

I’m surprised Donald hasn’t bought a newspaper by now, not that he needs one. He has a – excuse the expression – trump card, meaning the press needs him (for clicks or viewers) more than he needs the press …

The rest of us are not so lucky. We don’t get to so easily attack the press, even when it attacks us. We don’t have Trump’s megaphone. No one has his megaphone these days.

So Donald is acting for all of us, a solid majority anyway, when he disses the mostly liberal press. It’s certain to be popular.

And I for one am glad we might have a president who seems clued in to alternative voices (i. e., social media) as well and pops off on Twitter. I hope he doesn’t stop (although he might want to work with an editor). The reason is simple. We need as many voices as possible since none is unbiased. A multiplicity of sources is the only way we can even have a chance to get at that truth, to find even a hint of transparency. The current government is doing everything it can to suppress information, as was made obvious Tuesday by the astonishing number of State Department and DOJ lawyers sent to defend Cheryl Mills at the Judicial Watch deposition.

This is likely to get worse. To say we live in dangerous times is an understatement. Traditional sources of information and communication are not the answer. Or are only part of the answer. …

Trump is doing the right thing in holding the press to account. They are a privileged class. I am part of it, peripherally anyway, and have enjoyed that privilege. It is a far stronger privilege, I assure you, than the color of my skin. It gets me into places that many can’t go.

Mark Davis at Townhall replies to the most frequent criticisms of Donald Trump that are made in objection to his being the Republican candidate for the presidency:

As we ride the white-knuckle Trump train to the Cleveland GOP convention and beyond, the air will fill with criticisms of him. Some will come from Democrats, some from rebellious Republicans. From both sides, some of those criticisms will have merit and others will be simply ridiculous.

So here’s a convenient guide for assessing the anti-Trump pronouncements which we will swim in all summer:

“He is not a consistent conservative.” Completely correct. His populism certainly borrows from some strains of conservative thought, but his trade policies are of a more populist bent, and his willingness to entertain a higher minimum wage is straight-up liberalism.

Many conservatives who have long supported him know he does not bat a thousand, or even .800, but they feel his energy on immigration, job creation and hammering political correctness may result in more genuine conservative victories than, say, a Jeb Bush presidency might have yielded.

“He doesn’t like Hispanics/ women/ fill in the blank.” The attempt to portray Trump as a racist or misogynist fails on its face. It is a slander leveled by people who know he is likely to fare better with Latinos in November than Mitt Romney did in 2012 (27 percent). I’d love to send this year’s entire seventeen-strong GOP field through the streets of South Brooklyn. Precisely one would get waves of appreciative welcome, and it’s not either of our candidates who were actual Hispanics.

As for women, any Republican faces a challenge in the current era of government as master nurturer. But strong, self-reliant women are pervasive among Trump supporters, and there is not a whiff of mistreatment of women in his business history. Quite the opposite, Trump World appears to be a complete meritocracy, where women and people of color are rewarded for performance without regard to race or gender. This is admittedly jarring in a country that has been led too long by Democrats obsessed with weaponizing both.

“He seeks evangelical support, but has hardly led a Biblical life.” Direct hit. And to many, it appears not to matter one shred. …

To us, of course, the comparative unreligiousness of Donald Trump is a big plus.

“He is not a real pro-lifer.” … Has he bought into the absurdity that Planned Parenthood does some good things? He has, meaning he cannot grasp that the organization would not exist but for abortion services. These are not good.

We agree.

But there is no reason to believe that he is somehow lying in his testimony of becoming more pro-life as the years have passed. We conservatives are a funny lot; we persuade and coax and convince and lure people to our side, and when they pivot to agreement with us, we kick them in the crotch for not being with us their whole lives.

“We can’t count on his Supreme Court nominees.” What do people want him to do? He gave us a fat list of wonderful constitutionalist judges who would honorably fill the shoes of Antonin Scalia. Do we need a joint news conference with one of those names so that skeptics can know he means it? That is wildly inappropriate before he even accepts the nomination, and best left to the first days of his presidency, when he can make that announcement surrounded by the compelling imagery of the White House.

Trump’s tormentors responded to his worthy list with the same taunt they roll out with every conservative promise he makes: You can’t believe him, he’s a total liar. This is the mantra of those who don’t just doubt him; they hate him.

“He does stunningly unpresidential things.” Yes, he does, and most of them have helped him win the nomination. To the chagrin of more mannerly tastes, his admittedly brash and aggressive style has been punctuated with moments of truly embarrassing excess.

Those moments have dwindled as he has sent his rivals home. His discipline should sharpen even further now that he has but one opponent to target, and those attacks on Hillary Clinton will delight rather than annoy millions of Republicans who have watched him flay their favored hopeful.

“He contributed to Democrats.” No kidding, as does every businessman who wants to curry favor across party lines. I daresay Trump would not open a checkbook for her these days, now that their relationship is political. This trope is trundled out by critics seeking to sow seeds of doubt as to Trump’s reliability on core values.

“He doesn’t have any core values.” Have you listened to the man? Here are ten off the bat: stronger borders, blasting political correctness, leveling the trade playing field, rebuilding the military, taking better care of veterans, protecting gun rights, creating jobs, speaking truth to global jihad, and the broadly stated but resonant “make America great again”. 

Anyone is free to agree or disagree with those, but they have been recurring themes every day of his campaign. Doubters may claim that he might not follow through on all ten, but I’ll bet his batting average with those stated goals is better than the sorry job the Republican establishment has done following through on all of those things they said they would do if only we won the House, if only we won the Senate, if only, if only.

“He changes his views on the fly.” In general, this is not good. On important conservative economic points, if he has adopted one, he needs to stick to it.

There we disagree. Trump is a pragmatist. He is open to advice.

We hope he will change his mind about protectionism. His favoring it, in relation particularly to China, is the one position he has declared that we firmly object to.

That he can change his opinions is not a bad thing – until he finally adopts a strong free market policy. Only then need he “stick to it”.

His reversal on a job-killing minimum wage increase was a total unforced error.

That said, he has stated often that he may adjust views as he becomes more familiar with various issues. While this annoys ideologues (like me), it may prove somewhat endearing to voters who sense he may listen as he learns the ropes of governance.

And on things like reticence to commit U.S. troops to the Middle East, I am hoping he adjusts that view right after his first security briefing the afternoon of January 20, 2017.

“He compliments Putin.” He sure does, in a certain oblique way, noting the Russian leader’s strength and devotion to his goals. For his part, Putin is eating it up, to the degree that he has thrown a compliment or two back Trump’s way.

This is not exactly “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

But what it may be is a master deal-maker softening an adversary in preparation for a global chess match that might go better with an opening chapter of sweet-talk than it has of late with Obama’s empty rhetoric followed by inaction or worse.

It is true that Trump has zero experience dealing with foreign leaders. But he has a half-century of experience sizing up rivals and adversaries, using words and actions to lure them toward his agenda.

“He traffics in conspiracy theories.” This wholly accurate Trump criticism holds water, but dings him far less than those wielding it might wish.

His flirtations with such matters has ranged from the goofy (Rafael Cruz and Lee Harvey Oswald) to the inexcusable (Bush lied about WMDs to get us into war). But these moments seem to flit by without consequence, and the most recent one, the flight of Vince Foster nostalgia, was actually defused by the hyperventilations of overreaction.

Vince Foster was a close associate of Hillary Clinton. How he died is disputed. Did he commit suicide, or was he murdered? The case for doubting suicide is plausible.

As the voices of punditry gasped at his doubts on the official Foster story, millions old enough to remember 1993 thought: “Hmmm. The Clintons. The scandals. The various pressures of covering for them. Foster’s repeated frustrations with the Washington whirlwind. The decades of envelope-pushing by Bill and Hillary ever since. Know what? Maybe I’m not so sure what happened either.” …

“He rooted for people to lose their homes in the recession’s housing collapse.” This is straight from the den of lies that is the Democrat party advertising brain trust.

They found audio of Trump in 2006, musing about how a drop in home prices could provide buying opportunities that could be of benefit to investors. The history of such logic dates to neanderthals hoping tiger pelts would dip in value to grease the wheels of commerce 30,000 years ago.

Yet Elizabeth Warren, who we learn has pocketed some cash from a house flip or two, lashed out against Trump’s cruelty for actively wishing for homeowners to lose everything. There are only two explanations for an attack this baseless: genuine stupidity and malicious intent. Let’s just say she is not stupid.

And finally, “He is only doing this for his own ego.” No doubt, the man has a stratospheric self-image, and doesn’t mind telling us so. But this has been a trait of his for the decades we have known him. Does he engage in business deals for his own image or because he wants them to succeed? Has he plunged into various ventures from the USFL to the Miss America pageant for his own image or because he wanted them to succeed?

He clearly wishes to succeed at everything he does, so why would this not extend to running the country? This does not mean I will necessarily agree with his every instinct, but if he genuinely pursues the things he talks about with determination and seriousness, there will be far more positive results than negative.

In the end, I’d rather have a president interested in actually doing things that will make him look good, than the last seven and a half years of a president who does whatever he wants because he thinks he is already omniscient and omnipotent.

And if, at the end of his presidency, the country will have been truly benefited, Trump will enjoy the enormous benefit of an even loftier list of achievements, and we might enjoy the benefit of an America made, at least in some ways, great again.