PSYCHOHISTORY AND THE AMERICAN LEFT

If there was any doubt about the level of my interest in science fiction, it was dispelled when I read the first of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation books.  Set thousands of years in the future, it talked of a time when the Galactic Empire had long been established and was in decline.  Harry Seldon was a university professor who had developed an algorithmic system known as psychohistory in which he was able accurately to predict future events.  Seldon foresaw the breakup of the Empire which would be followed by a millennial long period of chaos – unless he could set in motion certain events which would shorten that period of destabilization.

It’s probably difficult for those younger people who view history as anything that happened before lunch to have a long term perspective.  It’s difficult even for those of us who have a respect for history to think in terms of how what we do today has implications for what might transpire in a thousand years.  But splitting the difference, it is possible to take a sober view of events that have transpired in our life times and reach an understanding of why things are today as they are, determined in part by recent past events.

Those who have tried to explain the virulent anti-Trump demonstrations by stating that the protesters are upset about the result of the 2016 election are merely focusing on a symptom, not the root problem.  Yes, the left is upset that President Trump won, more so than that Hillary Clinton lost.  But that merely scratches the surface of their frustration.  Their election loss last year was not simply the loss of an election but the end of an agenda whose goal was to transform the country into little more than just another global player at the same level as are Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, toward which they have been working for the last fifty years.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964 he set into motion a series of events whose repercussions  are manifest today.  LBJ promoted this law as a matter of political expediency and certainly not as a result of his personal belief in equality – an attitude he had never seemed troubled by through his extensive political career.  But between Viet Nam and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., he had his hands full.  And the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did what all politicians do in time of crisis.  They pass laws that they think make them look good without concern that the law will actually do good.

The law which guaranteed that people could not be discriminated against by reason of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was something that fair minded Americans approved of.  It also outlawed segregation in public schools and the use of public facilities.  But it had few teeth.  Seeing that the law was generally well received by their constituencies, the Congress passed further laws which added enforcement authorities to the original – and, of course, with the philosophy that if voters in their districts liked the first law, how much more would they like other laws which expanded the original.  So over a short time span, Congress enacted additional laws including the expansion and loosening of welfare benefits as well as adopting what we know as Affirmative Action.

Now if we consider the purported intent of the Civil Rights laws – to eradicate discrimination (which primarily was intended to help black Americans despite the inclusion of other classes), Affirmative Action deserves our specific attention as it is an excellent example of progressive thinking.  Affirmative Action was predicated on the assumption that for any of a variety of reasons, black Americans while theoretically equal to any other American, had specifically been deprived of the equal opportunity which the Declaration of Independence declared to be each American’s birthright.

As a result, in order to eliminate discrimination, Affirmative Action would rectify this injustice by instituting a policy of  discrimination.   The Federal government would impose quotas either tacitly or specifically in both colleges and the workplace to insure that there was what they deemed to be an acceptable level of minority representation among those who studied or worked in those institutions or businesses.  There were several problems with this policy.

The first was that minority students who were enrolled in colleges and universities and had gained admission not because they were the best intellectually qualified to have earned those places dropped out at a rate four times as high as their white counterparts.  The reason for that was evident. Many of these students had come from high schools which poorly prepared their students for higher education.

The second was that Affirmative Action rankled many white Americans who were supportive of the Civil Rights movement but whose children were being adversely impacted in achieving a college degree for no fault of their own other than that they were denied admission because of their skin color despite showing higher academic achievement than others who were admitted simply because of their skin color.  If there was any one reason for the growth of racism by whites in the country, Affirmative Action provided the perfect platform.

Because of the demography of the country in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was primarily designed to eliminate discrimination again black Americans as I said previously.  However, with the large influx of both Hispanics and Asians that has occurred in the last half century, it is interesting to look at some educational statistics to see how these two minority groups have fared educationally since they are also protected under the law.

For the year 2012, of the forty-eight states and the District of Columbia which reported, the overall nationwide graduation rate for high school students stood at 80%.  White students graduated at a rate of 86%; Hispanics at a rate of 73%; Blacks at a rate of 69%.  Asian students graduated high school in 35/48 jurisdictions at the same or a higher rate than white students for an overall graduation rate of 92%.  The question naturally suggests itself, “Why do students who bear the additional challenge of coping with a language which in many cases is not their first language do better academically than black students who do not have that obstacle to their education?”

It would be overly simplistic to lay all the blame at the feet of the various inner city schools which presumably “educate” the vast majority of black children in the country.  But it is interesting that middle class, suburban blacks’ children graduate from high school at virtually the same rate as their white classmates.   Unfortunately, unless you are a Hip Hop mogul or get signed by the NFL or NBA, lacking a good formative education, there is very little opportunity for the black child born in the ghettos of our cities.  Lacking a particularly great athletic or musical talent, most of our inner city black children are faced with a future of hopelessness – or membership in a gang.

During her campaign, Hillary Clinton made the remarkable statement that, “Being part of a gang is like joining a family.”  Well, that’s true – if you’re talking about the Manson family.  That statement is something that could only be uttered by someone who is a white liberal and who has neither the concern nor the understanding of the dynamics of life in the inner city where murder is the number one cause of death for those under the age of forty. And if you don’t understand why there is no outrage from the left on either black on black violence or the poor quality of education which inner city black children receive you shouldn’t be.  It’s not an accident but by design that these conditions exist.

At one point, liberals wooed black Americans with idealistic jargon about equality and how they would redress the past indignities that these people’s ancestors had endured.  And they had a simple way of convincing them of their sincerity – money.  They bought their allegiance through ever increasing numbers of programs, rewards for having more children, lunch subsidies, free or subsidized housing and most recently under the last administration, free phones.

But if Clinton had won the election, blacks would have had a very big surprise in store.  With the left’s victory which was denied, they would have thrown open the borders – and far more Hispanics would have found their way to the United States, ultimately dwarfing the number of blacks who live here – and making their political support irrelevant.  Then blacks would have found that they really have been living on a liberal-crafted plantation lo these many years.  And while the vast majority of our black citizens do not yet realize it, Donald Trump’s election is the best chance they have of truly participating in what should be freely available to all Americans – a shot at achieving the American dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE PAPISTS ARE COMING, THE PAPISTS ARE COMING!

It was Inauguration Day, January 20, 1961 and I was very sad.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy was going to become President of the United States, succeeding Dwight David Eisenhower in that position.

My parents had both supported Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 election and were disappointed in its outcome.  Nevertheless, like most of those in the country, they accepted its results and hoped that the new president would be good for the country.  Kennedy’s election was not the source of my sadness.  It was that we were losing Eisenhower.

I never knew either of my grandfathers.  But when I watched Ike on our Dumont television, he always impressed me as the kind of person who, if I were able, I would adopt as my foster grandfather.  He impressed me as calm, reasoned and a person who had control of every situation using his extensive life experience as his guide.  I felt safe with him running the country.  That was true despite the fact that many of our public buildings hosted “Air Raid Shelter” signs on their facades and that we conducted regular air raid exercises at school.  The cold war with our recently former ally, the Soviet Union, was in full bloom.

The presidential election of 1960 had not been without controversy.  Nixon carried 26 states to Kennedy’s 22.  But Kennedy won the nationwide popular vote by slightly more than 118,00,  rather remarkable considering that at that time there were 17 million more voters registered as Democrats than there were Republicans.   Kennedy overwhelmingly won the electoral college garnering 303 votes to Nixon’s 219, a margin of victory not very dissimilar from the margin that Trump had over Clinton in the 2016 election.  Ten states were decided by fewer than ten thousand votes each.  It was the closest election since 1916 when incumbent President Woodrow Wilson defeated Supreme Court Justice Charles Evan Hughes.  Despite a number of state recounts affirming the results, there were those who considered Kennedy’s election “illegitimate.”

A purported concern that Americans held in that election was that Kennedy lacked the experience and was too young to be an effective and capable president.  That, at least, was the argument that newspapers and political commentators put forward.  But there was another issue that was only mouthed in whispers.  Kennedy was a Roman Catholic.  And there were plenty of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants who were sure that if he were elected, the United States, the strongest nation on earth, would find itself under the control of the world’s smallest country, the Vatican and Pope John XXIII.  Conspiracy theories are nothing new to American politics.

During the short term of Kennedy’s presidency, there is nothing to suggest that any foreign influence played a role in the policies which he put forward or the programs he enacted.  Nevertheless, this was an era when Roman Catholics or Jews need not apply for memberships in various social clubs and organizations.  The term that was used to explain this obvious prejudice was that they were “restricted.”  Indeed, they were.

The cacophonous group who have coalesced under the umbrella as “protestors of an illegitimate Trump presidency” will be out in force tomorrow to express their point of view at the Inauguration ceremonies.  That certainly is their constitutionally protected right – as long as they do so in a peaceful manner, an issue which may be in question.  One of their main talking points is that Trump’s victory is “illegitimate” and attributable to “foreign influence” in the election – specifically Russia’s.  Interestingly, their right to protest which will be protected tomorrow by law enforcement is one which they wouldn’t enjoy were this unfolding in Moscow rather than Washington, D. C.

If the Vatican ran the government during the Kennedy administration, they did a poor job of it.  It was a mere ten years after Kennedy’s assassination that the Supreme Court upheld Roe v Wade – a decision that flew in the face of one of the most fundamental doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, the sanctity of life from inception.

If the Russians influenced the 2016 election they also did a poor job of it.  Had they wanted to avoid the controversy over their influence, much of which stems from Clinton’s three million larger popular vote than Trump’s, they should have scrounged up a few million more votes for “their candidate.”

If the Russians’ goal was to undermine the confidence that Americans have in our democratic process and in the continuity of governance, they needn’t have bothered.  It appears that we have a sufficient supply of our own, including members of Congress, who are attempting to achieve that same result.

PARDON ME

It should come as no surprise to regular readers that I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton.  For more than twenty-five years I’ve thought of her as the potentially most dangerous politician in America.  Nothing has happened in those two and one half decades which has caused me to change my mind on that subject.

On the contrary, White Water, the cattle trading scheme, Vince Foster – well, those are child’s play compared to her irresponsible handling of national security and the corruption attached to the Clinton Foundation which would be revealed if a truly objective investigation were to be conducted.  Of course, we all know that will never happen under the current administration.

Given my view, you might be surprised that I believe that, if President Obama doesn’t beat him to the punch, President-elect Trump should offer a deal to Ms. Clinton which would include a full presidential pardon.  Shocking, you say?  Maybe not so much.

In defending my position, let me first say that I believe Clinton is guilty as sin – in numerous different matters.  Perhaps that is inherently obvious – otherwise why would we even be talking about pardoning her?  Nor do I believe that she has experienced  any great moment of contrition which would warrant absolution in a moral or religious sense.  I think that if she were to review her past deeds, the only remorse that she might be feeling is that she got caught with an insurmountable amount of evidence suggestive of her guilt, too much to spin or lie away this time.

In an election that was heavily weighted in her favor; the benefits that she inherited as a Democrat because of the electoral map; the one-upsmanship afforded her in her primary contest by the DNC; the adulation of her by the media and the opprobrium heaped on her opponent by them; despite all that, she was up-ended by a political outsider and put the much vaunted expectation of our having our first female president on the back burner – at least for now.

Ms. Clinton proved herself to be an anachronism – and “The Times They Are A-Changing.”  Ms. Clinton, the champion of a higher minimum wage lost to Donald Trump, the champion of unlimited opportunity.  Clinton was supported by virtually all the self-styled elites.  Trump was enthusiastically embraced by people who were struggling to pay their mortgage because their jobs had been lost to Mexico.  Clinton espoused a policy of open borders while Trump promised an administration where law and an orderly immigration process would be restored.

So why a pardon for Hillary Clinton?  There are several reasons.

The first is that there really is nothing to gain other than retribution and a warning to others that unlawful behavior will not be tolerated and that nobody is above the law.  That is an important, no, that is the essential foundation of the American experiment and what differentiates us from virtually every other country.  But as you will see if you keep reading, we can make that point in a different way than by appointing a special prosecutor, spending countless hours investigating and arraigning Clinton and then trying and probably convicting her.

The second is that if, and I believe it is, President-elect Trump’s main focus to Make America Great Again, it is best to direct all his and Congress’ attention to getting the ball rolling on doing just that.  Let’s not get distracted by what will undoubtedly be spun as little more than partisan politics – although I believe that is a gross mis-characterization of  Clinton’s actions.

The third has been obvious to anyone who has watched the news on television in the week since the election.  This country is still obviously divided.  President-elect Trump is still being characterized as a “loose cannon,” a misogynist, unstable and hateful.  The presumed basis for the outrage is that he is not a legitimate president-elect as he did not win the popular vote.  If he had won both the popular vote as well as the Electoral College majority vote, I believe you would still have seen these protests.  Pardoning Clinton would go a long way to beginning a healing process, reuniting the nation and defusing the allegations about which these sorely misguided people are purportedly demonstrating.

If President Ronald Reagan was the “Great Communicator,” President-elect Donald J. Trump may well be called the “Great Negotiator.”  And here’s what I would advise him to negotiate with Clinton before giving her a presidential pardon.

First and foremost, Trump should require that in a press conference, she allocute to the real reasons that she chose to maintain an unsecure, private server despite the laws which should have prevented her from doing so.  That she allocute to whether all of the deleted emails were, in fact, personal or whether there were records that were deleted which should be part of the public record.  That she allocute to whether or not any of her decisions as Secretary of State were influenced because of donations to the Clinton Foundation.  Such an honest allocution would carry the same weight as a lengthy legal process and for those who blindly voted for her might give some reason for pause and reflection.

Second, I would ask her and President Clinton to forgo any pensions, Secret Service protection and any other benefits which are currently proffered on former presidents and politicians.  The Clintons have done very well for themselves since they left the White House.  Voluntarily stripping themselves of future benefices will hardly impose a financial hardship on the couple.

In my more Draconian moments, I would like to see Hillary Clinton voluntarily give up her U. S. citizenship and move to a foreign country where she might get a fresh start.  Brazil comes to mind.

By area, Brazil is only moderately smaller than the United States.  It has a multi-racial, multi-cultural population with lots of under served children – and taking care of children is a passion that Clinton maintains has been a focus of hers throughout her life.  Furthermore, it has elected a woman president (currently under indictment) – so if she wanted to revive her political ambitions, what more natural place than Brazil?

Furthermore, it is a welcoming country.  After WWII it took in a significant number of Germans, Japanese and Italians who may or may not have been involved in the Axis war effort.  The Israelis spent a great deal of time in the country ferreting out those who were members of the power structure of the Third Reich. This might be a community with whom Clinton could forge alliances. Whether husband Bill would choose to join her in exile would, of course, be up to the two of them.  Of course, this transplant to South America is more on my wish list than my must have list.

If Brazil doesn’t fill the bill for Clinton, an alternative might be Haiti.  Perhaps if she chose to live in Port au Prince, she might join in the search to find the fifteen million dollars that the Clinton Foundation allegedly gave to assist the earthquake victims there a few years back and which, by all accounts, is still missing.

In my view, this is a reasonable proposal.  But if you have a different view, I hope you’ll accept my apology with a heartfelt, “Pardon me.”

SO, WHO VOTED FOR NIXON?

It was Sunday, November 10, 1968 and earlier that week, Richard Milhaus Nixon had been elected President of the United States, crushing his Democrat opponent, incumbent Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.  I was feeling celebratory and for my postlude at church I played the Toccata from Charles Marie Widor’s Fifth Organ Symphony – an impressive piece which sounds far more difficult than it actually is.  Here is a performance given by James Kennerley, an outstanding young British organist played appropriately on the console at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

 

As an organist, I was used to finishing my final piece, gathering up my music from the music stand and leaving church to find only a small handful of people remaining who had taken the time and had the interest to listen to it.    On this particular Sunday, one of the faithful was a woman who was still praying, tears falling from her eyes.  I knew her.  One of her sons was in my children’s choir.

I walked down the center aisle of the nave, genuflected and joined her on the kneeler on which she was praying.  I turned to her, put my arm around her shoulder and asked her, “Betty, are you all right?”

Betty, through her sobbing, said, “I just don’t understand it.  I voted for Humphrey.  My neighbors all voted for Humphrey.  My relatives all voted for Humphrey.  So, who voted for Nixon?”

Hyde Park in Chicago was a very liberal neighborhood.  And Betty, a white woman who had married a black man in the 1950’s, long before this was either generally accepted not to mention chic, was typical in her mind-set.  She, and many others of my neighbors all exemplified that marvelous statement that William F. Buckley made when he said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” 

As a young person, many of my friends and neighbors were surprised to find that I was supporting Nixon in that election.  And they were always willing to debate me with the intent of changing my mind and bringing me over to their side.  They failed in that endeavor – but after the many debates in which I engaged, while I could tell that they had a sense of frustration as I would rebut their arguments, we still remained friends, there was no acrimony on either side and we left with the same feeling of respect for each other that we had before we argued our respective positions.  That sense of open and sincere discussion seems to be something that we’ve lost.  And that’s a tragedy.

I must confess to a little confusion that those who identify as “liberals” are so upset that Donald J. Trump will be the United States’ forty-fifth president.  These are the same people who believe that every child, irrespective of performance, should receive a sticker or a trophy.  These are the people who believe that you shouldn’t keep score because it might fatally impair the psyche of those who come out on the short end of the stick.  Remarkably, now that the game is over and we know the result, they want to change the rules under which the game was played to affect the outcome so that their losing team wins.  That’s the sort of behavior that I’ve observed among two-year olds who are throwing a hissy fit so that they can get their way.  And if we deem that sort of behavior unacceptable in toddlers, how much more should we consider it untenable in people who are actually determining the nation’s future in voting in our elections?

One of the arguments advanced in the recent riots over Trump’s victory and the “Not My President” signs is that Hillary Clinton won (barely) the popular vote and should, therefore, be our next president.  That, of course, begins the debate with the assumption that the Electoral College is antiquated, should have been abolished eons ago and we should disregard the Constitution.

Although there are many valid reasons why I believe we should retain the Electoral College, the fact is that under our current system, it exists.  To put it in the way in which many who are Pro-Abortion explain and support the decision in Roe v. Wade, “It’s the law of the land.”

This argument for a popular vote to determine the outcome of presidential elections further makes an unprovable assumption.  That the popular vote, as recorded, would have been the same popular vote the candidates would have received if it, rather than the Electoral College’s vote, determined the winner.  Both the losing Clinton and successful Trump campaigns developed their strategies based on the rules that governed the election – to secure 270 or more electoral votes.  If our system called for the election of the next president based on the popular vote, both campaigns would have run their campaigns differently, camping out in all the large population states. virtually ignoring the rest of the country.  Incidentally, that is the exact reason that the Founders established the Electoral College – so that small states would have a voice in our elections.

If we were to go back in time and rewrite history, (a favorite exercise of those on the left) we would have to crown different World Series winners by determining the victor as that team which got the most hits during the series rather than the most runs.  We would have different Super Bowl victors if we determined the best performance based on which team gained the most yards rather than put up the most points.

I do understand how shocked those on the left were as the results rolled in on election night.  I myself was startled at the outcome – and had made a sojourn to my local liquor store to buy a very large bottle of my favorite Scotch to drown my sorrow as I awaited the announcement that Hillary Clinton was going to be our next president.

It took me forty-six years of voting before I ever cast a ballot for someone who actually won his race for the House of Representatives.  So I had a lot of sucking up and disappointment in many, many elections.  But I never felt either the urge or need  to go out and express my displeasure by lighting trash cans on fire or vandalizing parked cars. My father had a simple piece of advice for handling the disappointments which he knew would come my way in life.  “Deal with it – and learn from it.”  But I suspect the left’s concern and need to find safe spaces may merely be in its infancy.

Despite the firm predictions that the Dems would regain the Senate and pick up twenty or so seats in the House, (not to mention installing one of their own in the White House), those predictions from such moral and mental geniuses as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid, did not come to pass.  For the first time in eighty-eight years we now have a Republican president, a Republican controlled House and a Republican dominated Senate.  And that is good for the American people.

Members of both parties have hidden behind the excuse that nothing gets done because of “divided government.”  That excuse no longer is available.  Legislators on both sides of the aisle and President-elect Trump will be judged by what they accomplish – or fail to accomplish.  I’m betting my money that Trump’s rhetoric is not merely a bunch of words – but are born from a sincere and earnest, heartfelt love of this nation and a belief that we can and should be doing better for all our citizens.  We will see.

But if I am correct and if Donald Trump is half as talented and driven as I believe him to be, the liberal left may be in for bigger headaches two years from now.  In the mid-term election, they will be defending twenty-five Senate seats, twelve of which are in deep red states.  If they think their position now is tenuous, they may be looking at a Republican Senate super majority two years hence.  But, as this is America, there is reason for them to be optimistic.

Instead of concocting excuses for their failed results at the ballot boxes across the nation, they can choose to, “Deal with it – and learn from it.”  Whether they do that or not is any body’s guess.  But in the real world, we don’t hand out stickers or trophies to the loser.  Instead, they generally wind up sporting a black eye.

OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE (BUT WHICH PEOPLE?)

As we come down to the wire and the general election is less than two weeks away, I look at it’s being over with a mixture of gratitude and trepidation.  Gratitude that the endless political ads will have ended – and trepidation as to the outcome.

That we have two flawed candidates (my apologies to Gov. Gary Johnson and Dr. Jill Stein who are essentially irrelevant), from whom we must choose is rather distasteful.  But at least one of those, Donald J. Trump won his nomination fairly and squarely in a field as crowded as the Kentucky Derby and despite an entrenched Republican establishment that actively opposed him.  They lost that battle and are working hard to lose the war because they refuse to recognize a truism uttered by the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, “The people has spoke.”

From  a quick read of some of the revelations being supplied by Wikileaks, it’s becoming clear that Hillary Rodham Clinton had some underhanded (and perhaps illegal assistance) in getting where she has gotten.  Nevertheless, she is on the ballot and we Americans have a choice to make.  The decision is effectively a binary one – and I have thrown my support and my vote to Trump for one simple reason which the late humorist, Will Rogers so eloquently expressed:

“I am less concerned about what government can do for me than I am concerned about what government can do to me.”

There are two things we can say about Trump and Clinton with some degree of certainty.  The first is that they are both human (although extreme partisans in either camp might dispute the validity of that statement as it pertains to the opposing candidate).  The second is that they have, during their lifetimes, both switched party affiliations.

Trump claims that in order to do business in his home base of New York City, it was essential that he both register as a Democrat and contribute to various Democratic candidates in order to “grease the wheels” of commerce.  While I don’t know if that was true in NYC, I do know that was a certainty in Chicago where I spent most of my adult life.  Attempting to do business with the City of Chicago as a self-identifying Republican was about as fruitful as a man who had lost both his arms in an accident attempting to engage in a little self-abuse.

Clinton arrived at Wellesley College armed with a copy of  Sen. Barry Goldwater’s book, “The Conscience of a Conservative” and four years later had shed this tome in favor of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”.  With her newly enlightened mindset, naturally Clinton turned her political allegiance away from her Republican foundation and joined the ranks of the militant Democrats – the purported champions of the “little people”.  But is that characterization in fact consistent with the real history of  Democrats?

Dinesh D’Souza took on this subject in his excellent documentary, “Hillary’s America:  The Secret History of the Democratic Party”. The movie is available on-line and I heartily recommend watching it by anyone who has an interest in American politics.  But below you will find my marginally edited recap – together with some additional material that I believe is relevant and important.

In 1838, Democrat president Andrew Jackson implemented his plan to remove the indigenous pre-Columbian Cherokee people from the ancestral lands they occupied east of the Mississippi River, relocating them to what is now the state of Oklahoma.  The Cherokees called this “The Trail of Tears”.  Of the estimated 15,000 men, women and children who began that march, it is estimated that 4,000 perished en route.  Jackson was no friend of “diversity”.

The year was 1861.  In South Carolina, Democrats fired the first shots on the Union garrison at Ft. Sumter beginning the Civil War.  The reason for the salvo and the primary motivation for the Confederate onslaught that took more American lives than any other war in which this nation has been engaged since it’s inception was the preservation of the institution of slavery.

It was the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln who wrote and spoke the words of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves from their bondage.  It was Democrat John Wilkes Booth, the active agent of a covert conspiracy who fired the fatal shot, killing the president.

In the Reconstruction Era, Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate the newly freed slaves and discourage them from exercising their newly forged freedom.  The tactics that were employed included whippings and lynchings.  Although this original hate group soon died out, it saw two later reincarnations -revived in both cases by people who identified as Democrats.

In 1878, U. S. Senator Aaron A. Sargent introduced a bill that was destined, forty-two years later, to become the 19th Amendment to the Constitution – granting the right to vote to women.  Not one single Democrat in the Senate voted for this legislation and it had to be re-introduced two more times before it met the requirements to be voted out of the Congress and given to the states for ratification.

The year was 1942 and Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the War Department’s Executive Order 9066 which authorized and resulted in the internment of more than 110, 000 Japanese-Americans who were legal residents in the United States.  Of these, more than 20,000 were U. S. citizens.  This complete violation of the Constitutional rights of these individuals was upheld by a majority Democrat dominated Supreme Court.

A significant number of the ads which are being aired in Nevada and, I presume, in most other states, portray Trump as a person who is “unstable” and should “never be trusted with the codes that could launch our nuclear weapons”. Personally, as a child of the cold war, I remember my many nightmares in which, despite our air raid drills at school and the yellow and black signs on our public buildings indicating that they were “bomb shelters,” none of these made me feel secure.  That humanity has both developed and continues to stockpile a sufficient quantity of these weapons effectively to destroy all life on our planet still causes me to shudder.  But what is the actual history of the deployment of nuclear weapons?

The year was 1945 and Germany and Italy had been defeated by the Allies.  The war against the Japanese Empire continued.  Despite the advice of his military advisors, including Dwight D. Eisenhower who would succeed him in the Oval Office and who advocated for a naval blockade of the Japanese islands, Democrat President Harry S. Truman gave the order to drop atomic weapons on Hiroshima and two days later on Nagasaki.  Although there are no exact statistics of the number of people who were liquidated immediately when the bombs fell or who subsequently perished from radiation poisoning, the estimates are that at least 600,000 people died, making these the most devastating two days in human history.

In its historic decision in 1957, the Supreme Court struck down school segergation, a policy that was typical of the discriminatory anti-black laws which Democrats had championed in the South.  In Arkansas, a state in which Hillary Clinton should later become First Lady, the scene was set for confrontation as Democrat Governor Orval Faubus intended to resist the Supreme Court’s ruling.

At Little Rock Central High School, formerly an all white school, nine black students had enrolled for the new school year.  When they arrived at school they were greeted by angry crowds.  President Eisenhower summoned Faubus to the White House to demand that he call in the National Guard to ensure the safety of these students.  Faubus declined to do so, ultimately causing President Eisenhower to call in the 101st Airborne to ensure the students’ safety and to control those who protested the integration of our public schools.

Republican President George W. Bush has been widely excoriated for engaging in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in which more than 7,000 American service people have died.  Part of that criticism comes from the fact that among the dead enemy were additional people, euphemistically called “collateral damage” who were civilians including women and children.  That is tragic – but we should be used to this sort of tragedy as it happens every time violent conflict occurs.

But in contrast, our fourth bloodiest conflict, exceeded in death count only by the Civil War, WWII and WWI, the war in Vietnam, vigorously pursued by Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson, makes these recent sorties look like a nice day at a church picnic.

We lost 58,209 servicemen in Vietnam with an additional 1,643 MIA and presumed dead.  Perhaps the turning point in the mindset of Americans who originally supported this war, came about not only as the numbers of soldier deaths mounted but as the media began reporting on the way in which the war was being pursued, specifically that we were using napalm as a tool to “flush out” the Viet Cong.

Napalm is a gelatinous compound that burns through almost anything in which it comes in contact – including human flesh. This iconic Time Magazine photo of a naked nine year old girl and her friends who had napalm dumped on their village in 1972 might have been the most gripping of any picture taken in Vietnam or perhaps any war.

 

 

And there you have it … a somewhat concise history of nearly two hundred years of how Democrats have addressed the questions of race and women and bringing about peace through diplomacy.  It hardly squares with the propaganda about “inclusion” which is one of the central themes of their talking points.  Is there an explanation?

At the beginning of D’Souza’s movie, he speaks with a fellow prisoner in his jail.  (D’Souza was convicted and sentenced for improperly making a ten thousand dollar political contribution to a friend’s campaign).  In light of the information coming out from Wikileaks about monies being moved around to support a failed Democratic candidate for the Virginia Senate – amounting to close to three quarters of a million dollars – whose husband is the number two person in the FBI and had oversight responsibility into the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email illegalities, D’Souza’s offense seems rather like small potatoes.

His fellow inmate was a con artist.  And as though it had been lifted directly from Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” if the truth about his con were uncovered and the facts revealed that his con was a sham, D’Souza asked, “How do you deal with that revelation?”  His answer was, “Lie, lie, and keep on lying.  Never admit to or give up the con.”

Hillary Clinton has lied and lied and lied and has never given up her con.  And that’s precisely why I cast my vote for Donald J. Trump.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ISLAM, MODERATE ISLAM AND RADICAL ISLAM – PART II

I apologize to my readers who anxiously awaited part two of this piece for my delay in posting but sometimes life not only imitates art – but it gets in the way of it.

In response to the recent and ongoing terrorist attacks carried out by people who are Muslim throughout Europe and the United States among other places, the news media has found a new go to buzz word that they have nearly succeeded in beating into the ground.  That word is “radicalized”.  It’s as though they feel they should be able to pinpoint that psychotropic moment when a perfectly happy, normal individual suddenly has an internal button pushed by some external entity or event and they suddenly enter a different world with a personality totally antithetical to their previous one.  That is nonsense and hog wash of the first order.

Of course, the present administration has bent over backwards with the limberness of a double jointed gymnast to avoid calling Islamic impelled terrorism what it is, despite the fact that every one of the three acronyms we give it, IS, ISIL, ISIS all start with the word Islamic.  The official, politically correct reason is that using that term disparages a religion and brands all Muslims with the same broad brush strokes of hatred which is essential to the makeup of those who blow themselves and others up with a religious zeal that can be described as nothing other than Islamic.  The holy book of Islam, the Koran, encourages this behavior.

I find it hard to understand how those on the left proclaim that we should have understanding and respect for one of the world’s largest religions – yet they do not see what it is that Islam actually is and what it teaches.  The throw away phrase that it is a “religion of peace” is belied by the facts of history from its inception until today’s most recent atrocity in a parish in France.  Islam is both a religion and a political entity which teaches that it should be the exclusive faith of every human on earth and those who fail to convert should be killed. That is Islam at its core.  In it’s political aspect it is no more or less totalitarian than Hitler’s Third Reich or Stalin’s Soviet Union.

For a moment, let’s consider the left’s premise that those who drive trucks through crowds with the intent of killing as many as possible, carry out beheadings of people of other faiths, throw gays from buildings, stone to death women accused of adultery and perpetrate “honor killings” should one of their children marry outside her or his parent’s determination of who should be their spouse, are really only lost souls who have gone mentally AWOL.  Their Islamic faith had nothing to do with their behavior.  But the fact is that Sharia Law, the codification of behaviors and punishments set forth in the Koran and in the Hadiths (sayings) of Mohammed preach exactly those forms of punishment and dictate that exact behavior in Islam’s adherents, the truck and flying planes into buildings being modern improvements, of course.

For an administration that considers the luxury accommodations at Guantanamo Bay to be cruel and unusual punishment, it is somewhat difficult for an intelligent person to understand how it dismisses, or more exactly, totally ignores the pernicious punishments which Sharia Law so generously hands out with the sanctity of what they believe is their holy faith.  Most Westerners would consider Sharia Law to be an exact description of the term “radical”.  And while the left so quickly dismisses these horrific acts as mere aberrations of the mentally challenged, let’s see how many Muslims actually believe in the sanctity of Sharia Law.  To that end, we’ll spend a moment with Ben Shapiro, one of the most brilliant people I know and see his analysis of this issue.

https://youtu.be/g7TAAw3oQvg

So according to Mr. Shapiro’s presentation there are (or were a few years ago) 680,000,000 “radical Muslims” in the countries he analyzed.  And while I have the greatest respect for Mr. Shapiro, I think he (and most others) are missing the point which is that by the very nature of Islam, any true believer is “radical” – at least as we in the West think of civilized conduct and behavior.  But even if we accept Ben’s analysis of “radical Muslims” and were to assume that while “radical” most of these are not “motivated” to perform radical deeds, let’s say one out of one thousand, that means there are 680,000 Muslims worldwide who might strike out against what they perceive as the enemies of Islam – which is to say the entire non-Muslim world.

While some may consider that a slam against a religious faith, Islam of the three great “faiths of the Book” is the only one which has both a religious and political agenda.  And it is that political agenda to which I am referring.  By contrast, Christian missionaries try to convert those who are non-Christian through preaching and example.  By contrast, Judaism discourages people from converting to that faith.  It is only Islam that views all infidels as worthy of contempt and in the failure of conversion, worthy of death at the hands of the devout Muslim.

It fascinates me how the left, so pre-occupied as they are, with “diversity” can be so defensive of Islam which preaches nothing other than religious and political homogeneity.  It amazes me that the left that so decries the “racism” inherent in the pre-amendment Constitution, valuing a black person as only three fifths of a white person for purposes of census and apportionment of Congressional seats, can be so supportive of Islam which states that a woman’s inheritance shall be only one half that of a male relative’s.  It astounds me that the left, so intent on equal justice for the bathroom rights of transgenders should be so silent when it comes to Islam’s imposing the death sentence on men who are involved in homosexual sex acts.  But then, one has to be logical to be astounded – and that has never been a core principle of the left – and most likely never will be.

The American apologist in chief, President Obama, has led this country and the Western world down a dreadful path with the “Iranian Nuclear Deal.”  The mullahs in Tehran must be laughing and drooling in their beards.  This is a bad deal, not because of the terms which they essentially dictated, but because there can be, as holy followers of the Koran, no deal whose terms they must honor because one of the parties is not a Muslim state.  According to both the Koran and Mohammed’s own actions in dealing with non-Muslims, any requirements imposed on them cannot be enforced as Allah allows, in fact, invokes faithful Muslims to agree to anything that will advance the furtherance of Islam in the world but in no way penalizes the faithful if they default on their end of the bargain.  It’s not unlike negotiating with an extortionist who has your entire family hostage and threatens to dismember each one of them if you don’t agree to his terms.

In light of this admittedly negative view of political Islam, Donald Trump’s much denounced statement about a “religious test” for admitting Syrian “refugees” is, perhaps, not so terribly outrageous.  The fact that every intelligence branch of our government has acknowledged that there is no way we can possibly corroborate the backgrounds of those who wish to migrate here should, of itself, be sufficient reason to oppose letting potential Trojan horses into the United States.  But there is a way out – one that would allow us to fulfill our welcoming outreach to the downtrodden and which would provide those who are already here with at least a moderate sense of security.

Let us open our arms to those few remaining Christian Syrians whose population has been so genocidaly reduced by ISIS.  They are people who most desperately need our help.  And they are people who are most likely to assimilate and be thankful for having the opportunity to be a part of the American dream.

THE SPEECH DONALD J. TRUMP SHOULD DELIVER TO THE RNC ON JULY 21, 2016

 

(Background:  Revolving spot lights and victorious loud music.  Trump enters to thunderous applause from the crowd).

He speaks:

Dear friends, fellow Republicans, fellow Americans:

This election is not about me.  This election is about you and your children and your grandchildren and it is about the greatest country that has ever been known on planet Earth in times ancient or modern. Our 240 year history as the guiding light based on rock solid principles of justice and freedom is now at risk because some of us have acquiesced to convenience and self-interest rather than truth and selflessness.  This election is, in fact, a time for deciding.  And what we have to decide is crystal clear.  Do we want to make America Great Again, not only for the benefit of our own citizens but for people who yearn for freedom and safety around the globe – or are we willing to sink into mediocrity putting both ourselves and others on the planet at risk and jeopardy?

Let me be honest – something you will hear infrequently from my prospective opponent, Ms. Clinton.  I never sought this office.  I never had political aspirations.  I loved doing what I have done all my life – building buildings and helping others by employing them.  But I decided to enter this fray for one reason and for one reason only.  The only way in which I was able to accomplish what I did was because I lived in a country which recognized and rewarded people who were willing to take a chance and to build something where there was nothing there before.  I lived in a country which allowed people to prosper based not on some assumed privilege of genetics but because they took the time, sweated the tears and refused to give up until the finished product was brought to fruition for all to marvel at.  I was only able to do what I did because I lived in the United States of America. And because of an accident of my birthplace I am both grateful and humbled.

Now over the course of the next few months, you may expect to hear the continuing drumbeat of the largely liberal media, lambasting me for this statement or that, for everything they consider a faux pas or a violation of their sacred rules of political correctness.  I will be portrayed as little more than a blow hard and a showman.  Well, I view this as a great departure from the status quo of , “Too much talk and not enough action” which is customarily what we hear from our elected officials.  And beause I am going to be honest to myself, a quality that may be sorely lacking in my opponent, I don’t anticipate changing.  But these charges reflect on style and are, at most, cosmetic.  They are distractions to which we will all be subjected because they divert from the real and only important issue, that being, who has the best interest of the country and its people rather than personal ambition and self-aggrandizement at heart?

We should expect that I will be unfavorably compared to my prospective opponent, Ms. Clinton for lacking in “experience.”  It is certainly an undeniable truth that I have never held elected office, let alone the most important one to which any American could aspire whereas Ms. Clinton has been a United States Senator and Secretary of State.  She certainly has more public service experience than I do.  But what has her experience done that has been to the benefit of the United States of America or its citizens?  To speak of experience without speaking of the results that experience has brought with it is as foolish as to extoll the extraordinary experience of a bank robber who has pulled off twenty successful heists.

Let me be clear that what I lack in political insight, I more than make up for, if I may say, in common sense and good judgment.  It doesn’t take a bureaucrat to realize that keeping, sending and receiving classified information on an illicit, non-secure personal server jeopardizes the people of this country and our remaining allies throughout the world.  That is something I would never do.  Furthermore, I would never lie, obfuscate, or evade with legalistic answers having done it should I ever have taken leave of my senses and actually committed those felonies.

Early in life, I realized that I was blessed to be a bit brighter than your average bear.  But as smart as I might have thought I was, I realized there are always people who are a little bit smarter – at least in some particular field of expertise.  If I have any genius at all, it is in admitting that there are people who know more than I on this subject or that.  And the true trick of becoming successful is in identifying those people and building a team with them as the keystones, relying on them for their exceptional insights and keen understanding of the area in which they are uniquely qualified.  The Trump/Pence team will do exactly that – and the result will be that we will again find our path that will lead to Making America Great Again.

But this can only occur if something happens on November 8, 2016 and the American people elect us to office.  And it would be foolish for me not to admit that this is an uphill battle.  Some political pundits have called this an election between whites and minorities.  Perhaps there is some truth in that – perhaps not.  But let’s take a moment to examine that issue.

First, to those American citizens who are of Hispanic background.  We thank you for your contributions to the American melting pot, for the cultural enrichments you have brought to the United States and for your diligence and strong work ethic.  You bided your time and waited with the longing shared by all immigrants to come to a land where the most you could achieve was how high you set your sights and how hard you were willing to work to achieve your goals.  You looked to find a new home, free of government oppression in a country where you could and should deserve the protection of the law just as every other citizen, irrespective of race, religion or national origin.  You came to America – the only country on earth that gladly welcomes one million newcomers a year.

But the safety and security that you sought is now threatened, not only for you but for every other American.  Porous borders which ask nothing of a person’s background have brought with them an onslaught of people, some of whom have dubious backgrounds and potentially dangerous futures.  I affirm my earliest comments in this campaign, to strengthen our borders, to deport those who break our laws and who are here illegally not for the security of just a particular segment of the American people but for all Americans, including our Hispanic friends and citizens.

To our black citizens – well, you may be the hardest nut to crack not only for me but for any Republican presidential candidate. For decades you have voted to elect Democrats to local, state and national office with a ninety to ninety-five percent solidarity – as though Democrats were the great emancipators and not Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. The question is not how the Republican or Democrat parties view your lives.  It is how YOU view your lives.

Chicago, now becoming the murder capital of the country, has been run by Democrats since 1931- eighty-five years; Baltimore has been run by Democrats since 1967 – forty-nine years; Detroit has been run by Democrats since 1962 – fifty-four years; Philadelphia has been run by Democrats since 1952 – sixty-four years.  So to the black citizens in these and other American cities, I would ask these questions:

“Have the Democrats served your interests – or have they merely used you as a tool to elect themselves and serve their own?”

“Should your children have the same right to attend the schools of their choice, not some inner city institution where they will receive an inferior education just as Hillary Clinton was able to choose for her daughter – or are you willing to accept the status quo and settle for inferior education and inferior opportunity for your kids?”

“Are you content to live in overcrowded, run down public housing in neighborhoods where the gangs, rather than civil law, rule the streets or would you like to live in a community where going to the corner grocery store doesn’t involve risking your life?”

To our black friends and citizens, overwhelmingly a bastion for the Democrats, perhaps now is the time to rethink your options.  Because if nothing has changed in your neighborhoods for decades – in fact has gotten worse – why would you think that electing Hillary Clinton is going to do anything other than pound the final nail in your coffins?

The Republican party and I welcome all those black Americans into our cause who believe that life means more than just surviving.  It should mean having the opportunity for all people of dignity and conscience who want to do better for themselves and their children to be able to act on that opportunity.

If Governor Pence and I are found worthy of your vote and we are elected to the highest offices in the land, I give you my solemn word that you will have that chance – something that has been denied you for decades.

In closing, let me take a moment not only to thank my family for their support and patience during the amazingly difficult ordeal of the primary – but most especially, to thank the millions of voters who saw something in my candidacy and offered their enthusiastic support at the ballot boxes through out the land.  I cannot sufficiently express my heartfelt gratitude.  I am humbled by your confidence.

But this is only the beginning of an even more challenging climb that will culminate with the general election.  I do know that if the good men and women of this country see what is at stake and are willing to take a chance on a political outsider who has nothing but the interest of the country and it’s people at heart, than we will set ourselves firmly on the path and be prepared for the journey to Make America Great Again.

 

 

 

A BRIEF TUTORIAL ON SOCIALIST ECONOMICS

Dorm life at the University of Chicago included endless reading lists, study groups and a twelve times a week food contract in the building’s cafeteria.  As one of my fellow students whose epicurean background was similar to mine put it, “They should put out a contract on whoever had the gall to call this food.”  Fortunately, we all got to enjoy a respite from this gastronomic abuse.  It was called Sunday and the cafeteria was mercifully closed.

This, of course, forced us students to fend for ourselves for sustenance.  As I was the organist for the Episcopal Church services on campus at Bond Chapel, Father Pyle and his wife had established a Sunday supper program for us poor waifs who had nowhere else to turn.  I wished that the program were a nightly event as I would greatly have preferred the fare at Brent House to that in my dorm’s cafeteria.

Hyde Park had only one establishment that could be referred to as a “supermarket”.  At the time I moved into the neighborhood it had been operating for over thirty years, having been founded during the Great Depression in 1932.  It was called the Hyde Park Cooperative Society.  But the “Co-op” as it was generally called was two miles from my dorm, far too long a journey on foot to buy a piece of fruit during the depths of winter.  So until I moved out of the dorms in my fourth year I was constrained to buy provisions from the two small mom and pop stores that were within reasonable walking distance.

My fourth year in college brought with it two major developments.  The first was that I paid for driving lessons and set to inflict myself on the general automotive community by purchasing my uncle’s two year old Dodge Monaco.   I also moved to the east side of Hyde Park and was only a few blocks from the Co-op which was the anchor tenant in Hyde Park’s largest shopping center – though by comparison to today’s mega centers it was really quite small.

Now that I was freed from the bondage of a dorm food contract, I naturally turned to the Co-op as my preferred choice for grocery shopping.  I walked into the store for the first time and wanted to find out how to become a member – it was, after all, a co-operative society.  I went downstairs to the membership department, picked up a brochure and couldn’t help but notice the photo montage that was on the walls showing the growth of the store from its original founding when four people got together and decided that they could help out people in the neighborhood if they banded together, bought food in quantity and passed along the savings to their customers.  In other words, the original founding motivation was based on a social philosophy – and the implementation of that happened to take form as a grocery store.  This philosophy continued to permeate the Co-op when I joined.

Now I must admit that I might not have been imbued with the same desire to help out the poor and downtrodden – but I was motivated to purchase a share because for ten dollars, I was going to receive a five percent return on my small investment while the banks were only offering four percent and I was promised a rebate on my annual purchases based on the store’s profitability.  Sounded like a decent deal to me.  I unfortunately made the small indiscretion as I signed up to refer to myself as a shareholder in the Co-op.  After all, I was purchasing a share so that seemed like normal terminology.  The person who accepted my ten dollars and signed me up explained that I was not a shareholder – but a member in the Co-op.  Well, shiver me timbers, apparently political correctness was floating around even back in the late ’60’s.

As I came to find out when my first year of membership had passed and the Co-op sent out its annual accounting, I apparently was not a “full member.”  My statement arrived showing my fifty cent credit on my one share investment.  In addition, I had received a 2.3% rebate on my purchases during the year.  So I was entitled to a distribution of just under three dollars.  But rather than sending a check for that amount, it had been re-invested in an additional partial share.  The explanation included in the letter indicated that until a person became a “full member,” which was to say owned ten shares of stock, that procedure would continue. And it did for many years.  I was moderately offended that the Co-op in the finest tradition of socialist organizations everywhere dictated, through it’s infinite collective wisdom, what its members should do.  Nothing could be more apparent to demonstrate that than what I will next relate.

Perhaps you will remember Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers’ Union.  If not, Chavez organized the farm workers to protest the poor conditions under which they labored.  He effectively called for a boycott of farm workers from picking lettuce and grapes.  The Co-op, always mindful of its social, primary mission, aggressively concurred with this policy and refused to carry either of these products during each of these boycotts.  (Those two mom and pop stores saw a significant increase in their sales while the Co-op refused to allow its patrons and members to purchase lettuce and grapes).  Apparently their customers didn’t completely subscribe to the collective wisdom.

As years went by, Chicago saw a significant increase in the number of chain grocery stores.  While the Co-op might have been the biggest fish in a small pond, it’s original concept of saving money by purchasing in bulk could in no way compete with much larger grocery stores with hundreds of outlets throughout the country.

The share dividend decreased regularly to the point where there was no dividend at all and the rebate percentage declined precipitously as shoppers found themselves with far less expensive alternatives.  On May 5, 2009, The Hyde Park Cooperative Society filed a petition of bankruptcy under Chapter 7 in the Northern District of Illinois.  The store was subsequently taken over by one of the smaller, multi-store chains, Treasure Island and is still operating under that name.  Seeing the writing on the wall, I had divested myself of my interest in the Co-op a decade earlier.

There are several points I hope that my readers will take away from this story.

The first is that when ideology, no matter how well-intentioned, is the driving force behind making business decisions even though that philosophy flies directly in the face of economic reality, that business is, sooner or later, doomed to fail.

The second is with regard to bankruptcy law – and the presidential campaign.

Much has been made, particularly by the junior senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren about the horrible things that Donald Trump has done to people because of his using the bankruptcy laws to his advantage.  She has painted a picture of his using those laws to “stiff” small companies and “cheat” them out of monies that were due to them.  So a word on bankruptcy law is in order.

If you’re familiar with the novels of Charles Dickens, you already know that he was a crusader for social justice.  One of the most egregious evils he identified was the existence of debtor’s prisons.  Yes, back in Dickensian England, a person could be imprisoned for failing to meet his debt obligations.  Bankruptcy laws came about as a reform to this form of societal punishment, recognizing that sometimes people found themselves in situations that were out of their control and the law was formulated to allow that person to make a fresh start.

As I mentioned, the individual who has most aggressively inveighed against Mr. Trump for following the law is Sen. Elizabeth Warren.  During her less than stellar career, Sen. Warren, prior to her election was a professor at Harvard Law School, among other venues. While there she gained a reputation as one of the nation’s foremost experts in and exclusively taught students – you probably guessed it – bankruptcy law.  It’s a bit hard for me to comprehend why a person who has spent a career teaching and representing clients in bankruptcy cases would hold such a negative view of that very law.

But then, I did sell my interest in the Hyde Park Co-op – before that very liberal organization had to resort to that same law.  Just saying …

 

T

 

 

 

 

IS HILLARY CLINTON RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SAN BERNARDINO MASSACRE?

As most of us who are political junkies know, the slings and arrows and mud throwing of this election cycle promises to be more intense than an extreme martial arts contest.  So without further adieu and not waiting for the actual participants to start the battle, I thought I would stir the pot and get things off on the right foot.  (Pun intended).

The two participants who appear to have emerged as the presumptive standard bearers of their respective parties, Ms. Clinton and Mr. Trump, both have a history of flirting with controversy – and if you haven’t heard all the gory details and the sordid particulars, stay tuned because no doubt you will.

There are those BS (that’s Bernie Sanders) supporters who avowedly would never vote for Hillary.  (Although I never considered voting for the man from Vermont who has lived off the public trough his entire life and never accomplished much of anything during that entire period, I must say that my attitude toward HRC is that water boarding and Chinese fingernail torture couldn’t convince me to cast a ballot on her behalf).

Mr. Trump has a similar problem with the most conservative wing of the Republican Party’s constituents.  From day-to-day it is clear or unclear where he stands on anything other than Making America Great Again – an admirable rallying cry and perhaps even an achievable goal – if we ever were blessed to receive some specifics.  However, we are all now getting used to his mercurial stance on positions and can only hope that he puts together a serious cabinet whose members are practical, businesslike and intelligent – something we’ve been sorely missing for nigh on to eight years.

Yes, I have reservations (is that word allowed in the PC lexicon? – well, who cares) about Mr. Trump.  Many of them.  I have on the other hand none about Ms. Clinton who I believe years ago should have traded in her collection of pants suits for an orange jump suit bearing a number.

I have had several conversations with those who advocate Ms. Clinton’s candidacy.  And while I am happy to delve into the many past (and present) controversies which seem inexorably to circle her, I am always greeted with the same rather haggard argument.  “Well, those things were looked into and no charges were ever brought against her.”

My response to that is simple.

According to FBI statistics, since 1990, 211,000 unsolved murders have occurred in the United States.  By unsolved we mean that no one has been arrested, arraigned, tried and convicted of these crimes.  But the fact that our imperfect justice system and law enforcement agencies have been unable to bring these murderers to task doesn’t mean that there are any fewer people who have been murdered.  It simply means that we have not found and punished their killers. The fact that Ms. Clinton has not been held to account as of yet of any misdeeds hardly means that she is not guilty of misdeeds, anymore than O. J. Simpson was not guilty of the death of his wife and Ronald Goldman despite the verdict of acquittal handed down by his jury.

It would be truly surprising if the media treats both candidates equally, given their unarguable left-wing bent.  Perhaps one indication of that is a theoretical question regarding abortion which was recently posed to Mr. Trump by Chris Matthews.  The question hypothesized that Roe v. Wade was overturned by a future Supreme Court decision and a pregnant woman decided to abort her unborn child, despite the fact that doing so was now illegal.  Should she be punished for disobeying the law?

Mr. Trump flailed a bit before responding (and then retracted his answer the next day), but if I were him would have responded as follows:

“You know, Chris, the important question is not about some future event which might or might not happen.  We had a situation that happened recently – a situation that was fact – not possibility – the murder of fourteen innocent people by two Radical Islamic Terrorists in San Bernardino, CA – and whether Hillary Clinton was responsible for this tragedy.  Let me explain.”

“According to FBI Director James Comey, there are open cases in every one of the fifty states – investigations of people who have ties to Islamic Extremism .  Now as we’re all aware, the FBI has been investigating then Secretary of State Clinton’s improper use of a personal, unsecured server exclusively to conduct official government business.  Notwithstanding her protestations that no information ‘either sent or received’ was ‘marked classified’ at the time of its being sent or received, there are at least sixteen separate Federal laws which she might have violated – which are not dependent on those documents being marked with the classified designation.”

“In order to get to the bottom of this mess, brought about for no reason other than Ms. Clinton’s decision to ignore State Department protocol, the FBI has assigned 147 of its agents to the investigation.  So what if, instead of diverting all these individuals from other duties, which might have included monitoring the activities of the San Bernardino murderers, these agents were doing far more important things – like insuring the safety of the American people?  Should we hypothetically hold Ms. Clinton responsible for those untimely and unfortunate deaths?”

“But, of course, that is just hypothetical.  What is absolutely certain is that because Ms. Clinton chose to maintain a private, illegal server, a choice she admits was a bad one, should we, at the least, send her a bill for the salaries of those 147 agents who would have been doing more important things but for her ill-conceived decision?  By my count, that would come to a bill in excess of $10 million.  Perhaps Hillary and Billary could simply call some of their foreign Clinton Foundation donors and explain they are having a tag day to cover this obligation.”

I would have loved to have seen the look on Chris Matthews’ face if Donald Trump had responded in that manner.

Perhaps I have a future as an advisor to him and his campaign.

“I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville