Rod Dreher's Blog, page 602

‘You Can See It All Over. It’s Unwinding’

“There is no way a man like Donald Trump has any business being president,” the man told me. “You can’t talk like he does and expect people to give you the authority to run the country. The problem is that there is nobody to vote for. Look at all the rest of them running. This is the first time in my life that I don’t feel confident voting for anybody for president.”

And later, with a look of pained resignation on his face: “I tell you, people who don’t think this country is in serious trouble don’t know what they’re talking about. You can see it all over. It’s unwinding.”

I talked to the man, a conservative, at one of the events I went to over the weekend. Mind you, I am in a foul mood. I am three and a half weeks into this sinus infection I picked up in Italy. Antibiotics were only partly successful, and this past weekend, it started showing signs of possibly becoming walking pneumonia. So that’s just thrilling. I tell you this in case my comments here come across as more gloomy than usual.

Over the weekend, I had to drag my cranky self to several events in Baton Rouge and around my town — made much less cranky, although only temporarily, by the magic of a steroid injection — and ended up having some good Trumpish conversations at all of them. “Good” in the sense of people clearly having thought hard about our political situation, and being pretty worried about it. My supposition is that most of these people are fairly conservative, though in one case I spoke with someone who is active in Democratic Party politics. The sense of foreboding I picked up was deep, and went way beyond politics. I’m going to convey to you details I gathered, though I’m going to obscure some of them to protect identities.

One conversation I had at a Baton Rouge event involved a middle-aged white woman who was a longtime public school teacher in a predominantly black school. She is a Christian, and said that if she had not been able to see the face of Jesus in every one of her students, she wouldn’t have been able to stay at it for as long as she did. The problems of her students were completely overwhelming.

“For a long time, we had grandmothers raising children, because the mothers of our kids were strung out on drugs,” she said. “We used to be able to talk to the grandmothers, to let them know what was going on with their kids, by going out to the churches. Over time, the grandmothers slowly dropped out of church. Nowadays, most of them don’t go. We kept seeing grandmothers encouraging their teenage grandchildren to have babies to get another check.”

“That sounds unreal,” I said.

“I know, but it’s happening,” she said, with a look of sorrow. “I had an 18-year-old senior who had three children. Now, we don’t even know who is raising some of these kids.”

A white college professor told me he’s blown away by how hard his working-class students, especially the black ones, work in the face of the desperate circumstances in which they were raised. He said that most of the students who make it into his classes are older, and are not there to play college. They want to learn something, and work. The lives so many of them come out of were badly broken by their parents, or parent.

The professor said that some of the writing assignments his students get involve personal essays. The things they tell you about the lives they have, and have had growing up, boggle the middle-class mind. He said that getting to know these students over the years has made him acutely aware of how devastating divorce is, or having parents who never married. He told a couple of stories that I don’t feel comfortable relating here, even in this vague way. Heartbreaking stuff.

I mentioned to this professor, and to one of his colleagues, a conversation I had had several years ago with professors at a conservative Christian college, in which they expressed deep concern that their students would ever be able to form stable families. This had shocked me because this school was, well, religious, and conservative. How could these kids be so unaware of what a family is, according to the traditional Christian model? The professors (at that Christian college) assured me that it’s not a matter of knowing in your head, but rather a matter of not ever having seen a stable, intact, functional family. The ideal family for them is an abstraction.

These are not the unchurched poor of the housing project or the trailer park. These are middle-class Christian kids. When I told that story to the professors this weekend, they nodded in recognition. They see it too. Every day.

Also over the weekend, I talked to someone who is an administrator at a Catholic school. She said that the teachers at her school say that they are having the worst time trying to get the kids to write logically coherent papers. They simply do not seem to grasp cause and effect. These are not the poor. These are middle class kids. The administrator is baffled and alarmed.

I mentioned to the administrator a conversation I had earlier had with a man whose job as a counselor brings him into daily contact with the public, and who had said to me — in a Trump-related conversation — how frustrated he was with the middle and upper-middle class people he works with. He said that their family life could be falling apart, but they will not accept responsibility for it. They will go to the mat defending indefensible behavior from their children, and defending their own parenting.

The cases, said the man, can be shocking in their obviousness, but these middle-class parents absolutely refuse to look critically at themselves and the way they live, and raise their children. He said that it’s very difficult to pierce the shield of self-protection and self-deception that these people have erected around themselves. It’s always somebody else’s fault.

“Their kids have no direction,” he said. “I’ll have in my office college-age young people with strong test scores and good grades, but no direction. They’re just drifting, and they’re getting no direction from their parents.”

The counselor is around my age. I suggested to him that our generation was not raised that way, but that’s how we seem to be raising our kids.

“This is new,” he said. “I don’t know where this comes from.”

Again: he’s not talking about the poor or the working class. He’s talking about middle class people. He’s talking about the kind of people who look at the dysfunctional black and white poor and working classes and think, thank God I’m not like them.

But they are like them. They just have money. For now. The counselor’s conversation

Anyway, I brought up the counselor’s conversation to the Catholic school administrator, and she shook her head affirmatively.

“All the time,” she said. And she gave examples of the way middle-class parents treat her and her teachers. It’s always Somebody Else’s Fault. Everybody wants to blame Somebody Else for their troubles, the administrator said. I suggested that there is a connection between this and the kids in her school being unable to write papers demonstrating logical, cause-and-effect reasoning. People have become used to thinking of themselves passively, as objects acted upon, instead of acting subjects.

Another person, a Christian, said to me, later, “I’m sick of churches these days. Everything is geared towards ‘meeting your needs.’ They have so many ministries and programs for every possible group, and don’t get me wrong, a lot of them do real good. But the overall effect is to train us to expect to be catered to. If somebody isn’t meeting our needs, then somebody is failing us. That’s the mindset. But that’s not Christianity. It’s supposed to be hard! It’s the Cross!”

A reader sent in the other day this passage from FDR’s 1932 Inaugural (emphasis his):

“Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose. Today we shall have come through a period of loose thinking, descending morals, an era of selfishness, among individual men and women and among Nations. Blame not Governments alone for this. Blame ourselves in equal share. Let us be frank in acknowledgment of the truth that many amongst us have made obeisance to Mammon, that the profits of speculation, the easy road without toil, have lured us from the old barricades. To return to higher standards we must abandon the false prophets and seek new leaders of our own choosing.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same, I reckon.

Honestly, I’ve had it with people. I’ve had it with Trump supporters who think their anger and their outrage gives them the right to punch people in the face. I’ve had it with Black Lives Matter and other Social Justice Warriors who think the so-called righteousness of their cause gives them the right to silence those who disagree with them. I’m sick and tired of people who think everything wrong in their lives is because somebody, somewhere, has wronged them. Guess what? You can’t screw whoever you like, have as many kids as you like, or as many partners as you like, walk away from your marriage (if you ever marry), and expect everything to be okay. You can’t drink, drug, party, “keep it real,” make excuses for your children, make excuses for yourself, allow our degraded popular culture to raise your kids, and expect a good outcomes. You can’t throw money at problems and expect them to go away (e.g., pay to send your kids to a Christian school, and assume that your tuition fee contractually entitles you to opt out of the moral and spiritual formation of your children), or assume that being a Nice Middle-Class Person is sufficient. It’s not. I’m tired of the rich and the middle class who expect everything to be handed to them, and fall to pieces when it isn’t. I’m tired of the working class and the poor who live as if their relative material deprivation gives them a pass from having to live by basic standards of conduct that most everybody understood and affirmed within living memory, but which are all but forgotten today.

Above all, I’m tired of a culture in which so many people have no idea how to tell themselves no, to anything, ever. A culture of entitlement. Believe me, I’m talking to myself as well. This is the beginning of Lent for us Orthodox Christians, and I am taking inventory of my own tendencies to sin, to disorder, and I don’t like what I see. You might try it too.

Consider too Canto XVI from Dante’s Purgatorio, in which the pilgrim Dante encounters Marco the Lombard on the terrace of Wrath, and discusses with him the cause of the anarchy and violence in Italy. I wrote about this in this space a couple of years ago. Excerpt:

In less poetic language, Marco concedes that we all have inclinations toward sin, but we can still see good and evil, and have the power, through free will, to resist our sinful inclinations. If we refuse sin the first time, and keep doing so, there’s nothing within our own natures that we cannot overcome. This is what Purgatory is all about: straightening through ascetic labors the crooked paths within us, making ourselves ready for Heaven. Marco goes on to say that if we submit ourselves, in our freedom, to God (“a greater power”), we free ourselves from the forces of fate and instinct. Here’s the clincher:

“Therefore, if the world around you goes astray,

in you is the cause and in you let it be sought…”

Boom, there it is. If you want a world of peace, order, and virtue, then first conquer your own rebel mind and renegade heart. Quit blaming others for the problems in your life, and take responsibility for yourself, and your own restoration. God is there to help you reach your “better nature,” but because you are free, the decision is in your hands.

But you know Dante: there are always public consequences of private vices. In the next line, Marco turns to political philosophy, explaining that as babies, we are all driven by unformed and undirected desire. If we are not restrained in the beginning, we continue on this path, until we become ever more corrupt. This is why we have the law to educate and train us, and leaders to help us find our way to virtue. The problem with the world today, Marco avers, is bad government, secular and ecclesial — especially that of Pope Boniface VIII (his name cloaked here), a wicked man who leads his flock astray.

The rest of this canto concerns itself with analyzing great political questions of Dante’s time, in light of what comes before. For us, we should focus on how the failure of authoritative moral leadership in the family, in the church, in the school, and in other institutions, has brought about our current crisis. Remember how on the terrace of Envy, Guido railed against the progressive decline in moral order owing to parents not raising their children to love virtue? We see a similar judgment here. Yes, each person must be held accountable for his own sins. But it is also the case that the abdication of authority and responsibility by those who ought to be teaching, guiding, and forming the consciences of the young plays a role. Ignorance of the moral law is ultimately not an excuse, but as ever in Dante’s vision, we are not only responsible for ourselves, but also for our neighbors in the family of God (notice that Marco began his address by calling Dante “brother”). If society’s institutions fail to govern justly and teach rightly, the consciences of others will not be “rightly nurtured,” and will, therefore, be conquered by vice.

As it was in the 14th century, is now, and ever shall be. Human nature does not change. Yes, American institutions have failed. A lot of this stuff really is Somebody Else’s Fault. Big business. Big government. The Republicans, the Democrats. The media. The leaders. The followers. The blacks, the whites, the men, the women, Hispanics, gays, Christians, Jews, Muslims, academics, workers, and on and on.

But here’s the thing: you and I, we are somebody else’s Somebody Else.

It’s all anecdotal, these conversations I’ve had this weekend, but thinking about them all on Sunday night, I recall how very little actual political content there was. I don’t know how many of these people I talked to — most of whom were strangers to me — are Trump voters, or planning to vote at all. (The one acknowledged liberal Democrat I talked to lamented how the extremes run both parties, and how partisanship has disempowered the vast middle by demonizing anything that breaks ideological orthodoxy.) What was present in these conversations was fear and anxiety, and a sense that what is wrong with America is much more deep-seated than any politician’s ability to fix. The rot, the decadence. You can see it all over. It’s unwinding.

View From Your Table

Bruges, Belgium

Utrecht, the Netherlands

Rubio’s Straight Talk on Trump

Marco Rubio had some sharp, good things to say about Trump and the current situation. Watch the whole thing. Excerpts (emphases mine):

RUBIO: I think we also have to look at the rhetoric coming from the front-runner in the presidential campaign. This is a man who in rallies has told his supporters to basically beat up the people who are in the crowd and he will pay their legal fees. Someone who has basically encouraged people in the audience to rough up anyone who stands up and says something he doesn’t like. And, I think the media has to bear some responsibility. For too long those comments were ignored. Some people thought they were cute. And he’s gotten an extraordinary amount of coverage for all the stuff he says that’s outrageous. Every time Donald Trump offends someone, says something ridiculous, says something offensive, it’s wall to wall coverage and it’s only elevated him even more. So I think we all look at this and say everyone bears responsibility for what’s happening but the result is, this is this is what a culture and a society looks like when everybody says whatever the heck they want. When everyone just goes around saying “I’m just gonna speak my mind, if I’m angry it gives me the right to say or do anything I want.” Well, there are other people that are angry, too. If they speak out and say whatever they want, the result is it all breaks down. It’s called chaos. It’s called anarchy. That’s what we’re careening towards in our political process. The great thing about our republic is that we settle our differences in this country at the ballot box. Not with guns or bayonets or violence. And you wonder whether we’re headed in a different direction today where we’re no longer able or capable of having differences of opinion, but in fact now protests become a license to take violence, to take on your opponents physically. I think — forget about the election for a moment. There’s a broader issue in our political culture in this country and this is what happens when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of anger and bitterness and frustration. And I think we all need to take a step back and ask ourselves, are we contributing to this? Because if this continues, I think this country will continue to be ripped apart at the seams and we will be incapable of solving any of the major issues that we have.

REPORTER: Senator, what do you think this means for the future of the Republican Party?

RUBIO: I think the question is what does it means for the future of America. Not just the Republican Party. Look, Barack Obama has used divisive language as well. I will admit he hasn’t called on people in the crowd to beat people up but he has divided Americans up among class warfare and things of this nature. I don’t say he bears any responsibility for last night. There’s real frustration in America. There are people in this country who are angry because they are working really hard and the jobs are gone. There are people in this country that are angry because they feel disenfranchised from the American dream. But the job of a leader is not to stoke that anger. The job of a leader is to address the causes of that anger and try to solve it, not try to stoke that anger so that they vote for you. This in many ways, not just Chicago, put that aside for a moment, the broader anger that now exists in the American political discourse is a direct result of the fact that words have consequences, that when you run for President of the United States or if you are President of the United States, whichever one is endeavoring to be, you can’t just take on the attitude that “I’m going to say whatever I want.” You can’t say whatever you want. It has real life consequences for people in this country, and all over the world. And we’re starting to see that bear out. You saw those images last night of peopling getting in their face, often divided up among racial lines in many cases. The police officers bleeding from the head, reminiscent of images from the 60’s. I mean, we’re going backwards here. This is a frightening, grotesque, and disturbing development in American politics.

REPORTER: What should Donald Trump’s message be to his supporters, especially these more violent ones? Should he tell them to stop?

RUBIO: A Donald Trump supporter sucker punched a man the other day at an event. Donald Trump has yet to condemn him. After the man was released from jail, he said, “next time I’ll kill him.” He still has not condemned it. And so it tells you that in many ways he doesn’t want to say anything to his supporters because he doesn’t want to turn them off, because he understands that the reason why they are voting for him is because he has tapped into this anger. The problem is leadership has never been about taking people’s anger and using it to get them to vote for you. If it is, it’s a dangerous style of leadership. Leadership is about acknowledging people’s anger, but as a leader trying to address why it is they’re angry, instead of manipulating their anger so that they become your voter, your donor and your supporter. So I think Donald Trump needs to ask when is he going to start condemning this stuff, because instead all he’s saying is these are really bad dudes at my events.

A Counsel of Political Pessimism

The depressing truth, as it seems to me this afternoon:

1. If Trump becomes the GOP nominee, it will mean chaos and violence. Same as if he becomes president. He generates an atmosphere of thuggishness.

2. If the Social Justice Warriors prevail in shutting down Trump rallies, it will mean chaos and violence. It is chaos and violence. They are thugs, even if they are praised by the media.

3. I want Trump to beat the SJWs at their game. They are making America ungovernable.

4. But it is not sufficient to cheer Trump for opposing these idiots. Whatever my heart says in the moment, my head tells me that I don’t want Trump to win, because I don’t think he has any plan to govern America, and his provocative attitude would help make America ungovernable.

5. I don’t want the Republican Party to beat Trump, because it will mean the same old same old.

6. I don’t want the Democrats to win, because the Court, and because they will empower SJWs even more, and marginalize cultural conservatives even further.

7. There is no way everybody can lose.

8. Whatever happens, the next four years in our country are going to be miserable.

9. We must cultivate our own garden.

I wish I could think my way to a better conclusion, a hopeful conclusion. Every political alternative open to us today seems bad.

Read David Frum for a far more intelligent and thoughtful take on the choice facing Republicans. His conclusion:

Sometimes a political movement must and should go down fighting. Many conservatives will feel that way about opposing Trump in November 2016. The alternative—ticket-splitting between Hillary Clinton at the top and Republicans down-ballot—also carries daunting dangers. But whatever is decided by conservatives who refuse to board the Trump train, that decision is best made without illusions and false hopes. This election closes a long period in American politics. Whatever comes next, that period will not return.

America & the Spanish Civil War

A Spanish reader writes:

Like America, Spain today is plagued by populism, economic stagnation, social decadence, and rancor resulting from the erasure of history via the removal of historical monuments. Spain is also plagued by Catalan and Basque separatism. Basque separatism especially has reached a fever pitch.

In light of all this, José Utrera Molina, a former minister of the Franco regime, recently penned an op-ed for the newspaper ABC. I found it so moving and so applicable to America that I thought I would translate it and post the translation here. Here it is:

“ABC has always been kind enough to print my thoughts. I am close to turning 90 years old, and I have been a witness to the complex and difficult vicissitudes of the life of Spain. When our civil war began, I was only ten years old, but I can say without a shadow of pedantry that those scandalously painful early years left their mark on my heart, which had not yet known terror. I would often hang out with older boys, and four of them died heroically on the front. I have not forgotten them, but those deaths and that fratricidal furor left an indelible mark on my soul. In my own family, brothers fought on opposing sides. I have always honored the memory of both of these pain-stricken parts of my family. I was part of (and this I neither forget nor regret) the Falangist organizations that spoke of fatherland, bread, and justice. I intimately knew the dramas of both Spains, and, in my early speeches, I never expressed hatred or anger. During my years as the Civil Governor of Ciudad Real, of Burgos, and of Sevilla, I became deeply familiar with the structure of the regime in which I had the honor of serving Spain.

“I always advocated reconciliation. I said that I longed for the day in which those who killed and those who suffered could embrace one another. The transition to democracy had a positive effect on Spanish life. At the very least, those who carried out the transition had a noble intention: completing the reconciliation that had in fact already reached the hearts of most Spaniards.

“I still follow Spanish politics. I try to find in hope the antidote to despair. I do not want to think about the consequences that could result if we once again allow our fatherland to be steeped in the hatred that shattered the soul of the Spanish people eighty years ago. But I can’t help but worry about the emergence of alarming symptoms that take me back to the suffering of a lost childhood and that pierce my soul like a lance. Might we really re-embrace a Cainite spirit? Might the flags of hatred and anger fly over Spanish soil? Might we Spaniards fail to resolve our differences peacefully, so as to avoid the terrible consequences of a new Popular Front, which, under the guise of progress, advocates the liquidation of the essence of Spain, of her Armed Forces, of her traditions, and of the flags that built our horizon of concord and peace?

“There is still time to avoid the tragedy of the definitive liquidation of the essence of Spain; it is still possible to avoid her definitive rupture; it is still possible to impede the tears that lurk to spring from our retina and break our heart.

“Being near 90 years old, there is nothing I can do, but given my proximity to a logical end that does not frighten me, I must proclaim my profound preoccupation at the dangerous abyss that seems to be on the horizon of my fatherland. I would prefer to die a thousand times rather than witness what Spain might turn into as a result of the terrible bullying of those who have not understood her and the incompetence of those who have not defended her. Some Spaniards, before I, predicted the decadence that now surrounds us. But still I embrace the will of God, who cannot leave Spain deserted.”

http://fnff.es/Espana_desamparada_3121_c.htm

SJWs Will Elect Trump

So, this happened in Chicago tonight:

Donald Trump has canceled his rally at the UIC Pavilion due to safety concerns.

A speaker came out to the podium and made an announcement.

“Mr. Trump just arrived in Chicago and after meeting with law enforcement has determined that for the safety of all the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena, tonight’s rally will be postponed until another date. Thank you very much for you attendance and please go in peace,” he said.

More:

As many as 10,000 people had tickets to attend the rally and at least 7,000 were in the Pavilion at the time of the cancelation. The line still stretched several blocks around the building. A crowd of protesters outside the area swelled to at least 1,000 people.

Protesters outside the Pavilion were loud, but peaceful. Inside the Pavilion, there appeared to be thousands of protesters in attendance, mostly young people and UIC students. Upon the announcement of the cancellation, they began shouting “We stopped Trump! We stopped Trump!”

And:

“It was quite disappointing that they couldn’t cancel because we feel it’s not just offensive to us, the things that he’s spreading, but it’s also something- we feel unsafe here on campus having someone like that here, and his supporters,” says Asa Wahdan, of the UIC Muslim Student Association.

Get this:

Many attendees came from Indiana and Wisconsin, making it a day trip to see the candidate they support. They were disappointed it was canceled.

From the Washington Post‘s account:

Protesters and supporters of Donald Trump clashed in sometimes-violent fashion here and in Chicago on Friday, the latest in an escalating series of confrontations that have come to define the front-runner’s rowdy campaign rallies even as he gets closer to securing the Republican nomination.

In the evening in Chicago, Trump canceled a rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago after brawls broke out at the event site.

More:

Inside the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis earlier in the day, protesters interrupted Trump eight times, prompting catcalls and chants from the crowd as security officers removed them. Scores were injured or arrested in clashes between Trump supporters and critics outside the venue, where thousands had gathered in an overflow area to listen to the event over loudspeakers.

And:

“God! Why do you create fools?” an exasperated Trump supporter said, as he watched a young Latino man yelling at a small group of Trump supporters and flashing his middle fingers.

One more:

The crowd was notified by a loud announcement that the rally had been postponed. The protesters immediately erupted into cheers and chants of “We stopped Trump,” while many Trump supporters stood stunned, many having waited hours to see the candidate. Soon, shoving matches broke out between the two groups, and police tried to break up one scuffle after another. Everyone moved outside, and the crowd grew in numbers and the altercations continued. Five people were arrested, a Chicago police spokesman said.

“You can’t even have a rally in a major city in this country anymore without violence or potential violence,” Trump said in an interview on MSNBC. “I didn’t want to see the real violence, and that’s why I decided to call it off.”

Earlier in the day, at a Trump rally in St. Louis:

Less than 10 minutes after Trump took the stage, as he was in the midst of a complaint about how the media does not portray his rallies as “love-fests,” protestors sprang up from all corners of the room.

Holding court at his podium and flailing his arms, Trump yelled directives as police officers gingerly tried to remove Black Lives Matters protestors. One group disrupted Trump’s speech for nearly 15 minutes, spanning two rows and intertwining their arms to create an impenetrable circle, yelling “STOP THE HATE” and waving signs that read “NOT YOUR LAZY BLACK.”

The corridors of City Hall were a picture of mayhem.

Yesterday I wrote denouncing the air of thuggery around Trump rallies, in particular the old coot in Fayetteville who punched an anti-Trump demonstrator. I stand by that opinion. We cannot have a democracy if people are going to get physically assaulted at a political demonstration. That loudmouth protester was in the process of being removed from the building when that jerk old man sucker-punched him. He was arrested, the old man, and charged. I hope he pays a legal price for that behavior. We cannot have that.

Getting the Chicago news, though, gives me a strongly pro-Trump feeling. These left-wing demonstrators tried to shut down an American presidential candidate’s speech during the campaign — and they succeeded, through an implicit threat of violence. People who support Trump drove hours to hear him talk, and they were denied their constitutional rights by left-wing hotheads who believe that they are so righteous that they don’t have to observe basic civility. You come to a Trump rally and you start flipping people off? You should not be surprised if you get a sock in the face.

What happened tonight in Chicago is why we need Trump, as obnoxious as he is, to keep going. I am not a Trump supporter, and I reject much of his rhetoric. But he has a right to give a speech, even an obnoxious speech, without it being interrupted by demonstrators. All of us do. Trump is revealing how impossible it is to have a normal democracy with the activist left, who think their crying need for “safe spaces” gives them the right to silence their opponents.

No. This political correctness needs to be opposed, and it needs to be opposed with force. I don’t know why the police couldn’t handle this situation, but they had better be on it in the future, because many Americans will not stand for this. What those protesters have done tonight is create a lot more Trump voters out of people who are sick and tired of privileged leftists using thug tactics to silence their opponents.

I would feel exactly the same way if conservative protesters tried to shut down a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders rally. Protest all you want, but do it outside the venue, or silently inside. Do not silence the speaker, because if you do that, you legitimize your opponents trying to silence the speakers from your side. Thuggish, illiberal tactics like this from the left call forth the same kind of thing from the right. When right-wing white nationalist types show up and make trouble at Democratic rallies, or BLM rallies, and get them cancelled, on what grounds will you on the left have to complain?

For me, it’s all about the mob. I despise the mob. Any mob, which I define as a crowd that acts in force to silence people by intimidation or actual violence. We have seen over the past few months how left-wing mobs on college campuses have gotten away with outrageous things, because men and women in authority on those campuses lacked the guts to stand up for the liberal civic order. This is why I cannot support Black Lives Matter, even though I support its goal of bringing critical attention to police brutality: because they believe that their cause is so righteous that they have the right to stomp over anybody who doesn’t share their vision.

Don’t y’all understand that people like you only feed the Trump beast?

Unlike the liberal New York Daily News — and, no doubt, the rest of the mainstream media — I do not blame Donald Trump for this tonight. I blame the left. You want to protest against Trump? Great — that’s your right as an American. But you do so silently and peaceably. You let the man speak. It’s his right as an American, and it’s the right of the people in the audience to hear his message, however offensive it may be to you, and make up their mind about it.

This has gone too far. When an American presidential candidate has to cancel his rally in a major city because protesters have made it too dangerous, we have a serious problem in this country. It’s infuriating. This is not America. Those disruptive protesters need to be made to understand that this is not how America works.

Keep at it, Black Lives Matter and fellow travelers. You are going to get Trump elected.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

I just finished a conversation with a dear friend about how I am voting for Bernie because I believe the best thing for poor communities -white and black communities alike – is the availability of good blue collar work.  He shot back that I was a racist for privileging economics over things like police violence and institutional racism.

This is what makes Trump supporters out of people like me.  (I am voting for Bernie in the primary after that, I have no idea…)  The contempt of the Left for people who disagree – even people like me who vote Democratic and stand with them on most (not all) issues!

I don’t know what to do anymore.  Mostly I’ve decided to keep my mouth shut in the company of my liberal friends lest I be revealed as an enemy of the Revolution.

Good job, Social Justice Warriors. Trump ought to pay you for what you do.

If I Were Jewish

Shoot, I’m a Christian and I don’t get this at all. That video is up on Drudge now. It was taken four years ago at a Dallas-area Pentecostal megachurch, New Beginnings, pastored by a husband and wife team, Larry and Tiz Huch. Everybody’s talking about how, in his appearance at the church, Rafael Cruz, father of Ted and a Pentecostal evangelist, preached about Dominionism, and how, in his view, it is God’s will that Christians take the property of non-Christians, and rule over them. John Fea wrote about this in the Washington Post:

Anyone who has watched Cruz on the stump knows that he often references the important role that his father, traveling evangelist Rafael Cruz, has played in his life. During a 2012 sermon at New Beginnings Church in Bedford, Texas, Rafael Cruz described his son’s political campaign as a direct fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

The elder Cruz told the congregation that God would anoint Christian “kings” to preside over an “end-time transfer of wealth” from the wicked to the righteous. After this sermon, Larry Huch, the pastor of New Beginnings, claimed Cruz’s recent election to the U.S. Senate was a sign that he was one of these kings.

According to his father and Huch, Ted Cruz is anointed by God to help Christians in their effort to “go to the marketplace and occupy the land … and take dominion” over it. This “end-time transfer of wealth” will relieve Christians of all financial woes, allowing true believers to ascend to a position of political and cultural power in which they can build a Christian civilization. When this Christian nation is in place (or back in place), Jesus will return.

Rafael Cruz and Larry Huch preach a brand of evangelical theology called Seven Mountains Dominionism. They believe Christians must take dominion over seven aspects of culture: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. The name of the movement comes from Isaiah 2:2: “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains.”

Now, it is unfair to Ted Cruz to assume that everything his father believes, he also believes. But this stuff is so extreme that he has to talk about it publicly, and either defend it or separate himself from it in a clear way. What’s striking to me about that video is that this megachurch has no cross above its stage, but rather a menorah. Again, don’t blame Jews for this; I’m sure most Jews are as mystified by that as most Christians would be.

Larry Huch’s ministry is focused on Christian Zionism. I went to his ministry website to find out what I could about the church’s theology. Here’s what I found. Excerpt:

We believe in restoring the Jewish roots of the Christian faith; that as believers we are grafted into Israel and the revelation and heritage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through faith in the Messiah. We believe in celebrating Shabbat and the Biblical Holidays and in the importance of restoring the biblical symbols of faith including the Tallit and the mezuzah.

To be sure, most of this is standard New Testament Christianity (e.g., the “grafted into Israel” part). What is unusual is the overt claiming of Hebrew symbolism, and the heavy focus on the nation of Israel.

More from the website about Pastor Larry:

Larry Huch is the founder and senior pastor of New Beginnings Church in

Pastor Larry’’s signature combination of humor, dynamic teaching style and deep understanding of the Bible have made him a much sought after guest on television programs, conferences and various forms of media. Pastor Larry is a pioneer in the area of breaking family curses and has written a bestselling book on this subject, Free at Last. His successful follow up book, 10 Curses That Block the Blessing, is also a bestseller. As a renowned and respected author, Pastor Larry has been honored by the testimonies of tens of thousands of people whose lives have been impacted and forever altered by his anointed teachings.

Pastor Larry is also a prominent authority and ground breaking teacher on the subject of Jewish Roots. His book, The The Torah Blessing, was followed by the sequel Unveiling Ancient Biblical Secrets and the most recent 4 Blood Moons contains new prophetic revelation of the hidden truths within God’s Word and the Torah. He is whole-heartedly committed to bridging the gap between Christian and Jews and restoring the Church to its Judeo-Christian foundation. He firmly believes in studying, understanding and teaching the Word from a Jewish perspective. Pastor was honored to have spoken at the Israeli Knesset, and has received awards from the Knesset Social Welfare Lobby for his and his ministry’s generosity toward the needs of the Jewish people in Israel, especially Holocaust survivors.

Let me be clear to readers of this blog who harbor anti-Semitic views: don’t even try to post them here. Anti-Semites are among the vilest people This background, however, gives important context to Ted Cruz’s unspeakable trolling of the Arab Christians from the Middle East who gathered in Washington in the autumn of 2014 to figure out how to save their own people from genocide at the hands of ISIS. Our Jon Coppage broke that story. Excerpt:

Last night Ted Cruz stood up to offer the keynote address to a room full of Middle Eastern Christians and their allies at a somber but celebratory gala dinner dedicated to Christian unity in the face of persecution and genocide. Soon thereafter he stalked off under a chorus of boos, with the senator declaring the room to be full of hate and saying, “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you.” The entire transcript of his remarks is included below, along with the complete audio I recorded 20 feet from Senator Cruz and the stage.

The plight of Christians in the Middle East has swept to the fore of public consciousness in recent weeks as ISIS and related organizations have systematically persecuted and murdered Christians, driving them from homes that date back to the very beginning of Christendom. The In Defense of Christians Summit was organized to bring together Christians of every sect and denomination to stand in solidarity with their persecuted brethren. Summit participants spent Wednesday on Capitol Hill, meeting with members of Congress to drive home their message.

Ted Cruz, however, fractured that unity. Hours before his keynote yesterday, the Washington Free Beacon ran a customarily nuanced headline blaring, “Cruz Headlines Conference Featuring Hezbollah Supporters.” The story referenced several of the leading Middle Eastern Christian leaders present and their own remarks about their region’s politics, taking particular pains to note that Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Mar Bechara Boutros Raï has an open dialogue with Hezbollah, the Shi’ite Lebanese political party and State Department designated terrorist organization. Lebanon has a long history of inter-religious conflict and is split between Sunni, Shi’ite, and Christian communities. Many Christians in the region have either allied with or received shelter from Shi’ite Muslim communities in the face of radical Sunni organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Personally, I strongly believe in the US-Israel alliance. But it is not unlimited and unconditional, and you have to be out of your mind to expect Arab Christians to share the views of American Christian Zionists on the Israel issue. The idea that Ted Cruz would take the opportunity of these Arab Christians meeting in Washington to raise awareness of the genocide being perpetrated on their people — sorry, our people, the Arab Christian people — tells me everything I need to know about his sorry character. Whenever people talk about what a sleazebag Donald Trump is, I find myself nodding along in agreement, but then I remember that Ted Cruz did this to some of the most desperate people in the world. His own people! Christian people!

So who’s the bigger sleazebag?

Larry Huch’s church is not Rafael Cruz’s church, but he’s preached there before. Does Rafael Cruz share the same sort of Israel-focused theology that Huch’s church does? And if so, does his son Ted? What about Dominionism?

I am usually quick to jump on secular liberals for making far too big a deal over Christian religious expression that they don’t understand, and that looks more alarming than it is. In this case, maybe I’m overreacting — and if so, I welcome your correction. But this aspect of Ted Cruz’s life deserves a lot more scrutiny than it has received, especially because of what it might telegraph about his foreign policy.

 

‘The Toughest Heathen On The Block’

Ross Douthat examines the phenomenon of Christians who support Trump. He points out that Trump is exploiting divisions that are already present among American Christianity. Many of his supporters who identify as Christians are really only marginal Christians, not churchgoers. But Trump still attracts a sizable minority of regular churchgoers. Why? These, Douthat (following Ben Domenech) theorizes, are Christians who have been shocked to wake up and realize that the things they assumed were true about America and their place in it no longer are. Here’s Douthat:

If this is really a post-Christian society, they seem to be thinking, then Christians need to make sure the meanest, toughest heathen on the block is on their side. So it makes sense to join an alliance of convenience with a strongman, placing themselves under his benevolent protection, because their own leaders have delivered them only to defeat.

And the lure of the strongman is particularly powerful for those believers whose theology was somewhat Trumpian already — nationalistic, prosperity-worshiping, by turns apocalyptic and success-obsessed.

Trump, in other words, is the political expression of what Douthat calls “the distinctively American heresy.” Read the whole thing. 

I think there’s a lot to this, but it’s not entirely convincing. I have anecdotal evidence from talking to friends and reading my e-mail that there’s something else going on, at least with some conservative Christians. If I had to sum up what I’ve been hearing, it would go something like this:

Yes, we conservative Christians have lost a lot of ground. The idea that we are going to restore Christianity through voting for Christian leaders has been revealed as false. We know that now, and we know that the Republican Party has used us, and it will keep using us if it can. We can’t vote Democratic because the Democratic Party loves abortion, loves all things LGBT, and will work to silence and restrict Christians like us. But the future the GOP promises us is nothing but one on which we continue to lose ground. I’m tired of voting for more foreign wars, more concessions to big business, and for the dispossession of my own people in our land, both through massive immigration and economic policies that help multinational corporations, but hurt us. And I’m tired of Republicans who won’t stand up to political correctness, but try to accommodate it. I don’t like Trump, but at least he offers the possibility of something different. All those godly Republican opponents of his offer more of the same, and I’m tired of it. I’d rather vote for a heathen who might do something different than for a believer who will give us the same old Republican rigamarole.

To be clear, nobody has put it exactly that way, but I’m combining and condensing a lot of the mail and private conversations I’ve had. Personally, only a small percentage of the conversations I’ve had with conservative Christians who favor Trump have been affirmatively pro-Trump. They are mostly the views of Christians who consider Trump the least bad alternative, because they have lost faith in the Republican Party, and never had it in the Democratic Party, which they perfectly and accurately understand cannot stand people like them (orthodox Christians).

They may judge wrongly in their pro-Trump vote, but it’s not to say that they are all prosperity-gospellers or America-as-the-Promised-Land types.

Teflon Trump’s The One

Did you watch the GOP debate last night? I did, and there were distressingly few instances of penis-comparing or other tabloid moments. It was actually a sober exchange. It may well have been Marco Rubio’s best debate ever. He will probably make a good president one day, but not this time. If that Rubio had been present at the New Hampshire debate instead of Robo-Rubio, we would probably be looking at a different scenario now. If, if, if. Ted Cruz was composed and articulate, but, as my boss tweeted last night:

Ted Cruz is a damn strong candidate for November 1980!

— Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) March 11, 2016

Yes. Listening to Ted Cruz last night was like hearing the Ghost of Republicans Past through an ear trumpet. He is yesterday’s candidate.

Kasich was Kasich. People who like Kasich appreciate his non-ideological, commonsense moderation (relative to his opponents), but he’ll come out with things like criticizing the Europeans for not bringing Turkey into the EU, and you’ll do a double take. In any case, we won’t have to worry about him anymore. True, he might win his home state of Ohio — the latest poll has him pulling ahead of Trump — but if he pulls that off, that will be his first and last hoorah.

Trump was weirdly muted last night, and carried himself in a presidential way. He was either tired, or was determined not to let himself be baited, because he is confident he’s got this thing well in hand. This is not to say he was much good. This was the moment last night for me that reinforced my conviction that Trump cannot be trusted, because he will say whatever comes to mind:

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump suggested at Thursday’s CNN Republican presidential debate in Miami that he would be willing to support a massive ground force to take on ISIS.

This is a shift for Trump, who has, as a presidential candidate, often portrayed himself as less hawkish than his Republican opponents.

Trump made the troop comment in response to a moderator’s question as to whether he would follow a military commander’s advice to increase the number of ground troops to fight the terrorist group.

“We really have no choice,” Trump said. “We have to knock out ISIS. We have to knock the hell out of them. We have to get rid of it and then we have to come back here and rebuild our country, which is falling apart.”

Radio host Hugh Hewitt pressed on specific numbers.

“I would listen to the generals,” Trump said, “but I would – I’m hearing numbers of 20 to 30,000. We have to knock them out fast.”

More ground war in the Middle East. How, exactly, is Trump different from his opponents on foreign policy?

Nevertheless, it was hard last night to reach the end of the event without resigning yourself to the likelihood that Trump is going to be the nominee. Was for me, anyway. It was a status quo debate. None of his three opponents really took the fight to Trump. Cruz does seem like the natural alternative to Trump now, but it’s difficult to imagine people who aren’t already the hardest of the hardcore conservative ideologues voting for him with any enthusiasm, other than a desire to stop Trump. I doubt it will be sufficient. But I could be wrong. Everybody has been wrong a lot this crazy election year.

One of the most fascinating dynamics has been Trump’s invincibility, in specific his inability to harm himself. He came across last night as somebody who doesn’t know his material. He often does; he is all about attitude. He flip-flops — on Mideast war, on H1Bs, etc. And yet … it doesn’t matter. I think there is in many Trump voters such a deep and abiding desire to punish the Republican Party that they don’t care. I received a long, thoughtful e-mail yesterday from a lifelong conservative that articulated a lot of what I feel. He asked me not to publish the e-mail, and I’ll honor that. But let me say that he offered a detailed history of what he regards as the long sellout by the Republican Party of social conservatives, in particular on the philosophical issue of defending the common good for all Americans, not just the investors and business leadership class. Whatever his imperfections, Trump is mostly hated by professional Republicans and Democrats because he stands for the idea that US foreign policy, economic policy, and immigration policy ought to be run in the interests of the American people, not some abstract ideal of trade globalism, internationalism, or the interests of multinational corporations and minority-group lobbies.

And I keep hearing from readers — conservative Republicans! — who say that if Trump does nothing else, the fact that he has smashed the Republican Party is an admirable achievement. They’ll get no argument from me on that one, for sure. The panic and misery of Conservatism, Inc., is a pleasure.

It is interesting to contemplate why the GOP apparatus has come to be so hated by so many conservatives. Pete Wehner writes Reaganism’s obituary, in what is one of the first honest reckonings I’ve seen from within GOP elite circles about what has happened, and why. Excerpts:

Trump’s attempt at a hostile takeover is not a thunderclap on a cloudless day. It was years in the making. And when the mantle worn by Reagan might be settling on the likes of Trump, this end-of-an-era moment demands that we reflect on what has happened to our Republican Party.

For those of us open to such self-examination–to understanding what conditions gave rise to Trump and Trumpism–the explanation starts with certain harmful habits. These include employing apocalyptic rhetoric, like the assertion that America is on the verge of becoming Nazi Germany. Such reckless language is evidence of fevered and disordered minds and paves the way for Trump’s incendiary rhetoric.

But that’s hardly the whole of it. Republicans embraced the political knife-fighting tactics of Newt Gingrich in the 1990s and light-as-air political figures like Sarah Palin in the 2000s. Many Republicans–including self-proclaimed “constitutional conservatives”–began to speak of compromise as a synonym for capitulation, which is odd given that the Constitution itself was the result of a whole series of accommodations–and Reagan was a gifted compromiser. (In the debate over the Constitution, there was even a deal struck that came to be known as the Great Compromise, by which every state was to have two members in the U.S. Senate, offsetting proportional representation in the House.) Republicans became suspicious too of the “spirit of moderation” that James Madison argued is essential in understanding which measures are in the public good. What many modern Republicans are looking for is conflict, confrontation, the politics of the cage match.

At some point along the way, it became fashionable in the Republican Party–in some quarters, anyway–to replace reason with rage, to deny science when it was at odds with ideology and to cheer mindless stunts like shutting down the federal government rather than responsibly managing and relimiting it.

Voters are complicit in this too; many of them have come to confuse cruelty, vulgarity and bluster with strength and straight talk. And Republican lawmakers compounded a problem they had promised to solve, promoting rather than ending corporate welfare and crony capitalism.

Wehner goes on to say that the GOP lost touch with ordinary Americans, and had nothing to say to them to help them deal with the huge dislocations caused by the globalization that the Republican Party (and Clinton Democrats, it should be said) embraced and promoted. Read the whole thing. It’s good — as far as it goes.

What’s conspicuously lacking in the piece is the Iraq War. Since Reagan, the GOP has enjoyed the trust of the American people as the party of national security. True, polls today show that the GOP has regained its lead over the Democrats on national security — this, because of immediate fears of Islamic terrorism. Perhaps Republicans don’t think they need to worry about this — and, in the short term (that is, this fall’s election), they’re probably right. Voters have short memories.

It is incredible, though, that to this day, the Republican Party has been unable to have an honest reckoning with the massive failure of its leadership and its worldview regarding the Iraq War. I suppose I am a conservative outlier here, but until the GOP gives a sign of understanding what it got wrong in Iraq, and that it has learned from that catastrophe, I find it impossible to trust Republicans more than Democrats on foreign policy. For all his mistakes and shortcomings on foreign policy, President Obama has kept us out of another land war — one that President McCain or President Romney would have been more likely to bumble into.

After last night’s debate, we have little reason to think that President Trump won’t march us into another war. We know, though, that his opponents are staffed up with the same GOP foreign policy thinkers who got us into Iraq. Trump doesn’t really know who his foreign policy advisers are, and I suppose there’s cause to hope that he will bring some realists onto his team. But you have to be wary.

Still, Newsweek‘s Matthew Cooper is right:

Saying “let’s not panic about Social Security” puts Trump closer to liberal economist Paul Krugman than Ted Cruz.

It’s this kind of busting ideological barriers has made Trump the leader. He’s broken with GOP policies on entitlements, on the individual mandate that was central to Obamacare and on trade. He’s not a liberal or a Democrat but he is charting new waters and given the total ossification of both parties, this kind of glasnost has to be welcomed.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are moving in lockstep to the left and had no place for former Virginia Senator James Webb, who had to drop out of the race. His more conservative positions on coal or his rare anti-Iraq War, anti-Iran deal position helped make him anathema.

Liberals keep saying that if conservatives are worried about the economy and economic fairness under the neoliberal consensus (of which Hillary Clinton is a part), then they ought to be voting for Bernie Sanders. The fact that they aren’t (the argument goes) indicates that they are, deep down, RACISTS. What they refuse to grasp is that there is nothing about Sanders that would restrict immigration or would stand up to political correctness. In fact, Sanders yielded to the Black Lives Matter protesters who seized his microphone in Seattle. He is a symbol of the weakness of liberal authorities in the face of left-wing illiberalism — and for Trump voters, that, rightly so, is a deal-breaker.

So, after last night, I believe that it’s going to be Trump. And remember, the kind of people who say Hillary will beat Trump handily are the kind of people who said for months and months that Trump was a joke candidate who had no chance of winning the GOP nomination.

I recall that after the 2006 election (or perhaps 2008), David Brooks wrote a column in which he predicted that America was in for a period of ideological instability as both parties grappled their way towards a new paradigm to replace the exhausted Reagan-era/Clinton Democrat consensus. Well, it looks like something new is emerging. Moments ago, I was on the phone with a young conservative friend who works in Washington politics, a guy who is appalled by Trump, but who says the best thing about Trump is that finally, someone has torn down the high institutional walls within the GOP that prevented discussion of genuine, substantive conservative reform. The party, he said, resolutely refused to learn from its defeats. Now, reform is being forced on them.

“After this, there’s no going back,” he said.

This is no bad thing. In fact, this is a very good thing. A very good thing. Even if Trump loses the nomination, or loses the fall election, there’s no going back to the stale, rigid Republican orthodoxies of the past 35 years.

Again: good.

 

Is The College Bubble Popping?

A reader who is a professor does not necessarily believe that the dramatic falloff in applications at the troubled, PC-harried University of Missouri is because people don’t want to deal with the Social Justice Warriors and the administration they have wrapped around their finger (as I claimed yesterday). He writes that it could be a sign of a broader collapse:

Though I agree that there would be some karmic satisfaction in seeing the university pay for its spineless capitulation to agitators, I’m wary of making this an overly simple story. The world of academia has been sitting on an enormous bubble for longer than housing during the last business cycle, and I think that incidents like this are an early indicator that the bubble is about to be popped. There are already plenty of reports of financial trouble in other states (Wisconsin, Louisiana, Illinois), and while the state governments shoulder a lot of that blame, the point is that five years ago, state cuts weren’t view as the kind of existential threat to the system that they are today. And sure, negative publicity probably hastens that unwinding process along. But the real problem is consumer demand.

This chart by the St Louis Fed shows how debt has turned parabolic since 2010, in a pattern that simply can’t be sustainable for more than another year or two. I’d say that 2016 is roughly equivalent to 2006 in the housing crisis cycle.

Here’s the stall pattern my own university finally admitted in public this month, resulting in a round of budget cuts (at an institution that’s totally immune to this kind of SJW nonsense):

1. Spend heavily on facility development in anticipation of a growing student body, while telling the faculty that this kind of expansion is “the only way” to remain solvent.

2. React with confusion when hopelessly optimistic expansion targets prove to be unattainable due to unprecedented economic headwinds.

3. Lower admissions standards to admit a larger fraction of applicants (including community college transfers) in order to kick the can down the road for another year or two, then feign shock when retention rates fall off a cliff. (My university went from about 81% to 59%, freshman class.)

4. Give up and grab the axe.

Last month our own administration begged the faculty to make personal calls to prospective students (basically, anyone who so much as clicked on our website) to convince them to come. I’ve been teaching ten years, and this is the first time I’ve ever been asked to do unpaid work as a telemarketer, but I gamely acquiesced to the request. One of our top departmental applicants, a guy who should have been in line for multiple scholarships in a good year, said he didn’t think he’d be able to attend without financial assistance. For whatever reason, millennials are incredibly reluctant to go deeply in debt in order to finance education. It’s almost as if the formative years of their youth witnessed some kind of similar cycle.

Keep your eyes on asset-backed security issuance rates for repackaged student loans. The loan market is technical, but it sends off all kinds of advanced warning signals in the form of flagging demand. As of now, I’d say the trend is turning over. And yes, with a 1.2 trillion loan market suddenly facing rising delinquencies and having more trouble marketing fresh debt to a new generation of dupes, this will snowball. As banks can’t find ways to sell debt, they’ll issue less of it, which means fewer applicants, which means that universities will be forced to swallow the depreciation cost of all the improvements they’ve been making under the early rush of new money from the education bubble, for years to come.

Student debt assets were, at last count, making up something like 50% of the US government debt portfolio. They aren’t dischargeable in bankruptcy, so there’s no way to cut the rope. If I know the recklessness of the ABS market like I think I do, you can count on it taking the rest of the economy for a ride, maybe in time to shake up in the election this fall.