Bannon has good answers

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon does not need lectures on race relations from “limousine liberals” and the media elites who hang out in largely homogenous crowds and whose oh-so-progressive-and-forward-looking organizations and outlets do not have the effortless diversity of Breitbart News’ masthead.
In a 60 Minutes interview, Bannon told CBS anchor Charlie Rose that he was raised in a desegregated neighborhood on the North Side of Richmond, Virginia, that is “predominantly black.”

“I went to an integrated school, a Catholic school. I served in the military,” he continued. “I don’t need to be lectured … by a bunch of limousine liberals, okay, from the Upper East Side of New York and from the Hamptons … about any of this. My lived experience is that.”

Bannon also suggested that left-wing activists and the legacy media may be trying to play the race card because they know how successful and unifying the economic nationalist agenda, which Bannon said will unify Americans of all races, nationalities, religious, and sexual orientations—can be. Bannon has consistently denounced ethno-nationalists and white supremacists. He did so again to Rose.

“[T]he Neo-Nazis and Neo-Confederates and the Klan, who, by the way, are absolutely awful – there’s no room in American politics for that,” Bannon said. “There’s no room in American society for that.”

And he told Rose that the legacy media give a platform to irrelevant white supremacists who stage rallies because the media want to “make them up as some huge part of Donald Trump’s coalition” when they are not.

In the end, Bannon said he is singularly focused on the economic nationalist message that will help and unite Americans–U.S.-born Americans and legal immigrants–of all backgrounds.

“I don’t need the affirmation of the mainstream media,” Bannon said. “I don’t care what they say. They can call me an anti-Semite. They can call me racist. They call me nativist. You can call me anything you want. Okay? As long as we’re driving this agenda for the working men and women of this country, I’m happy.”

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Poll warns GOP: Back the Trump Agenda or Face Defeat in 2018

“You dance with the one who brung you to the dance.” The wisdom of that old political adage might seem outdated in this age of expensive consultants, focus groups with instantaneous tracking of reactions, and micro-targeting of voters.  But the McLaughlin & Associates poll released this week reinforces the wisdom of that adage for any Republican who wants to avoid defeat in the 2018 primary season and in the general election that follows.

The message of that McLaughlin poll could not be clearer or simpler for Republicans as they choose in the coming weeks between the agenda of President Trump and the agenda of the Beltway insiders:  The base that brought you to the dance supports the Trump agenda.Dance with your base and win.Dance with the Beltway and lose.

To be fair, elected Republicans face many practical pressures inside the Washington Beltway.  There are always K Street lobbyists for various special interests and for large corporations wanting special favors, all offering generous campaign contributions.

And there are the Alinskyite Democrats and their leftist media threatening personal attacks, smears, and ruin for anyone who crosses their socialist agenda.

And then there are some old hands who have learned to thrive in that environment, whose advice is to tell the folks back home anything they want to hear but do the bidding of the Beltway insiders in order to survive.

Candidate Trump called all of that a swamp, promised to drain it, and stunned most of the political experts with a victory those experts said was impossible.  And now Republican officials are doubtless hearing from those same experts that the Trump phenomenon is a fluke, an aberration, and that the smart move is to wait it out.Maintain your distance from the Trump agenda and it will all go away

But the McLaughlin poll of likely voters tells a different story.  Here are just a few highlights:

Voting to increase the debt ceiling without new constraints on spending will make 62% of voters less likely to vote to re-elect a Member of Congress.

“Bailing out health insurance companies without repealing Obamacare” leaves 53% overall less likely to re-elect a representative, and only 29% more likely. That 53% figure jumps to 67% among Trump voters.

Conservatives (70%) and Trump voters (67%) are less likely to support a Member of Congress who has failed to support President Trump’s efforts to vet immigrants more carefully, especially those from countries with a strong terrorist presence.

Refusing to repeal the burdensome Obamacare mandates and taxes leaves 75% of conservatives, 68% of Trump voters, and 66% of Republicans overall less likely to vote to re-elect a Member of Congress.

Eighty-five percent of likely voters still believe that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, even if it offends some people.  Only 9% support restrictions on speech.  That is not good news for the proponents of political correctness, or for those who bow to its dictates.

In stark contrast to the impression one gets from the leftist news media, when voters are reminded of the violence of the ANTIFA protesters, 81% of conservatives and 63% of voters overall oppose ANTIFA.  Only 21% overall support them.

And, as things stand now, 49% of likely voters see the Republican Leadership as “supporting the swamp that President Trump promised to drain,” with only 22% seeing them as helping to drain that swamp.

And those are just the highlights.

Now here is the point that Republican officials cannot afford to miss. The issues of concern to the GOP base – conservatives, self-identified Republicans, and Trump voters – are the same kinds of issues that gave rise to the Tea Party movement in 2009 and led to GOP victories in 2010 and 2014.  The Trump phenomenon is not just a fluke, but is instead a sign that the sleeping giant of mainstream America is waking up and demanding that Washington get control of our spending, secure our borders, repeal and replace Obamacare, and stop giving in to the stifling demands of political correctness.  Trump’s agenda is their agenda.

Elected officials who have not helped to carry out the Trump agenda will not only be going against President Trump; they will also be pitting themselves against the movement that elected him.

The Democrats have become increasingly radicalized and unified since the 1960s.  And when Democrats are in power, they enact their socialist agenda.  Their voters get what they vote for, with no waffling and no excuses.

And, even with all its internal debates, the Republican party is still the political vehicle for the center-right mainstream.  But mainstream America is beginning to wonder why the results they are seeing do not match the rhetoric they heard during the campaign.Why is it that the Democrats can enact the socialist agenda but the Republicans cannot carry out the agenda of mainstream America?

Looking at the McLaughlin poll, “the Democrats won’t let us” will not play well during the primaries, let alone in the general election. The music is starting for the 2018 election. Base or Beltway.  Choose your partner.

SOURCE

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The Destruction of the Individual

The American Left makes a show of disapproving any but the most denatured, toothless and universalist religious beliefs. They are suffused with a sexual ethos that is amoral and libertine by the standards of the recent past. Their intellectual post-modernism specifically prevents any moral judgement or ethical framework. In fact they pride themselves on the ability to“deconstruct” the traditions and values that under-pin our civilization. Yet, they seem able to put aside their fractious identity politics in order to be unaccountably tolerant- even supportive of Radical Islam That political religion commits terror against the rest of the world and has spawned despotisms of religious elites of some degree in the entire Muslim world. They also demand the killing of apostates, the torture and murder of homosexuals, the subjugation, rape and “honor” murder of women and children: This begs for explanation.

I have a simple answer, and I want to hold it up for my liberal friends so that they will see themselves in it and think again about their current leftist doctrine.

Some have said that the affinity between the Left and Islam has to do with the historic crimes of the West and the Judeo-Christian culture. In doing so, they willingly ignore the murder and terror that accompanied the Islamic conquest of Arabia, The Levant, North Africa, large swaths of Western Asia and even parts of Europe in the heyday of the Caliphate. Although there may be some element of truth to the accusations of Western crimes, it does not compare in scale, ferocity or longevity to the crimes of Islam. In any case, the affinity is deeper and more central to the Left and Islam than that.

It is about human nature, and the urge to change and control it. Islam, you see, is about surrendering the individual will to Allah, and although Progressivism purports to be about compassion and “humanity”,it shares with Islam a kind of surrender of the individual. The Left and Islam are united in their animus toward individualism, family loyalty, nationhood, liberty and and an open and questioning religious faith. At the very bottom of the issue, Islamic Jihad and the progressive Left have this in common: as Dostoevsky put it in The Brothers Karamazov, “…the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”

That’s a harsh thing to say, so for clarity’s sake let me stipulate that I do not mean they are incapable of loving individual people. There is a difference between what we call “the individual” and a particular person. You may love one or many people but if you cannot love, or at least accept as human, someone who does not behave as you think fit or subscribe to the same political doctrine that you do, then you are denying and hating “the individual”.

The name “Progressivism” itself implies that there is a ‘humanistic’ ideal that can be reached in an orderly, planned and (if necessary, enforced) progression. This is nothing more than the same intellectual fantasy that has given birth to all of the utopian movements in history. Utopias always seem so promising at their invention, but they lead only to dystopia and suffering. The annals of socialism, communalism and communism are replete with failure and horror.

At their worst, they have led to mass killings in Ukraine, Russia, Nazi Germany, China, Cambodia, and Venezuela (to mention just a few) and at their best they offer a kind of tepid, quasi-democratic environment where individual advancement is all but impossible for any but the members of the elite. Even the best, Post War Germany, Sweden and Denmark, for example, are fast succumbing to the fecklessness of their fuzzy progressive ideals and the incompetence or their effete leadership. In the face of (irony of ironies!) Muslim immigrant hordes that serve as a Trojan Horse for Jihadists and the terror they bring the socialist democracies of Europe are dying before our eyes.

All they offer us as a rational for their failure is hatred dressed up as love and tolerance. Only consider what passes for political polemic from the Left. The “Nazi” meme, thinly veiled character assassination and other unproven ad hominem attacks prevail. In the liberal media Donald Trump is constantly characterized as a heartless, vicious, greedy fascist, and even insane. Anyone who supports him (or even refuses to denounce him!) can count on being vilified and dismissed.

Disagree with his policies and personal conduct if you want, but this is all out of proportion and a shameful proof that the Left is without any means of logical or reasonable argument for what they believe. Its not just Trump either. There is not a single conservative that is immune. They have even condescended to despise Ronald Reagan- arguably the last successful U. S president. The best they could do against Reagan, though, was to call him an “amiable dunce” or a tool of the corporations, even though his policies lifted the nation out of the self described “malaise” of the Carter administration into the headiest era of prosperity and universal well-being we have known since. But that is really just further proof that they hated him- not just for being different from them but also for proving that Jimmy Carter, one of their own, was hateful and incompetent. Whatever small respect they had for Reagan and the office, if they could only muster something like it for Trump, we might again experience a new “Morning in America” era.

Unfortunately, that does not appear to be what they want. They sooth their discontent by assassinating the character of individuals who stand for The Individual.  Their so-called humanism seems to be more of a means toward other ends…which begs the question… What is this “progress” the Progressives have in mind for us?

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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