The Trump Factor.

It's about rebellion and revolt.

//Would many of them cast a vote for Trump in a GOP primary? Probably not. For these students, Trump is not the leader of a political movement, but rather, a countercultural icon. To chant his name is to strike a blow against the ruling class on campus—the czars of political correctness—who are every bit as imperious and loathsome to them as the D.C.-GOP establishment is to the working class folks who see Trump as their champion.

That might not be much comfort for the numerous people on the right and left—myself and most of my colleagues included—who consider Trump a narcissistic, fearmongering authoritarian peddling a destructive, fascistic policy agenda. But what if his supporters aren't actually applauding his agenda: what if they're merely applauding the audaciousness of his performance?

"Trump's becoming an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness," Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor at Breitbart, told me. "It's why people like him."//

Why a corrupt narcissist like Trump resonates.

When was the last time a Republican was outraged by any of this?

//A lot of us complain that our elite betters are ignoring our concerns, but nothing could be further from the truth. They have heard us all right. They have gotten together to come up with a solution to the many problems we have brought to their attention. And that solution is for us to shut up and keep sucking up whatever abuse they choose to heap upon us.

It’s all about empowering the elite to feel smug. And about sticking us normal with the check.

Upset about establishment virtue signaling that requires us to take limitless numbers of Third World denizens into our country? Mad when they take our jobs? Of course, aliens don’t take the elite’s jobs – for example, we lawyers get to bar people who don’t pass the Bar from horning in on our action, but if you’re an American who wants to build houses for a decent wage, well, too bad and so sad!

And if these uninvited guests change your neighborhood so that you can’t read the window signs, well, learn to accept diversity. Of course, these visitors never change what’s inside the elite’s gated communities – except when they change the rich kids’ diapers.

Oh, and if one of them gets hammered and uses his shiny new illegal alien driver’s license to ram his beat up Chevy into a car packed with your son and his friends, that’s a small price to pay for the elite redlining its collective sense of moral self-satisfaction. And if an illegal rapes and murders your daughter, well, better an American woman die than some dreamer’s dream of easy pickings be denied.

Your life is not a priority. It’s not even a consideration.//

Elitist discovers that regular Americans are remarkably like real human beings.

The search for racism among grassroots conservatives in America continues.

//Kaddie Abdul, "an IT data engineer working in Silicon Valley," decided to drive four hours to a Trump rally in Nevada to show how racist "those people" are. She wore her Muslim garb, held her Koran, and waited for someone to attack her. No one did. A few people gave her an odd look, but nary a nibble.

Darn it.

Apparently the Guardian in Britain had paid for her gasoline, so she had to write something, so she wrote: "I went to a Trump rally in my hijab. His supporters aren't just racist caricatures."

Actually, she meant "just aren't racist caricatures."//

When the chips are down Donald Trump plays the anti-Catholic card...

...against a Southern Baptist.

I say that America should welcome its first Canadian Catholic president to show its tolerance and inclusiveness.


//Here’s the key transcript:

DICKERSON: When you say about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), “Not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba,” what does that mean?

TRUMP: Well, it just means that Cuba generally speaking is a Catholic country. And you don’t equate evangelicals with Cuba. I don’t. I mean, I think of evangelicals, and i have, I guess I am. You know, I’m Presbyterian. I’m Protestant. But I don’t see it coming out of Cuba.

DICKERSON: But you’re not questioning whether – I mean, as far as you know, he could be more devout than you are.

TRUMP: It’s possible. Certainly it’s possible. I’m not questioning it. And I say it in a somewhat smiling manner. But there’s a little truth to it.

What strikes me first about this is that Trump feels the need to attack Ted Cruz’s Christianity as fake. Trump wants you to think that Cruz is a secret Catholic, only pretending to be a Baptist (SBC) in order to get votes in Iowa//

9/11 and Censorship.

There is a surprising amount of media support about "thousands and thousands of Muslims in the New York area celebrating the 9/11 attacks."

I suspect that if there was this level of evidence/media reports about conservatives celebrating the murder of an abortion doctor, it would be "established history."

I just don't remember these reports.  Maybe they weren't carried outside of the NY area; maybe I just didn't want to believe them.

I do remember how quickly the media began to run "Don't hate Muslim" ads and how uniformly videos of people jumping/falling  from the World Trade Center were suppressed.

There is a discontinuity between official news and what people know, and the difference is feeding Trump's campaign. The fact that Trump can dredge up "news outside the narrative" may be both a great service. It is also proof that censorship of any kind is a bad idea, since all that censorship manages to accomplish is to teach people that their news can't be trusted.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/12/01/7-pieces-of-documentation-that-vindicate-trumps-claim-of-911-muslim-celebrations/

Our fragile civil rights.

This is insane.

//While certain Republican presidential candidates have drawn the ire of reporters and evoked comparisons to the Holocaust for daring to discuss a national registry for Muslims, approximately one out of four Democrats support forcing Jews and Christians to register with the government.

A recent YouGov poll asked 1,000 individuals if they would support a national registry requiring members of various groups to provide the government with their home addresses.

The poll found 27 percent of self-identified Democrats either “strongly support” (18 percent) or “somewhat support“ (9 percent) a national registry for Jews.

Democratic support for a national registry for Jews is nine percent higher than the support among Republicans (18 percent) and 12 percent higher than the support among Independents (15 percent).

The poll also found 27 percent of self-identified Democrats either “strongly support” (17 percent) or “somewhat support” (10 percent) a national registry for Christians.

Democrat support for a national registry for Christians is six percent higher than support among Republicans (21 percent) and 9 percent higher than support among Independents (18 percent).

On the topic of registering Muslims, Democrats were nearly split on their support for a national registry.

The poll found 41 percent of Democrats support a national registry for Muslims (25 percent “strongly support,” 16 percent “somewhat support”) while 47 percent oppose the registry (40 percent “strongly oppose,” 7 percent “somewhat oppose”).

The YouGov poll was conducted on the Web from Nov. 20-23. The margin of error is ±4.2 percent.//

The historically literate call this "The Marius Rule"....

...and we remember it was Marius's violation of the unwritten rule about not holding the consulship more than once that invited in Sulla and Caesar and destroyed the Roman Republic.

///This is much like Obama’s strategy of governance, in which he has ignored many of the unwritten rules of American politics, trampling on custom and tradition. And mostly gotten away with it, leaving politicians (mostly GOP politicians) as mystified as Dem pundits are by Trump. You can get away with a lot, if you don’t care what people who don’t like you think, only if they can stop you. Whether it’s a good formula for the country over the longer term, of course, is a separate question entirely.//

Birthright Citizenship.

I have accepted the notion of Birthright Citizenship ever since I read Alexander Bickel's phenomenal essay. 

Bickel is a forgotten legal philosopher who died far too young. His take on birthright citizenship was that "what is not given cannot be taken away," which seems like security for the rest of us.

I've generally agreed with this point, long before it became an issue.

On the other hand, I find it ironic to see all the talking heads and experts telling us (a) that the 14th Amendment is totally clear on the issue and (b) that there are cases from 40 years ago that decided the issue.

In light of the recent Same-Sex Marriage decision, which found a right to gay-marriage in the 14th Amendment, I ask "So what?"

Isn't the teaching of the recent decision that the Constitution is a "living Constitution" that has to evolve with society? Isn't the America of today different from the America of 1866 or 1980?  Where is it written that the Constitution "evolves" only in the direction that our liberal elites want it to evolve?  If Donald Trump is elected President, why can't he take the position that what was said in the past doesn't matter because times are different now?

So, there it is liberal/progressive Americans - American liberty is threatened by the living Constitution.

This is the world you created.

Bon appetite.