Tag Archive for: Ronald Reagan

Hatred of Trump Is Rooted In Contempt For Ordinary Voters

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Trump is our proxy. Everything thrown at Trump is thrown at us. If they can destroy Trump, what shot does any of us have?

‘E pluribus Trump’ = “Out of many, Trump”

“Far from the bully, Trump is the champion of those who have been bullied relentlessly and mercilessly by a self-appointed elite who holds them in contempt. In Trump, they have found a modern George Bailey….”

Opposition To Trump Is Rooted In Contempt For Ordinary Voters

By: Louis Markos, The Federalist, April 22, 2024

In Trump, his supporters hear a spirited defense of the hard-working despised and a fearless denouncing of the fashionable despisers.

A complaint I hear increasingly leveled at contemporary American politicians is that they are out of touch with voters, if not downright contemptuous of them. On a number of core issues, politicians seem less concerned with pursuing policies that are deeply unpopular with ordinary Americans than with upholding the ideologies and self-interests of the ruling elite. Two dramatic examples of this political disconnect with average citizens are the refusal of urban governments to prosecute violent criminals, which has caused a surge in crime, and the White House’s tolerance of mass immigration, which threatens jobs, security, and the rule of law.

As I survey the current political and intellectual landscape, I cannot help but see a resurgence of the arrogance and disdain of the 18th-century French revolutionaries for those they considered to be incapable of rational thought and moral behavior. But I am moving too fast. Let me slow down and give some historical background.

In The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004), Gertrude Himmelfarb distinguishes, convincingly, between the French philosophes, who championed reason; the American Founding Fathers, who concentrated on liberty; and the British moral philosophers, who emphasized human nature, benevolence, and our shared, internal moral sense.

While the English reformers showed compassion for the poor and uneducated and treated them as members of the same human race, and the American framers sought to ensure freedom for all classes, most of the French intellectuals looked down on the peasants, dismissing them as bestial and irrational, filled to the brim with the prejudices and superstitions of the Catholic Church. To the philosophes, the common people were neither honorable nor moral, but ignorant and unteachable, enthralled by religion and profoundly non-progressive. They were not citizens but the rabble. Even Rousseau, who extended some sympathy to the masses of the countryside, felt they needed to be guided by those who were enlightened to adopt the “general will.”

“In his article on the Encyclopédie,” Himmelfarb writes, “Diderot made it clear that the common people had no part in the ‘philosophical age’ celebrated in this enterprise. ‘The general mass of men are not so made that they can either promote or understand this forward march of the human spirit.’ In another article, ‘Multitude,’ he was more dismissive, indeed contemptuous, of the masses. ‘Distrust the judgment of the multitude in matters of reasoning and philosophy; its voice is that of wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice. … The multitude is ignorant and stupefied. … Distrust it in matters of morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions … heroism is practically folly in its eyes.’”

As a citizen in a representative democracy, I expect our political leaders, including Donald Trump, to be held up to public scrutiny and questioned, even investigated, when the facts warrant it. What I do not expect, and find increasingly troubling, is the widespread and ongoing demonization and character assassination of all those who support Trump and approve of his candidacy and his policies.

I am old enough to remember how roughly the political establishment treated supporters of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, especially if they identified with a conservative branch of Christianity. Reagan and Bush supporters routinely had their concerns ridiculed, motives suspected, and intelligence doubted. Still, the dismissal of Reaganites and Bushies as boobs and rednecks pales in comparison to the viciously sanctimonious profiling of Trump supporters as authoritarian, narcissistic white supremacists utterly unconcerned for the common good.

Whereas the liberal progressives of the 1980s expressed some compassion for the needs and struggles of the working man, the woke philosophes of today express only contempt for those who work with their hands. While carrying on the oppressor/oppressed identity politics of Karl Marx and his heirs, they have reduced America’s blue-collar proletariat to a racist, sexist, transphobic rabble who must be suppressed, managed, and reeducated.

Convinced, as the philosophes were, of the “wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice” of the rabble, today’s progressive philosophical, political, and social engineers have appointed themselves the task of redefining for the masses what it ought to mean “to be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father, a child, and when it is suitable to live or to die.”

The ironic difference between the philosophes of the past and the progressives of the present is that the latter have jettisoned reason altogether in their anti-scientific embrace of transgenderism and other uprootings of natural law. The superiority they claim over the masses is not, like that of Diderot, based on their more refined power of reason. On the contrary, their claims of superiority rest on the dubious ground of rejecting truth, logic, and reason as the product of white, patriarchal, heterosexual, and cisgender minds.

No wonder the majority of working men and women in America look to Trump as their advocate. He not only defends their traditional family values, common sense, and God-given humanity. His seems to be the only voice in Washington speaking up for, or even understanding, the joys and woes, hopes and fears, victories and struggles of that “rabble” that the political establishment, on both the left and right, seems only to dismiss, disparage, and despise.

Read the whole thing here.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Forget Basement Campaign — It’s Been A Whole Basement Presidency For Joe Biden

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Critics of President Joe Biden have begun dusting off the “basement campaign” allegation now that the 2024 election cycle is in full-swing, but a low-profile, press-free campaign would fall right in line with how Biden has conducted his entire presidency.

During Biden’s run for president in 2020, the now 81-year-old was criticized for running a “basement campaign” as he often stayed in his home studio for media appearances and had limited, low-attendance rallies. Now, as the 2024 election approaches, similar critiques are bubbling after Biden ducked out on a traditional end of year press conference and opted out of a prime-time Super Bowl interview.

Going on his fourth year in office, Biden is averaging about 11 press conferences a year, according to data compiled by the University of California at Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project. Biden’s average is the lowest since former President Ronald Reagan, who held office from 1981 to 1989, and averaged 5.8 press conferences per year.

The parallel between Biden and Reagan is not a coincidence, historian Barbara Perry, co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, told the Daily Caller.

“I think it’s more than coincidental that you have these two presidents with an aging factor. And I don’t mean to say that he’s non compos mentis and he’s going down. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying I do think it’s more than coincidental that oftentimes as these presidents get older, they want to do these kinds of pressers less. Prior to that would be the third and most elderly president was Eisenhower, who was well known for having trouble with his syntax,” Perry told the Daily Caller.

“I just think that’s part and parcel of what happens when you have older presidents, that to be on the hair trigger and be able to respond immediately to let’s face it, and I think this is the role of the press is to press and ask pressing questions instead, sometimes may even be hostile or at the very least, be pointed, and ask presidents to explain what they’re doing and why they’re doing things and to be controversial,” Perry continued.

In addition to snubbing press conferences, Biden has participated in fewer interviews with media outlets than his predecessors, according to NBC News. Since his 2021 inauguration, Biden has done 86 interviews with media outlets, NBC tallied. Former President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama trounce Biden’s numbers, each doing 300 and 422 interviews, respectively, at the same point in their presidency.

When Biden has done sit-down interviews with the media, his administration has often chosen to go the non-traditional route, sometimes avoiding hard-hitting journalists in favor of celebrity personalities. The president has done interviews with the Weather Channel, CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Ryan Seacrest and comedian Conan O’Brien.

In 2024, Biden has already foregone media opportunities. Biden turned down a prime-time Super Bowl interview for the second year in a row. His campaign then claimed that they wanted to give Americans a break from politics during the game, CNN reported. The NFL, however, is notoriously political, playing the black national anthem before the U.S. national anthem while players don helmet stickers reading “End racism” and “It takes all of us.”

“We are being less traditional because less people get their news from traditional mediums than ever before,” a Biden campaign official told CNN.

This year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched program in television history.

After giving an address on border initiatives being debated in Congress, Biden promised reporters on Feb. 5 that he would be back sometime during the week to answer questions. That same week the president unexpectedly gave a press conference to address a special counsel report that had been released that day discussing the president’s physical and mental state. It was widely panned after Biden mixed up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico and snapped at reporters who asked about his age.

Biden again promised to take questions from reporters following remarks on Ukraine funding stalling in Congress. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed further questions about the president’s promise.

“On Tuesday, President Biden, he said, ‘I’m not going to answer your questions today. I will answer them tomorrow and the day after,’” a reporter asked Jean-Pierre during a press briefing. “What was he talking about?”

“Well, he was outside yesterday, and he took questions from some of you,” Jean-Pierre responded, referring to when the president told the media he was giving them up for Lent. Biden also continued to repeat “Happy Valentines day” as he was asked about a mysterious national security threat.

“And what about today?” the reporter followed up.

“Today I don’t have anything to share beyond what you all know, don’t have anything to add on his public schedule,” Jean-Pierre followed up.

Mark R. Weaver, a GOP strategist, pointed to the quick-witted nature of press conferences as a reason Biden may be conducting less of them.

“It can be a little bit like playing ping pong. So in these gaggles, the reporter can serve the ping pong ball towards him, and he can hit once back, but he can’t hit the next shot or the next shot. He’ll walk away before he does. So [for example a reporter]  will say ‘Mr. President, why are the prices still so high?’ And he is able to give a first response he will say ‘Well, that’s because the Republicans in Congress’ right, so we can get a first response out,” Weaver said.

“But then the reporter will follow up ‘no, Mr. President, you did you know, you did this policy, you forgave student loans and and that change this monetary policy, what do you have to say about that,’ and then he’ll mumble and walk away. He can’t hit that second shot,” Weaver continued.

The White House dismissed questions about the president’s lack of press interactions during a February press briefing.

“The numbers show that President Biden has engaged in about 33 news conferences.  Compare that to Obama’s 66 and Donald Trump’s 52 by this time in their presidencies.  Can you explain why the President isn’t doing more?” a reporter asked Jean-Pierre on Feb. 12.

“We’re always going to try to find ways — obviously, outside of press conferences as well — t0 — for the President to be out there. And we have found some nontraditional ways.  We think it’s important to try and meet the American people where they are,” Jean-Pierre responded.

“As far as press conferences, we’re going to try and make sure when it’s the right time for — for those to happen, certainly we will — we will do so. But it doesn’t mean that this President does not engage with — with the press corps — with the White — White House press corps or with other reporters, journalists out there who have different — different ways with communicating with the American people as well.  We think that’s important too,” the press secretary continued, pointing to the amount of times Biden takes questions from reporters while on the road.

Biden does appear more willing to speak to the press when it is spontaneous, whether that be during trips or following a speech.

As of Oct. 17, 2023, Biden has engaged with the press 492 times in an informal “gaggle,” which is more than any other president aside from Trump, the Washington Post reported. The president is averaging about 131 interactions with the press per year as of Feb. 20, according to the American Presidency Project. The number is less than Trump, though far more than Obama who averaged 25 exchanges with the press per year.

Perry recounted a time she attended a December 2022 event at the White House and had an opportunity to speak to the president. Biden’s strength, Perry noted to the Daily Caller, is more personal, unexpected interaction.

“About 10 to 15 years, slid off his face between standing on that stage looking kind of tired and coming down and talking to each person standing behind the velvet rope line. And so I do think that part is a shame that to the extent that he is not out as much as maybe he would have been as a younger person meeting and greeting and pressing the flesh because that is his strength,” Perry told the Daily Caller.

While doing fewer press conferences, the Biden White House has still made an effort to meet the Americans through social media platforms such as Instagram and Tik Tok, the Washington Post previously reported. Throughout his presidency, Biden and his administration have leaned heavily on social media influencers in an effort to reach a younger crowd, though some argued to the outlet that the medium allows the White House to control the president’s messaging more.

“I think we should also point out that the press these days and in part may be trying to keep up with social media, may be more confrontational than at other times in long past,” Perry noted. “I mean, certainly the press was confrontational with Reagan, they were confrontational with Nixon, and I would compare him to someone like Trump, who really disliked the press. I don’t think Joe Biden dislikes the press, I think he probably misses the days when he could go toe to toe with them.”

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Reagan’s Goal to End the Department of Education Is Finally Gaining Momentum

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Ending the Department of Education may seem like a radical idea, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

The debate over the federal role in education has been going on for decades. Some say the feds should have a relatively large role while others say it should be relatively small. But while most people believe there should be at least some federal oversight, some believe there should be none at all.

Rep. Thomas Massie is one of those who believes there should be no federal involvement in education, and he is actively working to make that a reality. In February 2021, he introduced H.R. 899, a bill that perfectly encapsulates his views on this issue. It consists of one sentence:

“This bill terminates the Department of Education on December 31, 2022.”

This position may seem radical, but Massie is not alone. The bill had 8 cosponsors when it was introduced and has been gaining support ever since. On Monday, Massie announced that Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) decided to cosponsor the bill, bringing the total number of cosponsors to 18.

Though it may be tempting to think Massie and his supporters just don’t care about education, this is certainly not the case. If anything, they are pushing to end the federal Department of Education precisely because they care about educational outcomes. In their view, the Department is at best not helping and, at worst, may actually be part of the problem.

“Unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. should not be in charge of our children’s intellectual and moral development,” said Massie when he initially introduced the bill. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students.”

Massie is echoing sentiments expressed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, who advocated dismantling the Department of Education even though it had just begun operating in 1980.

“By eliminating the Department of Education less than 2 years after it was created,” said Reagan, “we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”

Before we rush into a decision like this, however, it’s important to consider the consequences. As G. K. Chesterton famously said, “don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”

So, why was the federal Department of Education set up in the first place? What do they do with their $68 billion budget? Well, when it was initially established it was given 4 main roles, and these are the same roles it fulfills to this day. They are:

  • Establishing policies on federal financial aid for education, and distributing as well as monitoring those funds (which comprise roughly 8 percent of elementary and secondary education spending).
  • Collecting data on America’s schools and disseminating research.
  • Focusing national attention on key educational issues.
  • Prohibiting discrimination and ensuring equal access to education.

Now, some of these functions arguably shouldn’t exist at all. For instance, if you are opposed to federal funding or federal interference in education on principle, then there is no need for the first and fourth roles. As for the middle two roles, it’s clear that we need people collecting data, disseminating research, and pointing out educational issues. But the question here is not whether these initiatives should exist. The question is whether the federal government should pursue them.

On that question, there’s a good case to be made that leaving these tasks to the state and local level is far more appropriate. Education needs vary from student to student, so educational decisions need to be made as close to the individual student as possible. Federal organizations simply can’t account for the diverse array of educational contexts, which means their one-size-fits-all findings and recommendations will be poorly suited for many classrooms.

Teachers don’t need national administrators telling them how to do their job. They need the freedom and flexibility to tailor their approach to meet the needs of students. It is the local teachers, schools, and districts that know their students’ needs best, which is why they are best positioned to gather data, assess their options, and make decisions about how to meet those needs. Imposing top-down national ideas only gets in the way of these adaptive, customized, local processes.

The federal Department of Education has lofty goals when it comes to student success, but it is simply not the right institution for achieving them. If we really want to improve education, it’s going to require a bottom-up, decentralized approach. So rather than continuing to fund yet another federal bureaucracy, perhaps it’s time to let taxpayers keep their money, and let educators and parents pursue a better avenue for change.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

AUTHOR

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Kennedy and Reagan — Communism Sucks . . . Must be Destroyed!

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Please watch this short video where Tom Trento reaches back into American history to have President John Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan teach the Democrat party that they have abandoned our Constitutional Republic and whole-hardheartedly embraced a Marxist, anti-capitalist, anti-God, political philosophy.

ALL Patriotic Americans, E PLURIBUS UNUM – must come together and DESTROY Marxism! The future of America – LIGHTS OFF or LIGHTS ON – will be determined on November 3, 2020.

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©All rights reserved.

Republican Primary Lesson: It’s Not About You!

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The existential threat to America today is not communism but colonization by illegal aliens and Muslim “refugees.” Political correctness subverts our First Amendment rights and shuts down even discussions about the threats to the middle class.

On the day Donald Trump resoundingly won primaries in West Virginia and Nebraska, the same day that Ted Cruz gave one last, desperate call-out to voters by indicating that he would consider reentering the race if Nebraska voters decided he should, a Quinnipiac poll provided yet one more shock to the pundit class.  It showed Trump even with Hillary Clinton in three key states.  He was beating her on leadership abilities, economic issues, and security issues.

Voters also thought that Trump was more “honest and trustworthy” than Clinton.

Trump had a lower rating on “moral standards” probably because of his playboy past.

The question remains: why would people trust someone who has low moral standards?  How did Trump earn this trust?

He certainly did not do it the way Ted Cruz did by speaking in front of a large banner with “TrusTed” on it.  He did not do it by telling his parents’ hard-scrabble stories the way Cruz and Marco Rubio did.  He did not by simply presenting his name with an exclamation point the way “Jeb!” did.  He did not do it with a phony “aw shucks” act like John Kasich’s.

Oddly, the man who is cast by the pundit class as being the supreme narcissist used the old Reagan slogan, “Make America Great Again.”  He tapped into the patriotic desires of Americans suffering two terms of an anti-American Obama presidency.

As voters rejected the other candidates’ appeals, commentators upped the rhetoric and aimed it at Trump’s supporters. The libertarians and millennial conservatives pulled out their thesauruses for new terms of insult.  Erick Erickson alternated between references to Scripture and casting Satanic aspersions on Trump supporters.  National Review’s Kevin Williamson likened them to Hitler supporters, and said their communities “deserved to die.”  The ominous meme about “angry white working class voters” was circulated by pundits who had studiously avoided any parallel categorization of Michelle Obama.

Adopting a new more conciliatory tone, David Brooks acknowledged the “pain” of “declinism” and called for a New Deal-like effort to change the “national story” from the old model of rugged individualism.  He suggested a “new definition of masculinity” for the new economy that rewards “emotional connection and verbal expressiveness.”  (Brooks is detail oriented, as his praise of the creases in then-candidate Obama’s pants showed.)

These commentators who attended elite schools and had connections were initially confident that the champion Princeton debater, praised by his former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz as “off the charts brilliant,” would win out over the buffoon who spoke in sentence fragments.  Cruz’s campaign, as the Washington Post described it, “reflected its candidate: methodical, strategic and data-driven.”  It “deployed a sophisticated data strategy that used psychographic information to appeal to the fears or hopes of potential voters.”

On the day of the do-or-die primary, Cruz decided to talk to a man holding a Trump sign at his event in Marion, Indiana.  With cameras trailing, Cruz walked up to a guy who would probably not react favorably to Brooks’ “new definition of masculinity.”  He was from Ohio, a “pole-climber,” as he put it — someone Brooks, sitting in an office admiring the creases in his own pants, might espy, from a distance repairing the lines.

The effort was clearly intended to present Cruz as patient and charitable towards someone holding minimal “verbal expressiveness.”  Sure enough, in grammatically incorrect phrases, the man said that he supported Trump because of “the wall” and the Second Amendment.  He told him, “You are the problem, politician,” and asked where his Goldman-Sachs jacket was.  Cruz, with evident exasperation, repeated the well-known charges against Trump.  He asked him if he knew that he had argued a Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court.

Clips from the exchange were played on Fox on May 7, with Greg Gutfeld’s facial contortions and comments interspersed to show how impenetrable Trump supporters are to Cruz’s debating points.

While those in the #NeverTrump camp probably found Gutfeld’s mockery funny, others, such as other pole-climbers who are already disgusted with the sneering at their kind, probably did not.

Nor did they miss the announced “deal” with rival John Kasich, or fall for the slogan of used car salesmen and consumer advocates (“trust me”).

Do the candidates not understand that the hard-luck stories about immigrant parents bring only a “so what?” from children of immigrants who did not go Princeton or Harvard?  Do they understand that abstractions about “free enterprise” mean little when your job has been sent abroad?  Do they understand that bantering in Spanish on the debate stage doesn’t win any points if you have to compete for work with Mexicans hanging out at Home Depot?

Do they understand that talk about the Constitution inspires very little confidence if it comes from someone like Marco Rubio, who betrayed his supporters on immigration?  Do they understand that when you say “when I am president,” as Rubio did, that it comes off as presumptuous?  All three of the candidates who blamed Trump’s “rhetoric” for the rioters who closed down the rally in Chicago on March 11 lost credibility—and votes.

Did the Big Brains who kept invoking Ronald Reagan not listen to “the speech” on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater?  Reagan, calling himself a “former Democrat,” addressed middle-Americans’ concerns, then arising from the existential threat of communism and growth of government: an administration that sought to imprison farmers for improper bookkeeping, that built public housing, and that harassed businessmen.  Reagan told stories, about an Arkansas farmer who lost his 960-acre farm for over-planting his rice allotment.  He related a story about a young woman pregnant with her seventh child seeking a divorce so that she could qualify for Aid to Dependent Children, which provided more money than her husband, a laborer, could earn.

The existential threat today is not communism but colonization by illegal aliens and Muslim “refugees.”  Political correctness subverts our First Amendment rights and shuts down even discussions about the threats to the middle class.

As I described at this site, Trump at his rally on April 10, in Rochester, New York, connected with voters by talking about their concerns, such as the recent closing of SentrySafe, which followed Carrier Air Conditioning’s exit from Indiana to Mexico.

The day after the Indiana primaries, CNN invited a number of #NeverTrump-ers — over-glossed, quick-tongued politicos – who were contemplating a third party.

The #NeverTrump-ers ominously imply that if Trump is the nominee, “it will be a long, hot summer — and fall,” — continuing the idea that any violence will be Trump’s fault.  Erick Erickson, on the morning after the Nebraska win, predicting that the “Schadenfreudenfuhrer” will “beclown” himself over the next two months, advised delegates to the national convention to reject the will of the voters.  Otherwise, “We will see a party fail to unite. It’s [sic] standard bearers will flee.”

These “standard-bearers,” not looking beyond their own reflections, continue in the same self-destructive path.  As they accelerate the insults, they show that they may have “psychographic information,” but not much empathy or common sense.

Neither Barry Goldwater nor Ronald Reagan Could Get Elected by Today’s GOP

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Emphatically stating that well respected Republican leaders of the past like Senator Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan could not get elected in the current climate of the GOP, conservative consultant Vic Gold says that neither would even try.

Goldwater was a true classical liberal who wrote this in his book “The Conscience of a Conservative“:

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

This Constitutionally based ideal is lost on those who call themselves the Republican establishment.

Gold — who served as a press secretary to Barry Goldwater in 1964 and has a long, distinguished history in conservative political circles — discussed the current state of the party and how things have gotten to the point they are at now in a Focus Washington interview (see the video below) with Chuck Conconi.

“The breakdown of the republican party starts with Newt Gingrich and the 104th Congress in 1994.” The party’s polarization started when Gingrich and Republican members of Congress spent their time focused on government shut downs and impeaching Bill Clinton. According to Gold that injected a venom into the party that has snowballed into vicious partisan politics.

Venom, polarization and partisan politics are code words for political correctness, something the American people are tired of.

Gold has lived through 24 elections, however it is questionable that he knows a classical liberal (e.g. conservative) stands for. In referencing the current candidates he says, “[T]hese people are not conservatives… they are practically anarchists.” Gold is correct in that there is a political insurgency sweeping across America. And that the insurgency is being led by the Republican Donald Trump. An insurgency that is focused on stopping an out of control federal government.

The Founding Fathers created a Constitutional  Republic, which is just to the left of anarchy. The Constitution of the United States was designed to protect the people against a democratic form of government. This is because democracy inextricably leads to mob rule and tyranny.

Gold labels the current crop of Republicans as largely “anti-liberals” who have have little in common with traditional conservatives. Gold has it wrong as many Republicans are in fact “classical liberals” following the ideas of notable individuals whose ideas have contributed to classical liberalism including John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. Classical liberalism drew on the economics of Adam Smith and on a belief in natural law, utilitarianism, and progress..

This is where the establishment in both political parties have lost their way.

Gold questions how the Democratic party could only come up with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as candidates. He laments, “Where are the Democratic leaders today?”

Moreover, Gold asserts that each party has contributed to the rise of Donald Trump and his domination of the GOP. The political system used to let politicians enter the presidential race despite financial status and now democrats such as Joe Biden don’t enter because he “doesn’t have the money”. He points to Bernie Sanders’candidacy as an ideal scenario for elections, “He doesn’t have the money but he [runs] anyway—we used to have that.”

It appears that Gold favors are return to the time when money was not the driving factor in elections. We agree, that is why Donald Trump is self-funding his campaign and people love him for it.

The political atmosphere is like non the American people have witnessed since the candidacy of Barry Goldwater. It was then that the GOP establishment helped defeated Goldwater giving the election to Lyndon B. Johnson. Will history repeat itself? That is the question.

Watch the full interview:

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of United States Senator Barry Goldwater (left) meeting with then Governor Ronald Reagan during the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida. Photo: White House via CNP/Newscom.

The Trump Insurgency

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trump at rally with supportersIf you Google the words “Trump” and “insurgency” you will get over 650,000 links to articles and commentary. I recently said to a friend that Donald Trump has gone from being a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President to the leader of a movement.

Can this movement now be called an insurgency?

The definition of an insurgency is a “rebellion against an existing government by a group not recognized as a belligerent.”

Is it Trump who created an insurgency or is Trump following the lead of a growing insurgency that was already taking place? I have written that Trump leads his followers by following their lead. The movement began during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and continues today. It is a struggle between the individualist and the collectivist.

Ayn Rand wrote a short nineteen page paper asking: What is the basic issue facing the world today? Rand, in her paper makes the case that, “The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism.” Rand defines these two principles as follows:

  • Individualism – Each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.
  • Collectivism – Each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.
trump supporters young

Trump supporters. Photo: Facebook.

Donald Trump has tapped into the “Individualism Movement.” Trump’s life is the embodiment of the individualist. Trump has been rich, then poor and then rich again. He has done this not with government handouts, but rather despite the government.

Members of the Individualism Movement go by many names: Silent Majority, TEA Party Patriots, Constitutionalists, Blue Dog Democrats, Anti-Establishment Republicans and the working class. They embody the insurgency.

Joseph P. William in his U.S. News & World Report column “New Insurgents, Old Problems“, wrote:

[Ronald Reagan in] His famous televised 1964 “A Time for Choosing” speech for GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, tapped into deep-seated anxiety about communism and runaway government spending. Decades before the Reagan Revolution, The Gipper laid out a then-radical vision for vastly smaller government, shaking up the party’s blue-blood ruling class and setting his course toward political immortality.

[ … ]

“We’ve certainly seen this before,” says Norm Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank and a veteran political scholar. In uncertain economic times, he says, “we get populism.” In Sanders’ case, that means disdain for bankers and Wall Street; the brand Trump’s selling sweeps in nativism, trade protectionism and mistrust of the GOP establishment.

Is Trump the new populist or the old individualist?

Here are just some of the reasons Trump’s campaign is different than any other of the candidates, Democrat or Republican, running for President:

  1. Not a career politician.
  2. Not politically correct.
  3. Isn’t influenced by money or big donors.
  4. When he sees something he says something.
  5. Turns his negatives into positives.
  6. Attacks against him consistently backfire.
  7. Fearless and is therefore feared.
  8. Has broad appeal due to his forthright comments.

Each of these are indicators of individualism on steroids.

Donald Trump is saying what people have wanted to say but have been afraid to do so. When Trump speaks he is not speaking to the media or the elite, he is speaking to John and Jane six-pack. He is speaking to each an every American.

Trump has shown that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. He is the new Individualist and the people love him for it.

It truly is a time for choosing.

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“A Time for Choosing” by Ronald Reagan

Watch out Scott Walker: You carry the burden of Ronald Reagan’s ‘Legacy’ in ‘Liberal Learning’

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Now that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is ascending as a presidential candidate, expect to see quasi-scholarly attacks about the devastating legacy of Republicans on higher education.  As James Piereson and Naomi Schaefer Riley noted recently, Walker’s problems with the University of Wisconsin arising over budget cuts and altering the words of the school’s mission “are those almost everyone in the Republican field could soon have.”

Yes, and expect attacks to come from places like the Chronicle of Higher Education, which recently published Dan Berrett’s article, “The Day the Purpose of College Changed.”  The day is February 28, 1967, when newly elected California Governor Ronald Reagan claimed that taxpayers shouldn’t be “subsidizing intellectual curiosity” at universities.  As an example, Reagan described a four-credit course at the University of California at Davis on organizing demonstrations.  He said, “I figure that carrying a picket sign is sort of like, oh, a lot of things you pick up naturally, like learning how to swim by falling off the end of a dock.”

Reagan found “whole academic programs in California and across the country” “similarly suspect.”  The Los Angeles Times’ response, “If a university is not a place where intellectual curiosity is to be encouraged, and subsidized, then it is nothing,” is applauded by Berrett as “giving voice to the ideal of liberal education, in which college is a vehicle for intellectual development, for cultivating a flexible mind, and, no matter the focus of study, for fostering a broad set of knowledge and skills whose value is not always immediately apparent.”

The decline in liberal arts enrollments in the 1980s, when business administration became the most popular college major, is traced back: “On that day in 1967, the balance started to tip toward utility in ways not even Reagan may have anticipated.”

Republican governors continue to degrade the popular opinion of liberal education, Berrett maintains, as he quotes Pat McCrory: “If you want to take gender studies, that’s fine, go to a private school,’ the Republican governor of North Carolina, said on a radio show a couple of years ago. ‘I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.’ In other words, it’s an intellectual luxury” – and “private goods.”

McCrory presumably follows the lead of Reagan, who in the same year he announced budget cuts, hypocritically dedicated a library at his alma mater, Eureka College, a small Disciples of Christ school, while citing the greats of liberal learning: Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, and Maimonides.

In contrast, “plenty of governors through the years have understood that a liberal education also has a public benefit.” At one time, “A farmer reading the classics or an industrial worker quoting Shakespeare was . . . an honorable character.”

Real “Liberal learning”?

As an alternative to the small-minded trend of utilitarianism, Berrett presents the efforts of the 100-year-old, 1,300-member Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), which promises to “devote the entire Centennial Year to a far-reaching exploration of the connections between high-quality liberal learning and Americans’ global future and of the changes needed to drive equitable access to high-quality learning for the millions of students who remain underserved. .  . .”

Berrett praises the projects on “educational quality, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and civic learning, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education.”  One of these projects, the Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) program, encourages students “to learn by tackling society’s ‘big questions’” through Signature Work.

Although Signature Work’s goal is presented as overcoming the disparity of “providing liberal education to some students and narrow training to others,” the projects are described as either career related, or related to “significant societal challenges such as health, literacy, sustainability, or human dignity.”

Nothing references Shakespeare or the classics, the kind of “liberal learning” that Berrett claims Republican governors are threatening.

In reality, the AAC&U promotes the kind of activism that one finds in the “gender studies” departments that Governor McCrory denounced.

Such politicization has entered the required subjects, such as freshman composition, that recall “liberal learning,” if only by name.  The activity that Reagan mocked in 1967, a four-credit course on picketing and protest, has become institutionalized.  Last year I wrote about a University of South Florida freshman composition instructor sharing tips in a professional journal on requiring student participation in “Slut Walk” and “Take Back the Night” demonstrations.  Other composition courses focus on such topics as “sustainability” and “composing gender.”  This is the legacy of the 1960s protests.

Real History?

In addition to twisting the definition of “liberal learning,” Berrett misrepresents the facts –facts readily available in the biography Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power by journalist Lou Cannon.

Cannon is a liberal.  Yet, he presents Reagan’s actions in full context. It’s a context that Berrett ignores.

Cannon recognizes that Reagan’s predecessor, Governor Pat Brown, did some creative accounting, leaving Reagan to begin his term with a deficit.  Berrett makes no mention of this.

Berrett also perpetuates old charges of anti-intellectualism already refuted by Cannon: “Reagan’s academic critics accused him of anti-intellectualism.  He gave them ammunition by saying, or so it was reported, that the University of California ‘subsidized intellectual curiosity.’  But while Reagan in the long tradition of populism certainly exploited the anti-intellectual biases of his constituencies, he was in awe of people with advanced degrees.  One of the reasons that Reagan was offended by the [campus] demonstrations was that he took higher education seriously.”

Reagan is known for his firm stance against protestors who violently took over California’s public campuses in the 1960s.  He explained to Cannon decades later his belief in outlawing activism that interfered with the rights of others, namely other students.

Although Reagan as a college student was “more concerned with dramatics and athletics than with his studies,” he was proud of being the first in his family to graduate from college (paid for with a partial scholarship and a job washing dishes) and interrupted his 1980 presidential campaign for a trip to his alma mater.

The Real Legacy

Berrett himself illustrates the politicization of liberal learning.  At the Chronicle of Higher Education critics of the degraded form of “liberal learning” are ousted.  Naomi Schaeffer Riley became a casualty when she dared to attack politicized Black Studies.

Such courses do not deserve any public funding.

But the liberal arts, rightly understood, are of value to students.  They produce knowledgeable, civic-minded, clear-thinking, and articulate citizens.  As evidenced by employers’ complaints, our liberal arts departments are failing to teach even basic skills, such as writing clearly, correctly, and convincingly. Shouting, marching, and sign-carrying are no substitute for studying Aristotle’s Rhetoric, reading classical works, and writing essays.

Conservatives do support privately funded independent institutions, such as the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, where I am a fellow, because they offer liberal learning, in its true meaning.

Scott Walker, and other Republican candidates, should make that distinction—and often.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research website. The featured image is of newly elected Governor Ronald Reagan confronting student protestors in Sacremento/Bettmann, Corbis, AP image.

Allen West: Remember when presidents stood up to Russia?

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Thirty-five years ago I was finishing up my senior year of high school and heading to my first year at the University of Tennessee. Something also happened that year — the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and began the 10 year Soviet-Afghan War. If anyone had told me in 1979 that one day, 26 years later, I would be landing at the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, I would have thought them crazy. However, history does indeed repeat itself for those who fail to learn from it.

So here we are in 2014 with a weak president, just as 35 years ago, watching another invasion. Once again we have a president who has diminished our military capacity. Once again we have a president who is limiting our energy security advancement in favor of radical environmentalists.

There are so many parallels between the tenures of presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama some postulate this is what a second Carter presidency would have resembled.

This past week, President Obama was in Europe displaying his failure to comprehend strategic level geopolitics. Europe has always been a battleground between East and West, between liberty and tyranny. The difference now is that we do not have resolute leadership such as President John F. Kennedy who went to West Berlin and stated, “Ich bin ein Berliner” meaning to say he was a citizen of Berlin (not a “Berliner” jelly-filled doughnut). And young Kennedy was indeed challenged by the brutish belligerence of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev by way of the Cuban missile crisis. Yet he stood his ground.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/hH6nQhss4Yc[/youtube]

Years later it would be another American president, Ronald Reagan, standing at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin demanding, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” And indeed the wall did. It was Reagan who clearly defined his Cold War strategy, “We win; they lose.”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/GCO9BYCGNeY[/youtube]

So when our current president makes weak, stumbling, incoherent statements such as, “this is not some zero-sum game” referring to Ukraine and Russia, he evidences his ignorance and cowardice to belligerents worldwide — and worse, to our allies. It is a zero-sum game and as Kennedy stated in his 1961 inaugural address:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge —- and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder….We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

And so we sit back and watch history all over again as weakness becomes the enticing elixir drunk by dictators, autocrats, theocrats, and despots. There is only one way to meet evil: head on. It is not about being a “warmonger” but rather a guardian of liberty and freedom — and a guardian of the republic for which we stand.

RELATED STORY: Putin thinks globally, while Obama acts locally

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com. 

Ronald Reagan was the TEA Party!

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Newly re-elected Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) on CNN’s Jake Tapper show stated, “I’m a conservative. I’ve governed as a conservative in this state, and I think that’s led to some people disagreeing with me in our state, because it’s generally a left-of-center, blue state.”

But is Christie truly a conservative?

Republicans, like Christie, often quote Ronald Reagan when speaking about conservatism. In September 2011 Christie spoke at the Reagan Library, his topic was “Real American Exceptionalism“. Christie focused on Ronald Reagan’s stand against striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Christie said, “The air traffic controllers, in violation of their contracts, went on strike.  President Reagan ordered them back to work, making clear that those who refused would be fired. In the end, thousands refused, and thousands were fired. I cite this incident not as a parable of labor relations but as a parable of principle. Ronald Reagan was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. Those who thought he was bluffing were sadly mistaken.  Reagan’s demand was not an empty political play; it was leadership, pure and simple.”

“We tend to still understand foreign policy as something designed by officials in the State Department and carried out by ambassadors and others overseas. And to some extent it is. But one of the most powerful forms of foreign policy is the example we set. This is where it is instructive to harken back to Ronald Reagan and the PATCO affair. President Reagan’s willingness to articulate a determined stand and then carry it out at home sent the signal that the occupant of the Oval Office was someone who could be predicted to stand by his friends and stand up to his adversaries. If President Reagan would do that at home, leaders around the world realized that he would do it abroad as well.  Principle would not stop at the water’s edge,” noted Christie.

Reagan’s policies were based upon in what has become known as his “three legged stool”. Some call them the “Three Pillars of Conservatism”.

Kevin Price from Renew America writes, “If you know of Ronald Reagan, you are likely to be aware of his ‘three legged stool.’ Reagan developed a success formula to build winning coalitions that was as simple as it was brilliant. A sample of that simplicity and one of the hallmarks of Reagan’s policies was his ‘three legged stool.’ Reagan’s policies were built on three ideas; free enterprise, strong defense, and pro-family social policies. He chose these three because they, of course, reflected his own values, but he also realized that each of these ideas have enormous appeal on their own.”

Reagan was a man of principle, true conservatives are as well. Compromise on matters of principle is foreign to conservatives. Conservatives intuitively know that compromise on principles is the art of losing slowly.

J. Matt Barber from Christian News Today in his column “The Complete Conservative” writes, “I recently attended the Ronald Reagan Centennial Celebration hosted by the Republican Party of Virginia. It was co-sponsored by, among others, the Ronald Reagan Institute for Conservative Leadership. Michael Reagan, the oldest child of the man widely considered our greatest modern president, was the keynote speaker. Mr. Reagan said something that I think concisely sums up the core values shared by the ragtag millions who comprise the Tea Party movement. ‘People often ask me if Ronald Reagan would have supported the Tea Party,” he said. ‘Ronald Reagan was the Tea Party’.”

Speculation about who is the frontrunner for in the 2016 presidential Republican primaries has begun. The media always frames the Republican selection process as a need to run as a conservative in order to win the primary but run as a moderate in order to win the White House. That strategy was unsuccessful for both John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Price wrote, “Today, the common cry from economic conservatives is that they are the only ones with a message that matters to the voting public. After 40 years of Roe vs. Wade, we have two generations who only know a country with abortion on demand, they argue. Secondly, many conservatives have grown suspicious of ‘the military’ leg. They believe that just as the government has gotten suspicious in its domestic spending, it has also lost its bearings when it comes to defense and has found itself being internationalists with muscle. Essentially, ‘the three legged stool’ is being replaced by a pogo stick. A single area of interest and concern — the economy, being the springboard for political success.”

Price concludes, “The reality is the ‘three legged stool’ tripled the reasons why one would vote Republican. If the GOP provides the only means to protect traditional families, Christian conservatives will support it, regardless of the other legs of the stool. I think the same can be [said] of the other parts of a coalition that made the Republican Party very successful. If the stool is dead, the fortunes of the party may be also.”

Has the GOP adopted a “pogo stick” as the only path for political success? If so, losses as far as the eye can see may occur, as they did in Virginia, a state that could have elected the conservative Ken Cuccinelli.

Barry Goldwater wrote, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

It not the economy stupid, its the three legged stool!

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