War Crimes

Mark Noonan28 Comments

It has been brought up lately, and I’ve been pondering it for quire a while. Here are some thoughts I have on the subject:

Back in ancient days, those who were defeated in war were at the mercy of the conqueror – it was felt that merely enslaving them was to cut them some slack. But putting an entire city to the sword down to the last man, woman and child was not uncommon. Over time, this was modified a bit as some great conquerors (most notably Alexander and Caesar) discovered that clemency was itself a mighty engine of war – letting the defeated off relatively easy tended to make conquests more lasting; and you could get more out of the defeated in continuing tribute than you could in a one-off sacking. But, still, for the longest time it was thought that an enemy who refused terms and was then defeated was without recourse to mercy.

Mostly through the agency of the Catholic Church as it rose to prominence, this idea of mercilessness to the conquered was modified. And the waging of war, itself, was held to require a strict set of rules. That these rules were often ignored is beside the point – there were rules and people would refer to them in judging the wartime actions of a nation. Time went on and war became to be seen as a thing between professional armies, alone, and the non-combatants were to be spared the ravages of war as far as possible. Napoleonic France diverged from this general trend (essentially, Napoleon looted Europe in order to fund his regime and his continuing wars) but the post-Napoleonic reaction was just that much more strong – until, by treaty, nations in the late 19th century started to codify the rules of war.

But it was still held that if one side violated the rules, the other side was justified in following suit. A good example of this was poison gas – banned by treaty prior to World War One, once the Germans started using it then all sides used it to the best of their ability. And then World War Two happened – a war was started by a nation with absolutely no justification and that nation then ran amok murdering and looting on a scale never seen before in war. After the war, trials were held and those judged most guilty of carrying out the crimes were hung or imprisoned for long terms. And it became rather set in stone: there were some things you just couldn’t do in war, ever.

But it still remains a fact that some people depart from the laws of war – most notably the terrorist. Remember, what was most terrible about the Nazi crimes was the way they brutalized people who couldn’t fight back…civilians and disarmed prisoners of war. We look far more in horror at the massacre of Babi Yar where more than 33,000 defenseless Jews were murdered than we do the bombing of Hamburg where more than 42,000 Germans died…this is because the Jews were completely harmless and completely helpless, while the Germans were at least working to support the German war machine and in the Luftwaffe and the Flak units, the Germans at least had a chance at self defense. We feel sadness when, say, an American or Israeli soldier is killed by an enemy but we know that soldiers voluntarily face such risks – and they have a chance to defend themselves. But when a bomb goes off in a shopping mall, it is defenseless, harmless people being murdered. The laws of war require that those shooting and being shot at be clearly identified as people who can do that – anyone who is not so identifiable must not be shot at and must not shoot. But the terrorist is violating both sides of that – they are not identifiable as shooters and they seek to kill people who are most definitely not in a position to shoot back.

What do we do about such a thing? That is the crucial thing we need to be clear in our minds about. The enemy diligently hides his identity. He desperately does not want to be known as a combatant before he starts shooting. He hides among his like, blending in to the best of his ability to confound those who would prevent him from attacking. He browbeats and threatens non-combatants into keeping silence, and supporting his efforts. He then steers clear of any place where he’s likely to be met with armed resistance, and then attacks. Is such a person, if captured, to then he held as if he were a regular soldier, honorably seeking to engage his like in battle? Or is he to be treated as a common criminal and be provided with a defense attorney? Or is he to be fought as he fights? Here is a clip from the movie Breaker Morant – it tells the story of three Australian officers being charged with murder for shooting out of hand what amounted to captured terrorists during the Boer War:

Most of the laws of war we use today were in effect at the time – but there is a difference: the defense the officers used was that they were obeying orders. Here’s the scene where the defense sums up:

And, of course, the standard was created in the post-WWII trials of the Nazis that obeying orders is no defense. Soldiers are to refuse to obey any order of a criminal nature – and, indeed, this has been written into American law and into the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But, still, what to do with an enemy who has departed entirely from the rules of war?

If a terrorist is planning on setting bombs in a series of shopping malls, what rule are we to use in stopping him from doing it? To be sure, if we can just arrest him and send him to jail, that is fine. But suppose we can’t? And even if we can arrest the particular terrorists planning the bomb-setting, what of their masters in a foreign land? And what of the government which allows them to operate in their territory? A further example – a terrorist group is using an active hospital as a base for their operations, what rule of war are we to use in getting after them? Kindly ask them to leave? Bomb the hospital? Suppose we decide in such cases that it is legitimate to bomb a hospital but we, being human, bomb the wrong hospital and kill hundreds of civilians – is that a war crime? Bring up the pilots on charges of murder?

We all know we must not become just like the enemy – but it seems to be that to become like the enemy would be to start hiding our military forces behind civilians and to eschew entirely attacking the enemy but, instead, go in search of family and friends and killing them out of hand. That would be acting like the enemy – but fighting the enemy without let or hindrance even though he is hiding behind civilians would not, in my view, be a crime…and if in the heat and pressure of battle where our troops are in a shooting gallery where who is the enemy and who the noncombatant is unclear, then it still would not be a crime if some of our troops did some things which in cool hindsight were wrong.

We are faced with a ruthless enemy and we have our choice – fight or quit. I don’t think that quitting is an actual option because they are determined to get after us regardless of what we do. But, still, if one wants to believe that if we stop, they’ll stop then that can be tried. On the other hand, however, if we decide to fight then while obeying all the rules of war, we still have to understand that an enemy departing from the rules will have to pay a high price for his actions…and those shielding the enemy while he violates the rules have to know that cooperating, even involuntarily, with the enemy is the worse option than resisting enemy pressure (in other words, the guy allowing his house to be used as a staging area for terrorists must become convinced that it is better to risk the wrath of the terrorists than to risk our wrath should we find out his house is a staging area).

War is a nasty, dirty business and no one comes out of it with completely clean hands. To take a human life is always a terrible thing and we should do our best to find ways to solve our problems without the spilling of blood. But the nature of humanity dictates that there will always come people who desire to obtain things by killing. It doesn’t really matter what particular thing it is they are trying for – the fact that they are willing to kill to get it is all that matters. And each enemy who arises has to be dealt with in the most efficient way possible. If someone wants to raise a conventional army to fight us and is willing to spare, as far as possible, all civilians then that, indeed, is how we should fight them…but if someone is taking to the hidden bomb in a school or the gunmen in an airport, then other means will be necessary to convince such an enemy that fighting is a losing proposition.

Happy Hour Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

‘Cause we’re all going to need to start drinking, heavily – get it?

Anyways…

Why are people furious over our political system? Here’s why:

During a panel discussion Monday morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe about a pair of new reports in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post concerning the ongoing FBI investigation into the Clinton private e-mail server, National Journal political reporter Ron Fournier argued that there should be a higher bar to bring charges against Hillary Clinton because she is running for president…

No. No. NOOOO! Because Hillary is prominent it is all the more vital that she be held to the strictest standard. I’ll much easier let some poor guy off than I would someone rich and powerful…because a rich and powerful person (a) can’t possibly have any justification for breaking the law and (b) if those who run the government are breaking the law then every person in the United States suffers ill effects. But this is why Trump is having such a huge effect – because this and 10,000 other examples are out there of people juiced in getting a free ride. This sort of thing must end if our nation is to be saved.

Could Trump win New York in November Short answer, no. But take a look at this quote:

…Levine said voters are increasingly unwilling to cross party lines, “and this pattern has only accelerated in this era of negative partisanship in which, if nothing else, many people are voting against the opposing party rather than voting than voting in favor of their own party.”…

Which is all very true but which might not be true for 2016. We only have a few bits and pieces of information to contradict the polling and political history…but if Trump can pull into his camp numbers of those who don’t vote along with some who normally vote Democrat, things could be very much up in the air.

NY Times throws up it’s hands and just can’t figure out why people become terrorists:

…After all this funding and this flurry of publications, with each new terrorist incident we realize that we are no closer to answering our original question about what leads people to turn to political violence,” Marc Sageman, a psychologist and a longtime government consultant, wrote in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence in 2014. “The same worn-out questions are raised over and over again, and we still have no compelling answers.”…

I hate to state the obvious, but I guess I’ll have to: people become terrorists because they want to. There are people out there who get a kick out of doing bad – from the drug smuggler to the bank robber to the identity thief to the terrorist. It is true that some times you can talk a person out of doing bad – appeal to their better nature. There are also times when it seems pretty clear that God intervened and a bad person saw the light and repented. But there are also people who, for a variety of reasons, can’t be reasoned with and refuse the call of God. These are the people who make the bad things happen – for run-of-the-mill criminals there are the police, courts and jails to deal with them…but for those who are determined to set off bombs in random public places, much more stern measures will be required. One thing certain, if you’re sitting there spinning mental cobwebs trying to figure out some sort of root cause of either bank robbery or terrorism, you’ll be failing to deter either the robber or the terrorist…you’ve got to take vigorous, positive steps to stop them. If there is some sort of root cause, you can work on that, too…but, meanwhile, you’ve really just got to get after those who do bad things.

Happy Easter!

Mark Noonan22 Comments

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead. – John 20:1-9

Out and About on a Friday

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Much argument these days on what a Conservative actually is – my two cents: a Conservative is someone who understands and believes the fundamental dogma of Original Sin. You don’t actually have to be a believer to hold this (though it’s easier if you are), but if you don’t work on the assumption that people can, even from the best of motives, get it wrong then your own policy ideas will eventually fall apart.

Trump is going to get crushed in an epic landslide – or, maybe not.

You know me – I’m not really in favor of all these late night, no-knock raids by police…but Belgium’s policy of no raids between 9pm and 5am is, well, stupid.

Georgia is debating a bill which would provide just a tiny bit of protection for those who want a conscience exemption – you know, not having to do things like hire people to work at the Church school who openly disbelieve in Church teaching and that sort of thing. Now, pay attention, Conservatives: Big Corporation is stoutly opposed to this. Big Corporation is even threatening boycotts of Georgia if the people there have the nerve to demand freedom of conscience. Big Corporation – and the so-called Capitalist system it lives in – is against us, folks. They are allied with liberals – and please let that sink deep into your heart.

Australia banned guns – and this led to the end of guns in Australia and everyone is now happy and peaceful! Just kidding – it has actually generated a violent black market in guns.

Scott Walker thinks that brokered convention will lead to a non-candidate getting the nod. I can think of at least one person I’d rather have than either Trump or Cruz. Can you? After all, if we are doomed to President Grifter, then I’d rather have us lose under an honorable banner.

Colorado’s dope industry is doing well – smoke a blunt for prosperity!

The Smartest Take on Trump

Mark Noonan53 Comments

It is from Victor Davis Hanson – first, “Is Hillary Better Than Trump?”:

Is Hillary perhaps still a Bill Clinton centrist or at least an elite member of the establishment whose first allegiance is the sober and judicious status quo?

No. Her tenure as secretary of State was the worst since Cyrus Vance served under Jimmy Carter. To Vance-like incompetence and therapeutic blather, she added serial dishonesty, violations of the law, callousness toward the families of the Benghazi dead, and opportunistic trashing of her predecessors. Hillary was as responsible as her boss for the Russian reset, the Iranian deal, the Libyan tragedy, the implosion of Iraq after the needless total withdrawal, the cluelessness about ISIS, the red lines/deadlines/step-over lines embarrassments, the slow and steady decline of Afghanistan, the genocide in Syria, the reach-out to thugs like the Castro brothers and Recep Erdogan, and the estrangement from Israel. She may have not done the apology tour, but it reflected well enough her worldview of the moment, as did the euphemism campaign of workplace violence and man-caused disasters…

Then, “Is Trump a Sure Loser?”

There is a good chance of it. I think he has no idea what Clinton, Inc. will do to him and will probably lose by a wide margin. But if that battle is lost, it was lost also when the Republican establishment and center nominated fine and upstanding trimmers like John McCain and Mitt Romney and a Congress that sought to slow rather than halt Obama’s frenetic efforts to socialize the U.S.

Do read the whole things because, as is usual with Hanson, every word repays reading. I’ll wait. Go on, read it.

Ok, all done? See what I mean – you already feel smarter than you were 20 minutes ago.

For those who are #NeverTrump and are arguing that Trump represents some horrible departure in American politics – an unprecedented level of vitriol, cluelessness, corruption and racial animosity – I have a couple questions to ask: where you been since 2007? If Trump is an incipient fascist out to destroy American liberty, then just what has Obama been up to? Have you forgotten the way the IRS went after TEA Party groups? That Ben Carson was magically audited right after he offended Obama? That the maker of an obscure video was actually arrested in service of the Obama Administration lie about what caused Benghazi? That Petraeus was convicted for far less than what Hillary hasn’t been indicted for? That Senator Menendez as given a pass on corruption when Obama needed him as a supporter, but as soon as he turned on Obama vis a vis Iran and Cuba, he got indicted? That Obama’s people spied on and harassed members of the MSM who didn’t entirely toe the Obama line? That Obama fanned the flames of racial animosity just to goose Democrat turnout for 2012? No matter what Trump might do as President, it isn’t anything that Obama hasn’t already done…and what Obama has done was done with the eager cooperation of Hillary Clinton.

We do have a real problem in this nation – freedom is under siege. Decency is despised. Honesty is considered a sucker bet. Trump may well exacerbate these trends but so would Hillary – it’s a complete toss up as to which one of them would be worse. But one thing we do already know – Hillary has held political power and corruptly used it to advance and/or protect herself and her cronies. Trump, by fact that he’s never held any political power, hasn’t.

As I’ve said before, I’ll never be a Trump supporter – but I’m not going to let my disgust at Trump’s antics blind me to just how lousy Hillary’s record is…nor Obama’s.

Freedom is Dying in America

Mark Noonan30 Comments

Earlier today a family member told me they were leaving a social media format – because others this person works with are liberals and as this person does not toe the left wing party line, having the liberal co-workers find out about heterodox opinions could be costly. Meanwhile, Erick Erickson details how he is living under threat for being anti-Trump.

Last year a cousin of mine found out that my grandfather – George Childs Noonan, Sr. – was a bit of a “blood and guts” Noonan during World War One. His battalion was attached to a British force assigned a vital task in piercing the Hindenburg Line, grandpa (per a unit citation) was one of a group of men who, surrounded by the enemy, fought doggedly, killing and wounding large numbers of the enemy before being forced to surrender when they ran out of ammunition (it was late in the war so grandpa only spent a short time as a POW). Grandpa was fighting for freedom – and he gave it his best. He and all 7 of his brothers fought in World War one – and two of his sisters served as Red Cross nurses in France. All 8 of the brothers were wounded to one extent or another…and so determined what that batch of Noonans to fight for liberty, that one brother actually joined up with the British Royal Flying Corps before the United States entered the war. And now, 100 years later, we’re finding out at the all the dedication and sacrifice was completely wasted – the great-grandchildren of those men and women are getting to be opposed to freedom, as such.

It is just bizarre how little the young know of history, or of what liberty is. A fellow Conservative on Twitter retweeted a youthful, liberal comment about Trump…the kid was wondering why the government hasn’t already gotten rid of Trump! Say what you want about Trump – and I’ll say a lot – but it never occurs to me in the slightest to try and stop Trump from doing what he wants to do. Nor Sanders or Hillary or anyone out there. Free country, right?

Not any longer.

And I think it must be because we’re not teaching young Americans about history. Oh, to be sure – there’s something in school which is identified as a history class, but I’ll bet the whole thing is nothing but a screed about how lousy the United States has been along with a few identity-politics plugs for selected “in” social groups. I feel pretty confident that in and among all they are teaching, why we went “over there” in 1917 isn’t covered…and I’m frightened to think about what I might find covered in World War Two. Probably something about the internment of the Japanese and the Atomic Bomb…I’ll bet a lot of schools even steer away from the Holocaust because that might offend Islamist sensibilities. I suspect it because I see the results – plenty of young people are getting suckered into neo-Nazi ideology because they don’t know the truth, and so easily fall to Nazi imagery and those out there who have crafted elaborate Holocaust-denial narratives.

Freedom is never more than a generation away from being lost – so said Ronald Reagan a generation ago, and he was right.

Now, can we recover? I’m not sure – it might be that various stripes of tyranny battle it out until one wins and suppresses everyone else. I hope freedom can still prevail – but I worry that time to do so is rapidly running out.

Out and About on a Friday

Mark Noonan17 Comments

I’ve seen people saying that in a choice between Trump and Hillary, Hillary is the better choice. This just flabbergasts me – for all that Trump has done, he’s not as bad as Hillary. Hillary has deliberately lied again and again throughout her public life. I’m not talking about the exaggerations and evasions common to politics – I’m talking about deliberately lying to the American people about what she has said and done. The latest outrage, in my view, is the way she’s claiming that the families of the Benghazi dead are lying about what she said! This is getting very far into the theater of the absurd – and she just keeps going down it. Like Trump, Hillary is incapable of admitting error…but so far Trump’s enormities haven’t lead to the catastrophe which has been Hillary Clinton actions. I can well believe that Trump will wind up as disastrous as Hillary…but to say he’s now, today, worse than Hillary is just silly.

For those casting blame for the rise of Trump I do suggest you check one, last place before finishing: the mirror. It is all of us Conservatives who have failed, to one degree or another. Sure, some are far more culpable than others, but each of us had a duty – if we wish to engage in politics, at all – in making our movement palatable to the widest possible cross-section of Americans. If the GOP primary electorate was even 15% African-American, then Trump simply would not have been able to get as far as he did. Whatever happens in November – the Election of Generalissimo Trump or the Coronation of Her Imperial Majesty Hillary I – we Conservatives need to think long and hard about how we get more people into our movement.

Watch what people do, not what they say. People are saying that Trump is a massive electoral defeat waiting to happen…but if that were the case, then President Obama wouldn’t be turning up the heat to save Hillary (and his legacy) from Trump.

Is the fate of the GOP in the hands of Kasich?

Secretary of State Kerry, once again Johnny-on-the-spot, has declared that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians and other non-Muslims. Only a liberal, American government would take more than two days to figure this out…and only a liberal, American government would only make the move when forced to by outraged public opinion.

John McCain is in trouble in Arizona – only leads his challenger by 1 percentage point. Question: will McCain seek some anti-Establishment street cred by endorsing “whacko bird” Cruz? Alternately, will McCain toss over the GOP in order to save his own political skin and try to force a vote on Obama’s SCOTUS nominee?

GOP Establishment increasingly shows itself willing to rally around Trump – meanwhile, the True Cons grow ever more dismayed by him. So, we might have Everyone But Conservatives for Trump…this year will be strange.

Hey, remember Islamist terrorism? It’s still a thing.

Instead of appointing a Harvard or Yale lawyer to the Supreme Court, why not someone who lives in the real world?

In contested conventions, the guy who starts with the most votes usually doesn’t win it. Reason: If you can’t snag a first-ballot majority, it indicates a firm level of dislike for your candidacy. Those who vote against you the first time tend to dig in their heels and cast about for any reasonable alternative. We’ll see if this comes out like that if the GOP convention is contested.

Can There be a Conservative Majority in America?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Because right now there clearly isn’t. The Trumpocalypse is upon us and while there still is a slim chance that Cruz can derail it, what Trump has revealed is that the Republican Party is not, itself, a Conservative party…some of us (definitely myself, included) figured America to be a center-right nation and thus open to Conservatism on the whole. Turns out, we were quite wrong. Between Trump and Sanders, we’re seeing that very large blocs of the American electorate are not remotely interested in Conservatism. Sanders and Trump supporters both share a similar dream – though both sides would reject this idea with fury – and that is a dream of an America with an all-powerful government. Trump and Sanders people just have slightly different ideas of who is the enemy and who gets bashed – and who gets the government goodies. Conservatism has nothing in common with that.

This is because Conservatism isn’t about political power as such. Trump and Sanders supporters have grand dreams of what the government will do as soon as their guy gets in. Conservatives have grand dreams of government doing little – certainly little that interferes with people just living their lives. National defense; just laws equitably enforced; basic services provided in an efficient manner. That is pretty much all a Conservative asks of government. And therein lies the fundamental weakness of Conservatism – it doesn’t offer goodies nor does it propose to punish groups or classes of people. It speaks to neither base political desire of humanity – greed for gain or joy in revenge. So, as we offer nothing – as it were – how can we gain a majority? How do we campaign, that is, on a platform of “we’re going to help you if you’re in a real bind but for the most part we’re going to just leave you alone”? Rather tricky business, right?

But it can be done. You see, even though the ultimate aim of Conservatism is limited government presiding lightly over free, independent people who look after themselves, there are dragons to slay and rewards to offer. There are, that is, things to offer people in return for their support. We just have to figure out how to offer them in a manner which appeals to them. I’ve been talking it up for years now – though my audience here is small, and even among my fellow Conservatives, much dissent from my views has been offered. But it is time to think anew and act anew – we don’t want to partner up with people like the Trumpsters (though we do eventually want the large majority of them to come our way – but only after they are properly instructed and understand what we’re doing) and we sure as heck can’t partner up with Socialists (though, once again, we want a large majority of them to come our way, eventually). Going into partnership – alliance – with Trumpsters or Socialists means we have to give in to their views and that can’t be done if we are to remain Conservative. They have to give up some of their views – and we have to convince them that doing such is wise and in their best interest.

Here’s my Three Point Plan for building a Conservative Majority. It is rather thumbnail at the moment and can certainly be fleshed out – but as I recently condemned a guy for not having a plan for making a Conservative Majority, I think it incumbent upon me to at least provide some bare-bones framework:

1. Stop being contemptuous of others. I’ve seen it for years but the Trump and Sanders phenomena has written it starkly: plenty on the right (the left, as well, but we’re not the left so I don’t care what they do) have monumental contempt for people who don’t just “see” things their way. Not everyone has the time or inclination to learn what others learn. But this doesn’t make them stupid or even uneducated – it just makes them people with a different set of knowledge and thus a different perspective. Of course, ignorance of some facts can lead people quite astray – but even if they are lead astray the way to reach them and get them on the right path isn’t by insulting them or being condescending.

2. Don’t denigrate their fears, either. Lots of people have lots of fears and some of them are entirely divorced from reality. From people who think that the Koch Brothers are conspiring against the people to others who think the UN is about to land blue-helmeted soldiers in America to confiscate our weapons and every possible combination in between. The fears may well be based upon false information, but they are none the less real to those who have them. Don’t insult the fears – acknowledge them. Find ways to turn those phantom fears towards real, concrete problems we have. If their fear is the Koch Brothers then propose ways and means to improve the relative power of the people against those who have a great deal of money. If the fear is foreign tyrants imposing their will on the United States then propose ways American sovereignty can be strengthened. But whatever you do, don’t just dismiss the fears as absurd – all you’ll get is a person who is now impervious to your pleas.

3. Substitute false enemies and false promises for real enemies and real promises. As you are now humbly trying to explain yourself and acknowledging their fears (real and imagined) of your audience you have a chance to start inserting into their minds who is really against them and what rewards they can really obtain by following your lead.

The real enemy of the United States is not a proposal to make something legal or illegal, but lawlessness. Solzhenitsyn pointed out that the real problem with the Communist government in Russia was not that it was tyrannical, but that it was arbitrary. Soviet Russia was chock full of laws from end to end, but no one in the Soviet Union had the least idea of what was really permitted or what was really prohibited because regardless of what the written law said, any trumped-up Communist party official or KGB officer could arbitrarily imprison you at any time. Over time it must be carefully explained to the American people that their great danger is not any particular set of political ideas, but the fact that our government is simply not under control of the people and is not abiding by the law. Right now in America no one can be certain, day by day, they are obeying all applicable laws – there are so many of them and so badly written; and that leaves out the fact that the government has proven itself highly selective in which laws it will enforce, and whom it will enforce them against. We are also in a state where we don’t know if something we’d rather not do will be made mandatory on the morrow by the merest whim of a bureaucrat. Big Government is incapable of being lawful because once it grows beyond a certain point, no one is really minding the store – and people with power who are not responsible to the will of the people tend to become more arbitrary all the time, even without the added inducement of people bribing the government to do this or that particular act outside the law. By telling tales of people who innocently ran afoul of laws – or who were ground up in the system for comparatively small offenses which snowballed – we can explain to the people that Big Government is necessarily against them, and thus grow the number of people who want government curbed.

Trump says he’s going to kick those foreigners out and get our jobs back and Make America Great Again. Sanders says he’s going to rake those Millionaires and Billionaires over the coals and thus provide everyone with free college, free healthcare, free etc, etc, etc. These are nonsense promises but people listen to them because people have a natural bent to believe it when someone is offering something swell with no personal sacrifice. You can’t beat something with nothing and so we have to contradict the false promises with real promises. This is the harder task than getting people to identify the real enemy, by the way. It is hard to argue against free stuff and nearly as hard to argue against “we’re gonna be great if you just give me power”. But I do believe the trick can be done. It is a matter of holding out in front of the people the real rewards of a Conservative government – personal safety; law and order; justice; peace; prosperity. And with this cachet – people like a challenge. They really do. Sure, they also like promises of free stuff, but if you promise blood, sweat, toil and tears in the right way and with the right vision of a broad, sunlit uplands, then people will sign on to your movement. Its a matter of going to Detroit and telling the people there that they, the people currently living there, will soon be living in a revived Detroit; telling people in a dying rust-belt town that with hard work and sacrifice that dying town will be revived…and not with slick deals for connected lobbyists and contractors, but with actual good things for the people there, today.

Anyway, that is what I’ve got right now – I’ll likely have more on it over time. But to build a Conservative majority will clearly take doing things different than we have. There’s really no other choice – we either adapt to current conditions and start moving the ball our way, or Conservatism is finished. And I think we can do it – if we but try.

Kevin Williamson to Working/Middle Class: Go Die in a Fire

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Saw this excerpted at Hot Air earlier today and I was astounded by it. I wanted to get the whole article from National Review, but something was screwy with the website and it wouldn’t take my 25 cent payment for it, so I have to go on what is quoted rather than being able to read the entire article. At all events, Kevin Williamson over at National Review has this to say of the sort of people who are backing Trump – and how they view the world:

It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves.

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

I don’t know quite where to begin with this from a man who, to this point, has been one of the more intelligent observers of politics. Garbutt, for those who don’t know, is a small town in upstate New York. It’s main product in the past was gypsum – a material used in such things as plaster and drywall boards. Williamson’s point is that it is the fault of the people of places like Garbutt that their lives are miserable. They were morons who didn’t realize you can’t make a living out of gypsum and so should have just moved somewhere else and learned a new trade…like, I guess, moving to New York City and becoming investment bankers, art critics or, well, writers for major national publications. Here’s the thing, though: China produced 132,000,000 metric tons of gypsum in 2015. I have a guess that China would not produce that much gypsum if there wasn’t a market for it. Meanwhile, the United States produced a mere 11,000,000 metric tons of the stuff in 2015…but there lies the tiny town of Garbutt, sitting atop a mountain of gypsum and no one is mining it. Garbutt could be a fine, prosperous community based upon gypsum mining but for some reason we just don’t mine it there any more.

The exact why of it all is beyond my immediate knowledge. I’m sure it was a slow decline of the industry over time and a host of factors provided the reasons for the decline. Could have been bad business practices. Maybe labor troubles played their role. The mining companies might not have installed the latest and most efficient means of mining. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if taxes and regulations made it increasingly difficult to mine at a profit. But I’ll also bet that our various “free trade” agreements opened up our gypsum market to foreigners who sweat their labor and don’t give a darn about worker safety or environmental concerns. But whatever the reasons for the cessation of mining in Garbutt, we should be working to restore it – we use gigantic amounts of gypsum in the United States every year and as we clearly have lots of gypsum in our soil, it is pure idiocy to not take advantage of what we have. Why send our wealth to China for something we can obtain right here at home? And don’t try to lay on me a bunch of globalist nonsense about how China’s gypsum has to be cheaper and it is the mere workings of the free market which dictate gypsum comes from China and Garbutt becomes a dead town. It isn’t the blind hand of market economics which makes this happen – but the warping of economic life by government policy that does it; and warping which is often as not done at the behest of big business which isn’t at all interested in wise policy but in just getting a slightly larger profit.

Because we do, as a matter of fact, produce gypsum in the United States. Nevada produced just under 2.3 million metric tons of the stuff in 2014, representing a 40% increase over the year before. Clearly, good profits are available within the United States in gypsum mining. The conditions which allowed Nevada to produce that much gypsum could obviously be duplicated in New York – but they aren’t. Those jobs are gone, boys, and they ain’t coming back – so goes the old Springsteen song and so go plenty of people in the United States…curiously enough, it is always people who don’t do the jobs that ain’t coming back who assert in forthright terms they ain’t coming back. I wonder if we advised Mr. Williamson that his job is being sent to a guy in China who will do it for 40% of Williamson’s wages how he’d feel about it? After all, I’m sure we can get plenty of Chinese who are just as willing to tell large swaths of the American population they are just miserable failures. It’s just economics, Williamson – the blind hand of a completely free market, you dig?

But what about the immorality Williamson notes? True, our moral failures are all our own. We are created by God with free will and everyone is ultimately responsible for their own choices in life. But it wasn’t the people of places like Garbutt who demanded sex, drugs and rock and roll. That demand was created in places like New York City and Los Angeles by bored, rich people who wanted to spice up their dead, empty lives – and woe to anyone in Garbutt who even made a peep about not wanting it in their community. It is a curious thing we’ve seen for well more than a century – the least eccentricity of the rich must become a requirement among the poor. The rich wanted to live in Babylon, and so everyone must live in Babylon as well. Can’t have some rich guy being held up to moral censure, right? So, the vices a rich man can afford because of his wealth must also become vices among those who can’t afford them, at all. Think of it – the Hollywood producer who puts out pop culture garbage which glorifies bad choices can afford to send his drug addicted son to rehab and bail him out of jail time and again…but the poor slob in some small burg? Can’t do it – his son dies of a drug overdose, or becomes a serial jail bird. But let’s not have any nonsense about calling the purveyors of popular culture to account. After all, no one will want to censor it – but it’s not even that; we can’t even call it wrong to do…that would make people feel bad and, worse, it could lead to a drop off in sales of popular culture products. That, of course would be the worst possible thing – a lowering of profits in the corporations making the product.

Understand this – the support for Trump is precisely among those who have been victimized by a system they don’t control. No, there isn’t a Conspiracy making it happen – just rank immorality, as is always the case when things in human life go wrong. A host of factors have all played their role in destroying communities both economically and morally – and our job is not to arrogantly say, “too bad, so sad” but to identify where we went wrong and then fix it. It is not stupid to want small and mid-sized communities of hard working people. It is the only thing a Conservative should want, for crying out loud. What the heck does Williamson want to conserve? Manhattan? Sweated labor and bribery in the People’s Republic of China? What? Trump is, as I’ve said again and again, no answer to anyone’s problem but he or someone like him will continue to garner support as long as people who should have answers don’t provide them. And as 2016 has gone on, I’ve come more and more to the conclusion that a very large number of people on the alleged right don’t even want to try for an answer – they’ve got swell lives as it is and don’t want to rock the systemic boat which allows them to maintain their swell lives. But grab a clue – there are many, many more millions of people who are shut out than doing well…their numbers grow. Many of them have been suckered into voting Democrat because at least the Democrats say they care…but even that is wearing thin. Trump likely won’t get anywhere, even if he did manage to win the White House but if we on the right don’t start thinking about how to fix this broken nation then mark my words, some sort of authortarian dictator who says he or she will fix the problem will gain majority support in the United States.

And fixing this broken nation means, precisely, finding dignified, profitable work for people who are now out in the cold…and not just in dead mining communities like Garbutt, but in the hollowed out cities like Detroit. People don’t want to live without hope – either we give them real hope, or a tyrant will give them false hope. You can say all you want that the feeling of betrayal by Trumpsters and BLM people is based upon falsehood. It doesn’t matter – it is what they believe. And, truth be told, even if the over-arching narrative such people have is false on many points, it is based upon a true enough situation. A working or middle class African-American man can easily feel that the system is against him; that the cops are unfairly targeting him; that he can’t get out from underneath a byzantine set of laws. A working or middle class white man can also feel that the system is against him; that his job was sent to China for no good reason; that Corporate and government bosses are living high while he’s left with scraps. The two men live it, every day – telling them they are wrong to even think that way just insults them.

I think our best bet is to go to people where they are – listen to them, acknowledge their grief and propose solutions to the problems they think they have. I was out and about among the people today – just regular folks at the swap meet. Working people; people with families to support. If I’d been taking a poll, I bet I would have found two men who would be spoken of most highly among these people: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Neither Trump nor Sanders are what these people need – but they are what these people are going for, because no one else is even giving them the time of day. What’ll it be, folks: leave these people to demagogues who will use their rage as the path to personal power, or will we step up and provide them something better? It’s our choice, for now. Very soon, if we do nothing, it will be taken forever out of our hands and we’ll just have to endure what is chosen with no reference to us. One thing is certain in my view, if we just yell about how stupid they are for believing as they do, we’re going to lose.

UPDATE: After I had written this and pondered it for a while, it occurred to me just what I was trying in my very poor way to say – and then I recalled where I had read it before. Below the fold you’ll find it:

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Ain’t No Trump Gonna Get Me Down

Mark Noonan15 Comments

I just refuse that office – that is, the Office of Being Hysterical About Trump and the Mortal Absolute Danger He Poses to All That is Good and True. Trump is what Trump is. Yes, he’s clownish. Yes, he’s vulgar. Yes, he is bringing out some bad elements. But it is not like Trump created the overall situation – that has been created, rather relentlessly, by others over a 50 year or more period. Trump is the result of our national infirmity, not the cause of it.

Over Friday night I watched as Twitter became ever more absurd – to the point where Conservative posters were lauding the likes of Rachel Maddow and MoveOn!. I admit I was shocked by all that – if there’s anything a Conservative should know it is that it is very risky to ally with the left. They’ll take our help in destroying part of us…and then when that is done, they’ll just turn around and destroy the non-left which just helped them out. What I’m waiting for now is for some of my fellow righties – those who, say, hold that “social issues” are bad for Conservatism to emphasize – to simply join up with the left. I’ll be watching and waiting, because I know it will eventually happen. They’ll join, they’ll be lauded by all their swell, new friends…but then the Leftwing Party Line will require EVERYONE to assert a certain false thing as true, and they’ll be caught in a vise…they’ll have to assert what they know is false, or lose all their nice, new friends. My bet is that those who ditch the right over Trump will be found to be willing pawns of the left – if you can’t see who your opponents are, then your opponents will eventually take you over.

This is not to say that all the Trumpsters are with the right – in fact, a very large portion of them are distinctly non-right. They are, in just a slightly different way, as much authortarian Statists as the avowed left. In the end, it matters not to me if you’ve identified foreigners or devout Christians as your “other” that has to be suppressed…that line of thinking always ends badly and I’m absolutely, foursquare against it. Those who want to get the foreigners out or get the Christians out are, in my view, just arguing for different forms of tyranny.

And that brings me back to the vitriol emanating from Trump/Trumpsters and flowing back towards same. This isn’t new, guys. The only thing new about it is that someone is pouring out vitriol and it is being reported on – and it is being reported on because the person doing it has put an “R” after his name. If Trump were running in the Democrat primary you simply wouldn’t be hearing about it (unless it was temporarily needed to ensure that Hillary gets the nomination). What, after all, is the slogan “no justice, no peace” but a threat of violence unless the protesters chanting it get their way, law be damned? And that is one of the more calm and reasonable slogans of the left. “Get in their face”. “Bring a gun to a knife fight”. “The police acted stupidly”. “If I had a son…”. These are rancorous, inflammatory words just as bad as anything Trump has said…and they have encouraged other people on the left to get more and more extreme in their actions and demands over the past 8 years…and all of them are from President Obama…and he’s just repeating what has been said on the left since the 1960’s.

You can’t give those who are anti-freedom so much as an inch. And I was happy to see some people do the right thing on Friday – that is, defend Trump’s right to speak whatever he wants to say. As I’ve said before, I don’t care what a person says – if it ever comes to pass that some words are considered out of bounds, then it is certain that eventually merely stating Catholic dogma will also be out of bounds. I defend everyone’s right to speak for my own sake – and so should everyone else who has the least understanding of what human liberty actually is. And you who read here know that I also condemn asinine speech…while the world as all “je suis Charlie” after the Paris massacre I was saying that it was wrong for Charlie Hebdo to print pictures disrespectful of Muslim beliefs…and also wrong for them to print pictures disrespectful of Christian beliefs (which now they will keep doing – but have decided, out of an abundance of understandable caution, not to print any more anti-Muslim pictures). You should never write, say, print, paint, sculpt or sing anything which is insulting – fine and dandy to launch valid, informed criticism of the beliefs of others, but crude insults are a negation of liberty…but we must allow them because the entirety of the human race is incapable, individually and in toto, of deciding just where the line is between criticism and insult. Once try to do that, and all you’ll do is set up a situation where those who are most easily offended will have a veto over all speech. Nothing doing. Everyone gets to say what they want. Period. End of story.

But on Friday, plenty on the right – including, no doubt, many who were “je suis Charlie” a short while before – were out there applauding the shut down of Trump’s speech. This isn’t about whether or not people should protest Trump – heck, if you want to protest Trump I might even show up for your demonstration. But if you want to shut down Trump, you’re opposed to freedom. Once again: period. End of story. I understand a deep, visceral dislike of Trump – but now that some on the right have joined in the effort to shut down Trump, all the anti-freedom left (which is, these days, most on the left) has to do (and they’ll do it, endlessly, for the next 20 years) is claim that any non-left speech is Trumpism and thus illegitimate. The cure for Trump is to talk about Trump – not to shut him up. Even if you happily then get rid of Trump, you’ll just find yourself in a position where certain speech has been deemed (with your joyful cooperation) entirely illegitimate and where is you defense when your erstwhile allies turn on you and call your speech illegitimate? You have none – you’re naked, and probably alone. Good luck with that.

As I said in the title, I’m not going to allow myself to get worked up over Trump – in the United States in 2016 after 50 years of our political life being poisoned by anti-freedom fanatics, Trump is just a ripple is a rather noisome ditch. I’d like to drain the ditch – but the plumbing contractor necessary for the job can’t include those who filled the ditch and made it nasty. I had a little debate last night with a very dear friend who is pretty darned liberal – but we’re friends and it’s all ok. After all, if Justices Scalia and Ginsburg can be friends, anyone can be friends across the political aisle. I will, actually, accept help in restoring freedom from anyone interested in the project – but it has to be an all-in sort of thing. Not even the slightest dissent from liberty. I don’t care if you are in favor of a completely socialist society – if you are also bound and determined that everyone shall be free to say and think what they want, then I’m on your side as far as that goes. But if you are in favor of the most Conservative policies imaginable but harbor even the least trace of a desire to suppress “bad” speech, then you are no ally of mine. Freedom first – because if I have that, then eventually (I believe) my views will prevail…but even if they don’t, then at least I’ll be able to safely be entirely out of step with everyone, and that is ok, too.