Jeb Bush bastardizes conservatism to justify his agenda

By Newsmachete

George H.W. Bush promoted "kinder and gentler conservatism," which implied that conservatism is neither kind nor gentle.  Mitt Romney said he was "severely" conservative, as if liberty and free markets can be "severe."  Now it is Jeb Bush's turn to philosophically vandalize conservatism with his "Conservative Immigration Reform Agenda."

Donald Trump has introduced the idea of an immigration system which comes down to the mass deportation of 11 million people at a cost of as much as $600 billion, massive new federal powers to step on the civil liberties of ordinary Americans, and a border plan that could be best described as a fantasy.
That plan is not something a small-government conservative would put forward. It requires the federal government to manage the exorbitantly expensive mass deportation of millions of people. It also requires a massive public works project unlike anything we’ve seen since the construction of the Hoover Dam – and the federal government, as you may have noticed, hasn’t been capable of running such a project judiciously of late.

Bush provides no evidence of where his $600 billion figure comes from.  In actuality, once illegals are cut off from housing, schools, medical care, and jobs, many will self-deport.  He has no problem supporting the $700-billion TARP bailout for big banks, but not a small fraction of that for a border fence.
Bush also shows a total lack of understanding of what a small-government conservative is.  A small-government conservative spends on only the essentials – national defense and security being the primary focus.  Not hundreds of billions to bail out banks.  It is precisely the security of the nation that a conservative would focus the government on.  Bush seems to think that spending money to build a wall is liberal, while spending hundreds of billions for corporate welfare is conservative.

A great nation must secure its borders for national security and public health reasons. We don’t have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on fencing when we can use new technology

This is what liberals say who don't want to secure the border – that they will have video cameras and drones that will watch the illegals streaming across, and that will substitute for a border fence.

We must find a practical solution to the status of the 11 million people here illegally today. We need a vigorous path to earned legal status where people are required to learn English, pay a fine and taxes, pass a criminal background check, work and not receive federal government benefits.

And what if they don't do any of these things?  Will Bush push to deport them then?  Certainly not.  In any event, conservatives believe in the rule of law, and these people are here illegally.  Rewarding their illegality is not conservative; it's flagrant disgard for the law.

As a deeply committed conservative who has spent my adult life fighting to strengthen the Republican Party and to advance the causes of limited government and individual freedom, I am confident we will choose the path that best meets those missions.

It's offensive to hear Jeb Bush call himself, and by extension his amnesty policies, "conservative."  Legalizing illegal aliens has nothing to do with limited government and individual freedom.  We lose our individual freedoms when illegals rape and kill our citizens, when they take our tax dollars for "social" services, and when Spanish becomes the primary language in our kindergartens.  Limited government is about attending to the security of the nation, but Jeb Bush twists it like a punch line in a joke.
His redefining of conservatism is just like what the liberals do when they redefine a man as a woman or a nuclear proliferation deal as an arms control treaty.  If he's nominated, he will further dispirit voters who want a clear contrast, and we will lose again, just like with Romney and McCain.
This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.

Unraveling the Trump Enigma

By Dennis Chamberland

To the astonishment of everyone except Donald Trump, the pretentious billionaire has singlehandedly commandeered the 2016 presidential election, leading the Republican pack right out of the gates. Trump has managed to instantly alienate if not outright enrage nearly every conservative powerbroker from congress to conservative talk radio. In taking the immediate, commanding lead in the Republican race for the White House, he has nearly every expert scratching their heads in absolute astonishment and disbelief. Literally, no one saw the Donald coming. The question for the moment is: why? The follow-on question is, of course: what next?
The "why" question is rather simple and will only further serve to exasperate the Republican leadership in congress. Donald Trump has commanded the early lead specifically because of the Republican majority in Congress. Trump’s supporters are self-defining themselves as disaffected, disillusioned conservatives that expected the new so-called ‘conservative’ majority in congress to radically change the status quo as soon as they took the reins of power, just as they promised they would do. When they failed to deliver and defund ObamaCare when they had the clear opportunity, along with significantly and meaningfully addressing immigration, the conservative base was outraged and felt betrayed by those in power. Trump’s instant popularity is clearly sending a message to Congress -- if Congress does not do what it promised and what the GOP base elected it to do, then the Republican grassroots will accomplish their desires through a Donald Trump presidency.
There is a rather curious, if not altogether entertaining, aura of disbelief in the Republican offices inside the Beltway today. While the conservative leadership in Congress controls everything with an iron fist, the electorate is certainly not so encumbered. The pompous, in-your-face arrogance of politics-as-usual is not resonating at all with the conservative base and Donald Trump has become their single point barometer. The good old boys party has just been crashed by the bombastic persona of Donald Trump and his take-no-prisoners -- ‘you’re fired’ -- style of campaigning. His candidacy has all the elements of the perfect storm descending on Washington and the hapless career politicians and their media minions are all resorting to mudslinging and various talking point obscenities while battening down the hatches. There is scarcely a single Republican office in DC that has not been forced on the defensive trying to explain away the hurricane with open mouth and out of control hair that appeared roaring up the Potomac with zero warning. 
On a daily basis, the conservative and liberal media forecast that Trump’s popularity is but a flash-in-the pan enigma that has finally peaked.  But poll after poll proves them wrong -- his popularly is actually expanding in the near-total vacuum of leadership that clearly defines 21st century Washington politics. 
But the prognosticators are all misdiagnosing the Trump phenomenon based on incorrect assumptions, further adding to their habitual malpractice. With their noses far too close to the science of DC politics, they miss the reality that Trump’s popularly is not based at all on their isolated view of political and party substance but it is instead fueled and fully energized by their own failure on public display engendered by their unconcealed duplicity. Trump’s success has been created out of the undisguised loathing of the Republican base for their leadership and their conspicuous failure to deliver on what they promised to be elected and reelected. The conservative voter is not just responding to Trump simply telling them what they want to hear -- Trump is promising to step into the duplicitous morass and actually provide key element by key element exactly what their elected representatives promised but egregiously failed to deliver.
But it is still very early in the process. With so many viable candidates still in the running, eventually individual substance will actually gel in the mind of the electorate. In the coming months prior to the first state caucuses, the granularity of the field will improve and begin to take shape. It is in this defining and refining progression that Trump will hold onto his early lead or he will fade. At this point, every single dollar on the bookmaking table is on this reduction process removing Trump early on and nearly every professional political odds maker is foretelling that Trump will soon fade and drop out in this winnowing process in a matter of the next few weeks. The money is all on the electorate eventually waking up to see Trump ‘for what he really is’. He has been defined by the partisan professionals as a liberal, as an opportunist, as a chronic issues flip-flopper and as a television showman with abysmal intellectual or policy substance and even a fascist-socialist!  Hence, as the prevailing Washington wisdom has already predetermined, he cannot last and will soon reveal himself for the Elmer Gantry he really is and flame out, opening up the field of hopefuls with actual substance to finish the race.
What this philosophy has overlooked is the very force de l'énergie that has driven Trump to his current status as the clear Republican frontrunner: anger, resentment, and betrayal. These are three of the most powerful of all human emotions. In these three sentiments lie the unfortunate fate of the established politicians in the race. Because of the duplicity of the 114th congress, their fate is already sealed. A betrayed conservative electorate will never allow career politicians to win the nomination, regardless of substance or their politicized version of a track record. And if the political machines of the caucuses force one of these into the convention again, the conservative voters will sit the election out or they will vote third party and the Democrats are certain to win the White House… again, and for the exact same reasons as before. Nothing can change that reality now. Once deceived, the memory of the emotional power is not soon lost. It is clearly now all about the emotional response of the conservative base to the treachery of the incumbents in power, and that raw passion is not likely to change. Indeed, all that passion has already been organized and focused into political energy very early in the process. If not Trump, the best the Republican Party can hope for in 2016 is a Carson, Fiorina, or Senator Ted Cruz -- the latter representing the only incumbent candidate who has kept the integrity of his promises by having to openly rebel against his ham-fisted handlers in Congress.
Dr. Dennis Chamberland is an engineer, scientist, writer, and explorer.

How Trump could get the Economy Going

By Howard Richman & Raymond Richman

The Dow Industrial Average fell by 358 points on Thursday and 531 points on Friday. Yesterday, after plunging more than a thousand points, it recovered to a “mere” 588 point loss.  Economic growth has been slow, and another recession appears to be on the horizon.  Could a President Donald Trump get the economy going again? So far he has only laid out the bare bones of his economic plan. But it has the makings of an excellent program.
Balancing Trade
First and foremost, he plans to negotiate balanced trade agreements and even threatens taxes on imports as a way to move trade into balance. If he moves trade toward balance, that would provide a tremendous boost to the economy. In the short term, demand for American made products would immediately increase. In the long-term, manufacturers would build many new American factories that incorporate the latest in production technologies.
These is a simple way to balance trade, explained in a book of which we are co-authors, a single-country-variable-tariff, the so-called Scaled Tariff that is explained in the book, Balanced Trade (Lexington Books, 2014).
The tariff goes up as a significant chronic trade deficit with a trading partner increases but diminishes as the trade deficit is reduced, disappearing completely when trade is brought close to balance.
Countries with whom trade is close to balance would not be affected. Only large countries with significant chronic surpluses in their trade with us would be affected. The tariff would raise the price of imports from the country to which it is applied but would yield substantial tariff revenues that would more than compensate for the high prices.
Jobs for the Unemployed
Over the last 8 years, an increasing percentage of American workers have left the workforce or have reduced their working hours. Meanwhile, the new jobs that have been created have mostly gone to immigrants, some legal and some illegal.
Trump plans to build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants and plans to deport illegal immigrants, which would open many jobs to unemployed Americans. This would increase the opportunities for unemployed and under-employed Americans.
If he increases the participation rate of the American workforce, he would provide a huge boost to the economy. But in order to do so, he would have to take down the system of work-discouraging, means-tested benefits that Washington has been creating. Former Pennsylvania secretary of public welfare Gary D. Anderson put together a chart of these benefits. It shows that poor people are often better off when they work less.
Trump could also encourage work by eliminating the Department of Housing and Urban Development which keeps blacks in ghettoes that are often far from the available jobs.
Cutting through the Regulations
Trump has resisted attempts by reporters to get him to endorse a higher minimum wage. Such a rate hike would be extremely racist, for it would make it ever harder for black teenagers to get their first jobs, as Thomas Sowell recently explained with an example from his own experience (Minimum-Wage Laws: Ruinous Compassion):

Looking back over my own life, I realize now how lucky I was when I left home in 1948, at the age of 17, to become self-supporting. The unemployment rate for 16- and 17-year-old blacks at that time was under 10 percent. Inflation had made the minimum-wage law, passed ten years earlier, irrelevant.
But it was only a matter of time before liberal compassion led to repeated increases in the minimum wage, to keep up with inflation. The annual unemployment rate for black teenagers has never been less than 20 percent in the past 50 years and has ranged as high as over 50 percent. 

Destructive regulations also include laws requiring all government contractors to pay union wages on federal contracts, barring the export of American-produced oil, requiring ethanol in gasoline, and the actions of a host of regulatory bodies including those created by the Dodd-Frank bill, not to mention the Community Investment Act which forced banks to make the sub-prime loans that compounded the severity of the Great Recession.
Tax Reform
Trump wants to simplify the U.S. tax code. The high U.S. corporate income tax rate has encouraged U.S. corporations to move their production and headquarters abroad.
The simplest solution would be to eliminate the corporate income tax entirely by treating corporate income the way partnership income is currently treated. Income from partnerships is taxed by the personal income tax.
After all, what is a corporation but a partnership that enjoys limited liability. The elimination of the corporate income tax would be a real boost to restoring the U.S. as a manufacturing nation.
Putting America First
Above all, Trump is a patriot, in contrast to the internationalists that dominate Washington. Take Obamatrade, for example, which Republican congressional leaders supported, but Trump opposed. Not only would it enable currency manipulation, but it would also set up international commissions with the power to force changes in U.S. labor, immigration and environmental laws.
Unlike McCain and Romney, the last two Republican candidates for president, Trump has not been taken in by the man-made global warming myth. In December, Obama will negotiate a worldwide climate change agreement. He will commit the United States to a huge reduction in carbon emissions of 26% -28% from 2005 levels, but will let China, already a much larger carbon emitter, continue to expand its carbon emissions until 2030.
Whatever plan Trump adopts, it will be pro-American. If he moves toward balanced trade, work for the unemployed, reduced government regulation, simplifying the tax system, and protecting America from unfair climate change restrictions, he could indeed get the economy going. Doing so would go a long way toward making America great again.

The drastic economic costs of 'birthright' citizenship

By Rick Moran

NRO's Ian Tuttle totes up the cost of birthright citizenship to the American taxpayer and, to no one's surprise, discovers that the massive benefits paid out to families with anchor babies results in a boom in "birth tourism."

According to Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) legal policy analyst Jon Feere, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security in April, between 350,000 and 400,000 children are born annually to an illegal-alien mother residing in the United States — as many as one in ten births nationwide. As of 2010, four out of five children of illegal aliens residing in the U.S. were born here — some 4 million kids. Reporting that finding, the Pew Research Center noted that, while illegal immigrants make up about 4 percent of the adult population, “because they have high birthrates, their children make up a much larger share of both the newborn population (8 percent) and the child population (7 percent) in this country.”
The cost of this is not negligible. Inflation-adjusted figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that a child born in 2013 would cost his parents $304,480 from birth to his eighteenth birthday. Given that illegal-alien households are normally low-income households (three out of five illegal aliens and their U.S.-born children live at or near the poverty line), one would expect that a significant portion of that cost will fall on the government. And that’s exactly what‘s happening. According to CIS, 71 percent of illegal-alien headed households with children received some sort of welfare in 2009, compared with 39 percent of native-headed houses with children. Illegal immigrants generally access welfare programs through their U.S.-born children, to whom government assistance is guaranteed. Additionally, U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are entitled to American public schools, health care, and more, even though illegal-alien households rarely pay taxes.
The short-term cost of “anchor babies” was revealed a decade ago in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. “‘Anchor babies’ born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income,” wrote medical attorney Madeleine Pelner Cosman. She noted the increasingly costly situation in California:

In 2003 in Stockton, California, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in San Joaquin General Hospital’s maternity ward were anchor babies, and 45 percent of Stockton children under age six are Latino (up from 30 percent in 1993). In 1994, 74,987 anchor babies in California hospital maternity units cost $215 million and constituted 36 percent of all Medi-Cal [California’s Medicaid program] births. Now [2005] they account for substantially more than half.

The long-term costs of birthright citizenship are even more dramatic.  Each anchor baby can sponsor family members once he or she reaches a certain age.  Of course, when they arrive, those family members will also suck up state and federal resources. 
Tuttle doesn't think it possible that current law regarding anchor babies can be changed.  Others disagree.  But this is one debate where, if Republicans can mount a coherent argument that speaks to the abuse of birthright citizenship, most Americans will be on their side.

Dow 5,000? Yes, it could happen

By Brett Arends

Published: Aug 21, 2015 4:20 p.m. ET

Such a scenario can’t be completely ruled out

Don’t be surprised if stock markets stabilize or bounce back in the next couple of days. Markets are due at least a short-term rally after this week’s dramatic plunge. This usually happens after a sell-off, no matter what the next big move is going to be. It doesn’t mean anything.
But anyone who automatically assumes this is another easy “buying opportunity” is talking nonsense.
For the past couple of years, Wall Street’s perma-bulls have had it their way. They’ve been gloating openly as stocks went up and up and up, seemingly without pause.
It got to the point that those warning about valuations and danger signs had been mocked into silence — or were simply ignored.
Not now.
I don’t mean to be alarmist or to induce panic, but someone needs to tell the public that there is a plausible scenario in which the U.S. stock market now collapses by another 70% until the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls to about 5,000. The index tumbled more than 3% to 16,460 on Friday.
Dow 5,000? Really?

For 30 years, stock prices have been increasingly boosted by financial factors: collapsing interest rates and Federal Reserve manipulation, culminating most recently in ‘quantitative easing.’

I’m not predicting that will happen, but contrary to what the bulls tell you, it cannot be completely ruled out.
And even if that ranks as an outlier and a worst-case scenario, there are other, more likely scenarios where the Dow falls to somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000.
In other words, although this might be a buying opportunity, a serious reading of history suggests this week’s sell-off might also be the beginning.
Let me say on the record that I am not joining the perma-bears or extreme doom-mongers. I am simply pointing out that the perma-bulls have taken their own arguments way too far. The stock market is not doomed to collapse to oblivion, as some hysterics keep claiming. But it is not certain to keep going up by 10% a year, either. All those claiming that every sell-off is a buying opportunity, and that stocks “always outperform,” are lying to you.
A true understanding of stock market history shows that Wall Street in the past has moved in long, long swings upwards and downwards, often taking years or even a generation or two. There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that the upward move that began in 1982 is one of them — and that the downward move that first began in 2000 has not ended.
Read: Meet the market timer who said things would get ‘ugly’
As stock market historian Russell Napier points out in his book “Anatomy of the Bear,” on five occasions in the past 100 years — in 1921, 1932, 1949, 1974 and 1982 — those big downward moves have not ended until share valuations have fallen to just 30% of the replacement cost of company assets. That’s using a powerful, if little-known, economic metric known as Tobin’s q.
And, to cut to the chase, if Wall Street stocks followed the same path today that would take the Dow down to about 5,000, and the S&P 500 Index all the way down to around 600. (The S&P 500 slumped more than 3% to 1,971 on Friday.)
Yikes.
The “q” is a valuation that they don’t even mention in the training manuals for the official “financial planner” and financial-analyst exams. Your money manager has probably never heard of it. Or, if he has, he probably ranks it with astrology and the mystic rantings of Nostradamus.
But the “q” happens to have by far the most successful long-term track record of any stock market indicator.
It’s been better than the price-to-earnings ratio or quarterly earnings forecasts or economic growth rates or long-term interest rates or Federal Reserve minutes.
Independent analysts — such as professor Stephen Wright at London University and Andrew Smithers at Smithers & Co., a financial consultancy in London — have tracked it back over 100 years.

And in the past there has been no better guide for the long-term investor. It’s been even better than the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings measure, also known as the “Shiller PE” after Yale finance professor Robert Shiller (which also, incidentally, suggests U.S. stocks could plunge a long way from here).
The “q” looks at the net asset values of public companies and adjusts them for inflation. It makes some intuitive sense. Why would Widget Inc. be valued at $1 billion on the stock market if you could start the company from scratch for a lot less?
Right now, according to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve, the reading on the “q” is about 100%. (It was 106% at the last reading, on March 1, but since then the S&P 500 has fallen by about 6%.)
Since World War II, the average “q” reading has been about 70%. So if Wall Street tumbled just to its modern average valuation, that would take the Dow Jones Industrial Average down to about 12,000.
See: When the stock market last crashed, these sectors fared best
If we just look at the period 1949 to 1994 — in other words, before the gigantic, off-the-charts boom of the late 1990s — the historic average “q” reading for stocks was 57%. If the market falls to those levels, that would take the Dow to about 9,500.
And if the market fell to its historic bear market lows, namely 30% or so, that would mean a Dow of about 5,000.
Why might such a scenario happen? It’s not just about China, or Greece, or slowing earnings, or the “death cross” on Apple’s stock. It would be because, for the past 30 years, Wall Street stock prices have been increasingly boosted by financial factors: collapsing interest rates and Federal Reserve manipulation, culminating most recently in “quantitative easing.” But at some point, that game has to come to an end. When it does, it is possible — not certain, but possible — that valuation metrics could unwind all the way back down again.
Past performance, as they say on Wall Street, is no guarantee of future results. And that means there is absolutely no guarantee that share prices in the future will follow a similar path to the one seen in 1921, 1932, 1949, 1974 or 1982. I would consider that to be very much the outer range of possibilities.
The real reason to be worried right now isn’t that these scenarios are guaranteed or even likely. It’s that 99% of the people managing America’s money, probably including yours, assume that they are completely impossible. And no, they aren’t. Have you factored that into your plans?

America the Place vs. America the Idea

By Dan Joppich

On NPR news last week there were two reports coming out of Greece that I had trouble reconciling. The first was Greece’s $85 billion bailout resulting in the Greek PM stepping down. Greece isn’t just broke, it’s broken. And yet, the second story was about immigrants risking death on the seas to leave Turkey and other places to come to Greece. Obviously they are leaving broken countries where they risk death and injury at the hands of their government on a daily basis, to take a boat ride risking death and injury on the high seas, to go to another country which is not just broke but broken. It’s a strange world.
Do these mostly unskilled, uneducated Muslims go to Greece or Europe hoping to someday become Greeks or Europeans? Do they wish to embrace Western culture and raise their children in a Western society? Or are they just looking for handouts like the ones that Greece already provides to over 70% of its population?
Do Central Americans, Mexicans, and Muslims come to America because they want to become Americans? Do they wish to embrace American culture and raise their children in an American society better than the one they left, or do they come here hoping to create Somalia in America? Do they raise the Mexican flag on American soil and force schools in their adoptive communities to cover symbols of America because they might be offensive to some of them? Do the predominantly unskilled and uneducated immigrants bring unemployment and the vices that accompany it like drugs, violence, crime, homelessness, dependency, etc?
Jonah Goldberg provides a clue about who we should embrace as American immigrants. He tells of Peter Schramm and his father who emigrated from Germany via Hungary in the fifties. “[Peter’s father] told his son to pack his bags, the Schramms were moving. Where to? Peter asked. His father replied, “We are going to America.” “Why America?” Peter pressed. “Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the wrong place.” He continued, “Dad, in his way, was saying that he understood America to be both a place and an idea at the same time. Fundamentally, it is a place that would embrace us if we could prove that we shared in the idea. We meant to prove it.”
Both of my parents are immigrants. Both came over with their families much like the Schramms. Both came, not for the freebies that America provided but because they wanted to be Americans. Both families came with skills as accountants, engineers, musicians, lawyers, artists, and writers. They wanted their families to be more like America and made no attempt to change America to be more like them.
If they wanted to live in cities or suburbs, there are cities and suburbs all over the world. If they wanted to live near big lakes, mountains or deserts, there are big lakes, mountains and deserts all over the world. They came to America “the idea”, not America the place.
Are the current immigrants coming ashore in Greece there because they want to be Greeks, or is it just the next stop over where they can get free things without the hassle? Are the immigrants to America crossing the southern border illegally, doing so because they want to be Americans, or are they just looking for free stuff promised by Obama for themselves and their children? Do the Muslims in Minnesota long to be Americans and live the American dream, or do they dream of returning to the Middle East and fighting the western Satan when they realize they can’t make America more like the Middle East?
A Muslim family can raise a son and daughters in the dress, religion, and traditions of the country they left and then be shocked when their son performs atrocities, as happened in Tennessee. Why? How could this happen? The answer is that the family adopted America the place but never America the idea. 
Two brothers come to America with their Kyrgyz parents. America accepts them with open arms, providing them with food, healthcare, housing and the highest levels of education at no cost with no strings attached. No expectations implied or assumed. Why then do the parents leave and the sons kill and maim hundreds in the name of their warped understanding of their religion or situation? Because their parents and family adopted the place and what it would give them and their children and never the idea of America and being American.
Unfortunately, there is no test that can prove that an immigrant is here to embrace the idea of America. Learning some historical facts and reciting a pledge don’t make you American. Being born in an American hospital doesn’t make you an American. There’s no red pill to choose that makes you an American.
The idea of being American must be in your brain or in your heart. I think that idea for many Americans has been lost. Even our president has demonstrated that doesn’t know what the idea of being American is. A flag on your lapel isn’t just a pin.
Maybe Obama should have taken the time to have a cigar and drink with Peter Schramm. Mr. Schramm could explain to him how he and his father “proved it.” How they led their lives in American in a way that showed they shared the idea of America. Maybe then we would have sensible immigration policies. Maybe then America would once again be an idea instead of just a place on the map.

How the New Left Took Over the Democratic Party

The Quiet Revolution: How the New Left Took Over the Democratic Party

By Scott S. Powell

Frustration with division and gridlock in Washington lead many Americans to impugn both political parties for the current broken and ineffective state of government. There is plenty of blame to go around, but below the surface there has been a quiet revolution going on in only one of the two parties -- the Democratic Party -- which is the main source of today’s irreconcilable division and moral confusion.
What’s remarkable is how the political and cultural center of American values has collapsed in the last two and a half decades with the Democratic Party having moved dramatically to the left. Recently, Democratic National Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz could not explain the difference between the modern Democratic Party platform and that of socialism, while at the same time gushing over the prospect of Socialist Bernie Sanders having a prominent place at the 2016 Democratic Party convention.    
If people today could somehow be transported back to the time of Harry Truman and Jack Kennedy, they would swear those standard bearers were Republicans with little in common with today’s Democratic Party. 
America’s two major political parties have always been fundamentally different. The Republican Party has been rooted in the moral principles and transcendent values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Democratic Party acknowledges that the starting point of the country may have been the Declaration and the Constitution, but since Woodrow Wilson many Democratic Party leaders have contended that progress requires constant adaptation, changing morals, and liberal interpretations of law and history. 
The progressive philosophy that the Democratic Party has come to embrace now has its roots less in the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of individual happiness and more in the tenets of race and class identity, equal outcomes, and an expanding welfare state. Since individuals vary in talent, ability, and motivation and the free market system produces unequal outcomes of success, a core principle of the Democratic Party is now redressing this disparity through the redistribution of wealth.
The strongest critique of early industrial capitalism came from the German philosopher Karl Marx, who believed that the contradictory forces of labor and capital inevitably bring about class struggle. This in turn, he argued, causes the working class proletariat to rise up and overthrow the capitalist order, seize the means of production, eliminate private property and create a new order that would equitably distribute resources from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need. The notion of conflict of interest between labor and capital, class warfare, and the need for redistribution of wealth, which has made its way into the Democratic Party, has its roots in Marx.
The proletariat never did revolt successfully en masse in any advanced industrialized state. Instead, Marx’s political and economic revolution was first staged in the largely agrarian nation of Russia, carried out by Marxist revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. Lenin made major contributions to Marx’s theories, so much so that Marxism-Leninism became the dominant theoretical paradigm for advancing national liberation movements, communism, and socialism wherever in the world radical revolutionary movements arose.
Among Lenin’s contributions was the theory of the vanguard. Since it was apparent that the proletariat masses were unlikely to rise up, Lenin argued that it was necessary for a relatively small number of vanguard leaders -- professional revolutionaries -- to advance the revolutionary cause by working themselves into positions of influence. By taking over the commanding heights of labor unions, the press, the universities, and professional and religious organizations, a relatively small number of revolutionaries could multiply their influence and exercise political leverage over their unwitting constituents and society at large.
It was Lenin who introduced the concept of the “popular front” and coined the phrase “useful idiots” in describing the masses who could be manipulated into mob action of marches and protests for an ostensibly narrow cause of the popular front, which the communist vanguard was using as a means for a greater revolutionary political end.
As Lenin was consolidating power in Russia, Antonio Gramsci was emerging as a leading Marxist theoretician in Italy and would found the Italian Communist Party in 1921. After being imprisoned by Mussolini, the Fascist prime minister of Italy, Gramsci authored what came to be called the Prison Notebooks, partially published in 1947 and in complete form in 1975, a legacy that made him one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the 20th century. Gramsci argued that communists’ route to taking power in developed, industrialized societies such as Europe and the United States would be best achieved through a “long march through the institutions.” This would be a gradual process of radicalization of the cultural institutions -- “the superstructure” -- of bourgeois society, a process that would in turn transform the values and morals of society. Gramsci believed that as society’s morals were softened, its political and economic foundation would be more easily smashed and restructured.
Cultural Marxism was also in vogue at the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University in Germany -- that is until 1933 when the Nazis came to power. Many members of the “Frankfurt School,” such as Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkeimer, and Wilhelm Reich fled to the United States, where they ultimately found their way into professorships at various elite universities such as Berkeley, Columbia, and Princeton. In the context of American culture, “the long march through the institutions” meant, in the words of Herbert Marcuse, “working against the established institutions while working in them.”
While the Frankfurt School was neo-Marxist, many of its adherents were less interested in economics and redistribution of wealth than in remaking and transforming society through attitudinal and cultural change. They incorporated Marxist class theory into sociology and psychology while also assimilating Freud’s theories on sexuality. Thus, Marx’s theory of the dialectic of perpetual conflict was joined together with Freud’s neurotic ideas, creating a sort of Freudian-Marxism. Their stated goal was a total transformation of society by breaking down traditional norms and institutions such as monogamous relations and the traditional family. This was to be accomplished by promoting and legitimizing unhinged sexual permissiveness with no cultural or religious restraint.
The countercultural influence of radicals like Marcuse and Gramsci has been advanced more by insinuation and infiltration than by confrontation. Their “quiet” revolution to remake society was intended to be diffused throughout the culture gradually over a period of time. Gramsci argued that alliances with non-communist leftist groups would be essential to the collapse of the capitalist bourgeois order. Marcuse believed that radical intellectuals needed to ally themselves with the socially marginalized substratum of the outcasts and outsiders, the exploited and persecuted of other races and ethnicities, the unemployed and the unemployable.
While the influence of Marcuse and the Frankfurt School and Marxists like Gramsci was greatest in intellectual circles in a strategic sense,  Saul Alinsky arrived on the scene in Chicago in the 1930s with the tactical tools for the foot-soldiers of social and political revolution -- the community organizers and non-academic labor and single-issue activists. 
Alinsky had a certain charm and appeal to wealthy funders, and had no trouble raising considerable sums to establish the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago from department store mogul Marshall Field and Sears Roebuck heiress Adele Rosenwald Levy, as well as Gardiner Howland Shaw, an assistant secretary of state in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.
Alinsky also had other benefactors in Washington and Wall Street. Eugene Meyer, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933, bought the Washington Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933 for $825,000. During the difficult years of the Depression that followed, the Post carried stories that legitimized Saul Alinsky and his ideas. 
In keeping with Lenin’s famous quote that “capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” Alinsky once boasted, "I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday."
Alinsky's tactics had more in common with Gramsci and Marcuse than the revolutionary and violent approaches of Russian Marxists Lenin and Stalin. Alinsky, too, believed in gradualism and subversion of the system through infiltration rather than confrontation and revolution.
Alinsky believed that politics was war by other means, stating specifically that “in war the end justifies almost any means.” But he was more than a nihilistic progressive revolutionary. Alinsky’s handbook,  Rules for Radicals, first published in 1971, included an admiration for the prince of darkness, Lucifer, noting that he was “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom…”
By the 1960s Marcuse and Alinsky were recognized as two of the most influential leaders of the New Left, which gained strength and numbers by taking a leading role in the anti-Vietnam War movement. However, Alinsky and Marcuse were critical of the violent and confrontational tactics of many of the anti-war radicals, such as Bill Ayers and the Weathermen, preferring instead that radicals work behind the scenes and bore into the establishment. This was seen later in the 1960s with Alinskyites positioned to take advantage of President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” programs, to direct federal money into various Alinksy projects.
Alinksy succeeded in what would be a crowning achievement: the recruitment of young idealistic radicals -- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- who would go on to climb to the top of political power in the Democratic Party. Hillary wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley College in 1969 on Alinsky’s methods and remained a friend of Alinsky until his death in 1972. A decade later, Barack Obama was trained in the methods and Rules for Radicals in the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago.  
Camouflage and deception are key to Alinsky-style organizing. When Barack Obama was organizing black churches in Chicago and was criticized for not attending church himself, he pivoted and became a regular church attendee, ultimately becoming a member at Jeremiah Wright’s radical Trinity United Church of Christ.  
The New Left did not simply fade away when the troops came home from Southeast Asia. It went mainstream, with many of the 60s radicals deciding to follow Alinsky’s counsel to clean up their image, put on suits and infiltrate the system. They would become professional revolutionaries who landed jobs in the knowledge industry: the universities, foundations, and the media and special interest activist groups.
By winning “cultural hegemony,” the acolytes of Gramsci, Alinsky, Marcuse, and the Frankfurt School believed that the wellsprings of human thought could be largely controlled by mass psychology and propaganda. One of Alinsky’s unique contributions, explained as the seventh Rule for Radicals, was the tactic to avoid debate on the issues by systematically silencing, ridiculing and marginalizing people of opposing views. At the same time, allies in the media provided cover and a framework of acceptance for radical issues and leaders. Traditional values of morality, family, the work ethic and free market institutions were made to appear outdated -- even reactionary, unnecessary, and culturally unfashionable. Ultimately this evolved into what has become known as political correctness, which now envelops the culture.
By 1980, the counter-cultural alliances would include radical feminist groups, civil rights and ethnic minority advocates, extremist environmental organizations, and advocates of liberation theology, anti-military peace groups, union leaders, radical legal activist organizations like the ACLU, human rights watch-dog organizations, community organizers of the Alinsky model, national and world church council bureaucracies, anti-corporate activists, and various internationalist-minded groups. Working separately and together, these groups could count on a sympathetic media and favorable coverage, which facilitated building bridges to the Democratic Party and becoming vocal constituencies deserving attention and legislative action.
The New Left in America realized that it was neither necessary nor desirable to own the means of production as originally envisioned by Marx. Redistribution could be accomplished through progressive taxation that was enshrined by an enlightened Democratic Party. Corporate priorities could be redirected through sensational and biased media exposure, proxy contests, mass demonstrations, boycotts, activist lawsuits and regulatory actions. No need to be responsible for the means of production, when you could advance Marx’s anti-capitalist agenda from the sidelines by indicting individual corporations and the system of capitalism itself.
By the early to mid-1980s a third of the Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives supported the budgetary priorities and the foreign policy advocated by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the leading revolutionary Marxist think tank in the United States, located Washington, D.C.  Robert Borosage, the director of IPS, was succeeding in one of his stated goals to “move the Democratic Party’s debate internally to the left by creating an invisible presence in the party.” The particular genius of Borosage and IPS was their strategy to spawn a myriad of spinoffs and coalitions, a force multiplier that took propaganda and the Leninist popular front strategy to a level never seen before in America.
Fast forward to 2008, and we find the long march through the institutions resulting in the New Left being embedded in constituencies that provided a base of support and policy positions for the Obama presidential campaign. And while Barack Obama had a very unconventional background of lengthy associations with Marxists and anti-American radicals throughout his formative years and early adulthood, a nearly twenty-year membership in Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “hate America” church, and an extreme left-wing voting record, the major media–now enveloped with the blinders of political correctness–made little effort to report on his background or examine his substantive qualifications. Barack Obama was both the culturally cool and articulate black candidate who provided a means for national redemption for a racist past, while also being the one candidate who provided a blank slate upon which people could project their own desires for hope and change.
Upon assuming office, President Obama had no problem bypassing the Constitutional advise-and-consent role of Congress in his appointment of a record number of czars, many of whom were so radical they would have failed to pass Senate confirmation. One of the offshoots of former IPS director Robert Borosage was the Apollo Alliance, an organization that he co-founded in 2001. Apollo saw its political clout increase dramatically with the election of Barack Obama. Van Jones, a self-described communist and an Apollo Alliance activist, was appointed Green Jobs czar by President Obama. A month after inauguration, a centerpiece of Apollo’s policy agenda was packaged right into the $787 billion stimulus bill, which directed $110 billion to green jobs programs. At the time of the passage of that bill -- what came to be known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute the strategy…”
In a free society, extreme and derivative ideologies from the destructive legacy of Marx, Lenin, and the Frankfurt School can find some appeal to the alienated and disaffected. A constitutional republic like the United States should have sufficient strength to withstand most contradictions and absurdities held by a relatively small minority.
The problem today is threefold: the Left’s wholesale domination of much of the knowledge industry, a growing uninformed and disengaged electorate, and a failing two-party system. The normal process of checks and balances, which is made possible when compromise can be accomplished between the parties, simply no longer works. With the long march through the institutions having resulted in one of those parties no longer sharing much in the way of common ground -- in terms of a philosophical heritage and values of liberty, private property, and limited government -- compromise has become nearly impossible. The radicalization of the Democratic Party has so affected Congress and the current president as to render bipartisan solutions and reconciliation all but impossible.
In the end, what is important for Americans to realize is that the experiment with a left-wing president, like Barack Obama, is less an aberration than the logical outcome of the transformation of both the Democratic Party and the American culture. And the election of Hillary Clinton, a student of Alinsky and well-schooled and practiced in his teachings of deceit and camouflage would take the United States further along its trajectory of decline. Hillary’s election would effectively constitute an Obama third term.    
The big question is whether the nation can survive and prosper if the culture remains fractured with a majority adrift from the heritage, morality and values of liberty and personal responsibility that are at the heart of the Declaration and the Constitution.
Edward Gibbon, the renowned historian, published his first of six-volumes of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in 1776, the year Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. Gibbon described six attributes that Rome embodied at its end: first, an overwhelming love of show and luxury; second, a widening gap between the rich and the poor; third, an obsession with sports and a freakishness in the arts, masquerading as creativity and originality; fourth, a decline in morals, increase in divorce and decline in the institution of the family; fifth, economic deterioration resulting from debasement of the currency, inflation, excessive taxation, and overregulation; and sixth, an increased desire by the citizenry to live off the state. 
One might hope that awareness of factors associated with Rome’s fall would prompt an awakening in America. But so many are now disengaged and relatively few people read books, let alone possess the capacity to reflect deeply about causality and historical parallels. Many feel atomized and helpless.  
Turning around America’s decline will require more than just political change. It’s vital to reestablish a positive and solid framework and foundation, around which a majority consensus could emerge and grow.  Such a foundation was well understood and articulated by George Washington -- revered by many as the greatest of all U.S. presidents. His timeless wisdom was conveyed in both his speech consecrating the nation at its birth and also in his Farewell Address delivered eight years later upon leaving office.  He said:    

 “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Unelected and unaccountable judges and regulatory bureaucrats that are part of today’s ever-expanding federal government are only part of the problem. Clearly, American citizenry need to understand the roots and causality of the current national decline, and the need to embark on a new course with the capacity and energy to go deep and broad and transcend party politics. 
Life, liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and even the Constitution itself are now threatened by a secular progressive minority at war with God. Americans need a second Paul Revere moment to wake up and get serious about choosing and electing leaders with the courage to make hard choices and the conviction to correct the nation’s compass. 
Reestablishing the ascendency and authority of first principles that are at the heart of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is a monumental task. Accomplishing it would no doubt unleash an enormous amount of energy, leading to a more vibrant and bountiful economy that would in turn go a long way in securing other vital national needs, from restoring fiscal solvency to rebuilding the military and securing lasting peace.
Scott Powell is senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and author of Covert Cadre, a comprehensive book on the New Left in America published in 1988.  Reach the author at scottp@discovery.org.

Hating Trump's Message

By Lloyd Marcus

While on an aerobic machine at the gym, I caught Trump on TV. It occurred to me that Trump's high poll numbers really represent the American people vs. the America hating Left. Trump's campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again.” Them's fightin' words to the Left.
For decades the Left has used its domination of the media and public education to indoctrinate our kids into believing that it is racist and mean to think of America as great. The Left says such pride and patriotism is an insult to the rest of the world.
You think I am crazy? Public elementary schools banned Lee Greenwood's “Proud to be An American/God Bless the USA” in NY and Florida, thus far.
A Brooklyn elementary school principal blocked patriotism from teachers' plans for a school assembly. Students were going to march in carrying US flags while singing a patriotic song. Here is one of the offensive lyrics. “I'll always do my part, I love my land that's free.”
The Ninth Circuit court upheld a San Francisco area school district's ban on wearing American flag t-shirts to school on a Mexican holiday.
Professors at the University of California, Irvine join students in trying to ban the America flag on campus because they say it contributes to racism.
Years ago a white friend told me her son came home from middle school a tearful basket case. He was filled with guilt about the evils his white forefathers thrust upon minorities. Today, my friend's son is an America-hating Communist. He also believes white males are the greatest source of evil in the world.
A product of public education, a millennial relative said she would be traveling near South Dakota. I suggested she visit Mt Rushmore. Her reply was venomous, “I wouldn't travel across the street to see those guys.”
Trump saying such things as wanting to “make America a winner” and “make our military strong” is extremely crass to the Left; as repulsive as showing Dracula the cross.
Despite being drilled by the Left to hate their country, I believe American youths instinctively desire to love their homeland. Trump is making it okay to say it out loud.
Even some Republicans are uncomfortable with Trump boldly advocating for America, vowing to make decisions in our best interest. Well trained by the Left, most professional politicians cringe hearing Trump say take the oil, make Mexico pay for the wall and stop giving money to countries that hate us. Talk of putting America first infuriates liberals; deeming it racist and insensitive to the global community.
Ann Coulter is a rare voice on the big stage clamoring for an immigration policy rooted in America's best interest rather than people to whom we owe nothing. Most pundits fear Leftists branding them racist, heartless and cruel. Consequently, Coulter's unapologetic common sense is rare.
Not only do Leftists support Obama governing against America's best interest, they have been cheerleaders for his long list of decisions designed to tear down our country. Obama's latest betrayal is his insane Iran nuke deal.
Displaying off-the-chain condescension, Obama repeatedly tells us, issue after issue, we are not seeing what we are obviously seeing. For example, Obama says his deal prevents Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, it is obvious to the world that Obama is green-lighting Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb. Obama's ego is boundless. For crying out loud, Iran is already breaking the deal.
Despite this administration’s pattern of telling us we are not seeing what we are obviously seeing, Admiral Lyons says Obama's strategy is simple for any thinking American to see. “It's anti-American; anti-western. It's pro-Islamic. It's pro-Iranian and pro-Muslim Brotherhood.”
Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry know Americans would reject dethroning us as the world super power and making citizens subservient to government. Insidiously, this Administration masks its betrayals with lofty words like fairness, compassion and patriotism. Obama's definition of patriotism includes opening our borders to illegals, taking our guns, taxing businesses out-of-business, repealing Constitutional freedoms and addicting as many able-body Americans to government assistance as possible.
Then along comes this outsider untamed by PC. Fearlessly, he speaks the truth. Wait a minute. This is a crazy way to run a country. I'm gonna make America great again! The people heard and responded positively. The Left is outraged.
This is not an endorsement of Trump for president. I am simply saying the Left's hatred of Trump's message reflects their hatred of America and those who love her.
Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American; Chairman, Conservative Campaign Committee

Donald Trump has made it OK to call illegal aliens 'illegal aliens' again

By Newsmachete

 

Republicans have been cowed into silence by the liberal media.  At first it was no longer acceptable to call illegal aliens illegal aliens.  Then they started to be called simply "undocumented" migrants – immigrants who simply lost their papers!  Then they all were lumped together, legal and illegal, as "migrants," so if you were against the illegal ones, you were against all of them.  And finally they became the ultimate virtuous class, called "Dreamers."  Are American kids ever called "dreamers" by the media?  I think not.
Anyway, Donald Trump has made it okay to say "illegal aliens" again, and the media is whining about it.

The Associated Press dropped ‘‘illegal immigrant’’ in 2013, soon after NBC News and ABC News. The New York Times announced it would encourage reporters and editors to ‘‘consider alternatives,’’ but ‘‘illegal immigrant’’ has shown up dozens of times in the paper in the two years since. The same goes for The Washington Post, CBS and The Wall Street Journal. 
‘We need to keep illegals out,’’ Donald Trump said at the Republican presidential debate earlier this month after being reminded of his earlier claims that Mexico is sending rapists and other criminals across the border. The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace picked up the term in a question, and Mike Huckabee volleyed it back, claiming that the solvency of Social Security and Medicare was under threat from ‘‘illegals, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, all the people that are freeloading off the system now.’’ 
The more common phrase, ‘‘illegal immigrant,’’ also implies suspicion, but strip the noun from it and the entire identity of a person who crosses the border without permission, or outstays his or her visa, is reduced to that of a criminal: What rights could he or she be entitled to?

That's correct.  Criminal aliens are not citizens.  They have no rights.

And ‘‘illegals’’ implies a permanent caste, as if there is no possibility of becoming anything else — even if millions of immigrants in the course of American history have shown otherwise.

A minor point of distinction: those millions of previous immigrants came here legally.  And I would hope there is "no possibility of becoming anything else" for illegals, except perhaps "emigrants."
So we are supposedly disempowering illegal aliens by calling them illegals.  For years American citizens have been disempowered from calling them what they are for fear of being called racists.  Americans had their jobs taken away by illegals, their taxes went to pay for illegals education and health care, and they were killed on the roads and the streets...by illegals.  Not "undocumented migrants," not "Dreamers."  Our right to protest them was disempowered when we were forced to call them people who "lost their papers," and they were considered the supreme virtuous class.
And until Donald Trump came along, most Republicans were afraid to call them what they were.  But now we have reclaimed the phrase.  Donald Trump said the words, and he wasn't struck down in the polls, so we can say them, too.  Words have meaning, so this is an important victory, thanks to Donald Trump.
I still am very suspicious about Trump's sudden turn to constitutionalism, given his past, but once again he is doing this primary contest a great service, pulling Scott Walker and other candidates to the right on this issue.