Posted tagged ‘Patriotism’

Donald Trump: An American Patriot of the Same Stripe as Ronald Reagan

October 18, 2017

Donald Trump: An American Patriot of the Same Stripe as Ronald Reagan, PJ MediaRoger Kimball, October 18, 2017

Image Courtesy of Shutterstock

The policy take-away from President Trump’s remarks last night at the Heritage Foundation centered around tax cuts. The president likes ‘em, and if he has his way (and on this issue, I think he will), we will see a sharp cut to the corporate tax rate (from 35 percent to 20 percent), a simplification and reduction of the individual tax rate, and a big expansion of the individual exemption (to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples filing jointly).

 There is a certain kind of politician who likes high taxes, partly because he likes big government, which is the natural result of high taxes, partly because he wants most people (not his tribe, of course) to have as little money as possible.  The poorer people are, the more dependent they are. Politicians of a certain stripe want people to be dependent on the government, i.e., on them and the instruments they control.

To my mind, that unholy dialectic between political power and an agenda of enforced dependency is one of the most despicable and destructive coefficients of the administrative state. It is despicable because it deploys power for personal aggrandizement under the camouflage of helping (i.e., pretending to help) others (the “Great Society,” etc.). It is destructive because its end is the eclipse of liberty for the sake of expanding and institutionalizing the apparatus of bureaucracy (and the perquisites of the bureaucrats running it).

So I applaud the president’s plan to cut taxes and allow Americans to keep a bit more of what after all is their own money. (We tend to forget this.)

But although taxes formed the official centerpiece of the president’s speech last night, and though I liked what he said about taxes, I thought the most impressive part of the speech was its rhetorical setting.  The occasion was a meeting of Heritage Foundation supporters. Accordingly, President Trump began by talking about the importance of embracing our history, our heritage. “For America to have CONFIDENCE in our future, we must have PRIDE in our HISTORY.”

I think that is right, and I think it is worth pondering each of the three stressed words.

One of the great liabilities of so-called identity politics is that, ironically, it acts as a solvent on shared cultural confidence. The irony flows from the fact that identity politics is supposed to leave its partisans with an enhanced sense of self-worth and solidarity but in fact it tends to isolate them in rancid grievance ghettos.

Along the way last night, the president spoke up for preserving our heritage, our history, an enterprise that encompasses not just the preservation of monuments and other historical markers that commemorate our past, but also extends to the spiritual decorum of civic respect: standing for the national anthem, for example, or (since this multiethnic country was and is, as Samuel Huntington observed, a country of “Anglo-Protestant” values) wishing people “Merry Christmas” in due season.<

It is worth noting, by the way, that saying one should have  pride in our history and confidence in our culture is not thereby to issue a plenary indulgence for past wrongdoing.  The fact that people erect a statue commemorating Gen. Robert E. Lee does not in any way imply that they are racist advocates of chattel slavery, any more than erecting a statue of JFK implies that one is an advocate of satyriasis.

President Trump’s policy initiatives—the judicial nominations, the regulatory astringency, the exploitation of the country’s energy resources and enforcement of our immigration laws, the revival of America’s military assets, regarding morale as well as hardware—are important, just as taxes, a rational (as distinct from an ideological) approach to the environment, and health care are important.  But at the end of the day, I suspect that the underlying success of the Trump presidency will be located on a different plane.  If he is successful in extending the extraordinary run of economic good news—the stock market at 23,000, unemployment at about 4 percent, GDP flirting with 3.2 percent—then the material markers will add up to a triumph.

Such achievements are not only important, they are in some measure indispensable to a successful administration.  But they are not by themselves sufficient for real success.

I believe that Donald Trump understands this, which is why his most brilliant speeches—before a joint session of Congress, at Warsaw, at the UN, and just a week ago at the Values Voter Summit—are speeches that dilate on civilizational themes.  At Warsaw it was the importance of defending Western civilization; at the UN it was the importance of national sovereignty; last week it was the  value of safeguarding our “Judeo-Christian” inheritance. (Aside to the reader: can you imagine Barack Obama speaking in warm terms of our “Judeo-Christian” values?) And last night it was the link between forward-looking cultural confidence and an affirmation of our glorious if imperfect past.

As Chief of Staff John Kelly said at his press conference last week, Trump’s agenda is “what’s good for America,” period, full stop. Donald Trump is a forthright and voluble American patriot of the same stripe as Ronald Reagan.  That is one of the reasons (not the only reason) he is so despised by the America-hating Left.

What interests me more, however, is the persistent contempt in which Donald Trump is held by some aspects of the America-loving Right.  To take just one paradigmatic example: my friend Bill Kristol, energetic political commentator and founder of The Weekly Standard, is not (litotes alert) a supporter of Donald Trump.  In a recent tweet, Bill had this to say:<

Bill Kristol 

I like Gorsuch, decertifying Iran and leaving UNESCO. But they’re not worth the degradation of our public life that is the Trump presidency.

Here’s my question: in what does the alleged “degradation” consist?  That Donald Trump tweets?

That can’t be right, since Bill himself avails himself of that demotic medium.  That he does not speak like a Harvard graduate?  That may be part of it, but Bill knows as well as I do that the end of rhetoric is persuasion, and no one can deny Trump’s masterly powers of persuasion. Donald Trump may be an imperfect vessel for our national hopes, but then of whom may that not be said?  In the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on national television “we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office.” I am pretty sure she was not talking about her husband. No, she was talking about Donald Trump. But what can that mean? As far as we know, Donald Trump (unlike Bill Clinton) is not guilty of sexual assault. Certainly, he has never said he was. Yes, there was that crude Access Hollywood video—a video, remember, that captured a private conversation between two bragging men more than a decade ago.  But how many crude locker-room expostulations equal one Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office?

I think the statute of limitation has been reached on that leaked video. Indeed, I think the most disgusting thing about it was the secret taping and malice-directed release of the video.  Trump’s language was crude: no argument there.  But how do we calculate the crudity and malevolence of those who made the tape and then released it in the hope that it would destroy a political rival?

Besides, it’s my sense that Donald Trump is not now the chap he was when Graydon Carter made his nasty quips about him in the 1980s or even when Trump was palling around with Billy Bush in 2005.

That is no surprise. The history of the world is full of redemption and conversion stories, from Saul of Tarsus to Henry V and beyond. Quoth the King at the end ofHenry IV Part 2:

Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self.

The proof of the pudding, they say, is in the eating.  It seems to me that in just nine months Donald Trump has given us a lot of savory tidbits to chew on.  Some people might object to the style.  But how about the substance?  In any event, it seems ungracious, not to say short-sighted, to withhold any possibility of reformation from a man just because he had the temerity to win an election without the permission of the would-be governing class.

The Racist Attacks on America and Trump

August 25, 2017

The Racist Attacks on America and Trump, Front Page MagazineDavid Horowitz, August 25, 2017

Let’s start by noticing the obvious. The biggest hate group in America – by a wide margin – is the anti-Trump chorus, which has advanced from calling him “unfit to be president” to accusing him (in the words of CNN’s Ana Navarro) of being “unfit to be human.” In between are malignant accusations that he is a “neo-Nazi,” a “white nationalist” and a “white supremacist” – all revelations about Trump’s character that somehow remained hidden during the thirty years he was a public figure and before he ran against Hillary Clinton. Nor is the hate confined to Trump alone but includes his aides and supporters. Congressman Jerrold Nadler and other House Democrats have even attacked Trump’s policy adviser Stephen Miller as a “white supremacist” for defending a merit-based immigration reform. The attacks from the anti-Trump left also include the charge that America itself is a “white supremacist” country.

In a nation which for eight years was headed by a black president, had two chief law enforcement officers who were black, has recently had two black secretaries of state and three black national security advisers, and has elected more than 10,000 black government officials; in a nation that has been governed for fifty years by statutes that outlaw discrimination by race and whose national culture is saturated with non-white heroes and icons – in such a nation, people who refer to America as “white supremacist” would normally be dismissed as an oddball fringe, members of a fraternity that includes people who think Elvis is still alive and on the moon. Unfortunately, we live in times that are not normal.

Recent events have turned out crowds in the tens of thousands denouncing “neo-Nazis” and “white supremacists” both real and imagined, who number in the hundreds, if that. Yet the outpouring of righteous rage in a veritable orgy of virtue signaling has extended across both ends of the political spectrum, as though Nazism hadn’t been defeated more than seventy years ago, or racial discrimination outlawed for sixty. The ranks of actual neo-Nazis and white supremacists are so minuscule that besides the universally despised David Duke and Richard Spencer there are no figures on this “alt-right” that even informed observers could actually name.

In contrast to the trivial representatives of organized Nazism, there are – to take one obvious example – tens of thousands of members of the American Communist Party, also a defeated totalitarian foe. Yet no one seems alarmed. There have been “Million Man” marches led by black racists Farrakhan and Sharpton, while “white nationalists,” and Klan members can’t attract a sufficient number of supporters to even constitute a “march.” Black Lives Matter is an overtly racist and violent group that is led by avowed communists and has allied itself with Hamas terrorists. It is an organization officially endorsed by the Democratic Party and lavishly funded by tens of millions of dollars contributed by Democratic donors like George Soros. But the self-congratulating denouncers of Nazism and white racism find nothing wrong with them.

On any rational assessment, “white supremacy” as a descriptor of American society or American institutions or a significant segment of the American right is loony toons paranoia. Yet on the political left it is now an article of faith, and also a convenient weapon for disposing political opponents. Its power as a weapon is actually a tribute to America’s success in institutionalizing the principles of diversity and tolerance. It is because America is a truly inclusive society that makes the mere accusation of intolerance is so effective.

Notwithstanding the marginal existence of actual Klansmen and “neo-Nazis” in American culture and institutions, the term “white supremacy” currently turns up 3.7 million references in a Google search – a tribute to its rampant mis-usage. Of these references, 1.2 million are linked specifically – and absurdly – to Donald Trump. The term “white nationalism” turns up 4.2 million references, of which 2.1 million are linked directly to the president. Only a slightly lower number – 1.8 million – link Trump to “Nazi.” The parity of the numbers is easily explained by the fact that in the lexicon of the left they are identical. As a leftwing smear site created by the Southern Poverty Law Center explains, “White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies.”

The malicious charge that Trump and his supporters are white racists is the central meme of a concerted effort to overthrow the Trump presidency before it has run its course – or before it had even gotten started. The accusation is made despite the fact that Republicans who elected Trump also voted for Barack Obama, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindahl, and that Democrats – not Republicans – were the principal resistors to the Civil Rights Acts. Reality aside, just 12 days after Trump’s inauguration Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi was already denouncing Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as a “white supremacist,” while Rep. Maxine Waters was revving up the call to impeach him with her colleagues not far behind. Six months later, the lead headline at Salon.com, was proclaiming, “White Supremacy Week at the White House.” Not to be outdone, The Week, whose commentators include the Atlantic’s David Frum, and Kerry adviser, Robert Shrum, ran a piece titled, “It’s White Nationalism Week at the White House.” Really.

Obviously the terms “white supremacy and “white nationalism” can’t actually mean what they say. If they did, one would have to conclude that half the country had simply lost its mind and morals. To make sense of the terms one has to understand them as expressions of an ideology that has emerged out of its university incubators to become a dogma of the Democratic Party and progressives generally. This radical perspective, known as “cultural Marxism,” divides society into a white majority that oppresses, and “people of color” who are oppressed, attributing all racial and ethnic disparities to “racism.”

As Wikipedia explains: “The term white supremacy is used in academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or societal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred.” In other words, actual racism –  racist hate by individuals – is not the problem. If eighty percent of corporate executives are white, that is prima facie evidence of what the left calls “institutional racism,” even though there are no racists pulling strings to keep non-white people down. Racism is redefined as defending the invisible system – e.g., the system of standards – that allegedly perpetuates these disparities. But note the hypocrisy. If 95% of the multimillionaires in the National Basketball Association or the National Football League are black, no one regards these as anything but disparities based on merit.

The unexamined premise of the argument that regards white Americans as racists is that statistical disparities are all the result of oppression. But who is oppressed in America? There are an estimated 65 million refugees in the world today fleeing oppression, but not one of them is fleeing oppression in the United States. Why do Haitians and Mexicans risk life and limb to come to America? To be oppressed? They come because in America they have more rights, more privileges and more opportunities than they would in Mexico and Haiti, which have been governed by Hispanics and blacks for a hundred years and more.

The reality that the academic theory of faculty leftists tries futilely to deny is that America is the least racist most tolerant multi-ethnic, multi-racial society in the history of the world. America has outlawed racial supremacies of any kind. The only group oppressed in America are illegal immigrants who cannot defend themselves because they have already put themselves on the wrong side of the law. For everyone else, the law – the civil rights laws – are their protector.

In the end, however, all the spurious outrages over white supremacy and homegrown Nazism, and all the canards about “white nationalism” in the Trump White House are not really about Trump. What they are about is America. More particularly, they are about the left’s ongoing indictment of America for the sins of its past (sins by the way that are shared by every other nation both white and non-white).

To see how the leftist attack actually proceeds – how deeply embedded it is in the liberal mind – one has only to recall the notorious exchange between CNN’s anti-Trump correspondent, Jim Acosta, and Stephen Miller, the president’s chief advisor for policy, over immigration reform. The exchange was triggered by Acosta’s appalled response to Miller’s announcement of a proposed new immigration policy that would privilege English-speaking applicants for American citizenship. Requiring familiarity with English might seem a reasonable way to make assimilation of immigrants easier and to put more opportunity within their reach in a country in which it is the official language. But not to liberals like Acosta. Acosta objected: “This whole notion of … they have to learn English before they get to the United States. Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?”

Miller’s response was this: “Jim, actually, I have to honestly say, I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English.” Miller’s shock was not hard to understand. According to Wikipedia: “In 2015, there were 54 sovereign states and 27 non-sovereign entities where English was an official language.” In addition, “many country subdivisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level.” Among these English speaking countries are Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Liberia, Belize, India, Fiji, Micronesia – a veritable rainbow of ethnicities and racial identities.

Behind Acosta’s clueless question lay the racial animus characteristic of the left’s attacks on Trump, his policies and supporters. This is the official CNN transcript: “ACOSTA (OFF-MIKE) Sounds like you’re trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country through this policy.” In other words a “flow” of whites; in other words the policy is “white supremacist,” racist. Miller’s response: “Jim, that is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant, and foolish things you have ever said…. “The notion that you think that this is a racist bill is so wrong.” To even think the policy was racist, Acosta had to overlook the fact that non-white English speakers actually outnumber white English speakers globally. Yet the left immediately began charging Miller with being a “white supremacist.”

This embarrassing but revealing moment is what the anti-Trump movement comes down to: the racist accusation that white supremacists, backed by 63 million American voters, have seized control of the American government and need to be overthrown.

But this hateful movement is not really about Trump. It is about America. Beyond that it is about the left’s attack on the democratic societies of the West in general, and specifically their foundations in individual rights rather than group identities. This was evident in the reactions to the major foreign policy address Trump delivered in Poland on July 6. His speech was a full-throated and often eloquent defense of the West and its values, and of America’s role in defeating the Soviet Union and the global Communist empire. In a climactic passage, Trump delivered a paean to the values that had inspired the West’s resistance to the totalitarians left and right, to the values that created western civilization. These were the values – above all that of individual freedom – that the wars against Nazism and Communism had been fought to defend. What Trump said was this:

“We reward brilliance.  We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success.  We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves. And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.”

On finishing this tribute, Trump issued a call to the people of the West to rally again to the defense of these values in the face of the new totalitarian threats that confront us: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

Despite, and more likely because of its reaffirmation of American values, Trump’s speech was immediately attacked by the political left. The common theme of these attacks was once again the left’s race war against Trump and the country he leads. Slate.com, an online publication of the Washington Post ran with this headline: “The White Nationalist Roots of Donald Trump’s Warsaw Speech.” The Bernie Sanders’ left at Salon.comrepeated the accusation: “Trump’s Alt-right Poland Speech: Time to Call His White Nationalist Rhetoric What It Is.” The respected Atlantic Monthly followed with this: “The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech.” For the left, American patriotism is white nationalism.

The Atlantic article was written by Peter Beinart, and began this way: “In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to “the West” and five times to “our civilization.” His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.”

The West, Beinart explained, is neither a “geographic term,” nor an ideological category. “The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white.” Whatever else one might think, this was certainly a perverse way of looking at Trump’s description of the West, or at the way the West has traditionally understood itself. Beinart’s attack displayed the racist animus that informs leftwing politics across the board these days, and that shapes its war against the White House and a Western civilization we have all celebrated until now.

The political left is relentless in its commitment to identity politics, which is a not so subtle form of racism. This animus is rooted in a racial and gender collectivism that is antagonistic to the fundamental American idea of individual rights applied universally and without regard to origins – to race, ethnicity or gender. The war to defend this idea is what created Trump’s candidacy and has shaped his political persona.

An American patriotism – which is precisely not about blood and soil, which is the antithesis of racism and collectivism – is what drives Trump and his presidency. If we are loyal to our country we will be loyal to each other; if we have patriotism in our hearts there will be no room for prejudice; we are black and brown and white but we all bleed patriot red. This is the mantra of Trump’s inaugural address; it was the mantra of his announcement of a new strategy to fight the terrorists in Afghanistan; and it is the mantra behind the call to “make America great again.” Patriotism – a specifically American patriotism – is the loyalty that unites us and makes us equal. It is this patriotism with which the political left is at war, and the reason they hate this president and are determined to destroy him.

A Little Patriotism Goes a Long Way

March 1, 2017

A Little Patriotism Goes a Long Way, Power LinePaul Mirengoff, March 1, 2017

Trump and Reagan share more than an ability to stage speeches and to articulate a patriotic message. They share a contempt for America doubters.

***********************************

The slogan and organizing principle of President Trump’s administration is “America first.” As he explained last night: “My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America.”

This is just common sense. Absent the Obama aberration, no president would think to say it.

However, even a message this obvious can use powerful, patriotic rhetoric and effective staging to support it. Trump’s presentation contained both, beginning with the second paragraph:

Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice — in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present.

That torch is now in our hands. And we will use it to light up the world. I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart.

A new chapter of American Greatness is now beginning.

A new national pride is sweeping across our Nation.

And a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp.

What we are witnessing today is the Renewal of the American Spirit.

Our allies will find that America is once again ready to lead.

All the nations of the world — friend or foe — will find that America is strong, America is proud, and America is free.

The address ended on the same note:

[W]hen we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began.

The time for small thinking is over. The time for trivial fights is behind us.

We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts.

The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls.

And the confidence to turn those hopes and dreams to action.

From now on, America will be empowered by our aspirations, not burdened by our fears — inspired by the future, not bound by the failures of the past — and guided by our vision, not blinded by our doubts.

I am asking all citizens to embrace this Renewal of the American Spirit. I am asking all members of Congress to join me in dreaming big, and bold and daring things for our country. And I am asking everyone watching tonight to seize this moment and believe in yourselves.

Believe in your future.

And believe, once more, in America.

There was also the unforgettable response of Carryn Owens when Trump and Congress paid tribute to her fallen husband, Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens. This was an American Greatness moment.

On Fox News, commentators of a certain age compared Trump’s address to those of President Reagan. It was Reagan, apparently, who began the practice of bringing heroic citizens to the gallery and recognizing them in his addresses.

I’m not sure that even Reagan ever matched the Ryan Owens moment.

But Trump and Reagan share more than an ability to stage speeches and to articulate a patriotic message. They share a contempt for America doubters.

This distinguishes them from the two Republican presidents who served in between them. Bush 41 and Bush 43 were great patriots. But they did not have, or at least display, a visceral reaction to nay-saying about America. (To be fair, neither followed a nay-saying administration).

Reagan and Trump have that visceral reaction, and they display it. This served Reagan well and, if Trump can control himself, it may well do the same for him.

France: Le Pen Launches Presidential Campaign

February 6, 2017

France: Le Pen Launches Presidential Campaign, Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, February 6, 2017

(Please see also, European Conservative Parties Are Not ‘Far Right’. — DM)

“The question is simple and cruel: will our children live in a free, independent, democratic country?” — Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front party.

“Economic globalization, which rejects any limits, has weakened the immune system of the nation by dispossessing it of its constituent elements: borders, national currency, the authority of its laws in conducting economic affairs, and thus allowing another world to be born and grow: Islamic fundamentalism.” — Marine Le Pen.

“Islamic fundamentalism instrumentalizes the principle of religious freedom in an attempt to impose patterns of thought that are clearly the opposite of ours. We do not want to live under the yoke or threat of Islamic fundamentalism.” — Marine Le Pen.

“Globalism is based, as we see, on the negation of the values on which France was built and on the principles in which the immense majority of French people still recognize themselves: the pre-eminence of the person and therefore its sacred character, individual freedom and therefore individual consent, national feeling and therefore national solidarity, equality of persons and therefore the refusal of situations of submission.” — Marine Le Pen.

“Those who come to France are to accept France, not to transform it to the image of their country of origin. If they want to live at home, they should have stayed at home.” — Marine Le Pen.

“In terms of terrorism, we do not intend to ask the French to get used to living with this horror. We will eradicate it here and abroad.” — Marine Le Pen.

“Everyone agrees that the European Union is a failure. It did not deliver on any of its promises, particularly on prosperity and security…. That is why, if elected, I will announce a referendum within six months on remaining or exiting the European Union…” — Marine Le Pen.

“The old left-right debates have outlived their usefulness…. This divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between patriots and globalists.” — Marine Le Pen.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-establishment National Front party, has officially launched her campaign to become the next president of France.

Speaking at a rally attended by thousands of her supporters in Lyon on February 5, Le Pen launched a two-pronged attack on globalization and radical Islam. She promised French voters a referendum on remaining in the European Union, and also to deport Muslims who are deemed a security risk to France.

2279National Front party leader Marine Le Pen, speaking at a rally in Lyon, France on February 5, 2016. (Image source: Public Senat video screenshot)

Le Pen’s political platform is contained in a manifesto of 144 promises regarding immigration and global trade.

Polls show that Le Pen — who said the election of U.S. President Donald J. Trump “shows that people are taking their future back” — is one of the most popular politicians in France.

A February 2 Ifop-Fiducial poll for Paris Match, iTELE and Sud-Radio showed Le Pen with 24.5% of the vote, compared to 20% for François Fillon of the center-right Republicans party. In December 2016, Fillon, who has become engulfed in a corruption scandal, held a three-point lead over Le Pen.

The poll also showed the independent centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron with 20% of the vote, the Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon with 17%, and the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon with 9.5%.

The first round of the election will be held April 23. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held on May 7.

Following is an abridged translation of key parts of Le Pen’s speech:

In all respects, this presidential election is unlike previous ones. Its outcome will determine the future of France as a free nation and our existence as a people.

After decades of errors and cowardice, we are at a crossroads. I say it with gravity: the choice we will have to make in this election is a choice of civilization.

The question is simple and cruel: will our children live in a free, independent, democratic country? Will they still be able to refer to our system of values? Will they have the same way of life as we did and our parents before us?

Will our children, and the children of our children, still have a job, a decent wage, the possibility of building up a patrimony, becoming an owner, starting a family in a safe environment, being properly cared for, to grow old with dignity?

Will our children have the same rights as us?

Will they live according to our cultural references, our values of civilization, our style of living, and even they will speak our French language, which is disintegrating under the blows of political leaders who squander this national treasure — for example, by choosing a slogan in English to promote the candidacy of Paris to host the 2024 Olympic Games?

Will they have the right to claim French culture when certain candidates for the presidential election, puffed up by their own empty-headedness, explain that it does not exist?

I ask this important question because, unlike our adversaries, I am interested not only in the material heritage of the French, but I also want to defend our immaterial capital. This immaterial capital is priceless because this heritage is irreplaceable. In fact, I am defending the load-bearing walls of our society.

Our leaders have chosen deregulated globalization. They wanted a happy outcome, but the result is frightful.

Globalization develops at two levels: from below with massive immigration and global social dumping; and from above with the financialization of the economy.

Globalization, which became a fact with the multiplication of exchanges, has become an ideology. Economic globalization, which rejects any limits, has weakened the immune system of the nation by dispossessing it of its constituent elements: borders, national currency, the authority of its laws in conducting economic affairs, and thus allowing another world to be born and grow: Islamic fundamentalism.

The latter has grown up within a deleterious communitarianism, itself a child of mass immigration, suffered year after year by our country.

We have thus fulfilled our first political act, which is to name the enemy.

These two globalisms, today, give a leg up to:

  • Economic and financial globalism, of which the European Union, the financiers and the domesticated political class are its zealous servants;
  • Jihadist globalism, which undermines our vital interests abroad, but which also takes root in our national territory, in certain neighborhoods, in certain places, in certain weak minds.

Both work towards the disappearance of our nation, that is to say, of France as we live it, as we love it, which is why the French have a feeling of dispossession.

These two ideologies want to subjugate our country.

One in the name of globalized finance, that is to say, the ideology of all commerce, the other in the name of a radicalized Islam, that is to say, the ideology of the whole of religion.

Faced with these two totalitarianisms that threaten our liberties and our country, we must demonstrate lucidity, determination and unity.

Economic globalism kills by asphyxia — slow, progressive, but certain.

Islamic fundamentalism attacks us by the calculated harassment of republican resistance, by incessant demands, by demands for accommodation, none of which, for us, can be reasonable and therefore conceivable.

Nor let us forget that Islamic fundamentalism is barbaric, that it manifests itself every day in the world by killing, massacring, using in particular the vile and cowardly weapon of terrorism or mass murder.

As in all ideological wars, we find useful idiots and more or less conscious accomplices who, through cowardice, blindness or greed, facilitate these undertakings for the establishment of this barbarous ideology, the enemy of France.

To advance, the advocates of these two globalist ideologies give the illusion of relying on our principles; in reality, they falsely invoke freedom to set up their totalitarianism: it is the freedom of the fox in the chicken coop.

The first, economic and financial globalism, invokes freedom of trade, freedom of movement, freedom of establishment; all those who venture to reveal their failures are accused of ignorance, accused of some ideological drift, and are struck down with moral reproach.

Economic and financial globalism is based on a pseudo economic expertise that never yields, not even to the evidence of its economic failure and the social devastation that it provokes. The objective is to reduce man to his role as consumer or producer.

Countries are no longer nations united by matters of the heart, but by markets, spaces where the commodification of everything and every human being is conceivable, possible, accepted and even organized.

People are no more than populations. Borders are erased, as with Schengen, to make of our countries station concourses where everyone is free to come and stay and to participate in the leveling of the social protections, the reduction of wages and the dilution of culture into the smallest common denominator.

With the globalists, cultures of peoples, that is, what makes the world’s diversity, are destined to be erased in order to facilitate the commercialization of standard products and to facilitate hyper profits at the cost of ecological depletion of the planet or child labor of the Third World.

This world where economics is an end in itself and man, a simple tool in its service, plunges us into an ephemeral era, in short, an artificial and deeply dehumanized world.

The rights of people, their social situation, their well-being, the environment in which they live, become the variable of adjustment of the interests of large groups and castes.

For them, the nation is a non-tariff barrier. In their eyes, the country is an open geographical space where the only requirement is to “live together,” that is to say, not to interfere with each other.

I want to denounce this powerful alliance between the promotion of savage globalization on the one hand, and the culpable inaction, even in the face of uncontrolled immigration and its direct consequence, the establishment of Islamic fundamentalism.

If economic globalism advances with the shield of free trade, the second of these globalisms, Islamic fundamentalism, instrumentalizes the principle of religious freedom in an attempt to impose patterns of thought that are clearly the opposite of ours.

The carelessness and weakness of our leaders have been a growth hormone to this ideology that tried to sow death in the Louvre two days ago.

We do not want to live under the yoke or threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

It tries to impose upon us pell-mell:

  • The prohibition of mixing in public places,
  • The integral veil or not,
  • Prayer halls in companies, street prayers, cathedral mosques,
  • The submission of woman by prohibiting the skirt, work or bistro.

No Frenchman, no Republican, no woman attached to dignity and liberty can accept it.

Behind these two ideologies is inexorably the enslavement of people: An enslavement, at first mental, which is effected by disaffiliation, by isolation, by dissolution of traditional bonds.

Economic globalism professes individualism, and radical Islamism communitarianism.

Globalism is based, as we see, on the negation of the values on which France was built and on the principles in which the immense majority of French people still recognize themselves: the pre-eminence of the person and therefore its sacred character, individual freedom and therefore individual consent, national feeling and therefore national solidarity, equality of persons and therefore the refusal of situations of submission.

These principles for which we are fighting are affirmed in our national motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” which itself proceeds from a secularization of principles stemming from our Christian heritage.

But these two globalist ideologies do not only attack our nation. Both of them attack our Republic by questioning its indivisibility.

The answer is not technical but regal, which is why we call for the moral rearmament of the country and a surge of national energy. We call for resistance and reconquest.

There is nothing for us more beautiful than France. There is nothing for us greater than France. There is nothing for us more useful to the world than France!

I say to the French who are watching or listening to us: the fate of France is in your hands!

The Revolution of Patriotism

France is a millennial country with a history and a culture. France is an act of love. This love has a name: patriotism. It is what makes our hearts beat in unison when the Marseillaise sounds or when our national colors beat the wind of history.

It is what unites the French left and right, from the cradle to the cane, from the factory to the office. It is what pits our vision against that of the globalists.

We believe it is time to revitalize national sentiment, to live it on a daily basis, to teach our children all that makes and has made their country, to teach them to love their compatriots, to be proud of their history, to be confident in the forces of France.

When one aspires to settle in a country, one does not begin by violating its laws. We do not begin by claiming rights. To all, and especially to people of all origins and all faiths that we have welcomed into our country, I repeat: there are no and there will be no other laws and values in France than those that are French.

On this subject there will be no retreat and no compromise.

Those who come to France are to accept France, not to transform it to the image of their country of origin. If they want to live at home, they should have stayed at home.

We will strictly apply the rules of secularism in a country whose tragic history has learned to guard against the wars of religion. We will extend the rules of secularism to public spaces and we will inscribe them in labor laws. We will respond to those who see with concern the rise of religious demands and the rise of conflicts in the workplace.

We no longer want the state to allow the spread of the hatred of France. We want a France that transmits and a France that is transmitted!

The Revolution of Liberty

The first liberty is security. You may ask how to improve security when for thirty years all governments have failed? Our method is simple: we will apply the law!

As Cardinal de Richelieu said, “to make a law and not enforce it is to authorize the thing that one wishes to defend against.”

We will re-establish the rule of law, that is, enforce Republican law in those places where it has been lost, where our rulers obviously lack the courage and willpower. We are going to put an end to the impunity of criminals, the no-go zones, the dictatorships of kingpins in certain districts, drug and weapons trafficking, burglaries, burned cars.

We will stress the certainty of prosecution, the certainty of sanction, the certainty of punishment, the certainty that delinquent aliens are automatically deported.

I say to the mothers who listen to me, support me: Do not accept that our children live in fear, in this daily violence of which they are the first victims, sometimes at the cost of their young lives.

In order to fulfill their mission, so important to this country, we will give back to our security forces the human and material resources as well as the necessary support and instructions.

We shall rearm them, including morally, with the establishment of the presumption of self-defense.

We will open suitable prison places, conclude agreements with countries of origin so that foreign offenders will serve their prison sentences in their country of origin, increase the means of justice and organize a response to criminals that can be summarized in two words: zero tolerance.

In terms of terrorism, we do not intend to ask the French to get used to living with this horror. We will eradicate it here and abroad.

Since we are at war with Islamic fundamentalism, we will apply to the enemies of France the legal devices of the state of war.

We will give ourselves the necessary technical and human means and will create the conditions and cooperation necessary for intelligence on the national territory as well as outside.

Foreigners with an “S” file [Fiche “S” or Sûreté de l’État (state security)] will be deported. Binationals with “S” files will be deprived of their French nationality and sent back to their country of origin. Frenchmen with “S” files will be prosecuted for aiding the enemy.

Places of Islamic preaching will be closed and the sowers of hatred condemned and expelled. The legal windows of Islamism, especially on the Internet, will be extinguished.

Finally, this revolution of liberty is that of our collective liberties, for state sovereignty, that is to say, for a free people to decide for themselves. This struggle for sovereignty is first, principal, essential, cardinal — it conditions everything else.

Without sovereignty, no protection is possible, no action is possible. Without sovereignty, a promise becomes a false promise.

My political opponents claim to control borders, to prevent immigration, to fight against unfair competition. They are lying to you. By refusing to free themselves from the straitjacket of the European Union, which is the decision-maker on these subjects, they refrain from any even minor inflection.

Worse, by staying in the euro, they are plaguing our economy, maintaining mass unemployment and giving the European Union the means of pressure to impose its inept views, its millions of migrants.

Everyone agrees that the European Union is a failure. It did not deliver on any of its promises, particularly on prosperity and security and, worse, it has put us under guardianship and kept us on a short leash.

Who could be satisfied with doing nothing against a system which enchains us, which does not work, and worse, whose dysfunctions ruins us?

That is why, if elected, I will announce a referendum within six months on remaining or exiting the European Union, and I will immediately engage with our European partners — many of whom aspire as we do to sovereignty — a renegotiation with this tyrannical Europeanist system which is no longer a project, but a parenthesis in history and I hope one day a bad memory.

The objective will be to find within six months a compromise that will allow us to recover our four sovereignties: monetary, economic, legislative and territorial.

If the European Union does not submit, then I will ask the French to vote in the referendum to resign from this nightmare and become free again.

In the same spirit, because we believe that France is great only when it makes its voice heard in favor of independence and world balance, we will leave the integrated command of NATO. We will re-examine our diplomacy with regard to our national interests and will give the means of our internal and foreign policy by the reconstruction of our military potential.

My commitment is to put France back in order in five years. In practice this concerns all sectors of our lives:

  • Putting our economy back in order
  • Putting our schools back in order
  • Putting our justice back in order
  • Putting our diplomacy back in order
  • Putting our security back in order
  • Putting our solidarity back in order

We open our arms to all those who share with us the love of France and wish to engage our country on the path of national recovery.

The old left-right debates have outlived their usefulness. Primaries have shown that debates about secularism or immigration, as well as globalization or generalized deregulation, constitute a fundamental and transversal divide. This divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between patriots and globalists.

The collapse of traditional parties and the systematic disappearance of almost all of their leaders shows that a great political re-composition has begun.

Other peoples have shown the way.

The British have chosen freedom with the Brexit. The Italians have shown their disapproval in the referendum on the Constitution. The Greeks are thinking about leaving the Euro. The Americans have chosen their national interest.

This awakening of the peoples is historical. It marks the end of a cycle. The wind of history has turned. It will bring us to the top and, with us, our country: France. Long live the people! Long live the Republic! Long live France!

RIGHT ANGLE: Patriotic Video of the Year?

December 2, 2016

RIGHT ANGLE: Patriotic Video of the Year? Bill Whittle Channel via YouTube, December 1, 2016

A victory for patriotism

June 26, 2016

A victory for patriotism, Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, June 26, 2016

(“Patriotism” — what a silly, old-fashioned concept. Thus spake the left. — DM)

1.
Nationalism won in Britain — not “fascism,” not “xenophobia” and not any of the other pejoratives pseudo-liberals love to apply to anything that counters their beliefs. Yes, pure and simple patriotism is what drove Brexit supporters, the kind of nationalism that leftist-liberal elites in the West in general, and Britain in particular, do not identify with.

British nationalism preceded Europe. The late historian Adrian Hastings placed the emergence of the buds of this nationalism in the eighth century and the formation of a true English national entity between the ninth and 11th centuries, at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. So the claims that the pro-Brexit movement was fueled by of “populism” and “empty rhetoric” indicates the critics’ own worldview.

2.
Fear of foreign migrants was not the main motive behind Brexit, but the unchecked flow of such migrants did serve as a wake-up call. Many of the migrants flooding into Britain refuse to integrate into British society. They do not adopt the culture of their hosts and do not see themselves as committed to the long-standing British ethos. This cultural (and perhaps national) autonomy migrants have created for themselves within Britain has served as a catalyst for the reawakening of natural feelings of patriotism among native Britons — feelings that elites have been trying to kill in the name of universal ideas.

3.
Not surprisingly, and quite entertainingly in fact, much of the Israeli media showed sympathy for the “Remain” camp. Why, you ask, does this have anything to do with us? Let’s look at the similarities between the Brexit vote and the last Knesset elections in March 2015. One can see the same media denial of the will of the people, belittlement of patriotic and religious sentiments and adherence to leftist totalitarian thinking (even at the cost of detachment from reality and the people). For Israeli media figures, the aftermath of the Brexit vote was a mini-replay of the dejection they felt after the last Knesset elections.

4.
Just a few months ago, U.S. President Barack Obama called on Brits to vote to remain in the European Union. The results of Thursday’s referendum showed Obama’s complete lack of influence. Obama is a symbol of both the radicalization of Western elites, who since the end of World War II have been trying to dissolve the idea of the sovereign nation-state, and the attempt by these elites to impose ideology (euphemistically called “values”) on the reality they see, instead of engaging in a thorough examination of reality and the lessons of history. The drama in the U.K. will have implications on these subjects, too.

5.
When it comes to Israel, it is still not clear whether Britain’s departure from the EU will be good or bad. Anti-Israel activists on the European continent and inside Britain, who, seeking via a variety of methods (some sophisticated and some less so) to thwart the Jewish people’s return to Zion, will not disappear, and will perhaps even get stronger. However, seeing the hostile EU be weakened is not a bad thing. We will wait and see how things develop.

Not Satire | Anti-Trump protesters are patriots

March 17, 2016

Anti-Trump protesters are patriots, Boston Globe, Renée Graham, March 17, 2016

(Please see also, US democracy at stake amid campaign violence, major Jewish group warns.

Humpty Dumpty words

— DM)

Aniti trump protestors
Protesters are removed as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C., on March 9, 2016.

Donald Trump slams protesters at his rallies as “thugs” but, as usual, the unhinged GOP presidential front-runner is dead wrong:

They’re patriots.

By now, any protester at a Trump rally knows what they will face. The lucky ones will only be ridiculed by the candidate, have their anti-Trump signs yanked away and torn to pieces, and be hustled out of the arena. At worst — at least so far — they’ll be peppered with racist or anti-Semitic invective, manhandled by security guards, spat on, or sucker-punched by some moron sorry only that he couldn’t have inflicted more lethal damage.

With Trump nearly sweeping this week’s primaries, those rallies will become more hostile toward anyone pushing against his hideous rhetoric. Yet those patriots will still come, not just because they oppose Trump but for the love of their country which is being shoved toward the abyss. As poet Adrienne Rich wrote in “An Atlas of the Difficult World”:

A patriot is one who wrestles/ for the soul of her country/ as she wrestles for her own being.

Odds are these aren’t the people who fueled an all-time spike in Google searches on moving to Canada after Trump won multiple states on Super Tuesday. They weren’t checking real estate prices in Toronto or job openings in Vancouver. Patriots don’t surrender their nation to a preening narcissist or to his supporters, who, like goats unable to discern between what they should chew up or spit out, swallow whole all the nonsense they’re fed.

Armed with nothing more than the unshakeable certainty that their nation will collapse under the weight of Trump’s insatiable ego, they walk into arenas where they will be met with scorn, even physical retaliation. This stunningly frightful time demands more than hash tags, and these protestors have placed themselves on the front line.

That’s a lot more than Trump’s fellow GOP candidates have done. On “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Governor John Kasich of Ohio said, when asked if he would support Trump as the presidential nominee, “It’s tough.” Actually, Governor Kasich, it’s not. Likewise, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas condemns the bombastic billionaire’s bruising style, but in his next breath says he will back the party’s nominee — even if it’s the troubling GOP front-runner. Kasich and Cruz would rather save their floundering party than the nation they claim to love.

For his part, Trump told CNN that if he doesn’t get the nomination, “I think you’d have riots. I think you’d have problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen.” That veiled threat is nothing more than a dog whistle for Trump’s rowdiest supporters.

Still, even under the risk of mayhem from those supporters, rally protesters are determined to keep that craven man with his dark dreams from running this nation into the ground. That is the essence of patriotism.

Especially after 9/11, patriotism was remade into something regressive and divisive, not unlike what extremists have done to various religions. It became flag pins and “freedom fries,” while dissent became tantamount to treason. Too many were left sputtering in enraged silence. Perhaps spurred by the success of the Black Lives Matter movement, many have found again the lasting power of voices joined in a common cause.

And that cause is to stop Donald Trump. Those who oppose him — and they will grow in number as he racks up primary and caucus wins — will not relinquish their country to the kind of made-for-television tyranny that Trump spews as easily as he breathes. A true patriot knows that for America to be great, it must be wrested away from this vain, empty man who believes in nothing but himself.