The
United States of America that we grew up in, and in some cases fought for, no
longer exists. I would like to write something stirring in defense of our
Constitution, but it isn’t under attack. It is simply ignored. Some have
proposed that we have a Constitutional convention to add new amendments. What
would that accomplish? Would our present Federal government respect a set of
new amendments when they don’t respect the old ones? What good does it do to
insist on one’s rights as a citizen, when in fact mere citizenship has lost its
meaning? Americans have no rights officials in Washington feel bound to
recognize. Both Republicans and Democrats overrule majority opinion as a matter
of course. They do not doubt for a moment that they are the best and brightest,
and that our voting franchise is merely an antiquated inconvenience. My elected
representatives represent no one but themselves. They make war on my
culture, my faith, and my security-- then they insult me in front of the
elitist media on TV. The executive branch, the congress, and most of the
judiciary have no more respect for me as a human being than colonial empires
had for the most backward and primitive of their subjects. The elites that
live inside the beltway and in the bubble of academia should try living in Ohio
or Missouri for a few years. “White privilege” isn’t doing all that well in
rural West Virginia. We are here, now, in this country at this time. We are
real people with real lives. We are not statistics in a sociologist’s model,
nor are we third and fourth generation perpetrators from some politically
reconstituted version of history. It is all too obvious that our most
unrepresentative of representative governments neither knows us nor respects
us. They despise us. It is too much to ask us not to despise them in return.
I
am tired of being told by Barack Obama on the one hand, and Bill O’Reilly on
the other, what my American values are or ought to be. I can work those out for
myself. I am tired of living in the dumping ground for whatever group of
hostile immigrants the social engineers in Washington import to ease their
guilty consciences. Let them move their Mexican underclass and angry Syrian
colonists to Martha’s Vineyard or Marin County north of San Francisco.Maybe
this would help our legislators and “opinion makers” alleviate a bit of their
never-ending narcissistic angst. I am tired of nameless, self-righteous
bureaucrats levering open the restrooms of my local schools to the confused
transvestites that a liberal education churns out, then lecturing me about
tolerance and individual rights. Where is their tolerance of my culture?
Where is their respect for my rights? Where is the brotherly
concern shown to my neighbors? I am tired of living in an ill-planned social
experiment. Of taboo words and taboo ideas. I am tired of being called a racist
by people who are, themselves, the worst of racists -- and who have denuded the
word itself of any meaning.
To be quite honest, I have no particular
love for Donald Trump -- but he is what we have. He doesn’t speak well. I don’t
think he has any idea what a republic is. Then again, his last two predecessors
didn’t really understand the concept of a republic either. No doubt it’s not a
word they use at Harvard. Although I may not especially like the erratic, often
juvenile Mr. Trump, it isn’t lost on me that he at least doesn’t hold me in
contempt. He may make war on illegal immigration and Muslim fundamentalism, but
most of the alternatives are making war on me. Twenty years ago I would have
worried about a man who scares resident aliens, and even a few citizens, to
death. You will forgive me if I have come to the epiphany that protecting
absolutely every minority’s feelings is not a rational
government’s primary purpose. You will forgive me, too, if I stop ignoring
fourteen centuries of Islamic history, the stark brutality of Islamic
scripture, and the barbarism of contemporary Islamic states. Give me a gated,
crime-free community to live in, and maybe I can have the luxury of worrying
about the planet’s weather.
I would prefer to have a genuine
conservative candidate to vote for, and will probably vote for Cruz if he looks
viable enough. But if Donald Trump is what it has come to -- I will happily
take the risk and check the box next to his name. Republican, independent, or
Bull Moose party -- I could not care less. Conservatives don’t have a
party. We cannot be choosy. Better Trump than the Democrats' mad rush to
national Hara-Kiri. And better Trump than the Republican establishment’s
facilitation of the same national Hara-Kiri, plus the now intolerable old lie
that “it’s the best that we could do.” It has never been impossible to build
700 miles of security fence. Eisenhower built most of the interstate highway
system in under a decade. It has never been impossible to balance the budget.
Over the course of American history balanced budgets have actually been the
norm. Moral cowardice has never been an attractive trait, and no amount of
clever advertising really makes it so. Ivy league “experts” who fail, then get
congratulated for their failures by the Ivy League talking heads, do not
impress me more than Trump. For all of his ratings appeal and flamboyance, he
did at least accomplish something in his lifetime other than being popular and
being famous. That’s better than “I made a great speech at the ‘04 convention,”
or “I married Bill Clinton,” or, the perennial favorite, “I waited my turn.”
We have nearly died of the disease of too
much compromise. Of “reaching across the aisle.” Of “building a coalition of
our Muslim allies.” We have no real friends in either quarter. How can a free
people compromise with totalitarian ideologies, either socialist or Islamic?
Let’s not fool ourselves. America has bitter enemies -- both foreign and
domestic. Donald Trump, for all of his flaws, must do. He speaks his mind. He
understands and acknowledges at least the plainly obvious. Most of all, so far,
he doesn’t scare.
