ActRight

Zarina, from Afghanistan, got married at the age of 13 and her husband is on the run having attacked her after waking up in the middle of the night, tying her up and mutilating her in their home.

By 2008, America was politically split nearly 50/50 as it had been in 2000 and 2004. The Democrats took a gamble and nominated Barack Obama, who became the first young, Northern, liberal president since John F. Kennedy narrowly won in 1960. Democrats had believed that the unique racial heritage, youth, and rhetorical skills of Obama would help him avoid the fate of previous failed Northern liberal candidates Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry. Given 21st-century demography, Democrats rejected the conventional wisdom that only a conservative Democrat with a Southern accent could win the popular vote (e.g., Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore). Moreover, Obama mostly ran on pretty normal Democratic policies rather than a hard-left agenda. His platform included opposition to gay marriage, promises to balance the budget, and a bipartisan foreign policy. Instead, what followed was a veritable “hope and change” revolution not seen since the 1930s. Obama pursued a staunchly progressive agenda — one that went well beyond the relatively centrist policies upon which he had campaigned. The media cheered and signed on. Soon, the border effectively was left open. Pen-and-phone executive orders offered immigrant amnesties. The Senate was bypassed on a treaty with Iran and an intervention in Libya. Political correctness under the Obama administration led to euphemisms that no longer reflected reality. Poorly conceived reset policy with Russia and a pivot to Asia both failed. The Middle East was aflame. The Iran deal was sold through an echo chamber of deliberate misrepresentations. The national debt nearly doubled during Obama’s two terms. Overregulation, higher taxes, near-zero interest rates, and the scapegoating of big businesses slowed economic recovery. Economic growth never reached 3 percent in any year of the Obama presidency — the first time that had happened since Herbert Hoover’s presidency. A revolutionary federal absorption of health care failed to fulfill Obama’s promises and soon proved unviable. Culturally, the iconic symbols of the Obama revolution were the “you didn’t build that” approach to businesses and an assumption that race/class/gender would forever drive American politics, favorably so for the Democrats. Then, Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat and the election of outsider Donald Trump sealed the fate of the Obama Revolution. For all the hysteria over the bluntness of the mercurial Trump, his agenda marks a return to what used to be seen as fairly normal, as the U.S. goes from hard left back to the populist center. Trump promises not just to reverse almost immediately all of Obama’s policies, but to do so in a pragmatic fashion that does not seem to be guided by any orthodox or consistently conservative ideology. Trade deals and jobs are Trump’s obsessions — mostly for the benefit of blue-collar America. In normal times, Trumpism — again, the agenda as opposed to Trump the person — might be old hat. He calls for full-bore gas and oil development, a common culture in lieu of identity politics, secure borders, deregulation, tax reform, a Jacksonian foreign policy, nationalist trade deals in places of globalization, and traditionalist values. In normal times, Trumpism — again, the agenda as opposed to Trump the person — might be old hat. But after the last eight years, his correction has enraged millions. Yet securing national borders seems pretty orthodox. In an age of anti-Western terrorism, placing temporary holds on would-be immigrants from war-torn zones until they can be vetted is hardly radical. Expecting “sanctuary cities” to follow federal laws rather than embrace the nullification strategies of the secessionist Old Confederacy is a return to the laws of the Constitution. Using the term “radical Islamic terror” in place of “workplace violence” or “man-caused disasters” is sensible, not subversive. Insisting that NATO members meet their long-ignored defense-spending obligations is not provocative but overdue. Assuming that both the European Union and the United Nations are imploding is empirical, not unhinged. Questioning the secret side agreements of the Iran deal or failed Russian reset is facing reality. Making the Environmental Protection Agency follow laws rather than make laws is the way it always was supposed to be. Unapologetically siding with Israel, the only free and democratic country in the Middle East, used to be standard U.S. policy until Obama was elected. Issuing executive orders has not been seen as revolutionary for the past few years — until now. Expecting the media to report the news rather than massage it to fit progressive agendas makes sense. In the past, proclaiming Obama a “sort of god” or the smartest man ever to enter the presidency was not normal journalistic practice. Freezing federal hiring, clamping down on lobbyists, and auditing big bureaucracies — after the Obama-era IRS, VA, GSA, EPA, State Department, and Secret Service scandals — are overdue. Half the country is having a hard time adjusting to Trumpism, confusing Trump’s often unorthodox and grating style with his otherwise practical and mostly centrist agenda. In sum, Trump seems a revolutionary, but that is only because he is loudly undoing a revolution. — Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. You can reach him by e-mailing [email protected]. © 2017 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

“What I see is…”

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday eased sanctions on

The popular progressive understanding of the Republican party and conservative movement is something like this: It is, at heart, a conspiracy of corporate oligarchs who use a collection of so-called social issues — religion, bigotry, racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment — to stir up the rubes in support of its own parochial economic agenda, tricking them into “voting against their own interests” in the popular progressive phrase. Wall Street guys pulling the strings and writing the checks, foot-washing snake-handlers manning the barricades. This isn’t really true, of course, as anybody who ever has spent any time around actual Republican politicians or conservative activists knows. But might something similar actually be true of the Democratic party? A few progressives have been wondering aloud this week why it is that Democrats have stirred themselves to oppose, with steely resolve, the nomination of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, while more or less going along with the nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general. DeVos (a friend of this magazine) may have ideas about school choice that don’t comport with the views of some Democrats (though they comport very much with the views of other Democrats, particularly those of the black urban middle class), but she is a relatively anodyne figure, a philanthropist and activist who has made a career out of doing what she can to look after the interests of children who don’t have the advantages enjoyed by her own. Sessions, on the other hand, is — their view, not mine — a racist as well as a radical who as attorney general would be empowered to do real damage to all that progressives hold dear. So why does DeVos get the Eichmann treatment while Sessions just gets a rap on the knuckles? What’s the matter with Camden? Here is one possibility: The Democratic party in reality is the cartoon version of the Republican party stood on its head, with cold-eyed self-serving economic interests using the so-called social issues to stir up the rubes while they go about seeing to their own paydays and pensions. The economic interests attached to the Democratic party are fairly easy to identify: people who work for government at all levels. You may come across the occasional Ron Swanson in the wild, but when it comes to the teachers’ unions — which are the biggest spender in U.S. politics — or the AFSCME gang or the vast majority of people receiving a taxpayer-funded paycheck, the politics of the public sector is almost exclusively Democratic. And what they care about isn’t social justice or inequality or diversity or peace or whether little Johnny can use the ladies’ room if his heart tells him to — they care about getting paid. Here’s an interesting point of comparison. When Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, he opposed gay marriage. So did Hillary Rodham Clinton, but Obama’s opposition was especially interesting in that he cited religious doctrine in support of his position: “My faith teaches me . . . that marriage is a union between a man and a woman. For me, as a Christian, it is also a sacred union — God’s in the mix.” George W. Bush, who was derided as a fundamentalist bigot by lifestyle liberals, never said anything like that. (Dick Cheney was well to the left of the Democrats on the question.) But there was barely a murmur of opposition to Obama’s staking out this ground “on the wrong side of history.” Social issues are for the naïfs. During the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama gave an off-the-record speech to a group of Wall Street financial executives in which he shared his frustration with the sclerotic and bureaucratic state of American education, and declared that he was close to publicly endorsing a nationwide school-choice program. (This is according to one of those in attendance.) The moneymen were enthused by this, but nothing ever came of it. In fact, Obama went hard in the opposite direction, working to gut the school-choice program in Washington, D.C., a popular program, which benefited urban black families almost exclusively. You don’t have to be a hard-boiled cynic to suspect that this has to do with the manpower and money-power of the teachers’ unions, who could have done a great deal more than they did to elevate Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama that year. Justice is one thing, but getting paid is the real issue. Think about that: If you are the candidate of the Left running in the party of the Left, you could, in 2008, run against equal rights for gay people — but you could not, if you had any sense of self-preservation, run in favor of school choice. Justice is one thing, but getting paid is the real issue. That probably explains why Betsy DeVos is getting the business and Jeff Sessions really isn’t. Democrats are in an awful position just now. Hillary Rodham Clinton was beaten by Donald Trump; Republicans control the Senate; Republicans control the House; Republicans are about to put an Antonin Scalia–style constitutionalist on the Supreme Court, a development made possible by the Democrats’ weak position in the Senate; Republicans control 34 of 50 governorships; Republicans control the great majority of state legislative houses. What, exactly, are the Democrats up to? Dressing up as vaginas and inviting Madonna to rile up the rubes with empty speeches in D.C. while the real power in the party — the public-sector unions — concentrate their fire on . . . Betsy DeVos, who believes that there should be some choice and accountability in public education. What is the Democratic party? Is it a genuine political party, or is it simply an instrument of relatively well-off government workers who care about very little other than securing for themselves regular raises and comfortable pensions? If I were a progressive, I’d be curious about that. — Kevin D. Williamson is National Review’s roving correspondent. 

All government bureaucrats should serve at will and be subject to firing if they do not do their jobs properly.

“If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”

In 2016, liberals have launched a broadside attack on Donald Trump and his supporters, accusing them of racism, writes Brett J. Talley. By weaponizing racism, the left transforms what should be a serious accusation into little more than another tool in their bag of political tricks, he writes.

President Donald Trump reacted to the massive rioting at UC-Berkeley in response to a scheduled campus speech by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Hundreds of liberals rioted at the University of California Berkeley Wednesday night -- burning stores, throwing Molotov cocktails and clashing with police.

One has to wonder why two Republican Senators, without any warning, would suddenly announce they’d oppose Betsy Devo’s nomination to be the Secretary of Education. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska both said they’d vote against Devos because she lacked the necessary experience to “strengthen public schools.” Whatever that means. I for one would like to see the Department of Education wind | Read More »

On Wednesday's CNN Newsroom with Carol Costello, during a discussion of White House press secretary Sean Spicer complaining about the media calling President Donald Trump's restrictions on immigration a "Muslim ban," CNN political commentator Errol Louis repeated a story that has turned out to be a hoax that the Iraqi mother of an American citizen died in Iraq because she was barred from traveling to the U.S. for treatment. The story in question has since been exposed as a fabrication, as the woman died several days before the restrictions were imposed. Louis: "All of the stories that have been done by this network, by other news organizations, finding who these people are -- these so-called 'bad people' who had to be kept out and finding out that they're children, they're elderly people, they're patriots, they're members of the military, they're, you know, grandmothers. They're people who in at least one tragic case wasn't able to come here for medical treatment, and died, you know."

Californians targeting Sacramento for swamp-draining.

George Soros, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were behind a Vatican coup to remove conservative Pope Benedict and install radical leftist Pope Francis, according to Catholics leaders citing WikiLeaks and other evidence.

Reddit, the hard-left online community populated by stoners and men/children playing video games in their parents' basements, announced Wednesday that it has banned the subreddit r/altright, citing the lamest of lame excuses -- that posters were guilty of "doxxing," which is the "posting of personal information."  

During an interview on NBC’s “Today,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer talked about President Donald Trump’s executive order that prohibited citizens...

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet.

SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch once opposed military recruiting at Columbia University because they discriminated against gays.

Obama issued more executive orders out of the gate as Trump, and some just as controversial.

When a republic finds itself amid a massive constitutional crisis ... a little right-minded “hostility” on the bench is just what it needs.

“They should be deported.”

Everybody has an obligation to calm the hell down.

Why the Left sides with radical Islam against American security.

SEWICKLEY, PA ? Just a few years ago, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were treated by their own Republican Party’s grassroots as the enemy. C…

A Conservative MP on the Women and Equalities Committee has opposed a new domestic violence bill to stop the use of the term “honour killing” and help British women who are victims of domestic abuse abroad, because it did not mention men.