ActRight

Ideas vs panzer armies

Donald Trump’s campaign is seeking to end the Democratic Party’s 20-year grip on Michigan’s electoral votes as the presumptive Republican nominee seeks to heal a divided party and reshape the campaign map this

This regressive left has effectually turned our great national dialogue into one long and unending speech, fraught with political correctness, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian bigotry, eugenics, espousals of invented victimization, and myriad –isms.

Mitt Romney won't launch a third-party presidential campaign of his own and has stopped trying to recruit somebody else to do it.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released the names of eleven federal judges he would consider nominating...

Sell your Adam Smith ties, everybody, and smash your busts of Ronald Reagan. It’s all over. Why? Because we have entered a new era of “nationalism,” or “patriotism,” or simply “Trumpism,” and the GOP will never be a traditionally and ideologically conservative party ever again. #ad#That seems to be the conclusion of a vast and growing number of prominent conservative commentators who are sure that Donald Trump has changed, or destroyed, conservatism forever. Type “The Republican Party is Dead” or “GOP R.I.P.” into a search engine and you’ll get a sense of how far and wide this notion has spread. Consider the inestimable Peggy Noonan, writing from the Olympian heights of the Wall Street Journal. She is increasingly adamant that Trump has ushered in a grand new era, a kind of Year Zero for the American Right. The once-conservative masses no longer want to hear about liberty or freedom — they want to be “protected” by government, Noonan wrote in February. RELATED: What Now, Conservatives? As Trump solidified his power, Noonan set about to shoot the wounded. “Those conservative writers and thinkers who have for nine months warned the base that Mr. Trump is not a conservative should consider the idea that a large portion of the Republican base no longer sees itself as conservative,” she wrote last month. A week later, Noonan again castigated anti-Trump forces in Washington. She insinuated that the Beltway elitists opposed to Trump seek to rebuild a post-Trump GOP as “a neoconservative, functionally open-borders, slash-the-entitlements party.” RELATED: How Should Conservatives Respond to the Age of Trump? That won’t happen, she insists, because “centers of gravity are shifting. The new Republican Party will not be rebuilt and re-formed in [the tony D.C. suburb] McLean, it will be rebuilt or re-formed in Massapequa [the Long Island suburb made famous by Joey Buttafuoco].” Looking past the uncharacteristically weak and unfair snipes, this is somewhat amusing, given where Noonan works. The Wall Street Journal — arguably America’s best newspaper, by the way — is editorially closer to “open borders” than any other mainstream outlet. Its position on entitlements is even more stridently — and more correctly — in favor of major reform, as was Noonan not long ago. The term “slash” is beneath her, given that this is the sort of irresponsible left-wing rhetoric she once decried. #share#Which gets me closer to my real point. A few years ago, Noonan lionized another populist movement. “Here is a great virtue of the tea party: They know what time it is. It’s getting late,” Noonan wrote. “If we don’t get the size and cost of government in line now, we won’t be able to. We’re teetering on the brink of some vast, dark new world — states and cities on the brink of bankruptcy, the federal government too. The issue isn’t ‘big spending’ anymore. It’s ruinous spending that they fear will end America as we know it, as they promised it to their children.” RELATED: After the GOP Darkness, the Dawn of Conservative Opportunity The point here isn’t to criticize Noonan, of whom I am a fan (though I have profound disagreements with her of late). Again, she is hardly alone in claiming that Trump represents a welcome break from conservative ideas as we’ve known them — ideas I once associated Noonan with. We can debate whether the New Thinking is good or bad. But we can all agree that one of the lessons of the Trump moment is that the conventional wisdom can change in an instant. And yet to listen to Trump’s biggest media cheerleaders, most of them in that populist heartland of New York City, the new conventional wisdom will go on and on — forever. As George Orwell noted, such assumptions stem from power-worship; that the winner of the moment will be invincible for all time. #related#For instance, in 2010, when Noonan was praising the free-market and constitutionalist tea party, our entitlement situation was worse, our immigration problems were no better, and Big Government was roughly the same (serious) threat it is today. Yet now she rallies to the protectionist and Constitution-agnostic Trump, despite Trump’s admission he will do nothing to fix entitlements or shrink government. The math on entitlements hasn’t changed, just the mood. Hence Trump’s focus on a Muslim ban and a wall on the Mexican border. Whether or not those are good ideas (I think the former is insane, the latter sadly necessary), it seems rather silly to expect this agenda to permanently displace the ideas that have formed the backbone of the conservative movement for generations. The mood will change again. It will be interesting to see whose ideas change with them. — Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review​. You can write to him by e-mail at [email protected], or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

“Turns out LGBT prez who criticized NC bathroom laws was child molester @PrisonPlanet @nero https://t.co/6UMg0u7Qup”

The former president of Charlotte’s LGBT Chamber of Commerce has resigned after he came under fire from a conservative group, which noted that he is on a sex offender list and questioned his role in supporting the city’s expanded nondiscrimination ordinance.

Donald Trump says he’ll be willing to hold direct personal negotiations with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m guessing any summit would be preceded by intense shuttle diplomacy by Celebrity Apprentice contestant Dennis Rodman. It’s a terrible idea, but it would be immensely entertaining. You could put a real dent in the national debt by holding the negotiations on pay-per-view. Hey, remember when Republicans complained about then-senator Obama’s pledge to “meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of [his] administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea”? Good times, good times.

Blake Lively under fire for saying she has an LA face and an Oakland booty.

On Monday, Lisa Stickles went to a Ross Dress For Less department store in Mesquite, Texas, where she claims management allowed a man, who made no attempt to appear to be a woman, into the women’s fitting room.

The Obama administration wants to make sure Utica, New York’s young refugees aren’t without a job, so he’s spending millions to make sure it doesn’t happen. “Access to a job in the summer and beyond can make all the difference to a young person – especially those who don’t have access to many resources and ?

Democrats are no strangers to pandering to minorities, but this video of Hillary Clinton is so cringe-inducing that it's very difficult to watch.

The list includes appellate judges Diane Sykes and William Pryor.

While the mainstream media focus almost exclusively on the chaos within the Republican Party, civil war lurks just under the surface of the Democratic Party. Last week, violence broke out at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel during the Nevada Democratic Party State Convention, with Bernie Sanders supporters tossing chairs and sending violent texts and voicemails to the Nevada chairwoman, Roberta Lange.

Acknowledging the truth might change transgender advocates’ positions, and that would require them to stop saying magic words they didn’t believe.

Source: Frank Caliendo

“On @MSNBC this morning Rep @RosLehtinen (R-FL) told @jdbalart she's #NeverTrump:”

Minh Pham from New Cross was allegedly instructed to wear an explosive backpack by an Al Qaeda leader

The desire for a third option in the race reflects widespread dissatisfaction among voters.

...As if the recession wasn't hard enough.

If JFK were here today, he would either have to renounce most of what he stood for or join the Republican party.

Responding to criticism about dismal diversity...

I was wrong. I’ve spent most of my career arguing that anti-Semitism in the United States is almost entirely a product of the political Left. I’ve traveled across the country from Iowa to Texas; I’ve rarely seen an iota of true anti-Semitism. I’ve sensed far more anti-Jewish animus from leftist college students at the University of California, Los Angeles, than from churches in Valencia. As an observer of President Obama’s thoroughgoing anti-Israel administration, I could easily link the anti-Semitism of the Left to its disdain for both Biblical morality and Israeli success over its primary Islamist adversaries. The anti-Semitism I’d heard about from my grandparents — the country-club anti-Semitism, the alleged white-supremacist leanings of rednecks from the backwoods — was a figment of the imagination, I figured. #ad#I figured wrong. Donald Trump’s nomination has drawn anti-Semites from the woodwork. I’ve experienced more pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism since coming out against Trump’s candidacy than at any other time in my political career. Trump supporters have threatened me and other Jews who hold my viewpoint. They’ve blown up my e-mail inbox with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They greeted the birth of my second child by calling for me, my wife, and two children to be thrown into a gas chamber. Yes, seriously. This isn’t a majority of Trump supporters, obviously. It’s not even a large minority. But there is a significant core of Trump support that not only traffics in anti-Semitism but celebrates it — and god-worships Trump as the leader of an anti-Jewish movement. RELATED: Trump’s White-Nationalist Fans Discredit his Candidacy Why has Trump triggered erogenous feelings from the pathetic Hitler devotees at Stormfront? Why do “anudda shoah!” meme-makers turn their lonely eyes to the clownish reality-television star? Why are the droogs of the alt-right desperate for sexual congress with The Combover? Modern American anti-Semitism springs from conspiratorial soil. Those who believe that politics and economics is a zero-sum game are more apt to believe that they are being screwed by “the system.” This is true both on the left, where Bernie Sanders complains about income inequality as though Bill Gates got rich by robbing homeless people, and on the right, where Donald Trump attributes manufacturing towns’ going bankrupt in Ohio to foreigners stealing their jobs (China is “raping” us and Mexico is “killing” us). And both Sanders and Trump target the banking industry for particular ire, stating that Wall Street prospers as Main Street suffers because of nefarious insider connections. Those nefarious insider connections — not corrupt government involvement in the financial system, which both Sanders and Trump want to expand — are to blame for suffering in the heartland. Zero-sum politics generates rage against those who are successful — and particularly at those big-city financial wizards and their fancy financial tools. RELATED: The Racist Moral Rot at the Heart of the Alt-Right Trump, like both Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, says routinely that we must embrace foreign-policy isolationism, and avers that we must stop our adventurism abroad in order to build at home. When Trump says that he wants an “America first” foreign policy, he means that foreign policy up until now has consisted of warmongers using the American military to achieve ends on behalf of foreign powers. “We will no longer surrender this country, or its people, to the false song of globalism,” said Trump last month. Connect this with his refusal to take moral sides between Israel and the Palestinians, and it’s rather clear where Trump stands. #share#Finally, Trump speaks the language of nationalism without any attendant constitutional philosophy. When connected with constitutional philosophy, “America first” means something very different from what it means with reference only to the borders and natives of the nation, as Charles Lindbergh could attest. If you want America to succeed because America is based on a matchless idea of human freedom and the governmental checks and balances that maintain it, that’s one thing; if you want America to succeed because you believe there is some superiority that attaches to those born within our borders, that’s something else entirely. And when you attach Constitution-less “America first” philosophy to zero-sum, conspiratorial economics and politics, all that’s left is to identify an enemy to blame. Trump’s anti-Semitic supporters believe they’ve identified that enemy, even if Trump won’t say it out loud. The anti-Semites believe that Trump’s zero-sum critique of free markets and foreign policy hawkishness, combined with his “America first” posturing, amounts to a rejection of the supposedly Jewish financial lobby on the one hand and the supposedly all-powerful Israel lobby on the other; they believe that Trump’s nationalism without philosophy amounts to an embrace of the blood-and-soil white supremacism they celebrate. RELATED: America First: Immigration and Nationalism Unite Donald Trump’s Coalition The end of Pat Buchanan’s publicity remission and his metastasis to mainstream news outlets represents a return to power of the old paleoconservative movement, with all of its attendant anti-Semitism. The old-school Buchananites are joined by alt-right blonde-coiffed intellectual skinheads like Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, who grin at anti-Semitism because they see it as a rejection of political correctness rather than an evil to be fought. And both of those groups have been joined by the outright anti-Semites, including David Duke, who couldn’t be more excited about Trump’s rise. Now, this doesn’t mean that Trump is an anti-Semite. No politician is responsible for all those who follow him. #related#But politicians become responsible for movements when they pat those movements on the head. Trump has done that repeatedly. When Trump refused to condemn David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan days before the Louisiana primary, then blamed it on his earpiece, that was a signal to his anti-Semitic base. When Trump retweets accounts heavily connected to white supremacism, his anti-Semitic base celebrates. When he appears on national television and refuses to condemn his supporters’ anti-Semitic death threats against a reporter (“I don’t know anything about that . . . I don’t have a message to the fans”), his anti-Semitic base takes note. When his wife, Melania, states in an interview that that same reporter “provoked” anti-Semitic death threats, Trump’s anti-Semitic base nods. Trumpism breeds conspiracism; conspiracism breeds anti-Semitism. Trump is happy to channel the support of anti-Semites to his own ends. The anti-Semitism on the right may slink back beneath its rock when Trump is defeated. Or perhaps it will continue to bubble up, fed by the demagoguery of bad men willing to channel ignorant rage toward their own glorification. — Ben Shapiro is the author of Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.

If Facebook discriminated against conservative-friendly news items, mused Brian Beutler in a Friday article, it almost certainly had good reason to do so, given the abundance of nonsense that right-wingers unleash on the Web. “The differences between mainstream and liberal political content on the one hand, and conservative content on the other, [are] critical,” wrote Beutler. “Facebook reviewers tasked with ‘disregard[ing] junk…hoaxes or subjects with insufficient sources’ are going to ensnare more climate-change denialism, more birther stories, more racist Breitbart agitprop than anything comparably dubious that comes out of the liberal internet. And those dubious stories will come not just from fringe sites or content farms, but from prestige outlets of the online right.”