Category: Feature

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

18 Nov, 2016

What Would Trump Success Be?

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Historically, presidents are “successful” if they can achieve two, maybe three, great things in office. I define “successful” in their own terms – what they wanted, not what they ought to have done. Thus, Reagan was “successful” because he beat the Soviets in the Cold War, revived the U.S. economy and was the only president since World War II to be succeeded by a member of his own party. He was less “successful” with such goals as bringing “strict constitutionalists” to the Supreme Court; of his three appointments, only Antonin Scalia approached that goal. President Obama was “successful” in passing...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

15 Nov, 2016

Three Cheers for the Electoral College!

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  I’m gloating over how the Electoral College worked as it’s supposed to, as designed by the Founding Fathers: It kept California from being relevant. Was California in 1787-89 part of Spain? No matter. The Founders had a dream in Philadelphia and saw how disastrous this state would become. Leftists of all stripes now are screaming, as they did in 2000, about how the EC is “undemocratic.” Screeched a letter to the Washington Post, “The Electoral College, an undemocratic vestige, distorted the election by giving battleground state voters more weight and smaller states disproportionate representation.” Thank you for making my...

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Feature / FF

14 Nov, 2016

Christopher Check, “Happy to Lose the Bet”

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Sometime late last Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, I lost 100 dollars. In September, at a fundraising banquet for Saint Michael’s Abbey, well fueled by a couple of gin-and-tonics, I bet a delightful lady named Bernadette that Hilary would win the election. She backed Trump. The loser would pay 100 dollars to the Abbey. Never have I been so happy to lose a bet. (I hope the confreres spend it on gin.) The anguished looks on the sanctimonious visages of Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow were worth every single penny. Watching the map grow redder as the evening wore...

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Feature

10 Nov, 2016

Clyde Wilson:  WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN

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We’ve only just begun to live White lace and promises A kiss for luck and we’re on our way (We’ve only begun) Before the risin’ sun we fly So many roads to choose We’ll start out walkin’ and learn to run (And yes, we’ve just begun) —The Carpenters, “We’ve Only Just Begun” Making America great again is not something to be looked forward to.  In fact, although America has had some great people and some great moments, it has never really been Great.  And spare me and my descendants from living in a “great country.”  Rather a good and comfortable...

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Feature

9 Nov, 2016

E. Christian Kopff: First Thoughts on Donald Trump’s Victory

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When my wife woke me up this morning, I recognized the mixture of excitement and satisfaction I felt. I had felt it before on the morning after Election Day, 1980. The sensation was not the taste of Proust’s petite madeleine. It was the smell of victory. My wife and I did not talk much. We didn’t have to. We did not share the emotions of the American election of 1980, but we had been in Italy together for the election of 2008. The Communist Party had changed its name for the second time in two decades, this time to the...

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All Paid Subscribers / Feature / Seiler

9 Nov, 2016

The Sweet Smell of Victory

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To quote the late Jackie Gleason: How sweet it is! How for months did I correctly predict a Trump victory, including right here on this site? Because, although I now live in California, I grew up near Detroit. I keep in touch with friends and relatives back there. They’re what Trump called the “forgotten Americans.” The bum trade deals – which aren’t “free” trade, but “managed” trade – hurt them, especially NAFTA and TPP. Meanwhile, just about everybody else was getting special government benefits paid for by the real producers. Not just Elon Musk’s Tesla, which wouldn’t exist without massive subsidies,...

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Feature / Fleming

8 Nov, 2016

Jerks 1: Land of the Free, Home of the Jerk, Part E

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The rot goes deeper than weakness and social dependency.  These same anti-socialist refugees still wore blue jeans—the official uniform of the proletariat—and professed egalitarian contempt for all those fripperies of dress and manners some relics of bourgeois society still clung to in the West.  I am speaking of the America of two decades ago.  Today, if I had to produce a single word to express the salient quality of modern Americans, it would be something like “shamelessness” or “impudence.”  Even elderly people no longer refrain from talking in Church, and their kids never quit screaming during the services.  Afterwards, at...

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Feature / Phillips Red

7 Nov, 2016

The TAC Presidential Symposium – It’s a Muddled Mess

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I recently wrote an article suggesting that The American Conservative (TAC) magazine, for better or worse the closest thing to a policy journal paleoconservatism has, should be more visibly on board the Trump Train. I realize that TAC is a non-profit and is not able to officially endorse a candidate. What I had in mind was that the magazine and its stable of writers should make it clearer that Trump is actually running on and advancing, to a greater or lesser degree, our cluster of issues – immigration restriction, rejection of free trade ideology and a more restrained America first...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

7 Nov, 2016

Some Ugly Truths

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Conservatives who are content to run against Hillary, without opposing the regime itself,  are working for the other side.  Ask James Comey, Alex Jones, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, George Will….and any lackey of the regime you run into. If Comey knows Hillary is guilty and is hiding the evidence, he should be forced to resign and stand trial.  If Comey did not learn anything knew from Huma and Anthony’s computers but reopened the investigation, he should be forced to resign and stand trial. Anyone advocating abortion for other people should be forced, retroactively, to submit to one.  Retroactive abortion stops...

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

5 Nov, 2016

Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

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I shall keep this simple, stupid, and brief.  Our rulers have drawn the line in the sand.  The Bushes have voted for Hillary, “fiscal conservative” John Kasich has voted for the worst Republican candidate in the history of the GOP (John McCain), and the neoconservatives–from Bill Kristol to David Brooks to George Will–have told us that the American hegemony and the American way of life hang in the balance. For a change, the neocons are right.  While they pretend to hate Trump because he is too fond of women, wears a comical rug, and plays the bully when he is challenged, those are not...