Posted on 06/06/2017 4:34:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
Writers never know when something they write will strike a nerve -- or, in the common phrase of the internet, "go viral."
Yet my last column, "Why Conservatives Still Attack Trump" did both. Aside from being reprinted on almost every conservative website, Newsweek published the column, and The New York Times quoted it.
More importantly, many major conservative writers responded to it, mostly in disagreement.
It is interesting that the column elicited so much attention. Maybe, like the man who bit the dog, an articulate case by a mainstream conservative in support of the president is so rare that people felt a need to publish it and respond to it.
Whatever the reason, I feel compelled to respond to some of the disagreements.
Before doing so, I want to note the respectful tone that permeated virtually every one of the disagreeing columns. We have enough cannibals on the left without conservatives eating each other up.
After reading the responses, I feel confident in saying that they confirmed my primary thesis: Anti-Trump conservatives do not believe that Americans are fighting what I call the Second Civil War, while pro-Trump conservatives do.
Indeed, Jonah Goldberg in National Review said as much. He denied that we are in the midst of a civil war on two grounds: One is that it is not violent, and the other is that we are fighting a "culture war," not a civil war.
Whenever I write about the subject, I almost always note that this Second Civil War is not violent. I never thought that the word "war" must always include violence. The word is frequently used in nonviolent contexts: the war against cancer, the war between the sexes, the war against tobacco, the Cold War and myriad other nonviolent wars.
Perhaps Goldberg would respond that he did not write that all wars are violent, only that all civil wars are violent. But if there are nonviolent wars, there can be nonviolent civil wars.
Nevertheless, what most disturbs me is his second argument -- articulated in various ways by most of those who disagreed with me -- that there is simply no civil war. And many repeated the universal belief among Never-Trumpers that a Hillary Clinton victory would not have been a catastrophe.
My response is that "culture war" is much too tepid a term for what is going on now. Maybe anti-Trump conservatives are fighting a "culture war," but the left is not. The left is working to undo the American Revolution. It's very close to doing so.
Of all people, one would think Jonah Goldberg would understand this. He is the author of what I consider to be a modern classic, "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change."
His book leads to one conclusion: We are fighting fascism. How is that not a civil war? When you fight fascism, you are not merely fighting a "culture war."
So, shouldn't the primary role of a conservative be to vanquish leftism? To me, that means strongly supporting the Republican president of the United States, who has staffed his Cabinet with conservatives and already won substantial conservative victories. As I suggested in my previous column, conservatives would have been thrilled if any Republican president had achieved what Trump has at this point in his administration.
"But what about Trump's character?" nearly all my critics ask. Or, as John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary Magazine, tweeted, "For Dennis Prager, who spent 40 years advocating for a moral frame for American politics, to argue as he argued today is, may I say, ironic."
First, I have indeed dedicated much of my life to advocating for morality -- for ethical monotheism as the only way to achieve a moral world; for raising moral children (as opposed to concentrating, for example, on raising "brilliant" children); and for the uniquely great Judeo-Christian moral synthesis developed by the Founding Fathers of America.
But I have never advocated for electing moral politicians. Of course, I prefer people of good character in political office. But 30 years ago, I wrote an essay titled "Adultery and Politicians" in which I argued that what political leaders do is more important than their character. To cite but one of an endless list of examples, I would prefer an adulterous president (like John F. Kennedy) who supported Israel than a faithful family man (like Jimmy Carter) who was an anti-Zionist.
Second, as a religious Jew, I learned from the Bible that God himself chose morally compromised individuals -- like King David, who had a man killed in order to cover up the adultery he committed with the man's wife; and the prostitute Rahab, who was instrumental in helping the Jews conquer Canaan -- to accomplish some greater good. (And, for the record, I am not suggesting that God chose Donald Trump.)
Third, though I listed his moral defects in column after column during the primaries, I believe that Trump is a better man than his critics maintain. I see no evidence, to cite one example, that he is a misogynist. His comment about famous and powerful men being able to do what they want with women was a) said in private -- and we are fools if we assess people by their private comments (Harry Truman, a great president, frequently used "kike" in private comments about Jews), b) not a statement about anything he had actually done, c) not misogynistic and d) often true.
Fourth, even if he were as morally defective as his critics maintain, my response is this: Trump's character is less morally significant than defeating the left. If the left wins, America loses. And if America loses, evil will engulf the world.
Indeed, Jonah Goldberg in National Review said as much. He denied that we are in the midst of a civil war on two grounds: One is that it is not violent, and the other is that we are fighting a “culture war,” not a civil war.
This statement from Jonah Goldberg shows how ignorant of history he is. The 1st U.S. Civil War didn’t begin as a hot war. It simmered for decades as a political confrontation and power struggle within the Federal and State governments.
You can be critical of the President...and still not be a never trumper. Just ask kellyanne Conway’s husband...who has set off a firestorm that will likely have repercussions for his wife.
Btw..he is right in what he said...
That about sums it up. Trump offends the Republican country-club set. The trust fund babies. The American gentry. They prefer someone from "within the club".
But, but, but . . . Mr. Prager, you lost your target. It’s a war and you made it a personal defense.
In any case, Clausewitz saw military force as an instrument that states and other political actors use to pursue the ends of policy, in a dialectic between opposing wills, each with the aim of imposing his policies and will upon his enemy
Hence his,
"Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst."
Goldberg is less well read than he imagines...
That’s it. And yet they didn’t mind a screeching Arkansas hack in a bad pantsuit being president. That was “classy” to them.
Or simply put “War is hell.”
And to think that “slavery” wasn’t the ultimate cultural object of war! That’s true even if you think it was a secondary reason for the war.
Goldberg, Krauthammer and many other of the Conservative pundits are really liberals. They just play the Conservative part on television.
Political punditry is entertainment. Someone has to play the liberal, someone has to play the conservative.
BTTT
He does..but at a certain point he has got to understand the lawyers have a point. Look at the bio of kellyanne Conway’s husband.
He used a twitter account that has been dormant to come out and criticize trump...And mentioned how lawyers agree with him.
He withdrew himself from joining the admin...and then publicly blasted trump...but still supports him
He has confirmed it is his twitter account
Now..what are the chances that trump will stop and think and pay attention .....
None
Kellyanne will not remain unscathed from what her husband did
Goldberg is a loser punk poseur, like a lot of the pretend "conservatives" out there.
They'd be HAPPY to be eating Hilly the Felon's excrement as she appointed Lefty after Lefty to the Supreme Court.
Jonah and his snotnose loser punk buds would be able to revel in their loser status for years and years - instead of being on the Winning Team, with President Trump.
The fact is they are not “Conservatives” they are Bushies.
Goldwater-Regan were American Nationalists. The Bush family dominance of the GOP for the last 30 years corrupted the GOP with the disease of Globalism. Trump is a turn back towards the Reagan-Goldwater Conservatism and a rejection of the Bush family’s Globalist viewpoint.
Those claiming to be “Movement Conservatives” aren’t really Conservatives, they are merely Bushites.
That may be..with some exceptions..but it doesnt change the fact that trump should be taking a hard look at what kellyanne’s husband said and taking it to heart
But he didnt...
His latest tweets are snowballing Conway’s comment
I suspect that he often doesn’t take the advice of Bannon’s war room.
A Hillary victory would be a global catastrophe. I imagine the cost would be as high as or higher than when Europe entered the Dark Ages - literally a thousand years of deterioration, cultural and intellectual retreat, decay, disease, and never-ending war on a Biblical scale.
My prayer (which I am not optimistic will be granted) is that President Trump will change the political landscape so much that the West will be able to withstand the next globalist totalitarian liberal to take power. That's a high bar to clear. Even though Trump is the best choice for the job, I still have very little confidence that he can do it. I expect our future to be indescribably ugly unless President Trump can pull off a miracle.
Those in power don't want the established order to be upset. They're too invested in it. The elites see the public as below them, and in 2016, like in most elections, they offered up what they thought of as a "choice", which is to say no choice at all, but maintenance of their power thru fear and division of the people. The elites fully expected the "choice" in 2016 would be between Clinton and Bush. Our very own version of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. A fake choice between two sides of the same coin.
It is almost obscene what the elite attempted to foist on the American people. Certainly on the Democrat side they succeeded by rigging the election so severely Clinton could not lose. Between their pre-weighted super-delegates (those who paid the biggest "contribution") to the duplicate poling places for Clinton to help re-weight the vote tally in states like NY, they did everything they could to turn the election process into a sham in representational government. Both the Dems and Republicans are guilty of this, putting their power and control over the interests of the people. It's just by some miracle Trump, by playing an unpredictable and unconventional game, broke thru and destroyed Bush.
Kaslin wrote: "He is blind, and so is every #never Trumper."
If the other side succeeds in their efforts to remove President Trump, the blowback is going to make the first Civil War look pretty tame.
The biggest point would be: "Why bother voting any more - since the Media and the Deep State will just 'remove' your candidate if he or she wins? See: Ted Stevens, Alaska, and many others."
Compare McCarthy on the front line: on target: "What does Theresa May know about Islam such that she can decide what is a perversion of it? Precious little, I’d wager. Otherwise, she’d not babble on about “Islamist extremism,” a term right out of the Department of Redundancy Department.
Have they expanded their voice. I was watching a Breitbart video link to a NBC panel discussion, iirc, and there was Bill Kristol.
Yeay Dennis. I have been harsh on him at the beginning of the campaign. Unlike almost all others talkers he came around to the idea of Trump as president pretty early if I recall correctly
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