Posted on 10/18/2017 11:33:26 AM PDT by jazusamo
The policy take-away from President Trumps remarks last night at the Heritage Foundation centered around tax cuts. The president likes em, and if he has his way (and on this issue, I think he will), we will see a sharp cut to the corporate tax rate (from 35 percent to 20 percent), a simplification and reduction of the individual tax rate, and a big expansion of the individual exemption (to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples filing jointly).
There is a certain kind of politician who likes high taxes, partly because he likes big government, which is the natural result of high taxes, partly because he wants most people (not his tribe, of course) to have as little money as possible. The poorer people are, the more dependent they are. Politicians of a certain stripewant people to be dependent on the government, i.e., on them and the instruments they control.
To my mind, that unholy dialectic between political power and an agenda of enforced dependency is one of the most despicable and destructive coefficients of the administrative state. It is despicable because it deploys power for personal aggrandizement under the camouflage of helping (i.e., pretending to help) others (the Great Society, etc.). It is destructive because its end is the eclipse of liberty for the sake of expanding and institutionalizing the apparatus of bureaucracy (and the perquisites of the bureaucrats running it).
So I applaud the presidents plan to cut taxes and allow Americans to keep a bit more of what after all is their own money. (We tend to forget this.)
But although taxes formed the official centerpiece of the presidents speech last night, and though I liked what he said about taxes, I thought the most impressive part of the speech was its rhetorical setting. The occasion was a meeting of Heritage Foundation supporters. Accordingly, President Trump began by talking about the importance of embracing our history, our heritage. For America to have CONFIDENCE in our future, we must have PRIDE in our HISTORY.
I think that is right, and I think it is worth pondering each of the three stressed words.
One of the great liabilities of so-called identity politics is that, ironically, it acts as a solvent on shared cultural confidence. The irony flows from the fact that identity politics is supposed to leave its partisans with an enhanced sense of self-worth and solidarity but in fact it tends to isolate them in rancid grievance ghettos.
Along the way last night, the president spoke up for preserving our heritage, our history, an enterprise that encompasses not just the preservation of monuments and other historical markers that commemorate our past, but also extends to the spiritual decorum of civic respect: standing for the national anthem, for example, or (since this multiethnic country was and is, as Samuel Huntington observed, a country of Anglo-Protestant values) wishing people Merry Christmas in due season.
It is worth noting, by the way, that saying one should have pride in our history and confidence in our culture is not thereby to issue a plenary indulgence for past wrongdoing. The fact that people erect a statue commemorating Gen. Robert E. Lee does not in any way imply that they are racist advocates of chattel slavery, any more than erecting a statue of JFK implies that one is an advocate of satyriasis.
President Trumps policy initiativesthe judicial nominations, the regulatory astringency, the exploitation of the countrys energy resources and enforcement of our immigration laws, the revival of Americas military assets, regarding morale as well as hardwareare important, just as taxes, a rational (as distinct from an ideological) approach to the environment, and health care are important. But at the end of the day, I suspect that the underlying success of the Trump presidency will be located on a different plane. If he is successful in extending the extraordinary run of economic good newsthe stock market at 23,000, unemployment at about 4 percent, GDP flirting with 3.2 percentthen the material markers will add up to a triumph.
Such achievements are not only important, they are in some measure indispensable to a successful administration. But they are not by themselves sufficient for real success.
I believe that Donald Trump understands this, which is why his most brilliant speechesbefore a joint session of Congress, at Warsaw, at the UN, and just a week ago at the Values Voter Summitare speeches that dilate on civilizational themes. At Warsaw it was the importance of defending Western civilization; at the UN it was the importance of national sovereignty; last week it was the value of safeguarding our Judeo-Christian inheritance. (Aside to the reader: can you imagine Barack Obama speaking in warm terms of our Judeo-Christian values?) And last night it was the link between forward-looking cultural confidence and an affirmation of our glorious if imperfect past.
As Chief of Staff John Kelly said at his press conference last week, Trumps agenda is whats good for America, period, full stop. Donald Trump is a forthright and voluble American patriot of the same stripe as Ronald Reagan. That is one of the reasons (not the only reason) he is so despised by the America-hating Left.
What interests me more, however, is the persistent contempt in which Donald Trump is held by some aspects of the America-loving Right. To take just one paradigmatic example: my friend Bill Kristol, energetic political commentator and founder of The Weekly Standard, is not (litotes alert) a supporter of Donald Trump. In a recent tweet, Bill had this to say:
I like Gorsuch, decertifying Iran and leaving UNESCO. But they're not worth the degradation of our public life that is the Trump presidency.
Heres my question: in what does the alleged degradation consist? That Donald Trump tweets?
That cant be right, since Bill himself avails himself of that demotic medium. That he does not speak like a Harvard graduate? That may be part of it, but Bill knows as well as I do that the end of rhetoric is persuasion, and no one can deny Trumps masterly powers of persuasion. Donald Trump may be an imperfect vessel for our national hopes, but then of whom may that not be said? In the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on national television we have someone admitting to being a sexual assaulter in the Oval Office. I am pretty sure she was not talking about her husband. No, she was talking about Donald Trump. But what can that mean? As far as we know, Donald Trump (unlike Bill Clinton) is not guilty of sexual assault. Certainly, he has never said he was. Yes, there was that crude Access Hollywood videoa video, remember, that captured a private conversation between two bragging men more than a decade ago. But how many crude locker-room expostulations equal one Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office?
I think the statute of limitation has been reached on that leaked video. Indeed, I think the most disgusting thing about it was the secret taping and malice-directed release of the video. Trumps language was crude: no argument there. But how do we calculate the crudity and malevolence of those who made the tape and then released it in the hope that it would destroy a political rival?
Besides, its my sense that Donald Trump is not now the chap he was when Graydon Carter made his nasty quips about him in the 1980s or even when Trump was palling around with Billy Bush in 2005.
That is no surprise. The history of the world is full of redemption and conversion stories, from Saul of Tarsus to Henry V and beyond. Quoth the King at the end of Henry IV Part 2:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,That I have turn'd away my former self.
The proof of the pudding, they say, is in the eating. It seems to me that in just nine months Donald Trump has given us a lot of savory tidbits to chew on. Some people might object to the style. But how about the substance? In any event, it seems ungracious, not to say short-sighted, to withhold any possibility of reformation from a man just because he had the temerity to win an election without the permission of the would-be governing class.
Perhaps an even more pertinent question might be, "But how do we calculate the crudity and malevolence of those who" published a private conversation, and then made it broadly available and repeated over and over again, thus polluting the minds of children and youth who heard it?
My new tag line!
Long before I had the right to vote, I was aware of US politics jumping off the rails. (thank you, pops) I voted for Reagan (first term) when I cast my first Presidential ballot.
The knowledge of the swamp I have learned since then has totally convinced me Reagan was a GREAT leader of the USA with a patriotism and vision - I see many similar attributes in President Trump that I intuitively sensed in Reagan ca. 1980...
MAGA!
And he respects patriotic ideologues and listens to them for advice.
Bump!
Amen...Makes a great tag line.
So far, he’s much better than Reagan. Hopefully, the Administration and enough Republicans in Congress will follow through with Trump’s work and get it done.
Lets git er done, folks!
You have a very good tag line with a good message.
Further thoughts:
Hillary touts her Methodist upbringing and spiritual influence thereof as credentials for national leadership, yet publicly identified and condemned millions of her fellow citizens to be "deplorables" and "unredeemable," might one logically conclude that her Methodist "influence" disallowed her from extending that kind of forgiveness and redemption to political opponents who might fit the one described below?
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,That I have turn'd away my former self.
Read
Yep, when Hillary brings up her Methodist upbringing I kinda cringe and put it in the same category as many if not most of her self aggrandizing statements, flat out lies.
True... Trump is today’s Gipper...
True! (Can’t beat the Gospel of John!) but I do switch around sometimes. :-) I will probably go back to John 8:32 after a while...I just REALLY liked this!
Probably because I hate the way the left is trying to destroy our HISTORY.
“Probably because I hate the way the left is trying to destroy our HISTORY”.
And CULTURE. They want to erase everything “American” and leave no American identity.
Before long they will want a new flag.
Yes. that it why I think the quote is so important! :-)
Yes.
The more skeptical you are about society, the less skeptical you are of government, and vice versa.Make America Great Again means to allow American society to be as great as God intended it to be.
Note that be is a misnomer, because process is reality. What is meant is be in the process of becoming greater. We dont want quality medical care which is predicated on the status quo relation of supply and demand. We want continuous improvement, such that our grandchildrens medical care is as much better than our medical care as our medical care is better than our grandparents medical care.
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