[Sir Napsalot]

"Obama understandably grew confident that he could nullify or ignore existing federal law, on the assurance he was doing so on transformative grounds and thus would be largely exempt from press scrutiny. And he was largely proven right in his reliance on media collusion."

Typical VDH. Be sure to read it all.

[Sir Napsalot]

Note: Original Title (by VDH) -

Progressive & Constitution: Overreach Good for Obama, Bad for President Trump

[libstripper]

Linkee no workee.

[DrPretorius]

I don’t read VDH anymore. He jumped the shark, just like Tom Sowell did, when he went on an anti-Trump tear this year during the primaries, showing that he knew a lot about ancient Greek history but he doesn’t know shiite about what really matters, such as the fight for liberty and freedom. I won’t click on National Review to read anything they produce anymore.

[Billthedrill]

VDH is back in form in a magazine that may no longer wish to hold him, judging by its recent establishment blatherings. He still doesn't like Trump, fine, lots of people who are going to have to vote for Trump don't, because they do love their country too much to place it into the hands of the predatory, racist criminal gang that is the current Democrat party. Given that the designated Vice Presidential candidate of that gang has just blurted shamelessly that a significant portion of the American public is going to have to be made to suffer based on the color of their skin for the Greater Good, we can see very easily what too much toleration of the wilder progressive fantasies has led us to. If it's that or a little New York bluster, I'll take the bluster, thanks.

Note Beinart’s pride in his and other intellectuals’ supposed ability to “push the political system.” But, alas, by his own admission, they so far have not pushed much of anything concerning the “despair of the working-class white men” — raising the question of “why not”?

The answer is uncomfortable for self-congratulatory intellectuals: their model of oppressed classes that are signified by race is contemptibly crude and has led them very far astray. We had, in an earlier article, a reference to American farmers as "rich white males". It's that bad. And the result is that these founts of wisdom turn out to be lazy, presumptuous, and out of touch. That isn't much of a base for sound decision-making. It isn't even particularly intellectual.

There is pattern at least as old as history, and it is simply this: when the ruling class becomes a criminal class the society either purges or falls. And the longer that reckoning is suspended, the more violent and unreasonable it is likely to be. That's the real thrust of the article to which VDH is replying: that a chuckling complaisance in governmental excess is likely to turn against its fond proponents. That argues very ill for those whose hands look to slip off the levers of power, replaced by those who may like the power but don't like them. Once used it is very difficult to return those levers to their original positions, at least without breaking the entire machine first.