Posted on 03/09/2016 11:53:07 AM PST by Kaslin
Donald Trump's candidacy is scary.
Trump isn't frightening because he's anything special personally. He's just a warmed-over mash-up of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot, a spoiled brat billionaire eccentric with a history of position flipping and bullying foolishness. He has authoritarian tendencies on a personal level, and no awareness of the Constitution or its importance. In other words, he's Barack Obama if Obama weren't ideologically driven and suddenly experienced a precipitous drop in IQ.
So what's so scary about Trump?
First, the idolatry of a certain segment of his following. Trump has drawn some of the worst elements of American life to his campaign. To be sure, most of his supporters are decent Americans who find his approach to politics a revelation: He's an outsider, someone who will "get things done." Some of his followers identify with his hard-line position on illegal immigration and his dislike of free trade, even though Trump could flip those positions in a heartbeat if he felt the political necessity to do so.
But some of Trump's supporters go beyond that. Some are driven by the pure worship of the strong man. Like Obama's cultish support base, some Trump supporters are willing to follow him anywhere, to justify any misbehavior, to view any opposition to Trump as a sort of irreligious disloyalty. When Trump asked voters to hold up their right arms and pledge their allegiance to him, media mocked him as a Hitlerian figure. He's no Hitler -- he's not nearly as smart, as ideologically consistent, or as dangerous. He's a barroom prince. Instead, we should be concerned with the increasing tendency of Americans, both left and right, to hero-worship politicians to the point of blindness.
Which leads to the second reason Trump should concern conservatives: his appeal to nasty causes. Trump desperately wants popularity. He gauges his success by the size of his crowds, his success in the polls, and the compliments he receives in the press. He'll talk up Russian dictator thug Vladimir Putin so long as Putin calls him "brilliant." And he'll go easy on former KKK leader David Duke if Duke endorses him. Trump's lack of moral principle makes him an easy mark for some of the worst people on the planet. Combine the fact that he is drawn to those who would manipulate him with the fact that he has a worshipful crowd following him, and it's not difficult to see how the Trump movement ends in tragedy.
Finally, conservatives should oppose Trump full-throatedly because he's perverting conservatism. Even as he cultivates idolatry and massages white supremacists and global tyrants, Trump proclaims that he's a conservative. Many of us who have spent a lifetime fighting against the false notion that conservatism is a toxic brew of secret racism and fascism; Trump's rise provides easy fodder for the opposition. And his followers refuse to acknowledge that Trump has little to do with conservatism. Instead, they allow him to use the mantle of Lincoln and Reagan and the founders to shield his own egocentric rise from criticism.
Trump's no conservative -- he's a leftist at heart, a man convinced of his own power, a man willing to abandon all principle to serve himself and his allies. His followers think they're his allies, but that only lasts so long as they follow him. Yes, conservatives should fear Trump's rise. And they should resist it however and wherever possible.
Bullseye.
“conservatives should oppose Trump full-throatedly because he’s perverting conservatism.”
The problem is that Conservatism does not work for conservatives. It works for the Chamber of commerce but not for anyone else.
Wharton School of Business is no chop liver, among the top 7 according to Forbes rankings of Top Business Schools in U.S only trailing Stanford, Havard, Northwestern (Kellog), Columbia, Dartmouth and Univ. of Chicago.
So we are debating the difference between Harvard Law and the Wharton School at Penn, statistically, both in the top 1% of the curve (99th percentile) so both Shapiro and Trump have impressive academic credentials, and think objectively fans of both should recognize that in the other.
Three Reasons ESTABLISHMENTARIAN ELITISTS Should Fear The Trump Phenomenon.
Fixed it for you, Ben.
Trump transferred into Penn. He wasn’t admitted as a freshman. Plus, elite university admissions weren’t nearly as competitive in the 1960s as they are now.
Never.
Unlike the #NeverTrump Purity choir we don’t have enemies lists and pronounce anathema on everyone who does not worship at our poltical shrine.
Didn’t Cheney tell someone coming out of a meeting to go ‘F themself’? Seems like I remember that one...
IQ doesn’t mean squat. I know plenty of stupid smart people.
And most of them work in Government jobs.
Many of us who have spent a lifetime fighting against the false notion that conservatism is a toxic brew of secret racism and fascism; Trump’s rise provides easy fodder for the opposition.
- - - - - -
Let’s look a young Ben’s “lifetime”:
Ben Shapiro · Age 32 years old - Born Jan 15, 1984
So what was Donald Trump doing while Ben was being a little baby”
Trump promoted Penn Central’s 30th Street rail yard as a site for New York City’s planned Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Trump estimated his company could have completed the project for $110 million, but, while the city chose his site, it rejected his offer and Trump received a broker’s fee on the sale of the property instead. Repairs on the Wollman Rink in Central Park, built in 1955, were started in 1980 with an expected 2 1/2-year construction schedule, but were not completed by 1986. Trump took over the management of the project without the city needing to pay anything, and completed it in three months for $1.95 million, which was $750,000 less than the initial budget.
In 1988, Trump acquired the Taj Mahal Casino in a transaction with Merv Griffin and Resorts International,[50] which led to mounting debt, and by 1989, Trump was unable to meet loan payments. Although he secured additional loans and postponed interest payments, increasing debt brought Trump to business bankruptcy by 1991. Banks and bondholders had lost hundreds of millions of dollars but opted to restructure the debt. The Taj Mahal emerged from bankruptcy on October 5, 1991, with Trump ceding 50 percent ownership in the casino to the original bondholders in exchange for lowered interest rates on the debt and more time to pay it off. He also sold his financially challenged Trump Shuttle airline and his 282-foot megayacht, the Trump Princess. The late 1990s saw a resurgence in Trump’s financial situation. The will of Trump’s father, who died in 1999, divided an estate estimated at $250–300 million equally among his four surviving children.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
Ben Shapiro is incredibly intelligent. I disagree with him on the dangers of Trump. The biggest danger is that he will be too much of a deal maker. No different than Bush or the Republicans who dealt away every position to Obama & Reid.
That being said, Shapiro is several orders of magnitude more intelligent than Trump.
The Magic of Donald Trump by Ben Shapiro.
http://cnsnews.com/blog/ben-shapiro/magic-donald-trump
I see Shapiro has thrown his hat into the ring for playing the role of Joseph Goebbels. The field is getting crowded, with Kristol, Godberg, Podhoretz, Krauthammer, Diamond, Brooks, Milbank, Goldstein, etc etc.
*rme* He has to write for them first before they can run him off
Well, that is all relative. PENN was not a JUCO back in the late 60’s/early 70’s either. My guess is it was at that time, a top business school then as well.
Wow. As has been said already, the true colors of so-called conservative champions are revealed more and more each day.
I used to enjoy Ben’s columns. But he’s just outed himself NR-style as someone who wants the uni-party to continue at all costs.
It’s almost as if his livelihood depends upon it...
And the admissions officer who interviewed Trump was a classmate of Trump’s older brother.
Let us know when Shapiro is successful enough to run for President.
With his own money.
Money is the measure of a man? Hou must really love Soros because he’s woth many times what Trump is.
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