America's Left in the Grip of Insanity

President Trump is unpopular. He's unpopular because he's boorish, crude and silly; he's unpopular because he has a unique capacity to turn winning news cycles into referenda on his use of Twitter. But the United States under President Trump hasn't seen any serious anti-liberty revanchism. In fact, under Trump, regulations have dropped precipitously; the economy continues its pattern of growth; and press freedoms have actually been strengthened. Despite popular opinion, women aren't on the verge of enslavement into Vice President Mike Pence's "Handmaid's Tale," nor are black Americans in danger of resegregation or political disenfranchisement.

Yet while Iranians protest against a regime that reportedly hangs homosexuals from cranes, members of the hard left in the United States insist that protesters against the Trump administration demonstrate bravery similar to that of Iranians risking death by an Islamist regime. Huffington Post political commentator Alex Mohajer tweeted: "The #IranianProtests, the #Resistance, and @WomensMarch are all the same. Across the world, people are fighting autocracies and oppressive regimes. @realDonaldTrump is NO DIFFERENT than the oppressive Ayatollahs in Iran." Oddly, that movement of solidarity hasn't prompted those who walked in the Women's March on Washington to say a single word in support of the Iranian protesters to this point.

This idiocy doesn't merely spring from hatred for Trump but from a deep-seated need to justify the Obama administration's feckless Iran policy. Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times reported that violence broke out in Iran after the demonstrators ignored "pleas for calm from President Hassan Rouhani" and termed Rouhani -- a tool of the mullahs -- a "moderate." Meanwhile, one CNN anchor fretted that Trump might put a "finger on the scale" against the Iranian regime. Members of the Obama administration took to Twitter to tell Trump to be quiet (Susan Rice, former national security adviser), chide Trump for failing to take in Iranian refugees (Samantha Power, former U.N. ambassador) and suggest that American policy has nothing to do with Iran's protests (Ben Rhodes, former national security adviser and architect of the Iran nuclear deal narrative). All of these administration members did nothing as President Obama watched dissidents die in the streets in 2009, and all of them actively abetted the maximization of Iran's regional power.

Herein lies the insanity of the left. Only nutcases on the right believed that Barack Obama's governance was morally equivalent to the Iranian government. In the main, conservatives thought that Obama pursued bad policies domestically and horribly immoral foreign policies. But many on the left seem to believe that Trump is merely steps removed from the ayatollahs. The ayatollahs agree, and they use that nuttery for public-relations leverage: No wonder Ayatollah Khamenei tweeted: "The U.S. gov. commits oppression inside the U.S., too. U.S. police murder black women, men, & children for no justifiable reason, and the murderers are acquitted in U.S. courts. This is their judicial system! And they slam other countries' and our country's judicial system. #BLM."

Trump isn't Khamenei. And the only recent administration to help build Iran's power is the Obama administration. Comparing the Trump administration to Iran's regime isn't just delusional; it's insulting and counterproductive. And the only people it helps are America's enemies.

The morass of humanity brainwashed into a leftist bubble continues to expand. This is how wars start. Wars end when one side is eliminated.

Crazy libs want to be crazy and feel empty inside without their twisted beliefs. They need to feel there is purpose to life and the Trump Dossier, Global Warming, secular humanism (standing over the rotting corpse of Christianity), and moderate islam fill that void.

Libs spend a lot of time online signing pointless petitions. They get warm fuzzies about their intellectual and moral superiority and reinforce their beliefs about social progress every time they donate dollars to an online cause, sign a pointless online petition, share a progressive story on facebook or watch PBS.

The cancer of liberal dogmas was excerbated by 8 years of G.W. Bush encouragement. Allowing the left to spin themselves into a hysterical tizzy by keeping silent was a crime against the US and the future of humanity. GWB should be prosecuted or at least be wearing a GPS ankle bracelet. The Bush clan, the criminal clinton empire and the obamanistas see no harm in having a real civil war - afterall - they are rich and wont die first - if at all.

SHAPIRO: I Will Never Vote For Donald Trump. Here’s Why.

will never vote for Donald Trump.

Ever.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because I stand with certain principles. I stand with small government and free markets and religious freedom and personal responsibility. Donald Trump stands against all of these things. He stands for Planned Parenthood and trade restrictions and targeting of political enemies and an anti-morality foreign policy and government domination of religion and nastiness toward women and tacit appeals to racism and unbounded personal power. I stand with the Constitution of the United States, and its embedded protection of my God-given rights through governmental checks and balances. Donald Trump does not. I stand with conservatism. Donald Trump stands against it.

I stand with #NeverTrump.

The counterargument to the #NeverTrump movement comes down to two words: Hillary Clinton. Trump will supposedly close the borders (a lie); Hillary will not. Trump will appoint conservative Supreme Court justices (unlikely); Hillary will not. No matter how bad Trump is, the argument goes, conservatives have a duty to back the anti-Hillary.

I think Trump will get blown out in a general election. But let’s assume that these critics of #NeverTrump are right. Let’s assume that but for we #NeverTrump voters sitting out the election, Trump would become president, and Hillary would go down in flaming defeat. And let’s assume that Hillary Clinton will appoint terrible justices, destroy the military, and usher in the apocalypse. Why in the world would conservatives live with President Hillary Clinton on their consciences?

Because first, it’s not on our consciences. It’s on the consciences of the people who went along with this nomination. We did not select Trump. We will not vote for him.

And if we are going to save the country, it will not rest on one or two justices on the Supreme Court. It will rest on the will of the people to resist tyranny. That will start at the state and local level. It will start with the people.

It will start with conservatives willing to say “no.”

Because if we never say “no,” we will never have the opportunity to say “yes.”

We must have a conservative party. The Republican Party is not that party, and has not been for a very long time. The Obama administration has brought about a unique moment – a transformational choice for the Party. Will they abandon all conservative principle in pursuit of victory, or will they turn back to the conservatism they supposedly espouse? This entire election cycle, the answer has been the former. In fact, for virtually my entire life, the answer has been the former. Establishment Republicans abandoned Reaganism for Bushism, and then abandoned Bushism for McCainism, and then abandoned McCainism for Romneyism. Until the last five minutes, they were ready to embrace Trump himself rather getting behind Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Now they call for conservatives to swallow hard and unify behind a man who opposes all conservative principles – to save conservatism!

In every election cycle, the establishment insists that we unify behind a candidate who does not reflect conservatism because elections are always a choice between the two worst options. They blackmail conservatives into supporting candidates who undermine the message and morality of our mission. Now Trump does the same. The establishment created the Donald Trump phenomenon with their “best of two bad options” logic, and now Trump is using that logic to destroy conservatism openly. The establishment doesn’t object to Trumpism. They only object to Trump. Strip the drunken boor antics from Trump, and you’ve got John McCain who will lie transparently to pander to the populist wing.

We don’t have to be complicit. As Ben Domenech is fond of citing, Alexander Hamilton once wrote, “If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.” Let us not be our own enemies.

Now is the time to say no.

“No” is a useful tool. If conservatives don’t say “no” to Nelson Rockefeller in 1964, there is no Ronald Reagan. If conservatives don’t say “no” to Gerald Ford in 1976 and George H.W. Bush in 1980, there is no Ronald Reagan. And if we don’t say “no” to Donald Trump now, we will continue drifting ever further left, diluting conservatism into the vacillating, demagogic absurdity of Trumpism. Conservatism will become the crypto-racist, pseudo-strong, quasi-tyrannical, toxic brew leftists have always accused it of being.

And we will have been complicit in that.

I will not be complicit in that. I stand against the establishment that sowed the seeds of Trumpism. I stand against the Republican Party that insists that victory matters more than principle, because victory without principle isn’t just meaningless, it’s counterproductive to my belief system.

#NeverTrump.

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