Free Republic

Thursday, December 24, 2015 Trump, Dictatorship and Competing With An Illiberal Left Posted by Daniel Greenfield A number of editorials have appeared in center-right outlets accusing Trump supporters of wanting a dictator. Well obviously. Politics is a competition. Everyone wants to win the game based on the rules of the game. And the current rules of the game are not Constitutional. The left wanted a dictator. Obama gave them one. He implemented laws, started wars and took on powers which were not only beyond his authority, but which were opposed by the majority of Americans and elected legislators in Congress....

The incoming hope-and-change Obama administration advanced the narrative that at home and abroad it cared far more for people than profits. Its “reset” diplomacy (all in the past “bad,” all in the future “good”) was supposed to be about multilateral consensus instead of Bush-era unilateral hubris. But after almost 30 months, it is now clear that in our dealings abroad values like human rights, constitutional government, free-market liberal economics, and transparency do not matter much to the Obama administration. In all the acrimony over the Israeli-Palestinian open sore — forget disputed lands, past history, even the matter of an ally...

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) member-states at the Durban II gathering in Geneva is pushing for "a new world order" that would expand and impose "nondemocratic and illiberal values on the West," says the Danish editor who in 2005 commissioned and published a series of cartoons, one of which depicted the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban that led to worldwide Muslim rioting.... Flemming Rose, editor of Jyllands-Posten, Denmark's largest-circulation newspaper, is visiting Israel under the auspices of the Hebrew University's Shasha Center for Strategic Studies, headed by former Mossad director Efraim Halevy. He's here to...

"The greatest irony of the post-911 world is that so many Democrats hate the Bush Doctrine. Liberation, anti-proliferation, and nation-building are activist and liberal, not defensive and conservative. The perceived immorality of our actions may weigh heavily on their souls. But it's nothing compared to what we might have to face if our goal of limited war for democracy fails. If the Middle East gets nukes before it gets freedom, it will be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to wage a war on liberal grounds. We'll be back where we were during the Cold War. The only difference is that...