Tag: NeverTrump

A Short Word: Why I am NeverTrump

For the sake of posterity, here are seventeen reasons that I proudly remain #NeverTrump.

After an emotionally taxing two years, with new reasons to oppose Donald Trump’s presidency coming on an almost daily basis, it’s sometimes hard to remember why it is I personally oppose the man and everything that he stands for. For the sake of posterity, here are seventeen reasons that I proudly remain #NeverTrump.

  1. He has used the advantage of his political connections to transgress against the natural rights of people around the world.
  2. He willfully provided material support to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, among many others, even while they worked to undermine the personal liberties of his fellow Americans.
  3. He willfully misrepresented the nature and extent of the many and conspicuous failures of most of his business ventures, as well as overstated the nature and value of his “hundreds of businesses” for the sole purpose of exaggerating his net worth.
  4. He regularly says and writes things he knows to be false, about himself, about his colleagues, and, especially, about his critics.
  5. He has never openly and forcefully rejected the putrid thread of White Nationalism that infests his political base and embraces many of their nativist political agendas.
  6. He has instigated hatred and provoked violence among his supporters against both immigrants and other Americans.
  7. He has a history of vulgarity and general impropriety with women, married and otherwise, famously bragging about sexually harassing and assaulting women.
  8. He is a fantastically bad judge of character, surrounding himself with who have later been forced to resign over embarrassing scandals, including physical assault of a female reporter, undisclosed contacts with a hostile foreign power, gross vulgarity unbefitting their office, and general incompetence.
  9. He has an unseemly and inexhaustible infatuation with himself, causing him to constantly talking about himself at the least appropriate times and feeding his fundamental disrespect for the office.
  10. He has repeatedly acted with duplicity toward men and women in his service, publicly praising them, before just as publicly cowardly naming and shaming these Americans from behind his Twitter account.
  11. He has failed to deliver on core promises to the American people, such as naming China a currency  manipulator and building a wall between the US and Mexico.
  12. He has failed to release his tax returns after promising to do so repeatedly in the two years since announcing his intent to run for the office that he now holds.
  13. He abuses the power and privilege of the Office of President, using executive orders to fake achieving agenda items he has failed to negotiate with Congress.
  14. He publicly attacked institutions of our Constitutional Republic, undermining both the credibility and coequality of the Legislative and Judiciary branches.
  15. He habitually puts politics before professionalism, posturing himself as a victim of the very system of laws and justice that he is sworn to uphold.
  16. He has appointed his family and life long friends to high office in direct violation of federal anti-nepotism laws and common decency.
  17. Finally, he conspicuously and repeatedly disregards the rule of law and seeks to undermine the independence of our justice system, in direct contradiction of his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

It is the sacred duty of every man and woman who loves Liberty to stand against such an demonstrably unworthy politician. We cannot claim to deserve better when we do not reject worse.

Liberty is For The Win!

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In The Shadow of the Russian Bear

Abandoning a core tenet of western civilization is the opposite of conservatism.

Some things are abundantly clear now. First, Donald Trump lied about the contacts between his campaign staff and Russian government. Second, Donald Trump, Jr. repeatedly lied about a meeting he had with individuals with curious ties to the Russian government. Third, the entire MAGA movement position that the Russian collusion story being a fallacious story concocted by the media created for the sole purpose of discrediting the president is itself a fallacious story concocted by the president for the sole purpose of discrediting the media.

I am not going to pretend to know the details of any of these meetings, or, with any certainty, that they were necessarily dubious in intent. However, after the release of the emails by Donald Trump, Jr. of his correspondence with and the ever changing inconsistent story regarding first even the existence of the meeting, then the nature of the meaning, and even how many people attended the meaning, no rational person can continue to argue that the Trump White House is honest.

The driving force of the Make America Great Again movement was, at least allegedly, a reaction to the perceived rampant dishonesty from the Democratic administration of Barack Obama and the complicit media that, for eight years, strained the credulity of Americans by shoving one bad policy after another onto the backs of the American people while the media simply abandoned any pretense of objectivity or even reality by outright failing to report on stories that were inconsistent with the political needs of the Democratic party.

Americans were simply tired of being lied to, either openly or by simple omission.

“You lie!“
-Joe Wilson-

Then along came Donald Trump. In plain, smash mouth rhetoric, Donald Trump waded into the front, hitting back at the partisan media. He called them out on their lies, usually on issues where the media was being obviously deceitful with a clear political agenda, but also in defense of politically ridiculous assertions (such as the matter of Obama’s birth certificate) that the media rightfully pushed back against him.

Among the core principles of “western civilization” (something the MAGA set loudly and often hysterically claim to be staunch defenders of) is that of devotion to personal integrity. This devotion to integrity is, as I just demonstrated, the very reason many Americans were so angry in the first place. When Harry Reid stood on the Senate floor, abusing the privileges of speech within the rules of the Senate and the Constitution, and falsely accused Mitt Romney of tax evasion, Conservatives were outraged because his statements were lies!

When Obama promised that Americans would pay an average of $2500 less a year on premiums, that they could keep their doctors, that if they liked their plan, they could keep their plan, Conservatives were outraged, because they knew that basic economic showed that insurance companies could not offer more services to more people for less cost. When MSNBC purposefully pushed the narrative that “white racists” were threatening violence against Barack Obama, because they some were carrying guns to a protest, Conservatives were justifiably offended when it turned out that the “racist gun toting white protester”  turned out to be a Black conservative gun rights advocate.

The shameless dishonesty of these Democratic Leaders and a complicit media created the very political wave that would lead to Trump’s electoral victory.

“To the best of my knowledge no person that
I deal with [has anything to do with Russia].”
-Donald Trump-

Now that Trump is the president, however, and Republicans control Congress, the same people who once howled in outrage over the bald faced lies of their political opponents now not only tolerate exactly the same bald faced dishonesty from Donald Trump and his brood of conspirators, Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Breitbart, Info Wars (which should have no more credibility than the side show National Enquirer), they perpetuate the lies.

Even while Trump’s eldest son reveals that everyone around Trump, including high up in his campaign had regular dealings with Russian officials, the MAGA movement proves that it cares even less about the devotion to personal integrity than the radical left they oppose. Abandoning a core tenet of western civilization is the opposite of conservatism. It is a betrayal of it. None that pursue a policy based on deceit and propaganda can be counted among patriots. Not now. Not ever.

Liberty is For The Win!

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Painting the Leopard: Never Means Never

Like many conservatives in 2016 and 2017, I believed the definition of “never” was well understood and generally accepted, and when people said it, I thought I knew what they meant. I was mistaken.

“Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots?
Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”
-Jeremiah 13:23-

The problem with absolutes, such as “always“, “every“, “all“, “never“, and “none“, especially when used in philosophy or even politics, is that it takes just one counter example to blow up even the most well constructed argument. Just when you think something is absolutely true of “all” people “everywhere“, someone inevitably comes along and, merely by existing, punches a neat, irreparable hole in any political theory.

This, of course, isn’t a new idea, having been around since at least Adam Smith first observed the obvious problems with even the most benevolent of planned economies. People rarely do what planners want them to do, or even what planners think the people should do in their own best interest. Their reasons for doing (or not doing) anything at any given time are often incomprehensible to anyone but themselves, with whim, not wit, guiding their decisions.

While these observations, liberally paraphrased as they may be, are most typically used in economic arguments against the sort of top down economic structures common among mercantilist and socialist economies, they were, and remain, primarily observations of basic human nature. People may, in fact, act in a certain way, but they aren’t likely to act in that way forever or for the reasons you even expect.

All of this being said, however, there are still some things that are fundamentally and always true, and, as conservatives, these assumptions are part and parcel of our ideological framework.

“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!
Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself
in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment, be deaf to all
those motives whose powers supported him through his trial…”
-Thomas Jefferson-

The political right has often, with good reason, objected to radical redefinitions of established words, like “marriage” (which has long been culturally defined) and “gender” (which has long been scientifically defined), and resisted creation of meaningless words, like “assault rifle” (as if there is any other kind of rifle) or “transgender” (as if throwing a dress on a man makes him anything other than a man), loaded terms that provoke a debate outside the scope of this article.

Despite the right’s repeated and principled rejection of novel meanings of words, suffice to say, there is a very large segment of the political right that has taken gross liberties with the definition of a very simple word that’s meaning has, until the last year or so, been extremely well understood: “Never.” Let’s get the definition of this word absolutely clear. Simply put, “Never” means “not ever“. Less simply, it means “under no circumstance“, “at no point in time (before, during, or since)“, “absolutely not“, “to no extent or degree“, and is a direct opposite of “always“, “sometimes“, and “in certain conditions“.

My memory is very clear on this. All around me, there were men and women who stood up and declared, with full throated conviction, “I will never support Donald Trump!” The #NeverTrump hashtag was born on numerous social media platforms with the purpose of spreading and supporting this commitment to principled politics ethics. Like many conservatives in 2016 and 2017, I believed the definition of “never” was well understood and generally accepted, and when people said it, I thought I knew what they meant. I was mistaken.

“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.”
-Thomas Jefferson-

Despite whatever the moral cowards in the Republican Party or the “Make America Great Again” crowd may presently believe, no amount and no combination of election victories makes an unworthy man elevated to the presidency of the United States any less unworthy of that office. As Donald Trump has demonstrated time and time again, he is a man whose fundamental disconnect from the truth and adolescent obsession with trite and petty insult borders on the pathological.

More disturbing than Donald’s own demonstrable inability to conduct himself with any integrity at all, is his millions of accomplices across the country who defend even his most ludicrous and provably false statements. Regardless how “well intentioned” their motives may be (and that, itself, is more than a little dubious), no amount of white washing can eradicate the spots of any leopard, particularly one who insists on revealing those spots for the entire world to see practically every day on Twitter.

And shouting “Fake News” until blue in the face doesn’t repair the demonstrable abandonment of even the very simple rules of English vocabulary. If the meaning of the word “never” can be so easily abandoned, there is no ground to stand on with respect to the definitions of “marriage“, “man“, “woman“, or even “rights“. So congratulations Trump Train, merely by existing, you have punched a neat and irreparable hole in your own mind numbing circular arguments. Bravo.

As it turns out, painting a leopard still remains a time terrible idea. Always. Every time.

Liberty is For The Win.

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Pomp, Adulation, and Avarice

The Republic has been through this fire before and need not go through it again.

Not every Founding Father was always a perfect role model for Conservatives, and this is truest in the case of John Adams who was elected to the office of president in 1797 for a single term. So contentious was John Adams’s single term as president, in fact, that Alexander Hamilton, a member of John Adams’s own political party, wrote in a letter to a colleague:

“For my individual part my mind is made up. I will never more be responsible for [John Adams] by my direct support—even though the consequence should be the election of Jefferson. If we must have an enemy at the head of the Government, let it be one whom we can oppose & for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures. Under Adams as under Jefferson the government will sink.“

Keep in mind that John Adams succeeded George Washington as president of the United States by virtue of election by the Electoral College. George Washington could have run for another term and achieved it, without question, but he chose to retire from public life. John Adams, at the time the Vice President and most popular candidate, won the presidency, which brings us unfortunately to the “disgrace of his foolish and bad measures“.

After the French Revolution, the radical French government had become openly hostile to the United States, and tensions between the two newly minted Republics rose rapidly. The Federalist faction sought to provide more executive discretion in order to deal with the possible threats of French nationals living in the United States. With the power of these acts collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, John Adams almost single handedly destroyed the nascent American Republic.

John Adams shut down immigration, deported hundreds of legal immigrants, and effectively removed voting privileges for immigrants, which was, more or less, the intended purpose of the acts. He then turned the power of the Act upon to his Republican party rivals, who were critical of his administration, including members of Congress and the press. The most famous of which being Vermont Representative Matthew Lyon, a frequent and vocal critic of John Adams, who wrote that President John Adams had an “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and self avarice“.

Matthew Lyon and many others who had published similar opinions of the Adams administration were not only fined but actually imprisoned under the Sedition Act. Thomas Jefferson, then Vice President, and James Madison viewed Adams’s behavior to be utterly contrary to the character and principles of the First Amendment, and they began to quietly foment political resistance to John Adams’s administration among the states. And they were not alone, as members of John Adams’s own party turned against him, including, obviously, the very influential Alexander Hamilton.

Suffice to say, Matthew Lyon’s description of John Adams should sound more than a little familiar to anyone paying attention to the present political affairs, and much of the nature and purpose of the Alien and Sedition Acts should also sound dangerously familiar to the strident political language of one of the candidates this year. The Republic has been through this fire before and need not go through it again.

It should be obvious now why we must heed the words of Hamilton and have a president “whom we can oppose & for whom we are not responsible“, because should we survive this dark season at all, we must, at least, retain our political legitimacy. We cannot allow our political identity to be confused with this nightmarish Nationalist pseudo-ideology.

#NeverTrump

Liberty is For The Win!

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A Short Word: Why the “Middle Class Voter” is Insane

As much fun as wasting precious days of our lives pushing a repugnant, center left moderate Republican in another doomed election would be, ideological conservatives have better things to do.

There is an old adage that is used a lot in popular culture: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The constant refrain from those riding the Trump Train is “We must vote for Trump, because ideological conservatives can’t win a general election, and only Trump can beat Hillary.” When ideological conservatives object to this hilariously bargain bin argument, the Trump Train shouts back while stomping their feet, “He’s better than Hillary!“, and then they accuse us of somehow “voting for Hillary” if we don’t agree with their toddler argument.

Considering there are incarcerated felons, right now, that are “better than Hillary“, the Trump Train will have to forgive ideological conservatives if we don’t find that argument particularly compelling. Instead, let’s focus on the insanity of voting for yet another moderate Republican candidate, for the same reasons, and yet expecting a different result, because, let’s face it, voting for Trump simply because he is the GOP nominee isn’t doing anything different. It’s doing exactly the same thing we done every election for 25 years.

There have been 8 presidential election years since Ronald Reagan, the last actual conservative Republican Party candidate, was in office. Over those contests, our candidates have been George H.W. Bush (a center left moderate), Robert Dole (a center right moderate), George W. Bush (a center right moderate), John McCain (a center left moderate), Mitt Romney (a center right moderate), and now, regrettably, Donald Trump (a center left moderate).

The Republican Party has lost 4 of the last 7 presidential contests, and it looks very much like we are headed for another loss this year, for a grand total of 5 losses in 8 contests. Of the 6 Republican candidates, only 2 (Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.) have even won an election. Only 1 (George W. Bush) has won a second term. As it looks like Trump is going to lose in a landslide this year, the Republican Party will be batting 1 for 6 successful two term presidents, because the only reason George H.W. Bush was elected was Ronald Reagan.

All 6 candidates since Reagan have been “the only ones able to win in the general election” and, coincidentally, also “the only ones that could beat Michael / Bill / Al / Barrack / Hillary.“So, we’re so very glad “political geniuses” are here to tell us who can and can’t win. If you weren’t wrong between 63% and 83% of the time, we’d have a lot more confidence in your predictions for this year. As much fun as wasting precious days of our lives pushing a repugnant, center left moderate Republican in another doomed election would be, we ideological conservatives have better things to do.

Such as doing something we haven’t done before (or at least in 160 years), like founding a new conservative political party that actually represents our values, for instance. That would be doing something completely different and allows us to expect a different result.

Be Brave. Be Free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW

A Short Word: Why NeverTrump?

The result of such a decision is as functionally irrelevant as the choice between being shot in the left temple as opposed to in the right temple.

In a recent interview on Louder with Crowder, Steven Crowder and David Limbaugh discussed the political ramifications of the #NeverTrump movement. Understand, both have taken reasonable and principled positions on the issue and made some great points worth responding to during a information rich interview (strongly recommend watching it). The goal here is to respond to the overall argument, as well as dealing with the two strongest arguments presented for #NeverTrump voters to break ranks and vote for Donald Trump in November.

Dr. Limbaugh hit all the key concerns that ideological conservatives in the #NeverTrump movement have about Donald, that he’s not conservative, that he’s not credibly anti-Establishment, that he and his supporters are offensive to the point of being pathological. All of those reasons, as Steven and David both openly admitted, were credible reasons to not support Donald’s candidacy. So let’s leave these points as mutually given.

It’s early in the discussion when Dr. Limbaugh posits the single strongest argument for voting for Donald, which is that a Clinton presidency would unquestionably be a disaster, and not voting only helps Hillary’s campaign. Unequivocally, ideological conservatives in the #NeverTrump camp whole-heartedly agree on this point in principle. Unfortunately, the simple fact that this is literally the strongest argument to vote for Donald undermines the entire argument.

If the strongest reason for voting for someone is that their opposition is somehow objectively worse, baked into such an argument is the supposition that the option being presented, in this case voting for Trump, is also objectively bad, otherwise another stronger argument would be presented. Such a “lesser of two evils” argument is already extremely tenuous when applied to propping up a semi-friendly fascist regime over an openly hostile socialist dictatorship in some third world country. The argument becomes totally untenable when applied to American politics for reasons we’ll discuss later.

When the difference between terrible option A, a pathological liar Democrat, and horrible option B, a pathological liar Republican, is a matter of labeling, not logic, what we’re really arguing about is which option we fear less. The result of such a decision is as functionally irrelevant as the choice between being shot in the left temple as opposed to in the right temple. The rational answer to the second proposition is the same as it is for the first: “Neither.“

Later, Steven brought up a really interesting point that, as Christians, he believes that we must leave room for Donald to credibly “come to Jesus“. To support the supposition that certain gestures by Donald could represent a political shift toward conservatism, Steven brought up the list of Supreme Court nominees that the Trump campaign released in mid May.

Even Ben Shapiro noted in previous discussions with Steven Crowder (seriously, watch his show, if you don’t have fun watching his show, the problem is you), Donald not only demonstrated a total lack of familiarity with the list, indicating he had nothing to do with putting it together, he even admitted that he considered the list to be only “a guide to nominate” SCOTUS justices, not necessarily a campaign promise. As Ben Shapiro aptly put it, “I don’t think he’s telling the truth.“

That aside, there are two major problems with this “come to Jesus” argument. The first is, as was already mentioned, Donald is simply not credible, so no statement he makes can nor should be taken as any indication that he means anything by the statement at that time. As a Scottish farmer who Donald Trump infamously tried to force from his own land so Trump could build a golf course, Michael Forbes, said, “Trump’s a compulsive liar. If he was to tell the truth, it would kill him.“

The second counterargument of the “come to Jesus” argument is that the Christian forgiveness is a personal action. If Donald lies about and abuses a Christian, that individual has a Christian duty to find the faith to forgive Donald for his lies and abuse. There is, however, no Christian principle or duty upon the individual to further subject themselves to Donald’s subsequent lies and abuse.

In fact, there is a very good Christian argument to be made that a Christian duty exists to protect society from exactly such a dishonest and abusive person, even if he is supposed to be indistinguishably better than a political alternative. We certainly do not have an obligation to allow such an individual to become the president of the United States in our name, where his many obvious and documented character flaws can harm more Americans.

Now, to a broader point. If we are truly at the point where the argument for voting for one candidate over another is which one will least rapaciously violate our constitutional rights, which necessarily implies they will both utterly fail their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution and the Natural Law underpinning it, then we have reached an impasse beyond which no ideological conservative can in good conscience go.

As has been discussed in an earlier article, the only duty that is imposed upon individuals in any of the founding documents is “to alter and abolish” any government that has become despotic (Declaration of Independence). If that’s the case with both Donald and Hillary, then We the People have a real duty to reject both of them outright. If the principled ideology of the Declaration of Independence still applies, then principled conservatives “must throw off such Government” and then “provide new Guards for their future security.“

This is something Steven and Ben Shapiro discussed briefly, and that’s where many of us in the #NeverTrump movement are. By the principles of Natural Law, we, as citizens, have no obligation to allow the government to abscond with our rights because “the two major political parties say so“. The political parties have no grounding in the Constitution or Natural Law, and if they both fail to provide viable candidates in regard to constitutional principles, then per the terms of those same constitutional principles, they are disqualified.

We are under no obligation to recognize the legitimacy of a government under either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump any more than both Thomas Jefferson or James Madison were obligated to recognize the legitimacy of the British crown. It is almost entirely certain that we have not yet reached the point of the necessity of a violent insurrection, but we are certainly to the point of the necessity of political resistance against a lawless political system.

This is clearly not the position of the entire #NeverTrump movement, nor is it even the position of David Limbaugh, Steven Crowder, or even the ideological conservatives within the #NeverTrump movement, but it is the position of Liberty is For The Win.

Please follow both David Limbaugh (@DavidLimbaugh) and Steven Crowder (@scrowder) on Twitter.

#VoteForLiberty

Cruz-bebravebefree

Be Brave. Be Free.

Liberty is For The Win!

We just checked, and it turns out that fighting for Liberty isn’t free, because it requires time and energy to research, prepare, and propagate this message for you. Please drop just a dollar a month into the proverbial tip jar and become a Patriot Patron. Of course, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Keep this fight for Liberty going! – @LibertyIsFTW