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4 • Thursday, May 5, 2016
Corinth, Miss.
Whom to blame for the rise of Trump? Cal Thomas Columnist
Dr. Frankenstein created the monster that bore his name and if Dr. Jekyll had not conducted those experiments in his laboratory, Mr. Hyde would never have emerged to terrorize London. In literature, we know whom to blame for the monsters, but who is to blame for the rise of Donald Trump? Is he the “monster” the elites say
he is? I am no fan of Trump and wish there were better candidates for president from both parties, but the major fault for his rise as the “presumptive nominee” of the Republican Party in 2016 can be laid at the feet of the very elites who are so vociferous in their condemnation of him. It is they who have presided over the horrific national debt, spending as if there were no tomorrow. They are not good stewards of the money we make and they take. It is the elites who have started wars we should not have fought and then not fought them to win with too many “rules of engagement” that only guarantee stalemate, or victory for the other side. They are the ones who over-regulate even small businesses, stifling their growth and preventing the creation of new ones. They so penalize initiative that if today’s OSHA regulations had been applied to Wilbur and Orville Wright the two visionaries would never have emerged from their Ohio bicycle shop, much less flown for the first time at Kitty Hawk, N.C. The career politicians, the lobbyists, the lawyers, the self-serving institution that government has become (instead of the constitutionally limited, people-serving institution it was originally created to be) have fueled the rise of Donald Trump. It doesn’t help their position now that these elites appear at least as arrogant as Trump in their denunciations of him while refusing to accept responsibility for what they have failed to dismantle. As Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has noted, Trump projects love for America and increasing numbers of voters, who also love America, are captivated by his love song, even if he sings it off key. Many of those voices that have warned of dire consequences should Trump become president have enabled big government. Republican politicians, afraid of their own shadow, the media and the Democrats, have done little to reverse any of this. When former House Speaker John Boehner refers to Sen. Ted Cruz as “Lucifer,” it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. What did Boehner do as speaker, other than cut deals with Sens. Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy and kiss former Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the cheek as she handed him the gavel? She must have instinctively known that Boehner wasn’t going to rock the boat and would do little damage to the Democratic agenda until the day that party would return to the majority and members resume their former ways. Voters gave Republicans a majority in both houses of Congress and they did almost nothing with it. It is why Boehner was ousted by conservative members of his own party. Don’t you have a right to be angry if you love America, if you served in the military or have relatives who did, as I have and did? The anger is bipartisan, as the popularity of the socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) attests. This lyric from the British punk rock group Dead Swans might help explain the country’s mood: “You’re lying to yourself, just like you always have, the words you said never meant a thing, I could see it from the start, you just want attention, absent friends and enemies are all that’s left in your life, every day is like a knife cutting through your chest, constant frustration, you choked on the best years of your life, no love, no hate, no hope, all lies.” (Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.)
Prayer for today Almighty God, I bless thee for the privilege of a great life. May I not be satisfied to rest with idle hands in youth and make age regretful because I have lived a useless life: but with a clear eye and an exalted mind may I choose the “durable satisfactions” that may be mine. Amen.
A verse to share “There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.” –1 Samuel 2:2
What is economic power? One of the problems with being a pessimist is that you can never celebrate when you are proven right. If what you want from politicians are quick and easy answers, someone is sure to supply them, regardless of which party you follow. History can tell you where quick and easy answers lead. But, if you don’t want to bother reading history, you can just wait and relive its catastrophes. What is “economic power”? What can Bill Gates stop you from doing? I don’t understand how people who cannot predict the weather five days in advance can predict the climate decades from now. One of history’s painful ironies is how often people on the brink of disaster have been preoccupied with trivialities. With a nuclear Iran with intercontinental missiles looming on the horizon, our intelligentsia are preoccupied with calling achievements “privilege” and playing other word games. Some people seem to think that Donald Trump has great abilities because he is a billionaire. But being born rich and getter richer is not exactly a Horatio Alger miracle.
Of all the disheartening signs of the utter ignorance of so many A m e r i Thomas can college Sowell s t u d e n t s , nothing so Columnist completely disheartened me as seeing on television a black college student who did not know what the Civil War was about. Fifty years ago, it would have been virtually impossible to find a black adult, with even an elementary school education, who did not know what the Civil War was about. One of the most richly rewarded skills in politics is the ability to make selfinterest sound like idealism. Nowhere is this tactic more successful than in so-called “campaign finance reform” laws – spending restrictions that prevent challenger candidates from buying enough publicity to offset the free publicity that incumbents get from the media. At one time, it seemed as if the free world had defeated the world of totalitarian dictatorships twice – first the Nazis and then the Communists. But, with the slow but
steady expansion of government control over our lives and the spread of the idea that people who deny “climate change” should be punished as criminals, it seems as if totalitarianism may be winning, after all. People who want to redistribute wealth often misunderstand the nature and causes of wealth. Tangible wealth can be confiscated, but you cannot confiscate the knowledge which produced that wealth. Countries that confiscated the wealth of some groups and expelled them, destitute, have often seen the economy collapse, while the expelled people became prosperous again elsewhere. Some people think that Ted Cruz would not have as good a chance against Hillary Clinton as would Donald Trump. They say that Cruz does not have a sparkling style of speaking. But, after months of hearing childish insults from Trump, the public may be ready for some serious adult talk by someone with substance, who can cut right through Hillary’s shallow evasions. To me, beautiful music is whatever music makes you glad to be a human being, whether it is “Musetta’s
Waltz” from “La Boheme” or “Muskrat Ramble” from New Orleans. Much of what passes for music today makes me wish that, if there is such a thing as reincarnation, I can come back as a dolphin. Republican leaders seem to be worried that Donald Trump will get the nomination and lose the election. Those of us who are not Republicans should worry that Trump will get the nomination and win the election. After all, the fate of the country is a lot more important than the fate of a political party – and in far greater danger. As this country continues to degenerate, we hope that it never reaches the desperate stage where only a military coup can rescue it from catastrophes created by feckless politicians. But, if that day ever arrives, we can only hope that the military will do their duty and step in. It is one of the few institutions dedicated to something besides individual self-interest. (Daily Corinthian columnist Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.)
Why Russia resents us Friday, a Russian SU-27 did a barrel roll over a U.S. RC-135 over the Baltic, the second time in two weeks. Also in April, the U.S. destroyer Donald Cook, off Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, was twice buzzed by Russian planes. Vladimir Putin’s message: Keep your spy planes and ships a respectable distance away from us. Apparently, we have not received it. Friday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced that 4,000 NATO troops, including two U.S. battalions, will be moved into Poland and the Baltic States, right on Russia’s border. “The Russians have been doing a lot of snap exercises right up against the border with a lot of troops,” says Work, who calls this “extraordinarily provocative behavior.” But how are Russian troops deploying inside Russia “provocative,” while U.S. troops on Russia’s front porch are not? And before we ride this escalator up to a clash, we had best check our hole card. Germany is to provide one of four battalions to be sent to the Baltic. But a Bertelsmann Foundation poll last week found
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that only 31 percent of Germans favor sending their troops to resist a Russian Pat move in the Buchanan Baltic States or Poland, Columnist while 57 percent oppose it, though the NATO treaty requires it. Last year, a Pew poll found majorities in Italy and France also oppose military action against Russia if she moves into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia or Poland. If it comes to war in the Baltic, our European allies prefer that we Americans fight it. Asked on his retirement as Army chief of staff what was the greatest strategic threat to the United States, Gen. Ray Odierno echoed Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, “I believe that Russia is.” He mentioned threats to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Yet, when Gen. Odierno entered the service, all four were part of the Soviet Union, and no Cold War president ever thought any was worth a war. Putin may top the enemies list of the Beltway, but we should try to see the world
from his point of view. When Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986, Putin was in his mid-30s, and the Soviet Empire stretched from the Elbe to the Bering Strait and from the Arctic to Afghanistan. Russians were all over Africa and had penetrated the Caribbean and Central America. The Soviet Union was a global superpower that had attained strategic parity with the United States. Now consider how the world has changed for Putin, and Russia. By the time he turned 40, the Red Army had begun its Napoleonic retreat from Europe and his country had splintered into 15 nations. By the time he came to power, the USSR had lost one-third of its territory and half its population. The Black Sea, once a Soviet lake, now had on its north shore a pro-Western Ukraine, on its eastern shore a hostile Georgia, and on its western shore two former Warsaw Pact allies, Bulgaria and Romania, being taken into NATO. Putin has seen NATO, despite solemn U.S. assurances given to Gorbachev, incorporate all of Eastern Europe that Russia had vacated, and
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three former republics of the USSR itself. He now hears a clamor from American hawks to bring three more former Soviet republics – Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine – into a NATO alliance directed against Russia. After persuading Kiev to join a Moscow-led economic union, Putin saw Ukraine’s pro-Russian government overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup. He has seen U.S.-funded “color-coded” revolutions try to dump over friendly regimes all across his “near abroad.” We are reaping the understandable rage and resentment of the Russian people over how we exploited Moscow’s retreat from empire. Did we not ourselves slap aside the hand of Russian friendship, when proffered, when we chose to embrace our “unipolar moment,” to play the “great game” of empire and seek “benevolent global hegemony”? If there is a second Cold War, did Russia really start it? (Daily Corinthian columnist Pat Buchanan is an American conservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster.)
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