The Canadian Red Ensign

The Canadian Red Ensign

Monday, December 14, 2015

"The Donald" Trumps Political Correctness

The results of our own federal election this year, in which the contemptible little empty headed pretty boy who is the son of our worst ever Prime Minister and who is better suited for a career in Hollywood or in the popular music recording industry than for running Her Majesty’s government in Ottawa, wrangled a majority of seats in the House of Commons out of a duped and gullible electorate, are so depressing that we must look outside our borders to see if there is anything going on in the rest of the world from which we can derive comfort. Mercifully, we don’t need to look very far. South of our border, in the American republic, a campaign is underway that is sufficient to bring the warmth of hope to any heart left cold by the return of the winter of Trudeaumania to our fair Dominion. I am referring to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump.



As a conservative in the original sense of the term, i.e., a royalist and a Christian traditionalist, I don’t, of course, approve of republics and presidential elections. I agree with all my heart and soul with Anthony Burgess who said “with a limited monarchy you have no president, and a president is one more corruptible element in government” whereas “a constitutional monarch is at least out of politics and can’t get dirty or corrupt.” If, like our southern neighbours, you are unfortunate enough to have a republic, you must try and find someone for the office of president who is unlikely to be corrupted.



If, ten, or even five years ago, you would have suggested to me that Donald Trump was that person, I would have assumed that you had been smoking some noxious, brain rotting, substance like cannabis and advised you to switch to good old wholesome tobacco. After all, this is Donald Trump of all people, the thrice married billionaire, who, having obtained money and fame in his first two incarnations as a real estate developer and a celebrity “reality” television host, has now set his sights on power, the fourth of the great corrupting temptations. Is he not the very embodiment of corruption?



Well, no, actually. There are influences out there which, although seldom recognized as such, are far more corrupting than sex, money, fame, and power. Among these, youth and strongly held ideals, stand out, neither of which is likely to have much sway over a man like Donald Trump. Furthermore, as we have seen in this very interesting campaign so far, Trump appears to be the first political hopeful in a very long time to be completely beyond the reach of the progressive narrative, the enforcement of which as orthodoxy, we call political correctness.



This is why the importance of the Trump candidacy extends far beyond the question of who becomes the next president of the United States of America. Donald Trump has been saying things that for a very long time we have all been told that nobody could say publicly without sinking his political career. So far, however, his political career has remained afloat. Moreover, he has come under heavy attack by the major media networks, by the Democrat party and by the leadership of his own Republican party, but none of these have succeeded in derailing him. His popularity continues to soar, not in spite of the things he has been saying, but because of them.



I am not suggesting that because what Donald Trump has been saying is popular it is therefore also right. Truth and justice are not matters that are decided by majority vote and, indeed, it is quite apparent that under ordinary circumstances, the majority is more likely to be wrong than right. In this case, however, the fact that statements by Trump which have shocked and appalled those whom the late Auberon Waugh called the chattering classes, have been well received by large numbers of ordinary Americans, is not due to the ignorance of the masses, real as that phenomenon is. Trump has been speaking on issues such as immigration which have a strong impact on the everyday lives of ordinary people and about which they can therefore be expected to be well informed. Furthermore, most of what he has been saying about these issues is self-evidently true.



For a long time now the United States has had a problem with mass illegal immigration across its southern border. Donald Trump has been accused of demagoguery for his populist rhetoric on this matter, but that mass migration poses an existential threat to the United States, even such a critic of populism as historian John Lukacs would agree with. Almost twenty years ago he wrote:



Two hundred years later the United States faces the danger of an enormous and uncontrolled flood of people coming largely from the south. It is not only that among these masses the earlier distinction between the purposes of a more-or-less orderly and lawful immigration and those of a more-or-less disorderly and unlawful migration are being washed away; but also that these dangers include a radical change in the composition of the American people as well as the meaning of civilized and traditional citizenship, together with a drastic weakening of the sovereignty and actual autonomy of the United States.



Lukacs concluded the essay from which I just quoted by suggesting that migration – not just illegal immigration – from the Third World posed a greater long term threat to the United States than the USSR and nuclear weapons.



The progressive leadership of the Democrats and the neoconservative leadership of the Republicans, to the extent that they acknowledge a problem here at all, insist that it is only illegal immigration that is a problem and that the solution to this problem is amnesty. One does not have to have a Ph.D. to realize that to offer amnesty to illegal aliens within your country’s borders, without first sealing those borders, is to increase the problem by inviting further illegal immigration in the future. It is also quite obvious that a country that gives up control of its borders will not remain a country for very long. Donald Trump’s proposed solution to the problem of illegal immigration – deporting the illegal aliens already in the United States and building a wall on the border over which they are sneaking – unlike amnesty, would actually deal with the problem rather than make it worse.



The same can be said for Trump’s proposed response to the early December mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. The shooting was an act of jihad and Trump called for a complete moratorium on Muslim entry into the United States until American representatives “can figure out what is going on.” The left, of course, and I include the neoconservatives in that, have been treating this proposal as if it were a greater atrocity than the actual shooting. You might recall, however, the old anecdote about the insane asylum that tested patients who claimed to have recovered their sanity, by putting them in a room with an overflowing bathtub, handing them a mop, and seeing if they had enough marbles to turn off the tap before mopping up. Donald Trump would appear to be the only American presidential candidate who would pass that test. The San Bernardino shooting is one of a long string of such attacks that took place around the world in the last month and a half, the largest of which was, of course, the attack in Paris on November 13th. While most Muslims are not terrorists, as the liberals never tire of reminding us, only Muslims commit jihad, and when faced with a worldwide explosion of incidents of jihad, from which even predominantly Muslim countries like Mali have not been spared, countries need to put the safety of their own people first, ahead of stupid concerns about hurting Muslim feelings.



The insane progressive narrative, that is enforced as political correctness, gets this completely wrong. For far too long, the self-appointed guardians of public moral and intellectual hygiene have gotten away with bossing everyone around and telling us that we cannot say this or that, no matter how true it might be, because to do so would be "racist", "sexist" or something of the like. The great thing about the Donald Trump campaign, which continues to march ahead despite all efforts to silence him, is that these have finally been told, as only Donald Trump could tell them, “You’re fired!”

4 comments:

  1. Really enjoyed reading your article and it is very true that political correctness has been an abuse against my opinion and many others in the Christian community!

    ReplyDelete
  2. @GTN - It is interesting to speculate on what will happen in the long term as a consequence of DT's campaign. At present it certainly looks as if the New Left Mass Media are harming their cause by giving DT so much publicity when he says true-but-taboo hate-facts. One might assume that this counter-pressure will lead to some moderation of Political Correctness.

    On the other hand, DT has led to a new wave of activism and radicalization on the young Left elites, who are organizing against this 'enemy' (creating more SJWs) - which will probably work to favour the Left.

    Secondly, as Nietzsche said - That which does not kill me, makes me stronger. Which suggests that unless DT overthrows and replaced New Leftism (which he is not even trying to do, so he will *not* do); then the Left will evolve to 'deal with' DT-type threats more effectively in the future - and this also will strengthen the grip of PC.

    So, as things stand, I don't think it likely that DT will help to end the insanity of PC. However, prediction is always uncertain - especially when it comes to the future! Who knows what domino effect might be set off?

    But - as I bang-on about at my blog and in my books - change could be worse (things are never so bad they can't be made worse). I don't think the secular Right can win power without mass-mobilizing hatred as their motivation, and becoming truly 'fascist' -- so the prospect is not enticing, whether anti-Christian PC survives and grows, or gets defeated by a populist secular Right movement.

    Only a nation based on religion, as the bottom line, can avoid insanity over the long term - men simply must have religion. If this is realized, and each person feels compelled to make a choice of religion - which boils down, in The West, to a choice between the two major monotheisms, then there may be hope of something better.

    If it does not come to this; the younger monotheism will win - on present trends, and becuase they unambiguously want to win - by default. In the end The West *will* have religion again - it is just a question of which one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I certainly agree with you on the necessity of religion, Dr. Charlton. I think that the question of which religion is of the utmost importance. If we start with the premise that no stable society or civilization can be built on the foundation of modern secular rejection of religion and that this latter leads precisely to the very unstable insanity we are saying today, it does not necessarily follow that any religion we were to choose would be better. Even if we limit the options to those monotheisms, choosing the younger one, or being conquered by it, which, as you point out, will happen in the absence of a choice either way on our part, would seem to me to be merely a different sort of evil from that of modern secularism and political correctness. Which means that the only choice which presents us with any real hope, is a return to the older monotheism of Christianity.

      To tie this in to the matter of the Trump campaign, I think it would be quite absurd to hope that Donald Trump is going to restore Christendom and turn the hearts of the West back to the one, true, faith. It is, however, enjoyable watching him make mincemeat out of our common enemies, revealing, in the process, that they are not as invincible as they have often seemed to be in the past. Paleolibertarian writer, Justin Raimondo, wrote an interesting article for "Chronicles" a month or two ago, in which he argued that while Trump hardly stood for his brand of antistatism and he could not actively campaign for him, there was nothing wrong with cheering from the sidelines, especially since Trump is making all the right people, i.e., leftists and neocons, angry. While coming from a different starting point than the Rothbardian anarchism of Raimondo's, I have arrived at a similar place with regards to the sentiment expressed.

      Perhaps the question, for those of us who look for a restoration and revival of Christendom - and more importantly true Christianity - in the West, is how to take advantage of the vulnerability the Trump campaign is exposing in the politically correct left?

      Delete
  3. I think it is sad that you are praising somebody offering such crass and thoughtless answers.

    The idea of banning all Muslim immigrants is an unworkable fantasy policy.

    ReplyDelete