Walkin’ Out With Ben

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I don’t have the chance to watch television.  I don’t even have cable.  I’ve only seen snippets of Donald Trump and even less of Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, so I don’t know how long it would take me to get to the point where I feel some real revulsion for Trump’s lies, his bragging, or his vague wild assertions.  But I’m not there yet.

I just see a guy who takes the fight to most of the right places.  Next I see most of the right places get angry.  I also see them show their arrogance and contempt.  These are signs of shifting power.  It’s something more substantial than talk.

That’s why I’ve been struck to find many people I admire taking the suicide pledge.  Donald Trump is the new Mitt Romney, so Conservatives should sit-out another election like they did the last one?  That’s what Ben Shapiro recommends in his really unfortunate piece this week at The Daily Wire.  Shapiro leads Breitbart.com.  Breitbart had a rocky recovery after their founder dropped dead one night in L.A., but they’ve since turned into something extremely helpful.  Their ads are not, but their reporting is.  So why all the pious ‘conservative’ excuses to hand the world Hillary Clinton?

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.

Didn’t Trump just release a pretty conservative healthcare proposal?  Seems kind of free market to me.  It’s the first time I’ve heard anyone who might have the power to do so get anywhere near actually gutting Obamacare.

Didn’t Trump also just correct Pope Francis for saying he wasn’t Christian?  I think the Pope has a right to express an opinion on what a Christian is, but Trump thinks even the Pope should keep that to himself.  That sounds like he believes in American style ‘religious freedom’ to me.  Perhaps Shapiro is referring to Trump’s famous stand on Islamic immigration.  Is there any reasonable person in the world who thinks we should continue to islamicize the planet because of religious freedom?

I admit Trump sounds like he may care little for constitutional balance of power.  He keeps claiming he’ll do things in a unilateral-sounding way.  But where is this great system of checks and balances today?  All I ever see are Congressmen passing two-thousand page, yet still unspecific, laws without anyone knowing what’s in them, while all the ruling power’s concentrated in the executive apparatus and the unjust courts.  I don’t see much constitutional or legal ever happening.

Finally, is it ‘immoral’ to be against a destabilized Middle East and imbalanced trade agreements?

I suppose bequeathing the whole situation to Hillary will be an improvement.

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.

Why is everyone so sure that Trump is lying about everything?  Doesn’t he tell the truth at least sometimes?  How can you know a liar’s lies in advance?  You can only guess.

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?

I think it’s time for people to start hedging this ‘Trump will lose’ meme.  Yes, unless something changes, like for instance, if he starts to sound like a liberal, Trump will be ruthlessly attacked by the entire planet except Russia and the old block.  They will hurl every insult they can find.  They will try and dig up a Bill Cosby-parade against him; and yes, they may easily take Trump out.  But I think it might be good to put a bit of a check on your certainty about the whole thing.  There were ten blocks of Floridians lined up outside a miserable arena in Orlando yesterday to see the loser.

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.

What? Is this some kind of emerging ‘conservative’ third party that votes by not voting?

I know Ben Shapiro was famous practically before he was even a teenager, but this is the first time I’ve heard him sound like a petulant child.  Our consciences guide our actions, and if our actions are irresponsible, our consciences should correct us.

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.”

Do you get the impression that Shapiro wouldn’t be trying to lead a walk-out movement under this pious ‘conservative’ banner if slippery Marco Rubio were the front-runner?

But today he wants Hillary, conscience-free.

 

 

 

On the New Catholic Suckers Movement?

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Vote for Hillary or not at all?

Vote for Hillary or not at all?

At Spero News Clinton Gillespie has an interesting report which appears to be getting little or no coverage.  Donald Trump has released his healthcare plans.  From a man who is almost as short on specifics as Ross Perot, they’re surprising.

After dominating Republicans in Super Tuesday, Trump’s campaign pivots to the general election and released specific policy plans on healthcare.For months, Trump told supporters and the media that he will abolish Obamacare while providing healthcare for those who cannot afford insurance. Despite questions about his alternative, Trump remained tight-lipped about his plans until now. Even last week during the Republican debate on CNN, Marco Rubio accused Trump for not having an alternative to Obamacare. (see video below)

In Trump’s healthcare plan, which he said is just a start to reforming healthcare, he said he aims to eliminate the individual mandate and lower costs. “No person should be required to buy insurance unless he or she wants to,” Trump wrote. His plan would look familiar to most Republicans who have tried to reform healthcare over the past several decades, including allowing tax-free health savings accounts for individuals that can be passed onto their heirs, allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines, and allowing individuals to deduct health premiums from their taxes.

Eliminate the individual mandate, create tax-free health savings accounts, deduction of premiums, and insurance deregulation:  these are conservative proposals, the most striking being an end to the Obamacare ‘tax.’

Trump’s plan differs from previous reforms in two ways. First, he wants to allow cheap prescription drugs into the country and called on Congress to “step away from the special interests and do what is right for America,” he wrote. To accomplish this goal, the patent laws would need changed that afford innovators to have a monopoly on their discovery for a certain number of years. Trump said that although the pharmaceutical industry is in the private sector, drug companies provide a public service.

That may help drugs become more affordable but also discourage innovation.

Trump believes enforcement of current immigration laws would save $11 billion annually by relieving pressure on governments to care for illegal immigrants. “If we were to simply enforce the current immigration laws and restrict the unbridled granting of visas to this country,” Trump wrote, “we could relieve healthcare cost pressures on state and local governments.”

Here Trump doubles down on the rule of law and his strong pro-border position.  (It even pops up under healthcare.)

Making price transparency is also one of Trump’s goals to reform the healthcare market. Currently, prices for exams are opaque for consumers while prices vary wildly from doctor to doctor, even in the same hospital. For example, last September, clearhealthcosts.com discovered a mammogram in Queens, New York costs $50. But it costs $607 for the same procedure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. “Individuals should be able to shop to find the best prices for procedures, exams or any other medical-related procedure,” Trump wrote.

Letting people shop.  Too capitalistic?  Restoring the free healthcare market destroyed by mandated insurance coverages is key, and conservative, so why all the Trump-hate?  Aren’t these recommendations specific enough for politics?  He’s a vulgar boor and an ignorant lawsuit-happy liar but he is communicating some concrete policy, no?  Why are we so sure that he doesn’t mean anything he says at all?

Is it so bad to challenge Paul Ryan or Pope Francis the way Trump has?  Aren’t they both sources of a lot of trouble?

Put simply, the Trump phenomena is a preference for fight over talk.  Trump confronts.  He may emit as much empty bluster as the next politician, but his fight itself is tangible and in a contest between something forceful and more helpless words people appear to be choosing the fight.

You may ask, “Isn’t this the essence of a strong-man government rather than a functioning democracy?”  Yes, it is.  A democratic republic requires a Christian society comprised of honorable men.  Those people are dead.  That’s why we have Obama and his GOP enablers now who pretend to represent us in some constitutional system.

The conservative movement itself is split.  In Ted Cruz many see a man with proven character, a Christian faith, and a conservative track record – but is it one of success?  Yes, Cruz may be the best the Senate has, and he’s resisted his opposition boldly, but as a lone voice what has he gained?  Why is he defensively reacting in this primary while Trump plays offense and stays strategically two steps ahead?  Attacks rain down on Trump from the press, from the Democrats, from the GOP establishment, from Mexico, from China, from CAIR, from the bishops, from Pope Francis.  He is certainly hated from all the right places.  How is it he still stands?

Maybe because he’s got something, somewhere that’s real.

Which brings me to what’s left of the Catholic conservative movement.  Those with media voices appear to fall between condemning Trump on his past, his character and his persona, and those bent on making their audience believe it would be a sin to vote for him at all, even in the general election.

Both camps are doing a grave injustice to the planet and the Church.  A radical left-wing tyrant in the Whitehouse and a pliant Congress is an evil reality with live with every day.  It should end.

There is a leftist strategy for the Catholic vote.  It has two fronts.

One: Move an uncatholic political tool into the papacy to skew the faith and turn the hearts of Catholics.  Use the hierarchy and the media to validate his new teachings.

Two: Suppress the remaining faithful, and reliably conservative, Catholic voter in the general election.

If and when Trump isn’t muscled out of a primary victory and he doesn’t run as a third party spoiler, all we are going to hear from the media are ‘megalomania’, low-life scandals, and dirt.  Why help them do it in advance and hand the Left their Catholic creation like a bunch of programmable lemmings?  What does it say about your pride that you would prefer Hillary over a man with some clear conservative ideas who shares your enemies, when you already know how cruel, unjust, and destructive she’ll be?

Francis might even call you a Pharisee.