Preventing People From Attending Donald Trump Rallies Is Undemocratic

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Donald Trump Protesters - St Louis

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Shutting down political rallies with the threat of violence and blocking public access to hear a political candidate speak is not behaviour worthy of any citizen of a democracy

People have every right to feel alarmed or even scared about the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. This blog believes that a Trump presidency, were he to secure the Republican nomination and win the general election, would be jarringly populist at best and economically ruinous at worst, though I dismiss any alarmist talk that Trump is in any way equivalent to the Nazis or other genocidal fascists.

Such hyperbole from anti-Trump activists is thoroughly unhelpful at a time when tempers are already flaring on both sides. After all, if you are a supporter of Donald Trump then having an angry college student yell in your face that you are supporting the new incarnation of Hitler will likely make you quite unreceptive to engaging in further debate and potentially being persuaded to change your views.

But the invective (on both sides) and hand-writing hysteria (primarily from the anti-Trump crowd) are nothing compared to the more blatantly anti-democratic methods by which some liberals are now attempting to shut down Donald Trump’s message rather than take it on in the battle of ideas.

The Huffington Post reports that some demonstrators are now attempting to block public access to Donald Trump rallies to prevent his supporters from hearing him speak, under the banner “Shut Down Trump”:

Protesters on Saturday blocked the roads leading to a Donald Trump rally in Fountain Hills, Arizona.

[..] An ABC 15 anchor reported at least three people had been arrested in connection with the protests. Deputy Joaquin Enriquez, a spokesman for the Maricopa County sheriff’s office, told ABC 15 the arrests were for blocking the road, not protesting.

The roadblock didn’t stop some determined people from getting out of their cars and walking to Trump’s rally.

Tomas Robles, executive director of Living United for Change in Arizona, a workers’ rights organization, told HuffPost that law enforcement was cooperative and treated protesters fairly. He said some Trump supporters “did try to get get aggressive,” but they were not violent.

“It was a peaceful protest, we got our point across, and we showed the nation and our state that just because Arizona at a time has been seen as anti-immigrant and somewhat racist, this is not that state anymore,” he said. “We’re not going to allow people like Trump to spew that rhetoric.”

Note the authoritarian tinge to the words of Tomas Robles, one of the protesters quoted by Huffington Post. Because he and his organisation disagree with Donald Trump, they are “not going to allow” him to air his views in public – at a political rally of all places, that most sacrosanct of venues in terms of the necessity for free speech.

While the rally in question went ahead, the demonstration prevented many Trump supporters from attending and forced others to abandon their cars and walk the rest of the way to the venue:

 

Hilariously, the Huffington Post – clearly sensing that running a story about liberal activists interfering with a political rally might not sound terribly progressive – felt the need to add the following editor’s note to the end of the article:

Editor‘s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

The obvious implication of this note is that it is perfectly appropriate and justified to stifle and attempt to shut down some forms of speech, and that we shouldn’t think badly of the protesters because they are waging war against a bad person who thinks the wrong things as opposed to a good person, “one of us”, who holds the correct beliefs and whose speech should be protected.

Or in other words: “Don’t worry, Trump and his supporters had it coming. They are bad people”.

The furious liberals outraged at the rise of Donald Trump need to realise that their usual tactic of shouting, screaming and now blockading things that they dislike is actually feeding – not killing – the beast. Maybe they do realise, but simply don’t care. Maybe the opportunity to signal their own moral virtue by ostentatiously raging against Trump is all that they care about.

But until Trump’s most ardent enemies on the Left learn to use their words rather than their fists they will only succeed in undermining free speech and American democracy, making Trump stronger all the while.

 

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Nothing Positive To Say About The EU? Just Bash The Leave Campaign

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

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Owen Jones, unable to think of one positive thing to say in support of the European Union, focuses his attention on mocking the Leave campaigns

Owen Jones can’t make a full throated defence of the European Union and Britain’s place in it, because in his heart of hearts he knows the EU to be a bad, terminally unreformable institution in which we should play no further part. Of that I am absolutely convinced, no matter how deep in his subconscious Jones may have buried his natural euroscepticism.

But to avoid alienating his virtue-signalling left-wing readership who instinctively support the EU (either out of simplistic internationalism or the cynical knowledge that being in the EU imposes stricter employment and social laws on the UK than British voters would likely tolerate themselves), Jones has walked back nearly all his earlier principled criticism of Brussels, and now bleats the usual fantastical nonsense about staying in the EU to transform it into some kind of socialist utopia.

Thus, unable to make a passionate argument in favour of the European Union, Jones must content himself with making snide observations about the Leave campaigns (who regretfully seem to provide him with near endless material). He cannot make an honest intellectual or moral case for Remain, so he deflects by snarking at those who want to reclaim British democracy by leaving.

And so we get stuff like this, in which Jones wastes an entire YouTube video smugly pointing out that pro-Brexit Conservatives are moaning about the Remain campaign waging “Project Fear” when many of them adopted similar arguments against Scottish independence during the 2014 referendum, and against Labour and the SNP in the general election last year. Because, according to this bizarre logic, two wrongs (the Evil Tories doing it before, and the Remain camp doing it now) cancel each other out.

Jones scoffs:

Project Fear. That is how Chris Grayling, who is a Tory cabinet minister who supports Brexit – Britain leaving the European Union – that’s how he is describing the campaign led by the government to stay within the European Union. As soon as I heard him describe the campaign to stay in in those terms, all I could think was “you cheeky git!” It reminds me of the Yiddish expression, chutzpah.

[..] Then there’s Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, who in the weeks before the general election said “Ed Miliband stabbed his own brother in the back to become Labour leader. Now he is willing to stab the United Kingdom in the back to become prime minister”. Again, you had co-ordinated attacks by big businesses warning of economic calamity were Labour to enter Number 10. Project Fear on speed, quite frankly. The whole campaign was waged on the basis of fear.

Now, the people complicit with that included, obviously, the likes of Chris Grayling and his colleagues in the Conservative cabinet, and the Conservative backbenches who now support Brexit and who are angry at those tactics, as they see it, being employed against them.

We can expect to see a lot more of this finger-wagging nonsense over the next few months from those who are determined to keep Britain inside the European Union.

Some of them refuse to make positive arguments for the European Union because they actually rather dislike it, but hold Britain in such low regard that they believe that despite being many times the size of independent countries like Australia and New Zealand, Britain is uniquely incapable of functioning independently outside of a regional political union.

Others shy away from talking up the European Union because they genuinely love the institution, want us to integrate even more deeply and therefore worry that they might get too carried away praising Brussels and so harm their own side.

Others still dislike the European Union and know full well that Britain could prosper outside this anachronistic mid-century supra-national political union, but persuade themselves to support Remain for fear of the social stigma that comes with declaring oneself a eurosceptic in certain circles.

But in no case will they be honest with the British people, because they have all come to the conclusion that telling what they see as difficult truths – in their case, that the European Union is a good thing for a, b and c reasons, and Britain should continue to participate because of x, y and z – will not win the referendum, but that Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) will do the job quite nicely.

Owen Jones rightly bristles at the way that the “No” campaign wielded this tactic in the Scottish independence campaign, which would make you think that he opposes it being used by any group and in any context. But apparently not so. Because Conservative Leave supporters “brought it on themselves” by utilising FUD tactics in the past, the Remain camp should not be criticised for doing so now.

It is a shame to see Owen Jones – at his best an intelligent and articulate voice on the Left – frittering away his time on the EU referendum campaign by pointing out the foibles and tactical hypocrisies of the Leave campaign. But what other choice does he have? Despite knowing full well that the EU is unreformable, Jones has committed to supporting Britain’s continued membership.

I think that this is a betrayal of the democratic accountability and local control that Jones spends much of his time promoting. And I suspect that he does, too. Which is why we can all expect to see lots more “gotcha” videos on YouTube criticising individual members of the Leave campaign, but not a damn thing praising the European Union or explaining how this magical socialist “reform” of the EU is to be achieved.

After all, nothing distracts from a guilty conscience like pointing out the flaws, failings and inconsistencies of other people.

 

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The Republican Party’s Cynical, Anti-Obama Hysteria Created The Monster That Is Donald Trump

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

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If you trawl for votes by quietly suggesting to people that their country has been taken over by a socialist, foreign-born, America-hating Muslim, don’t be surprised when they gravitate towards a politician who plays more effectively to those fears

The Republican Party has a lot to answer for when it comes to the rise of Donald Trump.

As a British conservative who has lived in America, knows the country (and not just the coasts) well and is married to a Texan, I have a sense of perspective lacking in many American conservatives. I come from a country with a far more left-wing political climate, in which edifices of the post-war consensus – the welfare state, the NHS – are idolised and often exempted from nearly all meaningful criticism.

I grew up in a culture which is a lot more suspicious of conspicuous success and achievement, more collectivist (though less so than continental Europe) and generally more expectant that government will play a hectoring, overbearing role in our lives. And therefore, when I see Republicans rending their garments wailing and rending their garments about the intolerable left-wingery of Barack Obama, I know exactly how whiny and entitled they are being.

The Republican Party reacted to the election of Barack Obama as though his presidency was going to usher in the end of the Republic. They acted as though a suite of rather workaday centre-left policies were part of a sinister conspiracy to turn America into a socialist country. Needless to say, they barely uttered a peep when their own side was busy ratcheting up the size of the state under the “compassionate conservative” Big Government presidency of George W. Bush, in which massive Medicare expansions – heck, even entire wars – were placed on the national credit card, and fiscal conservatism was put through the shredder. No, it was Obama who represented an un-American step too far, according to this false narrative.

And of course it was all nonsense. As Barack Obama’s second term reaches its end, the size and scope of the federal government is still stubbornly large, but America has by no means transitioned into a Soviet-style planned economy. Even the hated (in right-wing circles) ObamaCare has only tinkered around the margins, funnelling a few million uninsured into some form of health coverage, inconveniently disrupting the existing coverage of a number of other people but otherwise doing nothing to change the private insurance, private provision model of American healthcare. The Second Amendment has not been substantially undermined, let alone repealed. Defence spending may be misaligned but still eclipses the rest of the world, and the US military has not been decimated. In terms of domestic policy, in other words, the world has not ended.

Has America become a libertarian paradise under President Obama? Of course not. But that’s because a Democrat won the White House and focused (as much as he could, given a spineless Democratic congressional caucus and entrenched Republican opposition) on the kind of centre-left priorities you would expect from a Democrat. And crucially, neither has America become a socialist dystopia in that time.

That’s not to say that the Republicans did not often have a point, or that they were perpetually in the wrong – in many cases, their opposition to Obama’s agenda was justified. But at all times this opposition was carried out in a shrill, alarmist and hyperbolic manner – much as British left-wingers are currently mirroring the American Tea Party with their “pass the smelling salts” horror at the thoroughly unexciting, centrist government of David Cameron.

And when you go trawling for low information votes by feeding on prejudice and stoking up concerns about the personal motivations, the loyalty and even the American-ness of the president in a childishly obstructionist scorched earth strategy, you can’t really feign surprise when the sentiments you unleash give rise to a populist demagogue like Donald Trump. And people should call you out for doing so if you even try, as many Republicans are now doing as part of their cynical #NeverTrump movement.

Bill Maher – whose politics I often disagree with, but whose criticism of the Right is usually depressingly accurate – was on to something when he said on a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher that Republicans had “made a Faustian bargain with the racist devil years ago”, and are now paying the price.

During the panel discussion on his show, Maher said:

So let’s get right to it – the Republican Party, having an existential crisis. They are very upset that half their voters wanna give nuclear weapons to a guy who gets into Twitter feuds with D-list celebrities, and we understand that. I almost feel bad for them, except I really don’t, because they brought it on themselves. They made a Faustian bargain with the racist devil many years ago, and now those chickens are coming home to roost.

Let me read what Paul Ryan said this week. He said “if a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party they must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices”. LOL.

To which I would say to him: what about voter ID laws? What about once defending the guy who gets shot – the black guy, unarmed – instead of the cop? Y’know, I mean who are they kidding? This is the party they are, and Trump is just the latest.

And then the killer line:

They always say that it’s a big tent. To me it’s more like a house – think of it more like a house. And they let the racists have a room in that house. They didn’t go in that room with all the memorabilia, but they made a very comfortable room in there. And now they took over the house, and the regular Republicans are afraid to go to the kitchen at night to get a snack.

Ouch.

To be clear, while this blog does not support Donald Trump’s candidacy, neither does it subscribe to the idea that Trump or the majority of his supporters are racist. Certainly criticising illegal immigration in America is not racist, despite the cynical attempts by many Democrats and those on the left to suggest otherwise. Building a wall is not the solution, but the idea of properly enforcing the perfectly reasonable existing laws about illegal (the leftists love to leave out the word “illegal”) immigration is entirely defensible. Similarly, Trump’s nationalist, protectionist policies may well also be very counterproductive were they ever implemented, but this does not make them – or him – evil.

(One thing that does put Trump beyond the pale, in the view of this blog, is his lack of commitment to the constitution or to US treaty obligations, including those relating to torture. The First Amendment is not a plaything to be wielded like a weapon and undermined to snuff out criticism of a thin-skinned president, as Trump has suggested doing, and torture and reprisal killings were and are abhorrent and un-American).

As with many of Trump’s left-wing critics, Bill Maher is wrong to make this all about race. But he is quite correct in pointing out that in their desperation to win back the White House, the GOP tolerated all manner of crazy squatters and couch-surfers sleeping under their party’s roof. And while they did not explicitly add these people to the deeds of the house, they certainly left the front door wide open and stood on the street corner beckoning the crazies inside with a wink and a smile.

It is therefore exquisitely hard for me to feel sorry for the modern Republican Party as they are devoured by the very monster they kept as a pet and fed – particularly as I hail from a country which is planted a couple of steps firmly to the left in terms of the political centre ground, and have first-hand experience of the kind of “socialism” that the GOP cynically pretended was about to be unleashed on America.

I don’t want to see Donald Trump become the Republican Party nominee – though I feel much sympathy with many of his supporters – but if it does happen, as now seems increasingly likely, I cannot say that it was undeserved.

 

Thank You Lord Jesus for President Trump

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John McCain, The Man Who Gave Us Sarah Palin, Criticises Brexit

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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The man who wanted to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the American presidency has something to tell us about Brexit

Following swift on the heels of former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton’s welcome words of support for Brexit and the campaign for Britain to reclaim our democracy, Senator John McCain comes charging in to defend the status quo.

From the Times (+):

It is a few weeks before we get Barack Obama’s intervention in the EU referendum debate, but today we get a foretaste of America’s view of Brexit.

John McCain, the US senator defeated by Obama in 2008, has issued a blunt warning after meeting MPs on the Commons defence select committee that the “need for a strong and united Europe is greater than ever”.

Warning that Britain and the US are “confronting the most diverse and complex array of crises since the end of World War II”, McCain claims that “British membership in the EU is a vital contributor to the security and prosperity of Europe and the United States”.

He insists it is a decision for the British people, but notes that “whatever the outcome of the referendum on EU membership, it will send a strong message to Vladimir Putin”.

At least McCain does little to disguise that his view of Brexit is coloured almost entirely by his view of the American national interest, rather than what might be best for America’s strongest and closest ally, or for democracy in general – so in that regard he is slightly better than President Obama, who presumes to lecture the British people on what is best for them.

The Times – which seems to have deliberately ignored Ambassador Bolton’s contradictory intervention in the debate yesterday – goes on to suggest that Brexit supporters might have a difficult time dismissing a decorated war veteran like John McCain, as though a person’s military exploits from close to half a century ago have a direct bearing on their judgement about another country’s internal affairs.

Nonsense. If John McCain’s judgement is a factor at all here, then the failed presidential candidate who selected Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate hasn’t a leg to stand on.

Let’s recall Senator John McCain’s finest hour:

The person I’m about to introduce to you was a union member and is married to a union member, and understands the problems, the hopes and the values of working people; knows what it’s like to worry about mortgage payments and health care, the cost of gasoline and groceries. A standout high school point guard; a concerned citizen who became a member of the PTA; then a city council member, and then a mayor; and now a governor who beat the long odds to win a tough election on a message of reform and public integrity. And, I am especially proud to say in the week we celebrate the anniversary of women’s suffrage, a devoted wife and a mother of five.

She’s not — she’s not from these parts and she’s not from Washington. But when you get to know her, you’re going to be as impressed as I am. She’s got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today. She knows where she comes from and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what’s right, and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down. She’s fought oil companies and party bosses and do-nothing bureaucrats, and anyone who puts their interests before the interests of the people she swore an oath to serve.

She’s exactly who I need, she’s exactly who this country needs, to help me fight — to help me fight the same old Washington politics of me-first and country second.

My friends and fellow Americans, I am very pleased and very privileged to introduce to you the next vice president of the United States — Gov. Sarah Palin of the great state of Alaska.

And this is the person whose advice we should be fawning over when it comes to global security, the future of our democracy and our right to self-determination here in Britain?

We have enough politicians and high profile public figures with calamitous judgement and weak powers of prognostication here in Britain, without importing any more uninformed voices from overseas.

I think you can sit out this round, Senator.

 

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John Bolton’s Alternative American Position On Brexit

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

John Bolton - Brexit

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Former United States UN ambassador John Bolton provides a refreshingly different – and much more authentically American – position on Brexit to that of the sitting president

In marked contrast to President Obama – who treats his country’s closest ally with utter contempt by urging the British people to accept a continued loss of sovereignty and self-governance which America would never tolerate for herself – there are a number of other, more respectful American public figures who treat British democracy with the respect it deserves.

Some of these individuals not only recognise that the EU referendum is a sovereign decision for the British people alone to make without unwelcome hectoring from the Oval Office, but also appreciate that Brexit is the far better outcome for Britain, America and the world.

One such person is former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, who writes in the Telegraph:

President Barack Obama embodies the conventional wisdom, unabashedly supporting continued construction of a European superstate. Obama’s fascination with Brussels, however, reflects his own statist inclinations. His lack of international leadership perfectly mirrors the EU’s timid, ineffective defence of its own interests and values. Of course Obama loves the EU.

Arguing that today’s EU is collectively stronger than a continent of free nation-states misreads history, distorting it through a quasi-theological lens. The EU is less than the sum of its parts. Its politico-military “unity” is purest symbolism. Flags and anthems not only do not embody unity, but instead mask a poisonous, paralysing disarray.

Nor is unity reflected in incessant affirmations of Europe’s economic size, as if it were truly integrated. Indeed, if Europe had single-mindedly pursued a single market, abjuring political abstractions, it could have achieved more economic integration and broader political consensus together, rather than getting wrapped around the axle of “ever closer union”. And just as symbolic gestures do not ensure unity, reversing those symbolic gestures does not forestall Britain’s ongoing descent from representative government into Europe’s bureaucratic oligarchy. David Cameron’s proposed changes to London’s relationship with Brussels in no way addresses, let alone cures, the systemic failures inherent in EU decision-making structures.

Brilliant, stirring stuff. This blog does not often  share common cause with prominent neoconservatives in the model of John Bolton, but in this case he is absolutely correct. The point about Europe being less than the sum of its parts is particularly astute and counters the lazy (and never supported) trope that the EU amplifies our economic, military and diplomatic output, when in fact the European Union does no such thing.

The EU is far from a single, integrated economy – as John Bolton goes on to argue, the single-minded obsession with forging a political union has in many ways actually detracted from the creation of a true single market, such as could ever exist in a continent with such diverse cultures and no common language. Therefore, if we vote for Brexit, Britain will not be leaving some dynamic and prosperous unified economy – we will be leaving a political bloc dominated by an ill-fated currency union which imposes utter economic misery on the south and imposes financial obligations in the form of necessary transfer payments with the northern countries are unwilling to meet.

Bolton is also absolutely correct when he turns his analysis to the military and diplomatic angle:

America is partially at fault for the EU mirage because Nato, largely a US creation, has been so successful. For decades, sheltering under Washington’s military umbrella, Europe, including Britain, has recklessly shrivelled defence budgets and increased social-welfare expenditures. The results are not pretty. The EU has not only retreated from the world stage, it is becoming incompetent in ensuring security within its own “borders”. Europe’s loss of defence capabilities, as well as will and resolve, are deeply inimical to defending the West against today’s increasing global threats.

[..] If advocates of Britain remaining in the EU haven’t noticed, America’s international commitments are under attack from several populist directions in our ongoing presidential campaign. Some, especially among Democrats, simply do not value national security, preferring to focus on domestic issues, hoping – God forbid – to make America look more like social-democratic Europe. Others, especially among Republicans, think America’s allies have got a free ride, don’t appreciate US efforts, and should be made to fend for themselves. If Britain votes to stay In, this view may prevail across Washington. So be careful what you wish for.

These criticisms are entirely justified. Though Britain does best of the European powers in terms of maintaining any form of credible military, our armed forces have been pared back relentlessly while money is funnelled in an unearned peace dividend toward vote-winning social programmes.

And appallingly, many of the worst cutbacks have taken place under the current supposedly conservative administration of David Cameron, whose government’s disastrous stewardship of defence matters has left Britain with no maritime patrol capability and (far more crucially), no aircraft capability until the two (or possibly just one) new carriers currently being built come into service.

America has traditionally regarded Britain as her most stalwart ally because we have maintained moderate expeditionary capabilities together with the political will to use them where necessary. The political will has clearly ebbed away, as evidenced by the recent debacle with Parliament’s response to the Syrian crisis, and the expeditionary capabilities are gravely imperilled too. The Pentagon has always operated on the assumption that Britain could be relied upon to field an entire division operating independently of American forces in any joint action, but this is now being re-evaluated.

Part of the EU’s problem is that it has pretensions of significance on the world stage which are simply not matched by its willingness to divert money from generous social programmes to pay for them. Our defence is literally being guaranteed by the American working poor, who go without the kind of welfare perks (like working tax credits) and government-provided universal healthcare that we take for granted, in order to fund the American military machine.

Then there is also the issue of duplication. As well as spending far less on defence spending in real terms, the stubborn refusal of EU member states to give up the last vestige of sovereignty by abolishing national armies and contributing to joint European armed services means that there is massive duplication of HQ and some core infrastructure, while not nearly enough of everything else. There are probably enough European generals and admirals to fully man a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, and yet Europe does not possess even one comparable ship (to America’s ten).

In all of these ways, the European Union fails to pull its weight, let alone punch above its own weight, and actively contributes to making Europe far less than the sum of its parts.

As Bolton rightly notes, flags and anthems do not embody unity. And in the European Union’s case, these ostentatious pretensions of statehood only mark the desperation of certain political elites to escape the irritant of accountability to their own electorates and instead dissolve themselves into the unaccountable anonymity of Brussels supranational governance. Or – to see the project in the kindest possible light – they reflect a desperate effort to create a single European demos through sheer force of will, the geopolitical equivalent of “if you build it, they will come”.

But no European demos came, and none is coming. The entire European Union is built on an imaginary foundation and cannot hope to succeed, let alone win the respect and devotion of an informed citizenry.

Ambassador John Bolton gets it. Tragically, Barack Obama does not.

 

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