"Liberals thought that the best way to stop Trump was to treat him not as a normal, if obnoxious, political figure with bad policy ideas but as a mortal threat to democracy itself. Whether or not he is such a threat, this style of opposition led Democrats astray. It goaded them into their own form of antidemocratic politics — using the courts to try to get Trump’s name struck from the ballot in Colorado or trying to put him in prison on hard-to-follow charges. It distracted them from the task of developing and articulating superior policy responses to the valid public concerns he was addressing. And it made liberals seem hyperbolic, if not hysterical, particularly since the country had already survived one Trump presidency more or less intact.
"Today, the Democrats have become the party of priggishness, pontification and pomposity. It may make them feel righteous, but how’s that ever going to be a winning electoral look?" -- NYT, November 6, 2024
I respond: It will always be the right look for bitter, self-righteous
functionaries who want a tyrannical system which will degrade and ruin Republican enemies who have real integrity. It will always the right look for voters who want to dismantle the Constitution and bully those who don't go along with what's politically correct. The winning electoral "look" today is not a look or a brand but a platform of real policies for freedom which can be articulated and applied in the real world by courageous and principled statesmen working together to keep their promises and rebuild the broken civilization.
“I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable.”
-George Washington, Farewell Letter
In recent days, from Birmingham to Tower Hamlets, ordinary British and English people have, seemingly spontaneously, started to raise Union Jack and St George’s flags on lampposts and buildings. Some have even painted flags on roundabouts.
Shortly afterwards, however, local council workers quickly began taking down the flags, arguing the “unauthorised items” were “dangerous”, on the basis they might distract and even kill passing motorists and pedestrians.
Yet many, understandably, see glaring hypocrisy.
While the Labour-run council in highly-diverse Birmingham is now rushing to take down English and Union flags, it has left Palestinian flags flying for months (for its part, in what is another depressing insight into the dire state of modern Britain, the council says it needs police protection to remove Palestine flags in Muslim areas).
At the same time, Birmingham council is pulling down Union Jack and St George’s flags while seemingly having no issue lighting the ...
“With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.”
George Washington, Farewell Address, on the liberties won by the American colonists through war