A tip of my hat to Donald Trump. He dared name that which must not be named. He dared to point out the obvious: that Radical Islam is antithetical to women, gays, Jews and Christians. He dared tread where the Left has refused. He ranked women, gays, and non-Muslim believers ahead of the radical islamists, in contradiction to the Left’s prioritization of Islam over those groups.
I take great exception to his close-the-borders and ideological-test ideas. How do you even implement the latter? Do we forget that everybody lies? As to closing the borders – wouldn’t we want to help those oppressed by Radical Islam, especially women, gays and infidels? However, these aren’t wild new revelations on his part, and we needn’t be shocked when the tiger goes tiger. His anti-liberty solutions do not detract from the validity of his observations, and in the latter he exhibits, again, the plain talk what makes him attractive to many voters of many political stripes. Trump has also, with this and his previous vocal support for gays, blurred up the traditional battle lines between the Democratic and Republican Parties.
The Democrats have long acted as if they are the sole and natural defenders of women’s rights and gay rights. As to the latter, the Right has long obliged them, with vehement and now-quixotic opposition to gay marriage and gay rights. But, as to the former, there is a hard dissonance between claiming to stand for women’s rights and being mum about an ideology that treats women so horribly. If nothing else, Trump’s campaign and style have shined a light on this Harry-Potter-like “we must not utter certain words” mindset in politics. There is an ideology out there, one that not only hates Western values and the precepts of liberty, but also hates “lesser” versions of itself and perpetrates horrific violence without a hint of morality. If we are loath to even call it by name, how can we expect to defeat it? This fight against Radical Islam is not primarily about territory. It is a battle of ideas, one of liberty against oppression. One does not win a battle of ideas with silence.
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Trump’s economic speech was also strong and had many good points. The foreign policy the Trump team has assembled is also credible. I would rate both to be strong compared with Clinton’s.
So the question is whether this election will be about policy. And the answer is, clearly, “no”. Trump is the problem, not the policies he’s advocating, save for a couple of exceptions here and there. Trump’s nomination has put him directly in the media’s cross-hairs, and he honestly doesn’t know how to get out of the focus of the beam. In fact, every instinct he has is wrong in this setting.
The sad part is that Trump will likely drag down not only the Republican Senate majority with him, but also any consideration of the sensible policies he enumerates during the campaign. They will be labeled as “rejected” the day after Trump loses.