50 thoughts on “Jonah Goldberg on President Trump

  1. We, the peasants that the Jonah Goldberg-types wish to rule, reject his never-Trump disposition. We elected a flawed human to conserve the freedoms and liberties which are surely being chipped away by the ruling class. We reject a savior-type human president who is pure in conservative bona-fides, but merely wishes to manage the decline into the chaos and dreck that is progressivism and collectivism.

    His relatively famous essay, “To Hell with you people,” is how us normals feel about the uniparty ruling class in DC right now.

    • “We elected a flawed human to conserve the freedoms and liberties which are surely being chipped away by the ruling class.”

      1. Flawed human is too generous. That’s exactly what Goldberg was saying. You’re papering over the guy’s truly terrible character.

      2. If this is the approach republicans are taking to conserve freedom, it’s a terrible idea. It’s going to fail as badly as their war in Iraq did.

      • Trump has fulfilled many of the promises he made. IMHO he will be thought of as the second best President after Washington. He has forced the America haters to take off their masks.

      • Trump actually tells you what he thinks, what he intends to do, and then does it. “Truly terrible character?” We should be so lucky to be led by such scoundrels. At a certain point that we passed long ago, your protests over his “character” fall on deaf ears — especially if you weren’t one of the ones warning the rest about the danger posed by 0bama.

  2. ” Goldberg wishes that it were possible for a credible Republican opponent to Trump in 2020.”
    Of course it is possible, if they believe their own bullshit. But if no majo9r GOP never-Trumper mounts a primary challenge, then the stance is fraudulent.

    I understand why someone like Nikki Haley wants to wait until 2024 or after, but she was inside the Trump administration. Someone like Ben Sasse, on the other hand, loses all credibility with me if he does not challenge Trump for the soul of his party.

  3. Not convinced that a person with character flaws cannot not be a good ruler. King David? et al.

    Not sure if anyone on the planet earth is arguing that Trump is a moral exemplar in his private life. Sounds like a strawman argument.

    Nevertheless, if there is a significant contingent of conservatives who are defending Trumps personal life as opposed to celebrating his actual achievements, I am mercifully unaware of it, although admittedly having tuned out US media almost entireley I may be wilfully ignorant. I don’t see any Trump apologists in the SCMP, DW, El Pais, BBC, CBC, Straits Times, The Hindu, Globe and Mail… …Maybe a good reason to remain tuned out.

    So the media was a wonderfully fair and object system until Trump corrupted it? Noted.

    I notice that Goldberg only named names once while alleging a vast number of corrupt liars in the media. I’ll take his word for it that the media consists of hypocrites and liars but am not likely to change my mind either once someone else gets elected.

    Goldberg gives shortshrift to the specific campaign pledges that Trump has fulfilled. In addition to conservative judges, the crass and crude Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem fulfilling a promise that all of his predecessors had made, putting significant effort into deregulation, withdrawing from TPP, withdrawing from the Paris Accord, standing up to Iran, not getting into another war, attempting to get out of some of the wars he inherited, getting the individual mandate repealed, allowing pipeline construction, renegotiating NAFTA etc etc. These matter. To ignore them and say that people are celebrity struck and corrupt strikes me as condescending bigotry. Goldberg is basically saying that it is the mainstream media’s job to control how people think and vote. Yes, Jonah, that will cost you money and friends.

    I read Goldberg’s latest book earlier this year and was underwhelmed. So perhaps I am guilty of confirmation bias, but Goldberg seems to think his personal tribe, the Never-Trumpers, are the one true tribe that is completely objective and has moral truth and certitude. Yawn. The whole tribalism meme strikes me as sterile and stagnating.

    Even more amusing is Goldberg’s notion that not being bound by an ideology is a bad thing.

    Somebody who gets that Trump is a flawed person and should have Twitter taken away from him, but who nevertheless appreciates what Trump’s agenda means to a lot of people is Frank H. Buckley. His book, “The Republican Workers Party,” in my estimation is entirely more lucid, rational, and convincing than anything Goldberg has ever written.

  4. At about 27:00, “What NeverTrump meant was I wasn’t going to vote for the guy, and I wasn’t going to lie about the guy.”

    Nice try. What NeverTrump actually meant at the time for everybody else was a total collapse of rational political moral calculus borne out of intense bitterness of a loss of intellectual influence over the direction of GOP party politics that Trump represented, and a refusal to grapple with the reality that the space for Republican presidential victories no longer included establishment figures operating in their preferred manner. “What is to be done, if Romney being Romney, Jeb being Jeb, Cruz being Cruz … can’t win?” A tough pill to swallow! Lots of nasty side-effects! But life-saving medicine, nonetheless.

    It was a suicidally reckless willingness to accept – indeed occasionally an explicit preference for – a Clinton presidency, and all that would entail, and a decision to allocate scarce advocacy time and energy to undermining Trump, including among those swing county Republican voters. And, as such, ten times worse a betrayal of any effort to achieve a conservative intellectual vision of the social good than having someone with Trump’s behaviors and PR style as President for a few years, but with with mostly established conservative figures and Bush admin alumni in most of the political appointee leadership positions.

    What Goldberg hint toward is that it was impossible to support Trump as even the lesser evil without lying or all bus abandoning other values and principles, but that’s just not true, as was demonstrated by other colleagues at his own magazine.

    At about 29 minutes, he says that no body picked Donald Trump because of ideas or policies that weren’t being represented, but as a mere psychological phenomenon , “because they liked the guy”, and a “collective action problem”, giving some kind of hand-waving answer for how Trump could have swam through the pack by picking off just the right number of just the right kind of voters because there were so many candidates, but without any of those other candidates having the presence of mind to pick those $20 bills off the sidewalk.

    A good chance to have tested that proposition would have been if any of the other sixteen establishment GOP candidates would have been willing to make similar statements about immigration policy that represented what has repeatedly been shown to be the clear majority view of GOP voters, but which none of them were willing to do, instead hinting towards the same ‘comprehensive reform’ that had been tried and failed – because of passionate Republican revolts – several times.

    Collective action problem, indeed. People had plenty of good reasons to stop trusting the institutions. They stopped being trustworthy long before Donald Trump came along.

    • Scott Walker was initially doing well in the polls, picking up those $20 bills off the sidewalk. As Breitbart reported in April 2015, “Walker is now the only potential or declared GOP presidential candidate to discuss the negative effects of a massive increase in legal immigration on American workers.” At some point birthright citizenship became an issue, Walker took a stance that was too restrictionist for one of his billionaire donors, the donor *publicly* announced he was going to adjust Walker’s position, Walker adjusted his position, he collapsed in the polls, and that was that.

      As Mickey Kaus summarized: “Simplified Walker Theory: Takes ‘hawkish positions on immigration’–surges! Starts fumfawing on immigration–vanishes. …[H]e kept surging until the donor-induced immig. fumfawing!”

      At about 29 minutes, [Goldberg] says that no body picked Donald Trump because of ideas or policies that weren’t being represented…

      Does anyone think Goldberg genuinely believes this?

      I would love to see an immigration debate between current and past National Review writers. Say, Goldberg, Shapiro and French vs. Brimelow, Sailer and Steyn.

    • I think you’re being unfair to Cruz, who did pick up the immigration $20 bill on the sidewalk, to about the same extent Trump did (minus the Muslim ban idea). Well, it did propel him to second place.

      You’re also too generous to the rationality of Trump’s primary voters (the general election is another matter), who stuck with him after he exposed himself as completely insincere on the immigration issue (he said in one debate that we “need” immigrants because wages are “too high” – Jeb! himself couldn’t have summed up the donor position better). And, whatever else Trump has done as president to further a conservative agenda (mostly the same agenda Jeb! would have advanced, although Goldberg shows little appreciation), he’s pretty much abandoned the immigration issue. During the budget negotiations in the early part of this year, he had the Democrats on the ropes, and could have pressed for funding for better border enforcement, a wall, e-verify, changing “refugee” rules, maybe limiting legal immigration – and he just dumped the whole issue, letting the Club for Growth supply-side cargo-cultists underlings in his administration negotiate the final deal. Now we’re completely unprepared for the oncoming caravan Soros is sending, and the military (run by P.C.-addled hacks who were promoted under Obama) is not going to turn them back, no matter what Trump tweets. And his first term is just about half over.

      The only significant figure in Trump’s administration with any commitment to immigration restriction (speechwriters don’t count) is Jeff Sessions, from whom Trump is estranged as a result of the stupidly self-inflicted Russia witch hunt (there was no collusion, but Trump’s idiotic praise for Putin made the whole thing plausible). Trump’s true believers now hate Sessions because they care more about Trump personally than they do about the “agenda” they supposedly elected him to pursue.

      Meanwhile, we’re still throwing away kids’ lives in Afghanistan because McMaster was able to talk Trump out of shutting down the Pentagon’s boondoggle there by showing him old photos of women in miniskirts in Kabul in the 60s. But the Trump true believers don’t seem to mind that, either.

      When Goldberg says the Trump movement is about Trump personally, period, he has a point.

      • “… he’s pretty much abandoned the immigration issue.”

        This impression is reasonable and forgivable given typical media coverage of the issue and preference to focus on other subjects, but I have some insight into the matter, and I can assure you that this, and several other statements you made (Democrats on the ropes, Stephen Miller is just writing speeched) are quite false.

        Important immigration initiatives continue to be pursued on almost a weekly basis in the Executive branch (you can tell from all the Federal Register notices and the steady stream of lawsuits!) A lot of these involve small and technical changes in exercise of statutory discretion or regulations or even in interpretations of regulations. There matters are too abstruse and esoteric to keep a typical journalist from falling asleep and getting distracted by Twitter, but as with most legal matters, these tiny changes can have truly enormous impact and signifiacnt effects, especially in accumulation. Also, all those lawsuits tend to freeze matters for a while, or puts them in the hands of abusive progressive judges such that the press thinks it’s safe to take their eyes off the ball. Not so. All those matters are working through appeals (again, significant efforts that fly below the media radar), and I’m reasonably confident that most will eventually come back in the admiinistration’s favor.

        The reality is that the most important stuff can’t be done without new legislations from Congress, and the Republicans don’t have anything approaching the unity of the subject to make that happen when faced with 100% Democratic opposition. A substantial number of GOP Senators are opposed to funding the wall. Trump occassionally has to throw those guys (that is, their donors) a bone to get anything at all done.

        • “The reality is that the most important stuff can’t be done without new legislations from Congress and the Republicans don’t have anything approaching the unity of the subject to make that happen when faced with 100% Democratic opposition.”

          Agreed. If Trump were the transformative leader his intellectual apologists and MAGA-hat-wearing fans claim, he would be trying to forge enough Republican unity to get at least some of the legislative work done through the budget process (in which there is no filibuster). No doubt, not everything would be achievable, and many of the bitter-end “freedom-agenda” Republicans would have to be dragged along kicking and screaming, but a genuinely transformative leader would have done something by now.

          Trump hasn’t lifted a finger. Or, more accurately, he lifts his fingers only to tweet to produce the illusion that he is “fighting.” Last time around, after routing the Dems in the polls on DACA, he didn’t even get increased funding for border enforcement. Instead, he embarked on a new love affair with the fat lunatic ruling N Korea. His fans promptly declared that he had solved the N Korea problem and should get the Nobel Prize.

          It’s nice that lower levels of the administration are making worthwhile regulatory changes behind the scenes, but this is not enough. Even if one assumes the new regs will be faithfully implemented and not blocked by the courts, they will be reversed the next time there’s a Democrat or establishment Republican (including Pence) in the WH. Meanwhile, Sessions is about to be unceremoniously ushered out of DOJ, probably to be replaced by someone who likely would have appeared in a Rubio or Christy administration.

      • I think you’re being unfair to Cruz, who did pick up the immigration $20 bill on the sidewalk, to about the same extent Trump did…

        Two years before the election season started, Ted Cruz introduced legislation to double legal immigration and quintuple H1B visas. Cruz in April 2015: “There is no stronger advocate for legal immigration in the U.S. Senate than I am.” He started sounding a bit like Trump only after Trump had demonstrated it was politically necessary to move right. I don’t think it’s plausible that Cruz sincerely changed his mind.

        You’re also too generous to the rationality of Trump’s primary voters (the general election is another matter), who stuck with him after he exposed himself as completely insincere on the immigration issue (he said in one debate that we “need” immigrants because wages are “too high”…

        You’re overstating your case. Trump has been inconsistent, but his stress as a candidate on the significance of immigration echoes things he said years before the election. None of the other GOP presidential candidates had warned, years before the campaign, that the party was in danger of handing Democrats a permanent majority by permitting the naturalization of millions of immigrants who’d never vote for Republicans.

        It would have been perfectly fair for someone to conclude a President Trump would be unreliable on this issue, but there was no chance at all that any of his competitors would ultimately do what the base wanted. For voters who regard immigration as, politically, an existential issue, the only options were to roll the dice on Trump or throw up their hands.

        • See your point, but I disagree. I know about Cruz’s unreliable history on immigration. I think he has evolved, if only because he realized he had to in view of the hornet’s nest Trump stirred up. Unlike Trump, he’s intelligent, hardworking, disciplined, has an idea of how the government works (not thru tweeting), and would know how to pick the right subordinates to implement a policy. Not ideal, but I still preferred him to Trump. Of course, everyone else in the GOP primaries was completely hopeless.

          On immigration, as on everything else, Trump liberally contradicts himself all the time, because he has no real convictions, & no understanding of the issues. It was always a good bet that he would pick venal, self-seeking weathervane hacks he knows from the real estate, finance and media worlds to set and implement policy – as he has mostly done, except to the extent he picks PC-addled generals and Bush holdovers. He also listens to his unimpressive eldest daughter and son-in-law, who are garden-variety limousine liberals. So that Trump usually said the right kind of things on immigration during the campaign provided little consolation to me. That said, he has been better on this issue than I expected (very low bar). Still not good enough. Now we’re about to lose the House and Sessions. Game over, I fear.

          I have a feeling Mr. Kling and his fellow libertarians and free-market ideologues are going to learn a hard lesson about how their economic principles fare when their open-borders/anti-national principles are implemented.

          • A lot of people are missing something by interpreting Trump’s negotiation style as contradicting himself.

            In the first year of his presidency there were a number of situations in which Trump made some comment that infuriated either the Dems or his base. In many cases, his approach resulted in a better outcome than he would have gotten with the normal DC approach.

            It was nerve-wracking for his supporters who are used to getting knifed by their nominal representatives.

            I’ve noticed that in the second year there’s less of that and more of a sense of ‘don’t interfere with the man while he’s negotiating.’

          • What has Trump gotten his base on immigration? Other than a lot of counterproductive rhetoric (because it repels more people than it attracts) and an ineffective “zero tolerance” policy (which won’t work without more funding and changes in asylum laws, which are unattainable without control of the House – which the GOP is about to lose), nothing. He’s not negotiating with anyone on this issue. He just uses the issue as an applause line. And he’s firing the only cabinet official who cares about it.

            It would be interesting to hear a theory of how saying we need “more” immigration because wages are “too high,” could be part of a strategy (as yet unimplemented) to change immigration policy to put the interests of US citizens first. I mean, unless one takes the Bush position that the immigrants are doing all of us a favor by coming here.

          • What has Trump gotten his base on immigration?

            Substantively, not much. But perhaps what they perceive they have gotten is respect. Before the Republican primaries, anyone who wanted to get serious about enforcing immigration law was informed that their position was not serious, unrealistic at best, hateful at worst.

            Most of the political/ journalistic establishment still wants to ignore those people, but the tweeter-in-chief tells them they are right.

          • “Before the Republican primaries, anyone who wanted to get serious about enforcing immigration law was informed that their position was not serious, unrealistic at best, hateful at worst.”

            And how has this changed in any way? Right now, the MSM is accusing people who vocally support immigration restriction of somehow bearing responsibility for what happened in Pittsburgh. That’s a very strange kind of “respect.”

            I don’t see what good is done by Trump’s empty bloviating about immigration when the situation on the ground remains pretty much what it was. His first term is just about half over. When is Trump going to become someone who wants “to get serious about enforcing immigration law”? Never, I would bet.

            I give Trump credit for fighting for Kavanaugh, something it’s hard to imagine Jeb!, Rubio, or Christy doing. Maybe his truculence got a good result in revising NAFTA. Other than that, it seems he just fights for himself, personally, usually in crises he needlessly brought on himself (such as the Mueller witch hunt).

        • I was talking about perception. When the president of the United States agrees with you and spends a lot time saying your opinion is important and true, it sure feels like more respect than you were getting before the Republican primaries.

          And you can tell yourself, “Back then there was absolutely no chance of the laws being enforced. Now there’s a chance (no matter how small). And some messy compromise is better than what would have happened with Hillary or Jeb! or any of the other possibilities.”

          • So, in other words, Trump is just a new front for the same old Republican racket. It’s still all really about capital gains tax cuts. The rest is all for show. The supply-side cultists saw early on that they could coopt Trump for their agenda, and that’s why they were on Trump’s bandwagon long before the primaries were over.

            Again, accusing immigration restrictionists of being racists and somehow being connected with the Pittsburgh shooter is not my idea of “respect.”

            I don’t see any beneficial compromise on the way. To say that there’s more chance of progress with Trump than with extremists on the other side does not undercut my point that nothing is actually happening or in the works – except the entry of vagrant caravan of phony “asylum seekers.”

            Your argument seems to be that the whole point of making Trump president was emotional catharsis for his middle American voters, not actually changing policy to their benefit – making them feel good about themselves so they would continue to vote Republican. This makes sense from Trump’s point of view as an empty narcissist and from the point of view of the preexisting donor-driven GOP establishment. I don’t see why those of us who actually care about how the country’s future should be so thrilled.

          • I’m not talking about “whole points” or what I think will happen in regard to changes in immigration law and law enforcement. I’m not a pundit, paid to pretend to know more than I do. Much depends, of course, on what happens Tuesday.

            If half the country accuses Trump supporters of being racists and causing mass shootings, well, they weren’t saying very nice things about you previously (obligatory “deplorables” reference here). Mostly, they were just dismissing you, but now they can’t because THE PRESIDENT AGREES WITH ME and isn’t afraid to say so.

            Now, this may be as silly as voting for Obama because he likes the NBA and plays basketball and makes a big deal about his March Madness brackets. But feelings of being respected, of being cared about, of inclusion, of solidarity aren’t necessarily logical.

          • But my point is – nothing on the ground is changing. The invasion goes on, and is not stopping, in spite of Trump’s cheesy theatrics. Nor, it seems to me, is Trump addressing any of the other underlying issues that are making life worse for middle Americans. You seem to think that is okay – that it is good that Trump is a placebo lulling his base back into complacency while the bipartisan establishment continues business as usual. I do not.

          • It may seem that way to you but that is not what is going on inside my head. I was wondering why immigration restrictionists have favorable feelings toward Trump even though he has not done much substantive about their concerns.

            I could try to play the “seem” game too. You seem to be saying, “Trump has done nothing substantive for immigration restrictionists. He will do nothing substantive for immigration restrictionists. In fact, by being such an ill-mannered blowhard, he has made restrictions less likely. You restrictionists should look down on him like I do, and you would if you were as perceptive as me.”

            But that would be unfair.

  5. Can Kling cite any interesting or insightful points from Goldberg’s speech? I hear a long rant with weak points. Max Boot, Jen Rubin, and David Frum are more intense versions of this that have devoted themselves to this endless bitter fury against anything Trump. Goldberg hasn’t gone that far, but he’s not an insightful or even an honest pundit himself. He lies on lots of things.

  6. the goal of the president is to appoint conservative judges. that seems to sum it up. legislation is secondary. The judicial branch is the most important since it can annul the others.

  7. Well, we are really going to see how popular Donald Trump is in several weeks with the midterms and the last week has been terrible for nation with three terrorist attacks.

    1) Probably the worst thing about Trump is he is unable to an ounce of empathy for him and does not perform the emotional leadership role well at all. All Presidents face big issues and must do the Oval Office speech on TV and Trump is unable. Or they would have given eulogies at appropriate funerals.

    2) I think the big fear from serious conservatives is the embrace of Trump seems a bit loss on morals and religion in the Republican Party. And to many conservative what was suppose hold society together was religion continues to diminishing while society becomes more technocratic in nature. And angry Trump can only put this off 4 or 8 years.

    3) It does seem like the ANGRY table pounding Fox News and talk radio have beaten down the serious conservatives. A serious conservatives have reasonable concerns of the Honduras Caravan on current culture, negative effects of wages and strains on state budgets. A table pounding conservatives claims Soros is paying them to replace our population. While all political movements need their extreme actors, Republicans
    Party appears to taken over by Hannity, Coultor, Dobbs,and Trump versus Bush, Brooks and Douthat.

  8. What does Jonah want to conserve? The conservative American ideal is a nutty president. Let’s be conservative about having limitations on the power of the presidency.

  9. And 90% of the comments to this post so far are a case in point.

    I live in WI and have voted for Scott Walker in the past. Have mostly managed to tune out all the political ads but caught some this weekend while watching football. It was bashing his opponent on illegal immigration.

    I am so sick of the nationalist, populist, tariff-defending Hannity-Dobbs-Coulter GOP that I’m seriously considering voting democratic if I vote at all.

    I think this quote by (Republican) congressman Steve King on his support for European far-right white nationalist groups pretty much sums it up: “If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans.”

  10. I’m a fan of Victor Davis Hanson’s military history lectures, which I occasionally watch on youtube, and through that I’ve noticed exactly the phenomenon Goldberg discusses; ie, conservative intellectuals pretending there is some grand strategy that explains Trump’s erratic behavior and intemperate mouthing off when the reality is much simpler. I didn’t vote for Trump, either, and I share some of Goldberg’s sentiments but two quick follow-up points on his evident martyr complex:

    1. I suppose I’d be a bit more indignant about the corruption/degradation of the whole Conservatism, Inc. ecosystem of which Goldberg is a part If I thought it was actually worth a damn. Let’s not overrate the cultural significance of conservative intellectuals, swell chaps, though they might be.

    2. One way I would have considered titling this post if this were my blog would be “In which Jonah Goldberg is scandalized to learn that people in American politics lie sometimes.”

  11. These comments so far are interesting, if not amazing, especially on this blog.

    So many people who believe themselves to be classically liberal who are buying into the populist, nationalist, identitarianism that Goldberg documents. And now feel free to shout at their neighbors.

    So many people who, despite their professed dislike of the conventional professional politicians, employ George W. Bush’s idea of “I’ve Abandoned Free Market Principles To Save The Free Market System” in the hope of owning the libs.

    So many people who claim to be rational who ignore how free-ish trade has raised the population of the world out of absolute poverty, including more than 1 billion over the last 3 decades. And, of course, many of those benefits have flowed to the citizens of the US who follow their own comparative advantages.

    So many people who are afraid of “the other” that they can’t comprehend how the USA is great because of people who have “strange” ideas and are able to try them here.

    Our family gave to HIAS this weekend. We need more people in this country who want to strive.

    • But isn’t that the problem? Lots of Americans fear that many new arrivals will not strive, or that they will strive but not have the smarts or ability to defer gratification or ? to convert that striving into something positive for their new neighbors.

      The United States government used Hmong people against the communists in Laos. After Laos fell, realizing how the new government would treat them, many were brought to the US, in particular to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Minnesota is not exactly stingy when it comes to social services and is socially liberal but Hmong experience in the US has generally not been a successful one. There’s a lot of poverty and crime.

      I think most Americans wish Hmong, and Somalis and Syrians and …, were like Galicians of a century ago. But more and more evidence indicates they are not.

  12. NeverTrumper political analysis is entirely discredited among its intended audience.
    Not even worth the effort to watch, let alone fisk.

  13. The commentator with by far the best Trump analysis is Scott Adams.

    Since the election, my appreciation of inside-the-beltway commentary has gone to zero. Twitter wars between Trump and Bill Krystal or whoever he spars with is irrelevant to me. Anybody who watches Hannity or Maddow needs their heads looking into. Or, for that matter, Goldberg. I recommend something that Bryan Capland suggested years ago: stop watching the news. Just look at the rawest, purest, non-editorialized facts, and decide if you want more of it or less. Life will go on, with or without Trump. Excuse me now, I’m taking my son to soccer practice.

  14. First Republican I have voted for since Reagan who even attempted to fulfill his campaign promises and promote real conservative values.

    Jonah is a Demopublican. They rule us no more…..

  15. As Lincoln said of Grant, “I can’t spare this man. He fights!” (And, like TRUMP, he won.)

    The exact opposite of Jonah Goldberg and his merry, clubby band of “principled losers” who failed to fight on any front, except in the social /faculty club debates, where no one gets dirty or bruised and no one is making any progress in solving real world problems or beating back the Progtard hordes!

  16. “I think most Americans wish Hmong, and Somalis and Syrians and …, were like Galicians of a century ago. But more and more evidence indicates they are not.”
    This is very racist.
    It is also very true.

    The fact that true reality is racist — different results for different races, is a key problem in the PC censorship. Not wanting reality to be true / treating some untruth as reality.

    The reality of a HR Clinton presidency is so terrible to contemplate that I find no conservatives who were against Clinton to have lost integrity. Actually, I think our Arnold was a bit wimpy on not voting for Trump to be against Clinton, but it’s true he doesn’t have to justify his vote now. Nor would have to under Clinton — tho there is a LOT of “anti-Green Party” discussion among Dems, now. How Green votes weaken Dems, just as Libertarian votes weaken Reps.

    Trump is a twice divorced rich, smug, semi-moral businessman / entertainer / politician. Who is doing great conservative politics, given the huge power of PC elite. SCOTUS from the Heritage list of 25 remains enough to justify Trump as a conservative; the actual tax cuts were a bigger bonus than expected.

    It’s not all clear that Trump should lead more on immigration, if the Reps already in Congress aren’t willing to fund the Wall — maybe it’s better to have that problem still unsolved so more conservative anti-illegal Reps can get elected.

    • Disagree. I think people said similar things about Irish, Catholic, and Chinese immigrants a century + ago.

      It’s anecdotal, but I worked on a farm growing up in the midwest, and we had many Hmong employees who worked picking our produce. Many of the first generation didn’t speak English (although their kids all did), but there were zero problems or issues that ever made me thought they shouldn’t be in the country. I’m sure some people have issues (like anywhere), but I’d guess the majority are normal people not all that different from people who came here 100 years ago.

      I think it’s much more likely the tribal bias/fear of the “other” (not helped by Trump or Fox News) is making people irrationally fearful of immigrants. Similar to the non-stop coverage of the Honduras caravan, even though it’s 1000 miles away at the moment.

      Also, even if there are group level differences between races of the sort Charles Murray talks about, and which I’ll grant you — among mainstream thinkers — it’s potentially career destroying to even acknowledge, I don’t think it’s at all clear that means it’s justified to impose on the liberties of others.

      None of this is rational using any sort of expected value or cost-benefit analysis. I have a (fox news watching) relative who is afraid we’re going to start seeing tent cities here in Milwaukee, WI as a result of this caravan. A friend’s mother (again big fox news viewer) is afraid to join a gym because she thinks she’ll have to share a locker room with someone who is transgender.

      • “I don’t think it’s at all clear that means it’s justified to impose on the liberties of others.”

        Since these people, by your own admission (Charles Murray stats), can never contribute in taxes what they take in benefits, they are by definition imposing on the liberty of others. Each one is a thief, simply by virtue of collecting state benefits they can never possibly pay for.

        And that is before we talk about other externalities that don’t show up in GDP (or strangely enough make it go up in a bad way, like security and transaction costs).

        Finally, immigrants support the left and a broadly illiberal agenda. Politically they support increased benefits to themselves, so we can’t really say that they aren’t guilty of taking what they are given if they vote for it. There seems to me no reason to believe this will change. People without the IQ to produce a first world living standard for themselves can only achieve it by stealing from those that can. And specific minority set asides are popular and none of groups that have them turn them down on principle.

        We need to stop seeing these people are “wanting to be free” and start seeing them as “wanting to steal our stuff using government force because they can’t make it themselves.” There is nothing libertarian about that.

        • No, that is not my “admission”. I reject that differences in IQ imply that anyone is incapable of contributing more in taxes than they get in benefits or that most members of any group can’t (and don’t) have IQ enough to achieve a first world living standard. I would be surprised if Charles Murray makes that argument either.

          And even if this was true (again, I don’t accept it at all), there’s no reason your focus on the benefits-taxes balance couldn’t mean other solutions, like reducing benefits. As an aside, do you also consider social security recipients (who on average get about 1/3 more out than they put in) as thieves?

          As for the “illiberal” agenda that immigrants supposedly push, I think the nationalist/populist anti-free trade, president-telling companies (Harley, Carrier) where to put their factories agenda of our current president is hardly (tax cuts and supreme court justices aside) liberal, especially compared to immigrants as a rule, who are a collection of individuals and obviously not of one mind.

          I think the hijacking of the GOP in this direction by Trump — so that we’ll have a choice between the modern left and Trump’s mercantalist/1930’s version of the GOP, is going to be a net negative in terms of how much classical liberty is in the world.

        • First Paragraph:

          It’s just math. It’s provable. People have done it. If you reject it, you’re rejecting facts.

          “like reducing benefits”

          How are we going to reduce benefits? Are these new immigrants going to vote for reducing their benefits (they don’t, not just because they vote for democrats but surveys show they favor higher benefits for themselves).

          And why should natives change their benefit structure to accommodate immigrants? If we’ve decided we want to live in a society with some degree of social insurance, why should we surrender that in the interest of non-citizens?

          This actually gets to a serious point. People support social insurance because they see themselves, people like them, or their descendants as possibly needing such assistance one day. It’s kind of like an insurance premium they pay in case something goes wrong. Except instead of guarding against a specific risk it guards against misfortune generally. They may also value it as a social stabilizing factor, again because stability is a public good they enjoy. There are clear things gained from social insurance, people are buying something.

          When you live in a high IQ society the benefits, and thus premiums, on social insurance are low enough not to hamper proper economic functioning and living standards. In a low IQ society there are more benefits that need to be paid and fewer people paying. In insurance that creates a death spiral.

          If importing net tax liability immigrants means we have to abandon social insurance because they will bankrupt it, then even those who value social insurance or stability ought to oppose them coming.

          You seem not to know why we have social insurance. It isn’t for the betterment of random people all over the world. It’s to achieve specific objectives for our society. My family or people I care about might one day be poor Americans and might benefit from social insurance, but they will never be poor Mexican immigrants.

          “do you also consider social security recipients as thieves?”

          I think that the accounting surrounding Social Security is a scam and leads to intergenerational welfare that isn’t particularly defensible.

          However, placing an additional burden on the state through low IQ immigration that makes it even harder to pay for SS doesn’t help that problem.

          “who are a collection of individuals and obviously not of one mind.”

          They can statistically be counted on to behave in certain ways. That’s all that really matters. It’s all that’s going to matter when the votes are tallied.

      • I think people said similar things about Irish, Catholic, and Chinese immigrants a century + ago.

        Indeed they did. And about the Galician immigrants, most of whom were Ashkenazi Jews. A very large number of people believe that since “similar things were said” a century ago and they were wrong then, they must be wrong today. But, of course, that doesn’t logically follow, because the things being said are about different people in a different society today.

  17. It is interesting that the commenters who favor the policies they are getting from Trump (almost everyone) think that having Trump the man as the vehicle will work out strategically.

    Setting aside any arguments about what conservatism should and shouldn’t be about, I can understand the deep frustration with the establishment Republican’s of the world. But many conservative values could be won in the political sphere the right way, by convincing voters, by winning and by governing better than the competition. When was the last time the conservative establishment tried to govern by their principles?

    I live in Massachusetts, and the most popular politician is a Republican governor, who is basically a bureaucratic mechanic. Now, many bloggers here might not think he is a type of conservative they could stomach, but the formula is there to win in blue states by being competent and focusing on results. You can win by actually doing the work, especially in the petty environment we have now. People will respond to competence if anyone bothers to offer it.

    Instead, you want to take a short-cut with Trump. A civil argument could be made on much of this stuff, but the populist right has convinced itself that the system is out to get them and are willing to reach for desperate measures. They decide to send Trump out to do it the nasty way instead.

    Since when did you think you could have your political way without bringing the majority of the country along with you?

    Trump will inevitably implode because he has never had any respect for the law and almost certainly has done something sufficiently illegal that will take him down. He will destroy your causes for a generation or two at least. You may like that he is a fighter, but you are sending him out to fight your fellow citizens. He will never win support outside his base. He has been brilliant at leveraging his fighting skills and his base to hold onto power, but this can’t scale. The nation is about to barf this guy out.

    You took the lazy way, you forgot your core values, and you will pay the price.

  18. Usually we say don’t make it personal but in the case of Trump I think people should keep it personal. Be for a policy you like even if Trump is for it but treat him like he treats others. Call him names and trash him personally, call him the orange clown, make fun of his hair. Trash his ridiculous claims about immigrants and trade but keep it personal. I’d even trash his wife for being a gold digger. He’s an easy target. Stand up to him.

    • BTW I am happy that have not gotten into no more wars in the Trump presidency. Maybe another GOP president would have be more likely to go to war. Other that that and being against international trade, he is standard GOP. I like international and immigration so I am not with Trump on those but overall he has not been so bad.

  19. Charles Murray has stated over and over again that if any social group maintains strong families and respect for education, they will merge almost invisibly into the broad American middle class.

    If they tolerate illegitimacy and functional illiteracy and crime, then they will be a burden.

    Some of the greatest problems in this area are blacks and Mexicans who have been in this country a long time. Murray makes the point that Appalachian white are getting into this area and they have been here for 200 years.

    • And yet illegitimacy, illiteracy, and crime are functions of IQ. So you can tell exactly how much of it a particular ethnic group will have of such things based on its IQ.

      There is an effect where first generation immigrants from some third world countries maintain their traditional values in the first generation, but their children quickly assimilate to “American values” in the second generation. If they are high IQ those values are middle class values. If they are low IQ they are underclass values.

      Nobody has much of an idea of how to get the underclass to behave more middle class. Certainly, increasing the size of the underclass through immigration isn’t exactly helping.

      The Bell Curve even states that if Latinos keep immigrating to America, and we end up with South American demographics, that the inevitable result will be South American culture and politics. I.E. A large dysfunctional underclass in the valley barrios and a semi functional upper class on a hill. With the underclass trying to come up the hill to loot what it can and the upper class doing whatever they can to stop it.

      Middle class values are for middle class demographics.

  20. We are getting quite afield here, but I would ascribe the failure of Afro-American society to our abiding hatred of black males, with the result being fatherless families.

    God knows the white aristocrats of the old South had more than a few low IQ’s among them.

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