The talking heads of the establishment are heaping scorn on Donald Trump like squawking crows defecate on those underneath the phone lines where they sit. The long knives are coming out of the sheaths of the New York-Washington literati. Everyone is attacking Donald Trump. But why is such animosity spewing from our media, our corporations, and our academic leaders toward this bodacious entrepreneur turned politician?
Why? Because Trump represents something untamed and untamable. He represents an outsider who refuses to play the game of “politics as usual” that the good ol’ boys have been playing throughout the past 80 years. What the establishment fears about Trump is that he doesn’t need to play the role of sycophant to their corporate-banking-bureaucratic combine that rules America.
Oh, the Donald makes use of the power elite combine when he sees that it is in his best interests to do so. But he does not need the corporate-banking-bureaucratic combine like the media sycophants and academic courtiers do. He is big enough to transcend the power elites that dominate the country. Thus he cannot be bullied. And this is why the major networks hate him so; it is why Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier were oozing hostility during the debates. Because they choose to live their lives as appeasers of power, sycophants despise those who do not bow and scrape as they do in front of power.
Can Trump Govern?
Donald Trump is independent and defiant; that is indisputable. But is he presidential material? Can he govern the nation in this time of immense trouble? We might just be about to find out; the man defies all naysayers.
His recently released immigration plan is sending shock waves through the power corridors of the establishment. Alabama Senator, Jeff Sessions, who is our most brilliant immigration hawk in Washington has stated, “This is exactly the plan America needs.” And it is, indeed, a revolutionary set of policy proposals. Finally a presidential candidate who is willing to tell the voters the truth on immigration. Here are its basics:
1. Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Until they do, the U.S. will impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages, increase fees on millions of Mexican visas, and if necessary enact tariffs on all Mexican imports.
2. Enact nationwide E-Verify, which will bar all illegals from employment in the U.S.
3. End birthright citizenship. No more automatic awarding of citizenship to babies of illegals because they were born inside our borders.
4. End welfare abuse by immigrants. Applicants for entry to the U.S. must certify that they can pay for their own housing, healthcare and other needs.
5. Enhance the penalties for overstaying a visa. Individuals who refuse to leave at the time their visa expires must be subject to criminal penalties.
6. Detain all illegal aliens apprehended crossing the border until they are sent home. No more catch-and-release.
7. Defund sanctuary cities by cutting off their federal grants.
8. Mandatory return of all criminal aliens to their home countries.
There are other secondary features regarding the hiring of more ICE officers, cooperation with local gang task forces, treatment of H-1B visas, etc., but the above are the important features that need to be sold to the American people.
Flaws In the Plan
Unfortunately there still lingers Trump’s intention to select those who are “good illegals” and allow them to remain in America. My god, what a fiasco that would turn out to be. The bureaucrats in charge of such a “retention board” would surely allow 90% of the illegals to stay. This is the reality of Washington and its corporatist ideologues. Wake up, Donald! There is only one stand to take on illegals: they all must go home and apply for entrance through the front door. Only by setting the bar at the most severe level can we hope to keep the leaks and exceptions at a minimal level.
In addition, Trump’s welfare plank in the immigration plan mentions only the denial of welfare services to legal immigrants. But welfare services also need to be denied to illegal immigrants. Far more important.
The policy of allowing illegals to educate their children at taxpayer expense is not mentioned in the plan. Eventually a Trump administration will have to face this issue. But basically, the plan is an excellent start toward solving the alien invasion of America.
Skewering the Buffoons
The importance of Donald Trump can be found in the fact that through the sheer force of his personality, he has opened up gaping holes in the GOP establishment’s credibility. He is skewering the buffoons of the GOP like John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and the gaggles of big spenders that prance around Washington. He has declared the neocon hierarchy of the GOP to be what it is – a coterie of greedy, stupid statists who have no interest in the good of the country, only in more legislative controls and entrenchment of their power in Washington.
Unfortunately the war going on between Trump’s camp and the establishment honchos smacks of the Mussolini-Lenin conflicts when the Fascists and the Communists were rising to power in early 20th century Europe. It is a conflict between rival gangs of collectivists to see whose vision of massive government control will prevail. It is not a fight between advocates of freedom and advocates of statism. At least so far it has not shown itself to be such. But there is still time. Trump, however, will have to follow up his very promising immigration plan with several policy positions on the side of freedom and constitutionalism as adverse to GOP business as usual.
For example, will Trump support elimination of progressive tax rates? Will he strengthen his stand against amnesty by abandoning his acceptance of “good illegals?” Will he endorse federalism? Will he propose the end of nation building in foreign policy? Or will he do what the GOP corporatists do, endorse privileges for the banks, unions, minorities, and welfare recipients while imposing democracy throughout the world with our military?
Red Flags In Foreign Policy
As reported in the Los Angeles Times of August 16, 2015, Trump says he wants to defeat Islamic State militants “by taking over a lot of the oil and certain areas of Iraq.” When asked about sending U.S. ground troops to do that, Trump said, “That’s OK.”
This is frightening. Trump would drag us back into the quagmire of a guerrilla war in the guerrillas’ home territory. These types of wars can only be won by becoming a permanent occupying force – perpetual war for perpetual peace as Orwell put it. Militant Islam does not threaten us militarily. The danger it represents to us must be fought, not by invasion of Islamic lands, but at our border by simply denying Muslims entrance to our country as immigrants.
Donald Trump is, indeed, a maverick. He has no trouble calling out the pygmies and exposing the charlatanry of the Democrats and Republicans. He has cajones as they say. But does he have the overall mindset to truly stand for freedom and the Constitution? Such a stand requires a certain level of perception in political-economy that identifies why statism is not just pragmatically lethal, but also morally wrong. Does Donald Trump have that level of perception? We are going to find out. The man is certainly defiant in face of the quislings, which is so needed these days. But is he a true patriot, or is he just another corporatist like George W. Bush?
Nelson Hultberg is a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas and the Director of Americans for a Free Republic www.afr.org. A graduate of Beloit College in Wisconsin, his articles have appeared in such publications as The American Conservative, Insight, Liberty, The Freeman, The Social Critic, The Dallas Morning News, and the San Antonio Express-News, as well as on numerous Internet sites.
He is the author of The Golden Mean: Libertarian Politics, Conservative Values
Email: NelsonHultberg (at) afr.org
