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Trump Defended Wholeheartedly Against the Likes of Paul Rahe
This morning, I sent a link to my piece to various friends. One, a strong Trump supporter, responded as follows:
Paul is a hold-your-nose Trump supporter. He thinks Trump is a “swine” who has “no knowledge of foreign affairs” and is likely “unfit to be president.”
Three far more accurate and well-informed assessments of Trump can be found at American Greatness, here:
http://amgreatness.com/2016/10/13/trump-the-statesman/
http://amgreatness.com/2016/11/02/the-gops-ungrateful-bastard-caucus/
Feel free to respond as you think fit. Needless to say, I do not in general share the sentiments expressed in these three posts.
Update: Here lies another piece by D. C. McAllister applying Christian apologetics to the question. What she calls “laziness” I would call a mistake.
Published in Politics
Bob, I thought @Ribaldish was very specific about who he was calling disgraceful – it wasn’t everyone who votes for Trump, and it wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt. He was talking about white nationalists who “explicitly define national identity in racial or ethnic terms.” Which is, by the way, the very antithesis of the Roosevelt passage which you quoted.
P.S. Just one further thought about this part of the Roosevelt quote: “We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.” It is worth being aware that Teddy Roosevelt spoke and read several languages. He was talking about assimilation. The much-vaunted melting pot. He was not cheerleading for linguistic chauvinism.
I think the language is ambiguous, at least, as I read it.
White nationalists explicitly define national identity in racial or ethnic terms. They are bona fide racists, the real deal. Refusing to condemn them and their apologists isn’t a rejection of race-obsessed leftist thought-policing; it’s, at best, profound moral blindness.
And that a part of the Republican coalition has succumbed to it is nothing short of disgraceful.
@Ribaldish can clarify what was intended.
I believe I’ve been specific in my condemnation. Have you welcomed, rationalized, or turned a blind eye to, Trump’s support from bona fide racists and their apologists?
If that shoe fits, then wear it.
See my remarks in #54, above.
So you showed up here to charge people with responsibilities that no one must accept, then label them as disgraceful if they don’t answer your charge. I think you should name some names if you think there are racists appearing here so that they can then respond to your unwelcome, not to mentioned unfounded allegations. I have not found anyone here for whom the shoe fits, so you may need to look elsewhere.
You’re right, Bob. You don’t have to accept responsibility for the moral hygiene of your political coalition. You don’t have to accept responsibility for drawing clear distinctions between race-neutral border hawkishness and poisonous nativism. You don’t have to accept responsibility for repudiating repulsive ideologies like white nationalism when they seek to legitimize and mainstream themselves within the center-right.
I think you ought to explain, though, why you think anybody should be free to make that choice without consequence — without, for example, someone like me coming along and saying, “This is disgraceful.”
I’m just not used to having Paul Rahe and D.C McAllister included with people being characterized as disgraceful, especially by someone who shows up this week with no background or credibility for the record. Will you be gone by Wednesday?
I was not aware of a time-in-country prerequisite for criticizing people who post their opinions publicly. Where can I find this important requirement posted?
No. Will you?
I see plenty of racists. David Duke. Al Sharpton. The National Organization for the Race.
Not Trump supporters.
Once again you demonstrate an amazing familiarity with someone you regard as a racist. Why?
So now The Federalist is a racist publication? Really?
OK. I’m not a white nationalist. I don’t regularly read these most of these people you (and others) describe as racist white nationalists- often I’ve never heard of them- but when I do I don’t see the racism.
Of course, I’m sure that means I’m a racist. But I’m white, so I’m automatically a racist, anyway.
You lack the power to decide for me what is disgraceful.
What I find disgraceful is how the GOP has failed- miserably– to represent its American constituents, of all races. George Zimmerman defended himself against a thug, and the GOP governor of Florida allowed an ambitious prosecutor to withhold evidence in an attempt to ensure he was convicted.
That’s disgraceful. But, alas, typical of the gutless GOP.
Hence, Trump.
And yet David Duke is a Trump supporter, as are, by all appearances, the alt-right troll army that’s been bombarding David French with racist crap for the last year. Are you responsible for them? Of course not. You’re only responsible for how you react to their attempts to make themselves at home in your political movement.
At a minimum, they don’t seem to have a problem hosting the occasional apologia for white nationalists in order to drive clicks. Maybe it was part of an elaborate P.T. Barnum-esque scheme to part suckers from their money, but at the end of the day The Federalist permitted a piece that was sympathetic towards racists to be published under its masthead, without any disclaimer or caveat.
We’re all just talking, here, Xennady. I’m not trying to decide anything for you. Rather, I’m telling you that I think you, like Dr. Rahe, are being overly solicitous of people who do not deserve it — that the juice is not worth the squeeze.