Memorial Day

Arlington National Cemetery

Our National Affliction

From Paul M. Johnson:

THE MENTAL INFECTION known as “political correctness” is one of the most dangerous intellectual afflictions ever to attack mankind. The fact that we began by laughing at it–and to some extent, still do–doesn’t diminish its venom one bit.

PC has an enormous appeal to the semieducated, one reason that it’s struck roots among overseas students at minor colleges. But it also appeals to pseudo-intellectuals everywhere, since it evokes the strong streak of cowardice notable among those wielding academic authority nowadays. Any empty-headed student with a powerful voice can claim someone (never specified) will be “hurt” by a hitherto harmless term, object or activity and be reasonably assured that the dons and professors in charge will show a white feather and do as the student demands. Thus, there isn’t a university campus on either side of the Atlantic that’s not in danger of censorship. The brutal young don’t even need to impose it themselves; their trembling elders will do it for them.

The insidious thing about PC is that it wasn’t–and isn’t–the creation of anyone in particular. It’s usually the anonymous work of such Kafkaesque figures as civil servants, municipal librarians, post office sorters and employees at similar levels. It penetrates the interstices of society, especially those where the hierarchies of privilege and property are growing. To a great extent PC is the revenge of the resentful underdog.

Nowhere has PC been more triumphant than in the U.S. This is remarkable, because America has traditionally been the home of vigorous, outspoken, raw and raucous speech. From the early 17th century, when the clerical discipline the Pilgrim Fathers sought to impose broke down and those who had things to say struck out westward or southward for the freedom to say them, America has been a land of unrestricted comment on anything–until recently. Now the U.S. has been inundated with PC inquisitors, and PC poison is spreading worldwide in the Anglo zone.

For these reasons it’s good news that Donald Trump is doing so well in the American political primaries. He is vulgar, abusive, nasty, rude, boorish and outrageous. He is also saying what he thinks and, more important, teaching Americans how to think for themselves again.

No one could be a bigger contrast to the spineless, pusillanimous and underdeserving Barack Obama, who has never done a thing for himself and is entirely the creation of reverse discrimination. The fact that he was elected President–not once, but twice–shows how deep-set the rot is and how far along the road to national impotence the country has traveled.

Under Obama the U.S.–by far the richest and most productive nation on earth–has been outsmarted, outmaneuvered and made to appear a second-class power by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. America has presented itself as a victim of political and economic Alzheimer’s disease, a case of national debility and geopolitical collapse.

None of the Republican candidates trailing Trump has the character to reverse this deplorable declension. The Democratic nomination seems likely to go to the relic of the Clinton era, herself a patiently assembled model of political correctness, who is carefully instructing America’s most powerful pressure groups in what they want to hear and whose strongest card is the simplistic notion that the U.S. has never had a woman President and ought to have one now, merit being a secondary consideration.

The world is disorderly and needs its leading nation to take charge and scare it back into decency. Donald Trump fits the bill. Other formidable figures, including Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, have performed a similar service in the past. But each President is unique and cast in his own mold. Trump is a man of excess–and today a man of excess is what’s needed.

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Playing Dangerous Games With Our Constitutional Republic

From David French:

The state of North Carolina and the federal government are now in a state of declared legal war. On Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration sent a letter to North Carolina governor Pat McCrory demanding that the state “not comply with or enforce H.B. 2,” its so-called transgender bathroom law. According to the letter, a state requirement that people use the bathrooms reserved for their biological sex violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Department of Justice gave the state until today, May 9, to assure the federal government that men can use women’s restrooms and showers in state facilities.

Today, the state answered the Department of Justice — with a lawsuit. In its complaint, filed in federal court, North Carolina accuses the DOJ of engaging in a “baseless and blatant overreach,” an “attempt to rewrite long-established federal civil rights laws in a manner that is wholly inconsistent with the intent of Congress and disregards decades of statutory interpretation by the courts.” Simply put, Title VII does not establish “transgender status” as a protected class, and any effort to do so by executive fiat violates the law.

Then the DOJ escalated again. At an afternoon news conference, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a “significant law enforcement” action — its own lawsuit. At the same time, Lynch indicated that the DOJ retained the authority to federal funding to key state entities, issuing a not-so-veiled threat of dramatic action before the courts issue a definitive ruling. At the same time, she preposterously compared the act of preserving bathrooms for people of the same sex to, of course, “Jim Crow” and hearkened back to the days of segregated water fountains.

A public-relations battle over bathrooms and showers has transformed into a fight over the meaning and indeed authority of the Constitution itself. In its zeal to advance the sexual revolution, the Obama administration has defied the will of Congress, unilaterally rewritten federal law without even bothering to go through a statutory rulemaking process, and now seeks to bring a sovereign state to heel through a combination of threats and lawsuits.

Let’s make this simple. Title VII prohibits private and public employers (including state governments) from discriminating on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.” Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating on the basis of “sex.” Neither statute prohibits sexual-orientation or gender-identity discrimination. For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have sought to amend federal law through the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that would essentially add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes within federal nondiscrimination law. For more than 20 years, LGBT activists have failed. ENDA hasn’t passed even when Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress.

Rather than wait for the law to change, however, federal regulators and lawless federal judges have incrementally changed it by executive and judicial fiat, steadily expanding the scope of Title VII until July 2015, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission unilaterally amended the statute. In a document entitled “What You Should Know about EEOC and Enforcement Protections for LGBT Workers,” the Commission declared that it interprets and enforces Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination as forbidding any employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation” (boldface in original).

At a stroke, the EEOC decided that it was going to essentially enforce ENDA — a statute that doesn’t exist. Democracy wasn’t working fast enough for the Obama administration, so it decided to give authoritarianism a try.

North Carolina’s lawsuit represents a direct challenge to the notion that the EEOC can amend federal law merely by changing its “interpretation.” It also challenges the very idea that requiring people to use bathrooms that correspond with their biological sex represents sex discrimination. The Obama administration credulously buys the notion that a man in a dress or a man who has been surgically mutilated is now a “woman,” and it seeks to enforce that notion with the full power of the federal government. As I said before, quack science meets quack law, and the Constitution is the casualty.

The Obama administration is playing dangerous games with our constitutional republic. Unlike nullification crises in years past, this time the state government is leading the way in attempting to preserve the will of Congress and our nation’s system of checks and balances by defending federal law as written. The executive branch has gone rogue by amending federal law through unconstitutional action.

The administration is supplementing and buttressing its lawlessness with sheer bullying. Governor McCrory and the North Carolina legislature have shown admirable resolve. May they continue to stand firm. We’re way beyond bathrooms now.

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Republicans, You’ve Made Your Bed

From Kevin D. Williamson:

I want to leave a note here, because I expect to have many occasions to link back to it in the next several months.

Americans and Republicans, remember: You asked for this. Given the choice between a dozen solid conservatives and one Clinton-supporting con artist and game-show host, you chose the con artist. You chose him freely. Nobody made you do it.

I will be reminding you all of that, from time to time.

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I Wish I Were a Hoosier…

From Jay Nordlinger:

… so that I could vote for Ted Cruz tomorrow. A sterling Reagan conservative. A classical liberal. A believer in limited government, the rule of law, free enterprise, peace through strength, the right to life. A smart man, a decent man. A bold man, a persistent man. My friend (incidentally). The kind of person who ought to be president of the United States.

He’d be great for the country, and world. So would Carly Fiorina, as vice president. They are a dream ticket for me. I believe a Cruz-Fiorina administration would be curative. I believe we would see quick and marked improvement in the economy, foreign policy, the courts — everywhere.

People say they will lose. That may be. Good and meritorious people have lost before. But I hope they win. I know they would be excellent in office, as I’ve said. Wouldn’t it be something to see it tested? Confirmed?

As regular readers know, I regard Trump and Hillary as unfit. Equally unfit, in different ways. But I regard Ted ’n’ Carly as marvelously fit. I hope Indiana voters will pull the lever for them. And that Nebraskans, West Virginians, and others will later.

I know that many disagree. They can write their own blogposts. I’m with you, Ted ’n’ Carly, and I’m grateful for you. Wish I were in Indiana to express it through a ballot.

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