Finally, a Just War

Bless Donald Trump. Inadvertently, by just being Donald, Mr. Trump has delivered more good news to liberty lovers.

In his bid for the presidency, Mr. Trump is not only threatening the Republican establishment, but is forcing a war with the cable news channel that does the Republican regimists’ bidding.

The Fox News Channel backed Genghis Bush’s wars. The Powers That Be at FNC now wish to roger (Ailes) America, again, by delivering the country to neoconservative tool Marco Rubio, or to fool John Kasich (governor from Ohio), or to Ms. Fiorina, whom tacky media types call “Carly.” However, this little lady’s honeyed words conceal a burning desire to commit the country to an arms race with China and Russia.

Not for naught did Scott Walker go from 2 percent in the polls, to zero, to sayonara.  Walker, that live wire, picked up his marbles and went home, blaming Trump for making him sad.  But like the rest of the establishment’s candidates, Walker had served up the same sub-intelligent, hackneyed lies about the root-causes of the migration problem plaguing Europe.

Syrian, Iraqi and Libyan populations are on the move, the neoconservative posse preaches, because of a failure to remove Bashar Hafez al-Assad, a man who was the source of stability in Syria, much like Saddam Hussein was in Iraq.

Have we learned nothing about the perils of toppling law-and-order dictators, only to see the rise of barbarians worse than their predecessors? Evidently not.

Bar Rand Paul and, to a degree, Donald Trump, all the Republican candidates insist that American exceptionalism lies in leading the world not in technological innovation, comity, commerce and as exemplars of individual rights—but by projecting military power the world over. The US government’s bankruptcy, the candidates see as having no bearing on their own unanimous plans for an arms race with the other super powers and a renewed military offensive in the Middle East.

Since the second primary season Republican debate, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, in California, FNC’s Sean Hannity has been promoting Rubio’s rabid ideation with zeal. Rubio regularly trashes Vladimir Putin for trying to prop Assad up, so that the Islamic State does not capture Damascus.

Regrettably, other than to sensibly say that he’d get along with Putin, Trump made absolutely no attempt to demonstrate a familiarity with the issues, at Simi Valley. He might want to rethink his relaxed approach, for it belies the candidate’s claim to have surrounded himself with the best people possible, or to have good judgement.

Trump’s good judgment has since surfaced in a conversation with Greta Van Susteren: “If Putin goes into Syria and is “able to knock out ISIS,” that’s not the worst thing he’s ever heard, Trump told the host.

That excellent instinct—allow Putin to degrade and destroy ISIS if he wants to—comes from a very different perspective than Rubio’s lamentations about Russia “replacing us as the single most important power broker in the Middle East.”

You see, Trump’s instinct is to conduct foreign policy that benefits Americans. He doesn’t want Americans dying for nothing. Rubio’s prime objective is to conduct foreign policy that aggrandizes Washington. Like other neoconservatives, he dreads being a politician in a country that is no longer the world’s military hegemon.

For if America busies itself not with elective wars, but with commerce, the shift in power and prestige will be away from politicians who prosecute wars, and back to The People who produce prosperity.

“I’m owned by the people!” affirmed Trump, who wants what the people want.

Having spent a total of two years of his working life outside government, Rubio—reflexively, not consciously—wants what’ll glorify The State, the thing by which he survives and thrives.

And what does the battered GOP base want?

The base, I hope, has wizened up to the neoconservatives.

The base, I hope, will realize that neoconservatives are still in the business of creating their own parallel reality and forcing ordinary Americans, Europeans and Middle-Easterners to inhabit the ruins.

As I read it, the GOP base wants government to reverse the things it has done; to repeal laws, wars and do no more harm.

Unless in defense of the realm, Americans are uninterested in more of the same foreign-policy folly. Let us keep our military mitts to ourselves and defend our own borders. That, it would appear, is the prevailing sentiment among Republican voters, although not among the regimists who congregated at the Reagan Library.

Therefore, it is to Rand Paul’s prescriptions during the debate that Trump should look, and not to the War Tourette’s of the rest:

• Refrain from a rash foreign policy.
• Engage with Russia and China.
• Talk to the Mullahs before you “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” (a jingle popularized by jingoist John McCain).
• Leave dope policy to the states (not ideal, for consumption is to be left to the individual, but better than most).
• Do not sign on to bomb Assad out of existence. You’ll miss him when he’s gone.
• Remind Hillary Clinton who broke Libya.

Donald Trump has done another fine thing since Simi Valley, about which the media is audibly silent.

In the honorable tradition Benjamin Franklin wished to establish, Trump said he’d forfeit a salary as president. Many of our Founding Fathers believed America’s representatives ought not to be paid at all.

As a man among metrosexuals, Trump’s demeanor, naturally, is unlike that of his fork-tongued adversaries.

Nevertheless, Trump was genial, even gracious, at Simi Valley. He showed contrition over his unkind cuts about Carly Fiorina’s face. Fiorina could have cracked a smile, but didn’t. (Or, perhaps she couldn’t, considering the likely nips-and-cuts suffered by The Face).

And Trump refused to grovel.

Good. Groveling about impolitic statements is the first sign of a housebroken GOPer.

So here’s why Trump is good for liberty:

By waging internecine warfare against the political masters and their mouthpiece (FNC), Trump is undermining the bastions of neoconservatism in America; he is dealing a structural blow to the edifice of Beltway Republicanism.

In response, the Beltway boys are rising on their little hind legs.

As Megyn Kelly riffed about Trump’s sexism, Fox News commentator Rich Lowry blurted out this on Kelly’s File: “Carly Fiorina cut Trump’s balls off with the precision of a surgeon.” (Kelly, who is turning out to be rather vacuous, detected no sexism there.)

Another slick Republican strategist, Rick Wilson, a regular on CNN, recently asked Trump supporter Ann Coulter on Twitter if Trump paid her “more for anal.”

Trump, for his part, fired first on the political flank. Now, in a pincer movement, Trump opened up a new front and is gunning for the establishment’s media megaphone.

This is why Trump’s war with Fox News is part of a just, liberating war.