Michael Knox Beran, WASPS

At Amazon, Michael Knox Beran, WASPS: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy.

Donna Brazile Claims She's Being 'Persecuted' After Megyn Kelly Asks Her How She Obtained the Exact Same Question as Hillary Clinton at the March 13th Debate (VIDEO)

Truly despicable.

Talk about a rigged election. That's not up for debate.

The whole video's good, but go to 5:55 minutes at the clip:

'We will drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.'

Good.

There's a lot of draining to be done.

Here's Donald Trump at Gettysburg, "Trump makes 'closing argument,' again attacks accusers."

Trump: “We will drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” https://t.co/tByfpF7dN5 https://t.co/FyVLPrVZyj

— CNN (@CNN) October 22, 2016

Reuters Calls the Election for Hillary

Crooked Hillary's been ahead in the Electoral College for almost the entire campaign, but Reuters is making a bid deal of her current lead. See, "Clinton far ahead in Electoral College race: Reuters/ipsos poll" (at Memeor
andum):

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton maintained her commanding lead in the race to win the Electoral College and claim the U.S. presidency, according to the latest States of the Nation project results released on Saturday.

In the last week, there has been little movement. Clinton leads Donald Trump in most of the states that Trump would need should he have a chance to win the minimum 270 votes needed to win. According to the project, she has a better than 95 percent chance of winning, if the election was held this week. The mostly likely outcome would be 326 votes for Clinton to 212 for Trump.

Trump came off his best debate performance of the campaign Wednesday evening but the polling consensus still showed Clinton winning the third and final face-off on prime-time TV. Trump disputes those findings.

And some national polls had the race tightening a wee bit this week though others had Clinton maintaining her solid lead. But the project illustrates that the broader picture remains bleak for Trump with 17 days to go until the Nov. 8 election.

Trump did gain ground in South Carolina where his slim lead last week expanded to seven points, moving it into his column from a toss-up. Unfortunately for him, he lost ground in Arizona, which is now too close to call.

Additionally, he is facing a challenge for Utah’s six Electoral College votes from former CIA operative and Utah native Evan McMullin. The independent candidate is siphoning votes away from Trump in a state that is Republican as any in the nation. In some polls, McMullin is even leading. (The States of the Nation is not polling on McMullin.)

Utah, like almost all of the states, is a winner-take-all contest.

Keep reading.

A Frightening Preview of Hillary's America

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, "Dark and Unaccountable":

Hillary Clinton, of all people, summed up this debate and this election best.

“What kind of country are we going to be?”

The Evita of Arkansas is a compulsive liar who has never told the truth in her life. But this time around she was right. This election does not come down to the personalities. It comes down to the kind of country we are going to have. And in the third debate, the one that took a break from the petty haranguing of media lackeys like Lester Holt and Martha Raddatz, the issues took center stage.

The core issue came into focus with the very first question asked by Chris Wallace. Wallace asked Hillary and Trump if their vision for the Supreme Court was based on the Constitution or not. Hillary launched into a spiel about a Supreme Court that would stand for class warfare and gay rights. The only time she mentioned the Constitution was when she insisted that the Senate was constitutionally obligated to confirm Obama’s nominee. That is her vision of the Constitution; a document that grants her power to reshape the country without regard to the Founders or any previously existing rights or freedoms.

It fell to Trump to speak of justices who would “interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted”. And that is the core issue. Personalities and politicians come and go. Today’s trending topic has been forgotten a day later. Outrages explode like fireworks and then fizzle out.

The weapons of mass distraction have been deployed and detonated. They keep going off in blasts of media gunpowder to divert our attention from whether we will live under the Constitution or under the Hillary. Will we have the rights and freedom bound into the Constitution or corruption justified with cant about the need to defend the oppressed by giving unlimited power to the oppressors.

The final debate finally focused on the issues. Instead of leading with the scandals, it asked about gun control, amnesty and open borders. It asked what kind of country are we going to be?

And, are we going to be a country at all or an open border weeping undocumented migrants destroying what’s left of the middle class as the masterminds rob the country blind while preaching piously to us about all the poor Syrians, Mexicans and LGBT youth they want to protect?

Americans have had a preview of the country that Hillary Clinton would create under Obama. They received yet another preview of it at a final debate in which Hillary echoed Obama’s Orwellian language in which endless spending was dubbed “investing” and in which government would save the middle class by regulating and taxing it out of existence for the greater good of the officially oppressed.

Hillary Clinton promised free college and cradle to grave education that would be debt free. Americans would be the ones plummeting deeper and deeper into debt to pay for degrees in gender studies. She promised viewers pie in the sky to be paid for by higher taxes on the rich. But as Trump pointed out, that’s the class that her donors come from. Did Warren Buffett and George Soros invest all that money into her victory just to pay higher taxes? Did they do it right after they bought the Brooklyn Bridge?

Or will Americans buy the bridge believing Hillary’s promise that she “will not add a penny to the debt”?

The only way Hillary can hope to do that is to appoint Bernie Madoff to be her Treasury Secretary.

When Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump wrangled over tax hikes or tax cuts, the debate is whether crooks like the Clintons should have a massive pot of taxpayer money to “invest” into their donors.

But beneath it is the same big question; do we live under the Constitution or under the Hillary?

In Hillary Country, just like in Obama Country, there are always more “investments” to make and you had better pay your “fair share”. There are always special identity group interests that need money. There are always more regulations, taxes, fines and fees. And it’s all for the children.

The ones that Hillary will grimace at when the cameras are on her and nudge away with the point of her shoe when the little red light turns off.

But there is no lie that Hillary Clinton will not tell and no lie that her pet media fact checkers will not back her up on....

Still more.

Great Robert Costa Piece on the Crumbling of the Republican Party

This is a much better report than the one from the New York Times I posted earlier here, "Republican Party on the Verge of Extinction?"

Robert Costa used to be at NRO, and he's an outstanding reporter with excellent inside sources and a real feel for movement politics.

At WaPo:

#DonaldTrump-driven divide will consume #GOPe long after the election: https://t.co/Zee2HtbS7a #TRUMP #TRUMPTRAIN #MAGA #Rigged

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 20, 2016

Candidates Struggle to Remain Civil at the Al Smith Charity Dinner (VIDEO)

Actually, sounds like a pretty hilarious roast.

At New York Magazine, "A Night of Laughter, Charity, and Boos: The Candidates Struggle to Remain Civil at the Al Smith Charity Dinner."

Book Review: Nancy Isenberg's, White Trash

This is a great book review, from Professor Jefferson Cowie, at Foreign Affairs, "The Great White Nope: Poor, Working Class, and Left Behind in America."

Here's the book, at Amazon, Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.

And an excerpt from Professor Cowie's review:

Most Americans are optimistic about their futures—but poor and working-class whites are not. According to a recent analysis published by the Brookings Institution, poor Hispanics are almost a third more likely than their white counterparts to imagine a better future. And poor African Americans—who face far higher rates of incarceration and unemployment and who fall victim far more frequently to both violent crime and police brutality—are nearly three times as optimistic as poor whites. Carol Graham, the economist who oversaw the analysis, concluded that poor whites suffer less from direct material deprivation than from the intangible but profound problems of “unhappiness, stress, and lack of hope.” That might explain why the slogan of the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump—“Make America Great Again!”—sounds so good to so many of them.

A stunning U-turn in the fortunes of poor and working-class whites began in the 1970s, as deindustrialization, automation, globalization, and the growth of the high-technology and service sectors transformed the U.S. economy. In the decades since, many blue-collar jobs have vanished, wages have stagnated for less educated Americans, wealth has accumulated at the top of the economic food chain, and social mobility has become vastly harder to achieve. Technological and financial innovations have fostered economic and social vitality in urban centers on the coasts. But those changes have brought far fewer benefits to the formerly industrial South and Midwest. As economic decline has hollowed out civic life and the national political conversation has focused on other issues, many people in “flyover country” have sought solace in opioids and methamphetamine; some have lashed out by embracing white nationalist rage. As whites come closer to becoming a plurality in the United States (or a “white minority,” in more paranoid terms), many have become receptive to nativist or bigoted appeals and thinly veiled promises to protect their endangered racial privilege: think of Trump’s promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and his invocation of an unspecified bygone era when the United States was “great,” which many white Trump supporters seem to understand as a reference to a time when they felt themselves to be more firmly at the center of civic and economic life.

Trump also loves to tell his audiences that they are victims of a “rigged” political system that empowers elites at their expense. On that count, the evidence supports him. Consider, for example, the findings of a widely cited 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, who researched public opinion on approximately 1,800 policy proposals (as captured by surveys taken between 1981 and 2002) and found that only those ideas endorsed by the wealthiest ten percent of Americans became law. This domination of politics by economic elites has produced the de facto disenfranchisement of everyone else—a burden experienced by the entire remaining 90 percent, of course, but perhaps felt most acutely by those who have fallen the furthest.

For poor and working-class white Americans, the profound shifts of the past few decades have proved literally lethal: beginning around 1999, life expectancy—which had been increasing dramatically for all Americans during the twentieth century—began to decrease for less educated middle-aged whites. Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize–winning economist who discovered this trend along with his wife and collaborator, the economist Anne Case, speculated that this demographic group is “susceptible to despair” because they have “lost the narrative of their lives.”

Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash aims to uncover the historical roots of this social calamity and explain its political effects. It’s an ambitious book that doesn’t quite succeed but that is nonetheless frequently revelatory...

Keep reading.

Final Debate Unlikely to Change Minds

Well, yeah, the respective coalitions are pretty well locked in, but still ... perhaps there's a few undecideds out there.

At WSJ, "Voter Support for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Reverts to January Levels":

After all of this year’s election turmoil—the noisy clashes over Donald Trump’s comments on immigrants and women, the  Hillary Clinton email and family foundation controversies—public views of the two candidates have wound up right where they started in January.

Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are no more liked or disliked than when the year started, nor have more people come to view the prospect of their election with optimism, Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling finds. And in a head-to-head matchup, Mrs. Clinton’s 10-point lead of today is exactly where it stood in January.

Those numbers suggest that while tonight’s debate may produce dramatic moments and big headlines, it is unlikely to change the trajectory of the race. The 2016 election might seem turbulent, with its battle of personalities, hacked emails and late-night tweets. But underneath, there has been more stability than volatility...

Actually, I suspect WSJ/NBC oversampled Democrats in their polling, but the truth will be in the results on November 8th. I'm ready.

Keep reading.

The Case for Trump

From VDH.

I'm a Bible-Thumping Etiquette Teacher for Trump

Heh.

I love this.

From Diann Catlin, at USA Today:

I first encountered Donald Trump during the Republican Party primary debates. Night after night as he took on his opponents with vitriol and poorly chosen words, I would tell my husband, “I will NEVER vote for this man. He is simply Rude with a capital R.” I actually loved the night Sen. Marco Rubio dished it back, giving Trump a dose of boys-will-be-boys, and me a dose of front-seat boyish braggadocio.

I am not a reality TV viewer, and having never heard him utter “You’re fired,” I simply began listening to Trump relative to the key issues Americans face. Of course we need to secure the borders, and of course we need to improve job growth in America. We must lower our debt and we certainly must value the life of the unborn child. When I listened to the Trump children (who definitely would have seen their father in both good and bad times) speak of him with respectful reverence, I had to question my early summation of Trump.

Over the years earning a living as an etiquette teacher, I have met and corrected brash and character-challenged individuals. When I decided to vote for Trump, many of my friends said: “You, an etiquette consultant, can vote for someone so uncivil?” The more I encountered Trump in various televised interviews, the more I realized if his prickly corners were carved away, his strength on the issues would surface. I read his list of possible Supreme Court nominees and recalled how Obama’s liberal appointees had voted. I realized judgeship appointments would be crucial in the next years, and that Hillary Clinton would be appointing “Obamaesque” lawyers who would tilt the court even farther left.

I have taught the Bible, God’s Word, verse by verse for over 30 years. I like God’s ways. I know that he creates life in a mother’s womb. I know that he wants words of edification to come from our lips. I also know that he wants discerning believers to take part in government. Honestly, I find it embarrassing when evangelicals do not vote. To use as an excuse against voting that Trump is rude or worldly does not hold water, because God has always used imperfect people for his glory.

When God used David, whom he called a man after his own heart, he used a human David who not only committed adultery but murder. God uses people like Trump and like me who are sinners but whose specific issues, like the life of the unborn child, align with his word.

I kept weighing all I was seeing because deciding not to vote was not an option. One thing I know is that Barack Obama is as far from aligning with Christian values as any president we have ever had. And with 30 years of public service doing little for the issues Christians value, Clinton is simply more of Obama...

Keep reading.

Pre-Debate Handshakes Go Out the Window

This was the first thing I noticed at the last debate. The atmosphere was so tense you could cut it with a knife.

At NYT, "At Previous Debates, Melania Trump and Bill Clinton Shook Hands. Not Anymore":

This intensely antagonistic election has shattered another quaint campaign ritual: the handshakes between opposing candidates’ family members before a debate.

At previous debates, former President Bill Clinton has shaken the hand of Melania Trump — and sometimes the hands of the children of Donald J. Trump — as part of the predebate protocol.

It provides the audience in the room, and the people watching at home, with a moment of graciousness and a touch of celebrity.

But for the final debate, Hillary Clinton’s campaign wants a different setup, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity to speak candidly about debate negotiations.

That’s because at the previous debate, on Oct. 9 in St. Louis, the Trump campaign had an elaborate plan to parade three women who accused Mr. Clinton of sexual assault and rape into the family seating area and force Mr. Clinton to shake their hands as he crossed the room.

Had the Trump campaign succeeded, Mr. Clinton would have come face-to-face with the women on national television, a potentially humiliating and excruciating encounter. However, the Commission on Presidential Debates intervened, and the women — Juanita Broaddrick, Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey — never came close to Mr. Clinton.

But the Clinton side is not taking any chances at the final presidential debate, on Wednesday night in Las Vegas, and has apparently gained approval of a different protocol for the entry of the candidates’ spouses and families into the debate hall.

The new arrangement calls for the candidates’ spouses to enter the hall closer to their seats, rather than crossing the room, and each other’s paths.

That would avoid any potential for confrontations, given Mr. Trump’s penchant for dramatic stunts.

On Tuesday, an aide to Mrs. Clinton declined to comment on the change, and aides to Mr. Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.

It is possible, of course, that further negotiations could result in a different arrangement, if both sides agree, by the time the debate begins at 9 p.m. Eastern.

But the unease over how the candidates’ families interact echoes that of the candidates themselves. At the debate in St. Louis, in a striking departure from tradition, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump did not shake hands at the start, though they did at the conclusion of the 90 minutes.

The Clinton campaign is bracing for other possible Trump surprises at the debate, which seem more likely as the Republican nominee slips further in the polls...

More.

Polls Spell Trouble for Donald Trump?

WaPo was out with a 15 state survey yesterday which showed Hillary Clinton with multiple paths to an Electoral College victory. Not so much for Donald Trump, apparently, although I'm not that impressed.

Still, even the Los Angeles Times poll, the huge national outlier, is showing Trump's possibly fatal vulnerabilities.

See, "Even lots of Donald Trump's supporters are starting to think he'll lose the election":

Add another item to Donald Trump’s list of problems: More and more, his own supporters no longer think he can win, the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll has found.

As the two presidential nominees prepare for their final debate Wednesday in Las Vegas, the share of Americans who expect a Hillary Clinton victory is at the highest level since the poll began in July. Among Trump supporters, the share who think he will lose has grown significantly over the last month. That’s contributing to an election that increasingly seems headed to a lopsided finish.

The Daybreak poll asks people whom they plan to vote for and which candidate they expect will win. The question of voter expectations has often, although not always, proved to be a more reliable forecaster of election outcomes than asking voters their candidate preference.

Trump still has many fervent supporters who predict he will win, but, particularly among his voters who are college-educated or in higher-income brackets, expectations for a victory have dimmed.

Their optimism has faded as Trump’s standing in the race against Clinton has declined from a high point in mid-September. The Daybreak poll continues to show a small Trump lead, within the survey’s margin of error, while the other major surveys show Clinton ahead. But the surveys all agree on the trend of declining Trump support.

The descent started after the first presidential debate. Despite what some analysts predicted, the public airing of a videotape in which Trump could be heard boasting that he could get away with assaulting women because of his celebrity did not trigger a meltdown of his poll standing.

In the last few days, his support has shown signs of stabilizing at a lower level. That could mean Trump’s backing has reached a floor, although the evidence is not yet definitive.

In the polling averages, Trump receives support from about 41% of voters in a two-way matchup with Clinton and is a couple of percentage points lower in polls that include third-party candidates. That puts him in the range of lopsided losers including former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, who got 41% and lost 49 states to President Reagan in 1984, and Sen. Barry Goldwater, who took 38% against President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964’s Democratic landslide.

The country’s partisan division has hardened since those contests, and many more states align solidly with one party or the other. As a result, as the electoral map shows, even a Republican candidate with historically low levels of support can count on winning about 20 states with just short of 160 electoral votes and probably a few more than that. Clinton holds leads in states with 279 electoral votes — more than the 270 needed to win the White House — while five states remain too close to predict.

The decline in Trump’s standing, albeit small, has been enough to bolster Clinton’s edge in the largest of those toss-up states, Florida, where she has led in 10 consecutive polls over the last two weeks. Polling averages show her ahead by about 4 points there. Trump’s decline has also been enough to put at least one traditionally Republican state, Arizona, into the toss-up category.

The declining share of Trump voters who expect a victory could pose further problems for him. Expectations matter to campaign operatives, who try strenuously to project confidence about winning out of concern that voter beliefs about a loss can become self-fulfilling.

Keep reading.

Hillary's Hacked Emails Present Grim Picture of the Woman Who's Supposed to Be Our Savior

This is awesome.

I'm surprised USA Today even published this letter.

See, "Don’t blame the hackers, blame the perpetrators: Your Say":

Let me start by saying both candidates are horrid and flawed. I cannot believe, as Americans, this is the best we can do to represent both parties in an election. Be that as it may, I agree with your comment saying that “if you fear something will become public, don’t do it” in the editorial “What WikiLeaks hack says about Clinton.” However, to bemoan the Russian government as seeking to damage democracy is going a bit far. I am not a Donald Trump fan but I am thankful that Russia (or whoever) hacked these emails and has exposed Hillary Clinton as the sneaky, conniving, lying person she is. Just as I am glad The New York Times exposed Trump.

People do not regret their crimes unless they’re caught, and this is what it’s all about. The Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s staff got caught and they’re embarrassed by it. If this is influencing the election by exposing the ever elusive truth, then I am all for it.

We all know we can’t get the truth from our news media. It’s a shame it has to come from another country. That is why this election is so contentious this year. Americans are tired of Washington and career politicians like the Clintons. This has allowed a candidate like Trump to become the voice of Americans. And his supporters will ignore anything thrown at them and stand by his side. If anything, it strengthens their resolve.

Maybe if the news media would do an honest job of reporting the truth, other parties/countries wouldn’t have to step in and do it for us. The American public has been duped by both candidates and the news media.

Doug Burns
Arcanum, Ohio

Republican Party on the Verge of Extinction?

Well, if they lose their grassroots voter base they'll go instinct, although I'm not sure we're there yet. When Republicans lose competitiveness in congressional races, perhaps we'll be at a tipping point. But as long at the party can field candidates in those "down ballot" races everyone keeps talking about, they'll survive.

Presidential elections may well be another story, however, especially after this year.

An interesting piece at NYT:

Donald Trump and the G.O.P.: The Party of Lincoln, Reagan and, Perhaps, Extinction. Good Riddance #GOPe https://t.co/8LpRH1RmuE

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 17, 2016

Donald Trump's Untried Ground Game in Ohio

As they say, if Trump can't win Ohio, he's toast.

From Cathleen Decker, at the Los Angeles Times, "Ohio is crucial to win the White House. But there are few signs Trump is trying to get out the vote."

Republican Party Headquarters Firebombed in Orange Country, North Carolina

Remember what I was saying about political violence in my previous entry?

Threats of violence are hardly the preserve of the right.

At the Charlotte Observer, "Pat McCrory: Firebombing ‘an attack on democracy’."

Orange County is 80 percent Democrat.

Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina just firebombed our office in Orange County because we are winning @NCGOP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016

More at Memeorandum.

Mi-Ai Parrish: The Arizona Republic Responds to Threats

I'm saddened by the intolerance and militancy that's accompanied this campaign.

Of course, I don't much care for the leftist media types who've endorsed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, because they're part of the problem. It's just a bummer that their support for Hillary is being validated, in their eyes, by the unhinged fringe elements issuing death threats to the media, etc.

In any case, this is an interesting read, and something of a sign of the times. If Hillary's elected, I'm not doubting an increase in political violence from the fringes, and it won't just be from "conservatives." We're seeing all kinds of intolerance lately, and it's not breaking down into neat little ideological ghettos.

I just published “How do we respond to threats after our endorsement? This is how” https://t.co/4Wg9f71iP3

— Mi-Ai Parrish (@publishorperish) October 16, 2016

New Polling Ahead of Wednesday's Presidential Debate (VIDEO)

I just don't buy the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey finding Hillary Clinton with an 11-point lead. See, via Memeorandum, "Hillary Clinton Extends Lead Over Donald Trump to 11 Points."

And of course, here's the reason: WSJ/NBC reports an ideological breakdown of 43 pecent Democrat and Democrat-leaners, versus 36 percent Republican and Republican-leaners, and 12 percent independents.

See the Conservative Treehouse, "Media Polling Fully Exposed – About That NBC/WSJ Clinton +11 Point Poll..."

In contrast, the new Washington Post/ABC News polls shows a much closer race, with Hillary leading by just four points. See, ABC News, "Enthusiasm for Donald Trump Fades, Yet Partisanship Keeps It Close." And the partisan breakdown at the survey:

Partisan divisions are 33-25-33 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents, in the full sample, 32-29-33 among registered voters and 33-31-31 among likely voters.

Of course most consumers of mass media polls don't know enough to break down surveys by partisanship, much less by registered voters versus likely voters. The most important measure for the November election is the likely voters statistic, which at the WaPo/ABC poll derives from a breakdown of 33 to 31 percent Democrats versus Republicans, with a whopping 31 percent independents (32-29-33 among registered voters). That's light years away from the breakdown for WSJ/NBC, which is reporting registered voters. Frankly, the latter's a bogus poll. But here you have all this whoop-de-do about Hillary's "double-digit" lead following the Access Hollywood scandal, which is totally preposterous.

Well, no need to get too worried about the polling. It's all over the place, dependent on the reporting methods and partisan breakdown.

Meanwhile, here's Newt Gingrich, from ABC's This Week, "Newt Gingrich: If media wasn't lined up against Trump, he'd be beating Clinton by 15 points."

America’s Civilizational Paralysis

From VDH, at the Hoover Institution:

The Greek city-states in the fourth-century BC, fifth-century AD Rome, and the Western European democracies after World War I all knew they could not continue as usual with their fiscal, social, political, and economic behavior. But all these states and societies feared far more the self-imposed sacrifices that might have saved them.

Mid-fifteenth-century Byzantium was facing endemic corruption, a radically declining birthrate and shrinking population, and the end of civic militarism—all the last-gasp symptoms of an irreversible decline. Its affluent ruling and religious orders and expansive government services could no longer be supported by disappearing agrarians and the overtaxed mercantile middle class. Returning to the values of the Emperor Justinian’s sixth-century empire that had once ensured a vibrant Byzantine culture of stability and prosperity throughout the old Roman east remained a nostalgic daydream. Given the hardship and sacrifice that would have been required to change the late Byzantine mindset, most residents of Constantinople plodded on to their rendezvous with oblivion in 1453.

We seem to be reaching that point of stasis in postmodern America. Once simple and logical solutions to our fiscal and social problems are now seen as too radical even to discuss. Consider the $20-trillion national debt. Most Americans accept that current annual $500 billion budget deficits are not sustainable—but they also see them as less extreme than the recently more normal $1 trillion in annual red ink. Americans also accept that the Obama administration doubled the national debt on the expectation of permanent near-zero interest rates, which cannot continue. When interest rates return to more normal historical levels of 4-5% per annum, the costs of servicing the debt—along with unsustainable Social Security and Medicare entitlement costs—will begin to undermine the entire budget.

Count up current local, state and federal income taxes, payroll taxes, property and sales taxes, and new health care taxes, and it will be hard to find the necessary additional revenue from a strapped and overtaxed middle class, much less from the forty-seven percent of Americans who currently pay no federal income taxes. The Obama administration has tried to reduce the budget by issuing defense cuts and tax hikes—but it has refused to touch entitlement spending, where the real gains could be made. The result is more debt, even as, paradoxically, our military was weakened, taxes rose, revenue increased, and economic growth remained anemic at well below 2% per annum.

Illegal immigration poses a similar dilemma. No nation can remain stable when 10-20 million foreign nationals have crashed through what has become an open border and reside unlawfully in the United States—any more than a homeowner can have neighbors traipsing through and camping in his unfenced yard.

Likewise, there are few multiracial societies of the past that have avoided descending into destructive ethnic chauvinism and tribalism once assimilation and integration were replaced by salad-bowl identity politics. Common words and phrases such as “illegal alien” or “deportation” are now considered taboo, while “sanctuary city” is a euphemism for a neo-Confederate nullification of federal immigration laws by renegade states and municipalities.

Illegal immigration, like the deficits, must cease, but stopping it would be too politically incorrect and painful even to ponder. The mess in Europe—millions of indigent and illegal immigrants who have fled their own failed states to become dependent on the largess of their generous adopted countries, but without any desire to embrace their hosts’ culture—is apparently America’s future.

Keep reading.