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Fifteen reasons why Donald Trump is a liberal

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Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons
Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons

In National Review, David French lists 15 reasons why Donald Trump is a crazy liberal.

Here are the topics:

  1. government-provided health care
  2. raising taxes
  3. touchback amnesty
  4. protectionism / tariffs
  5. seizing private property (eminent domain)
  6. liberal judicial nominees
  7. opposition to first amendment
  8. raising minimum wage
  9. praising Planned Parenthood
  10. transgenders use bathroom / shower of their choice
  11. Bush-Iraq conspiracy theories
  12. bomb oil fields to stop Islamic State
  13. order American troops to commit war crimes
  14. 9/11 conspiracy theories
  15. Cruz father conspiracy theories

These are all from the time of Donald Trump’s campaign – we are not even going back to when he was “very pro-choice”.

I’ve covered most of these already, but this one was new to me:

15. Finally, there is this now-infamous bit of lunacy, which can’t be stressed enough: Trump tied Ted Cruz’s father to John F. Kennedy’s assassin:

“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said Tuesday during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”

“I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?” Trump continued. “It’s horrible.”

Yes, really:

His source for that conspiracy theory is – of course – the National Enquirer, which is run by his very good friend Mr. Pecker. And I expect that in a Trump administration, he would put more trust in stories from the National Enquirer than Presidential Daily Briefings produced by the FBI, CIA, etc.

Trump believes this:

The National Enquirer again
The National Enquirer again

This is not Trump’s first brush with conspiracy theories. Nor  the second. Nor the third. Nor even the fourth. And I guess that a fair number of his supporters will believe this, because maybe they consider the National Enquirer to be a reputable news source.

I wonder what would have happened to Ted Cruz if he had cited the National Enquirer as an authority when he was defending the Second Amendment before the U.S. Supreme Court. He probably wouldn’t have won the case if he had, so it’s a good thing he is a serious intellectual, and he won the case.

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Can we raise declining marriage rates by telling men to “man up”?

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Marine prays with his wife on their wedding day
Marine prays with his wife on their wedding day

The latest Prager University video features pro-marriage scholar Brad Wilcox:

I watched this video, and, as a card-carrying member of the Christian men’s rights movement, I was concerned that nothing was said about how radical feminism has weakened the attractiveness of marriage to men. I mean specifically things like women carrying debt, having liberal political views, being unchaste and even promiscuous, initiating the majority of divorces (70%), withholding sex if they do marry, and denying men child visitation if they divorce, single mother welfare making men superfluous, big government replacing men as providers, etc. The consequences of divorce for men are catastrophic, and I don’t just mean financially, but emotionally as well.

I contacted Wilcox to ask him why he did not recognize how radical feminism undermines the value of marriage to men, and he pointed me to this article he wrote in the leftist Washington Post.

He writes:

These days, 20something marriage has gotten a reputation for being a bad idea. That’s partly because parents, peers, and the popular culture encourage young adults to treat their twenties as a decade for exploration and getting one’s ducks in a row, not for settling down. In the immortal words of Jay-Z, “Thirty’s the new twenty.”

Indeed, the median age-at-first marriage has climbed to nearly 30 for today’s young adults, up from about 22 in 1970. Of course, there’s an upside to that. As my coauthors and I report in  Knot Yet: the Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America, women who put off marriage and starting a family earn markedly more money than their peers who marry earlier.

And here he sort of takes on my concerns about chastity, delayed marriage, and fertility:

First, you are more likely to marry someone who shares your basic values and life experiences, and less likely to marry someone with a complicated romantic or family history.  Those who marry in their twenties, for instance, are more likely to marry someone who isn’t previously married and shares their level of educational attainment as well as their religious faith. Marrying at this stage in your life also allows couples to experience early adulthood together. In the words of Elizabeth Gilbert, a 31-year-old woman who married in her mid-twenties, “My husband and I got to grow up together—not apart. We learned sacrifice, selflessness, compromise, and became better people for it.”

Women who marry in their 20s generally have an easier time getting pregnant, and having more than one child, than their peers who wait to marry in their thirties.  You’ll also be around to enjoy the grandchildren for longer.

You’re less likely to lose the best possible mate for fear of getting started too young on the adventure that is married life. One single, thirtysomething woman struggling to find a good partner put it this way to psychologist Meg Jay, the author of The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now, and whose TED Talk on twentysomethings has garnered 6.9 million views: “The best boyfriend I ever had was in my mid-twenties. I just didn’t think I was supposed to be [married] with someone then.” And as psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb explains in her book, Marry Him, there’s a higher likelihood of finding a true peer and more appealing partner-for-life in one’s twenties, before those most appealing potential mates marry somebody else by their thirties.

I cannot fault Wilcox or Prager for being ignorant of the social changes that have undermined the value proposition of marriage for men, and that have also undermined men’s ability to fulfill their roles. Far from being a man-blamer, Prager is a warrior against radical feminism, and just today Wilcox tweeted a study showing the boys benefit from single-sex education – a position I favor myself. But I do want to head off the common “men need to man up” objection made by those who deny that the real problem is radical feminism.

Contrary to the “be a man / man up” crowd, my objections to marriage don’t come from a desire to be lazy about education, career and finance. Rest assured that I have a BS and MS in STEM, and nearly two decades of STEM work experience (internships, summer jobs, full-time employment). I do make six figures, like the person Wilcox discussed in the video, and I have the savings you would expect with a gapless STEM resume. So, complaining about “man up” isn’t going to work on me, and probably not on most men who have concerns about marriage.

Radical feminism causes women to delay marriage in order to have fun, travel and ride the carousel of promiscuity in their 20s. Women have been told that they will have more fun by delaying marriage and staying single in their 20s. Church leaders, friends and family should be discussing and demonstrating the value of marriage to women, and showing them how the lasting contentment of marriage is better than the temporary fun of drinking, sex, travel and career. Marriage is a better platform for lasting joy and for quality relationships. It’s up to the woman’s friends and family to make the case for marriage as more fun and fulfilling than the alternatives offered by radical feminism. Her friends and family need to be countering the feminist message that is everywhere in the culture: marriage is boring, children are a burden, and that husbands are needy and demanding fools. And women need to be told how spending a decade being selfish in their 20s undermines their suitability for marriage.

A woman’s friends and family should train her not to view the moral and spiritual leadership of a man as threatening and dangerous, just because it disagrees with her feelings and desires. Instead of recoiling in horror when a well-educated, successful, wealthy man tells a woman with a history of poor decision-making to get a full-time job, pay off her debts, and start investing, her friends and family ought to welcome it. A good man’s practical advice should not be seen as stifling a woman’s freedom to “follow her heart”. And her friends and family certainly should not celebrate when she chooses a penniless, unemployed, empty-resume man who never questions her reckless decisions. Women should be encouraged to choose men who have demonstrated ability as protectors, providers and moral and spiritual leaders, even if she would rather have a doormat who lets her be wild, selfish and irresponsible. Doormats are not intimidating, but they are also not decisive about marriage. When a man wants to marry a woman, he is very interested in encouraging her to be practical and responsible. This is a good thing.

Lesbian relationships are the most unstable and shortest-lived relationships. This suggests that there is a tendency in women to reject commitment when it goes against their feelings and self-interest. Women’s emotions can make them unstable, and less capable of commitment. Friends and family need to recognize that tendency, and help women to learn practicality, responsibility and unselfishness at a young age, so that they are capable of making commitments.Men look for women who have demonstrated that they are able to complete things that they start. We know that women initiate 70% of divorces, and mostly because of feelings of unhappiness. Finish a tough STEM degree, work a tough job for a few years, pay off debts, pay off a car loan, etc. Men look for women who can make and keep commitments through good times and bad times, even when it goes against their self-interest.

A good basic book to read on this issue is Helen Smith’s “Men On Strike“.

Here’s a short video about her book:

A longer interview from News Max:

And an even longer interview with a homeschooling man:

Some men are ignorant of how radical feminism makes women less suitable for marriage while simultaneously making school and work more difficult to boys and men. It is these men who need to “man up” and “be a man” by challenging women to reject radical feminism and embrace early marriage to strong men who lead. If you’re not willing to fight the radical feminism that causes the underlying problems, then you can’t complain when men wisely reject marriage to women who aren’t ready to be wives and mothers.

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Obama DOJ moving fast against NC HB2 but slowly on Clinton investigation

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Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

Here is what your taxpayer dollars are going to pay for at the Department of Justice.

Religious liberty champion David French writes about it at National Review:

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.

French explains that there is no support for what the DOJ says in federal law:

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 ” (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.

So why exactly are social conservatives fighting the gay activists on this? Simple. We want to protect people’s right to privacy, as well as protect them from sexual assaults.

Here’s a case of privacy violated from last week, as reported by CBS News:

Frisco police are looking for a man they say photographed a young girl in a Target changing room.

Benito Valdez with police says it happened at the Super Target on Preston Road. “The man was in a female dressing room at the Target and was seen by the victim, over the wall with his cell phone, taking photos of the victim.”

It occurred at Target, of course- they let you use any bathroom you feel comfortable with, regardless of your sex.

The Toronto Sun reported on an example of sexual assault:

A sexual predator who falsely claimed to be transgender and preyed on women at two Toronto shelters was jailed indefinitely on Wednesday.

Justice John McMahon declared Christopher Hambrook — who claimed to be a transgender woman named Jessica — was a dangerous offender.

Gay rights activists like to ask how many sexual assaults have been committed by transgendered people. The answer is none or few, but no social conservative is worried about that – we are worried about cases like the one above, where a real predator pretends to be trans in order to get access to bathrooms, showers and yes, women’s shelters. But none of this is a problem for the Department of Justice, and besides, they would probably be more considered about the criminal rather than the victim anyway. That’s how liberals think.

But gay rights is a priority for the Department of Justice, under Barack Obama. Do you know what isn’t a priority? Criminal investigations.

This post is from Conservative Review.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s top law enforcement officer declined to give a firm answer on whether or not her department would take any action on the Hillary Clinton email scandal investigation before the end of election season.

At a press conference held to announce the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against the state of North Carolina over its controversial bathroom safety legislation, Attorney General Loretta Lynch was asked why the DOJ was able to move so quickly on the latter of the two cases and slowly, in contrast, on the former. When pressed, Lynch would only say that the investigation against the former Secretary of State was simply still “ongoing.”

No need to investigate the IRS for persecuting conservative groups, or to investigate Hillary Clinton’s unsecure private e-mail server in a timely fashion. No! The priority is to make sure that private businesses are forced to allow biological men into women’s bathrooms, because that’s what the gay activists want. Remember that Lynch is also passionate about prosecuting anyone who is critical of radical Islam. Not radical Islamic terrorists, but people who are critical of radical Islamist terrorists.