The Surge of Populism -- and Nationalism
Michael Barone is a respected conservative commentator but he has missed the point below. Trump is popular but that does not make him a populist. Populists are generally poorly informed, not graduates of the Wharton School. Nor is he a nationalist. Read Orwell for a very clear definition of nationalism.
Trump is simply an enthusiastic patriot. His love of America comes strongly through and endears him to masses of his fellow Americans. And his policies are in no need of new labels either. He is a conservative, very much so, but one with a take on economic issues that is both old and new -- but was also thoroughly conservative in practice. Read below for an understanding of that
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/2023/09/left-right-divide-no-longer-relevant-in.html
Historical context below:http://jonjayray.com/trumpism.html
Perhaps in passing I should mention that noted British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton saw patriotism and conservatism as very closely alliedhttp://jonjayray.com/rightism.html#1173
"Populist politicians and parties," writes the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Henry Olsen in The Spectator, are "rapidly gaining strength and power across the developed world." They're doing so despite the opposition and angry scorn of political and intellectual establishments of Left and Right and with a resilience that they find baffling.
Nothing exemplifies that resilience more than the current standing of Donald Trump's third presidential campaign. Trump didn't come close to a plurality, much less a majority, of the popular vote as the Republican nominee in 2016 and 2020; his conduct led to his party's loss of its House majority in 2018, and his endorsements of weak nominees cost it its Senate majority in 2022. Of course, despite his claims, he failed to win reelection in November 2020.
But there he sits, despite four indictments with 91 counts, polling 59% against multiple opponents in primary pairings and a 45%-45% tie against President Joe Biden, who led him 51%-47% in 2020.
As Olsen points out, Trump isn't the only politician often labeled as a populist who is doing well despite elite scorn. Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, comes from a party with roots in the fascist movement of Benito Mussolini. Though Mussolini has been dead for 78 years, that aroused more unease than the election of a former Communist to that post in 1998, just nine years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Other populists doing well lately include Germany's Alternative fur Deutschland and Canadian Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, longtime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and, back in 2019, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In different ways and to different extents, these populists abjure the market economics and interventionist foreign policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and have been winning the votes without entirely endorsing the platforms of cultural conservatives.
The stock response of financial and corporate establishments has been to use any means to exclude such politicians from positions of power. In this country, that has included concocting and promoting the Russia collusion hoax rather than accepting Trump's election as legitimate and using intelligence officials to muscle social media to suppress news of the legitimate Hunter Biden scandal in 2020.
Now, the establishment may be throwing in the towel. In its most recent edition, the London-based Economist left off worrying about populists' supposed authoritarianism and conceded that "Europe is not about to be overrun by fascists, in a repeat of the 1930s."
"Rather than trying to exclude hard-right parties entirely from government and public debate," it went on, "the best response is for mainstream parties to engage with them, and on occasion to do deals with them. If they have to take some responsibility for actually governing, they may grow less radical."
Quite possibly, and quite possibly, some establishment folks may one day concede that some of their policies and presuppositions have not worked out well. Olsen cites "the blind faith elites had that the pursuit of wealth would transform China's Communist party," the "elite economic mismanagement" that caused the 2008 financial crash and today's inflation, and "elite insistence that traditional mores be disregarded," which has led to "culture wars." He might have added the overly stringent and scientifically unjustified COVID-19 lockdowns in this and other countries.
Some 30 years ago, in the late Irving Kristol's Public Interest Quarterly, I wrote an article in which I argued that democracies have had "four major types of political parties: religious, liberal, socialist, and nationalist." Some democracies over the preceding 160 and the intervening 30 years have fared better than others.
Religious parties in Europe have disappeared or changed character with the decline of religious belief. The Republican Party, for three decades since the 1980s, has had some of the character of a religious party, which has faded in the Trump years, while today's Democratic Party sometimes advocates with religious fervor the secular liberalism of an increasing number of its supporters. As I predicted in 1993, "parties will attack their opponents by calling them religious."
Liberal parties dedicated to 19th-century liberalism, free trade, market economics, religious toleration, and freedom succumbed in the 20th century to socialist parties closely allied with labor unions. Grover Cleveland's laissez-faire Democrats become Woodrow Wilson's statist Democrats. Britain's Liberal Party, with a 397-156 seat margin in 1906 and a front bench with two later wartime prime ministers, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, faded to third-party status as Labour elected a prime minister in 1924.
Anti-clerical liberal parties in Italy, Spain, and France "died from failure of nerve," as I wrote, failing to protect democracy against Mussolini, Franco, and Vichy. Socialist policies didn't work and were repudiated by Thatcher and Reagan -- and Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
The democratic parties with staying power have been nationalist parties -- "not the nationalism of Hitler, of course," as I wrote in 1993, but the "nationalism that is open to various economic programs and compatible with cultural toleration." Olsen identifies "national solidarity" as the guiding principle of populist voters, who favor "the particular over the global, the communal over the individual, and the traditional over the novel."
"The United States may be entering a happy period," I wrote in 1993, "where it has two nationalist parties, with differing positions on important cultural and economic issues, but a fundamentally favorable outlook toward American nationalism, a condition we have not enjoyed since the mid-1960s."
Those hopes have been disappointed, most recently by the personal shortcomings of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, by the refusal of Trump's opponents to accept the legitimacy of his victory in 2016 -- and by his refusal to accept the legitimacy of theirs in 2020. It's looking like they will be disappointed for some time to come.
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The Cuban horror
“I want to recognize everyone in the audience who has their own painful but important story to tell about the true and brutal nature of the Castro regime,” remarked President Donald Trump during a speech in Miami’s Little Havana on June 16, 2017. "And we want to thank you all for being a voice for the voiceless...."
“Many of you witnessed terrible crimes committed in service of a depraved ideology," continued Trump's remarks, announcing his Cuba policy. "You saw the dreams of generations held captive, you saw what communism has done. You knew faces that disappeared, innocents locked in prisons, and believers persecuted for preaching the word of God. You watched the Women in White bruised, bloodied, and captured on their way from Mass. You have heard the chilling cries of loved ones, or the cracks of firing squads piercing through the ocean breeze. Not a good sound.
“Among the courageous Cuban dissidents with us onstage here today are Cary Roque, who was imprisoned by the Castro regime….She looks awfully good," he added.
“Mr. President, on behalf of the Cuban people, the people thank you, and we appreciate your love,” Roque responded.
“The Castro dictatorship may have taken 16 years of her life in a gulag, but they were never able to take her dignity," wrote Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu Blog. "The indomitable Cary Roque was an inspiration for the Cuban exile community and all women. She passed away in Miami on Wednesday (9/20) at the age of 82, but she leaves behind an incredible legacy of valor and perseverance that we would all do well to follow."
Not only was Caridad Roque a victim of The Left’s premier pin-up boys (Fidel Castro and Che Guevara) but she was also singled out for praise by President Donald Trump. Any more questions about the media black-out of her history, suffering and death?
On the other hand:
"She was an early b*llbuster, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. She rattled a lot of cages before women were even allowed into the zoo," said Katie Couric hailing Barbara Walters in Vanity Fair upon her passing on Dec. 30, 2022.
Some women living in the U.S. today (and with long experience in literal cages) strongly differ with Couric. Barbara Walters “interviewed” Fidel Castro in 1977 and again in 2002. But the famous ABC Wicked Witch who interrogated Nixon, Reagan and Bush – when confronted by Fidel Castro – morphed into Ann Margaret in front of Conrad Birdie. No hint of the famous ABC News dominatrix in Washington was evident in the smiley and goo-goo-eyed groupie in Havana.
Instead this famous “feminist” shamelessly stroked among the most brutal and insatiable male egos in modern history—and within walking distance of where hundreds of his female victims (including Cary Roque) languished in filthy, rat-infested and sweltering torture chambers.
When feminist icon Barbara Walters sat quivering alongside Fidel Castro in 1977 cooing that “Fidel Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful!” dozens of Cuban (genuine) feminists suffered in nearby torture chambers. From exile today many of them recall the horrors:
“They started by beating us with twisted coils of wire," recalls former political prisoner Ezperanza Pena from exile today. “I remember Teresita on the ground with all her lower ribs broken. Gladys had both her arms broken. Doris had her face cut up so badly from the beatings that when she tried to drink, water would pour out of her lacerated cheeks.”
“On Mother’s Day they allowed family visits,” recalls Manuela Calvo from exile today. "But as our mothers and sons and daughters were watching, we were beaten with rubber hoses and high-pressure hoses were turned on us, knocking all of us the ground floor and rolling us around as the guards laughed and our loved-ones screamed helplessly.”
“When female guards couldn’t handle us male guards were called in for more brutal beatings. I saw teenaged girls beaten savagely, their bones broken, their mouths bleeding,” recalled prisoner Polita Grau.
Fidel Castro’s regime, so “magnetic” to Barbara Walters, jailed and tortured 35,150 Cuban women for political crimes, a totalitarian horror utterly unknown—not only in Cuba—but in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere. Some of these Cuban ladies suffered twice as long in Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s.
Their prison conditions were described by former political prisoner Maritza Lugo: “The punishment cells measure 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. The toilet consists of an 8 inch hole in the ground through which cockroaches and rats enter, especially in cool temperatures the rat come inside to seek the warmth of our bodies and we were often bitten. The suicide rate among women prisoners was very high.”
“Only minutes after my arrival at the Hotel Riviera in Havana, I was told to be in his (Fidel Castro’s) office within 15 minutes,” wrote Barbara Walters about her first interview with Fidel Castro in May 1977. “There I found a very courtly, somewhat portly Fidel Castro. He apologized for making me wait for two years and said that now he wanted to cooperate…On Wednesday, Castro himself came to our hotel to pick us up…Then, driving a Russian-made jeep, he took us to the Bay of Pigs, where we boarded an armed patrol boat. We thus became, according to Castro, the first Americans to cross the Bay of Pigs since the U.S.-supported invasion there in 1961.”
Barbara Walters’ crossing of the Bay of Pigs was probably more than a historical sight-seeing junket. On the other side and near the mouth of the bay sits Castro’s personal island-resort Cayo Piedra, that houses his luxurious get-away chateau. According to defectors, when younger, Fidel Castro often repaired to this remote but luxurious villa for spearfishing among other recreational pursuits.
Juan Reynaldo Sanchez, a Lt. Col. in Cuba’s Armed Forces who spent 17 years as Fidel Castro’s bodyguard/valet, had just been promoted to the position when Barbara Walters visited Cuba for her first interview with the Stalinist dictator in May 1977. Sanchez defected to the U.S. in 2008 and explained to this writer how he was part of the Castroite entourage that accompanied Ms Walters and Fidel to the latter’s island chateau. Ms Walters does mention that:
“We stopped at a little island for a picnic lunch of grilled fish and pineapple. During which Castro swapped fish stories with the ABC crew. It was here that we taped our first but brief and candid interview with him.”
Argentinian journalist Juan Gasparini in his Spanish language book Mujeres de Dictadores (Women of Dictators) writes that, “It is widely supposed that Fidel Castro had several amorous adventures with the North American reporter Barbara Walters who twice visited Cuba to interview him. It is alleged that she later visited Cuba more discretely for private visits. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Walters has admitted to developing an attraction to the Cuban leader while boating with him on assignment in 1977, but she denies things got physical."
When Castro’s torturers were transferring his female prisoners from cell to cell while Barbara Walters visited Castro’s Bay of Pigs’ “Love Shack,” the guards were forced to drag many of these Cuban women around like dead animals. They were simply incapable of walking. The constant beatings had incapacitated many of them. The excrement and menstrual fluid caked to their legs and bare feet made it more difficult still. Some of the cells called “Tapiadas,” were barely big enough to stand and walk in and were completely sealed except for a few tiny air holes. The women were confined completely underground in total darkness and suffocating heat for weeks at a time. These were tombs by any other name, except that their occupants were still alive, if barely and if only by ultra-human perseverance.
In marked contrast to Cary Roque’s horrific ordeal in Castroite prisons, the celebrated Nobel Peace Price winner Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar has served a total of 15 years under house arrest. The late celebrated human rights activist Elena Bonner of the Soviet era served a total of 5 years of internal exile.
So you’ll please excuse these Cuban ladies (most of them U.S. citizens today) if they regard the “struggles” of Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem – and yes, the “b*llbusting” by Barbara Walters – as a trifle overblown.
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Police drop charges against British woman for silently praying outside an abortion clinic
After a six-month investigation, police in England have decided not to bring charges against a woman for silently praying outside an abortion clinic.
Police also issued an apology to Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the director of the UK March for Life, for the length of time it took to reach the decision not to prosecute her for silent prayer. In March, the charity volunteer was arrested after she told police she "might" be praying silently when they asked why she was standing on a public street near an abortion facility.
The abortion clinic was in a so-called "buffer zone," which was introduced by local authorities via a "Public Spaces Protection Order" and bans activities, such as prayer, that are considered a protest against abortion.
Vaughan-Spruce said in a statement upon receiving the apology from police that she never should have been arrested or investigated for the thoughts she held in her own mind because "this isn’t 1984, but 2023."
"Silent prayer is never criminal," she said. "I welcome West Midland Police’s decision to end their investigation and their apology for the time it took to do so, but it’s important to highlight the extremely harmful implications of this ordeal not just for myself, but for everyone concerned with fundamental freedoms in the UK."
"What happened to me signals to others that they too could face arrest, interrogation, investigation, and potential prosecution if caught exercising their basic freedom of thought," she added.
Vaughan-Spruce is currently considering options to pursue redress for her treatment by police with support from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) UK, which has been supporting her legal defense.
"Now that authorities have twice settled on the conclusion that silent prayer is not a crime – a conclusion also reached by the Home Secretary last week – I am thankful to resume my practice of praying silently for women in crisis pregnancies," Vaughan-Spruce said.
Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, said in a statement to FOX News Digital that in a democracy, speech and thought must be protected, not criminalized.
"We welcome the decision of the police to drop this investigation and apologise to Isabel for the length of her ordeal, but the fact remains - by arresting innocent people for the thoughts in their head, the UK has put the world on notice that fundamental freedoms are not robustly protected in our country," he said.
Parliamentarians in the UK are considering legislation to introduce similar censorship zones in other parts of England and Wales. The Public Order Act, which passed through Parliament in May 2023, would prohibit "influence" in an area of 150m around abortion facilities, but free speech advocates have raised concerns that its vague terminology will lead to criminalization of peaceful conversations, leafleting and prayer.
"There is now an urgent need for the UK government to address ideological policing by robustly protecting freedom of speech and thought and consistently applying the rule of law," Igunnubole said in his statement. "At a time when confidence in policing is at an all time low, it is crucial that police officers remember that they exist to protect citizens from crime, not to victimise law-abiding citizens for peacefully holding and expressing a diverse range of views."
"ADF UK are proud to have supported Isabel's legal defense," he added. "We are considering all options to pursue legal redress for Isabel's treatment at the hands of the police."
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Newsom gets one right
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, vetoed a bill late Friday night that would have required judges in child custody cases to consider whether a parent has affirmed their child's gender identity.
AB 957 originally proposed that courts deciding custody cases must consider whether each parent affirmed the child's gender identity. An amendment in June added a parent's affirmation of their child's gender identity to the state's standard of what constitutes parental responsibility in a court of law for providing for "the health, safety, and welfare of the child."
The bill was passed earlier this month by the state assembly, and was sent to the governor's desk for his signature. But Newsom said in a statement released Friday night that he cannot sign the legislation.
The governor said he appreciates the "passion and values" that led Democrat Assemblywoman Lori Wilson to introduce the bill and that he shares a "deep commitment to advancing the rights of transgender Californians, an effort that has guided my decisions through many decades in public office."
"That said, I urge caution when the Executive and Legislative branches of state government attempt to dictate -in prescriptive terms that single out one characteristic -legal standards for the Judicial branch to apply," Newsom wrote. "Other-minded elected officials, in California and other states, could very well use this strategy to diminish the civil rights of vulnerable communities."
"Moreover, a court, under existing law, is required to consider a child's health, safety, and welfare when determining the best interests of a child in these proceedings, including the parent's affirmation of the child's gender identity," he added.
When parents divorce and cannot agree on child custody, judges will determine custody based on a variety of factors.
Under AB 957, gender affirmation would have been one of the several factors for judges to consider in custody cases. Wilson, who coauthored the bill along with Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener, has said the bill would not have required parents to move forward with gender transition medical treatment.
"I am extremely disappointed. I know the Governor's record. He's been a champion for the LGBTQ+ community for years and even before it was popular to do so," Wilson said in a statement after the governor's veto on Friday. "However, on this point, the Governor and I disagree on the best way to protect [Transgender, Gender-Diverse and Intersex] kids."
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Senator Bob Menendez, his 'consultant' wife and kilos of gold: The Egyptian bribery claim that's hit US congress
It's an old saying that the weakness of Leftist politicians is for money while the weakness of conservative politicians is for women. Gold versus "girlfriends"
By the time FBI agents showed up at the New Jersey home of Bob Menendez last year, the US senator and his wife had allegedly been taking bribes for years.
According to court documents unsealed in New York overnight, the agents found hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of evidence to back their suspicions.
The documents accuse Senator Menendez and his wife Nadine of accepting the bribes in exchange for, among other things, providing sensitive information to benefit the Egyptian government.
The 69-year-old, who chairs the Senate's foreign relations committee, is also accused of using his position to try to "protect and enrich" a trio of Egyptian-American businessmen – Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes.
"The FBI found many of the fruits of this bribery scheme, including cash, gold, [a] luxury convertible, and home furnishings," the US Attorney's Office for New York's Southern District said today.
During the June 2022 search, more than $US480,000 ($745,000) in cash was found stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe in the home, and another $US70,000 cash in Nadine Menendez's safe deposit box.
Some of the envelopes were found inside jackets emblazoned with Senator Menendez's name, hanging in his cupboard, and others had the fingerprints or DNA of Mr Daibes.
There was more than $US100,000 worth of gold bars in the house.
FBI agents also found home furnishings and a luxury car parked in the garage – all allegedly provided by the three New Jersey businessmen who have also now been charged.
Mr and Ms Menendez are each charged with three criminal counts: conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion.
In a statement, Senator Menendez said prosecutors had mischaracterised routine legislative work.
"The excesses of these prosecutors is apparent," he said. "The facts are not as presented."
A lawyer for Nadine Menendez said she also denied any wrongdoing.
A trade in sensitive state information
Four years earlier, the powerful Democrat senator allegedly hosted a group in his Washington office. According to federal prosecutors, this was no ordinary meeting.
The sweeping corruption indictment alleges Egyptian military officials and Mr Hana were present. The businessman was a friend of Nadine Menendez. She was then Nadine Arslanian, and she had just started dating the senator.
The charging documents say she and Mr Hana arranged the meeting. It included discussions about foreign military financing to Egypt.
It did not include staff from Senator Menendez's office or the foreign relations committee.
Two months later, the senator and his girlfriend allegedly met with Mr Hana again.
According to prosecutors, that same day the senator asked the US State Department for some information. It wasn't classified but was highly sensitive due to security concerns.
He wanted to know the number and nationality of people serving at the US embassy in Egypt's capital, Cairo.
The next day, Senator Menendez allegedly texted the information to Ms Arslanian, who then forwarded it on to Mr Hana, who sent it to an Egyptian government official.
The same month, after dinner at a high-end restaurant with Senator Menendez, Mr Hana allegedly texted another Egyptian official with some more "non-public information".
This time, it was that a ban on sending small arms and ammunition to Egypt had been lifted. "That means sales can begin. That will include sniper rifles among other articles," said one of the texts.
The players
Bob Menendez, the senior US senator from New Jersey, is a lawyer who was elected to the seat in 2006.
He is perhaps best known in Australia as a prominent supporter of the AUKUS military alliance between Australia, the US and the UK.
He and Nadine Menendez married in October 2020. He had proposed with a performance of a song from The Greatest Showman outside the Taj Mahal while the couple were holidaying in India.
According to prosecutors, she was unemployed before she met Senator Menendez in a pancake restaurant and began dating him in February 2018.
For years beforehand, she'd been friends with the businessman Wael Hana, who operated a halal certification company.
Jose Uribe, a business associate of Mr Hana's, worked in trucking and insurance after previously being convicted of fraud and having his insurance broker's licence revoked.
He's accused of giving Ms Menendez a Mercedes-Benz convertible, in exchange for her husband's efforts to influence a criminal insurance fraud investigation targeting one of Mr Uribe's associates.
Ms Menendez later allegedly texted her husband: "Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes"
The fifth defendant, Fred Daibes, is a real estate developer and long-time fundraiser for Senator Menendez.
Prosecutors say Senator Menendez agreed to try to influence a pending federal prosecution of Mr Daibes, including by recommending the US president nominate a candidate for US attorney that Senator Menendez believed could be influenced.
The 'corrupt agreement'
Prosecutors allege Nadine Arslanian and Wael Hana worked for years to introduce Egyptian military and intelligence officials to the senator, in order to establish "a corrupt agreement".
It meant receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes in exchange for "acts and breaches of duty" to benefit the government of Egypt and Mr Hana himself, and others.
The first alleged bribe was a 2018 promise to put Ms Arslanian on the payroll of Mr Hana's company in a "low- or no-show" job.
In exchange, the couple allegedly promised Senator Menendez would use his authority to facilitate military sales and financing to Egypt.
The alleged meeting in Senator Menendez's Senate office occurred a few months later.
Around the same time, Ms Arslanian allegedly passed on a request from an Egyptian official. The official wanted Senator Menendez's help to draft and edit a letter lobbying US senators to support American aid to Egypt.
According to the charges, Senator Menendez "secretly edited and ghost-wrote the requested letter … seeking to convince other US senators to release a hold on $US300 million in aid to Egypt". He then sent it to his girlfriend from his personal email account, and then deleted it.
A meat monopoly pushes up prices
The following year, Mr Hana's company was granted an exclusive monopoly on the certification of US food exports to Eygpt. That's despite neither Mr Hana nor his company having any experience with halal certification, and the company making "little to no revenue" between 2018 and early 2019, according to the indictment.
"The monopoly … advanced the scheme by, among other things, providing a revenue stream from which Wael Hanna could make good on the bribe payments he had promised," the indictment said.
"The monopoly also resulted in increased costs for various US meat suppliers and others."
After the Department of Agriculture raised concerns about the monopoly with the Egyptian government, Senator Menendez allegedly called a high-level official to insist the department drop its opposition.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-23/bob-menendez-nadine-egypt-bribery-allegations/102893042
**************************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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