The members of the U.S. political establishment are in full panic. A colorful, renegade American patriot has just stood up to the ideological perversity that they have used for decades to exploit the lives of Americans and the meaning of our country. GOP leaders are writhing in paroxysms of fear at thought of The Donald on stage to compete with mega-state sycophants such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Mike Huckabee. Thus all stops are being pulled out to smear this brazen interloper who refuses to bow and scrape to the egregious perfidy that marks their careers.
What embarrassments our corporate, political, and media honchos are with their rush to cancel all contracts they have with Mr. Trump as punishment for his chutzpah. Because they have throughout their adult lives scorned “love of country” as a disease afflicting right wing bubbas, these quislings can’t conceive of a man who doesn’t care that million dollar contracts have just been withdrawn from his future. They can’t grasp that there are grander things in this world than wealth and power, that there are such a things as “love of country” and “adherence to the principles of liberty,” and that these virtues transcend their pusillanimous visions of the good life.
What Donald Trump has is what the Founders of America had and what T.R. Fehrenbach wrote about in 1968 in Greatness to Spare: The Heroic Sacrifices of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence. Trump has the strength of will to sacrifice wealth and power for freedom and honor.
The Declaration of Independence ends with the following words: “For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Fifty-six patriots signed on to this bold and revolutionary act of defiance in 1776. In doing so, they enshrined themselves into history’s hallowed halls that only the salient and the brave are able to enter. All of these fifty-six were well aware that what they were doing was “high treason” under every law accepted in that day, and as a consequence they could be hanged by the British as criminals. Yet none of them recanted – though almost every one of them met with misery, hardship, persecution, torture, loss of reputation, the burning of their homes, and even death for fourteen of them. Despite this, they were steadfast in pledging their Lives, their Fortunes, and their sacred Honor.
This is the mindset that stirs in the brain of Donald Trump. This is the mindset that is so foreign to the political left in this country, and unfortunately also to many so called conservatives on the right. This mindset of the patriot. It transcends all the shallow materialism and amorality that establishment figures revel in so compulsively. It is the sterling stuff that built America, and it is what must be recaptured if we are to restore America.
Unpopular Truths
George Orwell wrote that, “The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” This is what Trump has signed onto; and he is fully aware of it. He knows that he is destined to be blistered by the media sycophants and corporate quislings who have been selling the country out over the past 50 years on the issue of immigration and amnesty for the hordes of illegals that are flooding into our country. But like the fifty-six who signed America’s Declaration of Independence, Trump knows that there is something more profound and monumental to commit one’s life substance to. It is “adherence to principle.” It is the vision of freedom and limited government that the Founders bequeathed to us. So all of you in the media and corporate world, smear Donald Trump all you wish. You are now up against a man who is not afraid of the “unpopular truths” of life. He will be standing on that stage with your puppet candidates who have built their pedestrian careers mouthing platitudes of obedience to the mega-state. Donald Trump represents a powerful threat to the pseudo-conservatism of the political right; and its representatives know it. Trump is willing to touch the third rails of today’s politically correct arena – illegal immigration and multiculturalism and the grievous damage they are doing to our culture. He speaks truth to power because he has lived a life of power and is not afraid of its treasonous holders on both the right and the left. Trump may or may not win the nomination, but no matter how the race unfolds, his presence will be extraordinary. He will open up the campaign to a much needed airing of the ugly ideology of mega-statism and how RINO sycophants perpetuate it. He will rally millions of patriots out there in the heartland who don’t care that The Donald is a bit over the top and hyperbolic. They forgive him because, despite all his wealth, he is one of them. He is a man’s man and a full blooded patriot who is willing to pledge his life, his property and his sacred honor to the American cause. No man’s life can be meaningful unless he is willing to commit his intellectual and physical energies to a cause that is bigger than himself. Our corporate moguls, banker elites, and institute heads have never understood this. They are lost in the swamps of collectivism, materialism and narcissism. They are what is wrong with America. The patriots of the conservative and libertarian movements are what is right about America.Immigration Truths and Fallacies
Trump understands that America has always been a nation of immigrants. But never has she been a nation of “unrestricted” immigration. From the beginning of their formation of America into a nation, the Founders were acutely aware of the need to lay down rules for entrance into the country and the acquiring of citizenship. The Founders realized that the eternal verities such as our inalienable rights do not change from the past to the future, but immigration rules are not eternal verities; and they have little to do with individual rights. They are basically matters of public policy that will always be subject to both quantitative and qualitative revision with the passage of time. In other words, entrance into a country is not a “right.” It is a “privilege” granted by the citizens of the country involved. If those citizens decide that their country would be better off with a small, selective stream of immigrants instead of a large and indiscriminate stream, then it is their right to bring about such a border policy. There is no such thing as a right to enter any country one chooses. As the Supreme Court rightly ruled in the latter 19th century, “It is an accepted maxim of international law, that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty, and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.” [1] Those libertarians of America who oppose a tough stand on immigration must rethink their reasoning. Tight borders are based upon one of the most libertarian of all principles – the “right to freedom of association.” This means humans have the right to form into groups and establish rules for entrance into their groups, whether it’s a family with a fence around its yard, or a country club with a gate at its entrance, or a labor union with closed doors and by laws, or a country with tight borders and a Constitution. There is no such thing as a “right” to go wherever we please as Judge Napolitano and the Libertarian Party maintain. Immigration is not a fundamental “right.” It is a conditional “privilege” conveyed by the members of the group one is seeking to enter. This was the view of Washington, Jefferson, and the Founders in 1787. [2] It was, as we just saw, the view of the Supreme Court in 1892. And it must become America’s view again. No individual has the right to enter a country uninvited. All property in the world is owned either individually by persons or collectively by groups. The owners of a house and yard decide who can enter their house. The members of a country club decide who can enter their club. And the citizens of a country decide who can enter their country. The government is not destroying rights by denying entrance to certain people to the country it governs. It is merely expressing the rightful will of the owners of the country. Donald Trump is going to be appealing to the “owners of America,” i.e., the people, not the corporate, political, and media elites who are today’s destroyers of America. The campaign of 2016 might just become a huge turning point in our history. Notes:- Nishimura Ekiu v. U.S., 142 U.S. 651, 659 (1892).
- Writings of George Washington, Government Printing Office, 1931-44, 27: 254. See also Erler, West, and Marini, The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration, 2007, pp. 18-22, and Thomas G. West, Vindicating the Founders,1997, pp. 150-151.