Author: James E. Miller

James E. Miller is the editor-in-chief of Mises Canada. He works as a copywriter in Washington D.C.

Trump and divine retribution

Is God lending a hand to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign?

I know that’s a borderline blasphemous question to ask. Presumably, our Creator has better things to do than monitor America’s electoral politics. But I can’t come up with any other reason to explain Trumpmania.

First things first: There is no doubt the Republican electorate loves the Manhattan mogul. His poll numbers explain that well enough.

But popular uprisings have historically been suppressed by the party honchos and connected elites. Clamping down on insurgent candidates is well-honed practice that goes back to Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson. Yet Trump seems to be leading a Jacksonian march straight into the White House. He’s treating basic political orthodoxy like his own personal punching bag – Trump branded and everything.

By far, the Republican Party has been the biggest casualty in Trump’s jihad against Washington torpor. The billionaire is winning over GOP voters by insulting every accepted party soundbite to date.

Just take a look at his recent win in South Carolina. The Palmetto State isn’t exactly known for strict family values. But it does have a sizable military presence, and tends to be more war hawkish than the rest of the Union.

Normally, retail politics forces candidates to appeal to voters who value someone that identifies with their needs. Somehow, that memo never reached Trump’s untidy desk.

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No, women shouldn’t have to sign up for Selective Service (or fight in war!)

Feminists, rejoice!

Horace’s dictum, “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” will soon no longer be exclusive to American males. Sometime in the near-future, women will have the honor of being forced to leave their families, enter bullet-ridden battlefields, and risk having their limbs blown apart.

Surely, Virginia Woolf is cheering in her grave.

Last week, the chief of staff of the Army and the Marine Corps commandant came out in favor of lifting the exclusion of women from the Selective Service. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Robert Neller, the highest ranking U.S. Marine Corps member, told lawmakers, “it’s my personal view that, based on this lifting of restrictions… every American who’s physically qualified should register for the draft.”

Congress must act to lift the males-only condition for Selective Service. But is there any doubt this will eventually happen? In the name of equality, Democrats will joyfully embrace the proposition. Republicans are already coming around: A bill to lift the female draft restriction was just introduced in the House of Representatives by two GOP reps who also served in the armed forces.

It’s only a matter of time before girls, upon turning 18, sign up for the draft. And just like that, we will have slipped further into the brave new world where men and women are interchangeable cogs in the machine of society.

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Wolf in Donkey’s Clothing

Bernie Sanders showed promise but, it turns out, he doesn’t differ much from the rest of the political class. Shame.

That’s the topic of my Taki’s Mag piece published today. Excerpt:

First, I have to admit something: I wanted to like Bernie Sanders. I really did. Like Russell Arben Fox, I thought he was a “front porch socialist,” which is a fine alternative to the corporatist war-hungry sleazebags who mostly make up Congress. Socialism might be unworkable and murderous, but there’s nothing wrong with a bit of communitarianism to balance out the sybaritic impulses of the marketplace. Everything in moderation, said Oscar Wilde.

Bernie Sanders also seems to have a genuine concern for the losers of our society. The guy who loses his job to outsourcing; the mom whose low-wage job goes to someone who works for pennies and can’t speak English; seniors living on fixed payments who only see prices at the grocery store go up, never down—this is the Sanders constituency. Their struggle is part of the reason for his resistance to open borders and their tendency to drive down working-class wages.

Most of all, I like Bernie’s story. He was once a single father to a son, scratching out a living doing piss-poor carpentering and writing leftist screeds for an alternative Burlington newspaper. His first home in Vermont had only dirt floors, before Bernie put in the wood himself. Most of the time he lacked electricity. You can’t get more marginal than that.

But alas, the Sanders saga was too good to be true.

Read the whole thing here, and realize that Donald Trump is our only chance to dent the DC establishment.

Conservative against the conservative movement

Less than one week to go before the Iowa caucus, and the battle lines are drawn.

On one side is brash businessman Donald Trump. On the other side is the near-entirety of the professional conservative movement – the thinkers, marketers, editors, donor-schmoozers, lawyers, consultants, money-bundlers, tax cheats, business shills, and communication hacks who profess allegiance to St. Ronald Reagan.

As Michael Buffers says: Let’s get ready to rumble!

Ever since Donald Trump announced his presidential bid last June, he has been walloping the hucksters known as Conservatism, Inc. By channeling working class resentment and throwing out the playbook when it comes to raising money and hiring consultants, Trump is turning traditional politics on its head. He isn’t being spoon-fed soundbites; he isn’t begging for cash; he isn’t bending over backwards to appease huge corporations.

He’s doing something few candidates have done in a long time: Advocating on behalf of the entire national community, rather than a few eggheads and CEOs with bottomless wallets.

Meanwhile, the high-salaried Republican brain trust is losing its collective head. This was most pronounced in a recent symposium hosted by National Review eloquently titled “Against Trump.” Conservative luminaries such as Thomas Sowell, John Podhoretz, and Glenn Beck contributed, lambasting the GOP frontrunner and pontificating on the need for a principled leader in the White House. Their polemics were chock-full of the high-minded ideals and a mastery of vocabulary that would have made William F. Buckley proud.

But even for such a long, erudite (and possibly illegal) spread, the message is the same throughout: Trump is not a cerebral conservative, and thus isn’t fit for the office of the presidency.

Years ago, this kind of concentrated effort to derail a Republican presidential candidate would have been a resounding success. But that’s all changed with Trump. The bedwetting Hayek-lovers in “tassel-loafers and bow ties” no longer call the shots. A man with $10 billion and a twitter account now runs the show.

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Will Trump save us from political correctness?

Reprinted from the Press and Journal

Is Donald Trump slaying the beast of political correctness?

That’s what the Washington Post contends. In a piece titled “Why Trump may be winning the war on ‘political correctness’”, reporters Karen Tumulty and Jenna Johnson get to the heart of why the real estate mogul has won the allegiance of frustrated, disaffected Americans.

The reason is understandable: Normal people living paycheck to paycheck have no time for feeling-friendly language. They’re tired of being told to mend their ways by haughty academics and journalists. So they turn to the most brash man on the national stage.

Cathy Cuthberson, a 63-year-old retiree interviewed by Tumulty and Johnson, says that Trump is acting as a voice to “what a lot of Americans are thinking but are afraid to say because they don’t think that it’s politically correct.”

It’s true that no man or woman in the current presidential field speaks their mind quite like Trump. From accusing illegal immigrants of being criminally-inclined (stats from the Government Accountability Office and Department of Justice bear this out) to calling for a blanket ban on Muslim migration to the United States, the billionaire reality TV star has dared to go where few, if any, politicians have gone before.

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What Happened to the Wall Street Sheriff?

Elizabeth Warren is a big fat phony – that’s the topic of my Taki’s Mag piece today. An excerpt:

Elizabeth Warren has spent her congressional career raging against big-bank bogeymen. She was elected from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts based primarily upon her tough stance against the financial industry. “Wall Street CEOs—the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs—still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors and acting like we should thank them,” she boomed at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

Hallelujah to that, Sister Warren.

I have no qualms with ripping on the coke-addled computer nerds on Wall Street who make money hand over fist without creating anything. I agree with Brit Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the country’s chief financial regulatory body, that most of what goes on in the ledgers of too-big-to-fail banks, trading on amalgamated debt instruments and betting if blue-collar Billy will lose his house, is “socially useless.”

Chief Warren is more or less on the same page. Or so I thought.

Read the whole thing thing here to find out why Sen. Warren whores herself out to Goldman Sachs instead of standing by working folk.