Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that the word ‘Jihad’ is no longer politically correct, expunged from the PC dictionary. The establishment has said that use of non-PC words is prima facie evidence that the user is racist, homophobic, islamophobic, misogynistic and is probably a serial jaywalker on busy streets.
George Orwell’s book, 1984, tells us how the Ministry of Love has a mission to eliminate words from the language with the objective limiting expression of ideas that violate Thought Control. For example, the word ‘bad’ is replaced by ‘ungood’.
For the simple minded purveyors of Orwellian PC, jihad is the Arabic word for ‘challenge’ For a Muslim, the first jihad is to give one’s life to God which in Arabic, is Allah.
If there ever was a cross roads election, November 2016 is it. It is a Liberal/Conservative showdown that has been a long time in the making. Take look at the history of this classic conflict that is fundamental to political contests world-wide, as it has taken place in America.
The Beginning of Liberal/Progressive
A movement that began with Theodore Roosevelt’s progressives in the earliest twentieth century was aimed at breaking up power monopolies in a few basic industries. It was also designed to reduce political decision making powers held by political machines. The liberal/conservative relationship evolved into competing approaches to problem solving, traveling parallel paths that converged at critical times to solve critical problems.
The turbulent sixties with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam blew this relationship apart and made ‘moderate’ into a four letter word. Since then, Liberals and Conservatives have been on divergent paths, each demonizing the other with total destruction the goal. That angle of divergence has reached 180 degrees which makes this a cross roads election.
Liberalism vs. Conservative Today
Liberalism, embodied in the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton, and Conservatism, embodied in the Republican party and Donald Trump, espouse not only different solutions, but don’t even agree on the problems. To capsulize some examples:
PROBLEM
|
DEMOCRAT VIEW
|
REPUBLICAN VIEW
|
Economy
|
Increase government revenue for infrastructure to stimulate the economy.
|
Reduce taxes and regulations to enable business to do what they always do – Expand.
|
Terrorism
|
A local law enforcement problem needing tighter gun controls
|
Cut off the head of the snake by destroying ISIS HQ in Racca, Syria – WHATEVER IT TAKES.
|
Energy
|
Climate change threat dictates alternative energy to be encouraged by govt. subsidies.
|
Ignore this bogus science and encourage development of abundant domestic fossil fuel resources.
|
Health Care
|
Single payer system.
|
Repeal Obamacare.
|
While there are many more issues and a lot more could be written about each one, the table illustrates how diametrically opposed the two parties have become. People who value the ‘security’ of a paternalistic state will favor the Democrat candidates, while those who have faith in individual ability to create, will vote Republican.
Liberals Have Slight Lead With Four + Months To Go
Since nothing in this election cycle has conformed to ‘expert’ predictions, the meaning of any polling depends on what brand of tea leaves you are buying. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a long time Democrat politician, for whom everyone kept out of her path to the party’s presidential nomination. Everyone, that is, except a 74-year old senator who claims socialist as his party affiliation. What was expected to be a ‘coronation’ tour, has hung in the balance until the end of the primaries.
When billionaire builder and TV host, Donald Trump, tossed his hat into the Republican contest along with 16 other head coverings, ‘experts’ scoffed and assured everyone that it was just a publicity grab which would be over in a couple of months.
Now that he has earned the title, presumptive nominee, with more Republican primary votes than any candidate in history, experts have turned into sour grapes and should-be friends who had their chances and failed, label him racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic.
The media has come all the way out of the objective and impartial closet and uses every opportunity to reinforce liberal dogma. When DHS eliminated jihad from terror lexicon, no questions were raised but when Trump suggested a pause in immigration until we learn how to vet refugees, they dropped the ‘until’ part and clobbered him with the racist, lslamophobic tags.
Public Perception
Blunt, anti-PC expression has brought support from a broad spectrum of potential voters who are tired of the jaded, politically correct posturing by candidates with canned ideas. His slogan, “Make America Great Again”, has landed with a lot of punch for millions. Pollsters have not caught up with a significant realignment of voter interests. An example is the gubernatorial election in Kentucky in 2015 when the polls had the liberal democratic candidate up by nine points the day before the election which he lost by 11 points to the Tea Party Republican candidate.
Citizens are woefully uninformed about policies and issues, preferring bad TV and I-phone thumb hockey to due diligence. In his book, “Overton Window”, author Glenn Beck posits in a fictional account how this might work out. The title is named after Joe Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and is the subject of discussion at regular Mackinac Center seminars.
Briefly, over the entire range of issues about everything, it is the window which encompasses those issues which might get public attention and political forces keep trying to move the window in their direction.
The Christian Science Monitor observes that “Pundits believe that Donald Trump has jolted the Overton window far more than any presidential candidate in history.”
Are the people buying it? From the above referenced book, Beck offers “The public has lost the courage to believe. They have given up their ability to think. They can no longer form opinions, they absorb their opinions sitting slack-jawed in front of their televisions.”
Too often it has been said that an election is between Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, leaving voters very little to choose from. That is definitely not the case coming up in November 2016. How will the voters respond? Stay tuned.