Christopher Caldwell
Senior Fellow, The Claremont Institute and Author, The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties
Christopher Caldwell is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a contributing editor at the Claremont Review of Books, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. A graduate of Harvard College, he has been a senior editor at the Weekly Standard and a columnist for the Financial Times. He is the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West and The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on January 28, 2020, at Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C., as part of the AWC Family Foundation lecture series.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:And that’s our current party system: the bigots versus the totalitarians.
American society today is divided by party and by ideology in a way it has perhaps not been since the Civil War. I have just published a book that, among other things, suggests why this is. It is calledThe Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties. It runs from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the election of Donald J. Trump. You can get a good idea of the drift of the narrative from its chapter titles: 1963, Race, Sex, War, Debt, Diversity, Winners, and Losers.
I can end part of the suspense right now—Democrats are the winners. Their party won the 1960s—they gained money, power, and prestige. The GOP is the party of the people who lost those things.
One of the strands of this story involves the Vietnam War. The antiquated way the Army was mustered in the 1960s wound up creating a class system. What I’m referring to here is the so-called student deferment. In the old days, university-level education was rare. At the start of the First World War, only one in 30 American men was in a college or university, so student deferments were not culturally significant. By the time of Vietnam, almost half of American men were in a college or university, and student deferment remained in effect until well into the war. So if you were rich enough to study art history, you went to Woodstock and made love. If you worked in a garage, you went to Da Nang and made war. This produced a class division that many of the college-educated mistook for a moral division, particularly once we lost the war. The rich saw themselves as having avoided service in Vietnam not because they were more privileged or—heaven forbid—less brave, but because they were more decent.
‘IN THEIR OWN WORDS’ by Terry Turchie and Donagh Bracken
The Democrat Party’s Push to a Communist America
Forthcoming book reports on incremental take-over moves inside U.S. Government by communist-left individuals in Democrat Party.
SHORT BIO OF THE AUTHORS:
Terry D. Turchie spent 29 years in the FBI, retiring as the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counter terrorism Division. During more than half of his time in the Bureau, he was assigned to Soviet counterintelligence investigations in New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Palo Alto, California. Jim Fox, the former Assistant Director of the New York FBI referred to Terry Turchie as, “a key figure in the Soviet Division and our effort to neutralize Soviet intelligence efforts at the UN.”
Donagh Bracken coordinated regional and congressional campaigns for the Democrat Party. He is a graduate of Manhattan College and served in the U.S. Army assigned to the 10th Infantry Regiment at the Combat Development Experimentation Center during the Cold War. He is a Civil War historian and author of “The Words of War”in which he contrasted the Civil War reportage of “The New York Times” and “The Charleston Mercury”. He is the Publisher of History Publishing Company.
In Their Own Words” was written in the spirit of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”— Donagh Bracken
PALISADES, NY, US, October 7, 2019 /EINPresswire.com/ — History Publishing Company will publish “In Their Own Words” by Terry Turchie and Donagh Bracken. It is a book that uses the spoken and written words of individuals active in the U.S.Government to initiate an internal revolution in America.The book will be published January 14, 2020.
Far Left Liberalism has itself to blame for being the cause of the appeal of Bernie Sanders. The Democrat Party now has to contend with the possibility of Bernie being their nominee. Guess they really didn’t mean for the voters to take their extreme far left policies seriously ! Nancy
Bernie Sanders is riding the intellectual currents that the party and its elites have nurtured.
By the Editorial Board February 15, 2020
Bernie Sanders’s victory in New Hampshire on top of his tie in Iowa makes him a favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination. Hard to believe, but in a winnable race against President Trump the opposition may nominate a socialist who wants the government to control energy production and health care, who wants nationwide rent control, and who calls America a “racist society from top to bottom.” No wonder Democrats like James Carville are in agony.
The Vermont revolutionary’s victory portends a long primary battle, unless Democratic voters elevate a single mainstream candidate who can challenge him. Mr. Sanders will get his 25% to 30% primary after primary, racking up delegates on his way to the convention. If other candidates keep dividing the other votes, he will be hard to stop, as Mr. Trump was for Republicans in 2016. Even if a single alternative emerges, Mr. Sanders won’t go down without a ferocious intra-party fight.
***
How did this happen? How did Mr. Sanders move from the socialist fringe to the brink of controlling the Democratic Party? The Senator’s dogged persistence across decades and especially the last four years is part of the explanation.
Yet Mr. Sanders wouldn’t be this close to the White House if not for the complicity of Democrats and the liberals who dominate the academy and media. Rather than fighting the ideas that animate him and his millennial voters, they have indulged and promoted them. They created the political environment in which he could prosper. Consider the intellectual currents he is riding:
No. It doesn’t match his shrinking regulations and limiting government
by Allan H. Ryskind Allan H. Ryskind, a former editor and owner of Human Events, is the author of “Hollywood Traitors” (Regnery, 2015)
December 31, 2019
Prominent liberal Fareed Zakaria insists that Donald Trump “has been profoundly unconservative” because he’s abandoned what “Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government.” But it’s hard to take the charge seriously, even though some conservatives have sent his piece around for comment to see if he’s onto something. Yet no politician in recent memory has restricted the reach of government at both the federal and state level more than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Mr. Trump’s drastic shrinking of federal economic regulations, opening vast expanses of federal lands for energy exploration, drawing overseas businesses home with tax breaks and passing major tax cuts for corporations and individuals have generated an explosion of well-paying jobs, personal wealth and soaring wages, as well as the lowest level of unemployment for minorities on record. Some 7 million new jobs have been created during Mr. Trump’s presidency and more than 100 million American shareholders have watched the market jump 55 percent since his election.
You’d think Mr. Zakaria would be celebrating Mr. Trump’s low-tax, pro-growth economic agenda as not only core Republicanism but virtually Reaganesque. Increasing prosperity by stimulating market forces without enacting high taxes and big government programs is, of course, how conservatives try to keep government limited.
Mr. Zakaria concedes that Mr. Trump has delivered what conservatives have wanted in the realm of “social and cultural policy,” such as “appointing judges, tightening rules related to abortion and asylum, etc.” but suggests they have little to do with taming the Leviathan.
Really? Stacking the courts with judges steeped in the philosophy of federalism is, of course, precisely the way to limit government on both the economic and cultural fronts. Mr. Zakaria may ignore the threat, but Democratic Party presidential candidates, along with their media support groups, are panicked over the president’s court selections.
Does the Democratic Party represent the interests of black Americans? Larry Elder gives 10 reasons why blacks might consider leaving the Democratic Party.
The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.
Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.
The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.
American citizenship is eroding in three ways.
First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.
But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.
I have sent this article out before but thanks to Anthony Bruno for reminding us about it again. This article spells out exactly why Trump has such an appeal to so many people. Nancy
Trump’s ‘lack of decorum, dignity, and statesmanship’ By Evan Sayet in his article
“He Fights”
Excerpt from this article:
Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obama’s close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers & Bernardine Dohrn), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright’s church.
Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration’s weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administration’s cover-up.
My Leftist friends (as well as many ardent #NeverTrumpers) constantly ask me if I’m not bothered by Donald Trump’s lack of decorum. They ask if I don’t think his tweets are “beneath the dignity of the office.”
Here’s my answer: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency.
We tried statesmanship.
Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized “collegiality” as John McCain?
We tried propriety – has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney?
And the results were always the same. This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob.
I don’t find anything “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper” about Barack Obama’s lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party.
I don’t see anything “dignified” in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks.
I don’t see anything “statesman-like” in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent.
Yes, Obama was “articulate” and “polished” but in no way was he in the least bit “dignified,” “collegial” or “proper.”
Thanks to Ed Roney for sharing this article. At the bottom of the article are some of the main points in the article that Ed very thoughtfully provided . Nancy
The census fails to account for taxes and most welfare payments, painting a distorted picture.
November 4, 2019 by Phil Gramm and John F. Early Mr. Gramm is a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Mr. Early served twice as assistant commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Never in American history has the debate over income inequality so dominated the public square, with Democratic presidential candidates and congressional leaders calling for massive tax increases and federal expenditures to redistribute the nation’s income. Unfortunately, official measures of income inequality, the numbers being debated, are profoundly distorted by what the Census Bureau chooses to count as household income.
The published census data for 2017 portray the top quintile of households as having almost 17 times as much income as the bottom quintile. But this picture is false. The measure fails to account for the one-third of all household income paid in federal, state and local taxes. Since households in the top income quintile pay almost two-thirds of all taxes, ignoring the earned income lost to taxes substantially overstates inequality.
“A brilliant book based on a brilliant and true concept.” – TUCKER CARLSON
Remember America? There may come a time when no one will.
There will be no monuments to American heroes, no stories that will praise them. The United States will have become a dark chapter in human history, best forgotten.
In Erasing America: Destroying Our Future by Erasing Our Past (releasing August 21st), James Robbins reveals that the radical Left controls education, the media, and the Democratic party…. and they seek to demean, demolish, and relentlessly attack America’s past in order to control America’s present.
This toxic movement has already brainwashed an entire generation and is rapidly changing the cultural, historical, and spiritual bonds of our nation. American exceptionalism, history, and patriotism are a magnificent legacy, Robbins warns, but to pass it on to our children, we must view the past with understanding, the present with gratitude, and the future with hope.
Wondering if it’s really that bad? Here are some facts you’ll learn in Erasing America:
At Yale, residential Calhoun College is being renamed after students complained about the pro-slavery sentiments of John C. Calhoun. In Massachusetts, Simmons College claims saying, “God bless you” is an “Islamophobic microaggression.” In Virginia, school districts seek to ban To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because parents complained about the racial slurs in the books. Across the country, Christmas songs and movies are labelled as racist and sexist – and banned. In California, a San Francisco school district wants to rename George Washington High School because our first president owned slaves. In Arkansas, a monument engraved with the Ten Commandments was smashed to smithereens by a protester in a Dodge Dart. And in parks and squares across the South, statues of confederate generals and soldiers are disappearing.
Robbins wants you to understand the critical situation in America, and to use Erasing America to equip your fellow Americans against this Leftist propaganda – before it’s too late!
James S. Robbins is a senior fellow for National Security Affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and a member of the advisory board to the National Civil War Museum. Formerly, he was an award-winning editorial writer at the Washington Times, professor at the National Defense University, and special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His books include This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive (2010) and Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point (2006).
How is America to be defined? By its failures or its triumphs? Today, there seems to be an obsession with the former and a dismissal of the latter. Is this dark vision of the freest and most prosperous nation on earth an accurate narrative or a cynical distortion? James Robbins, columnist for USA Today and author of “Erasing America,” considers that question in this video. How we view America’s past will very much shape America’s future.
