Author Archives: Stephen Henry Miller

An Honest Look at Trump

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As readers know, I’ll be voting for Gary Johnson on the Libertarian ticket—not because I think he’d be a great president, but because the major party candidates are both personally repugnant advocates of, in different respects, truly awful policies. The next four years, most likely under Clinton, will be a rough patch in any event.

That said, readers also know that I am sickened by the way LGBT progressives have, with utter dishonesty, characterized Donald Trump as “anti-gay” because that false narrative serves their party. At some point, the mendacity is so corrupting that one can only despair of these people.

So I welcomed David Lampo’s A Gay Defense of Donald Trump, one small voice of reason amid a sea of hysterical base-frightening in the Washington Blade. As Lampo writes:

The fact is that any honest look at Trump’s record and views on gay rights shows that most of the attacks by gay Democrats on his views are simply incorrect.

Trump, of course, has been a New York Democrat and social liberal for most of his adult life, chummy with many Democratic politicians, including the Clintons, and active in many charities, including support for AIDS charities. He has a long record of public support for expanding gay rights, including adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He stated support for employment nondiscrimination as far back as 2000 in his book, “The America We Deserve,” in which he wrote of his support for a country “free of racism, discrimination against women, or discrimination against people based on sexual orientation.”

He publicly supported repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and in an interview with The Brody File (a very conservative radio show) in 2011, in response to a question about civil unions, he said, “First of all, I live in New York. I know many, many gay people. Tremendous people. And to be honest with you … I haven’t totally formed my opinion. But there can be no discrimination against gays.”

Lampo concludes:

There’s no doubt one can find much to criticize in Trump (and, for that matter, Hillary Clinton), but to label him anti-gay or a mouthpiece of the religious right is so off-base and incorrect it calls into question the credibility and honesty of those making such accusations.

That’s putting it charitably.

More. A bit off-topic, but this is what you won’t learn about Clinton by reading and viewing liberal media. Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Readers of these pages know of the Uranium One deal in which a Canadian businessman got Bill Clinton to help him get control of uranium mining fields in Kazakhstan. The businessman soon gave $31 million to the Clinton Foundation, with a pledge of $100 million more. Uranium One acquired significant holdings in the U.S. A Russian company moved to buy it. The deal needed U.S. approval, including from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While it was under consideration the Clinton Foundation received more money from Uranium One. Bill Clinton got a $500,000 speech fee. Mrs. Clinton approved the deal. The Russian company is now one of the world’s largest uranium producers. Significant amounts of U.S. uranium are, in effect, owned by Russia. This summer a WikiLeaks dump showed the State Department warning that Russia was moving to control the global supply of nuclear fuel. The deal went through anyway, and the foundation flourished.

In addition:

Peter Schweizer, who broke the Uranium One story, reported in these pages how Mrs. Clinton also pushed for a U.S.-Russian technology initiative…. Of the 28 announced “key partners,” 60% had made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation. Even Russian investors ponied up. … U.S. military experts warned of satellite, space and nuclear technology transfers. The FBI thought the Russian partners’ motive was to “gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology.” WikiLeaks later unearthed a State Department cable expressing concern about the project. Somehow, said Mr. Schweizer, the Clinton State Department “missed or ignored obvious red flags.”

This is why Clinton will be a disastrous president. But the media, which is full of Trump’s supposed fealty to Putin, covers up Clinton’s venality. Corruption all round.

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Life at ‘GULPTAB’

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The leftwing site Huffington Post “Queer Voices” has posted a funny video take-down of LGBT advocacy groups.

If you didn’t know it was intended as a protest against “the modern climate of corporate LGBT activism,” showing that “Corporates commodify LGBT activism with the same zeal that they’ve commodified self-love,” as the video’s creators state in the accompanying “Queer Voices” article, you’d just think the satire was spot-on (unless, of course, the description is part of the satire).

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BladeWatch

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Increasingly, there is no longer an LGBT rights movement. Clearly, the gay rights movement of the 70s, which became the lesbian and gay rights movement of the 80s and 90s, is gone—for the most part, a victim of its own success after the victories for military inclusion and marriage equality.

Today, there’s an archly politically correct transgender movement that’s focused on bathroom access (a legitimate issue greatly magnified by both sides, with few documented cases of actual discrimination in practice beyond the controversy around minors in public schools) and correct pronouns (often taken to ridiculous extremes). And there’s the Democratic party’s ongoing crusade to recruit LGBT votes and dollars by any means at hand. For the most part, the LGBT media has been thoroughly co-opted into this endeavor.

Lately, reading the Washington Blade is akin to reading The Onion, except that the latter often makes more sense. A few recent examples.

Headline: Trump makes ‘religious liberty’ a priority at anti-LGBT confab.

Excerpt:

Donald Trump didn’t make any explicit anti-LGBT remarks during his speech Friday at the Values Voter Summit, but loaded his remarks with coded language on “religious liberty” to indicate support for undermining LGBT rights.

The meme that religious liberty and the right to religious dissent are not only unacceptable anti-state activity but the worst kind of bigotry is thoroughly entrenched in the left-thought of the day. This, of course, all goes to forcing independent business owners to provide creative services to same-sex weddings, which, along with gender-appropriate pronouns, has become the dominant cause of what presents itself as the LGBT rights movement. That so many of the progressive mindset can’t, or won’t, see how ugly and authoritarian this has become is a sad commentary on moral corruption that dresses itself in the self-righteous narcissism of the politically correct and morally superior, fighting the “bigots” who won’t do as the progressive state decrees, clinging to their false superstitions and mistaken beliefs that individuals have a right not to be compelled to violate their “faith” principles.

Another headline: ID laws may ‘disenfranchise’ 34,000 trans voters.

Excerpt:

More than 34,000 transgender Americans in eight states could be prevented from voting in the November 2016 election because of strict voter identification laws that require voters to present government-issued photo IDs at the polls, according to a newly released report.

Just as, apparently, transgender persons can also no longer fly on airplanes or enter government buildings, since government-issued ID is also required for these activities. The fact that this big lie against voter ID is used with such unembarrassed impunity tells you all you need to know about the dishonesty of the contemporary progressive left and the degree to which LGBT activism and media have sunken down into the muck.

More. No voter fraud in the U.S. to speak of, Democrats say with a straight face. Of course, they know the truth. Corruption all round.

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Progressive ‘Love’

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Via the Washington Post:

As thousands of Donald Trump’s supporters left his rally here this week, they were greeted by protesters who accused them of being, among other things, racist, hateful and uneducated.

“Grow a brain, b—-!” one protester shouted at a Trump backer. Another pointed at rallygoers and yelled: “Racist a——s!” A third held a sign that read: “Make racists afraid again.”

Then they chanted in unison: “Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate!”

And they’ll never see the irony.

Daniel Henninger writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The moral clarity that drove the original civil-rights movement or the women’s movement has degenerated into a confused moral narcissism. One wonders if even some of the people in Mrs. Clinton’s Streisandian audience didn’t feel discomfort at the ease with which the presidential candidate slapped isms and phobias on so many people.

Nay. This is what they think.

Even better, via the Washington Blade.

As I said, LGBT supporters stand with Clinton on ‘deplorables’ remark. They can’t see that demonizing your opponent’s voters, rather than criticizing your opponent, is a terrible strategy in a democracy. But then, it’s all about signalling the moral superiority of the progressive base.

In the end, however, Hillary’s LGBT smugfest with Barbra may turn out to be one hell of a costly fundraiser.

Gregory Angelo of the Log Cabin Republicans has observed, correctly, that when it comes to LGBT inclusion Trump is “one of the best, if not the best” (meaning least worst) Republican presidential nominees ever. Democrats, with some justification, can laugh at that as a weak standard. But that’s not what they’re doing—they’re portraying Trump as the most anti-gay Republican ever (the Blade cartoonist warns he’ll be closing down gay bars). That’s just partisan hackery.

And more from supporters of the Party of Love.

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Deplorables and Bigots

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Hillary Clinton made it clear what she thinks of Donald Trump supporters. In comments that were only slightly walked back the next day, she told an LGBT fundraiser in New York City featuring Barbra Streisand:

To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.

She further explained:

That other basket of people are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change. Doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.

In other words, Trump voters are either haters or pitiable dupes.

The fundraiser reportedly raised around $6 million, with ticket prices ranging from $1,200 to $250,000, with many paying $50,000, according to reports.

Are some of Trump’s supporters bigots? Sure. But nowhere near half of them, and to say so is to pander to Hillary’s supporters sense of smug moral superiority to the lower orders, particularly the white working and lower-middle classes excluded from the Democrats’ top-bottom coalition of wealthy liberals and minorities—plus, of course, the growing legions of government employees.

One could as easily claim that half of Hillary’s supporters are left-authoritarians (she was endorsed by the head of the Communist Party USA, after all), and be as close to the truth, which is to say, not very truthful at all.

Trump supporters, to a large extent, see failed Democratic policies on the economic and international fronts, and while many believe Trump to be flawed, they view him as a better choice than Hillary when it comes to reviving economic growth and defending American interests. But progressive Democrats can only see the world through a self-justifying lens of rote identity politics, so if you don’t believe in bigger, more intrusive government chipping away at economic prosperity and expressive freedom, you’re a bigot.

A case in point is Obama’s chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declaring that antidiscrimination laws override other constitutional liberties and those who disagree are (well, you know):

The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts just issued a regulation requiring public accommodations to recognize people on the basis of their gender identity and not biological sex, pointedly noting that regardless of doctrinal issues, “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”

The decision of what church events are secular and which are religious is apparently to be determined by the state.

I’m no fan of Milo Yiannopoulos, the self-aggrandizing openly gay editor at the conservative Breitbart site, but he scores some points about the Democrats’ distorted view of Trump voters in this interview with CNBC. (For the record, I don’t equate most Trump supporters with the alt-right and would agree there are bigots within the alt-right movement who are backing Trump—just as there are left-authoritarians and PC inquisitors supporting Hillary.)

More. David Boaz writes that “it’s an indication that politicians like Clinton and Obama just can’t *imagine* any legitimate reason that people would vote Republican. … I think it’s a problem for politicians not to be able to imagine how anyone could think or vote differently from them.”

(I’ve moved the updates into a new post as they grew beyond a few additional closing thoughts.)

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If They’re Democrats, It’s Not Homophobic

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Log Cabin Republicans call out the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for running a sleazy ad saying of an out-gay House candidate in Arizona, Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, “We can’t trust him with our kids.”

As reported by the Washington Times, the ad dredges up and sensationalizes accusations of harsh, bootcamp-style disciplinary practices at a private school for troubled teens in Massachusetts where Babeu served as headmaster and executive director from 1998 to 2001. A state investigation recommended that certain practices be stopped but Babeu was never accused of wrongdoing by the state.

The ad, however, uses language that recalls accusations that gay men who are teachers are pedophiles and sexual predators, and not so subtly suggests that Babeu is a threat to children.

“Attack ads don’t get more homophobic than this,” Log Cabin Republicans President Gregory T. Angelo said in a statement. “Not only is this commercial factually inaccurate, but it shows just how low the DCCC is willing to go to stop a gay Republican from being elected to Congress.”

Democrats always think they get a free pass to be homophobic against gay Republicans, just as they feel they can be racists toward black Republicans and sexist toward Republican women.

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A Symbiotic Relationship

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Jason Willick explains at “The American Interest” why The Campus Left and the Alt-Right Are Natural Allies:

On the one hand, excessive left-wing speech policing and cultural brinksmanship on issues of race and gender was bound to make Milo-style ideological transgression more appealing. On the other hand, the alt-right’s newfound cultural power seems to vindicate some of the assumptions of the PC leftt: that racism and misogyny are deeply embedded in America’s cultural fabric, just below the surface, ready to erupt unless controls on thought and language are continuously tightened. …

The PC left and the alt-right exist symbiotically with one another: Working together to exacerbate tribal loyalties, to undermine the legitimacy of the state as a political unit, to question the idea that Western institutions can really treat groups of people with equal respect—in other words, to draw out and hijack the inherent weaknesses and contradictions in the Enlightenment liberal tradition. It’s unlikely that either movement has the cultural power or breadth of appeal to succeed on its own. But taken together, they make a fearsome foe.

From where I sit, it seems that far more center-right conservatives and libertarians are sharply critical of Trumpism and the alt-right than center-left progressives are of illiberal PC extremism, which they often strain to defend when they aren’t denying that it exists at all.

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She Who Must Never Be Criticized

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The LGBT-left blog Towleroad posted on LGBT Advocates Steam Over One-Sided ‘Washington Post’ Article on Hillary Clinton’s Gay Rights Record. I read the Washington Post article and thought it was ultimately a celebration of Clinton’s evolution, despite the promising— and certainly accurate—headline that “Hillary Clinton had the chance to make gay rights history. She refused.”

The Post article made clear that Clinton has now adopted a position of strong advocacy for LGBT rights within the context of the progressive agenda. But any criticism of Hillary, even pointing out her prior opposition to same-sex marriage and public acquiescence to the Defense of Marriage Act and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy, is anathema to the political operatives who helm the biggest LGBT lobbies, which are firmly joined at the hip to the Democratic party.

Remember, “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”

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Procedure Serves a Purpose

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Columnist Bart Hinkle writes that, rather than the Obama administration’s directive, with no review or public comment, that all public school restrooms and locker rooms must be open for use based on gender self-identification—resulting in several legal challenges—that “a normal rule-making procedure would have allowed for thoughtful consideration of such issues.”

As Hinkle notes, both left and right are quite willing to violate procedural rule-making norms meant to restrain the arbitrary use of federal power, if it serves their own agendas to do so. But each will strenuously condemn the other side for violating those same procedural norms on behalf of an agenda they oppose.

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