Beliefs That Drive My Conservatism.

A lot of dangerous nonsense can occur when people are driven by emotion and ignorance.

I believe a nation should protect its borders but I also favor legal immigration.  I also believe a nation has a right to determine the kind of legal immigrants it allows to enter its country and eventually become citizens.

When a nation has chosen to become a sieve it must deal with the consequences. Practically speaking, we cannot export millions of illegals but we can and should apply new rules as to whether we will allow them to become citizens and extract some penalties and make them meet certain demands.  If we cannot accomplish this then we have decided our laws are worthless and the value of being a citizen is as well.

Personally, I do not believe being an American, and a legal one, is worthless.  I place a high value on the fact that I am a citizen of this country and for this luxury I am required to obey its laws and I expect other citizens to do as well.  I also believe it is my responsibility to defend the country of which I am a citizen. Finally, I believe it is my responsibility to vote and exercise my legal rights and assume responsibilities for my behaviour and decisions.

Logically, I do not leave my home door open during the day or night. I care about my family and possessions too much to leave matters to  chance.  I feel the same way about the door to my country. There are those who call me heartless, bigoted, homophobic etc. for thinking and acting this way.and there are those who want my taxes to provide them with benefits who resent the fact that I have more than they have. Yet, they are unwilling to do anything for these benefits and would not even serve to protect the nation that provides them these benefits.

I understand there are those who fall on hard times etc. and they should receive a helping hand but I also believe they still have responsibilities as long as they are not demeaning and/or harsh. Nether do I believe they have a right to receive these benefits and  do nothing to earn/remove themselves off the dole.

Education and learning skills is the best way to help citizens move up the ladder. America is a nation that provides upward mobility.  Some of our wealthiest citizens were poverty stricken at one time in their lives.

To every argument there is another side.  Life is not a one way street. Perhaps we would all be better off if the heart was on the right side of our bodies.

As I have written, we are currently going through a period that threatens the very foundations on which our republic rests. Some of those who are actively engaged in making outlandish demands do so because they are ignorant.  Others are engaged in purposeful activities whose intent is to radically alter America, to bring our nation down because they are discomforted by our prosperity, our history etc.

They know what they are about and their purposeful desire to cause civil unrest, through destructive protests, employing  Saul Alinsky tactics and  using our freedoms to destroy our freedoms is not random happenstance. Their bitterness has been growing for decades. They simply need/seek a catalyst, a cause to unleash their anger. Interestingly enough they profess their protests and acts of civil disobedience, their rioting, their destruction of property are done to bring attention to their cause. They maintain their actions are for the benefit of the oppressed. Then why do they use oppressive methods against the innocent?

I submit they are anarchists, who benefit from chaos and believe, by stirring and inciting passions and acting in a lawless manner, can best accomplish their nefarious goals. Society must not coddle these thugs and we must not allow them to use our freedoms to imperil our freedoms. Nor should we allow government to participate in furthering their goals by allowing them to engage in  illegal behaviour without a penalty.  When students break windows they should be tossed out of school.  If rioters destroy property they should either serve jail terms and/or make financial restitution. If these anarchists injure police they must be given severe sentences and so it goes. For every illegal, wanton act there must be a consequence.

When an illegal Mexican carries a Mexican flag to protest why he is not allowed to be an American citizen I would argue, at the very least, he is hurting his cause. If he truly wants to be an American citizen I would think logic would dictate other measures.

Furthermore, if we are a nation that adheres to the law then the laws must be applied equally and actively. Allowing lawless behaviour on behalf of some cause is both dangerous and  illogical.

America is a tolerant nation. Americans are a tolerant and generous people. We have constitutional protections which allow protest, freedom of speech and laws to protect those engaged in appropriate civil protest seeking redress. Reverend Martin Luther King, and his followers, proved that to be the case. We have a history of correcting our mistakes . America, democracy, capitalism remain the best hope for world progress and peace. We are not a perfect people We have faults but if there were more Americas the world would be safer., the oppressed would have greater opportunities, there would be more wealth to shares and this is what Trump's U.N speech was all about. (See 1 below.)

On the eve of The Jewish New Year I hope we turn away from the nonsense espoused by the likes of Bernie, the specious appeal of  "Black Lives Matter," the attacks on college campuses by anarchists against  those whose views they disagree with  and begin to embrace free speech and the exchange of ideas and, finally, turn away from criminalizing behaviour as a political ploy by those who impose political correctness in order to silence the opposition.

These beliefs drive my conservatism and cause me to behave, think and write as I do. We may have different methods to accomplish worthy goals and here is where our views may part. However, I challenge those who think what I have written above is nonsense, illogical and inconsistent to explain their own positions.
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1)

Trump Hits Home Run for America in UN Speech

By Claudia Rosett

President Trump gave his first official speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning, and was immediately berated by the New York

Times(Trump's "characteristically confrontational message") and the Washington Post ("Trump's menacing United Nations speech, annotated"). Sen. Dianne Feinstein lambasted him for words that  "greatly escalated the danger" from Iran and North Korea. And the foreign minister of Venezuela's socialist dictatorship, Jorge Arreaza -- apparently trying to formulate some sort of supreme insult -- compared Trump in 2017 to President Ronald Reagan in 1982.

With that kind of reaction, you might just start to suspect that Trump did something right.

Actually, Trump got it very right. In a forum accustomed to diplo-fictions and the dignifying of dictators, he hit a home run for America.

An important bit of context here is that while the procession of speeches at the UN General Assembly's annual opening every September is officially dubbed the "General Debate," it is not actually a debate. It is not as a rule a forum for to-and-fro, in which the fine points of policy are hashed out. As far as that happens, it goes on behind the scenes. The General Debate is a presentation of messages; a parade before the huge golden backdrop of the UN's General Assembly chamber, in which for the better part of a week a series of senior envoys, ranging from heads of state to ministers, deliver remarks.

From many of the speakers, at a UN where the majority of the 193 member states are not free, it's a performance rich in platitudes, prejudice and propaganda for consumption by captive populations back home -- a polysyllabic porridge, in the UN tradition. What's relatively rare is plain-spoken truth.

So, by UN standards, Trump's speech certainly did not fit in. But by American standards, he told some extremely important truths, including his observation that "America does more than speak for the values expressed in the United Nations Charter. Our citizens have paid the ultimate price to defend our freedom and the freedom of many nations represented in this great hall."

He spelled out, quite accurately, that "The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based."

In particular, and in detail, Trump called out the rogue states of North Korea and Iran. He did not follow a script of pollysyllabic diplomatic enumerations of unacceptable activities. He reminded the UN members of Pyongyang's "deadly abuse" of American student Otto Warmbier. He talked about North Korea's kidnapping of a Japanese 13-year-old girl "to enslave her as a language tutor for North Korea's spies." And he cited "the assassination of the dictator's brother using banned nerve agents in an international airport."

He caused a stir, and inspired plenty of headlines, with his comments:

"The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime."

That's not bombast. That's a pointed and useful warning to a totalitarian tyrant, who in contravention of nine UN sanctions resolutions and all basic decency has been threatening preemptive nuclear strikes on the U.S. and its allies, advertising the testing of hydrogen bombs and shooting intercontintal ballistic missiles over Japan. Let's hope Kim Jong Un takes it seriously, despite decades of U.S. compromise and retreat that led to this pass.

As for the derision implicit in the label "Rocket Man," I'd say that Trump in describing the murderous despot of North Korea displayed a distinct delicacy simply by avoiding the use of raw profanity from the UN podium. Would it have been better to deferentially describe Kim as the supreme leader of North Korea? Mockery has its uses in facing down despots. The confrontation here is of North Korea's making -- and the dangers have grown all the worse over the years for such nonconfrontational approaches as the nuclear deals of Presidents Bush and Clinton, and the do-nothing "strategic patience" of President Obama.

Another highlight was Trump's bull's-eye description of Iran. Again, it was rude by UN standards, but right on target for anyone interested in the truth:

"The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy. It has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos."

And then there was the superb moment in which Trump, talking about the miseries of Venezuela under the Maduro regime, said:

"The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure."

Those are words that deserve to be carved in stone, somewhere in the UN's lavishly refurbished marble and granite halls. Come to think of it, they'd look good chiseled into the UN General Assembly podium.

Lest the assembled eminences had any doubt, Trump told them exactly where he stands: "As President of the United States, I will always put America first." He said he expected them to do the same with their countries, but with the proviso that "All responsible leaders have an obligation to serve their own citizens."

There was plenty more to his speech. We can now dicker over the precise policy implications of his phrase, "principled realism," and debate what exactly Trump is going to do or should do, about North Korea and Iran. We can note that he got the date wrong on his trip to Saudi Arabia -- it was this year, not last year. Plenty to discuss, and I'm sure the discussion will extend from now until at least the next round of Sunday TV talk shows.

But the bottom line is that for the first time in years, an American president went before the UN and in plain words spelled out some vital truths about America, the UN, and the world. Whatever the UN General Assembly might make of it, once it recovers from the shock, that's a good thing for the world, and a very good thing for America.

Claudia Rosett is Foreign Policy Fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum, and author of the Encounter Books Broadside, What To Do About the UN.

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