President Trump is a threat?

It’s the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend, so I was looking for some essays and think-pieces that might be of interest to Tea Party readers.  One that I found is J. B. Shurk’s somewhat wider perspective of President Trump, as published at American Thinker (and if you dislike President Trump, you still may find his perspectives interesting). The title: “What Do Democrats Fear in Donald Trump? Greatness.”  Here’s a sample:

Consider how many powerful ideas Donald Trump has cast into the national consciousness.  He has exposed both major parties as socialist globalist cults more concerned with government health care and foreign nation-building than a policy for American freedom.  He has exposed how free trade can never be free when based on slave labor.  He has exposed how the silent destruction of towns across the Midwest came not from China's comparative advantage, but from American companies' use of slavery by proxy.  He has redirected investment away from Wall Street and toward Main Street for the first time in over thirty years and has unleashed three decades' worth of pent up entrepreneurial energy in the very towns long deemed dead.  He has questioned how the federal government can have any legitimacy if it fails at enforcing its very own immigration laws.  

Not one Nobel laureate imagined this American renaissance of GDP and stock market surge, record-low unemployment, wage growth, and low inflation in one bubbling cauldron.  It took a change agent.  Not one foreign policy mandarin suggested unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit of the American oil man in order to destroy our enemies' power over us permanently.  It took a change agent.  Not one State Department official questioned why the United States was still subsidizing Europe's generous socialist welfare system seventy years after WWII.  It took a change agent.  Nobody wondered why we were enriching China at our own expense and preparing for a world where a communist dictator would lead.  It took Donald Trump.

Without worry or apology, Donald Trump stands before the world with a giant mirror, and the world does not like what it sees.  

. . .

What his fiercest adversaries [such as James Carville] are only now realizing is that Trump has shifted the trajectory of history permanently. 

Read the full article here.

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Free Men or Free Things

Image credit: farmboxford.com

Daniel Greenfield publishes at FrontPage and at his own website, Sultan Knish. His article “A Nation of Free Men or Free Things” ponders the meaning of Independence Day, and he starts off:

The 2020 Democrat primaries are underway with candidate after candidate promising a nation, not of free people, but of free things.

Free college, free health care and free everything else. Even for illegal aliens.

Of course there's a price to pay.

You get free health care by giving up the freedom to pick your own health care. You get free education, but the indoctrination is the price.

The Fourth to many is Fireworks Day. Every country has its fireworks days and this is the day that this one chooses to light up the night sky. The day means nothing to them because though they are surrounded by free things, they aren’t free. 

The difference between freedom and free things has been progressively erased so that many think that the American Revolution was fought because the British weren’t providing affordable health coverage to the colonies. If only they knew about the NHS, they would vote to go back.

All that the Crown really wanted was for the colonists to pay their “fair share”, a share that was determined thousands of miles away. All that the colonists wanted was the rights of Englishmen that they believed they were entitled to. After a great deal of bloodshed, the colonists won the right to be Americans instead—an odd series of consonants and vowels having to do with an Italian explorer but meaning free and limited government.

There is a big difference between a free country and a country of free things. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both.  . . .

Mr. Greenfield’s full article is here. Recommended.

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Mark Levin debuts on Fox

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Last night, Mark Levin debuted his Sunday evening program on Fox:

On the Fox News Channel premiere of "Life, Liberty & Levin,"Mark Levin sat down for an illuminating discussion with prominent economist and syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams.

Levin recalled that when he was about 20 years old, he spoke with then-Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), a close ally of Ronald Reagan.

"One of the things he said to me that has stuck with me ever since [was] 'every day Congress meets, we lose a little bit of our liberty.' It wasn't supposed to be that way," Levin noted.

. . .

Our household reluctantly tuned in last night -- and with low expectations. Levin is often strident and irritating on radio, and we did not sign on to CRTV after his disgraceful treatment/firing of Mark Steyn about a month after they started operations. However, last night’s program was a pleasant surprise. The distinguished economics professor Walter E. Williams was on for the full hour, so there was a sustained discussion instead of the usual 2-minute sound bite, cut off with the host/hostess saying “we’re out of time.”

There is a short video extract at the link (scroll down).

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US Slips To 12th In Economic Freedom

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Not good news from Breitbart:

US Slips To 12th In Economic Freedom

A new report of "economic freedom" around the world finds the US ranked 12th among 152 countries, tied with the United Kingdom, and lower than neighbor Canada or Australia. The index, published by the Cato Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute, has been published since 1996. As recently as 2000, the US ranked 2nd in the world, in terms of boasting a free economy. The US's declining ranking will lower future economic growth. 

The index, built on decades of research by Nobel laureates and dozens of leading scholars,measures 5 broad factors that impact the economy: 1. Size of government; 2. Legal structure and security of property rights; 3. Access to sound money; 4. Freedom to trade internationally and; 5. Regulation of Credit, Labor and Business. Countries where citizens are freer to engage in business and trade and property and legal rights are protected by the rule of law will score higher on the index. According to economic research, though, these countries will also do better economically and create and generate more wealth. 

The 10 freest economies in the world are: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mauritius, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Jordan, and Chile and Finland tied for 10th. 

America's descent down the ladder of economic freedom is unsettling, in itself. More troubling, however, is the chief factor behind the US decline. The biggest drop in US economic freedom has been in the country's legal structure. The report notes that, "increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States." 

The rule of law has long been the foundation of America's economic prosperity and liberty. The US ranking in this area has plummeted to a terrible 36th place in the world. This, combined with increased regulation is stifling US economic growth. The report observes, "[t]o a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state."

Read the rest here.