When Lisa Falkenberg was named as the editor of the Houston Chronicle opinion pages, you pretty much knew that the local Pravda was going to move even further to the left. And true to form, the paper’s editorials have indeed moved into Huffington Post territory. In fact, they even link to HuffPo in this one:
Trump broke the border. Now he owns it.
Trump didn’t just break up families, he broke the bank with this extravagantly expensive scheme of feeding, housing and clothing thousands of children and parents for an undetermined amount of time — roughly $2 billion in extra spending per year, according to Roque Planas at the Huffington Post — and rejecting more affordable alternatives to detention. He also broke with the priorities of the Justice Department, which should be targeting dangerous drug-traffickers and smugglers, not on moms, dads and toddlers.
And he broke his promise to run government like one of America’s best companies. Instead, he ran it like one of his own companies: into the ground. This time, though, the billionaire braggart who has declared bankruptcy six times doesn’t have that convenient out.
You can read the rest if you want but it is just a rehash of every leftist talking point Ms. Falkenberg has put forth during her time as a columnist. The idea that President Trump is responsible for the mess at our southern border is ludicrous beyond reason. Although I’m not much of a Trump fan, at least he is trying to actually do something about the streams of illegal immigrants flowing across the border, something which his predecessors failed to do. I suspect that we wouldn’t be in this place today if said predecessors had tried, even a teeny, tiny bit to stem the tide instead of actively helping to increase the flow.
Since Ms. Falkenberg decided to use the Huffington Post as her benchmark source, it is interesting that she left off the most important line in the article she linked to. Here, I’ll get if for you:
“I don’t understand why the administration is so hung up on detention ― it’s outrageously expensive,” Sandweg said. “And what do you get for that? Obama tried it and you don’t even get deterrence. Deterrence comes from actually removing people.”
Heck, let’s read it again for clarity’s sake:
Deterrence comes from actually removing people.
Once again in bold to make certain that Ms. Falkenberg understands it:
Deterrence comes from actually removing people.
Imagine that. Deterrence comes from actually removing people.. Which, I do believe, is the President’s goal. Go figure.
No, Ms. Falkenberg, President Trump didn’t break the border. Hopefully, he can fix it for those who did.
Let’s give Ms. Falkenberg an answer to another question she poses often. How and why was President Trump elected? Andrew Klavan wrote about this in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month (thanks to Unca Darrell for the tip):
A Tale of Two Indecencies Shows How We Got Trump
Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee seldom have anything interesting to say. But their recent controversies explain our political situation. Taken as one, the story has the precision of a parable.
Ms. Barr, a Trump supporter—in one of her many thoughtlessly grotesque moments—tweets a vulgar remark about longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. People reasonably interpret it as racist. Within hours, Ms. Barr’s No. 1 television program is canceled. Even reruns of her decades-old show are taken off the air.
Ms. Bee, a leftist who hates Mr. Trump—in one of her many well-scripted and vetted grotesque moments—makes an obscene remark about Ivanka Trump. That it is misogynistic is beyond dispute. The audience cheers. Her producer brags that the obscenity is trending on social media. After a day of outrage from the right, Ms. Bee issues a halfhearted apology. She receives an award. Her unpopular and unprofitable show stays on the air. Influential cultural voices earnestly debate whether her ugly comment was really all that bad. The conversation trails into silence.
Even the clearest parable can be misunderstood, so let’s explain this one. There are, generally speaking, two political factions in the U.S. One, the right, believes that America is a great nation and wants to preserve and continue its experiment in ordered liberty, limited government and free-market capitalism. The other, the left, believes America is racist and oppressive and yearns for some form of socialism.
The left has dominated cultural institutions—show business, journalism and higher education—for decades and has used that domination to convince itself and others that conservatives aren’t simply wrong but bigoted and vicious. Because they believe this—and in service to making others believe it—they interpret virtually any remark by a conservative as bigotry and viciousness, whereas even the most bigoted and vicious remarks by leftists are forgiven, forgotten or overlooked.
This leftist project has been so successful that it has created a kind of cultural cringe on the right. We censor our language, we cull our jokes, we debase ourselves after the slightest misstep. Even those politicians who were elected to promote our policies have often apologized for them, offering “kinder, gentler” or “compassionate” conservatism—as if the principles of governance that make us free and prosperous were heartless and brutal.
It becomes clear why those of us who believe in freedom would select a leader who will not apologize for anything—a product of vulgar leftist culture who will fight back on the left’s own terms and will institute conservative policies and ignore the opposition’s shopworn insults—“racist,” “sexist” and all the rest.
That leader may not be nice, or even good. But as the Barr-Bee situation shows, the cultural left has made it impossible to speak for conservatism without being simultaneously condemned as indecent and assaulted by indecency. It takes an indifference to decency to stand up against the opprobrium and do the right thing.
Do leftists dislike being held to the cultural rules they created? As a polite and decent man who believes that America is the least racist and oppressive country on the planet, that socialism is a moral atrocity and that ordered liberty is a gift from a gracious God, I find it hard to feel their pain over getting Trumped.
(click to read A Tale of Two Indecencies Shows How We Got Trump on wsj.com)
To go back to the question at hand, separating families at the border, I think it was a poorly thought out policy and I’m glad that the administration rescinded it and is now in the process of reuniting these families. Our country and our people are better than this. And after they are reunited, do as the Huffington Post suggests and send them back to their home countries together.
If Ms. Falkenberg and her ilk want to understand how that family separation policy, which clearly shows an indifference to decency, came about, they need to look no further than their own vulgar leftist culture.