{"id":82308,"date":"2015-12-15T09:34:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-15T17:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82308"},"modified":"2015-12-15T09:34:52","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T17:34:52","slug":"trump-and-the-riot-of-the-elites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=82308","title":{"rendered":"Trump and the Riot of the Elites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott McConnell writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Over the past week, Americans experienced a breathtaking barrage from top politicians and news commentators about \u201cwho we are\u201d or \u201cwhat we as a country stand for.\u201d Using the phrase identifies the speaker as one of the virtuous \u201cwe\u201d who shuns Donald Trump and rejects his recommendation, post San Bernardino terror attacks, that Muslim immigration to the United States be halted until the government can \u201cfigure out what is going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The breadth and scope of reaction against Trump\u2019s comment was stunning. Politicians from House speaker Paul Ryan to Hillary Clinton, the major neoconservative columnists at the country\u2019s largest papers, along with every liberal or left wing opinion outlet one could imagine, rushed to express contempt for Trump and his suggestion. What passes for the foreign policy establishment chimed in too. General Wesley Clark labeled Trump\u2019s remarks \u201cun-American\u201d. David Cameron to Benjamin Netanyahu added their own denunciations. An ACLU official recommended that Trump supporters be shot. For several days, America experienced the kind of bipartisan power elite unanimity which one thought could happen only in the wake of national tragedy.<\/p>\n

Much of the reaction was somewhat Islamophilic: America needed larger numbers of Muslim immigrants to help win hearts and minds versus ISIS. An immigration pause would alienate them. As evidence, the Times highlighted a story of Trump luxury brand items being removed from the shelves in rich Arab Gulf states.<\/p>\n

But no one has yet measured how the prospect of an immigrant visa, or lack of it, weighs compared to other policies through which the United States makes an impression on the Muslim world. For instance, one way in which the U.S states \u201cwho we are\u201d to Arab and Muslim audiences is by killing a lot of Muslims. Several years ago Harvard Professor Stephen Walt came up with an estimate of how many Muslims have been killed by the United States in the past 30 years, estimating conservatively that it was slightly less than 300,000. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott McConnell writes: Over the past week, Americans experienced a breathtaking barrage from top politicians and news commentators about \u201cwho we are\u201d or \u201cwhat we as a country stand for.\u201d Using the phrase identifies the speaker as one of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t