Tunnel Wall

Why a crucial problem is back in the national conversation.  . . . "Those last comments are particularly pertinent to the core of Europe’s current immigrant problem: many are Muslims who worship a faith radically different from the liberal culture of freedom, tolerance, and individual rights that created Europe and the United States. Hence most of the violence Powell predicted has come from unassimilated young Muslims–– the terrorists who bombed London in 2005 and Madrid in 2004, the rapists in England and Malmo who target non-Muslim women, the French “youths” who periodically smash hundreds of cars or murder journalists and Jews, and the Muslim who assassinated Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and drove Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders into hiding. And in most cases, these criminals have been the beneficiaries of welfare largesse, their violence often rewarded with increased “social welfare spending.”

"But we Americans shouldn’t feel superior, for we have our own immigration problems, especially with illegal aliens. Our problems aren’t as severe as Europe’s, for the vast majority of our immigrants come from countries that are essentially Western, rather than from Muslim countries whose religion is inherently hostile to Christianity and the West. But we have compromised that advantage by indulging the same carelessness about policing the border or dispensing social welfare largesse. We too have problems with crime from illegal aliens, ranging from drug-gangs and murder to the daily disorder and disregard for law that makes life more difficult in many communities. And we also have an anti-assimilationist lobby that leverages white guilt and self-loathing into political power.

"But we too, for now, seem to have a prophet. Whatever his flaws and weaknesses, Donald Trump has thrust the problems of lax immigration policies and weak enforcement of immigration laws back into the national conversation. Like Enoch Powell, politicians from both parties have tried to marginalize him. But in the age of the Internet, YouTube, and cable news, the citizens who agree with Trump can voice their approval more loudly than in Powell’s day. And they delight in the rough treatment he gives to immigration hacks like Univision’s Jorge Ramos, whom Trump tossed out of a news conference. Let’s just hope that a critical mass of people is listening, and that the Republicans embrace Trump’s warnings on illegal immigration instead of demonizing him."  Bruce S. Thornton

What Makes Donald Run?
. . . "After nearly seven years of Obama, the public is worn out by sanctimoniousness — by all the Professor Gates/Trayvon Martin/Ferguson lectures on race by an abject racialist, by all the sermons on climate change by a global jet-setter, by all the community-organizing banality by one who always has preferred the private school and the tony neighborhood, by all the us-versus-the-1-percent warfare by one who feels at home on the golf course only with celebrities and stock hounds. Given all that, the Republican base, at least for a few more weeks, wants someone to be unapologetically unacceptable — both to the liberal establishment that Obama ushered in, and to the wink-and-nod elite Republican opposition." . . .

And Trump so far has managed to make real outliers — non-establishment political mavericks like Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Scott Walker, and Chris Christie, who were the choices of the Tea Party movements just a fortnight ago — look like Eric Cantor/Mitch McConnell company men. That such gifted conservative politicos are considered functionaries is abjectly unfair, but it is nonetheless the jaded perception so far of much of the Republican electorate.

Victor Davis Hanson