My son Nathan wrote a nice piece on Steve Bannon and other issues. I am disturbed that the press is still trying to spread rumors, gossip, and lies that do not fit what the Trump people stand for. It didn’t work before the election and I do not think it will work now. Here are Nathans thoughts:
Hello Everyone,
It’s Donald Friday and I’m so excited. We are also making Opa Sausage tonight because Opa wants to go outside and shoot deer Saturday and Sunday in the freezing cold. You got to love it. The third article today is on Steve Bannon. I went long on that, but its worth the read. Next to Donald Trump Steve Bannon is now the most influential man in America. We need to get to know him.
New World Trade Order
All these countries that were giving Donald a hard time on trade are now caving. The governments of Mexico and Canada have already came out and said they were willing to renegotiate NAFTA. HAHAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHA.
These world leaders are all talk, no action. Now there is news out there that Apple is thinking about producing iPhones in the states. The article cites a source that this would raise the cost of production 100%, but there is no justification for that number and its most likely an exaggeration. People would be willing to spend 20%-40% more on an iPhone if they actually have good jobs and a regular income. This is Donald’s whole point on trade. A little protectionism (self-interest) never hurts.
Donald’s Cabinet Drama
The media is absolutely crapping their pants over the people who are showing up at Trump Tower to talk with the President-Elect. The funniest freak outs are over people like Ted Cruz, who was allegedly there to talk about the Attorney General position, and Mitt Romney, who was supposed to be there to talk about Secretary of State.
Is Donald actually going to hire these people? I don’t know, but either way he is in a win-win situation thanks to the media. It calms the minds of indifferent Americans who thought Donald might be crazy. It also contrasts Donald as a magnanimous figure while the media is trying to paint him as “Hitler.” The gap between these two presented narratives is so large that people naturally make a perceptive choice between the two. Gallup just did a poll that said that 51% of Americans are now more confident in Donald. Wow. It must be said that Donald is more persuasive than the media.
The beauty of it is that he doesn’t even need to hire Cruz or Romney, its all about the optics.
Steve Bannon’s Worldview
Steve Bannon, Donald’s new chief strategist, has been widely of accused of being a Nazi, anti-Semitic, and a lot of other stuff. Frankly, none of that is true. Bannon is a conservative Catholic who sees the erosion of the Judeo-Christian ethic as the main cause for the decline of the West.
I mean, this is the guy that co-wrote and directed Torchbearer with Phil Robinson. Bannon’s message is that we are image bearers of God, and that when we take God out of the equation man oppresses man. This leads to injustice, war, genocide, etc…
In 2014 Bannon gave a talk to a Vatican conference on poverty and politics. This whole speech was amazing. the audio is at the bottom of the transcript. Listen to it. Bannon starts his speech out by pointing out that 200 million people were killed during the 20th century. Bannon supposes that the forces that fought this great war, really the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right? The underlying principle is an enlightened form of capitalism, that capitalism really gave us the wherewithal.
So then he discussed capitalism and said there are 3 different types. There is crony capitalists:
I see that every day. I’m a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs…But there’s a strand of capitalism today — two strands of it, that are very disturbing. One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that’s the capitalism you see in China and Russia. I believe it’s what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people.
Then he went off on the libertarians:
The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism…that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the “enlightened capitalism” of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost — as many of the precepts of Marx — and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation [that] they’re really finding quite attractive. And if they don’t see another alternative, it’s going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of “personal freedom.”
What an incredible insight. He goes on to talk about so many more fascinating things. He supposes that the tea party’s biggest enemy is the GOP Establishment:
The tea party in the United States’ biggest fight is with the the Republican establishment, which is really a collection of crony capitalists that feel that they have a different set of rules of how they’re going to comport themselves and how they’re going to run things. And, quite frankly, it’s the reason that the United States’ financial situation is so dire, particularly our balance sheet. We have virtually a hundred trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities. That is all because you’ve had this kind of crony capitalism in Washington, DC. The rise of Breitbart is directly tied to being the voice of that center-right opposition. And, quite frankly, we’re winning many, many victories.
And he doesn’t leave the social issues out:
On the social conservative side, we’re the voice of the anti-abortion movement, the voice of the traditional marriage movement, and I can tell you we’re winning victory after victory after victory. Things are turning around as people have a voice and have a platform of which they can use.
Bannon’s biggest message is ideas can beat cash. He points out the defeat of Eric Cantor as Exhibit 1A:
For everybody in your audience, this is one of the most monumental — first off, it’s the biggest election upset in the history of the American republic. Eric Cantor was the House majority leader and raised $10 million. He spent, between himself and outside groups, $8 million to hold a congressional district. He ran against a professor who was an evangelical Christian and a libertarian economist. He ran against a professor who raised in total $175,000. In fact, the bills from Eric Cantor’s campaign at a elite steak house in Washington, DC, was over $200,000. So they spent more than $200,000 over the course of the campaign wining and dining fat cats at a steak house in Washington than the entire opposition had to run.
Now, Eric Cantor, it was a landslide. He lost 57-43, and not one — outside of Breitbart, we covered this for six months, day in and day out — not one news site — not Fox News, not Politico, no sites picked this up. And the reason that this guy won is quite simple: Middle-class people and working-class people are tired of people like Eric Cantor who say they’re conservative selling out their interests every day to crony capitalists.
Bannon isn’t Rudolph Hess, I think he is William Wilberforce, and he is now the right hand man of the President of the United States.
Final Thoughts
To drive home the point about the rights of man, those rights come from God. When you deny God’s authority you get what the French got.
Quote of the Day
The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it.
Article III, The Declaration of the Rights of Man
