Who’s the Real Nut Here? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Who’s the Real Nut Here?
by

Saturday

I awakened to read two super depressing articles in my beloved Wall Street Journal. The first was about a clique within Facebook trying to censor Donald Trump because he supposedly was racist and “Islamophobic.” Terrifying that what is basically a common carrier can discriminate against Republicans. This is in no way at all different from making blacks sit in the back of the bus. It’s so un-American you can hardly find words for it. Just a betrayal of the Constitution when free speech by the candidate of any major party can be restrained by an ignorant sect within the media. I have the feeling that this is the way things are going.

Today’s young have no idea of how precious free speech is. They want “safe spaces,” which means “safe” from anyone who disagrees with them. They want to stop anyone who has an unconventional thought from speaking. This is book burning, modern style. Modern, super ignorant style. And, again, what is “Islamophobia”? Shouldn’t we be afraid of radical Islam? Is that irrational, as my pal Judah Friedman asks?

Next, in the Journal, I turned to my dear friend Peggy Noonan. I have been a fan of hers for a long time. This time, she had a column about what a great thing it would have been in Trump were not (as she called him) “a nut.” And she has a point. He is a nut and he’s a big personality and that’s why he won the nomination. And many important people are, in their own way, highly eccentric, which is a lot like being a nut. And Trump’s extreme eccentricity and the media’s obsession with it, have obscured some fine points in his platform. We do want borders. We do want law enforcement.

But try looking at it this way: Is Trump more of a nut than a woman candidate who purposely destroyed 32,000 e-mails under federal subpoena? Is he anywhere near as much of a nut as Mrs. Clinton, who had her staff smash her computer and her cell phones with hammers and throw them in a river to keep the FBI from seeing what she said and received, also federal crimes?

Is Trump any more of a nut than a woman who wants abortion at any stage to be legal, and leads cheers for the killing of the most innocent among us by people with homicide in their hearts? Is Trump more of a nut than a woman who bullied and threatened the women who were molested and sometimes more than molested by Bill Clinton? Is Trump more of a nut than a woman who says the incredibly brave men and women of law enforcement are “systemically racist”? Is she more or less nutty because she will not use the words “Islamic terrorism”? Is she more or less nutty than Trump because she violated her own State Department rules about communicating confidential matters to people outside the security loop?

If the media had put the spotlight on her and on her misconduct, her contempt for law, her warfare against her own party and her own laws, who would be seen as the nut?

As everyone who reads me knows, I worked for Richard Nixon. I consider him by far the greatest postwar President and the greatest peacemaker of all time. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” And I still weep bitter tears when I think of how a media coup took Richard Nixon from us before he could have stopped the Cambodian genocide. Even now the endless media coup attempts to frame Richard Nixon, the Peacemaker, as a nut. And I shudder now at the media coup that is taking place in taking Donald Trump far away from the Oval Office — and, far worse, whisking the Republican Party into extreme disarray.

Trump’s a nut. I don’t doubt Peggy Noonan at all. But we have a choice of nuts this year, and that’s the tragedy. It’s a tragedy the greatest nation in history does not deserve.

Ben Stein
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Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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