Knives and Forks and Trash Attitudes - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Knives and Forks and Trash Attitudes
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As usual, Bob Dylan said it best. “There are a lot of people who have knives and forks but they don’t have anything on their plates, and they have to cut something.”

That someone is now the self-styled “progressives,” who control the Democratic Party. The sad truth is that the Democratic Party has been out of good ideas for at least 20 years. The last good idea they had was Bill Clinton’s budget policy, which genuinely put us a nation on a sound economic footing for the first time in decades. Mr. Clinton deserves a long round of applause for that. His economic advisers (sic) do, as well.

Since then, the Democrats have morally sunk to become the party of murder of the innocents in the womb — probably the most wicked platform of any major American party ever, the party of the cranks and malcontents, the men and women who scream for peace while rampaging through the streets and attacking police. They have become the party that speaks up for not allowing dissent on campus or in town halls. They are the party that sneers at the Constitution and wants to turn the running of the country over to the leftist judiciary. They are the party that stands up for the criminals and against those who want to defend their homes. To coin a good phrase, they are the party who stands up for the men who are out of jail before you are out of the hospital.

They are bankrupt morally and have been since Roe v. Wade. They know they’re out of touch with the ordinary, hard-working American who is not “different” in some way worshiped by the Media SuperClass. They know they are out of touch with people who work for a living or live on their savings.

So, how do they compete? With hatred. What they lack in moral stature, they make up for in loudness and venom. They are the men and women screaming “HATE! HATE! HATE!” in Orwell’s 1984.

Yes, there are real problems to be faced in our beloved America. We face a brown and black population who just cannot seem to keep up with their white and Asian fellow citizens. I want to say that — as a man who has worked with black people all of my life — I know they can do it. But they cannot do it by (as Mr. G.W. Bush so aptly said it) “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” They cannot do it with collapsed families and one beaten down hard-working woman without a husband taking care of four children. We have problems of gangs. Of a dismayingly poor education system. We have a gigantic problem of an inadequate national defense. We have a very severe labor shortage problem. We have moral problems. We have North Korea. And we have terrorism aplenty. And we have the threats to free speech posed by the racial groups and the left. We have real problems that will not be solved just by hating and yelling and moral character assassination.

I do not for a minute pretend that the GOP of Donald Trump can solve these problems, at least not overnight. But the GOP has at least some moral footing by being staunchly against terrorism and against the worst terrorism we have ever faced — the murder of our own children. I emphasize that I am angry about the Trump administration’s worship of money (Mr. Scaramucci is a literal disgrace in this regard — mocking hard-working Americans who just are not rich. His parting wish for Mr. Sean Spicer — that he go out and make a lot of money — reveals a trashy attitude. Mr. Trump has the exact same attitude: that only money counts. It’s fascinating to me that Mr. Warren Buffett does not have that attitude at all.) I emphasize that I am heartsick that Mr. Trump promised to rebuild the military and shows no signs of doing so.

But at least Mr. Trump has some meaningful plans: a health care system that is not a fraud from the starting gate, an education system that will use methods that have worked to allow the most needy among us to learn, a respect for free speech, and something really rare today — a sense of humor.

He is not a pure hater. In fact, I don’t consider him a hater of anyone. Businessmen are rarely haters. He wants everyone to get along. That’s a great, great attitude.

But he’s on dangerous ground. As my pal Judah Friedman and I often discuss, the Democratic Party and its acolytes in the media have only one goal: to bring down Trump. They have one giant weapon at their disposal now — Robert Mueller ( as in “Mueller, Mueller”). He is the nuclear armed torpedo aimed at Mr. Trump’s political heart. If Mr. Mueller and his handpicked tribe of Democrat haters are allowed to launch that torpedo, then all is chaos and we sink into confusion.

Time to fire Mr. Mueller, who should never have been there in the first place. There should not be a special prosecutor at all: There’s been no crime shown so far. Why have a Special Prosecutor who will only get his place in the history books by being a political torpedo, and who will not miss that chance.

Time to get back to work on the real problems of America instead of on the New McCarthyism of the Democrats. Time to stop hating and go to work. Time to put some food on those plates.

 

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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