Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s performance in last night’s Democratic primary debate has attracted attention, but I have been following her for a while now. Of the several dozen candidates who have declared for the Democratic primary, Gabbard is clearly the most sane, or perhaps the least insane. Indeed, this year’s crop of contenders is entirely off the rails, with various candidates endorsing impeachment of the president, racial reparations, open borders, welfare for illegal aliens, free college, and outright socialism. Most of these positions are not grounded in the real world but are simply talking points to win support of a voting population that was raised on late-night snark and college grievance studies rather than real knowledge and wisdom.
Congresswoman Gabbard, however, has a more sensible platform. She has long called for a withdrawal of American forces from foreign wars such as Afghanistan and Syria, does not favor the economically foolish plan for free college, opposes open borders, and generally puts Americans first. This was the standard Democratic platform until just a few years ago, but it seems downright conservative compared to where the Party is today. For this, mainstream media and their Democratic Party allies have tarred Gabbard as a stooge of both Bashar Assad of Syria and Vladimir Putin of Russia. Any time her name trends on Google or Twitter, her detractors immediately credit it to “Russian bots” rather than organic interest from a voting public put off by the insanity of her opponents.
Such was the case after the Democratic debate last night. Congresswoman Gabbard scored a major rhetorical victory by challenging one of the media-perceived front-runners, Senator Kamala Harris of California. Harris has enjoyed fawning coverage from CNN and the rest of the mainstream media despite her spotty past. She got her start in government due to her position as the mistress to former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, then spent several years as California Attorney General aggressively prosecuting drug users and allegedly putting several innocent people in jail. Her platform includes, ironically, drug legalization, as well as massive government subsidizes for African-Americans and open borders. Since she is the media’s chosen one, she had yet to be challenged on the apparent contradiction of her work as Attorney General with her current campaign, until Gabbard finally did so in the debate.
Partly because of this exchange, Congresswoman Gabbard was the most-searched candidate after last night’s debate. Senator Harris’ campaign, as well as her supporters in the media (it is hard to tell the difference, honestly), explained this as the actions of the same “Russian bots” that allegedly propelled Donald Trump to victory three years ago. Harris herself, in a post-debate interview, simply dismissed Gabbard as a lower-tier candidate in a move reminiscent of Hillary Clinton wondering why she was not fifty points ahead during the 2016 campaign.
It is in foreign policy, however, that Congresswoman Gabbard really distinguishes herself from her opponents. After the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the Democratic Party painted themselves as the anti-war party. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts won the 2004 Democratic Primary by portraying himself as a military veteran who was against foreign wars. Just a few weeks before Election Day, respected newsman Dan Rather took to national TV with forged documents alleging that President Bush had gone AWOL during his time with the Texas Air National Guard. After Bush’s reelection, the media went all-in on opposition to the wars. Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist whose son had been killed in the conflict, was interviewed almost daily by the mainstream news shows. The 2008 Democratic Primary was a contest to see who opposed the wars the most, with Barack Obama able to claim that crown by virtue of his only being elected to the Senate in 2004, a year after a majority of Republicans and Democrats had voted to authorize the war in Iraq.
Despite his anti-war platform, President Obama expanded the conflicts. He withdrew most of the troops from Iraq but sent even more to Syria, Yemen, and Libya, as well as massively expanding targeted drone strikes throughout the region. Despite promising to end the war in Afghanistan and shut down the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Obama did neither. Yet now that the Republican Bush was out of office and the Democrat Obama was in, mainstream media lost their passion for opposing the wars. In retrospect, their opposition to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq looks more to be born out of opposition to President Bush personally than a real anti-war principal. When President Trump promised to end the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan, the same media that trumpeted Cindy Sheehan’s long protest at Bush’s Texas ranch accused him of being a puppet of Russia, who has long been allied with the Bashar regime of Syria.
This brings us back to Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. While most of the Democratic Party switched from being anti-war to pro-war as soon as President Bush left office, Gabbard has remained steadfast in her opposition to sending American troops to die for no good reason. Unlike most of the Democratic field, however, her experience with war is personal: she served as a medic with a Hawaii Army National Guard unit that was deployed to Iraq during the war. Yet because her steadfast views are now the same as President Trump’s, the media and the Democratic establishment want to destroy her rather than giving her any chance to share her message with the voting public.
One of my first posts on this blog was a discussion of the realignment of our political parties from left/right or liberal/conservative into explicit globalist/nationalist. President Trump’s election was the first sign of this realignment and I expect it to continue for the next decade or so. The Trump faction of the Republican Party is nationalist, that is, they believe that the needs of the American people should be the top priority of the American government. The establishment faction of the GOP is globalist, that is, they believe the American people should serve the interests of a small global elite. Open borders and foreign wars are hallmarks of the globalist agenda. Much of the Democratic Party is globalist as well, with a few exceptions such as Congresswoman Gabbard. Many of her domestic positions are in line with standard liberal progressivism, such as expanded Medicare, abortion, gay marriage, and others. This obviously means that many on the right cannot support her. However, the most important battle in our political system going forward is between globalism and nationalism. Is the United States simply a province of the world, a place for resources to be extracted to support global citizens? Or is it a sovereign nation whose resources should serve its citizens?
Until globalism is defeated, arguing over cultural mores or economic systems is pointless. If globalism is triumphant, then the permanent bureaucracy will simply import millions of new voters who will support their agenda, which includes socialism and abortion and all the other things we on the right oppose. We cannot stop socialism when our borders are open to as many socialists that can come here. We cannot protect the sanctity of life when our cities are flooded with immigrants who simply vote Democrat because that is what their benefactors tell them to do. The coming realignment is going to severely clarify the battle lines. We can argue with the left over socialism or free college or gay marriage once we have closed our borders and stopped invading the world.
Congresswoman Gabbard is a Democrat, but she believes in putting American citizens first. That is a rarity in her party today, and that is the reason that her opponents and the media are attempting to destroy her. She will probably not win the nomination, but hopefully enough people will hear her message and realize that globalism is the real enemy today.
The Decline and Fall of the United States of America 