Conservative Calls Haley 'Progressive'

A self-confident man does not sneer... -- Ayn Rand

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Over at The American Conservative is an article mocking the presidential aspirations of Nikki Haley.

As one might expect, this piece is more important for what it says about its author (and his political faction) than it says about Haley, so let me save you the trouble of wading through the rest and get right to the point:

America deserves a real alternative to both parties and the GOP deserves to have Nikki Haley run as an independent if Declan Leary speaks for its leadership. (Image by U.S. Dept. of State, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

Haley's Trump-admin credentials are weaker than most. A Ukraine irredentist and Israel supremacist, she was always an odd choice as U.N. ambassador for an America First president. At the U.N., she was a much rarer advocate for American interests than for those of other nations and the global advance of liberalism. Whenever given the chance, she affirmed the United States' commitment to rights-based ideology on the world stage, as when she insisted that the American regime did not consider "conduct such as homosexuality, blasphemy, adultery, and apostasy ... appropriate for criminalization."

This is what Nikki Haley has always believed, from the first campaigns when she waxed poetic about immigrant dreams in the land of opportunity and who we are as a disembodied country and the perpetual forward motion of the great experiment. She is the kind of person who considers and treats America as an idea -- the end of history's march toward maximal freedom.

Which is to say she is a progressive liberal -- in the literal senses of both words -- who happens to have mostly decent thoughts on tax policy. [bold added]

If freedom and America's interests are at odds, why the hell did the Founding Fathers feel the need to rebel against England? Setting aside the whole question of whether the UN should exist at all, if America is going to participate in that farce, the least it can do is speak up for freedom.

Moving along...

Words mean things: Calling someone who supports Ukraine's self-defense an "irredentist" makes about as much sense -- and is about equally anti-freedom -- as calling the Union "irredentist" regarding the Civil War. (One can debate what kind of support and how much for Ukraine without taking Putin's side or insulting someone else whose opinion differs.)

The second insult has me flummoxed: Are we to abandon our only real ally in the Middle East to the Islamist wolves? In what way, exactly, is helping or offering moral support to Israel contrary to American interests? Not to put too fine a point on this, but is anti-Semitism now a litmus test for membership to the GOP?

Your guess is as good as mine on that one.

Moving along, let's take a gander at the list of "crimes" Declan Leary -- a contributing editor to this rag and who has appeared in National Review -- apparently thinks we should keep our traps shut about:

• homosexuality
• blasphemy
• adultery
• apostasy

One wonders if Leary would like to import a few "criminal" statutes from the Middle East...

Leary deserves to wake up in a benighted theocracy run by a religion different from his own, and face whatever that country's "justice" system doles out for blasphemous heretics like himself: This kind of ignorance of or indifference to mankind's long history of religiously-motivated brutality, warfare, and murder is completely inexcusable. He should be ashamed, and yet he is proud.

If wanting separation of church and state, and wanting the government to keep its hands out of my pants and out of my pockets makes me a "progressive liberal," count me in.

If the GOP can't tell the difference between Nikki Haley and AOC, it is well and truly dead.

-- CAV