Trump Makes the Right Call in Vowing Solidarity With the Christians of Nigeria

In the last week President Trump has demonstrated the breadth of the issues on which he is steadily pressuring his domestic and foreign opponents. The Democrats have only themselves to blame for their apparently incurable practice of leaping onto the wrong side of unpopular issues.While the country welcomes the end of illegal immigration, though it is somewhat indulgent of those who, though they entered illegally, have been good residents productively employed and raising families; it has little sympathy for violent criminals illegally in the country purporting to exercise constitutional rights to remain.The Democrats ultimately cannot win either legally or in the court of public opinion their apparent preference for violent illegals over Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seeking to deport them from Democratic-governed cities whose mayors proudly proclaim their defiance of federal immigration laws.The Democrats forced the shutdown of the federal government apparently because of Senator Charles Schumer’s fear of being successfully challenged in a reelection primary by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as the Democrats veer steadily into a far-left cul-de-sac from which there is no ultimate return except after severe electoral rejection.Mr. Trump has responded by seeking to use emergency funds to maintain food stamps and other relief for disadvantaged people. He wishes the issue tested in court first, presumably to see if the Democrats have so completely taken leave of their sense of electoral self-preservation that they demand that the courts withhold emergency funds from the most economically vulnerable sector of society, just as they have deserted their allies in organized labor over the government shutdown.Few of the Democrats’ endless anti-Trump initiatives have been so mis-targeted as the complaint that Mr. Trump is acting like a king. This goes back to Jefferson’s frenzied charges against King George III in the Declaration of Independence, an arraignment that at first glance appears to be appropriate to the Nuremberg trials. Jefferson went so far as to accuse the king, who would not allow a Roman Catholic to serve in public office in the British Empire, of trying to import Roman Catholicism into the United States.If Jefferson had not dished out this insane charge, Canada, which was then predominantly French and Roman Catholic, might have responded favorably to Washington and Franklin’s invitation to it to join the American Revolution.Today most kings are constitutional monarchs and behave with great circumspection and liberality. The kings of Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Emperor of Japan are all impeccably democratic, so these absurd claims that Mr. Trump is suffering royal delusions are on their face nonsensical.There is, however, legitimate reason to question whether the president posting on Truth Social an Artificial Intelligence-generated depiction of himself wearing a crown and piloting a warplane and dropping large amounts of what appear to be excrement on a New York City crowd of “No Kings” demonstrators, and covering a well-known anti-Trump influencer in this mundane ordnance, is the appropriate way to respond to critics. Some slack must be cut for the president because of the unprecedented unconstitutional assaults that his opponents have made upon him, most conspicuously the Russia collusion fraud, the concerns over the use of millions of unverifiable mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, the unfounded impeachments and indictments, and an endless campaign of wall-to-wall press defamation.It is also true that the scatological bombing of anti-Trump demonstrators would greatly amuse many in the vast army of the president’s supporters and even less partisan people might appreciate this unseemly treatment of self-righteous political pomposity as refreshing. Yet there remains a question of whether the holder of so great an office, whose previous occupants include some of the greatest statesmen in history, should engage in such an outlandish departure from the traditional concept of dignity of the American presidency. At the other end of the political spectrum from those who would be amused by unhygienic bombing of “No Kings” demonstrators is the president’s threat to defend the bloodily assaulted Christians of Nigeria. This conforms with the Republican Party policy of embracing Christianity with fervor but with no hint of friction with other religious denominations or even with the irreligious. Nigeria is the world’s sixth most populous country, with approximately 230 million people, almost equally divided between Muslims and Christians, and the Christians are three-quarters various Protestant denominations and one-quarter Roman Catholics.Both Nigeria’s president and prime minister have expressed gratitude for the president’s willingness to join the government in trying to suppress terrorists and promote religious toleration, the prime minister even telling the BBC that allowance should be made for Mr. Trump’s “unique method of self-expression.” (He hadn’t seen his anti-“No Kings” video.)Serious intervention in such a large country, even in a good cause, could be impetuous. Yet the president is absolutely correct in threatening reprisals for the persecution of Christians. This is a practice that has been widespread for many years, with minimal comment, while smaller denominations that have not suffered greater oppression have monopolized the sympathies of much of the world. Christianity remains the largest and by far the most influential religion in the world with more than two billion nominal adherents, a majority practicing believers, including this writer. Christianity is a generally humane and benign system of beliefs and the president is right to call for much greater solidarity among the Christian nations in defense of our coreligionists wherever they may be. This is a much more important statement than his AI fantasies on how to deal with annoying demonstrators.

Trump Makes the Right Call in Vowing Solidarity With the Christians of Nigeria

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