Trump’s Brazen Insight, by Peter Smith.

With red ink engulfing welfare-heavy national budgets, identity politics has become the last, desperate gambit to mine the pockets of the productive, hence the alliance of the Islam and the left. The president-elect’s genius was to recognise those being milked are themselves a marginalized group.

When reason guides the minds of men and women, free-market capitalism and prosperity follow. Reason can either be beaten down or, alternatively, elevated by cultural norms. Islamic cultural norms provide an example of the former; Christian norms an example of the latter. Reason is the enemy of progressive politics. That is why Islamists and the Left find common cause. …

Left-wing prescriptions have a use by date. The use by date transpires when, as Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it, “you run out of other people’s money.” …

Their difficulty is that their rationale of the past, representing working people seeking a better deal, no longer holds water. Working people have long since got the better deal. Capitalism has given it to them. Result: constituency gone. The conclusion: target and build up other, motley constituencies of special interests. …

No left-wing parties across the globe have credible policies. They are out of other people’s money to spend. A claim of inequality is their last desperate economic cause du jour. …

Read it all.

hat-tip Stephen Neil