Hillary’s Speech

Vincent J. Curtis

30 July 2016

Unlike her speeches to Goldman Sachs, Hillary released the full text of her acceptance speech at the Democrat National Convention.  The speech contained the expected themes of sentimentality for her family, attacks on her opponent, a sampling of her program, and a peroration of patriotism.

Whenever you’re dealing with a Clinton you need to check carefully for the lawyerly sophistries being employed.  These aren’t exactly lies, they are suggestio falsi  and suppressio veri.  These are Latin legal expressions translating as false suggestion and suppression of the truth.  Another technique a Clinton uses is to constantly change the assumed frame of reference in the course of making a sequence of expressions.  When the unstated and unexamined principles, or frame of reference, behind the sequence of expressions are compared, the expressions add up to nothing, because it all depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.

I don’t propose to examine Hillary’s speech in detail, for that would be a waste of time.  However, a fast overview of the obvious false suggestions and suppression of the truth that occurred in her speech is merited, if only for the record.

Entering the main body of her speech, Hillary called for unity.  “We are stronger together,” or some such insipid trope offered with the air of insightfulness.  It was unclear whether by being stronger together she meant the Democrat party for the political struggle ahead, or of the country as a whole.  That part was left ambiguous.  However, she then proceeded to dump buckets of manure over the head of Donald Trump.  She is also recently on record as being proud that Republicans are her enemy.  Not ISIS, not enemies of the United States, not the forces against law and order, but her civilized political opponents and co-countrymen she declares are her enemies.

So much for national political unity.  You can’t draw flies with vinegar.  This extreme partisanship she let loose here is of a piece with her whole political career.  She is where she is, and she is the hated and loved Hillary Clinton because she has been this extreme partisan for her entire career.

The United States cannot unify behind Hillary Clinton because of her poisonous hatred of her enemies, i.e. Republicans and those of the political “right.”  However, the extreme partisans of the Democratic party (though not those of the diffuse far-left, i.e. the Bernie Sanders supporters) can unify behind Hillary, if they can stand the stench of corruption that emanates from her and her family.

Her call for unity within the Democrat party was made to Bernie Sanders supporters who discovered that Hillary had been aided in her campaign by corrupt dealings of the Democrat party apparatus, which resulted in the resignation of the head of the DNC on the eve of the convention.  (That head, Debby Wasserman-Schultz was promptly hired by the Clinton campaign!  Loyalty gets rewarded by the Clintons.)  It takes a strong stomach to be a Democrat these days, but most will manage it.  Some of the Sanders supporters may not, and either vote Green party or stay home.

The next major theme was to recall her long career of social activism as proof of her concern for the little guy, and her merit to be their champion as president.  (note: The being a champion business is a rip-off of the Trump campaign.)

Hillary is a disciple of Saul D. Alinsky.  Alinsky was faced with the corrupt, machine politics of the city of Chicago from the 1930s into the regime of Mayor Richard Daly in the 1960s.  Alinsky was a champion of the “Back of the Yards” neighborhood, and got the corrupt city political machine to undertake ward healing for his neighborhood by undemocratic means that tended to undermine the smooth running of the city.  Since order was the justification for the machine politics of Chicago, Alinsky’s clever tactics served as the squeak that got the wheel grease for his neighborhood.

Thus Hillary’s view of government is of a cow to be milked for the benefit of those she is champion of.  Her calls for free stuff for the middle class of this kind.  It is going to be taken from the cow, consisting of Wall Street, big Corporations, and the super-Rich, who are finally going to made to pay their fair share of taxes.  (What their "fair share" amounted to was supposed to have been decided during the first term of the Obama Administration, but times change.)

All for the benefit of the middle class, who are portrayed as victims.  Never mind that when the system comes crashing down, it is the middle class who will suffer the worst because the Rich have the means to look after themselves withal, and the real poor have nothing to lose.

She said she is going to empower Americans to live better lives.  In the American constitutional order, the role of government is to promote the general welfare and otherwise leave the people free to pursue happiness in their own way.  It is an error peculiar to the left that this arrangement is perverted into the government playing a role in the individual’s pursuit of happiness under the aegis of promoting the general welfare.  It is impossible for the government to empower the people as a whole to live better lives any more than it is possible for a person to lift themselves off the ground by pulling on their shoes.  What happens is that some are empowered at the expense of others.  When walking, one foot is pushed forward while the other remains stationary, but unless the advanced foot is then made stationary so that the rear foot can be lifted and moved forward, the progress of the whole advances no farther than the first step.  With the government favoring the advancement of some over others, progress of the whole will cease after the first step.

Hence, when Hillary talks about “Americans” being empowered, she speaks only of those Americans of whom she is champion.  Since the middle class of America amounts practically to the whole, progress of them will cease upon the completion of the first act of Hillary’s program.  Hillary may indeed raise taxes on the rich, and that is as far as her program will carry America.

That program of hers she proclaimed near the end of her speech.  It amounted to boiler-plate progressivism, and included gun control, hatred of the NRA, and promises to ensure appointments to the Supreme Court that would overturn Heller and Citizens United, while protecting Roe v Wade.  This places Supreme Court appointments in the forefront of the election, and makes clear that many political decision in America are now made by the Supreme Court and not by democratically elected legislatures.

The use of the Supreme Court for political purposes is not the Trump program.  The contrary to Hillary’s activist approach (an exploitation of a weakness in the US constitution) is a return to non-activism, such as espoused by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and presently embodied in the works of Justice Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito.

Hillary’s speech on the whole was successful because she didn’t fall flat on her face.  She did not much employ the tedious, the obvious, the boilerplate, and banal bromides.  She did not too often fall into the speaking style of screeching, hectoring, shouting, and lecturing as to be painful.  She walked past a herd of elephants in the room: her chronic lying, her near indictment, her placing of America’s secrets at risk to avoid detection of corrupt dealings with the Clinton Foundation, the 33,000 emails the Russians might have in a blackmail file, the record of pay-for-play as Secretary of State, the Benghazi debacle, the Libya debacle, the Syria debacle, the Iraqi debacle, the ISIS debacle, the failed Russian reset, and the Iranian nuclear deal debacle for which she took credit.  She opposed the TPP trade deal after previously endorsing it.

In front of an apparently friendly audience (since the TV audience weren’t allowed to see the Sanders protesters.) Hillary delivered a speech adequately.

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