"Principled Reality"

Before giving us his links of the day, J.J. Sefton has this to say at the Ace of Spades blog:

Good morning kids. The final night of Hanukkah and Christmas is bursting out all over. Lots of things to cover so let us commence. Leading off we have President Trump who delivered a national security speech for the ages. Calling his strategy "principled realism," it is exactly that. In short, for the world to be a better and freer place, America must be an economic and military powerhouse. He also urged tighter, saner immigration policy and renewed his pledge to build the border wall. With the Dow Jones poised to hurtle through the 25,000 point barrier, business and consumer confidence is at an all-time high; certainly at a level we have not felt in nearly 20 years. The President knows and understands that American decline is not inevitable. Despite the lost decade of the Obama years, where we had political and cultural elites who not only thought that the best we could do was manage the decline but who actively took a sledgehammer to our institutions to hasten the decline, this president's first year in office has been a rhetorical and actual declaration of "not one inch further."

With a major tax reform bill likely to pass that will usher in a long-overdue positive restructuring of the tax code and the potential repatriation of a couple of trillion real dollars back into the economy in the next couple of years, we are poised for a once in a generation boom that will be nothing short of a miracle - the Media-Academia-Leftist-Deep State Complex notwithstanding. And that is the real tragedy and challenge and paradox. As things are turning around, the frantic efforts to continue to brainwash current and future generations of our youth remains virtually unchallenged. Knuckleheads who proclaim "all they want for Christmas is Communism" or fools like the execrable Charles Blow whose mission is to enslave the minds of black Americans with the phony institutional racism jive while black unemployment because of this president is at a 17-year low, are just symptomatic of the most important challenge we face, which is generational and will take decades; that of taking back the educational system.

But for now, it is enough to celebrate an incredible year. Even Mark Levin, who in fairness was never a "NeverTrumper" but was highly skeptical and critical of the president-elect a year ago, has given him ultimate praise as a result of yesterday's speech (and really his performance since January 20th) - "Reagan's third term."