Orlando and Hillary's Dilemma

Peter Navarro

Politics, United States

Clinton is hemmed in by political correctness.

With each new terrorist attack—Orlando is just the latest of a lengthening global string—Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects sink further. The reason may be traced to the four corners of a “no way out” box that a politically correct Clinton now finds herself trapped in.

At one corner of this box, Hillary is tied at the hip to a president who won’t even utter the words “Islamic extremism.” Hillary herself renounces the phrase “radical Islam”—even as she meekly denounces “violent extremism.” However, as Confucius once said: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name,” and American voters are overwhelmingly going to see a far blunter and waterboarding Trump as the wiser (and tougher) one here.

At a second corner of Hillary’s “no way out” box, there is the very real conflict between her support for both women’s and gay rights versus her politically correct views on “religious tolerance.” Says Clinton: “America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation, and as you know, we are home to people of all religions.’’

Here, however, is Clinton’s political conundrum: Clinton is supporting an intolerant religion in the name of religious tolerance—and much of the American public knows it. This includes all those American women who Clinton is heavily banking on to carry her to victory. They sure don’t want their daughters donning burqas at the behest of some new American Caliphate.

Here’s the broader inconvenient truth for both Clinton and women’s rights that Trump is more than willing to tell voters: Islam, as it is practiced in most countries around the world, suppresses women’s rights—the only issue is the degree of severity of the repression. In the extreme version, women can’t vote, can’t attend schools, must wear veils, and risk being stoned to death for any number of “sins.”