John Kasich: The Republican Party left Me

While his record on LGBT rights is abysmal, Ohio Governor John Kasich is one of the few Republicans who did not rush to prostitute himself to Donald Trump and betray everything the Republican Party once stood for.  Like myself, most of my extended family and many friend who are former Republicans, Kasich says that he did not leave the GOP.  Rather, the GOP left him.  Just like it left so many others who reject religious extremism, racism, defunding public education and a rapacious economic structure that benefits the wealthy while harming the less fortunate.   CNN has excerpts from Kasich's comments on "State of the Union":

Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich expressed frustration with the current state of the Republican and Democratic parties Sunday amid rumors that he could pursue a 2020 presidential run.

"I'm still a Republican. I didn't leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me," Kasich said on CNN's "State of the Union." "In my state we have balanced budgets, surplus, we're up half a million jobs and then people say, 'Well Kasich's not a conservative.' What does that mean?"

"Come home to where we basically live," the 2016 presidential candidate added. "We should care about people from top to bottom, not just those at the top, but everybody. I can bring that party back. That's what I'm going to do in one way or another."

Kasich hasn't ruled out a presidential run in 2020, saying that he's keeping his options open. And though he's been rumored to be pursuing an independent candidacy, he told CNN earlier this month that it was unlikely.

The governor also said Republicans face a tough fight in this year's midterm elections because of voters' distaste for President Donald Trump's "harsh language" and "division." Kasich said he foresees "a big ocean of people in the middle who are up for grabs in November.  "These are people who are objective. These are people who are rational," Kasich said.

Sadly, "objective" and "rational" more or less exclude those who now comprise the core of the Republican Party.  I will not be holding my breath for Kasich to pull ff his restoration of the GOP.  

Trump's Disastrous Convention Day One

As disturbing as watching the Republican Convention may be for sane and rational people, the good news is that many believe it did not go well for The Donald.   His wife plagiarized speech was not the only self-inflicted wound.  A piece in Politico gives an overview of Trump's less than wonderful day one of the convention.  I, f course, hope things continue to go badly.   Here are article highlights:

Donald Trump’s supporters painted a dark and dystopian portrait of an America in decline on Monday, as a parade of people spoke about a country slipping from their grasp, cops getting gunned down in the streets, and their family members slain by illegal immigrants.

But a self-inflicted scheduling blunder — the Trump campaign put the evening’s headliner, Melania Trump, well before the prime-time hour ended — had the networks turning away before the precious hour of free TV had been used up. Worse, her speech bore a striking resemblance to a Michelle Obama speech from 2008.

People inside the hall streamed for the exits as Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn droned on, and NBC wrapped up its hour, after some banter between its anchors, with a shot of a shockingly empty arena.

It was a rough end to a day that began with Trump’s campaign feuding with the popular Republican governor of Ohio, and that featured shouting and jostling on the convention floor as the party tried to stamp out the last embers of the Never Trump campaign. All day, cable news chyrons spoke of disunity and chaos.

On stage, there was a red-meat buffet of raw emotion for an angry Republican electorate, with little talk of ideology or policy. Indeed, there were more mentions of fallen American soldiers than of conservatism.

But there were even fewer signs of outreach across the aisle or to independents. For most of the night, the convention lineup felt and sounded more like a tea party rally on the statehouse steps — with little-known speakers delivering hard-line speeches — than a traditional national convention.

Melania Trump . . . .presented a big tent GOP, naming Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, African-Americans and Asians as among those welcome in her husband’s party. She was the exception, however.

More than an hour earlier, a series of speakers delivered intense, emotional addresses about family members killed by illegal immigrants and why they supported Trump — and opposed Hillary Clinton.

But MSNBC, CNN and Fox News did not carry those speeches, sharply limiting the audience. It was fallout, in part, of the Trump campaign’s decision to craft a schedule that squeezed six Trumps and the head of Trump’s winery into prime time this week.

One victim of the schedule malfunction was Sen. Joni Ernst, viewed by many as a rising star in the GOP. She spoke after Flynn, and by the time she was done even Trump’s kids, Bob Dole and Giuliani had vacated their seats in the VIP section. Gov. Scott Walker had abandoned his seat among the Wisconsin delegates, too.

The earlier parts of the first day of the convention in Cleveland did not go much better. Trump’s motorcade got into an accident en route to the city. 

One has to wonder how Trump thinks he can run the country when he can't run a convention.

The Republican Freak Out Gathers Steam

Last night it was Ted Cruz who suspended his campaign and then this afternoon John Kasich did the same, thus leaving Donald Trump - a man endorsed by racist groups and winning only in the working class white male category - as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.  While the so-called GOP establishment has for years courted extremists, racists, raging homophobes and theocrats, few ever believed that the Frankenstein monsters they unleashed would ever go so far as to overthrow the party's leadership.  Many conservatives don't like to be told that they are justly reaping what they sowed and/or that karma can be a bitch, but Trump is the creation of their own misdeeds and cynical pandering to those Republicans would have found abhorrent (I certainly cannot picture my late grand mother even trying to feign polite conversation with most Trump supporters).  As  a piece in Vanity Fair describes, the great GOP freak out has begun.  Here are article highlights:

Turning around to hug his family after dropping out of the presidential race Tuesday night, Ted Cruz managed to both accidentally punch and elbow his wife in the face, giving Republicans the perfect metaphor for the state in which he’d just left them. Donald Trump, a lurid orange candle of narcissistic fire, is now the party’s presumptive nominee for the presidency, and conservatives everywhere were not taking the news well.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus put on a brave face in a tweet sent shortly after Cruz dropped out of the race.  But on CNN the next morning, Priebus looked pained, saying he was “surprised” by Cruz’s “unexpected” move. “But now we have to say that it’s pretty obvious that Donald Trump is going to get to 1,237,” he told New Day host Alisyn Camerota.

Mitt Romney, who had attempted to reenergize the #NeverTrump movement with a well-received speech calling on Republicans to do everything in their power to deny Trump the nomination, took to Twitter to politely thank Cruz for his campaign, but remained silent about whether he would support his party’s standard-bearer.

Sen. John McCain hadn’t yet weighed in, but his former speechwriter, Mark Salter, immediately jumped ship, declaring “I’m with her [Hillary].”

Several prominent conservative leaders who had signed onto the National Review's “Against Trump” issue told the Daily Beast that, like it or not, they had to support Hillary Clinton now. “Hillary is ideologically not where I am,” said Leon Wolf, the editor of RedState, but argued that the former secretary of state would simply be a better president. “I wouldn’t go to bed every night worrying about a mushroom cloud opening up somewhere in the world because of some insane thing Trump had done.”

Erick Erickson, one of the first conservative commentators to speak out against Trump, told the Daily Beast that he would “de-register” as a Republican, saying that Trump’s nomination will rebrand the G.O.P. as the “party of white supremacists. . . . If Republicans aren’t going to stand up to having their party hijacked by a group of Aryan nation-types, then they get what they deserve.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had previously flirted with the idea of parachuting into a contested convention, declined to say anything overt about Trump’s victory, instead posting old videos of himself delivering patriotic speeches about America’s future and the true meaning of conservatism.

Erick Erickson - who I generally NEVER agree with  - got it right in terms of what the GOP is becoming: a party of white supremacists and religious extremists who belong in mental institutions.   

Kasich and McCrory Confirm They Are Bigoted Assholes

Sunday morning news shows today underscored the reality that both North Carolina's mental midget governor, Pat McCrory, and GOP presidential candidate John Kasich are nothing more than bigoted assholes and more or less harbor anti-gay animus.  Kasich went to far as saying that gays need to :just get over it" when it comes to the discrimination that they face.  Meanwhile, the brain dead McCrory could not even correctly name the Human Rights campaign and suggested that positive support for HB2 from a tiny black Christian group outweighed the outrage over the heinous law being voiced by 160 large corporate organizations, many of which bring vast amounts of revenue to his state.  Having been once fired for being gay, I can assure Kasich that it is not something one just gets over.  Not when it puts your children at risk and forces you into bankruptcy.  The man is an utter asshole.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement on Kasich's unbelievable batshitery:

Republican Gov. John Kasich on Sunday told LGBT people who face discrimination they should just get over it. The third-place GOP presidential candidate who is the sitting governor of Ohio also told people of faith who oppose same-sex marriage and LGBT people to "pray for" them. Both comments were made under the guise of uniting the nation.

CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" asked Kasich if there are any steps he "would take to try to stop states from passing" anti-LGBT, so called "religious freedom" laws. The Ohio governor responded, "No, I wouldn't," then admitted that he hadn't even "thought about" it.

"There is a legitimate concern for people being able to have their deeply held religious beliefs, religious liberty," Kasich continued. "But there's also people who we shouldn't be discriminating against. We need to have a balance," he insisted.

"If you don't like what somebody's doing, pray for them," the governor suggested. "And if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just, for a second, get over it, you know, because this thing will settle down."

He went on to call the fight for equal civil rights for LGBT people "a wedge issue that can be exploited by people on both sides," and concluded that "we need a united America, not a divided America.  

Let's take away Kasich's income, allow his children to be bullied, and have him turned away from businesses and see how quickly he "just gets over it."

As for Pat McCrory, the man seemingly is a complete simpleton or is at least doing all he can to come across as one as Think Progress reports after McCrory appeared on Meet the Press today.  Here are excerpts:

Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) went on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday to defend the sweeping anti-LGBT law he signed last month. It did not go well for him.

Over the nearly 10-minute interview host Chuck Todd hammered at McCrory’s widely-debunked talking points.

Todd began by highlighting how much the law has already hurt the Tar Heel state economically, noting that 160 companies have called for the law’s repeal. “Bloomberg, Capital One, United Airlines, Williams-Sonoma — that’s just on Friday,” he observed, adding that the law has cost state that at least $39.7 million in lost revenue already. He asked McCrory if he has any regrets about signing the law.

McCrory responded that he would “always call out government overreach,” like Charlotte’s law, blaming “the left” for passing a mandate on “every private sector employer” in the city. He then boasted that while the business community has criticized him, people at “an African American buffet restaurant” in the small city of Hamlet, NC had thanked him protecting them.

 What passes for intelligence in today's Republican Party is truly frightening!!

Reminder: John Kasich Is Also Evil

Given the insanity and freak show nature of the Republican presidential nomination contest, it is easy to be lulled into believing that Ohio Governor John Kasich might be somewhat acceptable as the GOP nominee or as president.  Unfortunately, that view overlooks the reality of Kasich's record and that, among other things, he is anti-gay and anti-woman when not engaging in union busting and diverting funding from public education.  Only  the extremism of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz make Kasich seem sane and moderate in comparison.  Gawker has a timely piece that reminds us that Kasich is just as scary  as his opponents, just in a less flamboyant way.  Here are article highlights:

With Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio out of the running, Ohio Governor John Kasich is the establishment candidate no one saw coming. And sure, compared to the rest of the GOP’s increasingly terrifying sideshows in suits, Kasich comes across as sane. But don’t be fooled: John Kasich is just as much of a monster as the rest—he just hides it better.

In March of 2009, Kasich infamously (at least in Ohio) noted that the state needed to “break the back of organized labor in schools.” Which is to say, John Kasich would like to break the back of the teachers unions. The same teachers unions that have, according to him, “smeared my record and distorted it.” It’s not just teachers Kasich wants to bust; it’s organized labor in general. From The Columbus Dispatch:

Kasich, who is backed by business groups, also opposes paying prevailing wages on state-funded construction projects. And as part of a sweeping review of state laws and regulations, he wants to reexamine the 1983 law that gave public employees in Ohio the right to collective bargaining, arbitration and strike (except for safety forces).

John Kasich loves to talk about how he brought jobs back to Ohio after the recession. The problem with that line of thinking, though, is that every state regained jobs after the recession. In fact, most states even managed return to pre-recession employment rates. Ohio was not one of those states.

According to Cleveland.com, by May of 2014, Ohio actually had 119,900 fewer jobs than when the recession began. As for the jobs Kasich did create, the majority were low-wage. According to a 2014 report by a progressive Cleveland think tank, Ohio’s median wage was nearly a dollar below the national average at $15.81 per hour.

Kasich is big on charter schools, which in his case meant spending over $1 billion on a program that exists to divert public funding to private pockets. According to progressive advocacy group Innovation Ohio:

·        Traditional public schools, which educate 90 percent of Ohio’s kids, receive $515 million less state funding than before Gov. Kasich took office.
·        Charter school funding has increased by 27 percent, and charters now receive more state money per pupil than do traditional public schools.

What’s more, The Akron Beacon Journal reported that “state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival the worst in the nation.”

It’s incredibly fortunate for John Kasich that Ted Cruz is Ted Cruz. Because if he weren’t standing next to an opponent so phenomenally, nauseatingly unlikeable, we all might realize that Kasich himself is also a dick.

Back in 2014, John Kasich was asked about his decision to sign into law a provision prohibiting rape crisis counselors from referring rape victims to abortion services. In other words, John Kasich imposed a rape crisis counselor gag rule. Instead of answering a perfectly reasonable question about an incredibly pernicious law, Kasich just... ignored it. . . . . Dangerously backwards women’s health laws aren’t just for the South anymore. In fact, Ohio has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, mostly thanks to John Kasich.

In just five years, Kasich manged to pass 11 different laws restricting abortion rights for women. Mother Jones points out that “since 2011, half of Ohio’s 16 clinics have closed, and according to The Columbus Dispatch three of the remaining eight are in risk of closing if they cannot find a hospital within 30 miles willing to enter a transfer agreement.”

As Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, told Mother Jones, “He is, if not the worst, among the worst of anti-choice governors in this country’s history.” There’s your reasonable, moderate Republican, everyone!

Is Kasich Almost as Bad as Trump?

With the dust settling in the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary, some GOP presidential candidates have already dropped out of the race - e.g., Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina - and others are finding themselves to increased scrutiny as their chances seemingly improve.  One such candidate is John Kasich who in relative terms - relative being the operative term - seems less extreme than Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.  But some, including many in Ohio from some Facebook commentary, are beginning to make the case that Kasich's campaign persona is a facade that hides much of the same ugliness that Trump, Cruz and Rubio exhibit.  A piece in Salon takes a look at what is perhaps the real Kasich.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump is a hemorrhoid of a human being, at times seeming more like an experiment in how much you can bamboozle conservative voters before they get a clue. The man wants to ban Muslims from coming to our country and says that the Obama-enthralled media is hiding a 42 percent unemployment rate.

Under the circumstances, it’s tempting to contrast Trump with some of his Republican opponents, seeing in them the compassion and common sense that Trump lacks. It is also a mistake to do this, because they are different flavors of the same poisonous gruel.

The Huffington Post’s front page, alas, fell into the “Trump is evil, so his opponent must be nice!” trap on Wednesday morning.

The piece, written by Ryan Grim, focuses almost exclusively on the rhetoric of John Kasich, the Ohio governor who came second in New Hampshire after Trump, praising him for “a message of civility, empathy and moral purpose in a race dominated by fear and race-baiting.”

And it’s true that Kasich loves to tell people how compassionate he is. But it’s a claim that should be taken about as seriously as Ted Cruz’s insinuations that he’s a prophet from God or any of the deliciously over-the-top bragging statements that Trump issues about himself. Kasich has an avuncular demeanor that helps him sell this “compassionate” image, but an actual look at his beliefs and policies shows that he’s throwing up just as much a front as any of these Republicans.

To be fair, Grim does mention, in passing, that Kasich has worked to undermine women’s health care and the right of workers to unionize, but that barely touches the surface when it comes to the rot exuding from the Kasich administration. If you start to dig in, it becomes clear that Kasich is no more a “compassionate” man than Donald Trump is, and the struggle in the Republican Party is one of aesthetics, not substance.

[E]xamine whether Kasich is really any better. (Spoilers: No.)

Racist. Sure, Kasich passes the extremely low bar of not retweeting neo-Nazis approvingly, but don’t let Kasich off the hook here. Kasich was already a huge proponent of putting harsh restrictions on welfare, an issue that has risen to prominence mainly because of racist urban legends about black people living indolently on food stamps instead of working.

As governor of Ohio, Kasich made this racial subtext undeniable in 2014 and 2015, by targeting minority populations for food stamp cuts while letting white people keep getting their food stamps.  As Mother Jones explains, the entire state of Ohio was eligible for an emergency extension on food stamp eligibility due to economic distress, but Kasich decided to grant it only to 16 counties in 2014 and 17 in 2015.

“Most of these were rural counties with small and predominantly white populations,”Hannah Levintova of Mother Jones writes. “Urban counties and cities, most of which had high minority populations, did not get waivers.”

Sexist. Sure, Donald Trump said the word “pussy” out loud, something we can safely assume Kasich does not do, perhaps even in the privacy of his own home. But what Kasich has done to women is much, much worse than a naughty word or a degrading comment. The man has a single-minded obsession with punishing the women of Ohio for having sex.

Kasich has signed a series of anti-choice bills that have shut down half the abortion clinics in his state. He signed a provision requiring abortion clinics to have a medically unnecessary transfer agreement with local hospitals, and then turned around and banned public hospitals from making such agreements.

Kasich has  no love for contraception, either, rewriting budget rules in an arcane and hard to understand way for the sole purpose of stripping family planning clinics of money they use to make contraception affordable to low-income women.

Xenophobic. Trump wants to ban Muslims from entering this country. Kasich “just” wants to ban Syrian refugees — people who are fleeing a horrific civil war that is being stoked by actual Islamic extremists — from coming in. . . .  In a way, it’s worse, because folks like Kasich are pretending it’s reasonable to treat Muslims like a categorical threat.

Demagogue. Kasich presents himself as a reasonable person and it’s easy to get lulled by his ability to speak wonk into thinking he might be one of the few decent humans left in the Republican Party. But a perusal of his website shows he’s just as eager to push demagogic conservative talking points as any other Republican in the race: Promising to “repeal and replace” Obamacare without really talking about what it will be replaced with (answer: nothing), striking poses about the “sanctity of human life” when all he means is denying women reproductive health care instead of actual life-promoting policies like making sure everyone has food and shelter, and even claiming that he’s “lifting up the most vulnerable Americans” by, you guessed it, cutting off the assistance they need to get back on their feet.

Trump is a repulsive man, no doubt about it. But let’s not let his repulsiveness lull us into believing the slightly less obnoxious version peddled by men like Kasich is any less damaging.

The GOP Debate Circus - South Carolina Installment

The main stage GOP debate began in South Carolina at 9PM EST via Business Network and so far the tone of circus - debate gives it too much dignity - is aimed completely at pandering to Teabaghistan and the most extreme elements of the ignorance and bigotry embracing GOP base.   To listen to Marco Rubio, one would think that Barack Obama has led a communist coup against America.  Indeed, to listen to Rubio et al, I feel as if I have been living in some alternate universe from the imaginary world in which the GOP contenders and Teabagistan have been inhabiting.  The irony is that the economic malaise of the middle class has nothing to do with Barack Obama and everything to do with the failed policies of the GOP under the misrule of Obama's brain dead predecessor.

As for Donald Trump, he slickly finessed the GOP establishment vetted comments of  Nikki Haley about the siren song of the angriest voices and turned his anger, hate and bigotry into an applause point for the knuckle dragging audience.  Trump may be a Hitler like demagogue, but he definitely learned how to pander to those with little education and low IQ's during his years on reality TV.

Up to now in the debate, only John Kasich sounds as if he is half sane and not totally willing to prostitute himself to the foulest elements of the GOP base and America.   My further thoughts will be share in a post in the morning.

Part of me still finds it hard to realize just how ugly and how extreme the Republican Party has become. It bears no resemblance to the party in which I was an activist for the better part of a decade. I do not know how anyone morally decent, sane and/or educated can be a Republican nowadays.  My main hope is that if the GOP nominates a far right extremist, as happened in Virginia in 2013, the GOP slate will lose across the board and perhaps the much needed death of the GOP in its present form will accelerate to finality.

GOP Civil War Looming as Trump Slides Toward Fascism?

As Donald Trumps slides increasingly down a path that makes one think of Adolph Hitler and/or Benito Mussolini and outright fascism, New Day For America PAC, which supports John Kasich, has launched a new ad that is displayed above that has assembled some of Donald Trump’s more extreme and vile statements. (Another source has fact checked and found that the majority of "facts" that Trump cites are not true). New Day for America is reporting that Trump is already threatening to sue them.  Meanwhile, a piece in The Week looks at The Donald's slide toward fascism.  Here are some highlights:

I made the case just a couple months back that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is a sort of fledgling Mussolini, nurturing an incipient fascist movement. As the first primaries approach, and Trump's lead in the polls is actually widening, his development toward outright fascism is progressing faster than I feared.

As of August, Trump had most of the ingredients for a fascist movement: the victim complex, the fervent nationalism, the obsession with national purity and cleansing purges, and the cult of personality. He was missing the organized violence, a left-wing challenge strong enough to push traditional conservative elites into his camp, support for wars of aggression, and a full-bore attack on democracy itself. He's made much progress on all but the last one.

It's clear now that the Paris attacks enormously energized the Trumpist movement. He's now speculating openly about invading Syria. Trump's proposals have gone from overt prejudice to things literally taken out of late Weimar history — closure of mosques and a national Muslim database. The rank-and-file have both fed off and stoked this behavior. When a lone protester started chanting "black lives matter" at a Trump rally, Trumpists jumped him (he was luckily not badly injured).  Trump later said, "Maybe he should have been roughed up." Hours later he lied about witnessing Muslim crowds celebrating 9/11, and retweeted nonsense racist garbage from a literal neo-Nazi.

Conditions are clearly fertile to start organizing a Trumpist paramilitary wing, a key fascist institution.  . . . . With an incomprehensible number of guns floating around the country, all Trump needs is a Röhm to get the organizing started — except probably with Carhartts and camouflage instead of imitation military uniforms.

Will other decent Republicans (those few that are left) join Kasich and call Trump out?  One can only hope so.

Kasich Wants a Propaganda Department to Spread "Judeo-Christian Values"

Driving home I heard John Kasich being interviewed and the topic of defeating ISIS and Islamic extremism came up.  In addition to advocating "boots on the ground" (and then evasively  dancing around naming the number of American lives he'd throw away), Kasich shockingly indicated that he would establish a propaganda department to spread "Judeo-Christian values" to win the war of ideas against ISIS.  That statement along proves to my mind that Kasich is unfit for the White House.  If one looks at history, it is the values and ideas of The Enlightenment that moved mankind forward and which are the real basis of modern Western civilization.  Religion and Christianity in particular have a bloody track record of giving the world, hate, bigotry and the murder of those with differing beliefs.  Be it the annihilation of other Christian sects during the early years of Christianity, the Crusades, Europe's wars of religion, the extermination of native peoples in the Americas, Judeo-Christian values have proven deadly.  The Washington Post looks at Kasich's ridiculous proposal.  Here are article highlights: 

During a speech Tuesday at the National Press Club, Ohio Governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich offered a litany of ideas meant to broaden the influence of the United States and combat the rise of the Islamic State. Among them was one that, on its face, seemed to contradict the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting have lost their focus on the case for Western values and ideals and effectively countering our opponents' propaganda and disinformation. I will consolidate them into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core, Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share: the values of human rights, the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association."

Curious about the constitutionality of such a thing, we called New York University civil liberties professor Burt Neuborne, former legal director of the ACLU and founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice.

"The 'Judeo-Christian' phrase, my sense is, is an unfortunate phrase by the governor," Neuborne said. "What he really means is historically the values associated with Western culture.

A President Kasich, though, "couldn't create an agency designed to promote strictly religious values," Neuborne said. "To the extent he's insisting in making it a religious institution, he's making it harder on himself. But my bet is that's not what he intended."

Apparently, Kasich failed to notice that Bobby Jindal's self-prostitution to the Christofascists did not save his campaign.  And, as noted above, he is apparently so ignorant of history that he doesn't understand that it was The Enlightenment - which embraced knowledge and reason and rejected religious based ignorance and bigotry - that is the basis of what we now consider to be western values. Sadly, the author of the Post piece is seemingly as ignorant as Kasich on this point.