If this was 1918 instead of 2018, I would be convinced that Donald Trump would be elected to a second term. Most Americans would be grateful that he had improved the economy and restored the military, that he had lowered taxes and given our foreign enemies fair warning that they had better think twice before provoking us. Most Americans would also appreciate the fact that he took our national sovereignty every bit as seriously as the Founding Fathers did.

I find it hard to believe that any of the countless dwarves who will be duking it out for the chance to run against Trump — a group that will include the tawdry likes of Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Gavin Newsom, Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Andrew Cuomo, “Beto” O'Rourke, and, God help us! Hillary Clinton — could possibly have a chance of defeating him. But that’s only until I remind myself that this is 2018, not 1918.

As the House elections proved, the problem isn’t that people think badly; the problem is that the majority don’t think at all. They never learned how. After all, unless you are well into your middle years, you have spent most of your life being spoon-fed left-wing propaganda by your teachers, the courts, and the media.

You have been told time and again that the only thing that matters is your emotional response to the issues of the day.

The fact is that the concept of privacy rights is never mentioned in the Constitution, but if you have been told that’s the only way the Supreme Court could have made abortions and same-sex marriages the law of the land, you accept the argument that the Constitution doesn’t mean what it actually says, but what it should say, at least if your emotions are to be believed. And according to the Left, there is no higher truth than your emotions.

Many of the conflicts between liberalism and conservatism were resolved to the satisfaction of progressives when those on the Left instituted something called political correctness. It not only served to corrupt the language in a way not seen since Humpty Dumpty insisted that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

That was one lesson the youngsters took to heart. It allowed them to pretend that being against foreigners sneaking into the country was the same as being against foreigners who entered the country legally.

It allowed them to pretend that being opposed to same-sex marriages or opposed to those who were biologically male using bathrooms and locker rooms intended for females or opposed to viable human beings being murdered in the womb made another person a bigot, a hater, a Nazi, or a fascist, even if that other person happened to be your mother, your father, your brother, or your sister.

What most people forget is that the exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty continued, with Alice saying: “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things” and Mr. Dumpty responding: “The question is, which is to be the master.”

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In an article titled “Not Theirs to Give” by Brian Farmer that recently ran in The New American, he opened with the statement President Grover Cleveland made at the time he vetoed a congressional appropriation of $10,000 to buy seed grain for drought-stricken Texans: “The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. But Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”

The article goes on to report that once, when he was running for reelection, Davy Crockett reminded voters that he had used taxpayer money to help the citizens of Georgetown recover from a fire.

When a farmer took him to task over it, Crockett argued that a great and rich country should not shrink from spending a paltry $20,000 to relieve public suffering.

The farmer challenged him: “Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?”

The farmer continued: “It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000.”

He concluded with: “You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose.”

If only our college graduates had the ability to think or speak so clearly. I would say the same about their professors.

The author then quotes the French economist of the 19th century, Frédéric Bastiat, who had this to say on the same topic: “How is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one person at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

But of course none of that matters in a mobocracy where politicians can ensure their success by carrying out just such a criminal enterprise in the certain knowledge that when you take from Peter to pay Paul, you can’t lose so long as the Paul’s outnumber the Peters.

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After recently listing my year-by-year favorite movies, Don Wise asked me about my favorite movie villains. He primed the pump by mentioning that his own favorite performances included Joseph Cotton in “Shadow of a Doubt,” Lee Marvin in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” Jack Palance in “Shane,‘ Laurence Olivier in "Marathon Man,” and Richard Widmark’s over-the-top Tommy Udo in “Kiss of Death.”

I replied: “I did prefer the subtler villains like Cotton in 'Shadow of a Doubt’ and Robert Walker in ‘Strangers on a Train.’ One of my all-time favorites was Dan Duryea. My least favorite was Robert Ryan, who went through a hundred movies wearing a perpetual sneer. Most actual villains don’t use semaphores announcing they’re not to be trusted.

"One of my favorites was Burt Lancaster, who could, when it was called for, be as convincing a villain as he was as a hero. Few could have been as menacing as he was in ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ or ‘Seven Days in May.’

"Jack Palance was always menacing, but particularly so in ‘Shane’ and in a TV movie in which he portrayed Dracula. I agree that Widmark was way over the top in ‘Kiss of Death,’ cackling maniacally as he pushed an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs, but it did make him a star and garner him an Oscar nomination.”

Mr. Wise wrote back to say that he never thought of Dan Duryea as anything but a song and dance man opposite Ethel Merman.

I let him know he had confused Duryea, a man born to wear suspenders and bowties and to play cheap grifters, with Dan Dailey, a true triple-threat of the movies, a man who couldn’t sing, couldn’t dance, and couldn’t act.