ROGER KIMBALL: DONALD TRUMP AS PERICLES:

Trump mounted a wide-ranging and spirited defense of core Western values and achievements. It’s not just that we are rich and powerful. It is also that we cherish such enabling civilizational values as individual liberty, the rule of law, the political equality of women, religious freedom, and a generous and innovative spirit of curiosity and exploration. “If we don’t forget who are,” Trump said. “we just can’t be beaten.” . . .

These were the sentiments that wretched Lefties like Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic, castigated as evidence of “The Racial and Religious Paranoia.” “Donald Trump referred 10 times to ‘the West,’” quoth Beinart, “and five times to ‘our civilization,’” as if that was evidence of some especially twisted perspective.

It was the same throughout the gigantic and odiferous midden of “progressive” commentary. A writer for Slate screamed about “the white nationalist roots” of the speech, Eugene Robinson emitted his usual incontinent drivel in The Washington Post, sniffing about Trump’s historical ignorance and cultural chauvinism, and a former Obama advisor picked up the baton to warn about Trump’s “Dark Views Of Clash Of Civilizations.”

What would these pathetic tools have to say about Pericles’s funeral oration, delivered near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, when the great statesman addressed the people of Athens to commemorate their war dead and remind them of what made their city such a distinctive and admirable place?

Something on the order of “who’s Pericles?” or “just another dead white male,” would be my guess. . . .