(*) Apart from all the other best things ever he has done so far…

Just like The Simpsons in the days when it was good, Trump’s ban on transgenderism in the military is great because it works on so many levels.

It’s great because it trolls like a boss.

https://twitter.com/BasedElizabeth/status/890536569106518016

It’s great because it has annoyed so many of the right people:

Donald: With your ban on trans people from the military, you are on notice that you just pissed off the wrong community. You will regret it. — George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) July 26, 2017

(Never underestimate the importance of this. Every time President Trump annoys people like George Takei, he is sending out a subtle signal to the base: #winning)

It’s great because of the very sensible reasons the great Thomas Wictor advances in this typically astute Twitter thread:

https://twitter.com/ThomasWictor/status/890286634394042368

As Wictor explains, “transgendered people have become political props used by angry leftists attempting to destroy everything they oppose.” They were also about to cost the U.S. taxpayer heinous amounts of money – perhaps $8.4 million a year – because, thanks to legislation introduced last year by President Obama, the Defense Department was liable for the cost of the gender reassignment surgery on any soldier whose ability to serve was “adversely affected by a medical condition or medical treatment related to their gender identity.”

Not only were these transgender sensitivity policies burdening the military with unnecessary costs but they were also making it less effective. Wictor: “Talk to people who served in 2016. They’ll tell you that they spent a huge amount of time in sensitivity training seminars.”

Sensitivity training? In the military? This is not how wars are won.

As my ex-Special Forces buddy Mike Simpson (check out our recent podcast) puts it:

https://twitter.com/DrMikeSimpson/status/890225535963598850

Amen, bro.

But maybe the most important reason of all why it’s great is this: President Trump just did – again – what literally no other leader in the world is doing right now. He took a step towards saving Western Civilization.

I wish this were an exaggeration. I wish Western Civilization were so secure that it was quite beyond the power of the U.S. president or anyone else to shake or shore up its foundations.

The fact is, though, that Western Civilization is in the direst of trouble. We’re talking Last Days of the Roman Empire here. One of the reasons we know that Western Civilization is on its last legs is because of precisely the kind of cultural and intellectual decadence that gave us Obama’s rules on transgenders in the military, and which is also responsible for all that shrieking we’re hearing from liberals now about what a terrible thing Trump did to repeal that legislation.

No Trump did not do a terrible thing. He did the right thing. He did the only possible thing for anyone who still believes in truth, justice, social order, commonsense, decency, logic – and all the other values which have traditionally underpinned our culture and made us great.

What he just did, among other things, is reaffirm first principles.

Let’s consider the issue for a moment in its simplest terms: why do we have a military?

The military exists for the defence of the realm. That’s why people are happy to pay for it in the form of taxation: not because uniforms are spiffy or because guns are cool or because every girl loves a soldier (though of course all those things are true) but in order that they can sleep safely in their beds at night confident that they are being protected from their nation’s enemies.

Any other purpose that has been introduced into the military over the years is mission creep – often self-destructive mission creep. For example, the military is not there to help Muslims feel more “included” (Fort Hood, anyone?); nor to solve climate change; nor to help feminists to pretend that girls are just as strong and tough as men; nor, yet, to give people who are confused about their sex or “gender” a lovely warm glow of recognition and belongingness.

Nice, fluffy and cute though some of these goals may be, they should not be the concern of the military. The fact that in recent years they have become the concern of the military speaks volumes about the grip which the Cultural Marxists – the Social Justice Warriors as they are currently known – have on our culture. Really you might have hoped that the one institution which would have remained immune to SJW nonsense would have been the one whose main concern is training young men up to a peak of fitness, aggression and killing efficiency in order that they can wipe out the nation’s enemies. But nope: even the Helm’s Deep that was the U.S. military fell to the SJW hordes long ago.

What President Trump has just done is taken a vital first step towards reclaiming it for the forces of civilization.

And this matters, it really does. Compare and contrast Trump’s fearless rejection of the transgender movement’s political agenda with the recent announcement by the UK Government’s Equalities Minister (!) Justine Greening that in future people in Britain should be free to decide their own “gender” regardless of medical opinion or what it says on their birth certificate.

As I argue in more detail here Greening’s move is the final nail in the coffin of the Conservative party in Britain. In the guise of “moving with the times” and “reaching out to the young” and “making marginalised minorities feel more comfortable in their skin” what it is in fact doing is rejecting one of the most basic tenets of Western Civilization. Indeed, it’s a flat out rejection of reality.

There are, needless to say, lots of other practical reasons why allowing people legally to decide their own gender is a terrible idea: the destructive effect on women’s sport; the constraints it will inevitably place on the freedom of speech of the many of us who, quite rightly, think this is an SJW bridge too far; the mind-warping effects it’s going to have on the impressionable children who no doubt are going to be exposed to this post-modern guff as part of their ‘education’. But the worst thing of all, as far as I can see, is that it capriciously, irresponsibly and unnecessarily rejects one of the most basic truths of nature: that there are men and there are women; that we are identifiably different. For me this is one of those pivotal moments in the decline of western civilisation. The barbarians are at the gate and here’s Justine Greening pushing the doors wide open: ‘C’mon in guys, gals —or however you want to define yourselves! The city is all yours. Or is that zirs?’

When socialist governments introduce legislation like that, you tend to roll your eyes, shrug your shoulders and mutter to yourself: “Well at least a conservative government will be along shortly to clean up the mess, as they always do.” But when this planned legislation comes from your own team – a notionally conservative government – then you know it’s game over. This, I know, is a problem right now which is exasperating conservatives not just in Britain but in pretty much all the western countries in the world that aren’t the United States.

What Donald Trump is doing right now is that good, that important. He has his work cut out, not just because he has so many enemies in the mainstream media, on the left generally, as well as within the GOP, but because his predecessors – Obama especially – made sure to salt the earth and poison the wells before he came into the White House.

But the size of the obstacles facing him just make the scale of what he has achieved and what he will achieve even more impressive.

President Trump isn’t, as the liberals would have us believe, picking on innocent transgender people. He is simply defending the values that have made us great and which, if he succeeds – as, pray God, he must – will make us great again.