Current Affairs – Page 7 – Maverick Philosopher

From Russia’s point of view, considering their strategic and economic interests, a pliable Obama 2.0 would have been far better than Trump, with his pro-oil-and-gas domestic agenda, his promised defense buildup, and his unpredictable Jacksonian promises to help friends and hurt enemies.

Well, duh. The sheer stupidity of the Dem line on all of this should inspire the right-thinking to have contempt for the jackass party forever more. Be grateful that the jackasses are out and the Jacksonian is in.

What Does America First Mean?

America First does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. This is compatible with respecting other countries' interests and right to self-determination.

So America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings.

An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts legal immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or the values of political Islam.

An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.

So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.

It is also not to be confused with xenophobia. The America Firster has no irrational fear of persons or things foreign. The same holds for every enlightened nationalist.

An enlightened nationalism is not a form of idolatry. 'America First' is not in competition with 'God First.' The principles belong to different orders. The first is a 'horizontal' principle defined over countries; the second is a 'vertical' principle having to do with countries and God. Obviously the following two propositions are logically consistent:

1) Every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries.

2) No country is an appropriate object of worship; only God is worthy of worship.

Finally, an enlightened nationalism is not white-supremacist. I will now quote Rabbi Aryeh Spero, not only because he makes good points, but to distance myself from those Alt-Rightists who are anti-semitic and white-supremacist:

It is not “white supremacism” when people with self-respect display love and admiration for their background and history, wish to defend it, and are proud of it. It is normal and healthy. The opposite is rootlessness. Nor are sincere calls for the maintenance of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian ethos, as liberals today accuse, “code words for racism”.

The purpose of the shaming we now see coming from liberals against fellow Americans is to muzzle us, so that what we believe is no longer able to be heard or transmitted. It is an enforcement of our political impotence. Longer term, the never-ending demonization is designed to end our civic and religious heritage. Through left-wing bullying and scorn, our heritages are being replaced by the new theologies of progressivism and non-distinctiveness.

That's right; I quibble only with the good rabbi's misuse of 'theology.' Just as progressivism is not a religion, as I have lately argued ad nauseam, it is also not a theology. 'Theology' refers either to God's knowledge of himself, which lies beyond our ken, or to our attempted knowledge of God. But progressivism has no truck with God, being secularist and atheist in its core forms.

You should read all of Rabbi Spero's piece.

Coming Together and Walling Off

Is it an unalloyed and exceptionless good that people be 'brought together'? Not even the Facebook CEO thinks so. Mark Zuckerberg touts his social media site as bringing people together. How sweet. Yet he has had a huge wall built around his Hawaiian compound. Apparently, many of those who engineer 'bringing together' are very special people who are not keen on being brought together with those they bring together.

And then there is the current pope, Bergoglio the Benighted. Safely and comfortably ensconced within the walls of the Vatican, he condemns the Great Wall of Trump, opining that what we need are bridges, not walls.

How about some bridges into the Vatican to make it easy for jihadis to gain access?

Radosh on Milo

Should one take any old enemy of one's enemy as one's friend?

“The Era of Empty Talk is Over”

The best line of Trump's CPAC speech.

Paradoxes of Illegal Immigration

This entry from 6 January 2012 bears re-posting in the light of current events. 'Light' indeed. A new day is dawning. Things are looking up. We now have a president with the cojones to take action, and he has. Who would have thought that Donald J. Trump of all people would be the patriot to save the country? The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways. What a week it's been! While conservatives rejoice — I mean true conservatives, not NeverTrump quislings and jokers — leftists lose their minds and descend into thuggery showing themselves plainly for what they were all along.

……………………………………

Philosophers hate a contradiction, but love a paradox. There are paradoxes everywhere, in the precincts of the most abstruse as well as in the precincts of the prosaic. Here are eight paradoxes of illegal immigration suggested to me by Victor Davis Hanson. The titles and formulations are my own. For good measure, I add a ninth, of my own invention.

The Paradox of Profiling. Racial profiling is supposed to be verboten. And yet it is employed by American border guards when they nab and deport thousands of illegal border crossers. Otherwise, how could they pick out illegals from citizens who are merely in the vicinity of the border? How can what is permissible near the border be impermissible far from it in, say, Phoenix? At what distance does permissibility transmogrify into impermissibility? If a border patrolman may profile why may not a highway patrolman? Is legal permissibility within a state indexed to spatiotemporal position and variable with variations in the latter?

The Paradox of Encroachment. The Federal government sues the state of Arizona for upholding Federal immigration law on the ground that it is an encroachment upon Federal jurisdiction. But sanctuary cities flout Federal law by not allowing the enforcement of Federal immigration statutes. Clearly, impeding the enforcement of Federal laws is far worse than duplicating and perhaps interfering with Federal law enforcement efforts. And yet the Feds go after Arizona while ignoring sanctuary cities. Paradoxical, eh?

The Paradox of Blaming the Benefactor. Millions flee Mexico for the U.S. because of the desirability of living and working here and the undesirability of living in a crime-ridden, corrupt, and impoverished country. So what does Mexican president Felipe Calderon do? Why, he criticizes the U.S. even though the U.S. provides to his citizens what he and his government cannot! And what do many Mexicans do? They wave the Mexican flag in a country whose laws they violate and from whose toleration they benefit.

The Paradox of Differential Sovereignty and Variable Border Violability. Apparently, some states are more sovereign than others. The U.S., for some reason, is less sovereign than Mexico, which is highly intolerant of invaders from Central America. Paradoxically, the violability of a border is a function of the countries between which the border falls.

The Paradox of Los Locos Gringos. The gringos are crazy, and racist xenophobes to boot, inasmuch as 70% of them demand border security and support AZ SB 1070. Why then do so many Mexicans want to live among the crazy gringos?

The Paradox of Supporting While Stiffing the Working Stiff. Liberals have traditionally been for the working man. But by being soft on illegal immigration they help drive down the hourly wages of the working poor north of the Rio Grande. (As I have said in other posts, there are liberal arguments against illegal immigration, and here are the makings of one.)

The Paradox of Penalizing the Legal while Tolerating the Illegal. Legal immigrants face hurdles and long waits while illegals are tolerated. But liberals are supposed to be big on fairness. How fair is this?

The Paradox of Subsidizing a Country Whose Citizens Violate our Laws. "America extends housing, food and education subsidies to illegal aliens in need. But Mexico receives more than $20 billion in American remittances a year — its second-highest source of foreign exchange, and almost all of it from its own nationals living in the United States." So the U.S. takes care of illegal aliens from a failed state while subsidizing that state, making it more dependent, and less likely to clean up its act.

The Paradox of the Reconquista. Some Hispanics claim that the Southwest and California were 'stolen' from Mexico by the gringos. Well, suppose that this vast chunk of real estate had not been 'stolen' and now belonged to Mexico. Then it would be as screwed up as the rest of Mexico: as economically indigent, as politically corrupt, as crime-ridden, as drug-infested. Illegal immigrants from southern Mexico would then, in that counterfactual scenario, have farther to travel to get to the U.S., and there would be less of the U.S. for their use and enjoyment. The U.S. would be able to take in fewer of them. They would be worse off. So if Mexico were to re-conquer the lands 'stolen' from it, then it would make itself worse off than it is now. Gaining territory it would lose ground — if I may put paradoxically the Paradox of the Reconquista.

Exercise for the reader: Find more paradoxes!

Election Hacking?

Today's Arizona Republic sported a headline containing the phrase 'election hacking.'

How about a distinction? It is one thing to hack into DNC servers and John Podesta's e-mail. It is another thing to hack into a voting machine. So I ask: what is the justification for talk of election hacking?

Let's assume that, contra Julian Assange's asseveration to the contrary, the Russians did the hacking into the DNC servers. Let's also assume that Vladimir Putin was aware of this and approved of it. What might his motive have been? The going 'wisdom' before November 8th was that Hillary was a shoo-in. That was the opinion of all the top commentators. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Putin's motive was to get some dirt on Hillary to use against her when she became president.

So it is far from obvious that the Russkis were trying to influence the U. S. election, let alone tilt it in Trump's favor. Why would they want Trump in office, an alpha male they could reasonably expect to put someone like 'Mad Dog' Mattis in charge of the Department of Defense?

And then there is the utter hypocrisy of the Dems and some Republicans who are suddenly horrified at our lack of cyber-security when they didn't seem much exercised over far, far worse such breaches over the last eight years.

Let's see this 'election hacking' nonsense for what it is. It is nothing but a shabby attempt by sore losers to delegitimize and obstruct the incoming president.

UPDATE (1/7). Here:

Also, some blame for the hack must be laid at the feet of the DNC and Democratic officials such as Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta for their wanton disregard for securing their own email system.

NOTE TO MR. PODESTA: Using “P@ssw0rd” for your password is not really a password. It is more like a “welcome” sign.

Yet, somehow, it was President-elect Donald Trump who seemed to be on trial during Thursday’s Senate hearings.

[. . .]

Chief among the intel honchos is bald and bespectacled Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. This most highly trusted top spook can be trusted to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — except when he is lying.

Most famously, The Clapper was asked during a 2013 hearing by Sen. Ron Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

“No, sir,” The Clapper responded, only to be exposed as a complete liar within months.

So Long, John Glenn

The third American into space, and the first to orbit the Earth, John Glenn is dead at 95. In those days American greatness was evident. America can become great again. President-Elect Trump's speech last night at the Iowa rally on his 'thank you' tour referenced Glenn and the need to revitalize the space program. A hopeful sign and nothing one could expect from a decadent Dem like Obama or Hillary.

On Flag Burning

In a piece entitled, "Mr. Trump, Meet the Constitution," the editorial board of The New York Times betrays a failure to grasp the distinction between the U. S. Constitution and Supreme Court rulings about it. In the 1989 case "Texas v. Johnson," SCOTUS handed down a 5-4 ruling according to which flag burning was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Now if you read the amendment you will find no reference to flag burning. The subsumption of flag burning under protected speech required interpretation and argument and a vote among the justices. The 5-4 vote could easily have gone the other way, and arguably should have.

So Trump's tweet, "Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag . . . ," does not show a lack of understanding of the Constitution. After all, SCOTUS rulings can be overturned. On a charitable interpretation, Trump was advocating an overturning of the 1989 and 1990 flag burning rulings.

Ought flag burning come under the rubric of protected speech? Logically prior question: Is it speech at all? What if I make some such rude gesture in your face as 'giving you the finger.' Is that speech? If it is, I would like to know what proposition it expresses. 'Fuck you!' does not express a proposition. Likewise for the corresponding gesture with the middle finger. And if some punk burns a flag, I would like to know what proposition the punk is expressing.

The Founders were interested in protecting reasoned dissent, but the typical act of flag burning by the typical leftist punk does not rise to that level. To have reasoned or even unreasoned dissent there has to be some proposition that one is dissenting from and some counter-proposition that one is advancing, and one's performance has to make more or less clear what those propositions are. I think one ought to be skeptical of arguments that try to subsume gestures and physical actions under speech.

The First Amendment also mentions religion. If flag desecration counts as speech, what would not count as religion? Is godless communism a religion? Why not, if a majority of the black-robed ones say it is?

The Constitution is a magnificent document worthy of great respect and a sort of secular reverence, attitudes one might hesitate to cherish with respect to certain members of the Supreme Court.

Am I saying that there should be a flag burning amendment? No. Let the states decide what to do with the punks who desecrate the flag.

As for Hampshire College, pull their federal funding if they refuse to fly the flag. That should get their attention.

Rod Dreher on Steve Bannon

Fair and balanced. An excellent antidote to the mindless screeching of the loons of the Left. But do loons screech? It is more like a plaintive keening.

Things are Getting Nasty

Trump supporters are being physically assaulted, but Trump critics such as David French are also coming under vicious attack.

In the immortal words of the 'motorist' Rodney King, "Why can't we all just get along?"

Who’s Deplorable Now?

Members of the party of 'tolerance' and 'inclusion' go on the rampage as captured in this collection of videos.

Trump won fair and square despite all the chicanery of the Dems. Now just as most Muslims are not terrorists, most Dems are not street anarchists. But the latter constitute a significant subset of Dems. What does it say about them that they breed elements who reject the very system of government that allowed for Obama's accession to power for two disastrous terms?

'Interesting' days up ahead. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Victor Davis Hanson’s Case for Trump

Excerpts:

Trump’s defeat would translate into continued political subversion of once disinterested federal agencies, from the FBI and Justice Department to the IRS and the EPA. It would ensure a liberal Supreme Court for the next 20 years — or more. Republicans would be lucky to hold the Senate. Obama’s unconstitutional executive overreach would be the model for Hillary’s second wave of pen-and-phone executive orders. If, in Obama fashion, the debt doubled again in eight years, we would be in hock $40 trillion after paying for Hillary’s even more grandiose entitlements of free college tuition, student-loan debt relief, and open borders. She has already talked of upping income and estate taxes on those far less wealthy than the Clintons and of putting coal miners out of work (“We are going to put a whole lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business”) while promising more Solyndra-like ventures in failed crony capitalism.

We worry about what Citizen Trump did in the past in the private sector and fret more over what he might do as commander-in-chief. But these legitimate anxieties remain in the subjunctive mood; they are not facts in the indicative gleaned from Clinton’s long public record. As voters, we can only compare the respective Clinton and Trump published agendas on illegal immigration, taxes, regulation, defense spending, the Affordable Care Act, abortion, and other social issues to conclude that Trump’s platform is the far more conservative — and a rebuke of the last eight years.

[. . .]

Something has gone terribly wrong with the Republican party, and it has nothing to do with the flaws of Donald Trump.

[. . .]

The Beltway establishment grew more concerned about their sinecures in government and the media than about showing urgency in stopping Obamaism. When the Voz de Aztlan and the Wall Street Journal often share the same position on illegal immigration, or when Republicans of the Gang of Eight are as likely as their left-wing associates to disparage those who want federal immigration law enforced, the proverbial conservative masses feel they have lost their representation. How, under a supposedly obstructive, conservative-controlled House and Senate, did we reach $20 trillion in debt, institutionalize sanctuary cities, and put ourselves on track to a Navy of World War I size? Compared with all that, “making Mexico pay” for the wall does not seem all that radical. Under a Trump presidency the owner of Univision would not be stealthily writing, as he did to Team Clinton, to press harder for open borders — and thus the continuance of a permanent and profitable viewership of non-English speakers.

One does not need lectures about conservatism from Edmund Burke when, at the neighborhood school, English becomes a second language, or when one is rammed by a hit-and-run driver illegally in the United States who flees the scene of the accident. Do our elites ever enter their offices to find their opinion-journalism jobs outsourced at half the cost to writers in India? Are congressional staffers told to move to Alabama, where it is cheaper to telecommunicate their business? Trump’s outrageousness was not really new; it was more a 360-degree mirror of an already outrageous politics as usual.