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Philosopher Daniel Bonevac Supports Trump

He gives his reasons in the Washington Post:

So why, given the response it gets me from colleagues and friends, do I support Trump?

Continue reading “Philosopher Daniel Bonevac Supports Trump”

Conrad Black on Donald Trump

Conrad Black has written well and with insight about Donald Trump. Here is his latest. Excerpt:

. . . his major foreign-policy statement on April 27 is a cogent outline of a clear definition of the U.S. national interest. It is neither impetuous as George W. Bush nor as defeatist and contra-historical as Obama. Trump is almost unstoppable as the Republican nominee now, and is already shifting fire to Hillary Clinton. In their only direct clash to date, when Senator Clinton called him a sexist, he shut her down easily by remarking that her husband, to whom she owes her prominence, was the greatest sexist in American political history and that she facilitated his behavior. Senator Clinton’s many untruths, even on absurd issues such as being fired on by snipers in Bosnia, and her lack of a serious record of public achievement, as well as the spirit of change and the unpopularity of the Obama administration to which she must affect some fealty, make her very vulnerable.

The election of Donald Trump as president is now a very reasonable possibility. Among its effects would be a salutary house-cleaning of the federal government, a process of renewal that would doubtless have lapses of taste and judgment, but that would revitalize American public life. The Bush dynasty was an accident of continuity following the very successful Reagan presidency, and it came to have a stifling influence on the Republican Party. The premature defeat of George H. W. Bush by Bill Clinton led to the even more precarious myth of the Bush-Clinton co-dynasty, as there was no excuse for Clinton winning the 1992 election. Barack Obama interrupted the Bush-Clinton alternation by seizing the moment for an admirable and nationally heartfelt gesture of tolerance and broad-mindedness, but he has been a disastrous president.

George Will has a different view. His latest concludes:

If Trump is nominated, Republicans working to purge him and his manner from public life will reap the considerable satisfaction of preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party while working to see that they forgo only four years of the enjoyment of executive power. Six times since 1945 a party has tried, and five times failed, to secure a third consecutive presidential term. The one success — the Republicans’ 1988 election of George H.W. Bush — produced a one-term president. If Clinton gives her party its first 12 consecutive White House years, Republicans can help Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, or someone else who has honorably recoiled from Trump, confine her to a single term.

Mr. Will ignores the fact that even one Hillary term will do irreparable damage to the country because of her Supreme Court nominations. Irreparable.

Tyrant at Home, Pussy Abroad

Roger Kimball, Why I Support Ted Cruz:

One of the curiosities of the reign of Barack Obama is that while he has vastly increased the power of the state domestically, when it comes to the world outside, to national security, he has gravely weakened the United States, both physically, in terms of its military strength, and psychologically, in terms of that diffuse but indisputably potent resource, prestige. ISIS rages, Russia buzzes our warships and reconnaissance planes, China militarizes the South China Sea. We do . . . nothing.

Dick Van Dyke and ‘Killer Mike’ Support Sanders the Superannuated Socialist

Here and here. How can Bernie lose? Did you know that 'Killer Mike' is “Southern rap's top political theorist”?

Trump’s Traction and Conservative Inaction

Donald Trump's 'traction' is largely due to conservative inaction. I leave aside for the moment that other source of Trumpian traction: the abominations of the Obama administration.

Conservatives are long on talk but short on action. Donald Trump, an alpha male with the billions to be beholden to no one, whose style of self-presentation is reminiscent of il Duce, has populist appeal because he looks to be someone who might finally get at least one thing done, say, stem the invasion of illegals from the south. And stop talking about it.

What have conservatives accomplished since the days of Ronald Reagan?

And yet the conservative case against Trump is devastating.

Here is a severely practical consideration: there is no way Trump can beat Hillary. He has alienated too many groups, women and Hispanics to name two. Add to that the fact that large numbers of conservatives will stay home, and Hillary is in like Flynn. Mark my words.

Let's hope that Trump does not get the Republican nomination. But if he gets it, you must vote for him. For the alternative is far worse. Politics is a practical business. It is not about maintaining your ideological purity, but about getting something accomplished in murky and complex circumstances. It is always about the lesser or least of evils. Trump would be bad, but Hillary worse.

While the 'bow-tie brigade' at National Review and the rest of the conservatives are so right about so much, they are too concerned with being respectable members of the establishment to know how to fight against the Alinskyite left. Hence their measured statements, their pious invocation of the Constitution, their refusal to give as good as they get. They don't realize that politics is not a gentlemanly debate, but war conducted by other means.

Backlash and ‘Frontlash’

Some lefty scribblers, effete and epicene, have their knickers in a knot worrying about the nativist and xenophobic 'backlash' post-Paris and post-San Bernardino. Even worse, however, is Attorney General Loretta Lynch's disgracing of herself along these lines:

Lynch addressed the Muslim Advocate’s tenth-anniversary dinner and declared that she is concerned about an “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric . . . that fear is my greatest fear.” Her greatest fear is — not terrorism — but a nonexistent Islamophobic backlash? ISIS has demonstrated that it can bring down passenger jets, strike the heart of a great Western capitol with urban assault teams, and inspire horrible carnage in California. We also know that ISIS has pledged to keep attacking the U.S. and possesses chemical weapons. Yet it’s politically incorrect speech that strikes fear into the heart of our attorney general.

To put it in the form of an understatement: Lefties are not very good at threat assessment. I should think that the 'frontlash' is far worse than any backlash that is likely to occur.

From the Gatestone Institute

Alan Dershowitz, Selective Outrage on Campus

Ingrid Carlqvist, Sweden Descends into Anarchy

Judith Bergman, How Can Anyone Be Shocked?

Charles Koch

Perhaps you have heard of those nefarious behind-the-scenes operators, the shadowy Koch Brothers. To get an initial taste of just how evil they are, see here.

An Observation on Last Night’s Democrat Debate: Bernie’s Generosity

I could stomach only about an hour's worth of it.

What struck me was Bernie Sanders' generous political self-immolation vis-à-vis Mrs. Clinton. He handed her the nomination by agreeing with her about the e-mail server (non)-issue. And the crowd loved it. (Is there a lesson here for Republicans?)

Here is my take on Sanders. He is basically a decent man who, though personally ambitious as every successful politician must be, nevertheless puts the good of the country, as he sees it, above his own personal ambitions. He is deeply rooted in principles that he honestly believes are correct. For him climate change, economic inequality, women's 'reproductive rights' and the rest are the real issues. And so he nobly took the high road to his own political marginalization by agreeing with Hillary that the e-mail server business is but a distraction from these real issues. After all, he could have justifiably attacked her on this very serious matter to bolster support for his nomination. He didn't.

If you're a 'progressive,' why vote for him when she is as much of a socialist and toes the politically correct line on guns to boot? (Nice pun, eh?)

Of course, there is another angle. Perhaps Bernie was playing the sycophant in hopes of a slot in the Hillary admin. But I don't think so. I really think he is a high-minded fellow with foolish and deleterious ideas. I could be wrong about the high-minded part.

By the way, we shouldn't be too harsh on our politicians. They are in the arena. They stand there, out in the open, under their own names, not hiding behind pseudonyms, exposed to the slings and arrows of a vast commentariat. They have courage. For this they deserve some respect. Even Hillary. Even Obama. Even the worst of them. For our worst are better than [you fill in the blank].

UPDATE (15 October): Daniel Henninger of WSJ agrees with me. He's a smart guy!

UPDATE (16 October): And Krauthammer too! Another smart guy. Nice tidbit:

The other three candidates hardly registered. Lincoln Chafee, currently polling at 0.3 points (minus-10 Celsius), played Ross Perot’s 1992 running mate, Admiral James Stockdale, who opened his vice presidential debate with: “Who am I? Why am I here?”

Flag Burning, Muhammad Mockery, and a Double Standard

If a coalition of what some leftists call knuckle-draggers (including rednecks, bigoted white working stiffs, those who "cling to their guns and Bibles," in the derisive words of Obama) were to slaughter flag burners, the leftists would howl in protest, pointing out (rightly) that flag burning counts as protected speech in these United States. They would not 'blame the victims' for having provoked or incited the knuckle-draggers. They would insist that flag burning is protected speech and take the reasonable view that murdering people for their (benighted) views is far, far worse than the desecration perpetrated by the protesters.

Mirabile dictu, however, lefties pull a 180 when it comes to the celebration of free speech practiced by people like Pamela Geller. Suddenly people who are exercising free speech rights are castigated for doing so, and warned about inciting violence.

What we have here is a classic double standard. One standard of evaluation is applied to flag burners, who tend to be on the Left, and a very different one is applied to Muhammad mockers, who tend to be conservatives. This double standard is particularly offensive, even more offensive that the usual lefty double standard, because flag burning and cartooning are very different.

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 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. Without going any further into this issue, let me just express my skepticism at arguments that try to subsume gestures and physical actions under speech.

Cartooning is very different. Cartoons have propositional content. The above cartoon expresses various propositions. It expresses the proposition that Muhammad is a war-like individual who is willing to put to the sword someone who merely draws his image. It also expresses the cartoonist's opinion that such a vile and backward view ought to be opposed.

If you fart, do you express a proposition? No doubt you ex-press foul gases from your gastrointestinal tract. Could it be that the stupidity of contemporary liberals derives from an incapacity to distinguish these two types of expression? Speech worth protecting is not gassing-off.

Finally, there is the irony that we conservatives are the new liberals. It is we who defend toleration and free speech, classical concerns of old-time liberals, while the 'liberals' of the present day have degenerated to the level of fascists of the Left.

What would be left of the Left were they made bereft of their double standards? There are so many of them. We need a list.

Another Double Standard

Update and Correction (5/13):

Dennis Monokroussos comments:

The Obama quote is that they “cling to guns or [not “and”] religion [not “Bibles”]”. As for the cartoon, it doesn’t express the proposition you relate in the body of the post. It, or something very close to it, is clearly the idea that the cartoonist has in mind, but that isn’t in the cartoon itself. If, however, one is allowed to draw the inference we all do from the cartoon, then it’s not obvious to me that one is also allowed to fill in the obvious connotations of one giving the middle finger or saying “F*** you!” or from the burning of the flag.

Dennis is right to correct my faulty quotation of Obama. See this short video clip. But while I did not reproduce Obama's words verbatim, I did convey their sense. After all, with 'religion' he was certainly not referring to Islam! Besides, 'cling to guns' and 'cling to Bibles' makes clear sense; it is less clear how one could 'cling' to religion. So you could say I was charitably presenting Obama's idea in better linguistic dress than he himself presented it. But Dennis is right: I should have checked the quotation.

Can a cartoon, by itself, express a proposition? No. So Dennis is technically correct. I almost made that point myself but thought it ill-advised to muddy my point with a technicality. Cartoons, in this respect, are like sentences. No sentence, even if in the indicative mood, by itself expresses a proposition. 'Peter smokes,' for example, is a declarative sentence. But it does not express a proposition unless it is assertively uttered by someone in a definite context that makes clear who the referent of 'Peter' is.

It is interesting to note that a mere tokening of the sentence type is not enough. Suppose I am teaching English. I utter the sentence 'Peter smokes' merely as an example of a declarative sentence. I have produced a token of the type, but I have not expressed a proposition.

Charity Navigator on The Clinton Foundation

Here. According to Peter Schweizer, only about 10% of what the Clinton Foundation takes in in donations goes to the people in need. But since Bill and Hillary are known by all to be ethically above reproach, Schweizer must be lying.

Free Speech: Is It Always Right to Say What One has a Right to Say?

It is not always right to say what one has a right to say.

Thus one of my aphorisms. It is worth unpacking, however, especially in the light of the incident at Garland, Texas.

First of all, the following is not a logical contradiction: You have a right to say X but you ought not say X. For you may have a legal right, but no moral right, or what you have a legal right to say may be highly imprudent to say. In fact, it may be so imprudent that moral and not merely prudential considerations become relevant.

So while Pamela Geller & Co. undoubtedly had the legal right to express themselves by hosting a cartoon fest in mockery of Muhammad, it is at least a legitimate question, one whose answer is not obvious, whether their doing so was morally acceptable.

On the one side are those who say that it was not morally acceptable given the high likelihood that violence would erupt. Indeed, that is what happened. Luckily, however, the Muslim savages¹ were shot dead, and only one non-savage was wounded. But it might have been worse, much worse. Innocent passersby might have been caught in the cross-fire; the shooter who dispatched the Islamist fanatics might not have been such a good shot and a long melee may have ensued; the Islamists might have shown up with heavier armament and killed all the cartoonists; they might have laid waste to the entire neighborhood, etc. We know from bitter world-wide experience what the barbarians of Islam are capable of. Do you recall, for example, the Taliban's destruction of the ancient Buddhist statuary?

On the other side are those who insist that we must not engage in what they call 'self-censorship.' We must not limit or curtail the free exercise of our liberties in the face of savages who behead people because of a difference in political and theological views.

So what is the correct view?

Suppose that Muslim reaction to the mockery and defamation of their prophet was just as nonviolent as Christian reaction to the mockery and defamation of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Then I would condemn as immoral the mockery and defamation of Muhammad. I would invoke my aphorism above. There are things that one is legally entitled to say and do that one must not, morally speaking, say or do.

Example. There is no law against private drunkenness, nor should there be; but it is immoral to get drunk to the point of damaging the body. The same goes for gluttonous eating. Closer in, we cannot and ought not have laws regulating all the inter-personal exchanges in which people are likely to mock, insult, and generally show a lack of respect for one another. And yet it is in general surely wrong to treat people with a lack of respect even if the lack of respect remains on the verbal plane. If you don't accept these examples, provide your own. If you say that there are no examples, then you are morally and probably also intellectually obtuse and not in a position to profit from a discussion like this.

So if the Muslim and Christian reactions to mockery and defamation were both physically nonviolent, then, invoking my aphorism above, I would condemn the activities of Geller and Co. at Garland, Texas, and relevantly similar activities. But of course the reactions are not the same! Muslims are absurdly sensitive about their prophet and react in unspeakably barbaric ways to slights, real and imagined. Every Muslim? Of course not. (Don't be stupid.)

So I say we ought to defend Pamela Geller and her group.

My reason, again, is not that that I consider it morally acceptable to mock religious figures. After all, I condemned the Charlie Hebdo outfit and took serious issue with the misguided folk who marched around with Je Suis Charlie signs. Perpetually adolescent porno-punks should not be celebrated, but denounced. That the Islamo-head-chopper-offers are morally much worse than the porno-punks who make an idol of the free expression of their morally and intellectually vacuous narcissistic selves does not justify the celebration of the latter.

The reason to defend Geller is because, in the present circumstances in which militant Muslims and their leftist enablers attack the the values of the West — which are not just Western values, but universal values – including such values as free expression and toleration, the deadly threat from the Islamist barbarians justifies our taking extreme measure in defense of values whose implementation will prove beneficial for everyone, including Muslims and their benighted leftist fellow-travellers.

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1. If you understand the English language, then you understand that 'Muslim savages' does not imply that all Muslims are savages any more than 'rude New Yorker' implies that all New Yorkers are rude.