Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Political Morality

  • Bloomberg Blames the Victim!

    Here: As the financial crisis first began to strangle American homeowners, Michael Bloomberg, then the mayor of New York, identified a scapegoat. Bloomberg didn’t blame the banks for handing out subprime mortgages; he blamed the consumers who’d applied for them. On an August 2007 broadcast of “The John Gambling Show” on WABC, Bloomberg first aired…

  • Are Fascist Antifa Thugs Blind to their Contradictory Behavior?

    A re-titled and redacted version of an entry originally posted 1 September 2017.  ……………………… Yes, says Jonathan Turley: At Berkeley and other universities, protesters have held up signs saying “F–k Free Speech” and have threatened to beat up anyone taking their pictures, including journalists. They seem blissfully ignorant of the contradiction in using fascistic tactics…

  • Why Did Trump Get the Religious Vote?

    A re-post from two years ago. Cognate question: Why do leftists keep asking the title question? …………………………… Why did Donald J. Trump receive the support of evangelicals and other religious conservatives? After all, no one would confuse Trump with a religious man.  Robert Tracinski's explanation strikes me as correct: The strength of the religious vote for Trump…

  • Subsidiarity as Bulwark against the Left’s Assault on Civil Society

    David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity: One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity…

  • Hitchens, Horowitz, Clinton, and Impeachment

    Christopher Hitchens died on this date in 2011. The synergistic effects of his excessive consumption of smoke and spirits did him in at the tender age of 62.  By comparison, David Horowitz is still going strong at 81 churning out books, manning the ramparts, and fighting the good fight. May he live to be 100!…

  • Third Parties: Discussion Societies in Political Drag

    A so-called 'third party' is any party in U. S. politics other than the Democrats and the Republicans.  There are many third parties. My thesis is that third parties are discussion societies in political drag.  Corollary to that is my claim that anyone who has anything to do with a third party thereby demonstrates ignorance…

  • On Civility and a Concession to Hillary

    Civility is a good old conservative virtue and I'm all for it.  But like toleration, civility has limits.  If you call me a racist because I argue against Obamacare, then not only do I have no reason to be civil in my response to you, I morally ought not be civil to you.  For by being…

  • Commentary on the Kavanaugh Contretemps

    Malcolm Pollack, A Roundup of Reaction from the Right. Most interesting to me is the following quotation from Pollack which embeds a quotation from Michael Anton on the "Gillibrand Standard" which well exposes the twisted  viciousness of the contemporary Democrat Party (the bolding is mine, read it if you don't have the attention span for…

  • A Powerful Condemnation of Feinstein and the Democrat Party

    Issued by Roger Kimball: As the spurious case against Brett Kavanaugh disintegrates, splinters, and re-forms into a cacophony of whiny, irrelevant expostulations, it is instructive to step back and survey the field upon which this battle took place. The ground is littered with dead and wounded ideals: civility, dead; basic decency, dead; the presumption of…

  • Dennis Prager: The Charges Against Kavanaugh Should be Ignored

    This piece by Dennis Prager is sure to outrage the Left.  Prager takes a step back and uncovers an assumption that almost everyone else is making. The assumption is that IF the young Kavanaugh had groped Dr. Ford in the manner she describes, THEN that would be good grounds for non-confirmation. But is the assumption…

  • Democrats as Tribal Termites

    Mendocino Joe writes, Wow, I cannot believe what I am seeing in our country these days.   I think your blog post about the Left hating because they need a bogey man after winning the civil rights battle is way too kind. I think we are seeing, in the Left these days, radical Evil from…

  • More on the Hate-Filled Left

    Jacques comments on yesterday's Shelby Steele entry: Shelby Steele is clearly right about the Left's need for hate objects (as a source of power) but I think he is wrong to say this is "a death rattle".  Or at least I'm skeptical.  We've already been through so many phases of this same dynamic, and it…

  • Why the Left is Consumed with Hate

    Shelby Steele offers a compelling explanation. In the '60s, the Left acquired its power and moral authority when it fought the good fight against racism and segregation and for civil rights.  Those battles were fought and they were won. But power is intoxicating and those who came into it in those years of ferment desired…

  • Kavanaugh is in Like Flynn

    And what little credibility the Dems had left is out like Stout. (G. F. Stout?) Here: Opponents of Kavanaugh lost the fight when they lost their marbles. His foes on the Senate Judiciary Committee and allied activists ensured that opponents to the nomination appear to be a pack of wild cranks.  [. . .] Not…

  • Norm Talk

    There is a lot of talk, and a slew of new books, about (democratic) norms these days and how President Trump is flouting them.  Your humble correspondent has speed-read two or three of them. This crisis-of-democracy genre wouldn't exist at all if the populist revolt hadn't put paid to Hillary's (mainly merely personal) ambitions. But…