Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Politics

  • Platform Shrinkage

    The Democrat platform has shrunk to one plank: hate Trump and oppose him on everything, no matter what. And the drunken Dems are walking that plank.  Never-Trumpers feared that Trump would destroy the Republican Party. But it is the Democrats he is destroying by driving them to adopt ever more extreme positions. Matthew Continetti: Trump's…

  • Politics and Philosophy

    Politics is a practical game. One has to win to be effective. Merely to have the better set of ideas and policies is to fail. Philosophy, however, is not about winning. It is about ultimate understanding, spiritual self-transformation, and wisdom. A politics fully informed by insight and understanding would be ideal if it were not impossible.…

  • Political Circularity

    The Democrats, under party discipline, circle the wagons. The Republicans, with their obstructionist 'mavericks,' form a circular firing squad. The Libertarians, bent on irrelevance, engage in a 'circle jerk.'

  • McCain the ‘Maverick’

    The Democrat leadership knows how to enforce party discipline, and their members  toe the line and vote as a bloc. The Republicans, however, include mavericks, the most prominent of them being Senator John McCain of Arizona: It’s become a cliché to label McCain a “maverick” for his dramatic, and increasingly frequent, breaks with the Republican…

  • The Populist Surge in Italy and Elsewhere

    Immigration, both legal and illegal, is perhaps the central issue of our time. Robert W. Merry: And, of all the issues roiling Europe these days, none generates more political force and energy than the immigration crisis—representing a direct threat to the very definition of the West as well as its cultural coherence and health. The…

  • The Childish Reactivity of the Trumpianly Deranged

    Here: No matter what Trump does, the Democratic reaction is the same: Outrage. When Democrats can't even praise Trump unreservedly for bringing American hostages home or show up when he fulfills a plank of the Democratic Party platform by moving our embassy to Jerusalem, it further convinces millions of Americans who abandoned the Democratic Party…

  • Maxine Meltdown

    The meltdown begins at 2:55.  And you are still a Democrat?

  • The Trump Paradox and Phenomenon

    Solid analysis as usual from my man Hanson: [Conrad] Black instinctively captures the essence of the Trump paradox: How did someone supposedly so crude, so mercantile, and so insensitive display a sensitivity to the forgotten people that was lost both on his Republican competitors and Hillary Clinton? Certainly, no one on stage at any of…

  • The Wipeout of Obama’s Legacy

    He who lives by the Executive Order shall die by the Executive Order. The witticism is mine. Fred Barnes provides the documentation. And a friendly tip of the hat to old blogger buddy Bill Keezer for keeping me well-supplied with cartoons and memes. I met old Bill back in the early days of the blogosphere,…

  • A Political Counterfactual Conditional: Had Hillary Won . . .

    . . .  The U.S. embassy would have stayed in Tel Aviv. “Strategic patience” would likely still govern the North Korea dilemma. Fracking would be curtailed. The — rather than “our” — miners really would be put out of work. Coal certainly would not have been “beautiful.” The economy probably would be slogging along at…

  • Barbara Bush

    She taught her boys to be gentlemen, but apparently not how to fight. Now civility is a wonderful conservative virtue, but it is for the civil only. It doesn't work with thugs. If we are not willing to be uncivil in our response to our enemies, we will not be able to preserve a space…

  • Kurt Schlichter Lays into Never Trumpers

    Cum ira et studio. A take-off on a line from Tacitus, sine ira et studio, "without anger and partiality."  There is a place for righteous anger as there is for partiality and polemic. Schlichter's rant ends thusly: You’ve talked and talked and talked about principles, but as James Comey and Robert Mueller and your gal Felonia Milhous…

  • The Politicization of the FBI

    Joseph E. diGenova: Over the past year, facts have emerged that suggest there was a plot by high-ranking FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials in the Obama administration, acting under color of law, to exonerate Hillary Clinton of federal crimes and then, if she lost the election, to frame Donald Trump and his campaign…

  • The Ideology of Illegal Immigration

    An outstanding column by VDH. Excerpts: The entire vocabulary of illegal immigration has become Orwellian. Once descriptive nouns and adjectives such as “alien” and “illegal” have melted into “undocumented” and “immigrant” and then into just “migrant,” ostensibly to mask the reality of both legal status and the fact that migrants go in one direction —…

  • The Art of the Smear

    Here. "[Former CIA director John] Brennan admitted his charge that the Russians were blackmailing Trump was pure speculation. But that didn’t stop him or anyone else from spreading the smear."