Politics – Page 26 – Maverick Philosopher

Obama the Hollow

Conservatives knew he was an empty suit from the git-go. Many lefties now admit as much. Does it follow that many leftists are raaacists?

Warning to ‘Liberals’

There is a line such that if you cross it you will have hell to pay. A lot of people think like Kurt Schlichter:

I know it’s theoretically wrong for a Republican candidate to smack around an annoying liberal journalist, but that still doesn’t mean that I care. Our ability to care is a finite resource, and, in the vast scheme of things, millions of us have chosen to devote exactly none of it toward caring enough to engage in fussy self-flagellation because of what happened to Slappy La Brokenshades.

Sorry, not sorry.

And that’s not a good thing, not by any measure, but it is a real thing. Liberals have chosen to coarsen our culture. Their validation and encouragement of raw hate, their flouting of laws (Hi leakers! Hi Hillary!) and their utter refusal to accept democratic outcomes they disapprove of have consequences. What is itself so surprising is how liberals and their media rentboyz are so surprised to find that we normals are beginning to feel about them the way they feel about us – and that we’re starting to act on it. If you hate us, guess what?

We’re going to start hating you right back.

Why are the Never-Trumpers Still Anti-Trump?

Dennis Prager answers the question to my satisfaction. Here is the main part of his answer:

The first and, by far, the greatest reason is this: They do not believe that America is engaged in a civil war, with the survival of America as we know it at stake.

While they strongly differ with the left, they do not regard the left-right battle as an existential battle for preserving our nation. On the other hand, I, and other conservative Trump supporters, do.

That is why, after vigorously opposing Trump's candidacy during the Republican primaries, I vigorously supported him once he won the nomination. I believed then, as I do now, that America was doomed if a Democrat had been elected president. With the Supreme Court and hundreds of additional federal judgeships in the balance; with the Democrats' relentless push toward European-style socialism — completely undoing the unique American value of limited government; the misuse of the government to suppress conservative speech; the continuing degradation of our universities and high schools; the weakening of the American military; and so much more, America, as envisioned by the Founders, would have been lost, perhaps irreversibly. The "fundamental transformation" that candidate Barack Obama promised in 2008 would have been completed by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

To my amazement, no anti-Trump conservative writer sees it that way. They all thought during the election, and still think, that while it would not have been a good thing if Hillary Clinton had won, it wouldn't have been a catastrophe either.

That's it, in a nutshell. Many conservatives, including me, believe that it would have been close to over for America as America if the Republican candidate, who happened to be a flawed man named Donald Trump, had not won. Moreover, I am certain that only Donald Trump would have defeated Hillary Clinton.

In other words, I believe that Donald Trump may have saved the country. And that, in my book, covers a lot of sins — foolish tweets, included.

Read it all.

I too vigorously opposed Trump's nomination. But when he got the nod, I had the good sense to support him. It boggled my mind that supposed conservatives at least as intelligent as me would support Hillary either by voting for her or by refusing to vote for Trump. What were they thinking? Prager's analysis is the best I have seen so far.

And 'surely' Prager is right that no one else could have defeated Hillary. A Ted Cruz or a Marco Rubio would have been a re-play of Romney against Obama: too many conservatives would have stayed home.

Counterfactual conditionals are fascinating. I wish I understood them. But there is much that your humble correspondent does not understand.

'Had Cruz been the Republication nominee in 2016, then Hillary would have won the presidential election.'

How do I know that that is true? Logically prior question: what makes it true if it is true? And logicaly prior to that: do all or some truths need truthmakers?

And yet I am confident that the counterfactual in question is not only true, but more reasonably believed than its negation.

Who Will Stand Up for Civil Liberties?

Alan Dershowitz.

I won't quote from his commentary; I have already discussed this matter in The Stalinization of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

That there are still a few influential people such as Dershowitz with the civil courage to speak out supplies a slim basis for hope in the midst of the current madness.

It’s Enough that He’s not Hillary

So spake Schlichter.

The Stalinization of Trump Derangement Syndrome: “Show Me the Man, and I’ll Find You the Crime”

From a Cato Policy Report:

. . . Alan Dershowitz discusses his time litigating cases in the old Soviet Union. He was always taken by the fact that they could prosecute anybody they wanted because some of the statutes were so vague. Dershowitz points out that this was a technique developed by Beria, the infamous sidekick of Stalin, who said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” That really is something that has survived the Soviet Union and has arrived in the good old USA. “Show me the man,” says any federal prosecutor, “and I can show you the crime.” This is not an exaggeration.

And now Donald J. Trump, the legally elected president of the United States, is the man. To prosecute someone for a crime, some crime has to be alleged. But in this case what is the crime? Alan Dershowitz raises the question and answers it: there is no crime.

There is no evidence that Trump or his team colluded with the Kremlin to swing the election in Trump's favor. But even if there were, such collusion would be at worst political wrong doing, not a crime. This is not my opinion but the opinion of a distinguished Harvard law professor who is not a Trump supporter. As Dershowitz told Tucker Carlson last night, "I voted for Hillary Clinton very proudly."

Around 3:10 Dershowitz speaks of "hacking the DNA" several times. He means: hacking the DNC, the Democrat National Committee. Carlson failed to catch the mistake.

I now want to make a point that Dershowitz did not make last night, namely, that phrases like 'hacking the election' have no definite meaning. You can literally hack into John Podesta's e-mail account, but you can't literally hack an election. (It has been claimed that the password he employed was 'password.' Could Podesta be that stupid or careless? I am skeptical.) Of course, you could use 'hack an election' to mean 'influence an election,' but then you will have changed the subject. Almost all of us, from low-level bloggers to the most august pundits, were trying to 'hack the election' in the sense of 'influence the election.'

What we have here with the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller is not an inquiry into whether a crime has been committed, but a witch hunt: a search for a nonexistent crime to pin on a much-hated man.

But didn't Trump obstruct justice by firing Comey? Is that not what is maintained by such powerful intellects as Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi? Of course not, as Dershowitz points out at 3:38 ff. Trump's firing of Comey was well within the president's constitutional rights. "Under the unitary theory of the executive, the president has the right to direct the justice department." I would add that the president fired Comey for good reason.

No doubt the 'optics' were bad: the firing looked self-serving. So the haters pounced suggesting that the only reason Trump fired Comey was because Comey was about to expose criminal acts by Trump. But that is just nonsense. Again: which criminal acts?

Even if Trump was sick of Comey and wanted him out for personal motives, he had solid impersonal legal reasons for firing him. They were set forth in the Rosenstein memorandum.

The Trump haters appear to be committing a version of the genetic fallacy. The psychological motivation of a claim or action is irrelevant to the question of the truth of the claim or the justifiability of the action. Had Hillary or Bernie or Jill or Jeb! been president, each would have been justified in firing Comey. Again, this is because of the availability of solid impersonal legal reasons for his firing. And you can bet all of Hillary's ugly pant-suits that she would have fired him had she won as she was 'supposed to.'

Political ‘Circularity’

Democrats know how to circle the wagons, stand together, and refrain from attacking their own. Republicans seem to prefer the circular firing squad. And the Libertarians? Theirs is the self-indulgent circle jerk of those who will never have power.

Two More Solid Conservative Trump Admin Accomplishments

With all the fake news and journalistic malpractice, there is real news that is going unreported and under-reported. Below, a couple of under-reported recent items that will gladden conservatives while eliciting howls of rage from the nattering knuckleheads of the Left.

A correspondent of mine thinks that Trump has done only one conservative thing: nominated and presided over the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Not so. He has done a number of conservative things. For example, his courageous affirmation of the rule of law anent illegal immigration has reduced it by some 60-70%. And that tough talk cost nothing. Good deal, eh? I am put in mind of Grandmaster Nimzowitsch: "The threat is often stronger than the execution." As for the execution of the Great Wall of Trump, give it time. The obstructionist Dems need to be subdued first.

The two items mentioned below are only the latest of the Orange Man's conservative accomplishments.

John Fund:

Last Thursday, President Trump announced the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate voter irregularities and fraud as well as charges of voter suppression in America.

WaPo:

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt decided to replace half of the members on one of its key scientific review boards, while Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is “reviewing the charter and charge” of more than 200 advisory boards, committees and other entities both within and outside his department.

For my views on voter ID see here.

Here is a little irony for you. There is voter fraud, and 'the dead' are prime offenders. And everybody except for a handful of troglodytes has photo ID. But crapweasel Dems deny these obvious truths. And yet they call us denialists for merely being skeptical about the claim that anthropogenic global warming is such a threat to humanity as to trump [I love it!] all others and to demand a radical re-organization of the nation's economy.

Why Positive ID at the Polling Places?

Angelo Codevilla, The Cold Civil War:

Today, states and cities ruled by the Left are seizing disproportionate influence in national politics by counting the votes of non-citizens. California issued drivers’ licenses—de facto voter registration—to a million illegals. Countless localities, such as New York City, Detroit, and Florida’s Broward County, do similar things. A few million votes here and there add up to a wall protecting today’s ruling class as it imposes itself on the rest of the country. Because this fraud so threatens the body politic’s integrity, a federal law requiring positive proof of citizenship for voting in federal elections is a sine qua non of continued national cohesion.

Why Hillary Lost

Brilliant analysis by Victor Davis Hanson. A rasty tasty morsel (O felix erratum!):

Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash is underappreciated for its effect on the campaign. Through painstaking research, it tied together all the strands of Clinton nefariousness: the Clinton Foundation as an excuse to hire political flunkies and provide free jet travel; the quid pro quo State Department nods to those who hired Bill Clinton to speak; and corruption under Hillary Clinton, from cellphone concessions in Haiti to North American uranium sales to Russian interests.

Add to the Clinton sleaze Hillary’s unsecured server and communications of classified material, the creepy New York and Washington careerists who turned up in the Podesta archives, and the political rigging that warped the conduct of the Democratic National Committee.

The result was that Hillary could no longer play the role of the “good” Clinton who “put up” with her husband’s “good ole boy” sleaze. Her new image was that of an equal partner in crime — or perhaps even a godmother who used the capo Bill as muscle. In comparison, Trump steaks, Trump University, Trump taxes, and Trump ties were old-fashioned American hucksterism, but with one important difference: Trump’s excesses were a private person’s; Clinton’s were those of a public servant.

Should a special prosecutor be appointed? By all means! To investigate Hillary.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc?

"Donald Trump is the first president in history whose campaign has come under F. B. I.-initiated investigation for collusion with a hostile foreign power. And the person heading that investigation, the F. B. I. director, has been fired." (Timothy Egan, NYT Op-Ed, 11 May 2017)

It might help if you read Rosenstein's Comey memorandum and related documents here. But if you are a lefty, it probably won't.

Will the Second Civil War Turn Violent?

It may well if the authorities do not cease their abdication.

When Politics Becomes Like Philosophy

In philosophy everything is up for grabs. Our politics are becoming like this. There is less and less on which we agree. We can't even agree that nations need enforceable and enforced borders!

Widespread and deep-going lack of consensus in philosophy casts serious doubt on the cognitivity of the discipline, but is otherwise not that big of a deal as long as the controversies of the cognoscenti are confined to the ivory towers. Academic controversies rarely spill into the streets. No one literally gets up in arms over the correct analysis of counterfactual conditionals.

But widespread and deep-going lack of consensus among the citizens of a country can lead to civil war. The USA is now in a state of cold civil war; if it heats up it won't be pretty.

The denigrators of philosophy typically dismiss it as so much hot air. What they don't realize is that many if not most of the hot-button issues that exercise them are philosophical at bottom. To see what I mean, consider a few issues that divide Left and Right:

For the Left, man is basically good; for the Right, he is not. The answer you give presupposes an answer to question number four on Kant's list: What can I know? What ought I do? What may I hope for? What is man?
For the Left, (material) equality trumps liberty; for the Right it is the other way around. This is obviously a central question in political philosophy.
For the Left, the differences between the sexes are socially constructed and therefore malleable; for the Right, socially constructed gender roles are secondary to biological and perhaps even metaphysical differences between males and females that cannot be socially engineered.
For the Left, abortion is a woman's reproductive right; for the Right, the human fetus, at least in the later stages of its development, is a biological individual with its own right to life.
For the Left, the purpose of art is to "challenge the status quo and bourgeois sensibilities"; for the Right, "to produce works of beauty and profundity to elevate the individual and society." (I quote from Dennis Prager.) Questions about the nature and purpose of art belong in aesthetics.

These are very deep philosophical disagreements. Time was, when most of us didn't disagree about them or even raise them as serious questions. But now these philosophical disputes are political disputes. In this sense our politics have become like philosophy.

Interesting times up ahead!