Politics – Page 27 – Maverick Philosopher

Word of the Day: ‘Delope’

Delope (French for "throwing away") is the practice of throwing away one's first fire in a pistol duel, in an attempt to abort the conflict.

Some days I half-seriously think that dueling ought to be brought back. Some liberal-left scumbag slanders you, you challenge him to a duel, and then there is one less liberal-left scumbag in the world. That would be a fine 'upshot,' no?

(Interesting side-question: should it be one fewer liberal-left scumbag? But 'one less' sounds fine to my highly sensitive ear.)

Schopenhauer undermines the philosophical foundations of dueling in the section on honor in the fourth chapter of his The Wisdom of Life, entitled "Position, or A Man's Place in the Estimation of Others." Schopenhauer is among the most penetrating of the commentators on the human predicament. No one can consider himself educated who has not read him. He writes beautifully, drawing on vast erudition.

Where did I find 'delope'? In a piece by Roger Kimball entitled Trump Critics Exude Desperate Political Nihilism. It ends thusly:

In Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein warned that “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it.” There is a kindred sort of madness about the anti-Trump stalwarts. They are held captive by a picture. Reality had to be a certain way. Trump had to be a certain way: a sort of repository of everything small, and mean, and malevolent.

His unforgivable tort was to act normally, conventionally. Sure there were the tweets—they were something the Left could love to hate—but in a larger sense his behavior has been. . . presidential. Issuing executive orders, nominating judges and justices, encouraging legislation to further the agenda he had outlined on the hustings, generally doing things to keep the promises he had made. Trump’s opponents keep telling us how “angry” his supporters are. But their hysterical behavior reminds me of nothing so much as the famous duel between Settembrini, the suave humanist, and Naphta, the Jesuit radical, in Thomas Mann’s great novel The Magic Mountain. When Settembrini delopes, Naphta screams “You coward” and shoots himself in the head. I sometimes think some of our more extreme anti-Trump crusaders are only a few adjectives away from that unfortunate eventuality.

Memo to Hillary

Shut up and take a hike!

Nullification Crisis

How long can we last? Not long without some serious political cleansing of our institutions of the leftist scum that years of conservative inaction have allowed to accumulate.

Myron Magnet at City Journal:

Wait: let me get this straight. It’s legally binding for two underlings in the civil rights divisions of the Departments of Education and Justice to send out a “Dear Colleague” letter declaring that, as these bureaucrats interpret Title IX of Congress’s Education Amendments of 1972, colleges and universities can’t get any federal funding if they don’t make special accommodations for transgendered students, however defined; but it is not legal for the president of the United States, pursuant to the Constitution’s injunction that he ensure that the laws “be faithfully executed,” to deny some federal funding to cities that declare themselves “sanctuaries” from federal immigration laws, and that accordingly forbid their officials from cooperating with federal authorities in implementing them, as Congress has demanded?

Chucky Schumer’s First 117 Days

Brilliant!

Who is to Trump what Goldwater was to Reagan?

Answer here.

Two Weeks of Great Clarity

Dennis Prager. Excerpts:

1) When America leads, the world is better. [. . .]

2) The terrible presidency of Barack Obama is beginning to be acknowledged.

Following President Trump's order to attack Syria about 63 hours after the Syrian regime seemingly used chemical weapons, even many in the mainstream media couldn't help but contrast his prompt response with Obama's nonresponse to Assad's use of chemical weapons in 2013. [. . .]

Likewise, Obama's do-nothing policies vis-a-vis North Korea are being contrasted with Trump's warnings to leader Kim Jung Un about further testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pressure on China's leaders to rein in the North Korean regime.

These contrasts are important for a number of reasons, not the least of which being there is now hope that Obama's star will dim as time goes on.

This will come as somewhat of a surprise to those on the left, but many of us who are not on the left believe that Obama did more damage to America than any previous president — economically, militarily and socially.

Regarding the social damage, as the first black president in American history, he could have been an unprecedented force for racial healing but instead left America more racially divided than any modern president. In his repeated citing of Ferguson, for example, he helped spread the lie that a racist white Missouri police officer had killed an innocent black teenager without reason (other than racial bias).

He deceived the American people (the "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor" assertion and more) in order to pass Obamacare, one of the largest government-expanding programs in American history. He used presidential power in an unprecedentedly authoritarian manner. He showed far more understanding of the Iranian theocracy than of the Israeli democracy. His Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice were politicized in ways reminiscent of corrupt Third World regimes. And he left America fighting a (thus far nonviolent) second Civil War.

3) The interminably repeated left-wing lie that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are in cahoots has exploded. [. . .]

4) Another charge made over and over by the left — the mainstream media, academia and the Democratic Party — that the Trump election had unleashed an unprecedented amount of anti-Semitism was proven to be yet another left-wing hysteria based on a left-wing lie. [. . .]

Nicholas Kristof on the Origin of Trump Derangement Syndrome

In the piss-poor pages of the Rag of Record's op-ed section, for today's date, I found this: ". . .Trump's craziness is proving infectious, making Democrats crazy with rage that actually impedes a progressive agenda."

It is true that the Dems are crazy with rage and that this impedes their agenda. But of course such impedance is a good thing, not to mention the pleasures of Schadenfreude as we watch our opponents melt down.

But Kristof is wrong about the origin of TDS. It does not derive from the Orange Man's alleged craziness, but oozes up from the mephitic recesses of leftists' psyche.

Their bien-pensant bigotry, smug assurance of moral superiority, and Hillarian sense of entitlement received a stinging rebuke on November 8th, and they still haven't gotten over it.

If you are wondering why I didn't link to Kristoff's piece, it is because the NYT webpages are now set up to disallow copying and pasting. No copy and paste? Then no hyperlink. Yes, I know there is a copy-and-paste work-around, but I'm not about to jump through those hoops.

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The better is the enemy of the good." Supposedly from the earlier Italian Il meglio è nemico del bene, attested since 1603. (Wikipedia) The thought is perhaps better captured by "The best is the enemy of the good."

In an imperfect world it is folly to predicate action upon perfection. Will you hold out for the perfect spouse? Then you will remain alone. And if you yourself are less than perfect, how can you demand perfection in others?

Politics is a practical business: it is about the gaining and maintaining of power for the purpose of implementing programs and policies that one believes to be beneficial, and for opposing those whose policies one believes to be deleterious. It's about winning, not talking. It's not about ideological purity or having the supposedly best ideas; it's about gaining the power to implement good ideas, ideas that are implementable in the current configuration of suboptimal circumstances. The practical politician understands that quite often Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, the better/best is the enemy of the good.

The Never Trumpers and the conservative opponents of the American Health Care Act displayed a failure to understand this important principle of practical politics.

Dennis Prager in his latest column explains why.

Practical politics as opposed to what? As opposed to the effete and epicene political salon talk of Bill Kristol and George Will. Erudite and entertaining but useless in stopping the leftist-Islamist juggernaut.

The main external threat to civilization? Radical Islam. The main internal threat? Leftism. That the latter is in cahoots with the former makes for a nasty synergy. Prager:

Conservatives who voted for Trump believed that defeating the Left is the overriding moral good of our time. We are certain that the Left (not the traditional liberal) is destroying Western Civilization, including, obviously, the United States. The external enemy of Western Civilization are the Islamists (the tens or perhaps hundreds of million of Muslims who wish to see the world governed by Sharia), and the internal enemy of the West is the left. What the left has done to the universities and to Western culture at the universities is a perfect example.

Civil Courage

Politics and Ridicule in a Post-Consensus Age

The Left's Hatred of Conservative Talk Radio

Rachel Dolezal, the Black White Woman

How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

Why the Left Will Not Admit the Threat of Radical Islam (Revised and Expanded)

Is Leftism a Religion?

Meme Shift: From Trump-as-Hitler to Trump-as-Incompetent

A salutary saltus. Good for the country. The muse is with me this morning. 'Salutary' fits nicely with the downing of the deeply-flawed health care bill.

But my purpose is not to preen and plume but to self-effacingly send you over to Scott Adams' place where you will find yet another installment of highly original analysis of the events of the day.

(Yes, I split the infinitive, deliberately, for stylistic purposes.)

What Explains The Left’s Anti-Trump Hysteria?

El Rushbo explains. (I believe this is the first time I have linked to Limbaugh in 13 years of blogging.)

Jerry Coyne Talks Sense for a Change!

Here:

It’s time that angry liberals stop calling every Republican a misogynist, a Nazi, or a white supremacist. On left-wing websites everywhere, these terms are being dispensed like gumballs from a machine. If we really want to take back the country, we have to deal with issues. Name-calling may make us feel good, but it’s not going to change the country. Buckling down and working for your ideas may not succeed, either, for the three branches of government are all moving rightward. But political action has a better chance of succeeding than does slander.

My opinion of Coyne has gone up a notch. But it remains relatively low. Here are my Coyne entries.

Another Trump Accomplishment: Progs Now Taking Federalism Seriously

Trump is doing well despite obstructionist Dems, deep-state saboteurs, and the nay-saying nimrods of Never Trumpism. The stock market is way up, illegal immigration is way down, and a solid conservative, Neil Gorsuch, is a SCOTUS shoo in.

Add to the list an incitement of interest among lefties in federalism.

Calexit, Bluexit and other secessionisms are just silly and won't happen. United we stand; divided we fall. We can keep the Union together if we practice some enlightened segregation. I have been arguing for federalism for years. We need the political equivalent of divorce. Members of a divorced couple can remain on amicable terms if they severely restrict their contact to what is patently in their common interest, such as the care of children. You get the analogy. It limps, but no analogy is perfect. A perfect analogy is an identity and you can't (fruitfully) compare a thing to itself.

I now hand off to William McGurn:

For both historical and philosophical reasons, federalism runs counter to the progressive instinct. Those on the left like government, and their preferred legislature is the Supreme Court. On top of this, the South’s invocation of states’ rights to resist the civil rights movement has tainted the phrase, which many regard as code for “Jim Crow.”

But Mr. Trump’s election may be occasioning a welcome rethink, especially among Democrats who understand they have lost far more than the White House. For all the attention to Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote victory, Democratic influence over state legislatures is now reduced to Civil War levels. In this environment, some progressives appreciate that they might have more to gain from a federalism that empowers minorities—sexual, racial, political, whatever—in locales where their views dominate.

One concern is whether lefties can learn to control their totalitarian instinct. I am not particularly sanguine about that. So keep your powder dry.

Zuhdi Jasser

Saturday morning I heard for the third time Dr. Jasser speak. One of the questions I put to him was: "How many American mosques foment political or Sharia-based Islam?" He praised the precision and relevance of my question, preferring it to the question, "How many American mosques foment terrorism?" Jasser's answer to my question was 80%. To which my response was, "And there you have the problem." Jasser agreed.

I was pleased to hear that Jasser supports Trump (not without reservations) and opposes the Left's mendacious phrase "Muslim ban" in connection with Trump's recent executive orders anent a moratorium on immigration from six Muslim countries. (Note to lefties: moratoria are by definition temporary.) He thinks Saudi Arabia and others should have been on the list.

I was also pleased to hear Jasser oppose the Left's identity politics. He mentioned Black Lives Matter in this connection.

The good doctor is for plain talk as against the obfuscatory rhetoric of Obama and Hillary: not 'violent extremism' but 'violent Islamism.' He described the Egyptian Brotherhood as a terror group. If I heard right, 20% of Syrian refugees are sympathetic to ISIS.

For much more about Dr. Jasser, see my tribute to him from last year, Zuhdi Jasser, Profile in Civil Courage.

As for civil courage, I have been praised for my 'guts' in saying some of the things I say on this weblog. But my civil courage is as nothing compared to his.

Sore Losers

Trump Stacks Up Well Against His Presidential Predecessors

Douglas MacKinnon makes the case. After a stinging assessment of George W. Bush, MacKinnon has this to say about Obama:

Next, the American people got a president who was inserted in the protective and unquestioning bubble of political correctness at about twenty years of age, who kept his grades, his transcripts, his SAT scores, his IQ and much of his early life a state secret, and who had virtually no real-world work experience. At least none that was not handed to him on a silver platter.

Purely because of his lack of real-world experience, coupled with his socialist views on life, he proceeded to decimate our health care system, force millions of Americans into poverty and onto food stamps, create more debt than the combined debt of every president before him, weaken our military to the breaking point, and cause our allies to no longer trust us. All while playing over 300 rounds of golf and squeezing in more vacation time than most Americans will take in a lifetime.

Fortunately for this president who was schooled by some truly reprehensible socialists, Marxists and haters, he and his wife begin their new lives as a former president and former first lady with a book deal valued somewhere between $30 million to $60 million.

As someone who spouts socialism and the redistribution of wealth, maybe he can be convinced to give most of those tens of millions of dollars to the families of the approximately 4,000 murder victims (about equal to U.S. losses in Iraq and more than U.S. losses in Afghanistan) in his hometown of Chicago. Surely he won't forget that he once lectured a hardworking plumber that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."