Politics – Page 28 – Maverick Philosopher

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."

David Horowitz on the Shadow Government . . .

. . . and the obstructionist Democrat crapweasels out to subvert the duly elected president. As Horowitz points out, the destructive Dems call themselves the Resistance as part of their narrative according to which Trump = Hitler. A short video with my favorite gun-totin' lesbian, Tammy Bruce.

Some Horowitz entries of mine.

Trump Derangement Syndrome: The Kristol Variation

Julie Kelly explains why she decided to break up with Bill Kristol.

Part of my explanation of the meltdown of Kristol, George Will, John McCain and other nattering nabobs of Never-Trumpism is that the Orange Man is an uncouth interloper who crashed their party and consigned them and theirs to irrelevance.

"The era of empty talk is over," Trump announced in his CPAC speech. And with it the era of Kristol and Co. These yap-and-scribble do nothing boys in their bow ties don't like it; hence their steaming and spluttering.

In his many years in office what has Arizona Senator John McCain done to secure the southern border? Praise him for his military valor in the past. What we need, however, is civil courage in the present. Too much go along to get along, senator.

Part of the explanation for the effete establishment conservatives' hatred of Trump has to do with his personal style and lack of 'class.' He's not one of them. As if 'class' trumps sound conservative actions. Hanson:

Even conservatives sometimes seem more bothered by Trump’s raw uncouthness in service to a conservative agenda than they were by Obama’s sautéed orneriness in advancing progressive hope and change. Years of the Cairo Speech, the apology tours, the Iran deal, the Iraq pullout, Obamacare, record debt and low growth — editorialized by chronic attacks on Fox News, along with “you didn’t build that,” “punish our enemies,” and “I won” putdowns from Obama — never prompted calls for the 25th Amendment like those in some anti-Trump tweets. Is the difference predicated on class, accent, education, tone, appearance, tastes, comportment, or the idea that a shared Beltway culture trumps diverse politics?

[. . .]

The final irony? The supposedly narcissistic and self-absorbed Trump ran a campaign that addressed in undeniably sincere fashion the dilemmas of a lost hinterland. And he did so after supposedly more moral Republicans had all but written off the rubes as either politically irrelevant or beyond the hope of salvation in a globalized world. How a brutal Manhattan developer, who thrived on self-centered controversy and even scandal, proved singularly empathetic to millions of the forgotten is apparently still not fully understood.

Some will say that the Lord works in mysterious ways. Of course, Trump might still blow it bigly. (That is indeed a recognized word.) We shall see.

By the way, Obama got away with his "sautéed orneriness" [brilliant phrase, Victor!] because of the black privilege black politicians enjoy and exploit to the hilt: the race card is used to deflect any and all criticisms as originating from anti-black animus alone. That is why no black pol ever leaves home without it. The race card, I mean.

Trump: Traitor and Russian Plant or Ultranationalist Fascist?

Might this be a false alternative?

The Trump haters in their furious incoherence oscillate between calling him

. . . an anti-American traitor and Russian plant to calling him a dangerous, fascistic ultranationalist whose relentless hawkishness is bringing us closer to World War Three. Already there are some days when they mount both attacks at the same time: the hawkish traitor whose Nazi style America First ideology leads him to lick Putin’s boots. The media wants to cast Trump as both Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler; but you can’t give the Sudetenland to yourself.

Brilliant.

The Meaning of Trump

Analysis so good that if I start quoting it I'll end up quoting most of it. You knuckleheaded NeverTrumpers need to read this.

Why We Like Trump Despite His Flaws

We like him because he understands that politics is not a gentlemanly debate but war, and because he is uniquely positioned to punch back hard against vicious leftists who obviously see politics as war. I can't say it any better than the great David Horowitz:

The movement galvanized by Trump can stop the progressive juggernaut and change the American future, but only if it emulates the strategy of his campaign: Be on offense; take no prisoners; stay on the attack. To stop the Democrats and their societal transformation, Republicans must adhere to a strategy that begins with a punch in the mouth. That punch must pack an emotional wallop large enough to throw them off balance and neutralize their assaults. It must be framed as a moral indictment that stigmatizes them in the way their attacks stigmatize Republicans. It must expose them for their hypocrisy. It must hold them accountable for the divisions they sow and the suffering they cause.

Earlier excerpts from the same piece:

Continue reading “Why We Like Trump Despite His Flaws”

If He’s Not Your President . . .

. . . how can you impeach him? (HT: Chris Cathcart)

Is Donald Trump Your President?

The graphic infra may help clear things up for those of you lefties who are not permanently lost to TDS. I will add that if Trump is not your president, then you are not my fellow citizen. You are a subversive element, and due no respect, if you do not accept our system of government and the procedurally correct outcome of an election.

See Prager's Note to the Left: Four Years Ago, Conservatives Were Just as Depressed:

Many of us believed that President Obama was doing great damage to America. Now we are convinced that he did more damage to America domestically, to America’s position the world and to the world at large than any other two-term president. He left office with racial tensions — many of which he exacerbated — greater than at any time since the civil rights era half a century ago. He left the world’s worst regimes — Iran, China, Russia, North Korea and radical Islamist terror groups — stronger and more aggressive than before he became president. Economic growth never rose above 3 percent, a first for a two-term president. He nearly doubled the national debt and had little to nothing to show for it. Obamacare hurt more people financially than it helped medically, including physicians. More people than ever are on government aid. The list is far longer than this.