Politics – Page 34 – Maverick Philosopher

Does Trump Incite Violence?

Yes, but only in the febrile 'mind' of an Hillarious liberal.

You have to realize that when Trump is 'off script,' he talks like a rude New York working man in a bar. He does this in part because it is his nature to be rude and vulgar, but also because he realizes that this helps him gin up his base.

Let me try to put his point in a more 'measured' way. His point was not that Hillary's bodyguards ought to be disarmed so that she could more easily be 'taken out.' His point is that if guns cause crime and have no legitimate uses, then why are her bodyguards armed to the teeth with the sorts of weapons that she would like to make it illegal for law-abiding citizens to possess and carry?

If guns are never the answer, why are they 'the answer' for government agents? If law-abiding citizens cannot be trusted with semi-automatic pistols and long guns, how is it that government agents can be trusted with them?

The graphic makes the point very well. Trump was not inciting violence. But if you say he was then you are slandering him and his supporters. Be careful, the Second Amendment types may 'come after you.' Politically.

UPDATE (9:25 AM). Here is what Trump said:

She [Hillary] goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before. I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. Right? Right? I think they should disarm immediately. What do you think? Yes? Yes. Yeah. Take their guns away. She doesn’t want guns. … Let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away, okay? It would be very dangerous.

Liberals are Nervous

From The New Yorker, 12 September 2016. By David Sipress. "I'm giving you something for Hillary's pneumonia."

So What is Alt-Right Anyway?

John Derbyshire gives the following answer (HT: Malcolm Pollack):

So what, in my opinion, makes the Alt-Right a distinct thing — not by any means a party, a faction, or a movement, but a collection of souls with something in common?

Here's my answer: We don't like flagrant nonsense in the discussion of human affairs. We don't like being lied to. We especially don't like being lied to by credentialed academics like Jerry Coyne.

The lies are so flagrant, so outrageously obvious, you'd have to laugh at them, if not for the fact that laughing at them is close to being a criminal offense. "There is no such thing as race!" What a preposterous thing to say! What a multiply preposterous thing for an academic in the human sciences to say. Yet look! — they say it!

As Ann Coulter has quipped: It's like saying "there are no such things as mountains." When, after all, is a mountain just a hill? Similarly with "there are no such things as colors," since, after all, no-one can tell you how many colors there are, or the precise wavelength at which turquoise is more blue-ish than green-ish. How many neighborhoods are there in New York City? Beats me; so are there no such things as neighborhoods? This is infantile.

Much more to the point, it's like saying "there are no such things as families." When do you stop being a member of my family? Fourth cousin? Ninth cousin by marriage? So are there no such things as families?

But of course there are such things as families. And that's all races are: big old extended families of mostly-common deep ancestry.

This acquiescence in obvious lies — even by academics, who should be the guardians of truth — is characteristic of totalitarian societies. The money quote here is from Tony Daniels, a/k/a "Theodore Dalrymple." Quote:

>>In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is … in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.<<

Tony himself, I should say, lines up with Goodwhites in the Cold Civil War, not with us Badwhites of the Alt-Right. I very seriously doubt he'd consider himself a member of the Alt-Right. His insight there, however, is very penetrating, and could be inscribed on an Alt-Right banner, if we ever get around to brandishing banners.

And so it is with the NYU Student Council ninnies and the Student Diversity Initiative bedwetters, not one of whom is fit to shine James Watson's shoes.

They don't want to shine his shoes. They don't want to persuade or convince him. They want to humiliate him. They, midgets and mites, want to humiliate a giant, one of the world's greatest living scientists. And the cringing administrators at New York University want to help them!

That's what the Alt-Right is about; that's what unites us; disgust with, and resistance to, these liars and weasels and commissars.

While I agree with everything Derbyshire says above, though not with everything he says, the above is useless as a definition of Alt-Right. Suppose I 'define' an airplane as a vehicle. This fails as a definition, not because it is false, but because it specifies only a necessary condition for a thing's being an airplane. Every airplane is a vehicle, but not every vehicle is an airplane. An adequate definition lays down individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the application of a concept. An adequate definition of 'airplane' must list those features that make airplanes different from other vehicles.

Similarly, an adequate definition of 'alternative Right' must list those features that make alt-rightists different from other sorts of conservatives. On Derb's definition, I count as alt-right, when I am no such thing.

I hate leftist liars and crapweasels. I have contempt for Jerry Coyne, or rather his attitudes and views. (See here.) I hold that the silencing of James Watson is an outrage and a betrayal of the values and purposes of the university. I find absurd the notion that race is a social construct. No doubt racial theories are social constructs, but the notion that race and racial differences are is preposterous. I agree with Dalrymple as quoted above. And I share Derb's "disgust with, and resistance to, these liars and weasels and commissars."

So I have some serious conservative 'cred' in the sense of both credentials and credibility, not to mention the civil courage to speak the truth as I sincerely see it under my real name publicly as I have been doing since 2004.

But none of these attitudes or commitments or virtues make me alt-right.

I am not exactly sure what 'alt-right' refers to, and apparently those who fly this flag don't either, as witness Derbyshire above, but I get the impression that the position includes some very specific theses that differentiate it from other types of conservatism. I hope to go into this in more detail later, but for now I'll mention the following: white tribalism, anti-semitism, rejection of classically liberal notions such as the value of toleration, rejection of the formal (as opposed to empirical) equality of persons and with it key elements in the documents of the American founding as well as in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and a rejection of the normative universality of truth and value.

Professional ‘Conservatives’ Worried Hillary Will Lose

Alt-rightists call them 'cuckservatives,' but I am no alt-rightist. (I don't believe the cure for a Commie is a Nazi.) So I use 'sneer' quotes.

Professional 'conservatives' are like a lot of professional 'philosophers': they cherish their cushy yap-and-scribble lifestyle whether or not it brings about any personal or social improvement. Wisdom? What's that? (Memo to self: write an entire entry on this.)

But for now, see here:

“I’ve heard a lot of conservatives voicing frustration, like, ‘How fucking hard is this, Hillary?’” said Ben Howe, a conservative ad-maker and an outspoken Trump detractor. “That’s the only reason I’m panicked these days … I’m losing faith in Hillary’s ability to win this easy-ass election.”

Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP consultant now working on Evan McMullin’s independent presidential campaign, said few of his #NeverTrump compatriots believe a case of pneumonia will sink Clinton’s candidacy. But her impulse to conceal the illness — and her campaign’s clumsy response once it was revealed — reinforced a core political weakness.

“There are a lot of Republicans on the ‘Never Trump’ side that are starting to feel very nervous,” Wilson said, “because no matter how minor the next thing is there’s a possibility [the Clinton campaign] is gonna screw it up by lying about something. They can’t help themselves. It’s genetic.”

The Bumpy Ride of Our Flight 93

Good commentary from Roger Kimball on the Flight 93 piece by Publius Decius Mus.

Kimball now has a more positive view of Trump:

As recently as a few weeks back, I was a lesser-of-two-evils, reluctant Trump supporter: classic Russian roulette vs. the loaded semi-automatic that is a Hillary Clinton victory.

But then Trump embarked on a series of high-profile speeches and rallies. I liked what he said about taxes and economic policy. I liked his list of possible SCOTUS nominees. I liked what he said about supporting the police and the plight of blacks in the inner cities. I liked what he said about combatting Islamic terrorism (what Barack Obama calls “workplace violence”). I even liked most of what he said in hisimmigration speech in Arizona. I thought it was courageous and “presidential” for him to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. I thought he did the right thing in going to lend moral, and even a bit of material, support to the victims of the floods in Louisiana. I was grateful when he released a video commemoratingthe canonization of Mother Teresa. I was happy to see him supporting school choice, standing up for religious freedom, and criticizing those who mock Christians and people of faith.

I know there will be some who object, “But how do you know he will do all things things.” The answer is, I don’t.

But I do know what Hillary would do: Obama on steroids. She’s a known-known. She would, as Publius warns, complete the “fundamental transformation” of this country into a third-world, politically correct socialist redoubt.

There is a fair amount of hysteria among NeverTrumpers about “The Flight 93 Election,” which I guess underscores just how potent its argument is. (The fact that Rush Limbaugh read it aloud on his radio show redoubled that potency.) As I say, I’ve come around to thinking that there are plenty of good reasons for someone of conservative principles to support Trump. I know, and have repeatedly rehearsed, the standard litany of criticisms about Trump. But they fade if not into insignificance then at least into near irrelevance in the face of his actual program (see above) and, most of all, in the face of the horror that is his opponent. I’ll give the last word to Publius: “The election of 2016 is a test . . . of whether there is anyvirtù left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.”

The great James Burnham once remarked that where there is no alternative there is no problem. Fortunately, we do have an alternative, and, my, we do have a problem. I was wrong when I predicted that Donald Trump would not be the candidate. I hope I will be proved wrong about my prediction that, were he the candidate, he would not win. The trends are promising, I think, but it would be foolish to deny that there are madmen in the cockpit or that many of the passengers are scared, apathetic, deluded, or just plain cowardly. We need a real-life Decius Mus who is willing to say “Let’s roll” and make a concerted charge. It may be the last chance we have.

Predicting What One Wants to Happen

Perhaps you have noticed this too. People will often predict what they want to happen, even when what they want to happen is far from a foregone conclusion. At the moment I am reading an article by David P. Goldman who asserts that Hillary is "road kill":

The presidential election was over the moment the word “deplorable” made its run out of Hillary Clinton’s unguarded mouth. As the whole world now knows, Clinton told a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender fundraiser Sept. 10, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”

What is the astute Goldman up to? He must know the election is not in the bag. A glance at the electoral college map should convince anyone of that. At the moment, Clinton has 209 electoral votes, Trump 154, with 175 toss ups.

My theory is that when intelligent people predict what they want to happen, when what they want to happen is far from a foregone conclusion, they are trying to influence the outcome. If more and more people think that Trump will win, then they will be inclined to support him. People like to be on the winning side. "You just want to be one the side that's winning," Dylan whined in Positively Fourth Street.

There are numerous examples of this phenomenon of predicting what one wants to happen.

A related phenomenon is often exhibited by my angelic wife. I'll ask her how likely it is that such-and-such a good thing will happen, and she will reply, "I hope so!" I will then point out that what I requested was her assessment of the probability of a desired future event, not a report on what she hopes.

'Do you think Socrates Jones will get tenure?"

"I hope so!"

Goldman's ending earns the coveted MavPhil nihil obstat:

He [Trump] built a new country club in Palm Beach two decades ago because the old ones excluded blacks and Jews. He’s no racist. He’s an obnoxious, vulgar salesman who plays politics like a reality show. I’ve made clear that I will vote for him, not because he was my choice in the Republican field (that was Sen. Cruz), but because I believe that rule of law is a precondition for a free society. If the Clintons get a free pass for influence-peddling on the multi-hundred-million-dollar scale and for covering up illegal use of private communications for government documents, the rule of law is a joke in the United States. Even if Trump were a worse president than Clinton–which is probably not the case–I would vote for him, on this ground alone.

My view exactly.

Hillary’s Chappaquiddick

You decide. (HT: Bill Keezer)

Hillary the Vacuous

In an outstanding NRO piece, William Voegeli has collected some choice specimens of Hillarious blather.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, really did say in an economic-policy speech this year, “I believe in an America always moving toward the future.”

This inanity is not a new problem. Consider the two most important speeches the president and the first lady gave in 1993. In his inaugural address, Bill Clinton said, “Each generation of Americans must define what it means to be an American.” Further, “the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.”

Less than three months later, in a speech ostensibly about health-care policy, Hillary Clinton told a bemused University of Texas audience that “we lack meaning in our individual lives and meaning collectively, we lack a sense that our lives are part of some greater effort, that we are connected to one another.” Her solution exceeded the responsibilities of a president’s spouse, but then it also exceeded the capacities of any public official, private citizen, or national institution: “Let us be willing to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the 20th century, moving into a new millennium.”

The earnest, incoherent moralism that characterized Clintonism at the outset remains its salient feature. In her recent acceptance speech, Hillary Clinton offered “the words of our Methodist faith” that she had learned as a girl: “Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can.”

It’s quite impossible to disagree with this credo, which is both its appeal and its fatal flaw. The hard questions, the moral and practical ones that matter, are about how to do good, not whether. The pious tautology that it’s good to do good but bad to do bad tells us nothing about choosing between goods when there are trade-offs or conflicts, weighing costs against benefits, comparing short-term attainments with long-term risks, or reckoning second-order effects. It’s useless, in other words, for grappling with every problem that makes our moral and political lives so hard.

Contrast this empty verbiage with the detailed policy proposals in Trump's Phoenix immigration speech.

The problem with Hillary, as with Obama, is that they are what I call stealth ideologues. They push a hard-Left agenda but they are too dishonest to own up to it. So they spout empty phrases the better to bamboozle the booboisie.

Lawyers are Over-represented in Government

And you are going to vote for Hillary?

Lies, Truth, Narratives, and Hillary

Hillary Clinton we now know to be a liar beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt. A liar is one who habitually makes false statements with the intention of deceiving her audience. This definition, however, presupposes the distinction between true and false statements. Aphoristically: no truth, no lies. Hillary cannot be a liar unless there is truth. But maybe there is no truth, only narratives. Here, perhaps, is a way to defend Hillary. Perhaps the outrageous things she says are merely parts of her narrative. So consider:

N. There is no truth; there are only narratives.

It follows that (N) itself is only a narrative, or part of one. For if there is no truth, then (N) cannot be true. Is this a problem? I should think so. Suppose you want to persuade me to accept (N). How will you proceed? You can't say I ought to accept (N) because it is true. Will you say that I ought to accept (N) because it is 'empowering'? But it cannot BE empowering unless it is TRUE that it is empowering. You cannot, however, invoke truth on pain of falling into inconsistency. No matter which predicate you substitute for 'empowering,' you will face the same difficulty. If you recommend (N) on the ground that it is F, then you must say that (N) IS F, which leads right back to truth.

Being and truth are systematically connected. The truth is the truth about what IS, and what IS is at least possibly such as to be the subject matter of truths. (A classical theist can go whole hog here and say: necessarily, whatever IS is the subject matter of truths, and every truth is about something that IS. But I am not assuming classical theism in this entry.)

So you can't say that (N) is empowering or conducive to winning the election or whatever; all you can say is that it is part of your narrative that (N) is empowering, or conducive . . . . In this way you box yourself in: there is nothing you say that can BE the case; everything is a narrative or part of a narrative. But you cannot even say that. You cannot say that everything you say IS a narrative, only that it is part of your narrative that everything you say is a narrative. You are sinking into some seriously deep crapola in your attempt to defend the indefensible, Hillary.

It follows from this that you cannot budge your sane opponent who holds that there is truth and that some narratives are true and others are false. I am one of these sane people. You cannot budge me because, according to MY narrative, there is truth and not all narratives are true. According to my narrative, my narrative is not just a narrative. It answers to a higher power, Truth. The only way you could budge me from my position is by appealing to truth transcendent of narrative. And that you cannot do.

So what is a poor leftist to do? Fall into inconsistency, which is in fact what they do. Everything is a mere narrative except when it suits them to appeal to what is the case.

It is of the essence of the contemporary Left to attempt the replacement of truth by narrative, a replacement they cannot pull off without inconsistency.

What if the lefty embraces inconsistency? Then, while resisting the temptation to release the safety on your 1911, you walk away, as from a block of wood. You can't argue with a block of wood or a shithead. While shit has form, it lacks form supportive of rational discourse.

Glenn Reynolds: Vote for Trump!

Here (emphasis added):

When Richard Nixon tried to weaponize the IRS, top officials at the Service made a stink. Under Obama, the IRS weaponized itself.

And, of course, the press is in the tank for the Democrats as usual. Bad news about Obama and Clinton has been soft-pedaled, with reporters sometimes admitting that they don’t want to help Trump.

So if the choice in 2016 is between one bad candidate and another (and it is) the question is, which one will do the least harm. And, judging by the civil service’s behavior, that’s got to be Trump. If Trump tries to target his enemies with the IRS, you can bet that he’ll get a lot of pushback — and the press, instead of explaining it away, will make a huge stink. If Trump engages in influence-peddling, or abuses secrecy laws, you can bet that, even if Trump’s appointees sit atop the DOJ or FBI, the civil service will ensure that things don’t get swept under the rug. And if Trump wants to go to war, he’ll get far more scrutiny than Hillary will get — or, in cases like her disastrous Libya invasion, has gotten.

So the message is clear. If you want good government, vote for Trump — he’s the only one who will make this whole checks-and-balances thing work.

Right you are, my man.

But more than good government is at stake. Government itself in the American style is at stake. We are at a tipping point. If the destructive, corrupt, lying leftist is elected, it is all over for the USA as she was founded to be. Despite what the bow-tied pussy-wussies say, there will be no recovery after four-to-eight more years of leftist infiltration of all our institutions and capitulation before our enemies.

Barry Goldwater on Conservatism

Freedom of Speech and Freedom After Speech

Rachel Dolezal, the Black White Woman

The Flight 93 Election

Required reading, especially for you yap-and-scribble, go-along-to-get-along, objectively pro-Hillary, bow-tied, milquetoast 'conservatives.' Via Malcolm Pollack.

Why Conservatives Should Vote for Trump, II

James Cambell, a professor of political science, writes,

Thinking Republicans should NOT SUPPORT Donald Trump, but they should reluctantly VOTE for him. On what matters most, and that is public policy, Trump is not nearly as bad as Clinton. Shout that Donald Trump is an idiot from the roof tops and into any microphone thrown in front of you–but then declare a vote for him.

The distinction between supporting and voting for a candidate is not a gimmick. There is a real difference. Support implies a positive assessment. A vote is a choice.

This is close to the view I have been maintaining over a series of posts. But I don't think Campbell gets it exactly right. Here is the way I see it.

Hillary must be stopped. She is utterly corrupt as a person, as is becoming increasingly evident with every passing day, and she is in bad health to boot. And her foreign and domestic policies are disastrous. I cannot in good conscience abstain thereby aiding her. So I must vote for Trump. In doing so, I don't merely mark a ballot; I 'make a statement' and 'issue a recommendation.' The 'statement' is not that Trump is a good candidate, but that he is better than Hillary, all things considered. The 'recommendation' is that you ought to do as I do if you are a conservative.

As I have already argued ad nauseam, politics is almost always about better and worse, not about Good and Bad. Vide Political Action and the Principle of le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

So in one sense of 'support,' I do not support Trump by voting for him: I do not unreservedly endorse him. I agree with Campbell that there is a real distinction we need to make. The words in which we couch the distinction don't matter. You don't like 'support'? Fine. Wise men do not quibble over words. The distinction can be put like this: to vote for a candidate is not unreservedly to endorse said candidate.

A vote is of course a choice, asCampbell says, but it is not merely a choice inasmuch as it has a certain 'content' as I have already indicated. Marking my ballot for Trump, I express my belief that he is better than his opponent, and not merely better for me, but for the country. I am also tacitly recommending that others do the same.

Trump's recent speeches have been outstanding. The Phoenix immigration speech was just perfect, exactly what a conservative ought to maintain (and not all that different from what Bill Clinton maintained in '95!). So it not as if "Trump is not nearly as bad as Clinton" on policy. He is vastly superior. The trouble with Trump is his self-absorbed and mercurial character. But as events are showing, it is becoming less and less clear that Trump is as bad as Hillary character-wise. He is shaping up, and she is being exposed for what she is.

Why a Conservative Should Vote for Trump

Dennis Prager makes the case. He concludes (emphasis added):

Therefore, with another four years of Democrat-left rule — meaning a nearly permanent left-wing Supreme Court and left-wing-controlled lower courts; the further erosion of federalism; an exponential growth in the power of the federal government; further leftist control of education; and the de-Americanization of America in part by effectively eliminating its borders, in part by substituting multiculturalism for American identity and in part by giving millions of illegal immigrants citizenship — America will not be America.

We conservatives who will vote for Trump understand that he is the only vehicle we have to prevent this. We recognize that though there are some fine individuals who hold left-wing views, leftism is a terminal cancer in the American bloodstream and soul. So our first and greatest principle is to destroy this cancer before it destroys us. We therefore see voting for Donald Trump as political chemotherapy needed to prevent our demise.

How might a NeverTrump conservative counter this line of argument?

A. One might argue that 4-8 years of Hillary & Co. won't make the country much worse than it is now and won't appreciably strengthen the leftist grip on our institutions.

B. One might argue that 4-8 years of Hillary & Co. will make the country worse, but that all the damage can be undone by a succeeding Republican administration.

C. One might argue that Trump is just too dangerous and mercurial to be trusted with the presidency. He might, for example, start a nuclear war. Better red than dead!

D. One might argue that Trump and Hillary are both evil and that one must never vote for an evil candidate. To vote for either would be like voting for Caligula or Nero, or for Stalin or Hitler.

E. One might argue that (i) Trump cannot be trusted to do anything he promises to do, so that policy-wise there will be no real difference between a Trump and a Hillary administration, and that (ii) Trump is character-wise worse than Clinton. Therefore one ought to either vote for Hillary or abstain. Someone who takes this line might urge that the much-touted Great Wall of Trump is just so much hot air: there never will be any such wall. Trump will back off from that in the way he has backed off (quite reasonably!) from talk of the deportation of the supposed 11 million illegal aliens in our midst. NeverTrumper David French a while back referred to Trump's wall as a "pipe dream."

At the moment I can't think of any other counterarguments. The only one that has any merit is (E). But it too is pretty lame. My response is that while we KNOW what Hillary will do, and that what she will do will be disastrous, there is some chance that Trump will accomplish some of what he proposes. There is zero chance that Hillary will do anything good for the country by conservative lights, while there is, say, a 30% chance that Trump will do 30% of what he proposes. So I reject (i). I also reject (ii). Both candidates are awful, but I don't see how you could say that Trump is morally worse than Hillary.

Trump is all we've got. Conservatives must vote for him. (I warmly recommend that liberals vote for Jill Stein.)

Crime as Politics

'Contemporary Liberals'

The Decline of the Culture of Free Discussion and Debate

The Left's Biggest Lie?

Civil Courage

The Democrats Have Moved Farther to the Left than the Republicans to the Right

Leftists Call Angel Moms a Hate Group

Ideological Certification

It ought to be obvious that anyone seeking entry into our country should be ideologically certified. We have no obligation to accept subversive elements. Now those who promote Shari'a are subversive elements. Therefore, we have no obligation to allow them in. Indeed we, or rather the government as representing us the people, has a moral obligation not to let them in.

This is just common sense. Trump, not Hillary, possesses this common sense as he made clear in his outstanding Phoenix immigration speech.

But you loathe Trump the man, don't you? And you have some good reasons. I suggest you make a distinction. There is the candidate and there is the candidate's ideological agenda. Both of the candidates have deeply flawed characters. But one supports a destructive leftist agenda and the other does not. And one or the other will be the next president. It won't be Jill Stein.

So, if you are a conservative, is it not obvious that you must vote for Trump?

Now I would like you to read William Kilpatrick, Western Self-Hatred Makes Jihad Possible. It includes commentary on Trump's immigration speech.