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.
Required reading, especially for you yap-and-scribble, go-along-to-get-along, objectively pro-Hillary, bow-tied, milquetoast 'conservatives.' Via Malcolm Pollack.
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.
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.
Not again! Yes, again. On 5 September 2016 anno domini, in the pages of Crisis Magazine, Fr. Brandon O'Brien opined (emphasis added):
While some similarities may exist between the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God, it is certain that the Christian who prays “Our Father, Who art in Heaven” each day is not praying to the same God as the Muslim who prays “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” This is because they are not worshipping the same God.
Certain! How's that for theological chutzpah?
The title of the piece is "Why Christians and Muslims Worship Different Gods." The reason is that the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God are drastically different. The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the key difference. For normative Christians God is tri-une: one God in three divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is well-known that normative Muslims reject this trinitarian conception and hold to the radical unity of Allah. God cannot have a son, either in heaven or on earth. This key difference leads to the crucial difference. For Christians, God, or rather God's Son, died on the cross (crux, crucis) for man's salvation, was resurrected, and ascended into heaven body and soul.
So the conceptions of God in the two religions are radically different. But how is it supposed to follow that Christians and Muslims worship numerically different Gods? It doesn't follow! Let me explain.
Suppose Sam's conception of the author of Das Kapital includes the false belief that the author is a Russian while Dave's conception includes the true belief that he is a German. This is consistent with there being one and same philosopher whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same man, Karl Marx, is such that Sam has a false belief about him while Dave has a true belief about him.
Now suppose Ali's conception of the divine being includes the false belief that said being is non-triune while Peter's conception includes the true belief that God is triune. This is consistent with there being one and same being whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same god, God, is such that Ali has a false belief about him while Peter has a true belief about him.
What I have just shown is that from the radically different, and indeed inconsistent, God-conceptions one cannot validly infer that (normative) Christians and (normative) Muslims refer to and worship numerically different Gods. For the difference in conceptions is consistent with sameness of referent. So you can see that Fr. O'Brien has made a mistake.
But nota bene: Difference in conceptions is also consistent with a difference in referent. It could be that when a Christian uses 'God' he refers to something while a Muslim refers to nothing when he uses 'Allah.' Consider God and Zeus. Will you say that the Christian and the ancient Greek polytheist worship the same God except that the Greek has false beliefs about their common object of worship, believing as he does that Zeus is a superman who lives on a mountain top, literally hurls thunderbolts, etc.? Or will you say that there is no one God that they worship, that the Christian worships a being that exists while the Greek worships a nonexistent object? And if you say the latter, why not also say the same about God and Allah, namely, that there is no one being that they both worship, that the Christian worships the true God, the God that really exists, whereas Muslims worship a God that does not exist?
In sum, difference in conceptions is logically consistent both with sameness of referent and difference of referent.
Apparently, this is difficult for some to see. My good friend Dale Tuggy writes,
Christians and Muslims disagree about whether God has a Son, right? Then, they’re talking about the same (alleged) being. They may disagree about “who God is” in the sense of what he’s done, what attributes he has, how many “Persons” are in him, and whether Muhammad was really his Messenger, etc. But disagreement assumes one subject-matter – here, one god.
Tuggy is saying in effect that disagreement presupposes, and thus entails, sameness of referent.
I think Tuggy is making a mistake here. Surely disagreement about the properties of a putatively self-same x does not entail that there is in reality one and the same x under discussion, although it is logically consistent with it.
A dispute between me and Ed Feser, say, about whether our mutual acquaintance Tuggy has a son no doubt presupposes, and thus entails, that there is one and the same man whom we are talking about. It would be absurd to maintain that there are two Tuggys, my Tuggy and Ed's, where mine has a son and Ed's does not. It would be absurd for me to say, "I'm talking about the true Tuggy while you, Ed, are talking about a different Tuggy, one that doesn't exist. You are referencing, if not worshipping, a false Tuggy." Why is this absurd? Because we are both acquainted with the man ('in the flesh,' by sense-perception and countless memories) and we are arguing merely over the properties of the one and the same man with whom we are both acquainted. There is simply no question but that he exists and that we are both referring to him. The dispute concerns his attributes.
But of course the situation is different with God. We are not acquainted with God: God, unlike Tuggy, is not given to the senses. Mystical intuition and revelation aside, we are thrown back upon our concepts of God. And so it may be that the dispute over whether God is triune or not is not a dispute that presupposes that there is one subject-matter, but rather a dispute over whether the Christian concept of God (which includes the sub-concept triune) is instantiated or whether the Muslim concept (which does not include the subconcept triune) is instantiated. Note that they cannot both be instantiated by the same item.
The point I am making is a subtle one, and you have to think hard to grasp it. The point is that it is not at all obvious which of the following views is correct:
V1: Christian and Muslim worship the same God, even though one of them must have a false belief about God, whether it be the belief that God is unitarian or the belief that God is trinitarian.
V2: Christian and Muslim worship different Gods precisely because they have mutually exclusive conceptions of God. So it is not that one of them has a false belief about the one God they both worship; it is rather that one of them does not worship the true God at all.
The difference can be put in terms of the difference between heresy and idolatry. If Islam is a Christian heresy, as has been maintained by G. K. Chesterton et al., then the Muslim has false beliefs about the same being about which the Christian has true beliefs. If, on the other hand, the Muslim is an idolator, then he worships a god that does not exist, which obviously cannot be identical to the true God who does exist.
There is no easy way to decide rationally between these two views. We have to delve into the philosophy of language and ask how reference is achieved. How do linguistic expressions attach or apply to extralinguistic entities? How do words grab onto the (extralinguistic) world? In particular, how do nominal expressions work? What makes my utterance of 'Socrates' denote Socrates rather than someone or something else? What makes my use of 'God' (i) have a referent at all and (ii) have the precise referent it has?
For the technical details see the entries collected here.
Summary
Most of the writing on this topic is exasperatingly superficial and uninformed, even that by theologians. Fr. O'Brien is a case in point. He thinks the question easily resolved: you simply note the radical difference in the Christian and Muslim God-conceptions and your work is done. Others make the opposite mistake. They think that, of course, Christians and Muslims worship the same God either by making Tuggy's mistake above or by thinking that the considerable overlap in the two conceptions settles the issue.
My thesis is not that the one side is right or that the other side is right. My thesis is that the question is a very difficult one that entangles us in controversial inquiries in the philosophies or mind and language.
You might say it doesn't matter. If Christians and Muslims worship the same God, then Muslims are heretics: they have false beliefs about the true God. If Christians and Muslims worship different Gods, then the Muslims are idolaters: they worship a nonexistent god. Not good either way. This won't be acceptable to Muslims, of course, but why shouldn't a Christian say this and leave it at that?
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.)
Subtitle: Disarming the Jews and the "Enemies of the State"
Essential reading on the eve of the disaster that is a Hillary presidency.
"Gun Control in the Third Reich, Stephen Halbrook's excellent history of gun control in Germany, shows that, motives notwithstanding, removing weapons from the general population always disarms society vis a vis its worst elements. In Germany the authorities tried to deal with the Nazi and Communist mobs that were shaking society's foundations indirectly, by disarming ordinary people. But their cowardice ended up delivering a helpless population to the Nazis' tender mercies. Halbrook's richly documented history leads Americans to ask why those among us who decry violence in our society choose to try tightening the vise on ordinary citizens' capacity to defend themselves rather than to constrain the sectors of society most responsible for the violence." —Angelo M. Codevilla, Professor Emeritus of International Relations, Boston University; author, Informing Statecraft, War: Ends and Means (with Paul Seabury), The Character of Nations, and Between the Alps and a Hard Place: Switzerland in World War II and the Rewriting of History.
"What good would private arms do against a totalitarian state? That won't remain an unanswerable rhetorical challenge for readers of Stephen Halbrook's calm, detailed scholarly book, Gun Control in the Third Reich. As Halbrook shows, Nazi leaders went to great lengths to extend the gun control laws they inherited from the Weimar Republic. They were obsessed with disarming Jews and other designated public enemies. Potential resistance was not only physically disabled. It was morally and psychologically disarmed. Evil then became irresistible in Germany, not because it was fueled by fanaticism but because shielded by fatalism." —Jeremy A. Rabkin, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law
"Even a defense with small arms against a tyrannical regime, if known, can galvanize public opinion which is the ultimate source of all political authority. That is why, as Halbrook authoritatively shows in Gun Control in the Third Reich, the Nazis-despite their massive military force-went out of their way to confiscate even small caliber weapons in Germany." —Donald W. Livingston, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Emory University
A. Some sentences are true in virtue of their correspondence with extralinguistic reality.
B. If so, then reality must have a sentence-like structure.
C. Reality does not have a sentence-like structure.
London Ed solves it by rejecting (A). But let me first say why I accept (A).
Consider a true contingent sentence such as 'Tom is sad,' or the proposition expressed by an assertive utterance in appropriate circumstances of such a sentence. I maintain that the sentence or proposition cannot just be true: if true it is true in virtue of something external to the sentence. The external something cannot be another sentence, or, more generally, another truthbearer. Nor can it be someone's say-so. So the external something has to be something 'in the world,' i.e., in the realm of primary reference, as opposed to the realm of sense. The basic idea here is that some truths need ontological grounds: there is a deep connection between truth and being. There is more to a true sentence than the sentence that is true. There is that in the world which makes it true. Call it the truthmaker of the truth. Some truthbearers need truthmakers. As far as I am concerned, this is about as clear as it gets in philosophy. Which type of entity is best suited to play the truthmaker role, however, is a further question.
Please note three things. First, the direction of the truthmaking relation is from the world to language. More broadly: from external concrete reality to the realm of representations, where Fregean propositions count as representations, despite their not being tied to specific languages, and despite their independence of minds. Second, correspondence is an umbrella notion that covers two quite different relations, naming, and making-true. Naming is a word –> world relation, whereas truthmaking goes in the opposite direction. I am tempted to say that truthmaking is the converse of naming. Third, I unpack 'correspondence' as it occurs in (A) in terms of truthmaking, not naming.
Here is what Ed says in rejection of (A):
The exam question is my argument against (A), namely that some sentences are true in virtue of their correspondence with extralinguistic reality. I shall also be taking on why my reasons are properly nominalistic, given that your version of nominalism is not mine.
1. Starting with nominalism. Classic nominalism is formulated by Ockham in Summa Part I, 51. “the root [of the error of the Realists] is to multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms, and [to suppose] that to every term [or expression] whatsoever there corresponds a thing [quid rei].”
2. My target is a formulation of the correspondence theory that violates classic nominalism, as I have defined it. There may be other formulations of the theory that are OK.
3. My formulation of the correspondence theory is that an assertoric sentence is true in virtue of naming or referring to or signifying a fact. Let that naming relation be R. Then the correspondence theory says that a sentence S (e.g. ‘Socrates is sitting’) is true iff S stands in the relation R to some fact F (e.g. ‘that Socrates is sitting’).
4. Suppose ‘Socrates is sitting’ names the fact that Socrates is sitting, and assume that it always so names. Then that fact must always exist, assuming the name is always names the fact. So ‘Socrates is sitting’ must always be true, i.e. ‘Socrates is sitting’ always stands in the relation R to the fact that Socrates is sitting. But it is not always true, clearly.
5. We might get out of this in two ways. First, by supposing that ‘Socrates is sitting’ fails to be meaningful, namely when the fact it purports to names ceases to exist, such as when Socrates stands up, or runs. This is absurd, however. The purpose of a sentence is always to mean something.
6. The other way is to suppose that the sentence sometimes names a fact, and sometimes does not. I.e. it actually names something else – a proposition – and the proposition is a fact when the sentence is true, otherwise not a fact. However we have now failed to explain the ‘correspondence’. The sentence ‘Socrates is sitting’ always bears the naming relation R to the proposition that Socrates is sitting, even when Socrates is not sitting.
7. What we really need to name is not the proposition (which may be true or false), but the reality that corresponds when the proposition is a fact. Perhaps ‘the proposition that Socrates is sitting being a fact’ or ‘the actuality of Socrates’s sitting’ or something like that. But there we have the same problem. Either the name ceases to be meaningful when Socrates is not sitting, or it continues to name something. But the former we agreed was absurd, and the latter means that we have not fully captured the relation we want.
8. The problem in general is that if the object of the relation R is something we can talk about i.e. name at all, then we have to deal with the problem of the fixity of reference. The purpose of a name is always to name what it names. But reality is not thus fixed. Whatever supposedly corresponds to the truth of ‘Socrates is sitting’ comes into existence when Socrates sits and goes out of existence when he stands up. But if ‘Socrates is sitting’ is true in virtue of naming this thing, either the sentence becomes meaningless when Socrates stands up, which is absurd, or it names something that does not go out of existence, and so does not name what the correspondence theory purports to name.
9. Bringing this back to nominalism. The problem above arises from the supposition that ‘Socrates is sitting’ is the name of some fact, and thus from supposing that every expression (‘Socrates is sitting’) has a name or referent or whatever.
Ed does two things above. He confronts the truthmaker theorist with a certain (supposedly insoluble) problem, and then he explains how this problem arises by way of a false assumption. First, the problem. I will summarize it as I understand it.
Since Socrates is a past individual, but nothing in this discussion has to do with time, I will change the example to 'Tom is red.' Tom is a tomato of my present acquaintance. We assume that the sentence is true. And of course, if true, then contingently true. My type of TM-theorist holds that contingent true predications such as 'Tom is red' have worldly correspondents called facts. These concrete facts are the truthmakers of contingent predications. Note that the fact corresponds to the sentence as a whole. So not only does 'Tom' have a worldly correspondent, and presumably also the predicate 'red'; the sentence has a worldly correspondent as well.
Note also that the sentence is not about the fact; it is about Tom, or, if you insist, it is about Tom and the property of being red. Still, there is some relation R that connects the sentence and/or the proposition it expresses and the fact. Notice, I wrote 'and the fact,' not 'to the fact.' 'To the fact' suggests a direction from language to world, and not vice versa, whereas 'and the fact' leaves the directionality open. Is the truthmaking relation R naming? Ed thinks it is, but this is not clear. Indeed, I will argue in a moment that the truthmaking relation is not the naming relation. It is clear that 'Tom' names Tom. It is not clear that 'Tom is red' names anything. Suppose it doesn't. This doesn't exclude the possibility that the sentence has a truthmaker. Maybe it has a truthmaker, but that truthmakers cannot be named. Note also that what Ed says above is nothing like what any TM-theorist has ever said. Truthmaking is a relation that runs from the world to representations, whereas naming and referring and 'signifying' run from representations to the world. Truthmaking is more like the converse of the naming relation. We shall see.
But let us suppose arguendo that the truthmaking relation R is naming. On this supposition, Ed sets up a clever little dilemma. It is based on three plausible theses.
T1. If N is a name, then N cannot be vacuous: it must have a nominatum or referent.
T2. If N is a name, then it has an existing referent. That is, there is no naming of nonexistent objects, pace Meinong.
T3. If a name N names an object O, then at every time at which N names something, it names O. So the following is impossible: at some times at which 'Kripke' is in use as a name, it names Kripke, at other times Shkripke. I think this is what Ed means by "the fixity of reference."
The Dilemma. Either sentence S names fact F or it doesn't. On either alternative, trouble. Remember, Ed is assuming that the truthmaking relation is a naming relation and that declarative sentences name facts.
Horn One. If S names F, then, by the conjunction of the three plausible theses, F exists at every time at which S exists, which is plainly false. Clearly, 'Tom is red' both as type and as token can exist at times at which the fact of Tom's being red does not exist. (I might assertively utter 'Tom is red' while Tom is green, or after Tom has been dunked into molten chocolate.) If you say instead that S is meaningless when the fact does not exist, then truthmaking is not naming (by T1), which is all it can be on Ed's (mis)understanding of truthmaking.
Horn Two. If S does not name F, then there is no truthmaking. For truthmaking is a naming relation.
Critique
It is clear that Ed does not understand truthmaker theory. The key idea is not that sentences name facts, but that facts make sentences true. That truthmaking is different from naming is clear from the different directions of the relations, but also because truthmaking is a many-many relation whereas naming is a many-one relation. That truthmaking is many-many can be seen as follows. One and the same truth can have many different truthmakers. For example, 'Something is red' is made true by a's being red, b's being red, c's being red, etc. And one and the same truthmaker can make true many truths. For example, Tom's being red makes true 'Tom is red,' 'Tom is red or Shlomo is sad,' etc. (Cf. Armstrong 1997, pp. 129-130.)
Nominalism
Ed has an understanding of nominalism which contemporary analytic philosophers will find idiosyncratic and vacuous to boot. No philosopher today thinks that for every bit of language there is a corresponding bit of reality. So we are all nominalists in this vacuous sense. And no one is a realist if “the root [of the error of the Realists] is to multiply entities according to the multiplicity of terms, and [to suppose] that to every term [or expression] whatsoever there corresponds a thing [quid rei].” And surely it is a bad joke to claim or suggest that TM-theorists straightaway infer the existence of facts from the existence of declarative sentences.
Liberals, whose love of political correctness gets the better of their intellects, typically object to the phrase 'illegal alien.' But why? Are these 'migrants' not in our country illegally, as the result of breaking laws? And are they not aliens, people from another country?
"But you are labelling them!" Yes, of course. Label we must if we are not to lose our minds entirely. 'Feral cat' is a label. Do you propose that we not distinguish between feral and non-feral cats? Do you distinguish between the positive and the negative terminals on your car battery? You'd better! But 'positive terminal' and 'negative terminal' are labels.
Label we must. There is no getting around it if we are to think at all. There used to be a political outfit that called itself 'No Labels.' But that too is a label. Those who eschew all labels label themselves 'idiots.'
Related to this is the injunction, 'Never generalize!' which is itself a generalization. Label we must and generalize we must. Making distinctions and labelling them, and constructing sound generalizations on their basis, are activities essential to, thought not exhaustive of, the life of the intellect.
Liberals also object to 'illegal immigrant.' In fact, the AP has banned the phrase. But given that there are both legal and illegal immigrants, 'illegal immigrant' is a useful label. There is nothing derogatory about it. It is a descriptive term like 'hypertensive' or 'diabetic.' It is just a fact that the 'migrants' are in violation of U. S. law, whatever you think of the law.
One consideration adduced at the AP site is that actions are illegal, not persons. But suppose your doctor tells you that you are diabetic, and you protest, "Doc, not only are you labelling me, you are forgetting that diabetes is a medical condition and that no person is a medical condition." The good doctor would then have to explain that a diabetic is a person who has diabetes. Similarly, an illegal immigrant is one who is in the country illegally. There is the act of illegally crossing the border, but there is also the state of being here illegally.
Plain talk is an excellent antidote to liberal nonsense. When a liberal or a leftist or a libertarian misuses a word in an intellectually dishonest attempt at forwarding his agenda, a right-thinking person ought to protest. Whether you protest or not, you must not acquiesce in their pernicious misuse of language. Or, as I have said more than once in these pages,
If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal!
Bear in mind that many of the battles of the culture war are fought, won, and lost on linguistic ground. If we let our opponents destroy the common language in which alone reasonable debate can be conducted, then much more is lost than these particular debates. The liberal-left misuse of language is fueled by their determination to win politically at all costs and by any means, including linguistic hijacking.
Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl. This one goes out to Kathy H.
Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Thinking of you, Anne-Marie C. and the fabulous and far-off fall of '73.
In the twilight glow I see her Blue eyes crying in the rain When we kissed goodbye and parted I knew we'd never meet again.
Love is like a dying ember Only memories remain Through the ages I'll remember Blue eyes crying in the rain.
Now my hair has turned to silver All my life I've loved in vain But I can see her star in heaven Blue eyes crying in the rain.
Someday when we meet up yonder We'll stroll hand in hand again In a land that knows no parting Blue eyes crying in the rain.
Jackson Browne, Doctor My Eyes. Dedicated to Darci M. and our summer of '78.
Doctor, my eyes have seen the years And the slow parade of fears without crying Now I want to understand
I have done all that I could To see the evil and the good without hiding You must help me if you can
Doctor, my eyes Tell me what is wrong Was I unwise to leave them open for so long
'Cause I have wandered through this world And as each moment has unfurled I've been waiting to awaken from these dreams People go just where they will I never noticed them until I got this feeling That it's later than it seems
Doctor, my eyes Tell me what you see I hear their cries Just say if it's too late for me
Doctor, my eyes Cannot see the sky Is this the PRICE for having learned how not to cry?
Which of the following is true? Francis outright lies about Islam; he is naive about Islam; he is an appeaser and defeatist who thinks that by not telling the truth about Islam he prevents further radicalization of Muslims.
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?
I have been asked about this on several occasions, most recently by Kevin W. So here is a redacted repost from over six years ago.
………………………………….
Joe from New York writes:
I have a question about chess. Would you be kind enough to tell me in your opinion what is the one chess book a person should have? What is your favorite? I am presently reading [Irving Chervev's] Logical Chess Move by Move.
I am a patzer.
I think your blog is great.
Thanks for writing, Joe, and for the kind words. I too am a patzer, though on a really good day I am a GP, a Grand Patzer. Although there is no one book that one simply must have, for patzers I recommend Georges Renaud and Victor Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate. This is a delightful old book written by a couple of French masters. It first appeared in English translation in 1953 and was reprinted by Dover Press in 1962. I believe it was International Master Calvin Blocker who recommended it to me. I am very fond of Dover paperbacks, which are inexpensive and made to last a lifetime. This particular volume is in descriptive notation which fact should gladden the heart of Ed Yetman. It is also full of Romantic old games, wild and swashbuckling, of the sort from which assiduous patzers can learn tactics.
Tactics, tactics, tactics. As important in chess as location, location, location in real estate.
The book is a study of the basic mating patterns. Since checkmate is the object of the game, a thorough study of the basic mates is a logical place to begin the systematic study of chess. That should be followed by work on tactics. The much-maligned Fred Reinfeld is useful here. After that, openings and endings. But the typical patzer — and I'm no exception to this rule — spends an inordinate amount of time swotting up openings. But what is the good of achieving a favorable middlegame position if one doesn't know what to do with it? To turn a favorable position into a win you need to know the basic mates, tactics, and at least the rudiments of endgame technique.
There is a lot to learn, and one can and should ask whether it is worth the effort. But patzers like us are unlikely to have our lives derailed by chess. We can sport with Caissa and her charms without too much harm. It is the very strong players, who yet fall short of the highest level, who run the greatest risk. Chess sucks them in then leaves them high and dry. The goddess Caissa becomes the bitch Impecunia. IM Blocker is one example among many.
