I have been harshly critical of Governor Deal for several years, for what I take to be good reasons. Nevertheless, in the interest of fairness, I want to put his veto statement in front of you. It is thoughtful and rooted in the right way: in an understanding of the Founding and the traditions of our nation. I don't think he has understood the argument of his opponents, or else he is raising a straw man by suggesting that his opponents' position can be characterized as a demand for an absolutely unrestricted right to keep and bear arms. No one is proposing eliminating restrictions on violent felons keeping and bearing arms -- indeed, the NRA worked hard to help get Project Exile passed into law.
However, leaving the straw man fallacy aside, he has an argument that I will present for your consideration. It's a long piece, so I'll put it after the jump.
Bernie Sanders: Clinton Runs a Money-Laundering Scheme
Nice to see that the Senator from Vermont is still punching. Also nice to see that Vox can't quite explain the charge away.
Well, That's Encouraging
In an article on the lies around the Iran deal -- which were truly infuriating to behold -- an explanation of why they get away with it.
As Rhodes admits, it's not that hard to shape the narrative. "All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus," Rhodes said. "Now they don't. They call us to explain to them what's happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing."
Are You Kidding Me?
Headline: "Spies Worry Candidate Trump Will Spill Secrets."
Oh, that's a great reason to consider voting for Hillary Clinton, who is currently under investigation for exposing thousands of classified documents through unsecured email on a ramshackle private server.
Oh, that's a great reason to consider voting for Hillary Clinton, who is currently under investigation for exposing thousands of classified documents through unsecured email on a ramshackle private server.
David French is Right
He is right about the problem, and also about the solutions.
First, it is absolutely vital that conservatives stay firm in their opposition to Trump. For at least a generation, the Left has been arguing that American conservatism is shot through with racism, sexism, and xenophobia. And now millions of Americans will face the difficult task of rebutting charges of hateful bigotry while supporting a man who gives aid and comfort to avowed racists, incites violence, and can’t even consistently disavow the Klan. Trump is the destroyer of conservatism, and he will taint all who take his side....I think conservatives can demand of our elected representatives a pledge to impeach and remove Trump, should he be elected, at the first sign of illegality or abuse. It would be healthy to formalize opposition to Trump in this way. For one thing, it would put him on notice that he will have no leeway as President. For another, it would help draw a distinction between Trump and those conservatives down-ballot that would minimize the damage to conservatism as a philosophy. It would be a firm expression of disapproval combined with a positive remedy. It would be a rejection of his viciousness, especially towards women, which I expect will only intensify in its ugliness as he campaigns against Ms. Clinton.
Fifth, the best solution for rolling back the extraordinary growth, power, and increasing corruption of the federal government is the convention of states, the Article V remedy for a runaway president and an out-of-control Congress. If two-thirds of states submit an application for a convention to propose constitutional amendments, then any proposed amendments can be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures — circumventing the federal government entirely.
Al vs. Marcy
Trump proved that many of the party’s moderates and establishmentarians hate the thought of a True Conservative nominee even more than they fear handing the nomination to a proto-fascist grotesque with zero political experience and poor impulse control. That goes for the prominent politicians who refused to endorse Cruz, the prominent donors who sat on their hands once the field narrowed and all the moderate-Republican voters in blue states who turned out to be #NeverCruz first and #NeverTrump less so or even not at all.This is the Nathan Deal lesson. What I think Douthat gets wrong is the idea that voters didn't notice. Trump's appeal was that he really wasn't one of the party elite. He really is someone they can't control. His wild, outrageous statements serve as proof that he isn't under anybody's control. No handlers would have let him say the things he's said.
Finally, Trump proved that many professional True Conservatives, many of the same people who flayed RINOs and demanded purity throughout the Obama era, were actually just playing a convenient part.
So the general election is set. If you're wanting a preview, here it is:
The Sea Rises Higher
For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know;
He saw the first oar break or bend,
He saw heaven fall and the world end,
O God, how long ago.
For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
End of the World
With Ted Cruz gone, there is no happy ending to this race. The best hope now is Trump plus impeachment of Trump. Otherwise, catastrophe.
Nathan Deal is 2 for 2
With today's veto of campus carry, Nathan Deal -- Republican Governor of Georgia -- reminds us of why the Republican Party is about to die nationwide. People turn to folks like Trump because the professionals have shown that they cannot be trusted. In this election, Governor Deal has personally betrayed the people who voted for him with vetoes on the two issues they cared most about: the Second Amendment, and religious freedom. The Legislature passed strong, considered legislation on both grounds. Nathan Deal personally killed them both.
When the party dies at the polls in November, and we face decades of a Supreme Court that simply rules conservative opinions unconstitutional, know that it was because of continual betrayals like this. Nathan Deal was once a good man, but his time in Washington with the Republican elite ruined him.
When the party dies at the polls in November, and we face decades of a Supreme Court that simply rules conservative opinions unconstitutional, know that it was because of continual betrayals like this. Nathan Deal was once a good man, but his time in Washington with the Republican elite ruined him.
Please Don't Do This
The American Family Association(!) has decided to send male activists into women's bathrooms at Target.
Don't do this. It's such a bad idea. It's completely out of order with the values you are supposed to represent, and it's wrong to violate your own values to make a point.
Don't do this. It's such a bad idea. It's completely out of order with the values you are supposed to represent, and it's wrong to violate your own values to make a point.
Snowden on Secrecy
He doesn't provide a convincing explanation of why he only leaked US secrets, and not those of America's enemies. However, it is possible to sever that question -- the one that suggests he is guilty of treason -- from the basic argument that constitutional freedom requires occasional unauthorized leaks. Especially where the government is engaged in unconstitutional behavior, sometimes (he argues) bringing the matter before the public is the only hope for correction.
"A Dark Time in America"
Dennis Prager writes:
Every distinctive value on which America was founded is in jeopardy.
According to Pew Research, more and more young Americans do not believe in freedom of speech for what they deem “hate speech.” Forty percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 said they agreed that offensive statements could be outlawed.
According to a series of Harvard polls, 47 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 believe that food, shelter, and health care “are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them.” That means that nearly half of our young believe they have a legitimate claim on the labor and earnings of others for life’s basic necessities. More than half of young Americans do not support capitalism — the source of the prosperity they enjoy and the only economic system that has ever lifted mass numbers of people out of poverty.
When young Americans see pictures of the Founders, they do not see the great men that most Americans have seen throughout American history. They see white males who were affluent (now derisively labeled “privileged”) and owned slaves.
The belief that certain fundamental rights are God-based — a view held by every American Founder and nearly all Americans throughout its history — is reviled outside of conservative religious circles and held by fewer and fewer Americans. The view that male and female are distinctive identities — one of the few unquestioned foundational views of every society in history — is being obliterated. One is deemed “a hater” just for saying that one believes that, all things being equal, a child does best starting out life with a married father and mother.
The ideas that America should be a “melting pot” or that all Americans should identify as American are now unutterable in educated company....
In addition, virtually every major institution is in decay or disarray.
Masculinity Is Not About Women
I can see why, in a discussion led by Paglia and Althouse, women would be the focus. I don't object to women being the focus of a discussion between women. I just think this is the wrong way to think about the problem they're interested in thinking about.
Paglia: "[M]asculinity is constantly being eroded, diminished, and dissolved on university campuses because it allows women to be weak."
Althouse: "In my way of looking at it, "allows" is the wrong word. I think we need to consider whether masculinity is constantly being eroded because it serves the purpose of making women weak."
So, here's the problem with both of these statements: masculinity has nothing to do with whether or not women are weak. It can enable weakness in women. It can also enable and support strength in women. Or women can become strong on their own, or not.
Let me give you an example. Last week I was out riding my motorcycle, and I came across a bull calf who was out in the road. Naturally, I stopped and chased him out of the road -- loose cattle are a danger to cars as well as motorcycles, and I felt it was my civic duty to help resolve a danger to the community.
Protecting the community from a danger is only part of my duty in a case like this, though. There is also a 'Golden Rule' duty to try to help the livestock owner recover the animal. I would certainly want someone to help me if I had livestock who got out on the road, so I ought to help others.
So, I went to the nearest farmhouse and knocked on the door. A woman of about 85 appeared, and I explained the situation. She got her daughter -- a woman in her mid to late fifties, I should think -- and the two of them agreed it was certainly their young bull and that they needed to deal with it. Neither of them had any idea how.
"My husband's gone to Mississippi," the younger woman explained. "He won't be back until Friday."
Now, this is cattle country in rural Georgia. There's plenty of masculinity in the men who work livestock. Here are two women, though, who had allowed the men in their lives to do the hard work of dealing with the cattle to such a degree that they honestly didn't know how to move an animal in the direction they wanted it to go. If they had any rope, they didn't know where it was. It took an hour and a half to push that bull calf back into its fence with the rest of it herd, while trying to keep the herd from coming out through an open gate.
This is not necessary. Had my wife been there, she could have helped me move the animal and we'd have done it in a few minutes.
What's the point of this story? The strength of the man has little enough to do with the strength of the woman. I don't doubt that the cattlemen who were off in Mississippi are manly enough. But their manliness if anything supported the women not learning to do this sort of work, even though they were part-owners of a herd of cattle. They never developed the muscles or the skills because they never had to: their husbands did that sort of thing.
Would you get stronger women if you made the men weaker? I doubt it. Nor is strong masculinity a bar to strong women, as my wife proves. She was a tough girl when I met her, and our years riding along together have not weakened her any.
What I think is that the business of making strong women has nothing to do with men or masculinity one way or the other. A weak man might mean that a woman had to be stronger in order to carry the weight he wasn't carrying. Or it could do what Althouse and Paglia both think it does, which is allow for (or usefully produce) weak women.
But it's not really a question about the men. There's not necessarily a close relationship between masculinity and the strength of women. Masculinity is about the strength of men, which is a good in itself. It's worth pursuing even if it does nothing for women at all. Nor does attaining it excuse women from developing their own character, skills, and capacities. Strong women are not, as these two ladies argue, functions of the strength of the men. Strong women have to be built independently. For the most part, they have to decide to build themselves. Providing them with the right kind of man is not going to do any part of the work.
Paglia: "[M]asculinity is constantly being eroded, diminished, and dissolved on university campuses because it allows women to be weak."
Althouse: "In my way of looking at it, "allows" is the wrong word. I think we need to consider whether masculinity is constantly being eroded because it serves the purpose of making women weak."
So, here's the problem with both of these statements: masculinity has nothing to do with whether or not women are weak. It can enable weakness in women. It can also enable and support strength in women. Or women can become strong on their own, or not.
Let me give you an example. Last week I was out riding my motorcycle, and I came across a bull calf who was out in the road. Naturally, I stopped and chased him out of the road -- loose cattle are a danger to cars as well as motorcycles, and I felt it was my civic duty to help resolve a danger to the community.
Protecting the community from a danger is only part of my duty in a case like this, though. There is also a 'Golden Rule' duty to try to help the livestock owner recover the animal. I would certainly want someone to help me if I had livestock who got out on the road, so I ought to help others.
So, I went to the nearest farmhouse and knocked on the door. A woman of about 85 appeared, and I explained the situation. She got her daughter -- a woman in her mid to late fifties, I should think -- and the two of them agreed it was certainly their young bull and that they needed to deal with it. Neither of them had any idea how.
"My husband's gone to Mississippi," the younger woman explained. "He won't be back until Friday."
Now, this is cattle country in rural Georgia. There's plenty of masculinity in the men who work livestock. Here are two women, though, who had allowed the men in their lives to do the hard work of dealing with the cattle to such a degree that they honestly didn't know how to move an animal in the direction they wanted it to go. If they had any rope, they didn't know where it was. It took an hour and a half to push that bull calf back into its fence with the rest of it herd, while trying to keep the herd from coming out through an open gate.
This is not necessary. Had my wife been there, she could have helped me move the animal and we'd have done it in a few minutes.
What's the point of this story? The strength of the man has little enough to do with the strength of the woman. I don't doubt that the cattlemen who were off in Mississippi are manly enough. But their manliness if anything supported the women not learning to do this sort of work, even though they were part-owners of a herd of cattle. They never developed the muscles or the skills because they never had to: their husbands did that sort of thing.
Would you get stronger women if you made the men weaker? I doubt it. Nor is strong masculinity a bar to strong women, as my wife proves. She was a tough girl when I met her, and our years riding along together have not weakened her any.
What I think is that the business of making strong women has nothing to do with men or masculinity one way or the other. A weak man might mean that a woman had to be stronger in order to carry the weight he wasn't carrying. Or it could do what Althouse and Paglia both think it does, which is allow for (or usefully produce) weak women.
But it's not really a question about the men. There's not necessarily a close relationship between masculinity and the strength of women. Masculinity is about the strength of men, which is a good in itself. It's worth pursuing even if it does nothing for women at all. Nor does attaining it excuse women from developing their own character, skills, and capacities. Strong women are not, as these two ladies argue, functions of the strength of the men. Strong women have to be built independently. For the most part, they have to decide to build themselves. Providing them with the right kind of man is not going to do any part of the work.
Good News, Bad News
South America is looking a lot like it's going to need some sort of American intervention. That always goes well, and hardly ever produces generations of resentment.
Still, there is good news:
Still, there is good news:
The encouraging news from Latin America is that the leftist populists who for 15 years undermined the region’s democratic institutions and wrecked its economies are being pushed out — not by coups and juntas, but by democratic and constitutional means. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina is already gone, vanquished in a presidential election, and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff is likely to be impeached in the coming days.
Government Makes Everything Worse
Via Wretchard, every industry touched by government gets worse. The graph points to one specific example, the massive increase in administrators in health care over the last decades. Like any other product, your health care gets more expensive the more salaries have to be paid to produce it. If you were just paying the doctor, the cost would be whatever the doctor thinks his time is worth, plus the cost of any medicines, tests, or supplies. If the doctor needs an assistant, her time has to be factored into the cost as well.
(An aside: I just employed that new academic standard of alternating the genders of pronouns to refer to nonspecific persons that Jason was asking about the other day. Notice how it looks exactly like an offensive assumption that a doctor would be male and his assistant a woman? But if you turn them around, the alternative construction will offend other people just as well. It's a terrible answer to the question of replacing 'he' as the universal standard for a person of unspecified gender. I think the old standard is better, but even the ungrammatical "they" for a singular individual of unspecified gender is better than this.)
So if the doctor needs four assistants to manage all the paperwork, now you're paying five salaries for however long the doctor is seeing you. Even if the other costs remained flat, your bill has to be several times higher than it was just to cover the needful salaries of the administrators.
Regulation does this across the board because there are always costs of compliance to regulations. Everything gets worse the more you regulate it.
(An aside: I just employed that new academic standard of alternating the genders of pronouns to refer to nonspecific persons that Jason was asking about the other day. Notice how it looks exactly like an offensive assumption that a doctor would be male and his assistant a woman? But if you turn them around, the alternative construction will offend other people just as well. It's a terrible answer to the question of replacing 'he' as the universal standard for a person of unspecified gender. I think the old standard is better, but even the ungrammatical "they" for a singular individual of unspecified gender is better than this.)
So if the doctor needs four assistants to manage all the paperwork, now you're paying five salaries for however long the doctor is seeing you. Even if the other costs remained flat, your bill has to be several times higher than it was just to cover the needful salaries of the administrators.
Regulation does this across the board because there are always costs of compliance to regulations. Everything gets worse the more you regulate it.
Take a Closer Look
Andrew Sullivan thinks this is a Platonic moment:
1) Being given over to pleasures and whims, especially food and sex.
2) Reveling in 'the nonjudgment that is democracy's civil religion.'
3) Attacks the rich and promises to fight for the poor, even though he (or she) is actually very much part of the wealthy class.
4) The wealthy elite seek a way to appease him or her.
5) Promises to cut through the paralysis and 'get things done.'
6) Offers a relief from democracy's choices.
7) Pledges to take on the elites above all.
Now I'll grant that (1) is a far better description of Trump than Clinton. But what of the rest? Is Trump "nonjudgmental"? That's not something I've heard before.
As for 3 and 4, who's the one who keeps promising to take on Wall Street even though she has grown quite wealthy? Who is the one who is paid off with massive speaking fees by the wealthy elite? By vast donations from oil-rich states who wanted to curry her favor as Secretary of State?
As for 5, who is the one who promises to be a "Progressive who Gets Things Done"? That was her big line from the first Democratic debate (that and being an enemy of Republicans).
Which of the two is promising to strip choices away from the democratic legislatures of the land? That's been the modus operandi of Clinton's faction since Roe v. Wade. It's how they've proceeded on all moral questions, in pursuit of this 'nonjudgment that is democracy's civil religion.' They have marched so far and so fast that whole sections of moral legislation are now declared to be unconstitutional, so that no democratic mechanisms can touch them.
As for the last one, which one is running as the candidate who will take on the 'one percent'? Which one is running as the candidate who will take on illegal aliens? They're not the elite.
Trump is a problem, but he's not the only problem. There's a demagogue in each of these races. Sullivan is clear on the danger Trump represents, but he is blind to the peril on the other front.
And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.Wait a second. Who better fits this description, Trump or Clinton? Let's break it down into its elements.
He is usually of the elite but has a nature in tune with the time — given over to random pleasures and whims, feasting on plenty of food and sex, and reveling in the nonjudgment that is democracy’s civil religion. He makes his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob” and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt. If not stopped quickly, his appetite for attacking the rich on behalf of the people swells further. He is a traitor to his class — and soon, his elite enemies, shorn of popular legitimacy, find a way to appease him or are forced to flee. Eventually, he stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic incoherence. It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities. He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery” — and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.
And so, as I chitchatted over cocktails at a Washington office Christmas party in December, and saw, looming above our heads, the pulsating, angry televised face of Donald Trump...
1) Being given over to pleasures and whims, especially food and sex.
2) Reveling in 'the nonjudgment that is democracy's civil religion.'
3) Attacks the rich and promises to fight for the poor, even though he (or she) is actually very much part of the wealthy class.
4) The wealthy elite seek a way to appease him or her.
5) Promises to cut through the paralysis and 'get things done.'
6) Offers a relief from democracy's choices.
7) Pledges to take on the elites above all.
Now I'll grant that (1) is a far better description of Trump than Clinton. But what of the rest? Is Trump "nonjudgmental"? That's not something I've heard before.
As for 3 and 4, who's the one who keeps promising to take on Wall Street even though she has grown quite wealthy? Who is the one who is paid off with massive speaking fees by the wealthy elite? By vast donations from oil-rich states who wanted to curry her favor as Secretary of State?
As for 5, who is the one who promises to be a "Progressive who Gets Things Done"? That was her big line from the first Democratic debate (that and being an enemy of Republicans).
Which of the two is promising to strip choices away from the democratic legislatures of the land? That's been the modus operandi of Clinton's faction since Roe v. Wade. It's how they've proceeded on all moral questions, in pursuit of this 'nonjudgment that is democracy's civil religion.' They have marched so far and so fast that whole sections of moral legislation are now declared to be unconstitutional, so that no democratic mechanisms can touch them.
As for the last one, which one is running as the candidate who will take on the 'one percent'? Which one is running as the candidate who will take on illegal aliens? They're not the elite.
Trump is a problem, but he's not the only problem. There's a demagogue in each of these races. Sullivan is clear on the danger Trump represents, but he is blind to the peril on the other front.
A Very Good Question
H/t Instapundit, a question about eugenics:
So if it's legal, and the science showed that it worked, would it be moral? Not according to natural law theory, but today the left rejects that -- and it does so on what it takes to be scientific grounds. Specifically, natural law theory looks for purpose in nature, and the current leading theories in biology reject that things evolve for reasons. It's all random. There is thus nothing that is "unnatural" in the sense that it could be said to violate some sort of "natural law" -- not blinding the eyes, nor deafening the ears.
If the Constitution and the law do not protect you, and the science is on the other side, should we simply accept the morality of such practices? The Church says no, but a religious moral law cannot be the foundation for any American laws under the current reading of the anti-establishment clause. What protection remains? Merely the fact that science hasn't quite worked out how to do it yet?
[Author Adam] Cohen takes [Catholic] opposition for granted, never exploring the meaning or roots of natural law and why it drove the church to quash sterilization in states such as Louisiana and New Jersey. Rather than confront sterilization on moral or philosophical grounds, Cohen bases his opposition on scientific grounds: Carrie Buck had a sixth grade education, sterilization alone couldn’t eliminate “feeblemindedness,” Jews, it turns out, are pretty smart (they just didn’t know English when the eugenicists gave them IQ tests). It is convenient that eugenics makes for crappy science, but what if it had checked out?What if it turned out to be true that you could substantially improve humanity by forcibly sterilizing large groups of people? According to US Supreme Court precedent, it's totally constitutional for the government to forcibly sterilize you.
So if it's legal, and the science showed that it worked, would it be moral? Not according to natural law theory, but today the left rejects that -- and it does so on what it takes to be scientific grounds. Specifically, natural law theory looks for purpose in nature, and the current leading theories in biology reject that things evolve for reasons. It's all random. There is thus nothing that is "unnatural" in the sense that it could be said to violate some sort of "natural law" -- not blinding the eyes, nor deafening the ears.
If the Constitution and the law do not protect you, and the science is on the other side, should we simply accept the morality of such practices? The Church says no, but a religious moral law cannot be the foundation for any American laws under the current reading of the anti-establishment clause. What protection remains? Merely the fact that science hasn't quite worked out how to do it yet?
The Gov't Hates Transparency
Over at Real Clear Markets, Tara Helfman writes of how the government fought tooth and nail to avoid discovery in a Fanny/Freddie case.
Wanna Go See a Movie?
Update: Looks like no one's interested, so I'm making other plans. Maybe next time.
The team that put together Range 15 is having one last push to fund their soundtrack before the movie is released on June 15. As an incentive, there are a number of perks for different levels of donation, from $10 on up, but the one I'm interested in is a private screening at Ft. Hood (bottom of the sidebar) with Mat Best, Nick & Tom from Ranger Up, Rocco, Tim Kennedy, Jarred (I should probably know who he is, but I don't) and some other cast members they didn't name but whom we should all assume will be awesome. Plus, it would be a real pleasure to meet and hang out with folks from the Hall.
That donation is $150.The date is just given as "May," so I assume if anyone wants to do it, we should probably decide sooner rather than later. UPDATE: Reading through their blog, it looks like May 14 at 8:30.
If you're up for it, let me know in the comments and we'll work out the details.
Trailer:
Update 2: If you can't go to this, it will be in theaters June 15th.
The team that put together Range 15 is having one last push to fund their soundtrack before the movie is released on June 15. As an incentive, there are a number of perks for different levels of donation, from $10 on up, but the one I'm interested in is a private screening at Ft. Hood (bottom of the sidebar) with Mat Best, Nick & Tom from Ranger Up, Rocco, Tim Kennedy, Jarred (I should probably know who he is, but I don't) and some other cast members they didn't name but whom we should all assume will be awesome. Plus, it would be a real pleasure to meet and hang out with folks from the Hall.
That donation is $150.
If you're up for it, let me know in the comments and we'll work out the details.
Trailer:
Update 2: If you can't go to this, it will be in theaters June 15th.
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