Joe McCarthy as an Object Lesson for Trump

Mona Charen over at Ricochet points out that, although it turned out that Joe McCarthy was correct about communists having infiltrated high levels of the US government, the way he went about trying to fix the problem actually discredited his cause. She then argues that Trump should consider that when it comes to how we handle immigration from the Muslim world.

She has some other things to say as well:

The parallel to our times is the Islamist threat. President Trump is right that we face a threat from Islamists. He is right that careful vetting of immigrants, including refugees, is necessary in light of that danger. The worry is that his ham-fisted approach to a delicate problem may wind up discrediting the effort to vet immigrants, alienate our friends in the Muslim world, and empower the self-righteous left.

...

Alas, instead of stressing that our goal is to separate extremist Muslims from the majority of peaceable Muslims, President Trump’s slapdash executive order showed complete indifference to the distinction. Even green card holders, who have already been vetted and granted the right to live in the United States, were to be stopped at the airport with no notice. Why the rush? Would 48 hours notice have been too much to ask? Translators and military leaders from Iraq and Afghanistan, who had worked with U.S. forces at risk to themselves (and who were badly treated by the Obama administration), were originally offered no dispensation from the blanket order. That’s dishonorable and unwise, as it alienates all Muslims who might be inclined to side with us in a future struggle.

I have to agree with that. I think foreigners who have put their lives on the line for the US deserve to be treated well by us, and I have the sense that they often have not been. In the "no better friend, no worse enemy" formulation, we don't seem to be doing well at either. I hope Trump will correct both sides of the formula.

Solid Point

One problem with hyperbolically calling it a "Muslim ban": you end up with headlines like "Most Americans support Muslim ban."

We had a similar thing happen with the waterboarding and stress-position debate in the Bush administration. Opponents insisted it was "torture." So, that close to 9/11, of course the headlines: "Most Americans support torture."

A Contradiction

A Turkish friend of mine argues, sometimes, that Americans just can't understand that the same Islam we encounter as a persecuted minority in our country is a very different animal in her homeland where it is the majority. For her, and she is far more anti-Islam than any American conservative I know, Ataturk's mistake lay in not finishing the job. The Turkey she grew up in, as a member of the educated and secular elite, has been washed away by the current regime.

This failure of imagination creates a kind of contradiction in the contemporary progressive movement. They have come to see themselves as the heroes of a story about America in which the forces of oppression of minorities have been resisted by a few brave people of good will. As heirs to these few brave people of good will, they inherit a project of moving America away from irrational prejudice against those who are different, and toward a future in which all are treated as genuine equals. This is what they mean when they speak of 'the arc of history,' citing Dr. King, and for many of them it is not a poetic metaphor. It's an article of faith that history really is moving this way, and they are really its heroes.

So, the contradiction my friend is trying to draw: On the one hand, Muslims (here) are a minority exposed to at least sometimes irrational prejudices. On the other hand, Muslims in places like Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so forth are the major violators of minority rights. To support Islam is, my friend believes, to lay the groundwork for future violations here too as Muslims become stronger and more numerous. Thus, in defending minorities they strengthen the chief enemy of minorities, because it is -- here, for now -- also a minority.

I would like to believe that this is an overstatement, although she has drawn out the contradiction nicely. Certainly I am ready to support any Muslims who are interested in reforming their faith so that this future conflict might be avoided. There are a few different ways in which this might happen, and none of them are at all easy. I'm not under any illusions about how difficult that will be. The theology and history are all against them, as well as what have so far been the best minds of the whole history of their faith. Their task must appear as impossible to us as the task of winning freedom of conscience must have appeared in Christian nations before the 30 Years War. Yet that happened, of course.

In any case, here's another author who makes a very similar argument. She is an atheist, pro-choice, and apparently feminist. She's trying to frame roughly the same point.

It's a good point.

No Grandmothers Died Because of Trump's Order

A woman died, to be sure: but she died before the order was issued, and the pathetic story concocted by her son was a lie.

Philosophically speaking, it hardly matters. Trump's order made possible such a scenario, even if it didn't play out. It's one of the hard problems you take on with that kind of authority: your decisions have unintended consequences, and sometimes they can be awful. You have to bear responsibility for them even though you may never have imagined them.

By sad coincidence we have a real life example of that in the other story about the new President today. He left the White House with no destination announced, apparently shocking lots of people. It turns out he was flying out to meet the body of the Navy SEAL who died in the raid in Yemen, the first military action Trump has ordered. The family requested no publicity, which is hard to make coincide with a Presidential visit, but he somehow made it happen.

So this other thing didn't happen, but it might have; he avoided the guilt of it, but only by accident. This is one reason I've never sought power over the lives of others, only the power to hold my own. It's an awful responsibility.

Dat brier patch

No, please!  Anything but that!

As Ed Morrissey says, this is a proposal that can unite Americans across the political spectrum.

How Big An Influence was SCOTUS on the Last Election?

Vox:

The Supreme Court was one reason for wavering conservatives to back Trump in November. More Republicans than Democrats said the Supreme Court was a major factor in their vote. Trump has pleased them with this choice.

He has also given himself a rare breath of normalcy in a turbulent first two weeks on the job. Amid continuing chaos over the refugee ban and increased resistance from Democrats to Trump’s Cabinet nominees, picking a well-respected jurist with a solid conservative reputation might be the most traditionally presidential thing Trump has done in office.

The election was close enough that a lot of things might have swung it. Certainly I spoke to people who said that they were single-issue voters this last time around, and that single issue was the Supreme Court. I suspect many people who had serious concerns about Trump nevertheless saw in Clinton's potential election the end of the Constitution as they understood it. If Scalia had still been alive and on the court as a guardian of that Constitution, would it have been enough to swing enough votes to the other side?

By following through on his pledge here, I expect Trump has won himself some ground with any voters who did choose him to protect the Supreme Court. Keeping your word builds credibility, and credibility is the currency. If he keeps doing this, the next time he seeks their vote he might get it on his own account. Of course, he'll have to keep it up.

The Feast of St. Brigid

The stories about St. Brigid as a girl sound surprisingly familiar. She gave her father's stuff away without asking, so he tried to sell her to the king. While he was there negotiating the sale, she appropriated the king's sword and gave it away without his permission.

Brigid died before the founding of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and in fact it's unclear how much of her story can be separated from pre-Christian myths. The story about the cloak, for example, is a commonplace one. Sometimes it's an ox-hide, and the way it gets bigger is by being cut into strips that can then surround a much larger portion of land.

Gjallarhorn

Sounds more like bagpipes than a horn to me, but Heimdallr works in mysterious ways.

Habemus Scotam

He didn't make Trump's list from last summer, but it does look like the President has kept his word to give us a nomination in the mold of Scalia.

UPDATE: Apparently he made the cut in later lists -- see the comments.

Harley Davidson Wimps Out?

It's hard to think of anything more contrary to the brand they've tried to build than not doing what you wanted to do because you're afraid of protests. It'll be fun trying to salvage their reputation after this.

UPDATE: There is some debate about the facts. See the comments.

UPDATE: Due to the events of a few days later, it looks as if the CNN story was 'fake news.'

A Former Operator Writes on Yemen

During a recent raid on an al Qaeda compound in Yemen, a Navy SEAL was killed. The linked post is in memoriam.

Stop Having Unacceptable Fantasies!

Those modest and moderate souls at PeTA have come up with another winner: ban fur in a fantasy game, in which of course all of the fur is make-believe anyway.

Not that I'm too surprised to discover such an interest in regulating fantasy. Not after Tex's post about "expectant mothers," I'm not. It's pretty clear that they intend for us to live full-time in fantasy worlds, so naturally it is important that they be in charge of regulating such things.

Just An Idle Thought

Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter): Notice that not one leftist panicking over a "coup" or "fascism" has said "Gosh, maybe we should decrease the power of the govt"?

"Betrayed the Department of Justice"?

It's one thing for a President to fire someone who serves at his pleasure but refuses to back his play. It's another thing to use the language of treason in describing her conduct.

Of course, it's easier for me to make this point than for many on the left, given how readily they've resorted to the language of treason aimed at Trump himself. That doesn't make it less wrong in this case.

Or Maybe Not So Divided

If you believe Rasmussen's poll instead of the last one, a solid 57% support Trump on his temporary visa order. Rasmussen reminds us that "These findings have changed little from August when 59% of voters agreed with Trump’s call for a temporary ban on immigration into the United States from 'the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism' until the federal government improves its ability to screen out potential terrorists."

This is nifty

At Science Alert, report of some interesting materials science advances.  We already knew that metallic vanadium dioxide (VO2) switches from a visually transparent insulator to an electrically conductive metal at 152 degrees F. Between 86 and 140F, it also reflects infrared light while remaining visually transparent.

Now we have learned that, when VO2 reaches the temperature at which it switches over to electrical conduction, it remains an unexpectedly bad conductor of heat. Apparently this is because its free electrons move in unison instead of primarily bouncing back and forth. Also, mixing VO2 with other materials adjusts the amount of both electricity and heat that it conducts. These characteristics together suggest that VO2 mixtures can be devised to do things like coat windows, so that they conduct heat in hot weather but insulate it in cold weather; VO2 might also begin to conduct heat away from electric motors after they have been operating long enough to build up heat.

I may have gotten this summary mixed up, particularly which parts follow from the new discoveries and which are old hat.  The linked article is short but worth reading.

Donald "Lizzie" Trump

This from Don Surber:

Donald Trump took an axe
He gave D.C. forty whacks.
When he saw what he had done
He gave another forty-one.
Donald Trump smiled away
Then he chopped off EPA.

Eric Hines

De-tribalization

Sebastian Junger, via Steve Sailer, argues that we see so much PTSD now, not because war culture is hard on the psyche, but because American civilian culture is notably lacking in the tribal cohesion and intimacy necessary to mental health.

In Junger’s rather sketchy description, tribal life sounds rather like being in the Army, although with less hierarchy, less marching, and even more gossip. Hunter-gatherers, the most intense form of tribal life, are strikingly egalitarian, constantly forming backbiting coalitions to undermine the confidence of superior hunters to keep the strongest men from monopolizing all the women.

Similarly, Junger notes, humans living under seemingly catastrophic conditions, such as London during the Blitz, his father’s hometown of Dresden under RAF raids, and the besieged Sarajevo he visited as a young reporter, seem to enjoy better overall mental health than peacetime Americans.

I recognize something like this pattern in my own life, as well as in the literature that most appeals to me, but it makes me a bit impatient. Whether people are shooting at you or not, we've been given all the opportunities to band together passionately against misfortune that any creatures could well wish for. We have only to seek the opportunities out, something we're not always so eager to do when an easy, comfortable life is within our grasp. We have no excuse to let our lives become meaningless or empty merely because we're well fed and unusually safe in the context of human history.

Saudis Back Trump's Refugee Plan

Not the immigration part, but the part where the Saudis and the Gulf States pay for Trump's proposed alternative to importing refugees: "safe zones" in Syria and Yemen. (Which, in classic Trump style, he claims the Saudis will pay for.)

How the Government Wrecked the Gas Can

I'm pretty sure we've discussed this exact issue in the past. This article is from 2012, but things have gotten worse since then.