Here's What A Citizen Looks Like

This fellow gives me so much heart, less because of his specific position and more because of his robust understanding of what it means to be an American citizen. I love his line about whatever the Founding Fathers intended, they wrote rights for all. He isn't waiting for rights to be bestowed on him; he claims them because he knows they are inalienable. Bravo!

A Nation of Corrie Ten Booms

Mr. W. and I were just talking about how difficult it is not to simply absorb the culture in which you live because no one can really stand outside his own time. Maybe a little, in flashes, but not really. Now here comes Anthony Esolen with a little essay about that: Holier than Them.

He allows his friend Robbie George to set up the problem:

the inestimable Robert George, likes to ask his college students how many of them, if they lived in the South before the Civil War, would have opposed slavery. They all raise their hands. “Bless their hearts,” says he, and then he advises them what their opposition would have cost them: ridicule from the most visible political and intellectual leaders of their society; slander of their motives; incomprehension at best from their families; loss of employment; loneliness; and scant gratitude from the people they aimed to help.
Nor is it clear how they could form a moral position running athwart so much of what they must have taken for granted from the time they were born

We all like to think we'd have worked the underground railroad or housed priests in Reformation England or hidden Jews from the Nazis or stood like Sakharov. And the truth is, no, we wouldn't. Mostly we'd have been shaped by the relentless propaganda campaign and the fear of retribution. If we even saw the evil at all, most of us would sigh and be silent and keep our heads down.

Esolen uses his piece to mock the virtue signaling of our time, where our pieties cost us nothing:

we are not called to oppose, notionally, comfortably, the characteristic evils of other ages, basking in the glow of a righteousness that costs nothing. We are called to suffer in opposing the characteristic evils of our age. And we will not begin even to conceive of how such a thing is possible, if we do not obey an authority that transcends mankind.

He has in view the sexual revolution:

What is the public evil of our time? What single “good” will cost you the most, through public ridicule or persecution, if you reject it and act accordingly?

He highlights a particular instance of cowardice masquerading as bravery that caught my eye as well. A pastor in Rhode Island fired his music director for getting gay married with the full knowledge of parishioners. So the parishioners, to protest, sang "All Are Welcome" in place of the Creed. 

What struck me about their protest was not so much the empty "bravery" of it, but how unwittingly apt their chosen gesture is: "We easily jettison the actual precepts of faith by which Christ's disciples live in favor of a fuzzy feeling folk song of our choosing." 

Esolen heaps deserved scorn on such folk, who imagine they are being brave and defiant when they are actually being swept along by the currents of the time. But I think his earlier point is more important -- the part about how difficult it is to stand against evil -- and not just because of cowardice, but because the water you're swimming in is so hard to see. 

That is what frightens me most about more years of Progressive rule and what mystifies me about some of my Christian #nevertrump friends who think any of the Christian institutions from which they plan to mount their counter-assault on the culture will withstand another four or eight or twelve or sixteen years of HHS mandates and transgender bathroom rules and the like. I think most of us who write about these things now will not think the same with eight or twelve more years of this. 

People seem to write as if the coming (already here in vanguard) soft persecution of Christians will be good for the Church -- it will purify us, awaken the sleeping giant, etc. I suppose that might happen.  Maybe we will be brave. Some people no doubt will. There have always been Joan Bells and Joe Scheidlers and Baronelle Stutzmans among us. But the truth is that most of us will just be carried along. They'll tell us we can't have our hospitals or universities unless we support gay marriage and pay for abortions and you know what will happen? We'll agonize, and then we'll decide in conscience that the good of being able to treat people in the hospital or of teaching most of what we believe outweighs the evil to be done by turning so many people out of work by closing those institutions down. Better that we should continue our work as best we can than turn these vital duties over to others, we will say.  

We will Sr. Carol Keehan it, and we will do so in good conscience, believing in good faith we are making the best of a bad situation and lamenting our own persecution.  And of those who do stand up we'll say either that we admire them but we don't think Christian conscience necessitates their stand or that they are a little too harsh or odd and that's not the way to attract people to the faith. We will have a point, as people who say such things (myself among them) do today, but we will be making these same compromises with a secularism now 5, 10, 15, 20 years advanced and even more people than today will simply not remember, or ever have experienced, any reality other than rule by the secular administrative state and they won't think it's that bad. 

This is why we pray, "Lead us not into temptation."  Because most of us are not strong enough to stand against the strong winds that blow. Most of us --I-- need a healthy culture because we have neither sufficient leisure to study and understand the times, nor eyes to see the evil in them, nor courage to oppose evil when we do see it. 

Two Points in Trump's Favor

I've been joking on Twitter that maybe Trump is a genius after all, because I don't know who else could have gotten Bill Clinton to wax eloquent for an hour about how sexy his wife is and how important the institution of marriage is; could have gotten the President to give shout-outs to Ted Cruz, coal miners, and the forgotten factory worker; and could have gotten the party as a whole --embodied by Booker, Michele, Biden & Obama-- to be full-throatedly patriotic and demand that no one run the country down.

As Pat Buchanan once said, this week has been the greatest show of cross-dressing I've ever seen. Tho' I guess we have to say the Democratic Party has identified as patriotic this week.

More seriously, in fairness to Trump, I want to throw two things out for consideration.

First, his press conference, the one where he allegedly called for Russia to hack us.  He didn't. What he did do was set a trap for the Hillary people to admit that her lost emails contain classified information -- and they utterly fell for it, in an unforced error.

More importantly, just watch it (Curtsy: Ann Althouse). Not saying I agree with every word of it, but I think I could feel comfortable if this version of Donald Trump showed up more often.  Not going to say more...just watch and see what you think.




 Secondly,  here's a pretty robust defense of Trump against the charge that he mocked the handicapped. That accusation has never sat well with me, because I watched Trump defend himself contemporaneously, and I judged him to be sincere, though because I don't trust him, I wasn't sure.  Read this.  The piece probably makes too much of the fact that the reporter in question does not have cerebral palsy and isn't handicapped in the way Trump gesticulated.  What I find persuasive is the 2nd video at the link, where he mocks Ted Cruz with the exact same gesture. It's Trump's way of indicating falling apart or discombobulation, and seeing that cinched for me what I already believed -- that in this one instance, Trump has been maligned, and didn't do the horrible thing we all readily believed of him.

I'm not a convert. I'm not going to pretend Trump is Reagan. But fair is fair.

You Will Be OUR President

Shamelessly pinched from here. 

Serious question. Is it possible to imagine any present-day Liberal luminary penning such a letter to a political opponent? I can't think of one, though I can imagine something similar coming from the pens of quite a few people in the GOP or Conservative movement.  Would be interested if you can think of a liberal/progressive who's evidenced parallel good will.

Is Donald Trump the Common Sense Candidate?

Update: Welcome, JAG readers! And my readers: I am being refuted. For the record, I didn't consider this post to be an attack -- just an engagement. Truth is, I sort of want to be persuaded by this particular brand of pro-Trumpism. It's just that so far, no matter how hard I try, I can't be. A response to the response will be forthcoming, but not right away as paying jobs call. Meanwhile, read my post below and the response linked above and stay tuned.  

Are you aware of the Journal of American Greatness?  You should check it out, as it's making waves among political theorists sorting through our weird presidential cycle. Though it's a bit difficult to describe what it is.  Call it a blog not of Trump supporters, but of anti-anti-Trumpists, writing to call the Republic to itself -- starting with whichever members of the Conservative movement might be listening. Its writers want a politics that is unapologetically pro-American:

immigration, trade and war are the issues that really matter right now

Particularly take a look at its recent post, On the Convergence of Left & Right, from which that phrase was taken.

The post makes two points with which I agree whole-heartedly.

1. A lot of folks in the #NeverTrump camp  --including folks I usually admire-- come over awfully prissy this cycle: unable to distinguish a colossal jerk (Trump) from an existential menace (all the fascist villains to whom he's been compared).

In this mistake they've actually strengthened Trump with his voters, I suspect. I haven't listened to any talk radio in years, but for some reason for the last two months I've found myself in the car for Bill Bennett's (now defunct) morning show and had taken to listening to the first half hour of Hugh Hewitt's (now moved to mornings) afternoon show while making dinner.

You know what Trump supporters who call into those shows say?  Or rather, what they do NOT say? They do not say they admire his crass ways. They do not say they hate immigrants.  What they say is (paraphrasing here an actual caller to Bennett's show): "I know he says a lot of things that are out of line, and they sort of make me cringe. But in the end he just reminds me of the fellas that work on the line with me. They don't mean any harm with their remarks, and they are loyal and will stick up for you. And I think he loves his country and will stick up for America."

Many variations on that thought.

Or: (paraphrasing a highly successful, devoutly Catholic, investment broker in New Hampshire who was a guest w/ Hewitt one evening): "I hate the way he talks about people. But I look at the direction our economy is going and I think we are headed for a collapse it may already be too late to avert, and I think, well, maybe this guy who is a businessman might actually address this instead of fleeing from it once he's in office."

"Real" people, outside the pundit bubble, aren't all that afraid of Trump. Or they might be, but in that case they're not afraid he's a malicious person likely to impose fascism on us so much as that they don't have a clue what his real policies are.

2. Secondly, the folks who make the mistake above are being played.

...leftists came to realize that praising Buckley’s act [purging anti-Semitism] is an effective way to concern-troll conservatives into purging more—and more and more. Keep at it! The more people you read out of your ranks, the more conservatives you denounce as racist, the closer you are to hearing us say you’re worthy heirs to Buckley! In this, as in so many other ways, the left is Lucy and the “right” is Charlie Brown.

Right on! I level a parallel criticism of certain Catholic apologists on the internet who are more ashamed of some random young hothead orthodox blogger somewhere who says something a little mean than of people who actively teach and practice error.  I don't presume to know they actually do that to be praised as "the reasonable ones." I only know that almost everyone I read these days on any subject sounds in my head like the most god-awful scold.

This JAG piece, alas, very much included, for it exaggerates the positions of its opponents (especially the folks at National Review, who come in for withering mockery) and makes claims I can't take seriously.

For example, the author claims he can no longer remember why he supported Romney over Obama.  I wonder how the Trump supporters, with their vaunted common sense and pro-America instincts might answer these questions:

1. The author is anti- wars to spread democracy and wants a pro-America foreign policy Great. But does he imagine that it was in the interests of the United States, in the face of a terrorist enemy that only understands force, to precipitously draw down troops in Iraq such that a war (whatever you think of its having been started) that was won was deliberately lost -- at the forfeit not only of American and allied lives, but of the meaning of those sacrifices? Would Romney have done that?
2. Would Romney have given us Justices Sotomayor and Kagan? Are they pro-America?
3. Would Romney have used the IRS for political purposes?
4. Would Romney have turned the Department of Justice into an office of political vendetta?
5. Would Romney have imposed the HHS mandate? Would he have used the might of the American justice system against the Little Sisters of the Poor?
6. Would Romney have behaved so fecklessly in Egypt and Libya? Would Romney have abandoned his own ambassador to torture and murder?
7. Would Romney have been so feckless and incompetent as to call ISIS the junior varsity and be surprised by its strength?  
8. Would Romney have turned the State Department into an LGBT rights organization, actively seeking out gay and trans diplomats -- no matter how much they offend our allies? 
9. Would Romney have hired as CIA director a man who doesn't believe in spying? 
10. Would he have allowed the humiliation of the U.S. being driven from a NATO country?
11. You seriously going to suggest Romney would have given us the Iran deal -- or the national humiliation of our sailors on their knees, apologizing to the Mullahs?
12. Would he have treated Ft. Hood and Boston and San Bernadino as matters for the police?
13. Would he have heightened racial tensions by jumping into "beer-gate" and the Trayvon Martin case? 
14. Would Romney refuse to call Islamic extremism what it is?
15. Would he be threatening North Carolina over its sensible protection of women and girls in bathrooms? 
16. If he had been President, would we still have Obamacare, or would a Republican congress have been able to act? 
17. What changes might Paul Ryan and a GOP Congress have been able to make to the budget and spending if there had been a President Romney to support them and sign their bill? 

Does it seem pro-American to fantasize no difference between Romney & Obama to you?

Every cycle there are pointy-headed theorists on the GOP side who fantasize about losing an election so that things will get so bad that people will be forced to turn to them for salvation -- and the GOP will be saved!

What about those of us who don't give a fig for the GOP? What if I only care about the people -- myself, my kids, my neighbors, the poor-- who have to live under the policies that result RIGHT NOW from the actions of those currently in office?

What if my objection to Trump is emphatically NOT that I fear him as a neo-Nazi, but that I can't think of a single policy he's advocated that doesn't seem colossally stupid?

I'm for robust border control. But I'm not for Trump's plan to effect it by blocking remittances to Mexico.

I'm for an American foreign policy that is unapologetically pro-American and avoids foreign entanglements. But I fail to see how Trump's promise to seize Middle East oil, be neutral as between Israel and Hezbollah,  kill women and children, and send 30,000 ground troops to defeat ISIS constitutes such a foreign policy. Seems like a recipe for inciting additional hatred for Americans and getting us embroiled in all kinds of skirmishes.

Let me say a word, too, about the JAG folks' (or at least one of them's) contempt for the so-called social issues. Just as Lincoln knew that the Union had to be preserved in order for slavery to be destroyed, I am willing to concede that sometimes --even though there are no rights at all without the right to life-- the life of the nation itself has to take precedence over specific policies, no matter how fundamental or of what moral significance.  And I agree with the linked post that the Trump voters are more interested in their own personal futures and the future of the nation as a whole than in abstract considerations about marriage and abortion.

However: the GOP in my lifetime has always been filled with people who think they can purge their way to electoral majority. And those people aren't all pro-lifers and purity conservatives. They are equally the folks who find themselves  (a la John Kasich) -- and apparently a la JAG-- embarrassed by pro-lifers and pro-marriage people and wish those topics would just drop.  The same argument that the JAG author makes about Conservatives being played over the race question and political correctness can be made over Conservatives who want to drop the social issues. You are never going to win an election by dropping your pro-family voters, no matter how much they embarrass you in front of the media.

More importantly, though, the JAG authors are looking for robust American resistance to political correctness, and I'd like to know where they find it more than in the pro-life and pro-marriage movements? Grass-roots people passed 51 pro-life laws in 2015. Should their victories be allowed to be taken from them by SCOTUS?  You want to fight the power? That fight is happening right now in Mississippi and Georgia, as the sovereign people take a common sense stand -- and the Cronyists in business and politics are aligning to force them to back down.  And where is JAG? And where is Mr. Trump?

The same is happening in the case against the Little Sisters of the Poor, which is not a Catholic contraception issue. It's a government (and its cronies in Planned Parenthood and Big Pharma) stomping on a mediating institution that has gotten in its way. Just today Americans who believe in self-government and liberty were able to persuade a court to dismiss an ACLU/ Planned Parenthood effort to COMPEL health care workers to participate in abortion. These are just as much battles for self-government as border questions. And where is Mr. Trump? On the wrong side -- defending Planned Parenthood, which is the crony-est institution of them all.

I'm for the great unwashed rising up against Washington.  I'm also for the renewal of the American character, especially the capacity for self-government. But it doesn't make me "establishment" to doubt seriously that Mr. Trump --a man who once fantasized publicly about the eventual size of his infant daughter's breasts and doesn't recognize these fights when he sees them-- is a good vehicle for such.

That is just common sense.

Taxation & Statesmanship

Daniel Henninger has a devastating column in today's WSJ: Panama Bernie (behind the paywall, but it was also at RealClearPolitics this morning; currently some kind of glitch or hack is interfering with that link for me, but presumably that will resolve shortly).

His thesis is that while Bernie, Hillary & the President rail on about rich people and "offshore accounts" it's government policies that cause them.

Spare me the crocodile tears over the immorality of tax avoidance. Panama is an indictment of government greed..... 

Most governments, including ours, overtax their citizens to feed their own insatiable need for money. Then the legal thieves running the government and their cronies, unwilling to abide the tax levels they created, move their wealth offshore to places like Panama. Arguably, all the world’s people should be able to move their assets “offshore” to escape governments that are smothering economic life and growth, which has stalled in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Blah, blah, blah. Not that I disagree with the point, but given how ticked off I am with the hypocritical, corrupting, cronyist, cowardly, virtue-signaling and bullying business community, I can't muster any fellow feeling for the individuals who head its companies. Big Business deserves anything negative it gets as far as I'm concerned.

The important point he makes, though, is that it's not just rich people who dodge high taxation. EVERYONE does.

Suppressed for generations by high tax rates and regulatory minutiae, most Europeans survive in an economic half-life of gray and black markets, with their assets protected by cash-only transactions, bartering, and endless hours devising off-the-books deals involving family real estate, inflated art prices and anything else they can hide from the taxman.

This is the point that not only progressives, but also many distributists and sincere social justice types, miss. No government, whatever its form, has infinite power to simply plan an economy and gain compliance from its citizens. To paraphrase Jurassic Park's Dr. Malcolm, people find a way. Wise law-givers --even on the rare occasions where they actually are more far-seeing than their citizenry-- are nonetheless bound by what their people will actually bear. 

It's nice that you think tax rate "x" or regulation "y" will contribute to the common good, but if it's so onerous that no one will pay it or abide by it, all you have done is create black markets and inventive ways to skirt the law. And every time you do that, you make it easier for people to beak the law again next time. 

Corruption is the main problem in Third World countries. Progressivism is just the West choosing voluntarily to become more and more corrupt -- all the while blathering on about immorality. 

As Menninger concludes: 

When private capital is under public assault, it will hide. From the wealthiest to the poorest, it creates a world of chiselers, not productive citizens.

I Love This So Much

I praised my 97yr old Godmother today for learning to text...

She reminded me she worked at Bletchley during war #codebreaker

— Dee (@sayitaintsojoe9) April 3, 2016

Trump is Zelig

Since Trump looks likely (I think there's still a chance for Rubio -- see the Weekly Standard take on the rally I missed out on in the previous post), I have been thinking hard about him. First, to see if I can in conscience vote for him if he's the nominee and second, because a handful of people whose political judgments I deeply respect support him over all the other nominees and I've been trying to be open-minded and see what they are seeing that I am not.

I "get" the voter rage angle. Yesterday during a conversation about politics I completely lost my cool in front of Eldest Weed (not at him) in a way that surprised me. It was a moment of self-awareness where for the first time I realized  I am one of those profoundly angry voters. I am not only deeply saddened, but enraged, that the liberty of a great nation has been utterly squandered for decades, and with rapid intensity in the past 10 years, thanks to the corruption of crony capitalism and our utter failure for generations to teach people what freedom is, such that we the people have willingly traded our inheritance for bright baubles and empty promises.

I learned from the Romney defeat that no one in the GOP is speaking the language of the working class, which feels itself increasingly threatened by an economy simultaneously stagnant and in rapid transition to something "else"; by a weakened currency that means wages can't keep pace with purchasing power; and by the feeling of malaise and weakness from losing wars, racial tensions and crazy policies that Trump rightly calls "losing" and "making bad deals." I understand the Trump phenomenon to be at bottom about jobs and patriotism (I  take worries about immigration to be overblown, both because the crisis has peaked and because hostility to aliens is a proxy for fearing for your own job -- and also because voters in SC said it was low priority).  Obama hasn't brought any jobs. The GOP Congress, after a lot of big talk, hasn't defeated the job-killing Obamacare. So why not give the successful businessman who promises incessantly he'll bring all the jobs back and put competent managers in charge of the government a shot? If he gives the middle finger to all the crony capitalists and media people who look down their noses at Middle America, so much the better. 

To those who are scandalized that Trump is pulling evangelical voters -- and telling those people they aren't Christian-- I would point out that Pastor Jeffers, one of Trump's supporters, makes a good case when he says that after Obergefell, evangelicals gave up on the idea that there would ever be godly leadership, and decided to go for a guy who would at least make rational decisions in the country's interests and leave discipleship to the Church.  So I absolve the evangelicals of being merely money-grubbing or hypocritical in their choice. They are perhaps learning to think politically rather than sentimentally; more likely, they're just being pragmatic. 

The argument that disturbs me enough that I've been trying to wrestle with it is the idea that Trump is a "Declaration candidate." This is the argument that while Trump is vulgar and a disrupter, what he represents is the people at long last manfully asserting their own agency as against the crony elites -- and therefore for all his coarseness, will be a purifying force for the body politic.  Yes, he talks like a demagogue, but in office in all likelihood, because he wants to succeed, he will take advice and put competent people in place and he might just be the one man who could actually rein in the size of government. (When you think about it, this was the Romney argument: "I like to fire people." Except Romney was hurt by the idea that he was mean; Trump's whole persona is "mean," so you can't attack him with it.) 

Having read sensible people taking this view, I took to listening to Trump speeches and campaign appearances to see if they were right. That's where I picked up the patriotism note, which I hadn't previously noticed. 

Still, I am sorry, they are wrong.

1. His promise to put "the right" people in charge is a Progressive promise, not a revolutionary one. He is running as a strongman & champion -- a Chavez (who also rose to power by being coarse and shocking the elites)-- or perhaps just an Obama. He doesn't sound like a person who will roll back the Administrative state and return us to a republic of self-government and personal and community agency. 

2. Statesmanship often involves tacking with the winds in order to keep the ship on course. In desperate times, prudence may require fighting for a single foundational principle, even at the temporary cost of other ideals one holds dear. Lincoln sacrificed much for the sake of holding the Union together because he understood that if the Union fell apart, not a single other good of the fledgling republic would remain. Does Trump have such a North Star to navigate by?  There is nothing whatsoever to suggest so.  Lincoln had a long track record of reflection on the meaning of the Declaration and the rule of law by the time he ran for President. Reagan had a track record starting from "A time for choosing." Trump's record is one of carefully adopting the popular -- the "winning"-- opinion of the moment. His opponents look at his past support for abortion, single-payer health care and the Clintons and see a life-long Democrat masquerading as a Conservative. I see a guy who adopts the views of whoever he happens to be hanging out with today.

3. Along these lines, in spite of his strong man image, I find Trump to be an extraordinarily weak man. Remember how he melted before Carly Fiorina's withering response to his having insulted her looks? He fell all over himself in that early debate to walk his comment back just because she stood up to him and he saw that his attack wasn't winning. 

His ability to lie boldly and often is well-known. But what strikes me in interviews is not his lies, but how often he changes his mind right on camera in the face of an interviewer who presses a point. The only point he ever sticks to is that he didn't say whatever it is you disapprove of.  On all other matters he capitulates easily --how often at debates he's changed his mind right in front of us as he rambled through a point!  He may revel in the dislike of the elites,  as populists do -- and that dislike may propel him to personal popularity-- but those elites are masters at manipulating public opinion on specific issues, and Trump is a slave to polls.  Where Reagan molded opinion to his will, changing the polls, Trump will change his opinion to whatever way the wind blows on any given topic.

4. Are you ready for Chief of Staff or other influential operative Roger Stone? Roger Stone? Is there a more corrupt figure in American life apart from the Clintons, and we're to turn the nation over to a man who chooses Roger Stone as his pal and political advisor? To support Trump is to throw away forever the argument that character counts and that self-dominion and self-restraint and virtue are necessary for the regime of freedom. You don't get to support Trump and be angry with Hillary for making good deals for herself and being a shameless liar all her life. 

5. This evening on a long drive home from a going-away party, I couldn't find anything good on the radio and so settled for a C-SPAN recording of Trump's appearance today in Huntsville, AL.  Mostly the same old tedious stuff about how great his polls are and winning, winning, blah, blah. But two things stood out. 

First: for the umpteenth time Trump promised he will bring back jobs by saying that as President he will personally call the CEOs of companies that try to move to Mexico or elsewhere and threaten them with a 35% tariff on their specific brand and the next day they will call him and say they're actually going to stay stateside.  

At one time I would have said this is no different in principle than other GOP candidates promising to lower taxes (which no President can do). But those candidates are using shorthand to describe the agenda they will set with the Congress. Trump, I'm convinced, literally doesn't know the president can't levy a tariff at all, much less on a specific company. I say this because he clearly has heard the criticism that the President has no power to impose a tariff, because he addressed it with the audience. In a stage whisper he declared (paraphrasing), "They say this wouldn't be presidential, so maybe I will make the call in secret." Then he goes on to describe in detail how the call will go and who will say what to whom. It's not a joke or hyperbole or agenda-setting. It's the actual view of the same guy who told us the other night that his sister the judge "signed a bill" that judge Alito also signed.  It's also a ridiculous claim, and a disturbing one, considering what it implies about his concept of executive power. A man who doesn't know how the government operates --and hasn't bothered to learn in this long campaign-- is going to be eaten up by the system, not make himself master of it. 

Secondly: I was amazed to hear Trump discuss the problem of China manufacturing islands in order to control the sea lanes in the South China Sea, and then denounce the Obama administration for allowing our military to decay such that we have aging equipment and aren't able to defend ourselves against Russia, China & Iran.  You know who has been talking about those two issues since the beginning of his campaign? Marco Rubio -- and he's the only one who has. Trump stole the talking points and his entire understanding of those issues from Rubio.  So the Strumpets can say they despise Rubio, but Rubio is actually setting their man's agenda on any question that isn't about saving jobs by personally threatening CEOs.  Rubio's the idea man in this election cycle. Candidates ought to learn from each other how to make good arguments. But great men do not just wholesale adopt whatever ideas they happen to hear from their opponents in debate.  

Trump is not some Prince Hal who is going to surprise us all by evolving into a statesman.  He is a Zelig, who will adopt the policy positions of whomever he ends up standing next to, as at this link, in which it is revealed that when talking to the NYT, his vaunted "wall" suddenly disappears and becomes an "opening bid." He is not strong; he is enormously weak.

*This essay has been tinkered with since I originally published it. Took nothing out, but added a bit and re-arranged. Intend to add some links to it later. 

A Great Man Has Fallen

Justice Antonin Gregory Scalia, AP Photo,
  shamelessly pinched from here.

I was present at the ordination party for Rev. Paul Scalia, one of the 9 children of Maureen & Antonin Scalia. Paul & I were good friends at the time, having worked in the same office for a couple of years.

I loved and respected my friend, but every so often you get a window into someone's life that raises your respect by a degree of magnitude. The reception was fun, filled with joyful conversation and singing show tunes around the piano. What stuck with me, however, was that after dinner, spontaneously, someone rose from nearly every table to say a few words about the newly ordained priest. Most of the words were of a roasting nature -- we laughed so hard at Paul's expense!  But eventually every speaker wound down to some serious words, which were always about some kindness Paul had done, or the witness he had borne in a certain circumstance, that got the person through a hard time or changed him for the better.

That would be remarkable enough, but interestingly, the speakers were from every period of his life. Someone from the neighborhood; from grammar school; from high school; from university; from the seminary; even Justice Thomas rose in gratitude for Paul's influence on his own reversion back to the faith.  I remember thinking: This is a man. Already he has spent his entire life being a quiet but real force for good everywhere he has ever been.

Others will write the story of Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence and the mind of one of the genuinely great American justices.  What has struck me over the weekend as remembrances have trickled out from bereaved friends is that the man was not only an intellectual giant and genuine force for liberty, but also a man of that deeper greatness he, with his wife, forged in his son: a genuine friend, a person of conviction, someone with a sincere love of Christ and of people, whose friendship made life better everywhere he's gone.  It is rare for a public figure to have the respect and affection of ideological opponents, yet his friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and with Elena Kagan is well known --and read Cass Sunstein's gracious words about him below.

If you read nothing else about the man whose passing was announced on Saturday, read this. I easily believe the truth of it, because daily communicants in the downtown parishes in DC have all seen the Justice at the back of the chapel saying his prayers just as described.  And we have all seen the broken and oddballs who likewise come to daily mass.

Have you read it yet?  See? This was a man.  May he rest in peace.

Antonin Gregory Scalia 1936-2016

Update: Now you must read this, too. A letter from Justice Scalia to a Protestant minister who preached at a funeral he attended.


Other Worthy Reads:

Hadley Arkes

Jonathan Last

Robbie George

Cass Sunstein 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Scott Johnson (watch the video embedded there, in which a progressive law student admits the only decisions she can bear to read are Scalia's)

Why Else Cruz Won

I for the most part agree with Ted Cruz' politics, but I don't trust his character.

He can't work with anyone.

He sold out persecuted Christians for fundraising purposes (shoot. link to the full article now dead, but you can get the gist here).

He wears his Christian faith on his sleeve and yet his campaign does this kind of thing:

Fake "voter violation" mailers.

And now Ben Carson says Cruz surrogates spread the false rumor that Carson was suspending his campaign. Watch the video.

“If Ted Cruz doesn’t know about this, then he clearly needs to very quickly get rid of some people in his organization,” Carson, who ultimately finished with 9.3% support in the Hawkeye State, said on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” Tuesday. “And if he does know about it, isn’t this the exact kind of thing that the American people are tired of? Why would we want to continue that kind of, you know, shenanigans?”
“At many of the precincts, information was disseminated that I was suspending my campaign, that I had dropped out, and anybody who was planning to vote for me was wasting their vote and, therefore, they should reconsider,” claimed Carson, who also pointed to tweets from Cruz surrogates that suggested the retired neurosurgeon was ending his bid.

I know politics ain't beanbag. And I also know you can't always control  your followers. But THAT is the kind of corruption and "insider" behavior -- all while wearing the mantle of trust and Christianity and principles-- that I am utterly exhausted by. 

Update: Oh, look. He's sorry/not sorry. 

In Support of Boehner

The vote for Speaker of the House is today, so I'm too late to have any affect on anything and am just relieving my feelings of frustration, but as my assorted social media feeds have been shouting at me to "dump the Speaker" for months, I have to say I think the anti-Boehner campaign is extremely misguided and highlights the misgivings I have about the so-called "Tea Party," even though I basically share its policy aims.

First of all, on the matter which sparked today's move against the Speaker: "CRomnibus," and the so-called "cave" to the President's illicit executive order on immigration. There was no cave. There was a fight set up, but a fight wisely deferred until it could be won. The Continuing Resolution funds most of the government for a year, but the Department of Homeland Security only through February. Which means: Boehner's going to fight on immigration policy, but he wisely waited to start the battle when the Cavalry (the new Senate) arrives. 

I have no idea what people who wanted to have that fight in December think they could have accomplished while Harry Reid still ran the Senate -- other than utterly squander the political capital gained during the mid-term elections by shutting down the government. Do you want to actually change the policy or do you just want to pontificate?

CRomnibus isn't a great bill. There's no love lost between any real Conservative and a multi-trillion dollar government spending plan under any circumstances. But in politics you work incrementally, and there were a lot of Conservative "wins." 

Such as: 

• the Ryan-Murray spending caps remain
• The EPA budget cut $60 million, and they're prevented from using the Clean Water Act against farmers' ponds and ditches. 
• Cutting the IRS budget some $365 million.
• No new obamacare funding
• Prevents Guantanamo perps from being tried as civilians in the U.S. 
• They delayed the incandescent light bulb ban. 
• 451 policies/programs blocked -- such as no abortion funding in Obamacare, no funding for ACORN, "fast & furious" explicitly banned, and more....

Blaming Boehner for Cromnibus is like blaming Pius XII for not helping Jews or calling Lincoln a racist: people want their rhetoric loud and their demonstrations showy, but pay little attention to actual actions and results. 

I often have the impression that no one understands any longer how our system works. The Speaker of the House, while he naturally has some influence over party positions, has limits on his power. He can't go much beyond what the members of his party are willing to do. Denouncing Boehner as a "RINO" strikes me as grossly unfair. He's a reliable Conservative, good at pushing his members in the right direction, and with a good sense of how far his people are willing to go. He's also (like McConnell in the Senate) a highly effective parliamentarian (which -update!- is how he forced the sequester on Obama, resulting in the ONLY actual federal deficit reduction in absolute terms in my lifetime), which is all the more needed when you have a crop of newbies who don't understand the House rules yet. 

He could be a trifle bolder, perhaps. Perhaps. What I mostly wish is that he and the GOP generally had a better communications operation to educate GOP voters and the American people on the reasoning behind what they do. I wish the absurd criticism about not fighting on immigration didn't go un-answered. And I especially wish that Tea Party figures chose their battles and their villains more wisely. I wish they lived the Catholic virtue of solidarity, understanding that when you come to office, you have to govern from where the country actually is. You don't get tabula rasa, and no matter how much you hate your predecessors' policies and consider yourself mandated to undo them, you are responsible for those very policies and responsible to the people relying on them, because you are part of the American people who put them in place. 

I don't fear for Boehner (has he been re-elected yet)? He is well-loved by most of his colleagues because he works like a dog for them in their campaigns, in and out of everyone's districts. If others want Boehner's position, they could learn from him how to serve others and not just rant at them.

Election 2014, Good News, Bad News

The bad news is the GOP took the Senate probably just in time to own the country's problems and elect another Dem president in 2016.

The good news? Quite a bit of it!

1. The GOP took the state legislatures and governorships in numbers that will have lasting impact in the states no matter what happens in 2016.

2. The quality of the GOP class just elected. You know how I always complain about Nixon ruining the country -- not with Watergate per se, but because backlash against him caused a wave of the nation's wickedest politicians to be elected? I think there's a good chance Obama just did the same in reverse. (And Henry Waxman, emblem of the nation's wickedest congressional class, retired rather than stick around. Which is perhaps emblematic of his class being vanquished at last.)

I happened to tune in to Rush Limbaugh for a few moments a day or two after the election when he was complaining bitterly about Reince Preibus (GOP chairman) culling candidates in this manner:

On Oct. 1, 2013, 16 potential Senate Republican candidates were met at baggage claim in Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport by trackers—those annoying, hyperactive, politics-obsessed, camera-wielding twentysomethings whose job is to make a candidate lose his or hers. After a series of fundraising events and policy briefings, the candidates met at the offices of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and recounted their stories with tales of their personal, belligerent Democrat. “We said that’s interesting; We’d like to show you the video of you and how you reacted to the tracker because we put those trackers on you,” said Sen. Rob Portman, the NRSC Finance Vice Chairman.

Unless I'm confusing this piece with another similar one, I think an earlier version of the story indicated that these faux reporters specifically hounded candidates on abortion and "war on women" issues. This bothered Limbaugh for some reason -- he took it as the Party trying to downplay social issues. I think it was smart. I don't want the pro-life cause at the mercy of the Todd Akins of this world.

[Let me just digress for a moment here to say something about that. Anyone can fumble in a debate situation. But Akin's gaffe -- arguing that pregnancy from rape is a non-issue because it rarely occurs thanks to a biological defense mechanism-- was an idea advanced by Dr. Jack Willkie in the early 1990s. It may or may not have some scientific basis, but in addition to sounding horribly insensitive to the victim of an assault ("is it real rape?"), it's rhetorically weak because it opens the door to the idea that abortion is the right solution to rape cases. Most engaged pro-lifers abandoned that argument swiftly. To my mind the problem with Todd Akin was not that he was completely tin-eared, but more that he clearly hadn't thought seriously about pro-life issues since the 1990s.]

I am tired of the GOP -- both the party and its voters-- accepting as pro-life anyone who says he'll support a human life amendment with no further questions. To my mind, putting people to the test and training them is a sign of taking pro-life issues MORE seriously, not less. The social issues are winning issues in the proper hands, and we have a class of Senate candidates (now Senators-elect) who seem to be stellar: whip-smart, disciplined and of good character -- people who didn't need to run away from abortion and the birth control mandate because they are sure of themselves and know how to give as good as they get. High hopes!

3. The defeat of the "War on Women."  Others have written about this so I won't add much except to say it's naive to think the war on women tactic will just go away. What's been defeated, hopefully, is GOP/pro-life defeatism. (Ditto the whining from folks who default in every election to how much the media are against us and there's no real difference between the parties. Whatevs. The media and party hacks you have always with you. If you can't figure out your way around those things, maybe you're not a good candidate. Those assertions have differing degrees of truth, but they're both just helpless downer talk from people who are essentially apolitical and want the world to just change without anyone having to make political arguments as opposed to moral assertions. There is always something to be done....)

The next few items are just things I personally find yummy in the results.

4.  My 3-decade losing streak is broken.  For the first time in my life a candidate I voted for in a state/local election won. Maryland, of all places, elected a pro-life GOP governor (ditto Massachusetts and, most shockingly, Illinois). I wish him well. The state didn't give him a legislature to work with, but it felt good on election night. (For the first time in my adult life, I'm proud of my state!) To what do I attribute his decisive win? Two things: Gov. O'Malley's rain tax. (Really? Even Marylanders have some limits). And Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown's being a poor candidate. The only thing he was really tasked with as Lt. Gov. was the roll-out of Maryland's Obamacare exchange, which was even worse than the Obamacare rollout itself. And he doesn't come off as the brightest fellow. By the end of campaign season the Anthony Brown signs had disappeared and generic  placards urging us to "Vote for the Democrats" were everywhere.

5. Wendy Davis lost in Texas. That's no surprise, but you know what's delicious? The poster child for late-term abortion on demand didn't even win the women's vote. Along those same lines: though I would have held my nose and voted for him if I were in NH just to wrest the Senate from the villainous Harry Reid, I don't mind that Scott Brown lost in New Hampshire. He ran a great campaign qua campaign, for which I give him credit, but he's a presidentially handsome pro-choice Republican, and had he won a certain wing of the party would be foisting him on us as a presidential candidate. No, thanks.  Ditto gay Republican Carl DeMaio's loss in CA-52. I kinda like the guy in the abstract and setting aside his disastrous ideas about family policy, but had he won he'd have been foist on us as the changing face of the GOP (indeed, the race was close and the Washington Times jumped the gun and ran such a story).

6. Scott Walker, Scott Walker, Scott Walker. I think nothing made me as happy Tuesday night as Scott Walker's re-election, simply because I viewed his race as a straight-up case of good (man of upstanding character, champion of little people) versus evil (public sector union bosses defending graft and incompetence). He proves in the hands of the right guy there are no third-rail issues in American politics.  My current choice for President 2016.

7. My other pet races: Mia Love -- first black Republican congresswoman;  Tim Scott, first black senator elected from the South -- and he's GOP;  Tom Cotton, senator-elect from Arkansas, because he talks to voters like this . (His victory speech --watch it!-- is almost a Reagan-like "time for choosing" speech.)  Mitch McConnell: because some people in the GOP have unjustly accused him of being weak or a RINO, not understanding the guy is a brilliant tactician and parliamentarian to whom we owe much.

For the record, I did endure two heartbreaks Tuesday night. It's astonishing Ed Gillespie almost beat Mark Warner in VA and sad that he didn't. Ditto my man Dan Bongino in a hard-fought congressional battle here in MD. You can tell what kind of man Bongino is by how gracious he is in his concession letter to his supporters.

I also agree with whichever wag on Twitter it was who said the election was not an endorsement of Republicans, but a restraining order on the Democrats. That's exactly right. Conservatives have a brief window now in which to make the case to the working poor, "workers" middle class families, blacks and latinos that their policies are the fairest and best. PLEASE, GOP, do not blow it by a) doing nothing and always being in reactive mode or b) having the first thing you do be passing business tax cuts or repealing the minimum wage hike -- moves which might be good eventually, but will be bad optics in this economy and will slam the open window shut, hard.

Let your first move be surprising, like pushing for education vouchers -- everyone's against the teacher's unions now. Or maybe something like Paul Ryan's opportunity grant w/ expansion of the earned income tax credit. That would help poor families right away, would be difficult for the President to veto, and would get people to sit up and listen.

Happy Independence Day!

"...And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

Click to enlarge

Thinking about these men today. 

And how they influenced men a world and two centuries away: Born American, but in the Wrong Place.

And how they influence people today. Danielle Allen thinks the text of the Declaration has a period where a comma was intended. I don't think I really understand the significance she places on this, but what's very nice in this interview is her account of how the Declaration inspires her unemployed or under-educated night school students.

Beowulf!

Shamelessly pinched from @nicedystopia's twitter feed, via @ninme's

This is Arctic explorer Peter Freuchen (who lost a leg to frostbite) and his wife Dagmar Gale. Missing a leg didn't prevent him from serving in the Danish resistance during WW II.  Can't say why, just think you need to see this. 

Something Wonderful

Brett McS, who is now for all practical purposes my remote content provider, passes along this fabulous interview Neil Armstrong gave to an Australian CEO doing a project on leadership in 2011.  I've never seen any substantial interview with him before. Brett offers this commentary:

What a great ambassador Neil Armstrong was for America, and if there did happen to have been intelligent life on the moon there couldn’t have been a better ambassador for the human race.

Remi Brague: Atheism Has Failed

See, I toldja!


This is difficult to hear: not the greatest sound quality, strong accent, and he's soft-spoken. But this lecture will repay careful listening.

Guess Who This Is

Update: via Twitter, the guesses so far are: Ayn Rand & Madalyn Murray O'Hair (the latter not a serious guess.) Nope!

And now the reveal: Gramma & Carlos & Tom got it. It's Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, later to take another name.

 

I Think Fr. Frank Just Won

After Gramma Pelosi proclaimed (or appeared to proclaim) late-term abortion "sacred," Priests for Life founder Fr. Frank Pavone called her out, asking her to have the decency to renounce Catholicism instead of pretending to be "devout" (though any practicing Catholic would tell you that no actually devout Catholic would ever refer to himself as devout; saying that of yourself is de facto proof it ain't true).

In an interview with Think Progress she laughs his challenge off -- says if it had been more "intellectual" and less "hysterical" she might have taken it seriously. But I think she also admits she's not Catholic here.

I grant the Church where they are on abortion. That’s where they are, that’s where they have to be. But my faith isn’t about what their position is.

It's a bit ambiguous. Possibly the "they" is Priests for Life since she denounces them before and after. But she seems to say here that her faith has nothing to do with what the Church teaches.

The interview is revealing, not only because it shows she's as ignorant as she appears, but because it demonstrates what's not even on her radar. Here 's what she says about Roe v. Wade (note her dismissive referral to the March for Life as a "parade"):

I’m not sure that the Republicans actually want Roe v. Wade to be struck down. Their base does. But from their standpoint, they’ve had plenty of opportunities to strike Roe v. Wade. They have these parades every year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but they have not acted in a way that would take it to the courts. Now, other people outside have their cases and all that. But President Bush, with a majority in Congress and a court inclined to strike down Roe v. Wade, he didn’t need to do it. And that should tell you something. They want the issue. Better to have the issue. Because if they strike it down they will have such a backlash in the country. [Emphasis in original.] 

Nancy Pelosi --former Speaker of the House-- does not value the authority of Congress! She thinks Republicans aren't serious (some of them certainly aren't, but that's another story), and her evidence is that they haven't done what Lefties do, which is try to impose their views through judicial diktat. It does not even occur to her that there could be any other way to function. Similarly, look at how she speaks of Bush "striking down" Roe, as if that were a Presidential power or as if the President has any control over the SCOTUS. (Makes you wonder what the relationship between Dem presidents and their appointees is, doesn't it?)

This calls to mind John Allen's piece about Christians in Nigeria wanting to be peaceful, but not able to bring the Muslims to the table until they fought, because Muslims could only understand non-violence as weakness. Legitimate legislative processes that honor the Constitution and the will of the people are so far off Pelosi's radar, she can't recognize that her opponents are working within them. Honorable politics are a cipher to her!

The Lady Not For Turning

I love Steve Hayward's tribute to Lady Thatcher at Powerline.

When Leo Strauss received the news that Winston Churchill had died in January 1965, he made the following spontaneous remarks in his classroom at the University of Chicago on the lessons of Churchill’s life—lessons that apply just as well to Margaret Thatcher.  His conclusion:

The death of Churchill reminds us . . . of our duty.  We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence.  For we are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all in seeing their greatness and their misery, their excellence and their vileness, their nobility and their triumphs, and therefore never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness.

Update:  Three items.

The Argentine pope pays tribute to Lady Thatcher:

"His Holiness Pope Francis was saddened to learn of the death of Baroness Margaret Thatcher," the papal message stated. "He recalls with appreciation the Christian values which underpinned her commitment to public service and to the promotion of freedom among the family of nations. Entrusting her soul to the mercy of God, and assuring her family and the British people of a remembrance in his prayers, the Holy Father invokes upon all whose lives she touched God’s abundant blessings."

Fun footage of Baronness Thatcher's last debate in Parliament below, but first an anecdote.

One of the chefs where I work (a great, robust, bass-voiced Turk) has lasting affection for Baroness Thatcher because he was on duty in the kitchen of some hotel in Colorado where she and Dennis were attending some conference or summit or some such thing. In the morning she came into the kitchen and the chef offered to make her breakfast, but she refused, saying she always made her husband's breakfast for him herself.

Now this. Wait til the end where she says she's enjoying herself.

Nicely Done, Your Eminences

Habemus papem! as you've no doubt heard. Barely had heard of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina before he came out on the Loggia a couple of hours ago, but, based on first impressions and everything I'm reading? Wow.

Seriously, where do we keep finding men like this in an age of such corruption and mediocrity, including in the Church itself?

His resume? Typical Jesuit over-achiever: Master's in Chemistry, then studied philosophy and theology. Taught literature, psychology and theology Jesuit provincial in Argentina for awhile, until Pope John Paul II made him a bishop and stuck him onto the Congregations for Divine Worship, Religious Life, Congregation for Clergy, Congregation for the Family, etc. Speaks Spanish, Italian, German, French, decent English and some Portuguese.

Known in Argentina for his service to the poor (one Holy Thursday he went and washed the feet of AIDS patients in a hospice), his personal humility and simplicity (sold the episcopal mansion, eschewed a chauffer and took the bus to work, episcopal motto: "lowly but chosen") -- and also, when it was thrust on him, for being a staunch defender of the family and traditional sexual morality. A critic in Argentina of luxury and corruption -- but also of Marxism.

Here's what seems to be a typical comment, based on how often it's quoted:

In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage,” Bergoglio told his priests. “These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptized!”

Bergoglio compared this concept of Catholicism to the Pharisees of Christ’s time: people who congratulate themselves while condemning others.

“Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit,” Bergoglio said.

Chaput the Great welcomes the appointment:

Pope Francis, the former Cardinal Bergoglio, is a man from the new heartland of the global Church; a priest of extraordinary intellectual and cultural strengths; a man deeply engaged in the issues of contemporary life and able to speak to the modern heart; open to the new realities the Church faces; and rooted in a deep love of Jesus Christ. He is a wonderful choice; a pastor God sends not just to the Church but to every person of good will who honestly yearns for justice, peace and human dignity in our time. May God grant him courage and joy, and sustain him with his divine presence.

This evening he led the faithful in prayers for the Pope Emeritus, then asked for a moment of silent prayer for him before imparting the Urbe et Orbi blessing.

And now let us begin this journey, the Bishop and the people, this journey of the Church of Rome which presides in charity over all the Churches, a journey of brotherhood in love, of mutual trust. Let us always pray for one another. Let us pray for the whole world that there might be a great sense of brotherhood. My hope is that this journey of the Church that we begin today, together with the help of my Cardinal Vicar, may be fruitful for the evangelization of this beautiful city.
And now I would like to give the blessing. But first I want to ask you a favour. Before the Bishop blesses the people I ask that you would pray to the Lord to bless me – the prayer of the people for their Bishop. Let us say this prayer – your prayer for me – in silence. 

Ad multos annos, Pope Francis!

Update: GREAT commentary via Aussie correspondent Brett McS.
Upper-date: Not the greatest translation, but still a window into what's in store: Card. Bergoglio's Lenten Letter; Sandro Magister's profile from about 10 years ago.