Monthly Archives: July 2018

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Sinners and Saints

“A generation ignorant, arrogant, and poor is a prescription for social volatility.”

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Selective Collusion

We are supposed to consider every transaction anybody on Trump’s team had with the Russians to be an existential threat, yet we are supposed to ignore the $500,000 speaking fee Bill Clinton got and the millions they gave to the Clinton Foundation.

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Putting Trump in a Historical Perspective

Can America survive Trump?  Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway commented that a business that can not withstand a little bad management is not that great a business.

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ADL Mission Creep

The ADL suffers from mission creep.  While anti-Semitism is the last acceptable bigotry, the ADL chooses to expand its mission to fighting hate in all its forms. Anti-Semitism is developing much deeper roots in the left. The ADL ignores this in the pursuit of a political agenda that subverts its true mission.

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The Path to Redemption

There are several Democratic voices struggling to get beyond the demonization, pathologizing, and other excuse mongering.  Such attacks only cause the Democrats to move further left and double down on the contempt for the voters that cost them so dearly. Ignoring reality avoids the pain of the loss, but offers no path to redemption.

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Noble Adversaries of Civilization

‘Men of religion combat freedom, and the friends of freedom attack religions; noble and generous spirits vaunt slavery, and base and servile souls extol independence; honest and enlightened citizens are enemies of all progress, while men without patriotism and morality make themselves apostles of civilization and enlightenment!”

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NATO and Trump

“The idea that international institutions, built on the blood-stained rubble of two world wars, must give way to some glorious new era of nationalism is inflaming the minds of people across the West. It’s a very weird epidemic of Year Zero thinking on a global level. “

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The Weakness of All

“I see that it is government alone that inherits all the prerogatives extracted from families, from corporations, or from men: the force of a small number of citizens, sometimes oppressive, but often protective, has therefore been succeeded by the weakness of all.”

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FDR and Trump

“Putting markets under economic discipline is where progressivism, socialism, fascism, and nationalism all intersect, each of those ideas being based on the superstition that the nation has interests distinct from those of the people who compose the nation.”

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Identity Politics is Undemocratic

“Diversity among different “kinds” of people is celebrated everywhere, but intellectual, ideological, and political diversity among those groups is demonized.”

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The Fatal Conceit of a Trade War

“China targeted pistachios to inflict pain in a region where Republicans are politically vulnerable. About 99% of American pistachios are grown in California’s San Joaquin Valley, home of GOP Reps. David Valadao, Jeff Denham and Devin Nunes.”

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The Means Matter

As we have seen with the elimination of the filibuster by Harry Reid, sacrificing the means to the end is a short sighted strategy and creates tools that will be used against you. No matter how noble the ends the means still matter.

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Should the Religion of a Supreme Court Justice Matter? 

The American Catholics did not look to the government to be the center of their religious mission. This made them less likely to look to the government to enforce their religious codes on others. This was not due to a superior loyalty to a foreign papist monarch, but to a local community cohesion. The Catholics felt stronger about the separation of church and state than the Protestant pietists. Their parochial schools relied less on public education and government support.

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Obama and Civil Liberties

“Nadine Strossen, a liberal and the former president of the American Civil Liberty Union, conceded — but only in hindsight when both Obama and she were out of their respective offices — that Obama was one of the most hostile presidents to civil liberties in history. “

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