The array of players shaping our current juncture

Allow me to attempt to systematize the various players shaping our current juncture.

I'll start with three broadly defined political actors - the president, the Republican Party, and the Democrat party - and the base for each. Then I'll look at other players having an impact on the present situation.

The president - He's proven, in these much-hyped first 100 days, to be the same man he was during the campaign season, during his run as a reality-television star, during his indulgences in sexual braggadocio on Howard Stern's radio show, and in his books - that is, a vulgar, shallow, rudderless, bombastic narcissist. The most recent evidence is last night's address to a rally at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

His base - It really has two components: the die-hard water-carriers who actually like a speech like last night's, the all-caps commenters who proudly wear the nationalist and populist labels, and then the conservatives who cling to the moves on the positive side of the ledger that Trump has made so far as evidence that all is going well.

The Republicans - By this, I pretty much mean federal-level Senators and House members. There are a few principled conservatives among them (Ben Sasse, Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert, Mia Love and Trey Gowdy come to mind), but collectively speaking, this is a group that does not know how to act like victors. The glaring example is, of course, the lack of the requisite testicular fortitude for just repealing the "A"CA and responding to any howls of outrage with full-throated defense of the free market.

Their base - They really don't have one, as both slavish devotees of Trump and actual conservatives are disgusted by their spinelessness.


The Democrats - Again, I basically mean federal-level Senators and House members, but also include DNC officials. This crowd is the kind of Leftist that Orwell portrayed so chillingly in the Napoleon character in Animal Farm, the thoroughly cynical and corrupt power-seeker who talks a good game about Leftist values - equality and fairness and living in peace - but are completely guided by their nose for amassing goodies. (As with the handful of actual conservatives among Republicans, there are some sincerely Leftist lawmakers, but most of them seem to have pretty fancy homes and fat portfolios of assets.)

Their base - The students, faculty and administrators on the nation's college and university campuses, the writers for The New Republic, the organizers of the pussy-hat march and the march for "science," 99 percent of the arts-and-entertainment world. These people blindly invest trust in the above-described Democrats, but are better at acting on their impatience than grassroots conservatives are. These people are our society's jackboots, the  most dangerous force among those being enumerated here. They are determined to crush everyone's First Amendment rights, not to mention their determination to obliterate the family structure and the notion of human nature itself.

The media bubble - Shouldn't I differentiate between right-leaning and left-leaning outlets here? Make a distinction between MSNBC and the New York Times on the one hand and Fox News and the New York Post on the other? I'm afraid that doesn't accurately reflect the dynamics involved, especially since FNC has been exposed  for the sybaritic atmosphere attendant to its Roger Ailes years. And consider how many of its leading lights past and present were not actual conservatives. Exhibit A: Bill O'Reilly. These are people driven by advancing their careers, having their good looks affirmed, and getting good tables at prestigious restaurants.

Enemies of the United States, and adversaries that back them - North Korea, Iran and the jihadists in the first category, and Russia and China in the second.

It's interesting that I'm scrambling to finish this post so as to head off to church. The above cast of players, considered in toto, constitutes the picture of a fallen world.

Does it frustrate you, maybe bring you a bit too close to the brink of resignation, maybe even despair?

Then get clear about what you value.

This is no time to be a mere spectator to some passing parade, sighing with an it-was-ever-thus absence of stake.

Start with some prayer. It's Sunday morning.

Lord, bring clarity to this scenario, and courage to each of us so petitioning.

Saturday roundup

This guy didn't even concern himself with the fact that everyone knows she ain't no pre-European American, such was the fervor with which he was pursuing his agenda:

WHY IS NBC LYING ABOUT ELIZABETH WARREN? In a story headlined Trump Again Derides Elizabeth Warren as ‘Pocahontas,’ NBC’s Daniel Arkin writes: “President Donald Trump returned to one of his most derogatory insults Friday, referring to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” — a jab at her Native American ancestry.”

Now I’m sure that Arkin knows that this isn’t a jab at her “Native American ancestry,” but at her fake Native American ancestry. So why pretend otherwise? To make Trump look bad. Which I guess explains why more people trust Trump than the media after 100 days.

After reading Mike Sabo's review of Thomas G. West's The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy and the Moral Conditions of Freedom, I want to read the book itself.

Here's how West systematizes the elements of what drove the Founders to approach the invention of a new basis for a nation-state the way they did:

West divides his book into three overarching sections: an overview of the founders’ political theory, an argument for why they thought government should inculcate citizen morality and virtue, and an extended examination of their views on property and economics. As he reasonably argues in the book’s introduction, before we can praise or condemn the founders, we must “first know” both “why the founders set up the regime they did” and “how their political order worked.”

All nation-states exist to protect something, but the founding of the United States of America was the first instance of using that concept to protect something truly universal:

 Natural rights are the inalienable liberties all human beings possess, not through government largesse, but by nature. Because “all men are created equal” in the sense “that there are no natural masters or natural slaves,” everyone has the natural liberty to order his life “without interference from other people.” Among these rights are the right to life, possessing and acquiring property, religious liberty, and to seek happiness—what West calls “the goal of human life.”

On the reverse side of rights are the duties all men have not to transcend the moral limits on the use of their rights. The founders called these natural limits the law of nature, or natural law. Natural law, which can be discovered through the faculty of reason, is “both the source of natural rights and a statement of our duties.” West argues that “natural liberty exists only within the moral limits of the law of nature.” Liberty, in other words, does not equal license.

Because all men are created equal, just government can only be founded on the unanimous consent of individuals who want to protect their rights, which are insecure outside of civil society. (The founders called the condition in which there is no common authority to protect against infringements of one’s rights the state of nature.) “The logic of the equality principle,” West contends, “necessarily leads to the right of the people to rule themselves in person or through elected representatives.” Consent, then, must be granted not only at the founding of a regime but also in the course of its operation, lest it degenerate into a tyranny.

And West, by way of Sabo, deftly dispels the notion that government promoting virtue somehow runs counter to the premise of liberty. Quite the contrary:

Against the view of scholars such as Thomas Pangle, Allan Bloom, and Harvey Mansfield, West contends that the founders were far from being concerned only with low bourgeois virtues, such as acquisitiveness, and comfortable self-preservation. In fact, they considered “virtue as a condition of freedom and a requirement of the laws of nature.”

Many public documents from the time spoke of the need for social and republican virtues within the populace such as justice (i.e., obeying the law), moderation, benevolence, temperance, industry, frugality, religious piety, and a responsibility among the people’s representatives to secure their good. In times of war, however, virtues of strength such as courage, leadership, bravery, vigor, and manly exertion are required. “Virtue is of concern to government not as an end in itself, but as a means to security and ultimately to happiness,” West concludes.

Opposed to the libertarian ethos that has consumed much of the Right, West argues forcefully that the project of sustaining our republic is not satisfied simply by getting government out of the way. The founders thought it was the duty of government (at least at the state level) to encourage virtue through public education, support for religious instruction, and a vast network of laws that discourage crime and promote stable families.

And to those who might be inclined to chime in with, "Aha! These much-venerated Founders were proponents of public education!", all one has to do is point out that current public education serves a purpose pretty much at odds with what they wanted to see it cultivate.

Then there is the matter of property rights, by which the Founders didn't just mean ownership, but also the chance to become an owner:

West also highlights an important but overlooked part of the founders’ theory of property rights: human beings have the right to possess and acquire property. They thought this important so that “the poor as well as the rich can benefit from property rights.” This stands in stark contrast to feudal ages in which serfs had virtually no prospects of climbing the ladder of opportunity and making their own way in life.

The ratcheted tensions in northwest Asia have Japan pretty skittish:

One of Tokyo's major subways systems says it shut down all lines for 10 minutes early Saturday after receiving warning of a North Korean missile launch.

Tokyo Metro official Hiroshi Takizawa says the temporary suspension affected 13,000 passengers.

Service was halted on all nine lines at 6:07 a.m. It resumed at 6:17 a.m. after it was clear there was no threat to Japan.

Takizawa says it was the first time service had been stopped in response to a missile launch. Train service is generally suspended in Japan immediately after large earthquakes. Tokyo Metro decided earlier this month to stop for missile launch warnings as well.

ESPN, like the Democrat party, is creating its own obsolescent with its leftward lurch.

Why isn't the "A"CA getting flat-out repealed in this era of Republican control of the federal legislative and executive branches? Byron York at the Washington Examiner contends that it's because somewhere between 25 and 50 Pub House members are scaredy-cats, afraid that they don't know how to articulate such a resolute position to the particular constituents in their districts.

The mixed-bag record of Trump-administration "policy" continues with current decisions on several fronts

LITD is squarely in the camp of conservative outlets that, during the campaign season, argued passionately for an actual conservative candidate and against DJT for reasons that are well-known, but, since his election, has taken a development-by-development approach. A look back at posts having to do with executive orders, cabinet and agency appointments, legislative proposals and public statements shows that we've called 'em as we've seen 'em, stating flatly - generally in the title of a given post - that some moves are awful, but also doling out praise where it's due.

A number of things are currently in the administration's inbox and it seems useful to review where it stands on each, and whether those stances deserve a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

Shane Vander Hart at Caffeinated Thoughts distills, I think, the three main good things the executive order on K-12 does:

1. Administration policy will favor local and state control in education as the law allows.

The order reads:

It shall be the policy of the executive branch to protect and preserve State and local control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, and personnel of educational institutions, schools, and school systems, consistent with applicable law, including ESEA, as amended by ESSA, and ESEA’s restrictions related to the Common Core State Standards developed under the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Trump is saying that his administration will operate within the confines of the law and not expand the reach and scope of the federal government into K-12 education by rule, regulation, or U.S. Department of Education guidance.

2. Trump orders a review of all federal rules, regulations, and guidance related to K-12 education.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will spearhead the review. DeVos is to look at all of the regulations and guidance documents related to the Department of Education Organization Act, General Education Provisions Act, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act.

The executive order reads:

The Secretary shall examine whether these regulations and guidance documents comply with Federal laws that prohibit the Department from exercising any direction, supervision, or control over areas subject to State and local control, including:

(i)    the curriculum or program of instruction of any elementary and secondary school and school system;

(ii)   school administration and personnel; and

(iii)  selection and content of library resources, textbooks, and instructional materials.

3. Trump orders DeVos to “rescind or revise” anything that violates statutory prohibitions.

DeVos is ordered to rescind or revise any regulations or guidance documents that are inconsistent with statutory prohibitions on federal control of K-12 education. If any of those items gave the Department the ability to direct, supervise, or control areas that are subject to state and local control she has to rescind or revise and publish any new regulation or guidance document within 300 days.

Now, for a bad move, the toying with the idea of leaving NAFTA. I cede the floor to the great Senator from Nebraska, Ben Sasse on this one:

Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse cautioned Trump against acting hastily, when it comes to NAFTA.

“Scrapping NAFTA would be a disastrously bad idea,” he said in a statement. “It would hurt American families at the check-out, and it would cripple American producers in the field and the office.”

“Yes, there are places where our agreements could be modernized but here’s the bottom line: trade lowers prices for American consumers and it expands markets for American goods. Risking trade wars is reckless, not wise.”

The massive tax plan is excellent, but, as Charles Gasparino at the New York Post points out,

business interest groups [will] lobby Congress to keep their loopholes, Democrats argue that the White House and Republicans are throwing money at the rich — and more than a few Republicans demand that the whole thing not add a cent to the budget deficit, even if the evidence of the Reagan years is that lowering taxes on people and businesses can grow tax revenues and, with some budget restraint, pay for itself.

And it may be those "business interests" that scuttle the much-needed exit from the Paris "Climate" agreement:

The latest word on the administration's stance came from Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who said Tuesday he would not advise Trump to abandon the deal but rather renegotiate it.

That statement aligned Perry, the former governor of Texas, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who formerly headed ExxonMobil and has spoken in favor of honoring the US commitment to the Paris deal, struck in 2015 and signed by more than 190 countries.

Trump's daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushner -- who both serve as his advisors -- are also said to be in favor of the deal.

On Wednesday, 13 major international businesses ranging from energy to pharmaceuticals to retail urged Trump to adhere to the Paris accord.

"US business interests are best served by a stable and practical framework facilitating an effective and balanced global response," said the letter signed by BP, Walmart, Google and others.

"We believe the Paris Agreement provides such a framework."

That said, it is heartening to see camps of resistance to the idea of staying in that stupid and harmful agreement:

But some in Trump's inner circle, including advisor Steve Bannon, want Trump to keep his campaign promise to "cancel" the deal.

Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt is also said to be pushing for a US exit, according to Andrew Light, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, a global research organization.

"He is worried that if the US stays in Paris, that would become the basis for some kind of legal objection to his work now, to do things like dismantle the Clean Power Plan and regulations (former president Barack) Obama put in place on transportation and electricity sectors," Light told AFP.

"I don't think the US staying in Paris interferes at all with what Pruitt wants to do with regard to domestic regulations," he added.

"But if the US stays in Paris there is a very high likelihood they will also announce they intend to change the US target." 

Again, there's that inconsistency thing. What was the point of hiring Pruitt to do the important work of de-fanging the EPA if he is going tone undercut on the diplomatic and "business interest" front?

Then there is the highly unusual move of calling in all 100 Senators for a b briefing on the North Korea situation, calling it "very grave."  That one is what it is. It's the inevitable juncture at which we're going to find ourselves after 20-plus years of idiotic policy, as enshrined in the Agreed Framework, the Six-Way Talks, and "strategic patience." But, jeez, it does kind of raise the hair on one's neck. Have you seen the photos of North Korea's live-fire drills? It's clear that at least one message Kim is sending is that, "Hey, we have plenty of this stuff. It's no biggie to use some of it for drill purposes."

So the mixed-bag record continues to establish itself. It looks silly to cheerlead for this bunch, but conversely, the shrill and idiotic response of the hard Left looks even sillier. IT's best to be guided by conservative principles and assess each development on its merits.

How much more thuggish is the Left going to get?

One for the just-wow file:

Protesters demanding a "budget for the people" stormed the offices of the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

The Twitter account "People's Action" tweeted out videos of protesters entering the building and chanting "shut it down!"

The protesters stated their opposition to priorities in President Trump's budget, which they said "will hurt our communities," and they railed against Heritage as being Trump's think tank.

And mayhem seems inevitable in Berkeley:

The University of California, Berkeley is likely to once again be the site of brutal protests on Thursday as questions arise about whether the city’s mayor has ties to an extremist group sparking violence.

Ann Coulter has vowed to move ahead with a planned appearance at the university, despite Berkeley trying to reschedule her speech over security concerns. Law enforcement sources told Fox News that regardless of whether the conservative firebrand shows up, there is a “99 percent” chance that the college will erupt in violence.

The sources are helping the Berkeley Police Department prepare for what is now seen as an inevitable showdown over First Amendment rights to free speech.

Charles “Sid” Heal, a retired commander from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department who met with Berkeley police on Monday, said that authorities are preparing for the worst because extremist groups from across the spectrum are heading to Berkeley, and because the past three protests that devolved into violence were met by a “lackluster” response from local police.

“We’ve been told they’re going to come no matter whether Ann Coulter comes or not, and the next riot is not a standalone in isolation but a natural consequence of the lackluster approach of the past,” Heal said, adding that because protesters felt police didn’t protect them at the last riot many are pledging to defend themselves. “People are becoming vigilantes.”

Heal and others said there is deep discord between the Berkeley Police Department and the city government, led by Jesse Arreguin, the 32-year-old newly elected mayor facing his first major test in running a large city. Arreguin has been accused of supporting left-wing violence because he is a member of the Facebook group of By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, a far left group that has incited violent protests across the country.

The city's mayor supports rioting as a means of expressing disagreement.

Folks, the deep, wide crack in this country's foundation may look to you, if you live in a flyover-country community in which manifestations of freedom-hatred tend to be mild, on the order of human-rights commissions, diversity councils and "green" initiatives and your contact with it tends to be limited to wince-, or perhaps occasionally growl-inducing, social-media posts, like something manageable that won't get in the way of your daily interactions with a variety of fellow citizens.

But do not underestimate the degree of their intolerance.

Just like the United States had a civil war, now it is post-America's turn.

It's time to check in on your values and how dearly you hold them.

Inconsistency and relativism will put you in danger.

We have moved out of an it-was-always-thus environment and into uncharted territory.

 

If you're looking to build a home, Squirrel-Hair just made your project considerably more expensive

Today's exhibit in the ongoing flood of evidence that the current president has no consistency to his worldview, no ideological core that guides him, comes in the form of action on one of his most harmful impulses: protectionism.

Perhaps you've heard about the tariffs to be imposed on Canadian lumber.

Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute explains why this harms far more people than it helps:

There are a lot of news reports today about Trump’s decision to impose stiff tariffs on American companies (homebuilders) who buy Canadian lumber, here is a sample: “Trump slaps first tariffs on Canadian lumber,” “Tariff on Canadian lumber sends a stern message,” “Trump Administration To Impose 20 Percent Tariff On Canadian Lumber,” and “Trump slaps duty on lumber from Canada.” In each case, those news reports miss a few very critical points: a) Canadian lumber doesn’t pay the tariff, b) Canadian lumber companies won’t pay the tariff, and c) American lumber-buying companies (mostly homebuilders) will pay the tariff, which will be passed along to home buyers in the form of higher new home prices. Therefore, it’s more accurate to report that Trump has just slapped stiff 20% tariffs (lumber taxes) on the American people, not Canada.

And the phrase "far more people" can be quantified:

Tariffs on imported lumber might help protect, save or create jobs in one US industry (lumber producers), but will destroy more jobs in other US industries (construction in this case). Update: There are about 32 construction workers employed in homebuilding (5 million) for every one worker employed in logging (50,800) and lumber and wood production (105,900) combined.

And resulting effects don't take long to manifest themselves:

Update 1: From a statement today from the NAHB:

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) today denounced the decision by the U.S. Department of Commerce to impose a 20% countervailing duty on Canadian lumber imports, saying it will harm American home buyers, consumers and businesses while failing to resolve the underlying trade dispute between the two nations.

The trade agreement that has governed Canadian imports of softwood lumber since 2006 effectively expired at the end of 2016. Uncertainty surrounding a new trade pact is the primary catalyst for the 22 percent spike in the Random Lengths Composite Price Index for lumber since the beginning of the year.

These price hikes have negative repercussions for millions of Americans. It takes about 15,000 board feet to build a typical single-family home and the lumber price increase in the first quarter of this year has added almost $3,600 to the price of a new home.

Additionally, the NAHB estimates that 8,241 full-time housing-related jobs(mostly construction) will be lost as a result of the new lumber tariffs.

Update 2: CNBC reports today that “Housing stocks take a hit from Trump’s lumber tariff“:

Homebuilder stocks fell on Tuesday on concern new tariffs by the Trump administration on Canadian softwood lumber imports will raise costs.

We're starting to see that DJT can gather all kinds of groupings of erudite and insightful people who can fill him in on the implications of various policies, but he is going to boneheadedly forge ahead with whatever he thinks is going to enhance his "winner" image in the eyes of his willfully ignorant base.

I really don't think he can see how a move like this is completely at odds with his very good plan to reduce corporate tax rates to 15 percent.

This is why those of us who strove to bring an alternative into actuality still will not engage in the tribalistic impulse to defend him as some kind of emblem of America's turning a conservative corner. If that is indeed the case, it is because of advisers, lawmakers and cabinet and agency heads, not the man at the top.

Monday roundup

How shameful and imperiling was the Iran nuke deal? We're just now grasping the full magnitude, per Politico:

Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal, according to a POLITICO investigation.

In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.”

In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran.

And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.” 

Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. A fourth, Behrouz Dolatzadeh, was charged with conspiring to buy thousands of U.S.-made assault rifles and illegally import them into Iran.

A fifth, Amin Ravan, was charged with smuggling U.S. military antennas to Hong Kong and Singapore for use in Iran. U.S. authorities also believe he was part of a procurement network providing Iran with high-tech components for an especially deadly type of IED used by Shiite militias to kill hundreds of American troops in Iraq.

The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China. That included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran whose progress had prompted the nuclear deal talks in the first place. 

When federal prosecutors and agents learned the true extent of the releases, many were shocked and angry. Some had spent years, if not decades, working to penetrate the global proliferation networks that allowed Iranian arms traders both to obtain crucial materials for Tehran’s illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs and, in some cases, to provide dangerous materials to other countries.

“They didn’t just dismiss a bunch of innocent business guys,” said one former federal law enforcement supervisor centrally involved in the hunt for Iranian arms traffickers and nuclear smugglers. “And then they didn’t give a full story of it.”

In its determination to win support for the nuclear deal and prisoner swap from Tehran — and from Congress and the American people — the Obama administration did a lot more than just downplay the threats posed by the men it let off the hook, according to POLITICO’s findings. 

Through action in some cases and inaction in others, the White House derailed its own much-touted National Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s proliferation networks. In addition, the POLITICO investigation found that Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort.

And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the U.S. These previously undisclosed findings are based on interviews with key participants at all levels of government and an extensive review of court records and other documents.
“Clearly, there was an embargo on any Iranian cases,” according to the former federal supervisor.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air has the must-read take on Fearless Girl:

 It’s a similarly generic work in bronze, adequately depicting a young girl in a skirt with her hands on her hips throwing her chest out. If it were placed opposite a similar statue of an older woman in an apron with her arms crossed, the title of the piece might well have been, “Girl Throwing Temper Tantrum.” But when you put her in front of the bull [which has been displayed in a little public park just off Wall Street for years], she’s suddenly a symbol of standing up to the man or whatever other magic you wish to imbue in the totem. Either of these figures standing alone could represent almost anything. But juxtapositioned as they are, a new meaning offers itself up if you care to find one.

Returning to [bull sculptor Arturo] Di Modica’s point, it once again all comes back to context and the infinitely variable responses we have to art. One recent segment on cable news featured a woman standing in front of Fearless Girl weeping as she described how seeing the piece moved her to tears. I’m not unsympathetic to that, even if I don’t have the same response myself. I worked for several years with a woman who regularly used the same phrase as she recounted how she too was moved to tears the first time she saw an exhibit of Jackson Pollock paintings in a museum. I have zero doubt as to her sincerity, even though I’ve personally always thought that all of Pollock’s paintings could have been named Explosion at Paint Factory and sold off at a farmer’s market.

But all that rigid gender distinction is rapidly becoming so yesterday:

Trans-activist Riley J. Dennis says having ‘genital preferences’ in dating is transphobic.

Yes, you read that correctly. If you’re a man who wants your woman to have a vagina you’re a bigot.

Dennis released a video at Everydayfeminist.com about his theory on “cissexism”, which he says is interchangeable with “transphobia” and means “prejudice or discrimination against trans people.”

My head is spinning. So, you’re born gay, you’re born trans, but no one is born straight. Straight people are just bigots.

Got it….I think.

To quote Dennis:

[People] might argue that being attracted to women without vaginas in no way negatively affects trans people, but on the other hand I would argue it’s more complicated than that. We all have our implicit biases built into our preferences and gender isn’t as simple as just the genitals you have.

Speaking of vaginas, they figure into the final confirmation that Bill Nye should never be trotted out as any kind of science authority or other type of serious human being:

A clip of Bill Nye’s latest television show promotes transgenderism and other gender identities as hard science, and it’s performing horribly on YouTube, as of Monday.

“My Sex Junk,” published on YouTube Sunday, features actress Rachel Bloom singing a song about transgenders, gay sex, and how sexuality is a fluid concept. The clip comes from an episode of Bill Nye’s show “Bill Nye Saves The World.”

“Sexuality’s a spectrum, everyone is on it. Even you might like it if you sit up on it,” Bloom sings on stage. “Drag king, drag queen just do what feels right.”

Bloom also delves into a bizarre chant where she laments a world in which you have only two choices between gender identity: male or female.

“This world of ours is so full of choice. But must I choose between only John or Joyce? Are my options only hard or moist? My vagina has its own voice,” Bloom sings.

Claudia Rossett at PJ Media reminds us that, along with the strategic threat North Korea poses, we must never lose sight of its status as the world's premier human-rights horror.

On Bill O'Reilly, tribalism and ideology

My interest in the extent to which, if any, he has been a sexual harasser is mild at best.

I've just always found the guy oversold as a sharp mind. From his insistence that, when gasoline prices rise, it's due to some kind of price gouging at some point in the petroleum-industry supply chain to his conclusion that Barack Obama is a patriot to his punching-above-his-weight conflagration with George Will, he has proven himself an inexhaustible wellspring of WTF moments.

That leftists are now in claim-a-scalp mode shows just how removed from reality their current fever has rendered them. Even measured-tone pundits with an obvious liberal bent want rather desperately to make him out to be some kind of icon of the Right:

MSNBC's Chuck Todd called him a "leader" in the conservative movement, which is more wishful thinking than reality.

In truth, the secret of O’Reilly’s success was that he was a centrist. He hit the elusive sweet spot that many media outlets covet, but few actually bother to pursue.

Professor Tim Groseclose (formerly of UCLA, now of George Mason), who is the best authority on political leanings in the media, used data analysis in Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind in 2011 to show that not only were most media outlets left of center, but also that public opinion was further left than it would have been were it not for the media’s effect. On a scale of 0 to 100 — zero being most conservative, and 100 most liberal — the true center of the American public, absent media influence, was around 25, Groseclose argued. And O’Reilly, on the same objective scale, registered as exactly that: 25.

As excerpted at the time by the Powerline blog, Groseclose wrote:

… What if we could magically remove the metaphoric glass and see, face-to-face, the average American, once his political views are no longer distorted by media bias? What would we see?

The answer, basically, is Ben Stein.

…

Yes, the actor, author, commentator, and former host of Win Ben Stein’s Money. More specific, the person whom we’d see is anyone—like Ben Stein—who has a Political Quotient near 25. The Political Quotient is a device that I construct to measure political views in a precise, objective, and quantitative way. A person’s PQ indicates the degree to which he is liberal. For instance, as I have calculated, the PQs of Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) are approximately 100. Meanwhile the PQs of noted conservatives Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) are approximately 0.

Two other people whose PQs are approximately 25 are Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller. They are significantly more conservative than the average American voter, whose PQ is approximately 50. But they are significantly more liberal than politicians like Michele Bachmann or Jim DeMint.

As my results show, if we could magically eliminate media bias, then the average American would think and vote like Stein, Miller, O’Reilly, and others who have a PQ near 25.

What his audience correctly sensed, though, was that his everyman persona was not schtick. He came by it honestly:

An Irish Catholic from working-class Long Island, born in 1949, O’Reilly was reared by a generation with warm feelings toward FDR’s New Deal economics, came of age in the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, and launched his career amid the Reagan Revolution. These were formative experiences shared by millions of Americans. Repulsed by the radicalism of Berkeley and the Black Panthers, offended by the lecturing of Jimmy Carter (crystallized in his “malaise” speech), but not far removed from the horrors of the Great Depression and World War II, they found themselves looking back affectionately to the economic ascendancy and cultural consolidation of the 1950s. And so they landed firmly on the right side of the political spectrum — but nearer its center than we often recall today. It was this audience that Fox News targeted when it was created in 1996 and that found a representative voice on The O’Reilly Report, which launched that same year. 

Consider that sentence beginning with "O'Reilly was reared by a generation with warm feelings toward FDR's New Deal economics."

That's important for understanding the size of his audience. It's the ethos that Matthew Continetti captured so incisively in his supremely important 2015 essay "Revenge of the Radical Middle":

These voters don’t give a whit about corporate tax reform or TPP or the capital gains rate or the fate of Uber, they make a distinction between deserved benefits like Social Security and Medicare and undeserved ones like welfare and food stamps, their patriotism is real and nationalistic and skeptical of foreign entanglement, they wept on 9/11, they want America to be strong, dominant, confident, the America of their youth, their young adulthood, the America of 40 or 30 or even 20 years ago. They do not speak in the cadences or dialect of New York or Washington, their thoughts can be garbled, easily dismissed, or impugned, they are not members of a designated victim group and thus lack moral standing in the eyes of the media, but still they deserve as much attention and sympathy as any of our fellow citizens, still they vote.

What the radical middle has seen in recent years has not given them reason to be confident in our government, our political system, our legion of politicians clambering up the professional ladder office to office. Two inconclusive wars, a financial crisis, recession, and weak recovery, government failure from Katrina to the TSA to the launch of Obamacare to the federal background check system, an unelected and unaccountable managerial bureaucracy that targets grassroots organizations and makes law through diktat, race riots and Ebola and judicial overreach. And through it all, as constant as the northern star, a myopic drive on the part of leaders in both parties to enact a "comprehensive immigration reform" that would incentivize illegal immigration and increase legal immigration despite public opposition.

This element, along with

•  the Beltway Establishment with which both conservatives and leftists expressed their disgust in the last election cycle, as well as

• those leftists, with their identity politics, thug means of asserting their presence in what remains of the national discourse, and utter flight from reality 

is the source of the dissonance drowning out the timeless conservative message.

It's said that O'Reilly's departure signals greater changes at FNC, as Rupert Murdoch's sons implement their notions of where the network ought to go. While the way that shakes out remains to be seen, it almost certainly doesn't behoove us as conservatives to invest hope in some kind of new era more reflective of what we stand for.

Such an outlet is probably not going to be found on television, which is fine.  It's not a medium conducive to persuasion of the type that we need to be about.

Tuesday roundup

Not that it's going to lead to a reversal of the referendum's outcome, but the codification of the changes to the Turkish constitution that Turks voted on Sunday, while now pretty much a done deal and sealing Erdogan's status as a dictator, appears to be fraught with fraud:

Article 94 of Turkey’s Election Law states that election tabulators cannot count envelopes and votes inside not carrying the official stamp of the election. The rule was enacted to prevent ballot-stuffing. Yet, an hour after the ballot boxes were opened, the High Electoral Council reversed its decision.

Then, in Turkey’s southeast where the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) dominates, observers were removed from the balloting room for “security reasons” so only the government-appointed officials in the room counted and tallied results. Fraud in this process alone may have changed the results. This isn’t just theoretical: In Urfa, a Facebook video emerged showing ballot stuffing.

The Republican Peoples Party says it is filing objections involving 2.5 million votes. If only one-fifth of that total changes, the final result will change as well.

The de-fanging of the EPA is already bearing marvelous fruit. The coal industry is coming back strong:

Buried in an otherwise-humdrum jobs report was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Department of Labor that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the low point in October 2016, and following years of painful layoffs in the mining industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs.

And coal companies with which to get those jobs are once again more numerous:

There's more good news for the coal industry. Earlier this month, Peabody Energy -- America's largest coal producer -- moved out of bankruptcy, and its stock is actively trading again. Its market cap had sunk by almost 90 percent during Barack Obama's years in office. Arch Coal is also out of bankruptcy.

Okay, so that's one for the good-move side of the ledger, and here at LITD we duly - indeed, heartily - note those. But consider some realities regarding Trump the man and Trump the president that Kevin Williamson at NRO enumerates:

No fighting China on currency, no wall, no NATO reform. Add a few more items to the list: Janet Yellen was definitely out before she wasn’t; our relationship with Russia was “great” during the campaign but today is a “horrible relationship” that is “at an all-time low” (he may not know about the Cuban missile crisis); the president could not make war on Syria without congressional approval (“big mistake if he does not!”) until he could. The Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land. Steve Bannon of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn of Goldman Sachs, Steven Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs, and Dina Powell of Goldman Sachs are firmly ensconced in their various roles throughout the Trump administration. The alt-right basement-dwellers and sundry knuckleheads beamed that Trump was going to be a “nationalist,” and that he would give the boot to coastal elitists, moderates, and Ivy League snoots. In reality, Trump is a New York Democrat who is being advised by other New York Democrats — Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner prominent among them — who are more or less the sort of people who brought you the Obama and Clinton administrations: business-friendly corporate Democrats, people who think of themselves as post-ideological pragmatists, consensus progressives who are much more interested in opening up backdoor channels to Planned Parenthood than they are in the priorities of people they consider nothing more than a bunch of snake-handling rustics and talk-radio listeners stockpiling gold coins and freeze-dried ice cream in their basements. Trump was a Clinton donor and a Chuck Schumer donor, and he is acting like one.

  Surprise.

Williamson mentions "business-friendly corporate Democrats, people who think of themselves as post-ideological pragmatists," but even if they think of themselves that way, they are in fact moral cowards hoping the climatista alligator eats them last, as Rick Moran discusses at PJ Media:

Despite the talk from climate hysterics about greedy corporations opposing efforts to combat global warming, the facts tend to speak for themselves.

International corporate giants have been on board the climate-change bandwagon for more than a decade. Their reasons have nothing to do with science and everything to do with reading the writing on the wall. If the world is going to go off half-cocked and suck the life out of the industrialized economies combating climate change, big business wants to be in a position to influence what happens to them.

It's no different than hiring another lobbyist in Washington or Brussels. Whatever expense there is in supporting the climate hysterics will be more than offset by savings in guiding the debate in ways that keep them operating.

So the question is, will corporations use their influence on President Trump to urge him to accept the Paris climate accord?

The smart money is saying yes.

Axios:

To varying degrees, most major companies producing coal, natural gas and oil either explicitly back sticking with the 2015 climate deal struck in Paris, or they're opting not to lobby against it, a dramatic shift from just a few years ago. They're not necessarily cheering global efforts to address the issue, but the decision not to oppose it has the same effect as tacit backing.

The reasons corporate America is uniting on global climate policy are many and often depend on the products made and how global a company's operations are:

• Consumer-facing companies like Starbucks and Pepsi, have long prioritized policies to cut carbon emissions because they don't sell products that directly contribute to the problem. They also have more direct interaction with consumers who like to buy from green-minded corporations.
• C ompanies that generate electricity have said, for much of the past decade, that they're moving away from coal toward cleaner burning sources of power, including natural gas and renewables. The Edison Electric Institute, the trade association representing investor-owned utilities, held a reception last year honoring the Paris climate deal after its conclusion, even though it officially doesn't have a position on the deal.
• Companies with huge global footprint s, like General Electric and ExxonMobil, know that pulling out of one diplomatic deal can only weaken the U.S. standing on other geopolitical issues, which could hurt their operations around the world.
• Publicly traded fossil-fuel companies are facing growing calls from their investors to address climate change, or at least to not fight such policies. This is a newer trend that's gained influence over the past couple of years.
• Major oil companies, like ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, have increasingly invested in natural gas, which emits 50% less carbon than coal when burned. Companies with big natural gas portfolios will gain with climate policies that accelerate a shift already underway to replace coal with natural gas. ExxonMobil, which bought big natural-gas producer XTO Energy in 2010, sent a letterto the White House in March urging Trump to stay in the deal. That letter followed a tweet by the company's top lobbyist just hours after Trump won the election expressing support for the accord.

"When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use," Joseph Stalin reportedly said. The corporate mindset is entirely predictable, based as it is on the simple concept of maximizing profits given the realities in which they exist. Any claim to morality or "good citizenship" is true only as long as it serves that overriding goal.

So yes, it's a great PR move to play along with climate-change hysterics, all the while working as hard as they can to keep the devil from their door.  

Jared Dobbs at The Federalist provides one of the best explanations of why Christians objecting to participating in same-sex weddings is not bigotry LITD has come across.


 

It's come to this

A lot of LITD posts lately have been about levels of rot on post-American campuses that are always one step beyond what one could have imagined.

And now we have this:

The UC Davis student senate has made it optional to display the American flag at its meetings, stirring up controversy on campus and conservative blogs.

Senate Bill 76 passed Thursday, said Michael Gofman, a student senator who opposed the change.

The bill amends bylaws that required the United States flag to be on display at every senate meeting of the Associated Students, University of California, Davis. The revised bylaws give senate members the option to petition for the display of the flag 24 hours before each meeting. The ASUCD senate pro tem ultimately has authority to decide whether the U.S. flag will be displayed, according to the revision.

The resolution says that since “the concept of United States of America and patriotism is different for every individual, it should not be compulsory that the flag is in view at all times during Senate meetings.”

Jose Antonio Meneses, who introduced the resolution, said the changes were meant to ensure the student government is following federal law, which he says doesn’t allow an organization to mandate displaying the flag.

“It wasn’t political in any way,” Meneses said. “But because it is the United States flag ... it’s a touchy subject to talk about. We want to make sure we are not sued.”

Gofman disagreed, saying all governing bodies within the U.S. – including a student senate – should display the flag. 

“It was a purely political issue from the start,” Gofman said.

The student government decision drew attention from internet blogs, many conservative – including Fox News Insider, the Daily Caller and The Blaze. Some stories say the flag has been “banned,” “banished” or “dropped.”

Meneses said that while he supports freedom of speech, many of the stories are inaccurate. 

“It’s not a ban on the flag,” he said.

He cited a 1943 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found West Virginia could not compel students to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

“The opinion in that case is that you can’t force people to pledge your allegiance, by (the flag) being there; by extension, you are pledging your allegiance to a symbol that you don’t relate to or that you don’t equate yourself with,” he said Monday.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article145130714.html#storylink=cpy

Actually, beyond the fracturing of the national fabric embodied in this move, the sloppy legal reasoning disturbs me most. This punk's use of the phrase "by extension" to equate displaying the flag with calling an assemblage to hedge allegiance to it is the kind of mentality that leads to a legitimization of the concept of a "living Constitution."

To what presently unforeseen level of decay will the post-American university sink next?

Your must-read for today

Not even going to excerpt from it. For one thing, it's a fairly short read. For another, each of its ideas is best presented in the overall context. And, I must confess, I'm a bit rushed. Heading off to church now, and then a very full plate today.

But the central idea of Andrew Michta's essay at The American Interest is that, more than the jihadist threat, more than the challenges posed by North Korea, Iran, Russia or China, more than the economic underperformance of America and Europe, the reason the West itself has dicey prospects is the erosion of its foundational concept, the sovereign nation-state. Our decadent culture is to blame for that.

Okay, one teaser sentence:

Today, in the wake of decades of group identity politics and the attendant deconstruction of our heritage through academia, the media, and popular culture, this conviction in the uniqueness of the West is only a pale shadow of what it was a mere half century ago. 

Now, read it all.

And Happy Easter.

The sewer of nonsense that is the post-American university - today's edition

Three examples today:

At Brown, the imperative of distorting the natural order trumps usage of proper grammar:

A Wall Street Journal reader forwarded James Freeman a copy of the letter received by the reader’s daughter from Brown University Director of Admissions Logan Powell. The reader, Freeman reports, is still trying to make sense of the letter. The reader’s bright daughter had already received news of her acceptance when a letter arrived that was addressed to her “Parent/Guardian.” 

Freeman reports:

Oddly, the note referred to the accepted student not as “she” but as “they.” Dean Powell’s letter also stated that our reader’s daughter had no doubt worked hard and made positive contributions to “their” school and community. Our reader reports that his perplexed family initially thought that Brown had made a word-processing error. That was before they listened to a voice mail message from the school congratulating his daughter and referring to her as “them.”

Surely you can guess the rest of the story. As a journalist, however, Freeman sought an explanation:

It turns out that the errors were intentional. Brown spokesman Brian Clark writes in an email that “our admission office typically refers to applicants either by first name or by using ‘they/their’ pronouns. While the grammatical construction may read as unfamiliar to some, it has been adopted by many newsrooms and other organizations as a gender-inclusive option.”

In one sense, this particular story has a happy ending. Freeman relates that the reader believes the school “wants to make it clear that only left wing extremists are welcome at Brown. Fine with us — good riddance.”

Like so many others inside the asylum of our elite educational institutions, the powers that be at Brown are out of “their” “minds.” The problem, however, is pervasive among these institutions. These institutions should not become “their” exclusive preserves. There has to be an answer.

The obvious question regarding Clemson is how it is going to hold classes if each student and even instructors has his own sense of how time unfolds:

Clemson University’s ‘diversity education and training” teaches employees that every “cultural perspective regarding time” is equally valid, so it’s wrong to expect people to be prompt.

Clemson is spending $26,945 on “diversity education and training” for its faculty members, Campus Reform reports:

“Clemson President James Clements pledged that ‘all employees will participate in diversity education and training,’ last April, in order to create a more inclusive environment on campus.”

In one slide, employees are taught that tardiness is acceptable because the concept of time is culturally relative. Thus, every culture’s perception of the actual time must be respected - since one “cultural perspective regarding time is neither more nor less valid than any other.”

The slide gives the example of “Alejandro,” who called a 9:00 AM meeting, and teaches that he should not rebuke a group of foreign professors and students who show up late:

“Time may be considered precise or fluid depending on the culture.”

Thus, the slide teaches, Alejandro shouldn’t impose his definition of time on others, because “his cultural perspective regarding time is neither more nor less valid than any other.”

A Wellesley  student's editorial makes plain why we call 'em jackboots:

True story: Wellesley used to be a thought of as a good school with bright students.

In fairness, despite all of the attention being paid online today to this fascist anti-fascist excrescence (the paper’s server is overwhelmed with traffic as I write this), there’s nothing in it that you wouldn’t hear on any other campus or in any other campus’s faculty lounge. It’s distinguished by two things, one being the surprisingly poor quality of the writing. Normally when you’re claiming the intellectual authority to reeducate the unwashed and, if need be, to ostracize the unrepentant among them, you proofread your copy to make sure clanging phrases like “We have all said problematic claims” have been safely excised beforehand.

The other distinction is that tirades about “hate speech” usually don’t come with overt threats of “hostility” towards the infidels. They should, since that’s how this nonsense plays out in practice, as Charles Murray could tell you. But there’s still enough of a veneer of intellectualism in apologias for this sort of thought-policing that consequences for the nonconformists are usually merely implied, not recommended.

Wellesley is certainly not a place for racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia or any other type of discriminatory speech. Shutting down rhetoric that undermines the existence and rights of others is not a violation of free speech; it is hate speech. The founding fathers put free speech in the Constitution as a way to protect the disenfranchised and to protect individual citizens from the power of the government. The spirit of free speech is to protect the suppressed, not to protect a free-for-all where anything is acceptable, no matter how hateful and damaging…

We have all said problematic claims, the origins of which were ingrained in us by our discriminatory and biased society. Luckily, most of us have been taught by our peers and mentors at Wellesley in a productive way. It is vital that we encourage people to correct and learn from their mistakes rather than berate them for a lack of education they could not control. While it is expected that these lessons will be difficult and often personal, holding difficult conversations for the sake of educating is very different from shaming on the basis of ignorance.

This being said, if people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted. If people continue to support racist politicians or pay for speakers that prop up speech that will lead to the harm of others, then it is critical to take the appropriate measures to hold them accountable for their actions. It is important to note that our preference for education over beration regards students who may have not been given the chance to learn. Rather, we are not referring to those who have already had the incentive to learn and should have taken the opportunities to do so. Paid professional lecturers and politicians are among those who should know better.

These places were once the conduits by which an understanding of Western civilization's foundations were transmitted.

There's not doubt that they no longer serve that function, but what other kind of institution is equipped to take up the mantle?