Wednesday roundup

We may be polarized in 2018 post America, but somebody's buying something from somebody. Consumer confidence at highest level in 18 years.  Rise in wages and salaries of 3.1% in October.

The Pakistan Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of that Christian mother who'd been incarcerated for nine years. When the judge read the decision, she was free to go. Muslims have reacted by blocking roads in the nation's biggest cities.

Get your brain around the way he got both of these disparate assertions into one sentence:

"So, we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them," [CNN's Don] Lemon concluded. "There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban."

Remember a few weeks ago when I noted that and enthusiasm for "implicit bias" training had infected our local school board? I'll bet it won't be long until "equity" training, now gaining a foothold in Missouri, works its way to our district. It depends on whether a sufficient number of concerned citizens have the guts to call BS on it as they did there:

Yesterday, I noted that five of seven candidates for the Montgomery County, Maryland school board say the biggest problem facing the school district is lower achievement by “students of color.” I disputed the notion that this gap is the school board’s responsibility or problem, but that view seems to be an article of faith in education circles nowadays. 

It’s also generating a new industry — cultural and racial equity training. Pacific Education Group is an industry leader. According to the Kansas City Star, the California firm “has been in high demand in recent years, training educators, city leaders and corporate executives from Lawrence [Kansas] to New York and Philadelphia to Los Angeles and around the world.”

The Group’s founder, Glenn Singleton, is the author of “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools.” The “courageousness” of Singleton’s politically correct conversations is open to question, but according to the Star, his is the No. 1 book recommended by the Missouri School Board Association for educators and administrators to read this year. 

Recently, however, parents in a Missouri school district — Lee’s Summit — rebelled against paying Singleton and his group to provide cultural and racial equity training. They expressed their displeasure at a school board meeting and on social media. 

According to the Star, critics “opposed Singleton’s firm because of its cost, and its discussion of white privilege and the cultural competence of white teachers educating black children.” Some wondered why the focus should be on inequities related to race. 

The response, I suppose, is that race is where the most obvious unequal outcomes are. The Star tells us that “based on a formula involving Missouri Assessment Program scores, Lee’s Summit’s black students performed nearly 84 points below white students in 2015, 2016 and 2017.” And, according to district data, the margin is widening not narrowing.

I don’t think critics are denying that racial outcomes are unequal, though. Instead, it appears that they reject, as I do, the idea that responsibility for poor outcomes lies with the school district, rather than the students and/or their parents. 

They are striking a blow in favor of common sense and individual responsibility, and against fancy talk, group think, and victimology. 

We should expect no less from the Show Me State.

Andrew McCarthy at NRO on how we ought to regard Saudi Arabia:

We do not have common values with the regime in Riyadh. We are an un­matched pair, drawn reluctantly together by some common interests and enemies — which tend to be interests and enemies for saliently different reasons. We cannot avoid interaction, and better that it be cooperative than belligerent. It should, however, be strictly transactional, and there is no good reason to pretend it is anything but.

Did you know Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist dated each other when they were both Stanford law students circa 1950?

Birthright citizenship: A matter for Congress to take up since the Fourteenth Amendment provides insufficient guidance

Of all the discussion of Trump's announcement that he plans to use an executive order to stop conferring citizenship on the children of illegal aliens that I've seen today, the piece that strikes me as indispensable appears at National Affairs, and is authored by Peter H. Schuck, Baldwin Professor Emeritus at Yale, and Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1985, they coauthored a book entitled Citizenship Without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Polity.

They point out that our supreme legal document didn't really even address the matter until 1868:

The original Constitution was silent about immigration and the qualifications for citizenship, other than a provision empowering Congress to regulate naturalization. The first mention of national citizenship in the document came in 1868 with the ratification of the 14th Amendment. Its first section — the Citizenship Clause — reads as follows: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The precise meaning of the phrase that we have italicized — "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" — is at the heart of the debate over whether the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens are automatic birthright citizens.

The intention of the 14th Amendment's framers or ratifiers specifically regarding the children of foreigners present in America in violation of U.S. laws is essentially impossible to discern. No framer or ratifier mentioned that topic, so no specific intent is there to be found. Birthright citizenship originated in feudal doctrines of perpetual allegiance that the American revolutionaries rejected in favor of a consensual view that, as the Declaration of Independence put it, governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," and that people are entitled, and perhaps duty-bound, to withdraw their consent from unjust governments. The best way to make sense of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause, therefore, is to attend both to constitutional history (that is, what its framers sought to accomplish by it) and to constitutional theory, or how to make the clause fit most comfortably with general principles of American republicanism, including commitments to popular self-governance, civil solidarity, and inalienable human rights.

There was a specific purpose in crafting and ratifying that amendment. There's one clause in it, however, that, for its literal brevity, has given Constitutional scholars and judges reason to mine its implications ever since:

The Citizenship Clause's chief aim was to overturn Dred Scott and guarantee citizenship to all persons of African descent born on U.S. soil or naturalized here. But its guarantee of birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born was not fully universal, because the clause contained an opaque qualifying phrase: "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof." The most important and under-studied question in regard to the Citizenship Clause is the meaning of this phrase — then and now — given the framers' and ratifiers' intentions.

As we elaborated in our book, the context of 1868 is key to interpreting that phrase. The United States did not restrict immigration at that time, but did exclude several groups born on soil governed by the U.S. from birthright citizenship. Plainly, the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction" was meant to leave Congress with the power to regulate access to birthright citizenship for groups to whose presence or membership it did not consent.

So what does "subject to the jurisdiction" mean? This inquiry must focus on the clause's treatment of Native Americans born into tribes. Everyone agrees that "subject to the jurisdiction" was intended to exclude the children of foreign diplomats, occupying enemy armies, and children born to foreigners while on foreign vessels in U.S. waters — even though they are then literally subject to our jurisdiction. Everyone also agrees that the 14th Amendment's framers intended to exclude tribal Native Americans. (The Supreme Court would so hold in 1884, and Congress chose to confer statutory citizenship on them in 1924.)

These exclusions from automatic citizenship at birth reflected the general principle animating the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction": the mutual consent between the parents and the U.S. government to their legal presence on U.S. soil as immigrants owing allegiance to the United States. Native Americans in tribes fit that description of the excluded; they were "domestic dependent nations," as Chief Justice John Marshall famously put it decades earlier, who did not profess or owe full allegiance to our government.

The discussion of Native Americans leads to a consideration of mutual consent, a concept that applies to the present situation:

 The fact that some of the clause's supporters thought that the government could not and should not confer citizenship on the native tribes in no way implies that they would have wanted to confer automatic citizenship on the children of those present in the U.S. in violation of American law. Indeed, if anything, it implies the opposite. Rather, their treatment of tribal Native Americans suggests their determination to make mutual consent to full membership the sine qua non for constitutionally mandated citizenship.

The two authors actually disagree as to whether Congress's inaction on something then leaves other branches free to weigh in. On this, LITD side with Schuck:

Broadly speaking, when the Constitution itself does not answer important questions with clarity, decision-making should usually be left to the people's elected representatives in Congress, so long as they do not violate fundamental rights. This properly leaves Congress with the authority to decide the question of birthright citizenship for these children. Does the Citizenship Clause constitute this consent to their birthright citizenship? Again, no one at the time even raised the question, for a single reason: The group did not then exist. Should Congress's failure to alter the status quo by statute or by constitutional amendment support an inference that the American people have consented to this status quo?

This congressional inaction might have some bearing on the public debate over the political and policy issues raised by our interpretation of the Citizenship Clause. The two of us differ, however, about how this inaction should affect the interpretation of whether the clause's consensual requirements have been met. Given that bills to repeal birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized aliens have failed repeatedly for over two decades, Smith argues that Congress has effectively decided in favor of the current policy. In contrast, Schuck maintains that no such inference should be drawn legally or politically. Thousands of legislative proposals are introduced in each Congress; the vast majority of them go nowhere, for a host of reasons. This is why the Supreme Court routinely states that it will not draw any inferences about congressional intent from such inaction.

There's much more that they take a look at. A definite read-the-whole-thing piece.

It's this kind of stuff - today's edition

Our Bonehead-in-Chief once again displays his utter absence of a lack of timing, and of a filter between his ("very good!") brain and his mouth.

As I've said before, early on, he established a pattern of a few good developments on his watch followed by a move so egregious that it wipes out their effect.

Such is the case with his tweet today flat-out declaring that the news media are the "enemy of the people."

Here's LITD's prediction of the various ways his throne-sniffers are going to respond:

• Kurt Schlichter will say something to the effect of "new rules, bitch."
• Bill Mitchell and Wayne Allen Root will say something to the effect of "low unemployment!"
• Laura Ingraham will call it unhelpful and quickly move on.
• Sean Hannity will say, "Hell, yeah, that's exactly what they are!"
• Ann Coulter will say, "Whatever. Can we please just get the wall built?"

Saturday roundup

Great piece by Akhil Rajaseskar at The Federalist entitled "It Doesn't Matter If You Love the Constitution If your Neighbors Don't Know What It Says."

His first paragraph states clearly and succinctly just what the Constitution's raison d'être is:

The Constitution of the United States was created with a simple purpose: to limit government. Imbued with various separations and specific endowments of power, the Constitution is America’s ultimate obstacle to government tyranny, higher and more powerful than any person, institution, or office.

Just how ignorant are post-Americans about the supreme law of their land?

A study conducted last year by the Annenberg Center of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania showed that only 26 percent of Americans could name all three branches of government, while more than a third (37 percent) surveyed couldn’t name even one of the five freedoms or rights guaranteed by the First Amendment–religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.

Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once lamented Americans’ ignorance of the Federalist Papers: “It is such a profound exposition of political science that it is studied in political science courses in Europe. And yet we have raised a generation of Americans who are not familiar with it.”

Indeed, most states’ history and civics classes today are “mediocre to awful,” according to a 2011 study published by the American Bar Association. When states’ standards for history classes were graded for “content and rigor” and “clarity and specificity” on scales from A to F, a whopping 28 states earned grades of D or F, while only 9 earned an A- or B.

He then looks into the funny business by which SCOTUS benches have found other bases besides the Constitution on which to come to their decisions:

 Starting in 1903 with Lochner v. New York and picking up the pace since, the legal class has been steadily dismantling public understanding of and access to the Constitution by introducing strange and novel concepts into constitutional interpretation that any well-informed common citizen would be hard-pressed to find. From substantive due process to “penumbras” and “emanations” of rights, lawyers have found new ways of convincing people that the Constitution has hidden meanings. We now live in a popular culture that is incapable of exercising the power it was given — the power it needs — because it has been wrenched from our hands and reclaimed by those we have come to regard as our intellectual superiors.

Ominous new survey of college students:

Many U.S. college professors now regularly share their own social and political beliefs in class, and their students feel increasingly afraid to disagree. That’s according to a new national survey of undergraduates due out next week. 

When students were asked if they’ve had “any professors or course instructors that have used class time to express their own social or political beliefs that are completely unrelated to the subject of the course,” 52% of respondents said that this occurs “often,” while 47% responded, “not often.”

Post-America is finding ways to make the "A"CA optional.  Measures include repealing the individual mandate, association health plans, short-term duration plans, arrangement whereby an employee of a company can purchase a plan on the individual market and the company can reimburse him or her for the premiums tax-free, and expanding the ability of states to design their own versions of the "A"CA.

Andrew McCarthy at NRO reports on an ominous ruling by the European Court of Human Rights:

When he was 50, the prophet of Islam took as his wife Aisha, who was then six or seven. The marriage was consummated when Aisha was nine.

This is not a smear. It is an accurate account of authoritative Islamic scripture. (See, e.g., Sahih-Bukhari, Vol. 5, Book 58, Nos. 234–236.) Yet it can no longer safely be discussed in Europe, thanks to the extortionate threat of violence and intimidation — specifically, of jihadist terrorism and the Islamist grievance industry that slipstreams behind it. Under a ruling by the so-called European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), free speech has been supplanted by sharia blasphemy standards. 

The case involves an Austrian woman (identified as “Mrs. S.” in court filings and believed to be Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff) who, in 2009, conducted two seminars entitled “Basic Information on Islam.” She included the account of Mohammed’s marriage to Aisha. Though this account is scripturally accurate, Mrs. S. was prosecuted on the rationale that her statements implied pedophilic tendencies on the part of the prophet. A fine (about $547) was imposed for disparaging religion.

Mrs. S. appealed, relying on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That provision purports to safeguard “freedom of expression,” though it works about the same way the warranty on your used car does — it sounds like you’re covered, but the fine print eviscerates your protection.

Article 10 starts out benignly enough: Europeans are free “to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” But then comes the legalese: One’s exercise of the right to impart information, you see, “carries with it duties and responsibilities.” Consequently, what is called “freedom” is actually “subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties” that the authorities decide “are necessary in a democratic society,” including for “public safety” and for “the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others.”

Translation: Europeans are free to say only what they are permitted to say by the unelected judges of the European courts. Truth is irrelevant. As the jurists reasoned in the case of Mrs. S., a person’s freedom to assert facts must be assessed in “the wider context” that balances “free” expression against — I kid you not — “the right of others to have their religious feelings protected,” as well as “the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace.”

It is thus verboten to say things that might upset Muslims. Particularly offensive is mention of Islam’s many doctrinal tenets that make us cringe in the 21st century — approbation of child marriage, violent jihad, the treatment of women as chattel, the duty to kill apostates, and so on. That these tenets are accurately stated, supported by undeniable scriptural grounding, is beside the point. Or as the ECHR put it, reliance on scripture could be classified as “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam, which could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace.”

What the vestiges of Western civilization are coming to: I say something that is true; it hurts your feelings, so — of course — you blow up a building; and it’s my fault.

I've long maintained that any organization with the term "human rights" in its name is up to no good.


Oh, sheesh, yet a further ratcheting up of our societal combustibility: 7 dead, several others shot at a Pittsburgh synagogue during Saturday prayer service.

We have, over the last 50 years, become a nuttier society. That's the fundamental problem from which these others - shoot-ups of public places, male strippers who mail pipe bombs, the drug epidemic, drag queens reading to little kids in public libraries, transgender bathrooms, lies about perfectly qualified Supreme Court nominees, forms of artistic expression enamored of perversion and ugliness - stem. We badly need God.

UDATE:

California under Freedom-Hater domination is a bastion of income inequality:

After factoring for costs of living, California is the poorest state in the union. An average of 14 percent of Americans live below the poverty line by census measures. Compare that with the 19 percent of Californians who live below the poverty line and the situation is clear. The census measures factor in housing costs and wellbeing with programs like food stamps and housing assistance. Altogether, the state government has made life for poor and middle class Californians nearly unbearable.

How? California renters pay an average of $1,440 per month, much higher than the national average of $1,010 per month. In 2015, more than 40 percent of Californians spent over 30 percent of their income on housing. Today, 29 percent of them spend over half their earnings on housing. Median home values, at $529,000, are more than double the national median of $239,800. Residents who can afford rent or a mortgage are on the hook for electricity rates burdened by green initiatives and regulation that grew 500 percent faster than the national average from 2011 to 2017.

“Not In My Backyard” development and construction restrictions mean that California cities are much more expensive for the poor, with Los Angeles having the highest proportion of income going towards rent in the nation. The state and its cities use environmental and zoning laws to restrict housing, which often disallows large scale development of apartments. The result? Less access for middle class residents.

From 2011 to 2016, California increased spending on administration at more than double that of teacher pay. Its public employee system disincentivizes government thrift and saddles taxpayers with debt that outstrips the national average. A private sector employee would have to save $2.6 million to receive the same retirement as a California Highway Patrol officer. On top of a burdensome state income tax, California has the highest sales tax in the country along with property tax rates that disproportionately punish the poor and lead to housing problems.

Traditional left wing prescriptions simply have not worked in the state, which an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times dubbed the “poverty capital” of the United States. Housing vouchers increase the cost of living. The number of those with no health insurance in California fell by more than half after the state expanded Medicaid, yet poverty remains near historic highs. California spends the third most per capita on welfare programs, yet its economy continues to fail the poor and middle class.

Despite having just 12 percent of the national population, California represents nearly a third of all Americans on welfare. Federal taxpayers shell out more than half of the $6.7 billion in the California Work Opportunities and Responsibility to Kids program. In Texas, 6 percent of families in poverty receive welfare. In California, the figure is 66 percent. Can you guess where the poverty rate is lower? Not California.

The combination of government overreach and ineffective programs creates a brutal dichotomy of very rich and very poor. California is the fourth most unequal state in the union with so many homeless who face diseases like typhus and hepatitis. The number of people living on the streets in California increased by nearly 14 percent to more than 130,000 in 2017. Mark Zuckerberg is worth $70 billion, while San Franciscans have an app that helps them track human feces on the sidewalk.

Most of the caravan people are turning down the Mexican government's offer of asylum, which includes temporary IDs and work permits, medical care, schooling for their children, and housing in local hostels.

At The Weekly Standard, Andrew Eggar's list of "conservatives" who pushed the false-flag narrative in the pipe-bomb case contains pretty much the names you'd expect: Ann Coulter, Dinesh D'Souza, Bill Mitchell, Candace Owens, Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs.

...

The kind of thing we're up against

NBC sat on essential information about Julie Swetnick and her attorney Michael Avenatti:

To NBC News' credit, their reporting is the entire reason we know about the discrepancies in Swetnick's accounts. It was their October 1st report—during the height of the Kavanaugh sexual misconduct debate—that first revealed that Swetnick would not or could not confirm several of the details she made in a sworn statement to Congress.

But per the newest story, these are the details NBC News knew for a fact during the Kavanaugh debate, and chose not to report:

• On September 30, Avenatti forwarded an anonymous woman (I'll call her Woman B) to NBC claiming she could corroborate Swetnick's story. On the contrary, she said of the punch spiking "I didn't ever think it was Brett" and when asked if she ever witnessed Kavanaugh act inappropriately towards women replied, "No."

• On October 2nd, Avenatti publicized a sworn statement from an unnamed woman claiming she had "witnessed firsthand Brett Kavanaugh, together with others, ‘spike’ the ‘punch’ at house parties I attended with Quaaludes and/or grain alcohol" and he engaged in "inappropriate physical contact with girls of a sexual nature."

• The same day, Avenatti confirms to NBC News that the woman is Woman B.

• On October 3rd, Woman B tells NBC she only "skimmed" the statement she made to Congress.

• The same day, when asked about the discrepancies, Avenatti suddenly backtracks and claims the woman is not Woman B.

• On October 4th, Woman B texts NBC: "It is incorrect that I saw Brett spike the punch. I didn't see anyone spike the punch … I was very clear with Michael Avenatti from day one."

• The same day, when asked about her denials, Avenatti responds, "I have a signed declaration that states otherwise together with multiple audio recordings where she stated exactly what is in the declaration. There were also multiple witnesses to our discussions."

• Five minutes later, Woman B texts NBC: "Please understand that everything in the declaration is true and you should not contact me anymore regarding this issue."

• Minutes later, NBC calls again, and Woman B again reiterates she never saw Kavanaugh spiking punch or being sexually inappropriate.

• On October 5th, she texts NBC: "I will definitely talk to you again and no longer Avenatti. I do not like that he twisted my words."

Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed October 6th. At the time of his confirmation, there was a sworn statement before Congress indicating that the Supreme Court nominee was a sexual assailant and drugged women. As far as the Senate and public knew, there was nothing indicating that statement was false.

Still, the pro-fetal-death camp stands by Swetnick. Here's Planned Parenthood's latest tweet about the matter:

 

We still believe Julie Swetnick. #BelieveSurvivors

NARAL добави,

Потвърден профил

13:22 ч. - 25.10.2018 г.

Real evil is afoot in post-America.

 

Post-America gets uglier by the hour, and there's only one way back from the brink

There is, of course, the rash of crudely made pipe bomb-type devices sent to various Leftist icons over the past few days. And there are the sadly unsurprising reactions from both the Left and the Trumpist right. The former wasted no time taking the "climate-of-hate-engendered-by-Trump's-inflammatory-rhetoric" stance, and the latter hastily hopped on the "this-has-all-the-markings-of-a-decoy-operation-cooked-up-by-the-Left" bandwagon.

There is NBC's hot-potato treatment of Megyn Kelly over her remark that when she was a kid, blackface Halloween get-ups were acceptable if the trick-or-treater was clearly portraying a character. A boneheaded thing for Kelly to say, without a doubt. But, again, the pattern-of-racial-insensitivity narrative was instantly put out there, and those asserting Kelly's fundamental decency were on the defensive.

There's the caravan of Central Americans (and, according to the Department of Homeland Security, a few jihadists and gang elements) moving northward through Mexico by the day, making as much of a spectacle of their project as possible, as well as sending some signals, such as waving the Honduran flag as they walk, about how far down the list of their priorities any kind of assimilation they'd undertake should they cross the US border is.

Particularly bothersome to me as a self-identified conservative is the poison that Kurt Schlichter regularly injects into internal conversation on the Right. Yesterday, his Townhall column (not linking to it) was entirely devoted to portraying Ben Sasse as a sissy and an ineffectual dweeb.

Sasse's latest book Them: Why We Hate Each Other - And How to Heal asserts that our political polarization and societal brittleness largely stems from an epidemic of loneliness, and that our loneliness in turn stems from the vanishing of our basic civic bonds: church, Rotary Club, local sports leagues, forms of entertainment that used to unify us culturally.

Schlichter says he hasn't read it and doesn't plan to. He says he's not interested in any healing, only crushing the Left. His own latest book is called Militant Normals: How Regular Americans Are Rebelling Against the Elite To take Back Our Democracy.

He has of late displayed a Trump-like penchant for self-aggrandizement, patting himself on the back for posting a self-characterized "brutal" YouTube video attacking Sasse.

He's also given the same treatment to National Review writer David French, another principled and thoughtful conservative, accusing him of "wetting his panties" and lobbing other salvos of snark.

French wrote a very good and important piece about this, entitled "Defending Trump Isn't A Sign of Masculinity," in which he came to the defense of several friends his who have likewise come in for attack from Schlichter:

My friends and colleagues who’ve held true to conservative principles both before and after Trump — men like Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Cooke, and many others — have shown real moral courage. In some cases, threats against them are so great that they’ve had to show physical courage as well. Just ask Ben to tell you some of his stories living in the crosshairs of the Antifa Left and the alt-right. They’ve applauded Trump when he’s done good things, critiqued him when he’s done wrong, and kept their eyes on larger cultural trends. That’s not weakness.

I would suggest that Schlichter seriously engage Sasse's thesis, because even if these "militant normals" do ascend to the point of completely prevailing in the struggle to shape America, they will lack the guidance of an institutional foundation.


Schlichter is not the first Trumpist (and he always emphasizes that he's of the I-was-for-Cruz-but-now-that-we-have-Trump-I'm-mightily-impressed camp) to bandy about the term "elite," but it figures heavily into his rhetoric. This is disturbing. It establishes a slippery slope down which an inquiry into the philosophical basis for the worldview called conservatism (Burke, Locke, Bastiat, Weaver, Buckley, Kirk) can get dismissed as a waste of time, given the urgency of the task of "owning the libs."

It also connotes a lumping-together of elements that are actually quite disparate. Ben Sasse, for instance, has such conservative bona fides as an AQ rating from the NRA. He opposed the Affordable Care Act. In addition to his stints as a consultant and a college president, his career credentials include serving as executive director of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He combines intellectual heft, ideological consistency and considerable heart. He is no John Kasich or David Brooks.

The overall point here is that it is damn hard in 2018 to stand for recognizable conservatism. There is no end to the forces from a variety of directions that stand ready to try to eviscerate those who take the trouble to do so.

I might also note that French and Sasse are also Christians. It is core to what they are about.

That's the key to keeping a level head for anyone who seeks to participate in our national conversation  civil war from a position of consistent conservatism. Prayer is essential. It equips one with a real humility, not the convenient kind that does indeed seek to accommodate what indeed is the main enemy (the Left). (I find it rich that Kasich is seeking to invoke God in his discussing of the migrant caravan, given that after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision he said about Christian wedding service providers that they needed to get with the program since homosexual "marriage" was a done deal.)

With the Left in charge of the humanities departments at post-American universities, it's hard enough for our civilizational heritage to guide us in the present struggle. The tough-guy Right (a David French term) worsens that dilemma by seeking to brand all who don't sniff the throne of the Very Stable Genius with the blanket term "elite."

There are a few real conservatives in the fray, and contrary to both the rabid progressives and the Schlichter types, we are not irrelevant. As the ugliness metastasizes, we'll be shown to be indispensable.

There's nothing racist or vote-suppressing about voter-ID laws

Per Larry Elder's latest column:

Despite these alleged racist roadblocks to the ballot box, in 2008 blacks voted at a higher percentage than whites. That same year, liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote one of the majority opinions in a 6-3 case that upheld Indiana's voter ID law, which required voters to show a photo ID -- such as a driver's license or passport -- before casting their votes. Stevens recognized "flagrant examples of (voter) fraud" throughout America's history and wrote that "not only is the risk of voter fraud real" but "it could affect the outcome of a close election." The additional burden on voters, Stevens argued, is more than offset by "the state's interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters."

Blacks also support voter ID. A 2016 Gallup poll found that 77 percent of non-whites support voter ID, nearly as high as the 81 percent of whites who support it. 

The fact that voter ID is legal and popular does not, of course, affect the view that it "suppresses" the minority vote. The George Soros-supported website ThinkProgress ran a story last year with this menacing headline: "New Study Confirms that Voter ID Laws Are Very Racist." 

Citing research by three professors from U.C. San Diego, Michigan State and Bucknell University, the article says: "turnout among Hispanic voters is '7.1 percentage points lower in general elections and 5.3 points lower in primaries' in states with strict voter ID laws. The laws also reduce turnout among African-American and Asian-American voters. White turnout, according to their study, is 'largely unaffected.'"

Case closed? Not exactly. 

A follow-up study by researchers from Yale, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania found no evidence that voter ID laws have a statistically significant impact on voter turnout. This study examined the methodology and conclusions of the previous study. Its researchers wrote: "Widespread concern that voter identification laws suppress turnout among racial and ethnic minorities has made empirical evaluations of these laws crucial. But problems with administrative records and survey data impede such evaluations. ... We show that the results of the paper are a product of data inaccuracies (and) the presented evidence does not support the stated conclusion ... When errors are corrected, one can recover positive, negative or null estimates of the effect of voter ID laws on turnout, precluding firm conclusions."

In other words, the data do not support the notion that the "brown-brown" are too dumb, too lazy or otherwise incapable of obtaining the necessary identification to vote. 

The whole leftist "argument" to the contrary is based on a sentiment that leftists always have to gin up among the cattle-masses to get people to think they have a valid point: feigned pity. The actual objects of the pity are often quite insulted by it.

The real-world political and cultural implications of our lopsided redistribution picture

Check this out:

More than half of Americans receive more money in various types of government transfer payments (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security) than they pay in federal taxes.

According to a report released this year by the Congressional Budget Office, only the top two income quintiles in the United States pay more in taxes than they receive in government transfers.

 Not surprisingly, the lowest income quintiles receive far more in transfers than they pay in taxes:

In the lowest quintile, households pay only $400 in taxes (as of 2014, the most recent data available) while receiving more than $16,000 in various types of tax-funded transfer payments.

The end result is households in the bottom three quintiles have higher incomes after taxes and transfers than they do before taxes and transfers:

The second-to-top quintile is slightly worse off after taxes and transfers, and the highest quintile is sizably worse off. In other words, the top two income quintiles are subsidizing the bottom three, and the advantage, proportionally speaking, gets larger as income goes down.
The Politics of a Majority on the Dole

The political implications of this are considerable. As Ludwig von Mises once noted, once we get to the point that a majority of the voting population receives more in benefits than it pays in taxes, then voters will demand more and more wealth be transferred to them through government programs. It will then become politically necessary to extract larger and larger amounts of wealth from a minority in order to subsidize the majority.

Market economics will become less and less popular because the voters will have realized they can — in the words of James Bovard — "vote for a living" instead of work for a living.

And the mindset that "the government" is providing the goodies and can continue to do so because it has magic powers becomes more entrenched.

And character traits like initiative and ingenuity dwindle, and post-Americans become more and more like cattle.

From a guy who's in the thick of it

I doubt you'll be surprised. I'm not. But here's confirmation:

A migrant traveling north with the massive caravan that is trekking to the U.S. border admitted during an interview on Tuesday that there are "criminals" embedded in the group.

"Criminals are everywhere," one migrant told Fox News. "It’s criminals in here. It is. But it is not that many. It is good people here trying to get through Mexico and then get to the United States. It doesn’t mean that everybody is a criminal."

The migrant's admission comes just as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said Tuesday that there are "gang members" and people with "significant criminal histories" that are mixed in with the caravan.

"@DHSgov can confirm that there are individuals within the caravan who are gang members or have significant criminal histories," Department spokesperson Tyler Houlton wrote on Twitter. "Citizens of countries outside Central America, including countries in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and elsewhere are currently traveling through Mexico toward the U.S." 

"Stopping the caravan is not just about national security or preventing crime, it is also about national sovereignty and the rule of law," Houlton added. "Those who seek to come to America must do so the right and legal way."

This is our chance not to go the way of Europe. This throng can choose the means by which it is stopped. But it will be stopped.

 

Transgenderism: the most visible sign of the West's conscious decision to go insane

We're at the point where people who talk about gender not being defined by genitalia and DNA are taken seriously and regarded as mentally healthy grownups.

There's even a piece at NBC News today by a "transgender parent, musician and activist"  (not linking; you have what you need if you want to actually check it out) that makes the following claim:

Many people are born with ambiguous genitalia . . . 

Talk about a drive-by assertion. How does this person define "many"? Just what kinds of ambiguities is it talking about? Can we see some percentages?

It lets the cat out of the bag as to the narcissism - indeed, the solipsism - that is at the core of this phenomenon called transgenderism:

. . . defining your identity and choosing how to present your gender to the world is a basic form of self expression. 

No, it's a basic form of nuttiness.

And the creepiest aspect of all this is the momentum with which this phenomenon has taken hold. Twenty years ago, the nuttiness of it was universally recognized.

As Brandon Morse at Red State notes, this ought to be pondered deeply and studied rigorously:

The sudden rise of transgenderism in the first world should be looked into, but it would appear that at this time, too many institutions are afraid to touch it lest they suffer the wrath of the mob.

That's actually from the last paragraph in his piece, which I will now reprint in full. It's about how identity-politics militants have squelched academic inquiry into the amount of regret transgenders experience after having mutilated themselves. It will chill your bones:

 Sex change surgeries for people who suffer from gender dysphoria often lead to disastrous ends.

Those who undergo the surgeries are 19 times more likely to commit suicide after the procedure, and that’s already on top of a 41 percent suicide rate for those who suffer from gender dysphoria as is.

Yet, despite our knowledge of these numbers, the scientific and medical communities are afraid to tackle the subject for fear of what it could cost them in terms of careers and reputations. In today’s day and age, talking negatively about transgenderism in any capacity will result in the naysayer being labeled a societal pariah, guilty of bigotry and hatred towards the LGBT community.

And so the problem grows unabated, getting worse and worse. This has been confirmed by Doctor and Professor Miroslav Djordjevic, who was the world’s leading expert on genital reconstructive surgery according to the National Post.

According to him, five years ago he received his first patient who wanted his genitals reconstructed after he had them removed during a sex change surgery to become a woman. Over the next six months, he would receive six more patients, all regretting their sex change operations. He would go on to receive six more after that, and today does 100 surgeries a year.

Those who came to him to help reconstruct their genitals report “crippling levels of depression following their transition and in some cases even contemplated suicide,” according to the National Post.

With all these numbers in the open, you would think Universities and medical researchers would tackle the subject and its effects, but they aren’t. Institutions are backing away from giving out any funding on transgender surgery effects as they don’t want the backlash.
According to the National Post, James Caspian, a psychotherapist who specializes in working with transgender people, had originally been approved by Bath Spa University to research “detransitioning,” but the University’s ethics committee denied him after some initial research for fear of the transgender community coming after the university:

According to Caspian, the university initially approved his proposal to research “detransitioning”. He then amassed some preliminary findings that suggested a growing number of young people – particularly young women – were transitioning their gender and then regretting it.

But after submitting the more detailed proposal to Bath Spa, he discovered he had been referred to the university ethics committee, which rejected it over fears of criticism that might be directed towards the university. Not least on social media from the powerful transgender lobby.

Both Caspian and Djordjevic are baffled that research into this is not being jumped on given the destructive nature of the subject.
Djordjevic especially seems suspicious of the lack of mental health checkups for the patients who wish for transitional surgery, and due to some patient testimony thinks that money is at the root of the problem.
“I have heard stories of people visiting surgeries who only checked if they had the money to pay,” he says. “We have to stop this. As a community, we have to make very strong rules: nobody who wants to make this type of surgery or just make money can be allowed to do so.”
Djordjevic says that over the past decade his patients have been getting younger and younger, going from 45 to 21. He fears that soon these surgeries will include children, and according to the National Post, he’s right to be afraid:

Referrals to adult and child gender identity clinics in the UK have increased dramatically over the past 10 years. In April, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the only clinic for adolescents in England, reported 2,016 referrals to its gender identity development service, a 42 per cent rise compared to the previous year, which in itself marked a 104 per cent increase on the year before that.

These are stark increases. The sudden rise of transgenderism in the first world should be looked into, but it would appear that at this time, too many institutions are afraid to touch it lest they suffer the wrath of the mob. 

The Left has shown that it has fully digested the battle plans laid out by Gramsci, Marcuse, Alinsky and Cloward and Piven. Embark on the long march through the institutions. Permeate the culture.

Attain positions of influence in associations and journals in the health-care field.

Install diversity officers in school districts, and set up social-justice offices in high schools.

Pitch ideas for sitcoms featuring people with exotic sexualities to television networks.

Frame the argument in terms of access to employment, insurance coverage and housing.

Get susceptible churches to buy into the self-congratulation that can come with being "caring."

This is reaching a deadly serious level. We're quickly arriving at the point where telling people like the person who wrote the NBC News piece (published at a page within its website called "Think), "Sorry, pal, there are only two sexes, only ever gonna be, and God designed it that way" will get you in serious trouble.

Again, I say what I have to reassert with dismaying regularity. I keep searching for signs that maybe this blog's name is no longer applicable, that maybe we've moved into brighter times, but such evidence has not appeared.

Some absolutely essential plain speaking about entitlements

Dr. Jane Orient at Caffeinated Thoughts nails it:

The Washington Post of October 18 says that the biggest issues in the midterm elections are the threat that Republicans will slash Medicare and Social Security, and maybe get around to repealing ObamaCare after all. It quotes a tweet from Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) that Republican statements about “adjusting” entitlements are “Washington-speak for cutting the Medicare and Social Security benefits you have worked hard to earn and making you pay for tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.”

So, will rescinding the tax cuts and taxing the “rich” even more fix the problems?

Think about it for just a minute. Didn’t seniors already earn their benefits? If so, why the need to tax the rich to pay them?

The ugly truth is that the payroll taxes paid by today’s retirees were taxes, not contributions to a protected pension program. That money was spent immediately on yesteryear’s retirees—and any excess on reducing the deficit. The money in the “trust funds” is only a claim on future tax revenues.

There is no longer any excess. Payroll taxes from fewer than three working Americans are supposed to support one retiree, and the trust funds are being drained. Retirees’ and Medicare providers’ checks are coming from the wages of burger flippers, teachers, construction workers, or anybody else who is employed. Even if you think this is fair, it is a precarious and unsustainable situation. As the Baby Boomers retire, workforce participation by men of prime working age is shrinking, and wages have been stagnant.

The rich are not sitting in their counting houses counting out their money. The money is mostly invested in enterprises that create jobs (and payroll tax revenue) and produce the goods and services we all need. Even if a draconian increase in taxes produced an increase in revenue—and it usually doesn’t—it would likely crash the economy.

The situation for all of us, not just seniors, is deadly serious, and it requires economic realism, not name-calling, bickering, platitudes, and magical thinking. 

There is no disputing this. At some point, post-America must engage in a very grown-up conversation about it.