In some situations, you have to prioritize the principles involved

This post is basically going to consist of a Facebook post and one chain within the comment thread underneath.

Here is my post:

I don't usually use social media as a vehicle for activism, but this one really disturbs me. I'm speaking of the utterly boneheaded idea of merging the departments of labor and education. Yes, I understand that much of today's world of work requires skills that most people don't have. But education and training are two different things - entirely. 

The point of education is to grasp the vast sweep of human history, and to explore the best that has been thought, discovered and created.

It is to learn how to live humanely in a difficult world.

Training is something the private sector does to meet the particular needs of particular private entities.

And so I'm offering the URL to this petition to stop this move.

By the way, here's the URL. You should sign the petition, too.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-merger-between-us-dept-education-and-us-dept-labor

And here's the thread:

Other Guy: If you think the Department of Education is about teaching anything like "the vast sweep of human history" you are not paying attention.

Me: See above comments. I'm in complete agreement that the Ed Department and for that matter the Labor Dept should be abolished. (A big reason I was a Ted Cruz enthusiast was that he had the spine to come out with a list of cabinet-level departments and federal agencies that he'd set about dismantling if he got elected.) But to get into that level of it here would be to muddy the waters. These departments do exist, and it is indeed folly to merge them.

Other Guy: I think if the merger results in there being half as many federal employees at the end of the day, who cares.

Me: Because of the reasons I state in the post.

Me: It looks to me like a nationalist move, borne out of some kind of concern that America taken collectively needs to be more "competitive" vis-a-vis other industrialized countries. It reduces education to the equipping of a work force to meet the needs of corporations. It seems to me it could be argued that it's actually a leftist impulse - playing favorites in the marketplace.

Me: If company A needs particular skill sets and can't find them, that is not a matter for government to address. 

 Other Guy: I was looking at it as a way to cut two bloated bureaucracies in half. 

Me: That's a good thing, I'll grant you, but another important principle is at stake here. 

Other Guy: Fair enough. I haven't thought about any deeper than "hey, less bureaucrats".

Glad you accepted my invitation to think about it a little more deeply. By the way, it's "fewer bureaucrats."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If - we're probably talking about when - Lopez Obrador wins, it's going to be pass-the-popcorn time

The most leftist presidential candidate in decades is likely to get elected in Mexico on July 1. Former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has made it pretty clear he's none too fond of the free market.

But on the personality level, he bears more than a passing resemblance to the Very Stable Genius. He love big rallies in big stadiums. As the linked Reuters story says, he has a strong will and a sharp tongue. Observers and particularly apologists seek to reassure the Mexican public that he has "matured" and isn't going to make rash moves.

And consider the timing. We're in a period of peak controversy about illegal immigration. Lopez Obrador calls it a human right:

“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

He then declared migration “a human right we will defend,” eluniversal.com reports.

 If even right-leaning Mexican presidents find Trump antagonizing, what will the coming Clash of the Monumental Egos look like?

Especially since there's no telling how Trump regards any leader of any nation-state on any given day.

UPDATE: John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist writes about the recent spike in cartel-driven violence in Mexico and its role in the current spike in illegal immigration to the US. In the coverage I've seen about Lopez Obrador, I haven't seen anything about a solid and comprehensive plan for dealing with this head-on.

The euphemisms monsters use

SCOTUS got one very right today:

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of faith-based crisis pregnancy centers by striking down a California law forcing them to present abortion — the exact thing they exist to try to prevent — as an option to expectant mothers seeking services.

The court said the law violated the First Amendment by forcing facilities established by groups who believe abortion is murder to advertise information on them.

The decision was a win for the clinics, known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” which had argued the requirements under the state’s Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care and Transparency Act, or FACT Act, infringed on their speech rights, forcing them to promote a procedure they morally oppose.

Justice Clarence Thomas delivered the opinion of the court, which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined.

Justice Stephen Breyer filed a dissenting opinion, which Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined. 

Here's what former Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards had to say about it on Twitter:

SCOTUS today: upholds the immoral Muslim ban and says it’s just fine for fake clinics paid for with tax $ to lie to women about their pregnancies and withhold medical information. We’ve got to be ready for November.

Got it? It's "withholding medical information" to not have to put up a sign saying, "Now, if you like, you can go down the street and get your son or daughter exterminated." Not sure just what she means about lying to women.

And the other SCOTUS decision does not uphold a "Muslim ban."

Keith "Stolen Land" Ellison, speaking of Twitter, says it is:

The US Supreme Court just ratified Donald Trump’s “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entry into the United States.

But Liz Wheeler, host of OANN's Tipping Point shuts his stuff down good and proper:

Six Muslim majority nations on the list. Two NON Muslim majority nations.

All of which have ties to terrorism.

All of whom can get OFF the list if they stop sponsoring terrorism. 

But back to the subject at hand, brace yourselves for a barrage of feminist fury over the pregnancy-clinic decision.

What the Very Stable Genius is doing - blaming a private company for reacting to government intervention in the free market - is essentially just what the Most Equal Comrade did

The VSG, never one to hesitate before tweeting in response to what seems to him to be an affront, let loose with bluster-filled and economically ignorant outbursts today about Harley-Davidson:

A Harley-Davidson should never be built in another country-never! Their employees and customers are already very angry at them. If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end - they surrendered, they quit! The Aura will be gone and they will be taxed like never before!

Surprised that Harley-Davidson, of all companies, would be the first to wave the White Flag. I fought hard for them and ultimately they will not pay tariffs selling into the E.U., which has hurt us badly on trade, down $151 Billion. Taxes just a Harley excuse - be patient! #MAGA

The thug factor is on full display here as well. (Another example just today of that was his unnecessary weigh-in on the Maxine Waters situation: "Be careful what you wish for, Max." But, you know, "he fights.")

Ben Shapiro at Daily Wire points out that, while the subject was health insurance on his watch, the basic principle is the same: blaming private companies for doing what makes economic sense in the face of government intervention:

Trump’s attacks on Harley-Davidson are nearly indistinguishable from Obama-era attacks on American companies who had to cut jobs and hours thanks to Obamacare. Barack Obama himself participated in this tactic, slamming large companies for taking cost-cutting measures to deal with the additional obligations of Obamacare: “when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers’ wages, shame on them.” He singled out Staples for his ire:

I haven’t looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security, and if they can’t, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages.

Big government advocates will always blame private industry for the failures of government interventionism. Tariffs are big government. And big government has consequences. Attacking companies responding to market conditions is a pathetic way of avoiding responsibility for those consequences.

Jeff Cox at CNBC says that the investment markets are likewise reeling from the inconsistency coming out of the administration's trade shop:

They may have to start passing out neck braces on trading floors if the White House's contradictions on trade policies continue much longer.

Investors are getting whiplash from watching the back-and-forth happening among Trump administration officials who can't seem to agree on a trade policy. Monday's action featured a series of mixed messages about President Donald Trump's latest trade-related threat, resulting in volatile market action and confusion and frustration in the financial markets.

"I don't think the people in the White House have an ideal path for the way this is going to go. They're trying lots of different things," said Rob Lutts, chief investment officer and president of Cabot Money Management. "I actually believe they're making this up as they go along."

When there is no rudder, the boat lists and the sails flap in the breeze.

 

 

The essence of collectivism is out-and-out theft

I just came across an essay at The American Prospect  entitled "Want to Expand the Economy? Tax the Rich!" by  guy named Nick Hanauer. He's a venture capitalist, but a huge leftie. In that, he's not really an anomaly. Warren Buffett has said that he'd be delighted to pay more in taxes.

I've given you what you need to Google it. I'm not linking to it. I don't want to be responsible for it getting hits.

He exposes his disingenuousness in the second paragraph by citing Harley-Davidson's moving of some production overseas. As we've noted here at LITD, that's due to the tariffs imposed by Trump, not the tax cuts passed by Congress. He also mentions Kimberly-Clark's restructuring, which involves plant closings, neglecting to go into the reasons for that:

Like other consumer products makers, notably Procter & Gamble (PG, +0.09%), Kimberly-Clark is dealing with a price war in key categories and weak demand for some products such as diapers amid a declining birth rate. P&G among others has also been slashing prices on key items such as diapers.

Organic sales for the company, a measure the strips out the impact of currency fluctuations, was flat for the year even though the company was more optimistic about 2017 at the year’s outset. Kimberly-Clark expects organic sales to be 1% this new fiscal year, helped by higher volumes that are helping it contend with lower prices.

The job cuts and factory closings are part of a plan to cut costs by $2 billion in cost cuts by 2021. At the same time, amid the pressures on its business, the company said it would raise its dividend by 3%, something that lifted Kimberly-Clark’s stagnating stock price on Tuesday morning. News of the reductions stands in stark contrast to the many hiring and bonuses announcements by large U.S. corporations in recent weeks in the wake of the recent tax reform bill.

Then he trots out the banal buzz-terms. The recent tax cut was a "trickle-down scam." A "financial giveaway."

But then he gets into the case of Kansas - the Brownback tax cuts and the subsequent economic shortfall.

And, once again, he leaves the important stuff out.

Brownback's initial tax cut proposal was far less than what the state Senate finally put in place.  And spending was never actually cut, only the rate of spending growth.  

Ben Haller at Reason fleshes out the details of how the Kansas case went awry:

What went wrong? First, the legislature failed to eliminate politically popular exemptions and deductions, making the initial revenue drop more severe than the governor planned. The legislature and the governor could have reduced government spending to offset the decrease in revenue, but they also failed on that front. Government spending per capita remained relatively stable in the years following the recession to the present, despite the constant fiscal crises. In fact, state expenditure reports from the National Association of State Budget Officers show that total state expenditures in Kansas increased every year except 2013, where expenditures decreased a modest 3 percent from 2012. It should then not come as a surprise that the state faced large budget gaps year after year.

In addition to a failure to control government spending, Kansas officials failed to ditch one of the worst elements of the tax plan: the total elimination of taxes on pass-through entities. Pass through entities are, to put it simply, businesses that pay taxes through the individual income tax code as opposed to the corporate code. It's particularly bizarre that this provision survived because even those who supported Brownback's other tax cuts, such as the Tax Foundation, felt this part of the plan went too far and encouraged tax avoidance. Instead of policies like eliminating tax loopholes, lowering tax rates, and broadening the tax base—the most common elements of tax reform—the state created arguably one of the largest loopholes that could be found in any state tax code and exempted businesses that employ over 50 percent of the state's workforce. You would have to shoot state accountants in the foot if you wanted to make it any harder for them to balance the budget.

Finally, Brownback compounded those mistakes by doing the exact opposite of what an ardent supply-sider, or any fiscal conservative, should do next: he raised taxes.

In fact, the state's 2015 tobacco tax increase was only one-third what the governor wanted; the legislature rightly reduced it because they felt Brownback's proposal would disproportionately affect low income people and drive business out of the state. The governor also pushed for an increase in the state sales tax from 6.15 percent to 6.5 percent (the rate people end up paying is even higher when local taxes are taken into account), and he got it. Sales taxes are inherently regressive, but in Kansas they are particularly so because it's one of only a few states that tax food.

Even those regressive, poorly planned tax increases failed to solve the budget crisis.

This Hanauer character doesn't get into that.

Then he gets into how "the world" is "awash in money." And it's here that we get to the essence of how sinister his argument is.

He's talking about money as if it's fungible, just kind of "out there" and not really belonging to anybody.

Listen up, mister: Every last dollar in the economy belongs to some person or organization, and what they do with what is theirs is none of your stinking business.

Now, the leftist rejoinder to that is to get into the business about "inequality" and how some people are still barely scraping by.

My suggestion to them is to think in terms of opportunity, because it's out there:

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data show 6 million unfilled jobs and a shortage of workers to fill them. This is the very definition of a tight labor market and will most likely lead to higher wages and bonuses to workers. It is already having this effect. In some parts of the country, employers are paying signing bonuses of up to $25,000 for welders, pipe fitters, engineers and truck drivers.

"We've probably never had a situation like we have today, where the demand (for workers) is strong and capacity is constrained," says Bob Costello, chief economist of the American Trucking Associations.

Finally, the real unemployment rate, the so-called U-6 rate, which includes discouraged workers who have dropped out of the workforce and those who can only find part-time work, has fallen to 8% this year, down from a high of 16% in Barack Obama's first term.

Two things, in conclusion:

1. Money is not fungible, and government has no business taking one more red cent of anybody's money than is necessary to fulfill what were commonly understood to be government's functions prior to the progressive era.
2. A major reason it's unfortunate that we have Trump as president, the credit given to him in the title of the above-linked Stephen Moore piece notwithstanding, is that principles get buried under muddied circumstances, such as the above-discussed facts that Trump's protectionism motivated Harley-Davidson to move some production offshore.

This Hanauer character is advocating theft, pure and simple.

The relentless goose-stepping of the revisionist jackboots

What post-Americans with way too much time on their hands preoccupy themselves with:

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name will be removed from a major literary award over how the author of “Little House on the Prairie” depicted minorities in her in books.

The decision to nix her name on the award, changing it from the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Award” to the “Children’s Literature Legacy Award” comes after a unanimous vote by the Association of Library Service to Children’s board. That decision was met with a “standing ovation by the audience in attendance,” the group reported.

“This decision was made in consideration of the fact that Wilder’s legacy, as represented by her body of work, includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness,” the Association for Library Service to Children said in a statement after the vote.

The award is given to “an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children,” according to the organization’s website. 

Judging a late-nineteenth-century worldview from a post-American perspective, and thus indicating to the kiddies that that is how history must be approached.

Can the culture undergo anymore rot without completely dissolving?

The post-American Left gets more savage by the hour

Now they're leaving decapitated animals on DHS employees' doorsteps:

A decapitated and burned animal carcass was recently discovered on the front porch of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official’s Washington, D.C. home, ABC Radio reported Monday.

The incident came amid an increase in threats against DHS employees, with some two dozen reported in the past few days. DHS sent a letter Saturday to all employees apprising them of the “heightened threat,” which appears to have been exacerbated by a broader national backlash against the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration-enforcement policy.

“This assessment is based on specific and credible threats that have been levied against certain DHS employees and a sharp increase in the overall number of general threats against DHS employees,” Claire Grady, acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security, wrote to employees on Saturday in a letter obtained by ABC.

These goons need to stop this, and right away.

The Very Stable Genius has some strange priorities

Yes, it was cowardly of Jimmy Fallon to apologize for the hair-messing-up stunt on his television show, but it's dismaying - make that "sad!" - to see the US president take the time to weigh in on it and make it an opportunity to engage in alpha-male preening:

.@jimmyfallon is now whimpering to all that he did the famous “hair show” with me (where he seriously messed up my hair), & that he would have now done it differently because it is said to have “humanized” me-he is taking heat. He called & said “monster ratings.” Be a man Jimmy!

Sorry, all you shills and ate-up cult members, but this is why I still find it unfortunate that he's our chief executive e.

The ramifications of the Very Stable Genius's trade policy are underway

Better enjoy the economic uplift from tax reform while you can. A countervailing wind has begun to blow.

In a response to President Trump’s trade war with the European Union, an American icon, Harley Davidson motorcycles, will be moving some of their production facilities out of the United States.

The maker of the iconic American motorcycle said in a regulatory filing Monday that EU tariffs on its motorcycles exported from the U.S. jumped between 6 percent and 31 percent. The company said it expects the tariffs will result in an incremental cost of about $2,200 per average motorcycle exported from the U.S. to the EU.

“Harley-Davidson maintains a strong commitment to U.S.-based manufacturing which is valued by riders globally,” the company said in prepared remarks. “Increasing international production to alleviate the EU tariff burden is not the company’s preference, but represents the only sustainable option to make its motorcycles accessible to customers in the EU and maintain a viable business in Europe. Europe is a critical market for Harley-Davidson.”

Ruining the American economy and killing off American jobs to own the libs.

Sales for Harley-Davidson in Europe are second only to that in the U.S. Around 40,000 were sold in Europe last year.

With anticipated costs between $30 million to $45 million through the rest of the year, the company vows to absorb the hit and will not be raising its prices, in order to avoid damaging the momentum in sales they have in Europe. That should cover them until they can manage the move to Europe, estimated to take between 9 to 18 months.

Shares in Harley-Davidson slid 3 percent before Monday’s opening bell. They weren’t alone. Other companies that rely heavily on aluminum and steel also felt that gut-punch that comes from having a barely literate, stampy-footed reality TV host in charge of a nation’s well-being.

Making America 1930 again.

On Monday, the vice president of the European Union’s governing body said that Europe and China will form a group aimed at updating global trade rules to address technology policy, government subsidies and other emerging complaints in a bid to preserve support for international commerce.

European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said unilateral action by U.S. President Donald Trump in disputes over steel, China’s technology policy and other issues highlighted the need to modernize the World Trade Organization to reflect developments in the world economy.

Trump and his devotees will continue to call this “winning.” It’s those Harley enthusiasts, however, that make up Trump’s base. When they do see Harley-Davidson moving from being a uniquely American commodity, who do they blame?

What about the pork and soy farmers that are already feeling the effects of an ill-advised trade war? 

What say you, Larry Kudlow?

The essence of the matter

I'm not at all fond of what-about-ism as an instrument of point-making, but Michael Brown at Townhall makes clear that a question of basic morality is at stake in the Maxine Waters exhortation:

Rep. Waters, do you know how millions of us felt during the presidency of Barack Obama? How deeply grieved we were by his pro-abortion zeal? By his saying, “God bless you” to Planned Parenthood? By his speaking of an unwanted teen pregnancy as a punishment?

As pro-life Americans, his statements and actions were outrageous to us. But it never crossed our minds to kick his press secretary, Josh Earnest, out of a restaurant. And it certainly never crossed the minds of Republican leaders to call for such things. To do so is to draw a very dangerous line and to set a very ugly precedent.

Rep. Waters, do you realize how upset we were when President Obama “changed” his position on homosexuality, becoming a champion for same-sex “marriage” after emphatically saying he rejected it as a Christian? (I say “changed” because it’s fairly clear he lied about his earlier “Christian” view, falsely claiming that his views had recently evolved.)

For millions of evangelicals, there is nothing more sacred than the life of a baby in the womb and the sanctity of God-ordained (male-female) marriage. And our previous president led a frontal assault against both those fronts.

What if we had kicked you out of one of our restaurants because of your support for him? Would you have said, “I respect your convictions, and you have acted honorably?” I think not. 

You see, we're not just talking about separating kids from parents in the matter of abortion (although the kid getting killed certainly does accomplish that separation). We're talking about limbs getting separated from torsos. And in the case of homosexual "marriage," we're talking about openly mocking God's design for the most basic unit of human societal organization.

Here's the thing: I honestly don't think Maxine Waters is outraged about border policy. This is her current vehicle for whipping up mob frenzy and thereby facilitating the amassing of power for the jackboot cabal.

A lot of leftists start out believing all that stuff about "fairness' and "equality" but once they get a taste of power, that's what it becomes all about.

In post-America we maneuver within the parameters of ridiculous and dangerous

For today's examples, let's start with the dangerous, because this really is:

Maxine Waters wants more people to harass Trump administration officials in public spaces.

The California Congresswoman went on a shouting rampage during a toy drive outside the Wilshire Federal Building on Saturday.

Check this out:

“God is on OUR side!” she declared, as the crowd went wild. “On the side of the children. On the side of what’s right. On the side of what’s honorable.”

“And so, let’s stay the course. Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up and if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she yelled.

Yes, Waters is a pathetic clown show, and her following is comparatively small, but it doesn't take a vast army of thugs to carry out what she's exhorting her minions to do. And a few instances that go to their satisfaction will swell their ranks, as we've seen in previous iterations of the general unrest that has characterized post-America for the last decade or so.

Now, for the ridiculous. The Very Stable Genius, in his petty, schoolyard-bully attempt to stand up for his press secretary, who, as I said yesterday, did comport herself with dignity in the matter of getting ejected from the Red Hen, took to - where else? - Twitter:

 President Trump on Monday said the Virginia restaurant that refused to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is "dirty" and "needs a paint job."

“The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders," the president wrote on Twitter.

"I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!"

Just shut up, Mr. President. Never weigh in on anything. Seriously.

You have hired great people in most positions in your administration. Let them implement good policies and do the talking and the tweeting. You, you just stay out of their way.

Ah, but that would go against the grain of what he's all about and always has been. If he didn't bluster, and get the kind of slavish cheers for it - of the kind Maxine Waters was getting yesterday -  he wouldn't find any position he had fulfilling.

So that's the lay of the land in June 2018. It's going to be back and forth between the jackboots and the boneheads, and the very notion of dignity recedes ever further into the mists of antiquity.

 

More on the new level of cacophony

I don't think there's anybody who isn't afflicted with some type of the contemporary derangements that are woefully prevalent today that doesn't think Sarah Sanders conducted herself with class and dignity when she was subjected to that shameful ousting from the Red Hen. (By the way, did you know the owner is a cousin of Meryl Streep?)

In fact, from what I can tell, she's a classy lady generally. Yes, I find it unfortunate that she chooses to be a spokesperson for the Very Stable Genius, but at least she does so with coherence, decorum and conviction. I don't know a great deal about what she was doing prior to this. Her background is campaign consulting. She's been involved with campaigns ranging from that of her father to those of Tim Pawlenty and Tom Cotton, the latter of whom is one of the undisputed good guys.

But then there's her father, who is also currently the subject of much discussion on social media for his tweet showing a photograph of a gaggle of tattoo-covered MS-13 members flashing their sign, with the message: "Nancy Pelosi introduces her campaign committee for the take back of the House."

Jonah Goldberg tweeted in response: "That Huckabee [presumably a principled and civil public figure], if he ever existed, is gone."

Quinn Hillyer then chimed in with his own assessment:

He never existed. As I reported during that 2008 campaign, the real Huckabee (who I covered while at the Ark Dem-Gazette in 1997-98) is petty, mean-spirited, self-absorbed.

As did Ron Fournier:

I’ve known him since before he got into politics. That Huckabee you talk about did not exist

Now, whether apples fall far from trees or not doesn't tell us everything about people's offspring, and, as I say, Sanders generally comports herself with class. It's just that we have her situation pretty much simultaneously juxtaposed against her father's stunt. I can tell you I don't have much use for his (low) degree of judgement - and timing - after seeing him put this boneheaded outburst on Twitter while his daughter is contending with a situation in which her actions are entirely defensible and indeed laudable.

On another front, there's this:

On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace interviewed former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, who said that under President Barack Obama, they did detain some children alone and some families together, two policies for which Donald Trump has been under considerable fire.

After President Trump signed an executive order last week to stop the separation of families at the border, the administration took new fire for the idea that families would be detained together. Rep. Louis “The secretary of Homeland Security has lost all morals when it comes to protecting children and enforcing our immigration laws.”

It is also something for which the ACLU blasted President Obama years ago.

On Sunday, former Secretary Johnson told Chris Wallace that they thought it was necessary at the time, and that it is still is.

Wallace showed now infamous photos from 2014 of children in detention and asked if the Obama administration had handled things “so well.”

“Without a doubt the images, and the reality, from 2014, just like 2018, are not pretty,” said Johnson. “We expanded it, I freely admit it was controversial, we believed it was necessary at the time, I still believe it is necessary to remain a certain capability for families.”

Also says we can't have a catch-and-release policy, and he's exactly right, of course.

We shall see if he's subjected to the kind of excoriation that Sanders, Neislen and Trump have come in for.

We do know that one gubernatorial candidate takes a little different view of protecting the homeland from that of Johnson:

New York gubernatorial candidate and former “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon on Thursday called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “a terrorist organization” and called for its abolition, pitting progressive New Yorkers against Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Nixon made her remarks at a church on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where an illegal immigrant is taking sanctuary after being threatened with deportation after she failed to show a driver’s license during a traffic stop by ICE agents.

“ICE has strayed so far away from its mission. It is supposed to be here to keep Americans safe but what it has turned into, frankly, is a terrorist organization of its own that is terrorizing people who are coming to this country,” she said, according to NY1 News.

She's also currently in the  news for getting all goopy over her son's resentment of teh DNA he was born with:

In honor of Trans Day of Action, Cynthia Nixon shared a touching Instagram post to celebrate her oldest child.

On Friday, the Sex and the City star — who's currently running for governor in New York — shared a photo of her and her son Samuel, announcing that he's transgender.

No wonder the kid is confused:

Nixon had Samuel, born Samantha Mozes, with her ex-husband Danny Mozes, along with her 15-year-old son Charles Ezekiel Mozes. She also has a 7-year-old named Max Ellington Nixon-Marinoni with her wife, Christine Marinoni. 

In addition to participating in LGBTQ advocacy for more than 10 years, Nixon herself has publicly identified as bisexual and was honored with the Human Rights Campaign’s Visibility Award in Feb. 2018.

In a statement, HRC President Chad Griffin, called Nixon, "a fearless and outspoken advocate for all LGBTQ people." 

Likeable, let alone admirable, people are in short supply these days.

 

How many more minutes until the final crackup?

I may do a search of the LITD archives to determine just when the terms "cacophony" and "brittleness" started to show up in posts. I'm pretty sure the by the time of the university-campus chaos of 2015 I was employing them to depict where we were headed. Maybe when the racially-charged urban unrest in places like Ferguson and Baltimore were the main headline fodder. Maybe during the religious-freedom firestorm of 2013. I'd just have to check it out.

But as I said in Friday's post, "A New Level of Unhealthiness," I'm seriously considering that we're surpassing the polarization and danger for real violence that became manifest in those previous periods.

I'm not alone, either. When I read Derek Hunter's Townhall column today, I thought, it does a disservice to a pundit's readers to dance around this now. It's time to state bluntly where we are, and Hunter does:

In a time of crazy, it’s been a Hell of a week. I literally wrote the book on the liberal outrage culture and this week disturbed even me. There are some things you simply can’t undo, some ledges you can’t pull back from. We’re teetering on one now. How can we, as a nation, get back to civility or even just get along again?

Now, let me reiterate what I've been saying since about this time in 2015. It's undeniable that the Left is driving this crackup. But from 50 years ago, that tumultuous year of 1968, to three years ago, there were two forces contending for the sold of the nation and the West: Left and Right. It got worse as the decades ensued, with feminism, environmentalism, the mutation of the civil-rights movement into a race-huslting enterprise, the rot of the culture, and the hijacking of the entertainment, education and journalism worlds by the Left (and much of the corporate world and many "Christian" denominations as well) becoming so pervasive that we became inured to the process.

But now we, of course, have the Trump phenomenon added to the process. Here's where a new level of cacophony gets added to the mix. Much is going quite well in this country, particularly on the economic level. But Trump enthusiasts who make that the main point are in denial that something is terribly wrong.

And I maintain that the Left's current level of frenzy is exacerbated by the fact of who Trump is. Yes, they would have been howling - and marching, and disrupting people's restaurant meals, and calling for elected officials' children to be kidnapped - if an actual conservative were president, but the fact that Trump has the outrageous personality that he does is a new type of flammable substance being poured onto their rage.

Then there is the element of the Right that continues to find Trump objectionable in signifiant ways. You may know this element from the derisive term by which Trump enthusiasts characterize it: "Never Trumpers." (Or, as Kurt Schlichter calls us - yes, it's disclosure time; I said us - "Fredocons".) The Trump enthusiasts would have us believe that his mercurial ways, his rudderlessness and his boorishness are negligible compared to ever-more-favorable numbers for GDP and employment. Never mind that he was snookered by the most dangerous rogue regime on the planet in his megalomaniacal quest to look like a "winner."

But those of us trying to see our way clear to hold fast to conservative principles have to face yet further splintering in the form of calls like that coming from George Will, who is now exhorting anyone and everyone not to vote Republican for any office in this fall's election. Will was the poster boy for serious polemical discourse, informed by an unsurpassed breadth of historical perspective, for decades, and now he is making us ("Never Trumpers") look ridiculous to Trump's slavish devotees, and giving the Left a glimmer of hope that it has found the wedge with which to pry apart conservatism and send the resultant shards flying in every direction.

For God's sake, will someone in post-America try to make some sense?

Quit trying to stuff the grim panoply of civilizational threats into neat little boxes of shorthand analysis.

The answer is not to "get behind Trump." Neither is it to go all George Will on the Republican Party.

It is to defend those pillars and principles that have always been true and always will be.

One of which is the assertion that a high level of civilization is good, that it keeps people safe, allows them to prosper, and keeps life from being hellish.

Whether it's not too late in the day to persuade a sufficient swath of post-America that this is the way out of our present juncture is not at all certain.

Have a nice Sunday.

Saturday roundup

North Korea:

The must-read on this subject is by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute at National Review:

Given the hopes that President Trump’s North Korea policy had generated in the roughly 18 months leading up to Singapore, the results were little short of shocking. There is no way to sugarcoat it: Kim Jong-un and the North Korean side ran the table. After one-on-one talks with their most dangerous American adversary in decades and high-level deliberations with the “hard-line” Trump team, the North walked away with a joint communiqué that read almost as if it had been drafted by the DPRK ministry of foreign affairs. 

The dimensions of North Korea’s victory in Singapore only seemed to grow in the following days, with new revelations and declarations by the two sides. What remains unclear at this writing is whether the American side fully comprehends the scale of its losses, and how Washington will eventually try to cope with the setbacks the meeting set in motion.

Kim Jong-un’s first and most obvious victory was the legitimation the summit’s pageantry accorded him and his regime. The Dear Respected Leader was treated as if he were the head of a legitimate state and indeed of a world power rather than the boss of a state-run crime cartel that a U.N. Commission of Inquiry wants to charge with crimes against humanity. In addition to the intrinsic photo-op benefit of a face-to-face with an American president who had traveled halfway across the globe to meet him, the Dear Respected Leader bathed in praise from the leader of the free world: Kim Jong-un was “a talented man who loves his country very much,” “a worthy negotiator,” and a person with whom Trump had “developed a very special bond.” Kim even garnered an invitation to the White House. These incalculably valuable gifts went entirely unreciprocated.

Second: Kim was handed a major victory in terms of what went missing from the summit agenda. For the Kim regime’s security infractions are by no means limited to its domestic nuke and missile projects.

As Professor Bruce Bechtol Jr. details in an important forthcoming book, North Korea is a WMD merchant for Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other elements in the Middle East, supporting and in turn being supported by an unholy alliance of terror agents abroad. Not unrelated, North Korea maintains immense stockpiles of chemical weapons, as Kim Jong-un’s assassination of his half-brother in a Malaysian airport with nerve agents was certainly intended to remind us. North Korea is also actively involved in cyber warfare and cyber crime, as the Sony hacking and the cyber-robbing of numerous overseas banks attest. DPRK security services routinely abduct foreign nationals — from Japan, South Korea, Europe, and maybe even America — as has been documented by HRNK, the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. And then there is the nightmare of human rights under the regime — a catastrophe unparalleled in the modern world — and its commitment to eradicating the Republic of Korea, a U.N. member state.In getting a pass on all these matters in the official record of its deliberations with Washington, North Korea scored a huge plus. 

Third: Regarding the key issues that were mentioned in the joint statement, the U.S. ended up adopting North Korean code language. 

Until (let’s say) yesterday, the U.S. objective in the North Korean nuclear crisis was to induce the DPRK to dismantle its nuclear armaments and the industrial infrastructure for them. Likewise with long-range missiles. Thus the long-standing U.S. formulation of “CVID”: “complete verifiable irreversible denuclearization.”  But because the nuclear quest is central to DPRK strategy and security, the real, existing North Korean state cannot be expected to acquiesce in CVID — ever. Thus its own alternative formulation, with which America concurred in Singapore: “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

In this sly formulation, South Korea would also have to “denuclearize” — even though it possesses no nukes and allows none on its soil. How? By cutting its military ties to its nuclear-armed ally, the U.S. And if one probes the meaning of this formulation further with North Korean interlocutors, one finds that even in this unlikely scenario, the DPRK would treat its “denuclearization” as a question of arms control — as in, if America agrees to drawing down to just 40 nukes, Pyongyang could think about doing the same. The language of “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” ensured that no tangible progress on CVID was promised in the joint statement.

Likewise the communiqué’s curious North Korean–style language about agreeing to build a “peace regime” on the Korean Peninsula. What is the difference between a “peace regime” and plain old “peace,” or, say, a peace treaty among all concerned parties? From the North Korean standpoint, a “peace regime” will not be in place until U.S. troops and defense guarantees are gone — and a peace treaty between North and South may not be part of a “peace regime,” either, because that would require the DPRK to recognize the right of the ROK to exist, a proposition it has always rejected.

Fourth: The North delivered absolutely nothing on the American wish list at the summit and offered only the vaguest of indications about any deliverables in the future. No accounting of the current nuke and missile inventory. No accounting of the defense infrastructure currently mass-producing nukes and missiles. No accounting of WMD sales and services in the Middle East, or cyber-crime activities, or counterfeiting, or drug sales. Not even a small goodwill gesture, such as the release of Japanese abductees or an admission that North Korean agents did indeed kidnap David Sneddon, a young American last seen in China, as many who have followed the case believe.Nor did Team Trump’s much-vaunted timetable for handing over nukes and dismantling WMD facilities emerge. Quite the contrary: As Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation and others have pointed out, the joint language commits North Korea to even less than any of its previous (flagrantly violated) nuclear agreements did: less than its agreements with South Korea in 1991 and 1992; less than its Agreed Framework in 1994; less even than the miserable Joint Statement from the so-called Six-Party Talks in 2005. 

Mona Charen's Ricochet piece, "Historic Snooker," from a few days ago is worth your while as well:

Why is our president smiling? You can always argue that democratic leaders must treat with dictators and even villains of various stripes for the sake of winning a war or securing the peace. You can even argue that sometimes presidents flatter unsavory leaders to build trust and ease tensions. But no historical comparisons can illuminate Trump’s ricochets between hysterical threats (“fire and fury”) and pusillanimous praise (“very talented”) without any substantive change on the part of the dictator. What has changed since the State of the Union address in which Trump honored the memory of Otto Warmbier and detailed the atrocities of the North Korean regime? In gratitude for the exchange of pleasantries, the release of a few hostages, and vague offers of “denuclearization” Trump has made himself Kim’s doormat.

As a matter of substance, the Singapore summit achieved less than nothing. It was a profound defeat for U.S. world influence and for democratic decency, arguably the worst summit outcome since Yalta. Kim promised to consider “denuclearization,” exactly as his father and grandfather had done repeatedly over the past several decades – breaking their promises each and every time. For this puff of cotton candy, Trump agreed to halt “U.S. war games” (using the North Korean term for joint military exercises with South Korea) which Trump himself called provocative! He invited Kim to the White House. He also issued the risible tweet announcing, ahem, peace in our time: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. 

It’s difficult to determine just how stupid Trump thinks the American people are. But there is no question that Trump’s affection for strongmen and thugs, evident before in his praise of the Chinese murderers of Tiananmen, and his warm words for Putin, Duterte, and Xi, has now extended to the worst tyrant/killer on the planet. Trump did far more than overlook Kim’s atrocious human rights abuses, he became Kim’s PR man. “he’s a very talented man and I also learned he loves his country very much.” He has a “great personality” and is “very smart.”

Trump granted Kim’s legitimacy: “His country does love him. His people, you see the fervor. They have a great fervor.”

In 2014, a United Nations report concluded that North Korea’s crimes against humanity “entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”

What of all that? Trump is understanding, even impressed. “Hey, he’s a tough guy. When you take over a country — a tough country, tough people — and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean, that’s one in 10,000 that could do that. So he’s a very smart guy. He’s a great negotiator.”

What was Trump’s chief argument in 2016? The U.S. had been the victim of “bad deals,” with other countries and he was the great deal maker. He fingered the Iran deal as the worst deal in history. His defenders will excuse the truckling to Kim as a clever gambit to extract concessions. But Kim has offered absolutely nothing. All of the concessions have come from the United States, including the most crucial one – we’ve put ourselves on the same moral plane as North Korea. That’s what Make America Great Again has achieved.

The Border Crisis:

Heather MacDonald at City Journal gets to the heart of the matter:

Underlying this episode were several cardinal principles of left-wing activism: that favored victim groups must never be held responsible for their actions, and that policy should be made based on immediate claims of need, with no regard to long-term consequences. The reigning assumption during the family-separation meltdown was that the adults who brought children with them across the border had no responsibility for their subsequent plight. The only actor with agency was the federal government; it alone bore the blame for alien minors being placed in detention facilities. Yet the but-for cause of the child separation was the adult’s decision to cross illegally into the U.S., child in tow. If you don’t want to be separated from your or another person’s child, don’t cross the border illegally. Likewise, any whisper of immigration enforcement inside the border is inevitably greeted with cries that such enforcement would cause illegal aliens to be “fearful.” If you don’t want to fear deportation, don’t assume the risk of deportation, however slight that risk may be, by illegal entry.

Obeying the law, however, is something that must never be demanded of politically correct victims. If lawbreaking carries negative consequences, the fault lies with the legal system, not with an individual’s decision to break the law in the first place.

This principle is at work in the ongoing attacks on the criminal-justice system as well: the overrepresentation of blacks in prison is attributed to allegedly racist actors and institutions, not to lawbreaking by the criminals. Non-legal forms of distress are also covered by the no-agency rule. If single mothers experience elevated rates of poverty, the fault lies with a heartless welfare system, not with their decision to conceive a child out-of-wedlock. The father, of course, is as good as nonexistent, in the eyes of the single-mother welfare lobby. If teen mothers are stressed out, the problem lies in the absence of daycare centers in high schools.

The “progressive” solution to these dilemmas is to confer an immediate benefit on the alleged victim that will alleviate the problem in the short term, perverse incentives be damned. Illegal aliens with children must be exempt from immigration rules. The likelihood that such a policy will encourage more illegal aliens to come is out of sight, out of mind (if not covertly viewed as an affirmative good). If having more out-of-wedlock children puts a strain on a single mother’s welfare check and food stamps, then the government should increase the allotment to reflect the additional births. If that single mother and her children show up at a shelter claiming homelessness, give them an apartment. If such free housing encourages more single mothers to flood the shelter system, contract for more apartments.

Also check out Rich Lowry's latest column, entitled "Dems' True Goal Is To End All Border Enforcement," which has appeared in the New York Post as well as Jewish World Review.

Post-America's Crumbling Civility:

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders tweets about her attempt to patronize a restaurant:

Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so

A Facebook friend of mine (he's a buddy in the offline world as well) reports that our societal brittleness has reduced his longstanding friendships by one:

Well today it happened. I was called by one of my old friends "one of the biggest pieces of shit" that he knows, and asked me to unfriend him.
Why you may ask?
For presenting and defending conservative points of view.

Sad times my brethren, sad times. 

You probably know about Nikki Haley announcing that the US was pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council. (It probably should have been noted and celebrated here at LITD; it's been a busy week.) Since then, she's had the opportunity to demonstrate why it was an excellent move. 

Future first female POTUS Nikki Haley is exactly right. In the same week that saw Ms. Haley deliver a blistering “Dear John” letter to the UN “Human Rights” Council, the alleged watchdog group also had the pleasure of enduring her entirely justified clapback wrath at their new report scrutinizing US poverty. The “Human Rights” Council, which includes Afghanistan, China, and Cuba, condemned the US for lowering tax rates on rich people and curbing certain programs for poor citizens. This, despite the fact noted by Haley that the US currently has its lowest unemployment rate in decades.

The Council, which includes Iraq, Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was set to present the report Friday, which was drafted by Philip Alston, a man who left his home country of Australia and took a high-paying seat as a law professor in the United States of America at New York University. Haley lambasted the apparently non-satirical report as “misleading and politically motivated” (also, water is wet).

Haley added:

It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America. In our country, the President, Members of Congress, Governors, Mayors, and City Council members actively engage on poverty issues every day. Compare that to the many countries around the world, whose governments knowingly abuse human rights and cause pain and suffering.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist democratic socialist, defended the report against his own country, calling the scathing examination “totally appropriate”. Specifically, he highlighted the 40 million who still live in poverty* (defined by the Census Bureau’s mobile goalpost as $25,100/yr for a family of four--roughly the average salary of Poland or Greece) and the 30 million who do not carry health insurance since they are no longer forced by the federal government to buy any (this of course leaves poor citizens with no medical recourse other than the full coverage already provided for them by Medicaid). Sen. Sanders’ criticism of US wages was a scorching indictment of the nation listed as having the 2nd highest average salaries in the world after Luxembourg according to the OECD. No doubt this will only bolster the credibility of the findings of the “Human Rights” Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and Venezuela. 

Another must-read this weekend: Kristen Soltis Anderson's Washington Examiner piece, "The Four Species of Beltway Republicans."  She categorizes them as the Trump enthusiasts, the establishmentarians, the internal opposition, and the remnant.