Saturday roundup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ratcheted tensions in northwest Asia have Japan pretty skittish:

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

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

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

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

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

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