“Everyone is in favor of free speech… but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” ― Winston Churchill
Maybe Donald Trump simply forgot the personnel management lessons he got in the 2016 campaign and the first year of his Presidency. Michael Cohen, Omarosa Newman, Anthony Scaramucci, Paul Manafort…
You might ask, “Where is Kellyanne Conway when you need her?”
Why? Well, he desperately needs a steadying influence.
You are probably already aware of Trump’s recent flurry of intemperate and foolish outbursts, soon to be a Prog campaign advertising buy. But JIC, at Powerline a précis: Donald Trump, RIP
My understanding is that Trump did not assemble the pictures himself, but that they were part of an article he appended to a Truth Social post. This is not an excuse. That he(!?) failed to notice himself(!?) threatening a black man with a baseball bat is not believable. If you do believe that… it’s even worse: A potential CiC did it unwittingly?
To make this sort of discernment error in your public communications is not, shall we say, indicative of sober reflection. To do it on the same day you warn against “potential death and destruction,” is beyond my comprehension. To do both when a quarter of the country already is wrongly convinced you incited an insurrection?
It was always too much to expect the tiniest forbearance from The Donald, and he has been mercilessly harassed for 7 years by those who would tear down the law to an extent that would make Mother Theresa swear. He accomplished many positive things as President.
But, grant causes for this stone deaf bullshit though I might, I cannot find any rational justification for it. This is his 2016 campaign on crack.
Reasonable, if less informed people could not be blamed for supposing the Jan/6 Committee had a point.
Trump supporters who do not recoil from this need to reflect. But they are the people who will defend him, again making the Jan/6 Committee seem reasonable.
He has already alienated those who consider DeSantis a credible alternative. He insists on sacrificing votes in the general election, should he be nominated.
His egomania is a progressive disease. I am convinced he will run third party should he fail at the GOP nomination. He seems quite willing to destroy any chance of keeping the Dems out of the White House in 2024.
Another Republican might lose even if there is no third party run. But imagine the effect of a Trump campaign of the sort he is already conducting. Cloward-Piven from the right.
Trump has a point. He is no longer capable of making it to anyone who is not a lemming.
Do I still prefer Donald Trump to Joe Biden? Yes. But I hope I am not forced to make that choice. I did vote Libertarian when he ran against Hillary.
Among the most guileful, if transparently self-serving, arguments I’ve heard in favor of spreading student debt to every taxpayer – from a youngster whose degree was fully financed by parents – is that wiping the student slate clean would benefit everyone because of the important contributions student debt ‘victims’ could make if they no longer had to worry about the burden of holding up their end of freely signed contracts.
Freedom from the indentured servitude they accepted would enable them to more quickly apply their elite credentials and superior expertise, contributing to the welfare of society. Translated, this means they can get on with their lives: Borrow money to start a business, buy a house, start a family, afford a planet saving electric car, contribute to the most enlightened charities, vote for more spending… The simplest formulation is, “If we get to be looters, we will become better makers quicker than anyone else. And everyone gets a share!” (Apologies to Milo Minderbinder.)
I do not know how Equity of the implied redistribution is assured, and I assume Equity is very important. Maybe a new Federal Department?
This same ingenue has been heard to argue that we needn’t worry about government spending in any case, because we are on the brink of marvelous technological advances which make the at least half trillion dollar cost of spreading student debt to everyone else look like spare change.
This explosive growth of wealth theory is interesting enough for another long post, but I do have some questions to mention here.
In the context of the student loan pillaging, the minimum increase in general wealth would have to be substantially more than half a trillion. For example, we need to account for all the small businesses that wouldn’t be started because some taxpayers won’t be able to afford it; or a down payment on a house. Etc..
So, if the starting point is north of half a trillion dollars, what is the limit to spending we should consider? Is there any? Are we into full MMT? How much debt will be erased by this unprecedented expansion of wealth?
It seems to me we should minimally aspire to eliminating the national debt, and establishing true trust funds for social entitlement programs. Including a contingency fund for things like reparations. Again, what’s the limit on current spending if we assume such miraculous future growth?
This news is so good, and so imminent (arguably it must occur withing the span of a single generation) that I have to wonder why we just don’t wait for it to happen. And THEN pay off the student loans. Or, better, let the people who incurred the debt pay it off with their new found wealth.
OK. I conflated arguments which appear not strictly meant to be taken together. But there is a direct line between freeing the potential of these embryonic John Galts and economic nirvana. Expecting consistency in such ideas isn’t unreasonable. If we’re going to accept “the elite will contribute more than it costs” argument, it’s fair to ask how much faith we can put in the overall economic acumen of the bright young people who are proposing it. Who are preparing to become stewards of the economy.
The bottom line is that looting of taxpayers on behalf of students will damage the economy. Even if you accept the “benefits everyone” argument, those benefits are not immediate. Let’s just let the people who benefited from the loans they took (because they thought they would benefit financially) pay them off. As a bonus, not paying them off via taxation preemptively reduces the national debt by at least half a trillion dollars.
However, perhaps you find economic arguments insufficient. And you consider the question of fairness to those who responsibly discharged their student debt to be irrelevant… Let’s take a look at legal objections and precedent.
A major argument for proponents is that a Presidential executive order is legal under the 2003 HEROES Act. Randi Winegarten certainly doesn’t see any legal barrier:
If you can take the word of a person responsible for closing classrooms that she’s concerned about “our students” you might consider that what she means by “our” is ownership, not stewardship. She does not mean students under care and protection, she means revenue bots.
The HEROES Act of 2003 was sponsored by Republican John Kline of Minnesota, who had served 25 years as a U.S. Marine. When he introduced the bill in the House of Representatives, he declared that it would help “the troops who protect and defend the United States.”
At that time, many college students and recent grads who were members of the National Guard and Reserves were being deployed to carry out Operation Iraqi Freedom and anti-terror operations in response to the slaughter of 2,977 people on 9/11.
Stating that the bill was “simple in its purpose” and “specific in its intent,” Kline explained that it will “assist students who are being called up to active duty or active service” and those who are impacted by “a war, military contingency operation or a national emergency.” He also emphasized that the bill would do this “without affecting the integrity” of student loan programs.
Demonstrating just how simple and specific the bill was, the official legislative record shows that the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 421–1 with only “forty minutes of debate.” The Senate then passed it “without amendment by unanimous consent.” If all 100 senators were present, this is a margin of 521 to 1.
…
The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates that Biden’s student loan cancellations and payment reductions will cost $605 billion to more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. This amounts to an average cost of roughly $4,700 to $7,700 for every household in the United States.
…
The Biden administration claims that the HEROES Acts of 2003 gives them that power, but Congressional records prove just the opposite is true. These include the introduction of the law, the debate of the law, the votes on the law, and the text of the law.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that unless Congress clearly delegates such powers to the president, these types of actions are illegal.
There’s more. Even Nancy Pelosi knew it would be illegal before she stopped knowing it
If the Court cannot stop the president from raiding the Treasury to buy votes and reward friends on the most implausible of legal pretexts, what is it for? A majority of the Court appears to recognize that the HEROES Act does not grant the power in question — a reality that even Nancy Pelosi acknowledged until it became clear that Biden intended to act when he could not get such a plan through Congress.
The statute says that the secretary of education can “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs” when “necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.” Chief Justice John Roberts set the tone for the argument by noting that Justice Antonin Scalia once observed that “modified in our view connotes moderate change. He said it might be good English to say that the French Revolution modified the status of the French nobility, but only because there’s a figure of speech called understatement and a literary device known as sarcasm.” Moreover, the chief justice observed that, even if terms such as “waive or modify” could be construed to encompass the outright cancellation of student debt, the Court’s “major question doctrine” requires more — namely, a citation to “clear congressional authorization” of the specific action taken by the administration. No one can plausibly claim that the HEROES Act even anticipated, much less green-lighted, half a trillion dollars in relief to a favored class of debtors without additional congressional input.
The entire idea was a Democrat political ploy prior to the mid-terms.
Biden has justified spending such an incredible amount without first obtaining congressional approval by invoking the HEROES Act, a 9/11-era law designed to allow the federal government to provide student debt relief to soldiers who were forced to withdraw from college to enter active duty. Under the HEROES Act, the Secretary of Education is granted the authority to waive “any statutory or regulatory provision” relating to student loan repayment or assistance programs during a time of “a war or other military operation or national emergency.”
…
The legal ground justifying Biden’s student loan relief plan has always been shaky—and obviously politically motivated. As higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz told CNBC earlier this month, “If it was an emergency, why wait three years to provide the forgiveness? Why present it in a political framework, as fulfilling a campaign promise?”
Finally, let’s not forget who promoted this problem. Student indebtedness owes most of its problematic nature to debt encouraging Federal programs and the use of that easy money to fund the explosion of a diversity/inclusion/equity (DIE. AKA DEI) Administrative cadre in our universities. WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING is a quintessential example of government causing a problem for which the ‘fix’ is more government intervention.
Chicago is electing a mayor today. The candidates are not simply corrupt, they are degenerate. The execrable Lori Lightfoot, for example, may be re-elected. While it’s not clear any other candidate is better, some are even worse.
It reminds me of Carl Sandberg’s 1914 poem Chicago. The opening line was cemented in my mind 60 years ago.
Carl Sandberg loved the city. He captures Chicago’s essence: What made it a great city. He sees the dark side, but also a flourishing metropolis: Big, vibrant, strong, industrious, creative.
I’m sure he would shed a tear at what it has become.
Chicago
By Carl Sandburg
“Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.”
Uncancelled History | EP. 05 Winston Churchill
“Andrew Roberts joins Douglas Murray on this episode to discuss Winston Churchill. The two discuss the soldier, writer and prime minister in detail, leaving nothing off limits.”
This long and thoughtful article is highly recommended. There is an interesting introduction – a nicely condensed look at evolutionary psychology – which I think blows up Rousseau’s “state of nature/innocence of man/blank slate” argument in favor of Hobbes’ “nature red in tooth and claw” view. This is deftly applied to the implied question in its title: Social justice as social leverage.
That could have been “Utopian Scheming as a Dominance Strategy.” Utopia depends on the blank slate model of human cognition.
I’ve picked one paragraph in order to relate it to quotes from Raymond Aron, Milton Friedman, and Robert Heinlein:
But social justice as status-and-social-leverage is driven towards blank-slate claims. For the less constrained by underlying structures—such as innate human cognitive traits—the grander the imagined social justice future can be. So the more rhetorically dominant its claims can be. The more motivating its aspirations can be.
The more control must be given to a centralized arbiter of truth.
The key element here is the blank-slate Rousseauian – “humans are innately good and it is civilization that is destructive” assumption, vs the Hobbesian – “humans are innately self-centered, because in raw nature lives are nasty, brutish, and short.” Rousseau is often contrasted as an optimist with Hobbes cast as pessimist. I don’t understand why Rousseau is considered an optimist, since return to “state of nature” would be a mass extinction event for humans. Then again, that implicates mainstream Green thinking.
If Rousseau is right, the future depends entirely on how that blank slate human mind is conditioned. It is not difficult to see how proponents of Critical Race Theory and Transgender Activists insist their ideas be taught in K-12. And it is easy to see why they want this kept secret from parents.
A fundamental transformation of culture requires new language, suppression of speech, and erasure of opponents. A recent example is the attempt by the Ontario College of Psychologists to compel his attendance at a re-education camp. The threat for non-compliance is suspension of his license as a clinical psychologist.
Consequences that flow from the Rousseau/Hobbes debate over human nature underlie the following:
“The [classical] liberal believes in the permanence of humanity’s imperfection, he resigns himself to a regime in which the good will be the result of numberless actions, and never the object of a conscious choice. Finally, he subscribes to the pessimism that sees in politics the art of creating the conditions in which the vices of men will contribute to the good of society.”
-Raymond Aron
Aron, a PhD in the philosophy of history, was a historian, journalist, philosopher, and political scientist. A stellar example of French intellectualism for much of the twentieth century.
You can detect Adam Smith in “in which the good will be the result of numberless actions.”
Which gives us a segue to economist Milton Friedman, who echoed Aron’s sentiment:
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
We are not blank slates, or we would by now have only good men to elect in the goodthink utopia in which we would already live.
Granted, the Hobbes/Rousseau debate is not strictly binary. Of course we learn things from our culture and experiences, and we use those things to inform a spectrum of political opinion. Underlying that spectrum though, is a basic binary choice. Robert Heinlein:
Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
-Robert Heinlein
In closing, I’ll give another nod to Heinlein describing the consequences of the hive mind necessary to any Utopia, where freedom of thought cannot be allowed:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
I hear Senate incumbent Raphael Warnock (D, GA) says challenger Herschel Walker (R, GA) will not be able to cope with the cognitive demands of being a Senator.
What is Warnock’s opinion of John Fetterman’s Senatorial capability? Was he ever asked?
Should Mehmet Oz have used this tactic against Fetterman in PA?
