The essence of the Trump regime in 2018

The intellectual and moral essence of the current Republican regime in Washington, summed up in a single tweet:

The Tyranny--or the Democracy--of the Ideal?

Now available online (and for free!): a symposium on Gerald Gaus’s recent book, The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society (Princeton University Press, 2016).

The collection is edited by Ryan Muldoon, and includes papers by Scott E. Page, David Wiens, Fred D'Agostino, Kevin Vallier, and Gerald Gaus. Lori Watson and yours truly also have a paper in it: “The Tyranny—or the Democracy—of the Ideal?”. Here is the abstract for our paper:

In this article we defend the 'Rawlsian' view of the nature of political philosophy, and especially the role of 'ideal theory' in thinking about justice, against some of Gerald Gaus's main criticisms in The Tyranny of the Ideal (Princeton University Press, 2016). First, we dispute Gaus's claim that Rawls's idea of a 'well-ordered society' cannot survive the move to political liberalism. We formulate a 'political liberal' version of the well-ordered society, and show that Gaus's 'Open Society,' rather than a radical alternative to the political liberal well-ordered society, in fact closely resembles it. We then challenge Gaus's claim that Rawlsians committed to the principles of 'justice as fairness' are confronted with 'The Choice.' According to The Choice, ideal theorists must either: (1) pursue 'nearby' relatively certain 'local' gains in justice for their society, or (2) forgo these local gains in order to pursue the more ambitious but far less certain goal of 'ideal' justice. (The goal of ideal justice is 'less certain' both in terms of its likely achievement as well as the likelihood that it is in fact the ideal.) We challenge Gaus's claim regarding The Choice, at least as applied to the Rawlsian view, by explaining how addressing local injustices naturally can lead some citizens to develop conceptions of full justice, including 'realistically utopian' versions of their societies. The kinds of political proposals that plausibly follow from this account of public reasoning indicate that Rawlsians in fact do not confront The Choice.

Kudos to Prof. Muldoon for putting this impressive volume together. And it is great that Cosmos + Taxis is free and online!

The global menace of Trump

Trump’s domestic policies have been—and promise to continue to be—horrible. But for the most part, they are standard right-wing Republican policies—viz., tax cuts for the wealthy (packaged in thoroughly discredited ‘trickle-down’ nonsense), the instalment of reactionary federal judges, the destruction or undermining of environmental and worker protections, and the overall retrenchment of the plutocracy at the expense of democracy and equality of opportunity. Sure, Trump is cruder than some Republicans would like, and more explicit in his racism, misogyny, and xenophobia than most political observers are used to in a national leader. But the actual policies themselves are not that much different than what a President Rubio or Cruz would be pushing in an alternative timeline.

What is more worrisome than Trump's domestic agenda is his sheer recklessness with respect to the international domain. Here he has the potential to cause global political and economic damage with his simplistic, crudely nativist ‘worldview’. If you are not frightened yet about what another 3 years of Trumpian foreign policy might bring, I recommend you read this article at Politico. The magnitude of dangerous incompetence and chaos in this administration is simply breathtaking.