Conservative ‘intellectual’ gets ‘destroyed’

Watching squeaky sophist Ben Shapiro get ‘destroyed’ (doesn’t he normally to the ‘destroying’?) by Andrew Neil on the BBC made my day. (And, hilariously, Shapiro is so clueless that he charges über-Tory Neil with being a ‘Leftist’!)

Here’s a valid argument:

a. If Ben Shapiro represents the intellectual leadership of contemporary American Conservatism,

And

b. If the success of a political movement (e.g., contemporary American Conservatism) depends upon the philosophical cogency of the political views espoused by its intellectual leadership,

Then:

c. Contemporary American Conservatism is doomed.

Of course, while valid, the argument is unsound: premise ‘b’ is manifestly false. American Conservatism (or what is called that today) is thoroughly incoherent, and entirely motivated by a desire to enforce existing hierarchies (racial, gender, class, etc.) and relations of domination.

“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives…” (J.S. Mill)

AOC: Rawlsian?

Could John Rawls's conception of distributive justice -- 'justice as fairness' -- someday actually help shape public policy in the United States?

Perhaps ... if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to tax income above 10 million USD at 70 percent is ever realized in law -- or so claims Micah Johnson at Slate.

(Alas, the article gets some things wrong, e.g., that Rawls was a defender of the 'welfare state'; he in fact favoured 'property-owning democracy'. And the 'egalitarian' objection it mentions is accommodated by the 'fair value' of the political liberties guarantee. Still, it's always nice to see justice as fairness mentioned in the popular press!)

Ted Cruz: Master Debater

This post, “Owning the Peanut Gallery,” by Maria Farrell at the ‘Crooked Timber’ blog is well worth reading—especially by anyone who ever participated in university-level debating in North America. It is hilarious and does a great job in capturing what it was like to take part in university tournaments in the early 1990s, especially from the perspective of Canadian teams visiting the U.S. And of course any post that further illuminates the comprehensive awfulness of Ted Cruz is worthy of praise.

The post brought back my own memories of debating in Canada around the same time (I represented University College at University of Toronto). I recall going to tournaments at Yale and Harvard, and encountering Cruz (and Austan Goolsbee, and others), although—thankfully—I don’t recall ever debating Cruz myself.

(Nitpick: A friend points out that this claim in the post is incorrect: “We’re the highest ranked Canadian team at a US tournament, ever, at that point [1993].” A team from the University of Toronto made it to the finals at Harvard in 1992.)

Threat to democracy: Cambridge Analytica

This undercover report on Cambridge Analytica from Channel 4 News is well worth watching.

(It is, of course, no surprise that this vile organization was instrumental in helping Trump win the electoral college vote in the 2016 US election...)

UPDATE [2018-03-20]: Here is C4 News' report on the role of Cambridge Analytica in the Trump 2016 campaign.

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 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.

Nonsensical Rifle Addiction

This video—a segment within the Dutch comedy show ‘Sunday with Lubach’—does a brilliant job of conveying just how insane the rest of the civilised world regards the American obsession with guns. And it is quite funny as well. (The narration of the video is in English—in fact the narrator sounds a lot like Patrick Stewart, at least to my ears.)

Of course, a standard reply from those within the United States who worship firearms is to declare that the right to own lethal weapons is necessary for ‘freedom’. But this is in fact wrong—widespread gun ownership actually reduces citizens’ overall freedom.

Guns versus freedom of speech

The nature of freedom and its social preconditions is one of my central research interests. Most of my past academic work on this topic has been on the role of ‘money’ (economic resources) and education (intellectual resources) in facilitating citizens’ effective freedom. But of course citizens’ freedom can be constrained or expanded by other things. In the case of the United States (and pretty much only the United States, at least amongst Western liberal democratic societies), widespread civilian ownership of firearms—including the right to freely carry them in public places—greatly constrains most citizens’ freedom.

This view is contrary to the mainstream American view concerning this topic. Many people on both sides of the ‘gun control debate’ within the United States agree that allowing citizens to own firearms enhances their freedom—the question (as it’s generally framed) is whether this freedom is sufficiently important or valuable to outweigh the foreseeable costs for citizens’ health, safety, and lives. Proposals to limit or regulate citizens’ access to and use of firearms are justified by American gun control advocates, for the most part, on grounds of public health and safety.

This way of framing the issue is mistaken. It unjustifiably cedes intellectual ground to firearms advocates. Permitting anyone to own and carry in public places deadly firearms decreases the overall freedom of the citizenry; it does so by increasing the overall level of private, arbitrary coercive power (via threats of force and exercises of force by individual citizens) within society. Or so I have argued in the past.

I’m pleased to see others articulating something like this way of construing the relationship between firearms and freedom. Focusing on freedom of speech, at Slate Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern have great piece entitled, “The Guns Won: Charlottesville showed that our First Amendment jurisprudence hasn’t reckoned with our Second Amendment reality.”

Here are some of the key points from their article:

“When demonstrators plan to carry guns and cause fights, does the government have a compelling interest in regulating their expressive conduct more carefully than it’d be able to otherwise? This is not any one judge’s fault. It is a failure of our First Amendment jurisprudence to reckon with our Second Amendment reality.
Charlottesville proves that this issue is hardly theoretical anymore.”
…
“This conflict between the right to bear arms and the right to free speech is nothing new, but the sudden surge in white nationalist activism has made it painfully obvious that, in the public square, the right to bear arms tends to trump the right to free speech.”
…
“The result is an alarming form of censorship: Nonviolent demonstrators lose their right to assemble and express their ideas because the police are too apprehensive to shield them from violence. The right to bear arms overrides the right to free speech. And when protesters dress like militia members and the police are confused about who is with whom, chaos is inevitable.”
…
“It’s perfectly reasonable for courts to consider the speech-suppressing potential of guns when evaluating a city’s efforts to keep the peace. And it will be perfectly lethal if they fail to take the Second Amendment reality into account, as they reflect upon the values we seek to protect with the First.”

The core problem posed for freedom of speech by guns is expressed succinctly by Siva Vaidhyanathan in his piece for the New York Times (“Why the Nazis Came to Charlottesville”): “There is no ‘free speech’ if anyone brandishes firearms to intimidate those they despise. You can’t argue with the armed.”

An armed society is an unfree society.

The best coverage of Trump is from political satirists

I’ve been a great fan of political satire for as long as I can remember. But one thing that has become increasingly clear since Trump won the electoral college vote for the presidency last November 8th, is that the most informative and critical coverage of the Trump regime in the United States has been coming from political satirists (such as Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee, and Stephen Colbert) rather than from mainstream news outlets (like CNN or even NPR).

The reason is simple: news outlets see themselves as neutrally ‘reporting’ the news, including manifest nonsense like Trump’s claims regarding massive voter fraud or Trump’s tweets alleging that President Obama wire-tapped Trump tower, whereas satirists are free to call Trump’s bullshit “bullshit.”

This Vox article—“ Comedians have figured out the trick to covering Trump”—by Carlos Maza does a fine job of explaining this point. (There is a longer, funnier video version of the article here.)

I’ve especially been impressed with Seth Meyers’ “A Closer Look” pieces on Trump, which I watch regularly on the 'YouTube.'

The Anti-Trump Overlapping Consensus

Only 11 days into the new American regime and its cruelty and incompetence is manifestly clear. But as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo notes, none of the horrible actions being taken by the Trump regime should surprise anyone. Trump ran on an anti-Muslim, anti-Mexican, pro-authoritarian, white nationalist agenda. What I find disorienting is not so much the horrific substance of what the Trump regime is doing (which I expected), but its breakneck pace and incompetence—that is, its sheer chaos.

With respect to the ham-fisted Muslim ban announced on Friday, its immorality and imprudence is well explained in this Vox interview with the prominent political theorist Joseph Carens. (Carens has produced more important work on the ethics of migration over the past four decades than anyone else.)

I’m gratified that the (US-based) professional organizations to which I belong—the American Association of University Professionals, the American Philosophical Association, and the Association for Political Theory—have all denounced Trump’s Muslim ban.

Here is the UWM (University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee) AAUP statement:

We, the UWM Chapter of the American Association for University Professionals, state our unequivocal condemnation of the immigration and travel ban enacted by President Trump on January 27, 2017, and affirm our support for our students and colleagues affected by it. We recognize the ban as part of a broader agenda that threatens the university and the very spirit of the Wisconsin Idea. 

Many colleagues, graduate and undergraduate students at our university are citizens of the seven countries affected by this executive order.  In Fall 2016, 104 graduate students from these nations attended UWM. Many other students are citizens of other Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East. All these people are full members of the university community; the university belongs to all of us. The travel restriction interferes with their studies, their work as intellectuals, and their freedom of movement as people. 

We affirm that public universities are places of free inquiry and collective endeavor for all people, regardless of race, religion, sexual identity, or national origin. We are a nation of immigrant entrepreneurs and refugees, travelers, slaves and indigenous occupants; at UWM, our diversity is our strength in research, teaching, and community service. 

We likewise affirm our support for the many students, faculty, and staff throughout the UW System and across the country, facing discriminatory and exclusionary migration policies. We reiterate AAUP-UWM’s advocacy for the rights of our undocumented students to security and privacy. We call on our university leadership to speak out whenever and wherever possible on these pressing issues.

Here is the APA statement:

American participation in the global exchange of ideas depends on free movement of students and scholars to and from institutions of higher education, academic conferences, and other venues for study, research, and scholarly interaction. The executive order issued on January 27 limiting entry into the United States by refugees and those from seven predominantly Muslim countries, and deterring travel abroad by immigrants in the US, disrupts the work of philosophers and scholars in all disciplines around the world and impedes students, teachers, and researchers from engaging in their educational and professional pursuits. 

The APA’s mission is to foster open dialogue and the free exchange of ideas. Inclusion and respect for diverse people, religions, cultures, and ideas are at the very core of our work. This order goes against these values—values on which the United States itself was founded. 

The APA is working to assess the impact of this executive order on our members and participants in our upcoming meetings. We will take steps to ensure that those affected are able to participate in our meetings to the fullest extent feasible and to advocate for and support philosophers whose lives and work are harmed by this order. 

We stand with learned societies, colleges and universities, and others around the world in calling on the President and Congress to reverse this executive order and to denounce religious intolerance in all its forms.

And here is the APT statement:

The Association of Political Theory condemns, in the strongest terms, the travel ban recently issued by the federal government and demands that it be immediately rescinded.  As clarified in our mission statement, the purpose of the APT is to promote the study of political theory and political philosophy in North America by advancing scholarly interaction, collaboration, and debate among political theorists from diverse intellectual perspectives. Our membership includes scholars from many different parts of the world including those covered by this travel ban. As an Association, we stand both with these scholars and in solidarity with all refugees and immigrants who have been negatively impacted and endangered by this executive order. We now commit to taking concrete actions to prevent the harms to our members that this policy threatens.  We will begin exploring ways to do this and we welcome suggestions from our members about how best to help.

I’m also relieved to note that I have yet to interact personally with any academic who is remotely sympathetic to the new Trump regime and its manifestly malevolent policies. To use a Rawlsian term, there seems to be an ‘overlapping consensus’—amongst liberal egalitarians, centrist liberals, classical liberals, libertarians, democratic socialists, etc.—against the quasi-fascist regime now wreaking havoc in Washington D.C.  

To conclude this post, this strikes me as a spot on representation of the real power at work in the White House:

[Comic from here.]

The Kochtopus is poised to control the Trump administration

I’ve mentioned the threat that the Koch brothers and the various organizations that they fund and control – a sprawling plutocratic network of political influence and corruption often referred to as the ‘Kochtopus’ – pose to American democracy before in this blog. Given that the Kochs refused to back Trump during the 2016 election, they have not been subject to as much scrutiny in the most recent election cycle as they have been in the past. However, the Kochs are now poised to shape the policy agenda of the coming Trump administration in numerous horrible ways.

Theda Skocpol, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Caroline Tervo explain what is happening in their important article, “Behind ‘Make America Great,’ the Koch Agenda Returns with a Vengence,” at TPM.

Some key points:

During the election campaign, Trump relied upon well-established conservative organizational networks that could reach into many states and communities. … [H]e benefitted indirectly from Koch network operations centered in a nation-spanning, political party-like federation called Americans for Prosperity. Even more important, after his campaign squeaked through on November 8, an unprepared President-Elect Trump started to fall back on people and plans offered by the Koch network, which aims to dismantle not only Barack Obama’s accomplishments but much of what the federal government has done for 75 years to promote security and opportunity for ordinary Americans.
…
Despite loud pronouncements from Charles Koch that his network would not support Trump, the Kochs’ massive political operation worked over many months to turn out Republican voters in key states. Above all, AFP was deeply involved in get-out-the-vote efforts, especially in the critical swing states of Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
…
Having helped to elect Trump and a fully GOP-controlled Congress, the Koch network is now positioned to staff and steer much that happens in Washington DC.
…
For the emerging Trump White House, Vice President Mike Pence, long a Koch network favorite, was put in charge of transition planning for federal personnel appointments – and one of his senior staffers for this effort is his long-time associate, Marc Short, recent head of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the lynchpin of the Koch network’s fundraising operation.
…
In addition to Pence and Short, newly-named White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has had strong ties to AFP’s chapter in Wisconsin – a chapter that has been central to all aspects of politics and policy in that state during the ascendancy of Governor Scott Walker.
…
After apparently denouncing and opposing GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan during the election campaign, President-Elect Trump did a quick about-face to fully embrace Ryan and his radical government-shrinking policy agenda. Speaker Ryan has been a featured politician at many Koch donor conclaves over the years, and Washington Post reporter Matea Gold has described Ryan as “clearly a favorite of the Koch donor network.” It is not hard to see why. Ryan’s main priorities, already spelled out in budgets that House Republicans have repeatedly passed, include slashing federal funding for Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other parts of the social safety net for the poor; privatizing Medicare for future generations of American retirees; instituting large and regressive tax cuts rewarding corporations and the very wealthy; gutting what remains of labor regulations and union rights; and eliminating business and environmental regulations.
…
With all of these leadership ties in place, is it no surprise that specific plans have rapidly emerged to advance the Koch agenda in the new Congress that convenes in January 2017, perhaps enacting bills so quickly that opponents will be disorganized and most Americans will not understand what is happening.
…
With total GOP control of Washington DC about to happen, the Koch network dream of an enfeebled U.S. domestic government is on the verge of realization.

Read the whole thing – and despair.

Interview on freedom, money, and justice as fairness

Last September I was interviewed about my forthcoming article, "Freedom, Money, and Justice as Fairness," by Sarah Vickery for the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee journal In Focus. The interview can be found on page four of the journal (available here). I've reproduced it below.

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ALL (SOME RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY)

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science (UWM)

“With freedom and justice for all” is the last line of the Pledge of Allegiance and a guiding ideal in American society, but there’s a caveat: freedom seem to be worth more the wealthier you are.

“You and I have an equal right to freedom of association,” explained Philosophy professor Blain Neufeld. “That right is protected equally for both of us. But if I’m wealthy, I can exercise that right more effectively. I can set up associations or travel to distant places to associate with others. We have equal liberty but I can make better use of it.”

That’s one of the principles forming the basis of Neufeld’s recent paper, “Freedom, Money, and Justice as Fairness” published in the journal Politics, Philosophy, & Economics. He seeks to answer a question that has sobering implications for our society: How do you reconcile the thought that we have basic freedoms with varying abilities to exercise them against the idea that money can grant access to freedoms that others without money will never have?

There are two seemingly conflicting views of freedom at work here, said Neufeld. The first is philosopher John Rawls’ conception of Justice as Fairness which claims that: (1) every individual has an equal right to a set of basic liberties, but (2) there may exist some inequalities in society, such as those regarding income and wealth, which can in influence the worth of those liberties. The first principle has lexical priority in Rawls’ conception of justice, meaning it will always take precedence over the second.

On the other hand is philosopher Gerald Cohen, who argues that wealth can eliminate barriers to freedom, giving wealthy people certain liberties that others do not have.

“If Cohen’s right, why would (Rawls) insist on lexical priority? It doesn’t make sense,” Neufeld said. “The paper is an attempt to explain why you still want the lexical priority even if you’ve granted Cohen’s point – why you’d still want to have special protection for these basic rights, even if you acknowledged that the more wealth people have, the more freedom they have.”

Neufeld was inspired to write the paper thanks to a Canadian lottery commercial he remembered seeing regularly as a child. The ad showed happy lottery winners traveling and enjoying fun activities under the tagline ‘Imagine the freedom.’

“When I read Cohen’s article, that commercial popped into my mind. If you win the lottery, you’re free! You can remove all of these constraints,” Neufeld said. “I thought, if Cohen is right, does this spell trouble for Rawls’ conception of justice? I hope it doesn’t, or I’ll have to reevaluate what I’m doing with my life.”

Neufeld won’t have to reevaluate too hard; he concluded that Rawls can accommodate Cohen’s point if you apply to Justice as Fairness a “basic needs” principle – an insurance that everyone has adequate education, discretionary time, health care, and other fundamental needs met.

“If you secure those things, you already establish a level of freedom all citizens have to a more or less equal degree, even independent of whatever inequality might be necessary for economic efficiency,” Neufeld said.

That has implications for our own political system, he added, especially when we look at how current rhetoric and social systems have marginalized some groups of Americans, thanks to income inequality. This paper won’t change it, but, “It’s one of my on-going concerns, trying to resurrect another way of thinking about individual freedom that points out that inequality is incompatible with widespread liberty,” Neufeld added.

More concretely, Neufeld emphasized in his argument about the basic needs principle that one fundamental need is adequate discretionary time. People need time away from work to pursue leisure activities, to engage socially, and to think about important things – like what their political views should be. He’s been dismayed to see Americans working longer hours in recent decades, alongside attacks to benefits like overtime pay.

“What Rawls talks about in terms of a basic needs principle as a precondition of even being able to be free – if you’re not educated, if you don’t know what options are available to you; you’re not free to choose among those options. If you’re working constantly, you can’t, say, think about how to vote in an upcoming election,” Neufeld said. “This idea of a basic needs principle is important.”

Liberal democracy in a darkening world

There are some interesting observations from Joe Heath (Philosophy, University of Toronto) on the US election in his recent post at In Due Course.

This comment especially troubled me:

"Perhaps I am overreacting, but I do feel as though yesterday was one of those moments, like the fall of the Berlin Wall, that alters the trajectory of civilization. That’s because the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency is deeply discrediting to Western-style democracy. In fact, I think the big winner, globally, from Tuesday’s election, is Chinese-style authoritarianism."

I think that the possibility that what happened on Tuesday will be perceived in the way that Heath describes is a real danger. It reminded me of the following observation by John Rawls:

"If we take for granted as common knowledge that a just and well-ordered society is impossible, then the quality and tone of [political] discussions will reflect that knowledge. A cause of the fall of Weimar’s constitutional regime was that none of the traditional elites of Germany supported its constitution or were willing to cooperate to make it work. They no longer believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime to be possible. Its time had past." 

(From the Preface to the paperback edition of Political Liberalism [my emphasis].)

The need for optimism

This post from Josh Marshall, "Observations on the Day After," is well worth reading (Marshall is one of the few American political pundits whom I read constantly, and with whom I usually agree).

In particular, I liked this passage:

"Optimism isn't principally an analysis of present reality. It's an ethic. It is not based on denial or rosy thinking. It is a moral posture toward the world we find ourselves in."

We're in for some very dark times, people. Let's light a candle and conduct ourselves with honour, compassion, and dignity.

Worst case scenario

The worst case scenario for the 2016 U.S. election has happened: a Trump victory with Republican control of Congress.

I'm still in shock at this gratuitous act of electoral self-destruction, with all its national and international implications.

This Vox piece --- "5 winners and 4 losers from the 2016 election" --- succinctly hits on most of the main issues.

The things that terrify me the most about the forthcoming Trump regime are: (a) the further deterioration of the environment; (b) the destabilization of the international order (in part because of the emboldenment of Putin and the potential unravelling of NATO); (c) the entrenchment of a rightwing Supreme Court; (d) the likely end of the Affordable Care Act; (e) the erosion of other key social safety programs with a Ryan-authored budget (esp. Medicaid and food stamps); and (f) the emboldenment of racist, misogynistic, ableist, xenophobic, etc., discourse within American political culture.

On racism and xenophobia --- not just within the U.S. but throughout many other democratic societies -- this article, "White Riot," is a long and depressing read, but an excellent one. (The fact that Canada turns out to be the 'hero' of the story is cold comfort...)

One "what-could-have-prevented-this" comment: As my partner and most of my personal friends already know, I always thought that Bernie Sanders would've been a stronger candidate against Trump. This Daily Kos post nicely summarizes most of my reasons. (However, aside from a couple of posts on Facebook, I did not press this view because: (a) I was only about 70% confident in my judgement; and (b) I viewed Trump with such horror that I did not think it constructive to focus too much on the relative merits of Clinton versus Sanders.)

Finally, it looks like Clinton at least won the popular vote (the tally is 59,036,741 votes (47.6%) for Clinton versus 58,914,866 votes (47.5%) for Trump at the time of this post).

Now, to bed...

(Post updated at 6:22 with links and further thoughts.)

The soul of a tyrant

Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen draws upon the Epic of Gilgamesh and Plato's Republic to diagnose Donald Trump as "a walking, talking example of the tyrannical soul."

Indeed.

Trump confirmed (yet again) his malignant nature in tonight's debate when he threatened to imprison Hillary Clinton should he be elected president. That is an attack on the very heart of liberal democracy.

November 8th cannot come soon enough.

Inching towards justice: what a more liberal US Supreme Court could accomplish

In an earlier post I explained why I think that US citizens have a moral duty to do whatever they reasonably can to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. For the vast majority of US citizens, of course, this involves voting for Hillary Clinton.

For the most part, regrettably, I find that the strongest arguments in favour of voting for Clinton to be ‘negative’ in nature. Simply put, whatever her shortcomings (e.g., her record of insipid political ‘third-wayism,’ her hawkish tendencies in foreign policy, etc.), she is worlds better than Donald Trump. So I see this election to be far more about preventing a disastrous Trump presidency than about achieving a Clinton presidency.

But there is one genuinely positive argument for voting for Clinton: namely, the impact that another Democratic president can have on the composition of the US Supreme Court. Given the considerable power wielded by the USSC and the lifetime tenure of the justices – both aspects of the American political system that I find lamentable, but which I recognize are not likely to change anytime soon (if ever) – the prospect that the court might move in a genuinely liberal direction does give me some hope for the future of the country.

If you are curious to know more about the ways in which a more liberal USSC might move the US towards greater freedom and justice for its citizens, I highly recommend reading Dylan Matthews article for Vox, “How the first liberal Supreme Court in a generation could reshape America.”

Here are the article’s main points. A more liberal USSC likely would:

1. End long-term solitary confinement.
2. Reduce mass incarceration.
3. End the death penalty.
4. Restrict/limit the impact of the “Citizens United” decision regarding campaign spending.
5. Expand, or at least better protect, all citizens’ voting rights.
6. Limit the scope for gerrymandering.
7. Better protect the right of women to control their own bodies.

It is also possible that a more liberal USSC would recognize education as a constitutional right.

So all liberal/progressive/left-ish/Berniac US citizens who care about the overall direction of their society have at least one very important reason to vote for Clinton.

On the radicalization of the U.S. Republican Party

Following up on the topic of my previous post, I thought that I should mention that Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann have an excellent article in today’s Vox: “The Republicans waged a 3-decade war on government. They got Trump.” The article refers back to the authors’ 2012 book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, and their related Washington Post article, “Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem.” Here is the key passage from their 2012 argument:

The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier in American politics — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

As Ornstein and Mann point out in the Vox article, the nomination of Trump – and the collapse of any serious opposition to that nomination amongst the party’s elites – vindicates their earlier thesis.

In the end, the exploitation of anti-government sentiment by Republican leaders, and the active efforts on their part to make all government look corrupt and illegitimate, reached its logical conclusion. The Republican political establishment looked no less corrupt, weak, and illegitimate than the Democratic one, and the appeal of a rank outsider became greater.

It’s grim reading. And it underscores how vital it is that Trump be defeated in November. Even if that happens, though, Ornstein and Mann are skeptical that the Republican Party can become a constructive force in American politics for the foreseeable future.

Trump is a horror – but then so is the Republican Party

In an earlier post I claimed that it was the moral duty of all American citizens to oppose Donald Trump’s attempt to become U.S. president by the most effective means available to them. For most citizens, of course, this means voting for Hillary Clinton.

My favourite American pundit, Charles Pierce, points out (for the nth time) what a danger Trump is in his recent post: “This Isn't Funny Anymore. American Democracy Is at Stake.” Pierce doesn’t pull any punches (not that he ever does): “Anyone who supports Donald Trump is a traitor to the American idea.” 

His conclusion:

Here is the truth. Nobody called for a moment of silence for Micah Johnson. Eleven U.S. cities are not on the brink of racial violence. He, Trump just made that shit up so his followers can stay afraid and angry at the people he wants them to fear and hate. This lie was a marching order and the Party of Lincoln is right in step with him, straight into the burning Reichstag of this man's mind. 

Welcome to the 2016 Republican convention: a four-day celebration of the ritual suicide of American democracy. 

With balloons.

Sadly, the fact of the matter is that most of the candidates whom 'the Donald' vanquished were pretty horrible as well (they simply were more subtle in expressing their racism, misogyny, homophobia, inegalitarianism, and intolerance). The Republican Party has become an extremist party, one now closer in its rhetoric and agenda to France’s National Front or Britain’s UKIP than the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower.

But lest despair overwhelm us, I recommend the following two pages that mock the Donald:

1. This one mocks Trump by imagining what kind of Dungeons and Dragons ‘Dungeon Master’ he would be in a series of tweets. It’s called (appropriately enough) ‘Dungeons and Donalds.’

2. This one replaces Calvin’s head with Trump’s in a number of classic ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ strips. No dialogue is changed! The aptness of Trump uttering Calvin’s lines indicates that intellectually he on par with a six year-old cartoon boy. (And the expressions on the photos of Trump’s face that are pasted into the strips are perfect.)

Guns versus liberty

In light of the horrific mass shooting last weekend in Orlando, I thought that I would link to a post I wrote last October: “An armed society is an unfree society.” It expresses (more or less) the reasons why I think that easy access to firearms reduces the freedom of citizens (in addition to all the other harms it causes with respect to loss of life, health, etc.). In other words, the debate over gun control in the US should not be construed (as it generally is now) as a debate between 'freedom' on one side and 'security' (or life) on the other. Rather, it's really a debate about the just distribution of freedom. And the gun control side is the one that promotes greater overall freedom for citizens.

On this topic, well worth watching is this hilarious rant about guns from Australian comedian Jim Jefferies (from 2014).