Here We Go Again

Get ready for Kavanaugh 2.0.

The Democrats increasingly threadbare bag of tricks to take down Republicans has needed something new for some time now, and it seems the Dems have seized on the (for them) astonishingly successful smear trap of Judge Kavanaugh. If you can recall without cringing, the Senate confirmation hearing on Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court was concluded, when the Democrats discovered a (gasp!) new witness with damning information on High-Schooler Bret Kavanaugh - Christine Blasey Ford. They then beat the drums to have her testify in open session, the media joined in, and the Republicans caved, setting off what should have been a days worth of work that was strung out for weeks as new witnesses and new crimes were invented. All the while, both the Dems and the Media hammered Kavanaugh's reputation to a pulp with speculation heaped atop lies, hoping that the Republicans would cave again and vote Kavanaugh down.

Vote him down despite the palpable reality that Bret Kavanaugh had never done anything wrong, and that as Lindsey Graham passionately pointed out, the entire Democrat road-show was a travesty.

So, how does this translate to an Impeachment trial of President Trump? Well, the Democrats have been beating the drum for weeks now that it will be important for the Senate to call witnesses. Mitch McConnel, however, has been adamant that it is the House that calls witnesses in furtherance of its Impeachment decision, and then delivers the evidence they find to the Senate for trial. It is not the Senate's job under the Constitution to find or introduce new evidence in support of the House's Impeachment decision. So, Mitch opines, there will be no new witnesses or evidence to supplement the House's Articles of Impeachment; it is not the job of the Senate to clean up inadequate Articles of Impeachment.

This seems pretty straightforward, and has the added advantage that that is how the Democrats in the Senate handled the Impeachment of their own party's President, Bill Clinton.

But the drum beat for witnesses, and even new charges, continues, so here is what is going to happen over the next few weeks. There will be shocking stories in the Major Media, based on anonymous sources, of some especially heinous perfidy by Trump, and an all out demand that the Senate investigate immediately. Mitch will resist at the outset, and the Senate will duly convene to hear the House's representatives present the Articles of Impeachment, the President will mount his defense, and after the submission of written questions, the Senate will be prepared to vote …. Except, there will be a motion for additional witnesses related to the House's charges, but also for the introduction of evidence of any new crimes the Dems and the Major Media can stitch together out of whole cloth. Four or five of the weak-sisters in the Republican ranks will then fold up under the pressure.

And then the games will begin. Once the door to additional evidence and witnesses is opened, the Dems will parade a slew of new witnesses and odious speculations, and we will all be subjected to a weeks long hatchet job on Trump. The crimes charges will be both tenuous and risible, but it won't matter because the goal, as with Kavanaugh, will be to simply fill the air with such a fury of Trumpian scurrilousness that everyone will be unable to see that there is not one jot or tittle of real, Impeachable evidence of anything.

Hopefully, Mitch or someone will stand up and break through the fog to close the sham of a proceeding off, like Lindsay did in the Kavanaugh matter. But that is not likely.

And so, the ugliness of our politics will again be on display, to the detriment of all of us. Our only hope then will be an appeal to the only group that the Democrats are, deep down, truly afraid of: the American voters. Hopefully they will throw all these bums out next November.

The Price of Eggs

We're into a little F. A. Hayek today. Try to keep up.

There is a generic critique of market economics making the rounds these days, that goes something like this: a free market is no guarantee that, at any given moment, things will be priced correctly, and therefore, we need government intervention to 'nudge' things - and people - back where they ought to be. The acme of examples for this notion is health care, primarily due to the fact that health care is unarguably a critical need for everyone, and its cost has wildly outpaced the ability of most people to pay for it without financial ruin. It is clear that something needs to be done about health care, and it must be done now, and the only solution that makes any sense is to spread these costs among everyone by spreading the wealth around and government is the best way to do this … because socialism.

Well, let's back up a second. Is it true that the free market is not a guarantee of correct pricing for goods and services? The naysayers cite complex economic theories and studies of distorting influences on markets, things like friction, sticky-ness, monopolies, oligopolies, and plain old fraud and greed, to make their case. But this line of argument depends on one big unstated assumption: that we can establish what the 'correct' price is independently of the market. But what independent criteria are they referring to? This reminds of the original mistake of the blessed Adam Smith, when he put forth his theory for the correct price of labor in his classic book, The Wealth of Nations. His argument was simple and straightforward and makes eminent sense. Labor is performed by human beings and human beings need to earn a minimum amount to buy food and housing, so therefore, any employer that paid less than that minimum amount would soon have no more laborers. This established a floor to wages that could be determined without regard to any particular local market forces - one need only total up the costs of the minimally necessary food and housing, and divide that by the hours a typical laborer worked, and voila! That's what employers must pay.

As I said, this argument was simple and straightforward and made eminent sense, but it had one problem. It purported to establish an objective value - a value independent of market forces - for something as fundamental in economics as the value of labor, and thereby took that science down a long road of error for close to a 100 years.

In truth, employers do (and always have) taken into account their employees need for a living wage, for the simple reason that they want them to come back tomorrow. But the real correlation of wages is with productivity - employers will pay a living wage so long as it is equal to or less than the revenues he will get from the effort of the employee. If not, then the employer will not pay the employee anything at all; he will not hire him in the first place.

This puts the price of labor squarely within the dynamic of the free market, unhitched from any other criteria to establish a value. This, of course, bothers many people, who believe a living wage needs to be imposed on the market regardless of any other considerations. But, again, they give us no serviceable objective criteria (beyond a spleen induced moral outrage) outside of the market that can serve to guide in assessing the 'correctness' of the market value of labor.

And here is the reason why they cannot furnish an appropriate objective criteria, which also answers the question whether free markets can guarantee the correct pricing of goods and services: because there is no objective price to anything until the market discloses that particular data point. Or, to put it another way, a market price is information about the price of goods and services at this contemporaneous moment, but not the future price, and the future of any system as complex as the market and prices remains uncertain at any given point in time. Or to put it still another way, they have their causation backwards: market pricing is not caused by the value of goods and services, but instead is the cause of their value, in the sense that it discloses the value, moment by moment.

For example, take eggs. I can buy a dozen eggs today for less than a dollar. But two years ago, they were more than $2.00. Which is the true, Platonic, price of eggs that I will see tomorrow? Well, I certainly want the price to be less than a dollar, but I can't offer any reason why except that I am cheap and prefer to reserve my money for other things than eggs. And this is what everyone else is doing as well, and producers of eggs with their hard working hens are wondering why they are busting their literal and metaphorical tails to give me eggs when I value them so little. So, more people are buying the cheap eggs, while at the same time producers are cutting back on eggs and furnishing more material to Chick-Fil-A for sandwiches, and the upshot will be - the price of eggs will probably rise, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point.

CONTINUED …

Impeach Trump Now!

Yes, impeach the guy. Here are the facts.

Joe Biden/Obama set US policy as follows: the Ukraine shall not be permitted to investigate corruption in a company within its borders that has Joe Biden's son on the Board. If they insist on doing so, then we will withhold up to a billion dollars in aid.

Donald Trump canceled that policy, reinstating the policy that was in effect prior to the Obama administration, and communicated this new policy direction to the President of the Ukraine, to wit, the US encourages the Ukraine to prosecute all corruption without regard to whether it would hurt or harm the son of a powerful US politician. The stated rational for this policy is that corruption in the Ukraine has been a major sticking point in foreign relations going back decades.

The impeachable part arises because Joe Biden is running for President, and the prosecution of his son for corruption might harm his chances of winning. Actually, it might or might not - perhaps old Joe could just distance himself from his son's activities in the Ukraine, like John Kerry's son did. Or perhaps he could just deflect the matter to some 'woke' issue that the media likes to report on and cruise right on to the victory that all the polls are predicting. Or perhaps …

Well, all that doesn't matter, because this is impeachable. Just look in the Constitution and its right there, or if not, I seem to recall something in Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention about it. So, Original Intent! as you right-wingers like to drone on about.

Irrefutable conclusion: impeach him now!

Or, here's an idea: let the President run his foreign policy as he sees fit. This idea has the added advantage that it is actually in the Constitution. Look it up; our founding document is written in English and not that long.

The Predication Game

But, Easy, even assuming that Barr is sincere and intends to follow through, my concern is that I suspect he will find predication for the investigation. I think this because the intelligence and investigative agencies of our government are quite aware of what the 4th Amendment and Justice Department regs require before they can use the powerful tools at their command. And as I go over all the events of the last three years, it seems obvious to me that we are seeing a very sophisticated scheme to create a predicate and justification for an investigation. In fact, the scheme was so sophisticated that it beggars belief that this is the first time the FBI et al sought to begin an investigation in such a manner. This was obviously something approaching standard practice that the FBI et al had honed to near perfection for many years.

Consider: they want to investigate the Trump campaign to find collusion with Russia, but they have no evidence of such. What to do? Well, find a member of the Trump campaign and plant him with insider information about Russian involvement in the American election process, e.g. hacking Hillary's emails. Then, cover your tracks by having a seemingly independent source 'discover' that campaign member to have insider connections with Russia, and voila! You have the reasonable grounds you need to begin an investigation of the Trump campaign.

And this is clearly what happened with George Papadopolous. He tells them in early 2016 that he is joining the Trump campaign, and in the course of a few days - a few days! - they are able to put together a global initiative - global initiative! - to set him up as the 'evidence' that the Trump campaign had nefarious contacts with Russia. There is evidence that the highest levels of the Italian intelligence agency introduce him to the mysterious Maltese academic, Joseph Mifsud, who gives Papadopolous the information that Russia has 30,000 of Hillary's emails. Then the highest levels of British intelligence along with long time CIA assets introduce him in London to an ostensibly innocent bystander, Alexander Downer, an Ambassador from Australia, where Papadopolous is induced to pass on the information he got from Joseph Mifsud about the Russians having Hillary's emails. It is then Alexander Downer who passes on the 'information' that Papadopolous, a member of the Trump campaign, apparently has insider knowledge about Russia and Russian interference in the American electoral process.

At this point, the loop is closed and the FBI et al has the 'independent' evidence from the Australian Ambassador that will permit them to begin a full boat investigation of the Trump campaign.

Stated like this, it's all an obvious subterfuge to skirt the 4th Amendment and public policy prohibitions against turning the tools of the government against an opposing political party. But that does not take into account the sophistication and expertise of our high government officials in 'laying a predicate' for an investigation. As I said, a troubling aspect of all of this is that this looks like a practiced operation that has been honed to perfection by the FBI et al for many years. So, I suspect that Barr will find enough of a 'predicate' such that all the parties stayed just over the 'right' side of the line in beginning this investigation, even though the overall circumstances point to corruption.

Compare, Barr's recent decision not to prosecute James Comey for leaking classified and other information. James Comey is a smart, experienced guy, and he knew exactly what the rules and regs required vis a vis internal investigative information. So he fashioned 7 memos with particular attention to the type of information contained in each, and then meticulously distributed them in such a way that he would always stay just shy of the line of a violation - or at least, a violation concrete enough to warrrant prosecution. As a result, Barr had to pass on prosecution, and Comey skates.

Put simply, I suspect Barr will be similarly powerless to do anything about the corruption he finds in his "predicate" investigation, except by instituting new rules and regs to hopefully prevent this sort of thing from happening again. Which is a good thing, a very good thing - but far from a satisfying conclusion to this whole tawdry affair.

The Predication Game

I am a weird guy; I get excited over predication. No, no, not the grammatical variety, but the legal.

Finally, after more than three years and multiple investigations by the CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the FBI, and multiple Congressional committees, someone in Washington has come up with the clear and concise issue that has been staring us all in the face like a grim spectre.

Attorney General William Barr tells us that he is investigating whether the FBI had a 'proper predicate' for opening and conducting an investigation against then candidate Trump and his campaign way back in 2016, and/or perhaps as early as 2015. And with simple clarity, a clarity in short supply these days in Washington, he stated that he needs to know the predicate for the investigation because it is an extraordinary fact that there was surreptitious surveillance (aka 'spying') by the highest levels of the US government against the campaign of an opposing party during a Presidential election contest.

This is not a complicated issue. Presidential election or not, the government cannot investigate anyone without an appropriate reason to believe a crime has been committed. This is basic 4th Amendment jurisprudence, and not controversial in any respect. But when the 'target' for an investigation is the candidate and campaign of a Presidential election, then the standard becomes even more stringent - because not only is the 4th Amendment in play, but also the integrity of our fundamental system of government. This is why the DOJ has numerous existing rules and regulations covering investigations and prosecutions that might interfere with elections at all levels of government.

What has obscured this otherwise obvious issue for the last 3 years (and counting)? It's basically been a studied disambiguation in support of a particular narrative, that Trump colluded with Russia. It was definitely a fact that Russia meddled in our election;  since the time of Lenin, they always have and there was no particular reason they didn't this time. But that is not evidence Trump or anyone colluded. Despite that, the FBI et al commenced an investigation, and covered their tracks publicly, with media complicity, by muddling Russian meddling with Trump collusion to give the impression that they had reasonable grounds to investigate Trump, when all they had were reasons to investigate Russia. And the fact that all of this was designated national security allowed the FBI et al to insinuate they had grounds to suspect Trump, but never have to actually show us anything.

But Mueller has now spoken that there was no evidence of collusion, and the real, serious issue is finally getting the hearing it deserves: what was the evidence that started the investigation, and was it a proper ground for an extraordinary, secret investigation of a Presidential campaign?

Here's hoping that AG Barr is serious about all of this. If not, it won't be the first time we've seen the Washington insiders deep six a matter of public importance. But let's wait and see.

The Will, Gracefully Free

Salvation through grace and grace alone. This is a bit of Christian orthodoxy that remains a stumbling block to many an otherwise good Christian. It remains an impossibility for them for the same reason Erasmus, the original Humanist, argued that to permit so weighty a matter as the eternal salvation of the human soul to depend only on God would deprive human beings of any worth or value. Without some decisive participation in the transition from mortality to immortality, mankind becomes nothing but automata, as little involved in their growth and development as a rock or stone. In essence, it is argued that  instead of inspiring men to become the very image of God, Christian orthodoxy annuls the greatness that man can be heir to, as well as the responsibility that may, if he is not diligent, consign him to judgment and death.

Free will is the key. Man must have free will in these matters or he is nothing. According to various doctrines adopted in this context, man might have a little part in his own salvation, with God carrying the heavy load, or a great part, with God sitting happily as his child grows himself up. But always there is a definite and decisive sovereign space for man apart from God that carries him to eternal life.

And yet … the most earnest of those who insist on the reification of man's free will in these matter, many of them some of the most effective defenders of Christianity in a dangerous world, have no problem with other gifts and capacities that they were given.  A powerful intellect, to take one example, that has enabled them to discern and teach some of most subtle truths of the Scriptures. They did not create that in themselves, but instead received the potential at birth, were nurtured by their parents, teachers and mentors. None of this bothers them at all: an undeserved gift, freely bestowed on them, which gave them a full and fruitful life with God.

But, they say, it was them that nurtured this gift with a will to become a better person, and it was this personal act that was decisive, not the initial gifts and help along the way. But this misses the point, so let me repeat it. It is incontestable that a powerful intellect can be a critical aid in living a more fruitful life with God and that in fact many of these people have utilized this capacity in their Christian work. And there are many other gifts of the Spirit that come from God - gifts of preaching, of teaching, of administration, or evangelism - that are similarly critical for many people who are trying to live a Godly life. And all of these gifts, properly received, are manifestly unmerited, transparently undeserved, mere contingencies of our lives that could have been different - except for the loving grace of our Father.

But to the Erasmus Free Will junkies this is all just fine. They are not bothered in the least that just about everything they hold of value in their lives as an actual existing human being is contingent, unmerited, and undeserved, so long as they can hold onto a singular human capacity: the free will, to choose salvation or not.

But, alas, our free will is no different from any other capacities and powers we possess. As we look across the range of human beings, it is clear that some have strong wills and some middling wills and some wills are downright weak or non-existent. This is the way it is in this world; de facto equality of all human beings is, in this context, a myth - or a desperately desired dream, depending on your politics. Our wills are strong or weak depending on many factors, our DNA, our upbringing, education, the wider culture we grow up in, the peers we choose at critical life moments, parents, friends, wives, children … the list is endless as to how and why we have turned out like we have. Because, to put it succinctly, we are contingent beings, born into a world not of our making and further formed by forces not in our control.

The degree of will power we possess is important in how we navigate our time and culture, as are such things as our native intelligence and our degree of sociability with our fellows. But it cannot be the basis upon which admission to Heaven is predicated, for the simple reason that it is limited and contingent just like all else in this vale of tears and Heaven is eternal. You might just as well try to elevate the number 212 to Infinity by some sort of legislative fiat. You can do it; you can issue a proclamation about it; you can organize parades of ecstatics in the street; but nevertheless a finite number will never in all of time and eternity be Infinity.

And we can will as hard as we like, with a will of iron and a purpose adamantine, and we will never be more than contingent finite beings - unless, by the perfectly free and unmerited grace of God the impossible is made possible by His Will.

On Wittgenstein

The question has been asked why I like Ludwig Wittgenstein, given that he has in some measure contributed to the relativism in vogue in some sectors of our society. Feminists for instance, take from Wittgenstein that there are no fixed truths but only language games that stereotype and oppress women. They then leap to the idea that if they can change the language it will change the reality of women in the world; ergo, the Politically Correct Crusade.

Wittgenstein's notion, however, was not really about language creating reality, but that language was a collection of non-interlocking puzzles or games - with emphasis on the 'non-interlocking.' For me, this was reminiscent of Thomas Kuhn’s scientific paradigm shifts, as well Kierkegaard’s three stages of life. For me, the key insight of all three was the same: that transitions between the separate spheres (however you want to define them) cannot be done logically or via any kind of rational construct.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones to come up with this insight. Of all the religions of man, it seems to me that Christianity was birthed in it. Leave aside the obvious fact of the eternal mystery of the Trinity, and just take one of many paradoxes at the heart of Christianity: the judgment and forgiveness of sins. So we are really and truly judged sinful and yet instantaneously forgiven? How does that work? Well, it does work, but definitely not as a logical syllogism concluding in an effortless Salvation. Muddle Judgment and Forgiveness together in some kind of logical synthesis and you lose both – and possibly your soul besides.

This is another example of how philosophers down through the ages keep coming up with new names for the same phenomena. Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn each put forth a cutting edge philosophy, only to find that the new distinction discovered was at the very heart of Christianity more than 2,000 years ago. It gives a nice appearance of an advance in thought, I guess. But what it is really is the recovery of ancient wisdom that had faded from the cultural memory, and in that respect, these philosophical reiterations are very helpful.

So that’s why I like guys like Wittgenstein.

And you can’t blame Wittgenstein for the nonsense Feminists might do with his stuff. That’s like blaming manufacturers of a very helpful thing like glue for what teenage boys might do with their product and a paper bag.

Hillary & Bill Clinton

These two people, despite immense and obvious flaws, have cast a singular shadow (some would say "pall") over the Republic for lo' these many decades. So, after all this time, what is their current place in American politics? Here is an article that asserts an answer, from Fox Business News.

An interesting take, but I am afraid the fact that many Democrats want the Clintons to go away is old news. Everyone forgets that it was the New York Times that dropped the expose on Hillary’s private email server – just before she was going to declare a run for the 2016 Presidency. To me, that was an obvious hit-job by some higher-ups in the Democrat Party (probably Obama) trying to dissuade her from running. However, the Clintons have so much juice on the party machinery that they refused to take the hint and she ran anyway. At that point, the Dem’s had nothing else to do but ram her through the primaries and into the Presidency.

Except Trump.

Hillary is finished as far as a political office is concerned, as is Bill, but that does not mean they don’t still have serious political muscle on their side – no one who has behaved as these two have the last 30 years could have survived this long without something really significant to leverage their party leadership. Given their Arkansas background, it’s probably dirt on certain specific people coupled with photos. But it could also be the dirt, plus money, plus a demonstrated willingness to burn the Democrat house down unless they are allowed to continue their influence.

I suspect Bill and Hillary Clinton have in their heads a last goal for their careers: to match the achievement of Ted Kennedy. And that is, to continue to be a major player in US and world politics despite a very public and outrageous scandal. And you can almost hear the Clintons comforting each other on a cold winter night in their house in Chappaqua: "After all, we never killed anyone, right?”

Iconic Ignorance

I am not a Southerner by birth, descent, or location, but I have to say a few things against the statue smashing know-nothings currently exulting in the spotlight.

Most if not all these statues and monuments were erected to honor the soldiers who fought for the South's Terrible Cause in the Civil War. The know-nothings have one simple rule: hate the cause, then hate the soldiers and tear down their statues. And if you've got a little hate left over, expend it on all the rest of the Southerners today.

But as has been amply pointed out to largely deaf ears, most Southerners (95% or so) did not own slaves. Certainly many of these non-slave owners supported the institution, but this support was not for them the protection of their wealth and economic status. It was more in the nature of loyalty to the people and institutions one grows up with; solidarity with their own family, towns, cities, and cultures.

Misplaced loyalty? Perhaps; but a virtue nonetheless, as we can see in these divisive times where community fellow feeling is at a disastrously low ebb. If people exhibited a little more loyalty to the general community rather than banding together in their tight little identity tribes, it might help in hashing out our differences.

The second and more important fact is that, various provocations notwithstanding (principally Fort Sumter), the North invaded the South with massive armed force. Nothing the South had done before that time was of such a scale as this military response by the North. In our day, we talk of a 'proportionate response' as the only acceptable level of warfare. Well, I don't necessarily agree with the theory, but on any measure at all, the North's response was about as disproportionate as it gets.

Thus, the primary reason that massive numbers of young men leapt to their guns and joined the Confederate Army was to protect their very homes and families against an invading force. In this context, whether the South was to blame for provoking the North, and even the odiousness of the ultimate cause being served, was irrelevant.

Such times as were faced by the sons of the South were terrible and tragic. In the face of an invading army, a sudden decision was demanded of them, a decision that would show where their honor and loyalties lay and whether they were willing to sacrifice their very lives. Spoiler alert: the Southern young men stepped up. And they proceeded to serve not only with great courage but with a skill in battle that made them one of the most effective fighting forces in recorded history.

In the face of monuments to such men as these, the Social Justice Warriors ought to scuttle in shame back to their parents' basements.

Something About Kierkegaard

Continued from here.

A note on Kierkegaard. In his time, the nation of Denmark believed itself to be Christian because each and every citizen could state confidently that he had been instructed on the dogmas of the Christian faith and that he believed them to be true. The primary focus of Kierkegaard's mission was to unsettle the Danes from this notion by making a stark distinction in his authorship between knowing something intellectually and religiously-ethically incorporating that knowledge into one's heart and soul. As far as Christianity was concerned, the former did nothing, was nothing. The latter, however, meant not only a changed heart but a changed life - a new birth, if you will.

 In this mission, Kierkegaard was explicitly working on the assumption that for a changed life to occur as Christianity demanded, work must be done by each individual person within their subjective personality, work that only they could do. Rote following of commands, dogma of the Church, or Kierkegaard's own authority as an eminent thinker in Danish society, would not activate this potential in his readers. So he highlighted in both the structure and arguments of his books and in the plan of his whole authorship to withhold satisfaction from normal reader expectations, so that each reader would begin to do that deep, mysterious human agency thing that was needed.

Whether he was successful or not, whether he was altogether too artful in his production, is for the literary and philosophical critics to say.  But it is not true in the slightest to find in him support for the post-modernist presumption that all talk of faith or morality is groundless or nonsense. Contra Conant, the Postscript was not a work dedicated to branding high philosophical speculation about faith and morals as nonsense; to the contrary, it mapped a road of rationality to its pinnacle of perfection in a Paradox, and said, "No further." In doing so, Kierkegaard was not denigrating rationality or the truths of human reason, but bounding it all within its proper sphere where it is most effective. In this, he was in solidarity with the tradition of Kant, Aquinas, Augustine, Aristotle, and Plato.

Crooked Timber

Okay, Whit, I give. You want to talk philosophy, then let's talk.

Christianity (in)famously describes us all as the crooked timber of humanity.

There is a wealth of philosophy in that phrase. But the aspect I want to highlight is the anthropic angle. This crooked timber idea is not a singular concept because it presumes in the saying something else: what a straight timber would look like. There is no getting away from this, a very common, ordinary observation is built or rests on … something else.

This is a duplexity in human agency that is not a byproduct of something else, an unintended consequence or epiphenomenon, but something absolutely fundamental: the bifurcation within the psyche of how we view the world from our singular peculiar viewpoint. Such a standpoint is utterly unique in the life of Planet Earth - an organism that fashions (in Richard Rorty's paradigm) conceptual mirrors of a world, but mirrors that always reflect two things - that which is and that which has been or will be or ought to be - and somehow make them seamlessly into a single conception about what is going on.

I am reminded for some reason of the mystery of music. We hear notes on a scale, but we don't really hear just the individual notes as they are played because that would be a schizophrenic cacophony. We hear a musical composition, a musical event, because each note has a context within the ones that went before and the anticipation of the ones that will come after. In other words, each note is a duplexity (or multiplexity), both itself in tonal purity and all its brothers and sisters that preceded and will proceed from it.

And we do this naturally; historical anthropology tells us that music is a primeval impulse that has always been a part of us  - almost as if it preexisted  the first homo sapiens.  And if received wisdom can possibly be true, music may even have been that which created us unto what we are and might become.

What we are and might become - there is the duplexity again. We are both, crooked and straight, and which e'er path we tread depends not on me but Thee.

Tracking the Wild Rino

With the continued carping from the Republican back benchers, the NeverTrumps, it seems like a moment to clarify who is and who is not a republican in name only - a Rino.

Rino's have been a Republican bane for upwards of 40 years now, weeping and moaning and gnashing their teeth at other Republicans at whatever inopportune moment they can find. They appear to have originated in the northeast of these United States, and that remains their natural habitat, but have spread across the fruited plains into almost every political jurisdiction in the land. Over the years there have been confirmed sightings in Florida, Ohio, and also Arizona, and now Utah has drawn this grumpled beast to its jurisdiction.

And many other places as well. Wherever they are, they never boast significant numbers, but are hard to ignore because of the characteristic incessant, loud, grating noises they make.

So, what exactly makes a Rino rino-like? …

Objectively Subjective

In the Introduction to Authorship and Authority in Kierkegaard's Writings (2018 Bloomsbury Academic), the editor Joseph Westfall says this:

[James] Conant - following the early Wittgenstein, and relying heavily upon both Witgenstein's and Keirkegaard/Climacus's uses of revocation in these particular works - argues that language, as an instrument for the communication of objective concepts, cannot accommodate meaningful (i.e., "sensical") discussion of those aspects of human existence capable of being approached or apprehended only subjectively, such as faith or morality. Because subjective moods and passions cannot be objectively communicated, and because language is a medium suited only to the communication of objectivity, all language about things like faith and morality ultimately must be shipwrecked on silence, whether by ceasing communication altogether (as in the famous final line of the Tractatus) or in nonsense (as, Conant argues, in Climacus's "objective" account of faith or of truth "as subjectivity").

To those of you not in the circle of Wittgenstein's fame, the final line of the Tractatus is "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Except, of course, when the unspeakable steps forth you may speak to tell others to be silent. Other than that, Ludwig would ask you to keep your mouth shut.

Actually, don't get me wrong, no one has more admiration for Wittgenstein than I do. Both his early and late philosophies are manifestly brilliant, and there is much to be learned from him. But the notions Conant explicates have seeped into the intellectual culture over the last century and spawned a vast network of philosophical and "academic" studies known as post-modernism, resulting in a fatuousness not seen since Socrates had to stay up late a couple of nights to help Philebus and Thrasymachus. And like many before him, Conant simply misunderstands Kierkegaard (and Wittgenstein). I must respond.

Things like 'faith and morality' denote actions in the real, empirical, material world, and as such I certainly agree with Conant that they call for something other than speech. But this is an obvious observation, bordering on the banal. The chief modern exponent of this view can reliably be traced to John Wayne, who often said, "Talk is cheap." Before him you can go all the way back to the blessed St. James in his Epistle written somewhere in the first century, A.D., wherein he proclaimed that faith without works - action - was dead.

So these 'subjective … aspects of human existence' most certainly do not involve speechifying of any kind, and in that sense are sub specie silence. One may talk while practicing faith, but such is irrelevant to the essence of the practice; the practice at its core is a non-verbal action - even when the act of faith is to encourage others in a sermon to have faith - and therefore Conant can safely describe these things as demanding silence.

So far, I am with him all the way. Where I cannot go … Continue

The Importance of Metaphysics

And now for something completely different.

Ilya Somin tells us that

... the enormous diversity of both originalist and living-constitutionalist legal thought is a sign that constitutional theory remains a relatively immature field of study. We have far less agreement among experts than in more developed academic disciplines - not just 'hard' sciences like physics, but even social sciences such as economics or political science.

I imagine you think that now I will get down into the weeds of constitutional theory. But I intend to cast my net a little wider than that, by asking: what is it about the 'hard' sciences that yields more agreement among the experts? I would venture that it is the core consensus about not just appropriate objects of study, but also standard approaches, methods, and procedures - and, I would insist, a common metaphysic. For behind or above or below a hard science is a fundamental theory, an abstract construct, that is for that science the ultimate criteria of what in its field of study is the really real objective reality, and what is mere myth, illusion, or wishful thinking.

This ultimate form, framework, parameter of a science is nothing more than an assumed - not proven - really Real reality (as in, "we mean it this time") above or behind its objects, which in turn provides a substrate of a construct or foundation to the phenomena. This is a metaphysics, pure and simple, the agreed upon encompassing sphere for all activity within any given science. Any experiment or theory that posits a 'reality' outside of the assumed metaphysic quite simply is excluded as being unscientific ab initio. An astrologer will never be permitted in the doors of astronomy because his premises are outside the parameters of honest astronomical discussion. A proponent of intelligent design will not be allowed to debate Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian evolution because he invokes a reality that is not … Darwinian.

But a metaphysics is not just an exclusionary principle, it is the criteria for a positive advance in rational thought. For without these unproven allegiances to a certain fundamental framework of the Real, there is no science possible in the modern sense.

J'Accuse!

In trying to unravel the roiling cauldron of charge and counter-charge that was the Kavanaugh confirmation 'process,' I came across this helpful advice on the difference between an accusation and calumny from none other than that famous amoralist, Machiavelli.

Machiavelli distinguishes between “accusation” and “calumny” in order to demonstrate that “as much as accusations are useful to republics, so much are calumnies pernicious.” The difference is that accusations are public, subject to critique and refutation, and a mendacious or even inaccurate accuser pays a price. Calumnies, by contrast, “have need neither of witnesses nor any other specific corroboration to prove them, so that everyone can be calumniated by everyone; but everyone cannot be accused, since accusations have need of true corroboration and of circumstances that show the truth of the accusation.”

From <http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/> 

Inasmuch as the Left has gone all in on the principle that 'every woman must be believed,' including, as in the case of Christine Blasey Ford, those that have neither witnesses nor any other specific corroborations to prove what they say, then they clearly are in favor of calumnies as an effective methodology going forward.

Which puts them, morally speaking, quite far downwind from Machiavelli.

Quite simply, I think if you cannot achieve the simple moral sensibility of a man like Machiavelli, then you might need to do some soul searching - that is, assuming you haven't already lost your soul altogether.

The Meaning of Meaning

I stumbled on this interesting exchange the other day - a bit late, but it touches on an issue near and dear to my heart. It is between Alan Dershowitz and Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia is dead, you say? Quite right, but it seems that early in Justice Scalia's term on  the Supreme Court, members of Mr. Dershowitz Constitutional Law class felt he, as their teacher, was a bit lopsided in his criticism of Justice Scalia's Supreme Court opinions, so they issued an invitation to the Justice to come debate Mr. Dershowitz. Nino, as Justice Scalia was nicknamed, promptly accepted. Would  that I was a fly on the wall of  that confrontation, but in lieu thereof, we have Mr. Dershowitz' report:

"So, in my classroom debate with the justice, I challenged him with the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended racial segregation of public schools in the Southern states. As a matter of indisputable historic fact, following the Civil War the “people” who “adopted” the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment had to take into account what would surely be the continued segregation of public schools, and not only in the Deep South …

I asked Justice Scalia, whether if had he been on the court in 1954, he could have joined the unanimous court without violating his principle of originalism. He was both candid and self-effacing in his response, saying that no theory of constitutional interpretation — including originalism — was perfect. But he still insisted that originalism was “better” and “safer” than any other theory, because it precluded honest judges from substituting their own philosophies for those of the founding generation. In his own provocative words: “Show Scalia the original meaning, and he is prevented from imposing his nasty, conservative views upon the people. He is handcuffed. And if he tries to dissemble, he will be caught out.”

I feel sure that the Justice had a bit more to say than that about the subject, but that is all Mr. Dershowitz gives us, which is not to say Mr. D was being unfair to Nino. His review is uniformly affectionate, and he is trying to give the flavor of his relationship with Scalia in light of the significant differences they had on Constitutional interpretation.

But it raises my own  thoughts on Scalia's theory of Constitutional interpretation of originalism, and what a proper response to Mr. Dershowitz should be. For there is no doubt in my mind that originalism is the only proper interpretative theory for a purported Constitutional Republic. If the original meaning of the foundational document of a Republic is not determinative of its ongoing application, then the whole idea of a Constitution becomes essentially meaningless. You might just as well set up any small group of people and give them generic principles like 'justice' and 'fairness' and then wait for them to tell you what to do next. As we have seen, that is the net result of the 'living constitution' interpretive school which we have suffered under these many years.

But Brown v. Board of Education did conclude in a good result. Would originalism have precluded that result? And if so, what does that mean for constitutional interpretation?

Continue .....

Justice Takes a Holiday

Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave us the raison d'etre of his term as AG the other day. Here it is in pertinent part.

While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations … I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action …

Lots of people have responded with the egregious list of actions taken by General Sessions' own special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, not least of which was stacking his staff with some top-tier members of the Friends of Hillary Fan Club. But what does he make of the more recent actions of his attorneys in the Southern District of New York?  They obtained a guilty plea from one Michael Cohen, taxi cab magnate and general incorrigible, that he had violated the most sacred laws of this Republic, the federal election laws. And he did so with a script written verbatim by Jeff Sessions' Department of Justice (SDNY branch). And, wonder of wonders, Mr. Cohen's words contain information extraneous to his guilt, and those words just happen to repeat verbatim Democrat and Major Media talking points that Donald Trump violated election laws, too.

In the words of Bloomberg's Noah Feldman, 

In essence, by making Cohen say he acted at Trump’s direction, the Southern District declared war on the president.

In a normal case like this, in what context would the prosecution require that the defendant implicate others in his crime? Obviously, when they had further principals they wanted to prosecute. But in the first place, Mueller and others in the Sessions Justice Department have repeatedly assured the President that he is not a target in any of these investigations.  In the second place, the President cannot be a target of the Justice Department because, you know, the Constitution.

Impeachment is the method provided for any criminal conduct by the President, and as the indispensable Andy McCarthy has repeatedly told us, Impeachment is a political process, not legal.  If the Justice Department does not indulge in 'political considerations' as insisted by Jeff Sessions, then it has no role whatsoever in Impeachment.

But manifestly, the prosecutors of the Southern District of New York are engaged in laying the groundwork via forcing a particular plea out of Michael Cohen for an Impeachment of the President. And now, apparently, they are taking up with the New York AG an investigation into the Trump organization. What a coincidence! The Trump organization has been in business for more than 50 years, during which it has been very high-profile in the most high-profile city in the world, and our Justice Department decides it needs a little investigating - within a couple of years after its principal becomes President. Could this possibly be … a political decision? You decide.

So, what action is General Sessions prepared to take?

Playing the Angles

Jeff Sessions recently sang the praises of our "Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement," and the latest unpredictable outrage sprang forth from the most predictable sources. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Crazytown) tweeted "For the chief law enforcement officer to use a dog whistle like that is appalling."

For you non-canines, 'dog whistle' refers to race-baiting rhetoric, of which the phrase 'dog whistle' is a prime example. Whenever the left accuses someone of dog whistling, they are dog whistling to their base that its time to become outraged over race. 

To be clear, Senator Schatz main problem is reading English. Apparently, he thinks the phrase means "White American heritage." That could be a correct reading if we are talking demographically, e.g. Anglo American as opposed to Hispanic American. But we are not; the context here is law enforcement, and in this context it refers to a tradition of law unique to English speaking peoples descended from the English/British system of laws. As such, it does not mean 'white' at all, it really means "English," which last time I looked was a language and a generic identifier of a country, not a color.

It is as if he heard Bing Crosby dog whistling away when he sang about a white Christmas. But the Binger wasn't referring to a white people's Christmas, but to a snow covered landscape during the Christmas season. 'White people's Christmas' is not the same thing as 'snow covered Christmas,' and 'white people's heritage of law' is not the same thing as 'Anglo-American heritage of law.'

Which is to say, different things are different, and it ill becomes a Senator of the United States to make mistakes like this in so public a manner. In truth, if Senator Schatz had bothered to retain even a modicum of education from his younger years, he might have been able to make the case that Jeff Sessions was dog whistling Germans. Anglo is originally derived from the Germanic tribes known as the Angles who invaded and conquered England about the 5th Century. 

But if that is what Jeff Sessions was doing then he would almost be as silly a fool as Senator Schatz. The Angles got beat up badly by the Vikings and then squashed by the Normans in 1066, and have had a difficult time putting together any kind of power base ever since. I'm afraid Jeff Sessions by now would be whistling to a kennel nearly as empty as the vast void between the ears of Mr. Schatz.

I think we have  plumbed the depths of this particular bit of idiocy. Lord, please give us a sufficient respite before the next outbreak.

In Like Flynn

The news cycle flies along at its typical breathtaking pace. Mannafort becomes Weinstein becomes Rob Porter becomes Kim Yo-jong becomes Bannon becomes .....

Can we take a moment to slow down the power point slide show and finish up on what used to be termed current news? Let's roll the tape back and bring Lieutenant General Michael Flynn into some focus.

Corruption at the highest levels of government, that is what we saw when our tax payer supported Super Lawyers, Robert Mueller, et al., our very own Special Prosecutors, obtained a plea deal on December 1, 2017. General Michael Flynn admitted he lied, which is not just a social faux pas or evidence of a character flaw, but a felony when done in an FBI interview. Although many who support Mr. Mueller would decry posting the 10 Commandments outside a Federal Courthouse, they have no problem with elevating within the Courthouse the 9th Commandment to a major crime.

Except, the corruption is not with poor Michael Flynn, but with the Special Prosecutors themselves. Let's take a look at some salient facts:

1. The 'lying' Michael Flynn did was not in any interaction he had with Mueller or his team. It was done way back in January of last year when the General voluntary sat down with the FBI to 'splain a few things.

2. At the time, what the FBI wanted to know was what Flynn had said to the Russian Ambassador. This was curious in that the FBI had FISA taps of the conversations and thus already knew exactly what Mr. Flynn had said. And they also knew that what he talked about was not criminal in any way, that in fact it was pursuant to his normal and necessary duties as the prospective head of Trump's NSA. The implication that rises here is that the FBI was hoping to catch him in a lie so they could enforce the 9th Commandment upon him with a God-like vengeance. This feels to me like unethical behavior by  the FBI bordering on abuse of power, but hey, I'm just a private citizen of this Republic, so what do I know?

3. In any case, what Mueller's indictment does not mention is that the FBI determined after the interview with Mr. Flynn that his account of his Russian conversations was substantially true, and that any errors or omissions did not rise to intentional dishonesty. Thus, Mr. Mueller brings his indictment based on his own determination of Mr. Flynn's responses, superseding the agents who were actually present at the interview. I ask: who is better situated to assess the credibility of a person, the one who is face to face with him or the one who is reviewing a transcript months later? A silly question, I know. Our very Special Prosecutors obviously possess super powers of detection of credibility, and it's not clear why we (me and you, dear reader) have any business questioning the matter.

So, to wrap this up, what we have is a decorated General who was performing his lawful duties as a civil servant of the government, who has become the target of large political - not criminal - forces swirling around Washington that for reasons of their own sought to entrap him in some sort of crime so that he would do ..... what?

They certainly haven't gone to all this trouble to get General Flynn; he's just a Washington player like thousands of others and he was fired from the Trump Administration about 30 seconds into his tenure. For me, there is only one obvious answer: they want leverage to force him to support their narrative that Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians to subvert the American election. If so, then they will be forcing him to lie because Michael Flynn - and Mannafort and Jared Kushner and all the rest - have already voluntarily testified that there was no collusion with the Russians, and the FBI, CIA, NSA, numerous Congressional Committees, and our very Special Super Powerful Best in Class Prosecutors have to date found no evidence of collusion.

Would that our betters on the Federal Courts would allow us to post the Ten Commandments at the door of the Special Prosecutors offices - I think they could use some brushing up on that 9th Commandment right now.

Gobbledygook

It is of the essence of the modern to invent specialty languages for an academic discipline. This is traceable, I think, to the collapse of the sacred as a source of authority in contemporary times. Without God, beings like we are need to create our own sphere of authority, something that is unassailable by any outside the chosen few, and that is in turn held sacrosanct by that same chosen. What better way to safeguard the inner sanctum than inventing a private language that only the elect can understand?

But science and academic endeavors in general are a public enterprise, by definition. So, this tendency of the academy to obscure themselves behind a vale of technical terms should be resisted. I think the most straightforward way to do it is to insist that any discipline, no matter how technical its orientation, ought to be able to - and shall - explain its tenets, hypothesis, and conclusions in non-technical terms. If it can't - or won't - then it is bogus, and should be summarily dismissed from the academy.

I note here that this is a significant movement within the science of economics at the moment. For too long, economics has gravitated into a mathematical world of abstraction, and many are calling for economics to return to the more prose-based approach of Adam Smith. Similar concerns are also being raised in physics.

Herewith an example from architecture in a discussion about Italian stones:

 … there remains the large group of stones and that of granites (characterised by varied typologies and geographic distributions) for possible stereotomic uses … 

'Stereotomic?' Now there's a technical term I defy anyone to grasp from the context. Do architects really speak this way? Or more to the point, do they actually think in these terms? Well, yes they do, because this is actually a legitimate term. We know this because the author quickly moves to explain it:

 …  i.e. for structural purposes or at least strongly contributing to the formation of architectural envelopes.

Oh, it is the use of stone as a structural element, as opposed to its use as a façade or for other decorative purposes. This is quite clear and straightforward, so we can, I think, permit the architects their own verbiage.

Now, here is an example regarding the science of Sociology, from an oral argument last year in the Supreme Court, the gerrymandering case of Gill v. Whitford. Via Ed Whelan in The Corner of National Review Online, Justice Roberts:

Mr. Smith, I’m going … to lay out for you … what is the main problem for me and give you an opportunity to address it….

[I]f you’re the intelligent man on the street and the Court issues a decision, and let’s say, okay, the Democrats win, and that person will say: “Well, why did the Democrats win?” And the answer is going to be because EG was greater than 7 percent, where EG is the sigma of party X wasted votes minus the sigma of party Y wasted votes over the sigma of party X votes plus party Y votes. And the intelligent man on the street is going to say that’s a bunch of baloney. It must be because the Supreme Court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans.

Justice Roberts goes on to call this Sociological gobbledygook. And for a very good reason: it is a veritable gaggle of private Sociological speak. But what does it mean? Tellingly, as Ed Whelan notes, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, the president of the American Sociological Association, in his letter to the Chief Justice complaining about the Justice's take on Sociology, did not even consider explaining in ordinary language what the terms meant. Instead, he read Justice Robert's comments as a condemnation of Sociology as a science, and proceeded to deliver several layers of snark.

The key point here is not that Eduardo cannot explain his terminology in normal language, it is that he refuses to do so. It's like the way the Catholic Church resisted the translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible into the common languages of the people. They had many reasons for this, but surely one concern was that once common translations are allowed, people would not need a Priest to interpret the Bible. Some do, but many don't, or so says the Protestant Reformation, and so says I vis a vis our own secular priests in the academy.

My case is made. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and the other priests of sacrosanct private languages need to be summarily dismissed from the academy. Get them to a Nunnery - or a Monastery, as the case may be - where they may collectively worship their mysterious gods in the privacy they desire.