Donald Trump: A Man For Our Times

If you can get past the snark, the insufferable Paul Krugman is, unbeknownst to himself, actually groping his way to an important point, even if he never gets there:  it is depressingly clear the Republicans are "A Party Not Ready to Govern".  Why?

Consider Obamacare.  For seven years the Republicans have been chanting "repeal and replace."  So how, exactly, should they go about doing that?

I imagine that early on they would have formed a working group.  That group would have consulted with think tanks, economists, lawyers, and actuaries.  Seven years is enough time to put together a serious plan.  Likely, they would have written pro-forma legislation.  And, over seven years, Republican leadership would have had time to educate, inform, cajole, and sometimes threaten their membership to get on board with the plan, for when the time came.

Amazingly, they did none of that, and that requires---nay, demands---an explanation.  I, of course, have no such explanation, but I do have an hypothesis.  To paraphrase The Three Stooges, "Hypothesis means I'm guessing and I have a college degree."

Like most of us, I suspect the Republicans are surprised to even be in power.  But even if they did not expect to be in power, they should have had blueprints for their idea of the ideal health care system.  In this way, they would have had some plan of action for influencing the development of Obamacare.

The Republicans have nothing.  Krugman implies they have nothing because they are idiots.  He writes, "they have no idea how to turn their slogans into actual legislation, because they've never bothered to understand how anything important works."

That is just a stupid remark.  I think the Republicans do not have a plan of action on health care because they never intended to repeal and replace Obamacare.  I think they like Obamacare just fine.  In the matter of health care, the Republicans and the Democrats are as one.

Does that seem unlikely?  It should not.  We have exactly the same thing regarding immigration.  Year after year, at least since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the American people wanted the borders controlled and immigration reduced.  Year after year the Republicans would promise.  And, year after year, nothing would get done.  At some point, you have to conclude that the Republicans are happy with things just the way they are---just as happy as the Democrats.  As with Obamacare so with open borders, the Republicans and the Democrats are as one.

Oh, you still don't believe me? Then take it from "Jeb!" Bush, 

many who illegally come to the United States do so out of an "act of love"

Don't you just want to punch him in the mouth? I think a lot of Americans finally caught on to the evident fact that there is no important difference between Republicans and Democrats, and that is why Donald Trump swept the field during the Republican primary elections.
Furthermore, this explains why so many Republicans share "Trump derangement syndrome" with Democrats.  They like things just the way they are, and they hate Donald Trump for upsetting the apple cart.  The election of Donald Trump is as much a defeat for the Republicans as for the Democrats.

The failure of the recent effort to repeal and replace Obamacare merely confirms my conviction that Donald Trump is "A man for our times."  We have an apple cart that needs overturning in the worst way, somebody has to do it, and it looks more and more like Trump is our guy.

Build It and They Will Come

On March 22, 2017, Damon Hewitt published an op-ed in the NY Times critical of the admissions process for the specialized high schools of New York City.  His argument is self-refuting on three levels.

First, Mr. Hewitt argues that an admissions process that is meritocratic in theory is not meritocratic in fact because not enough Black and Latino students are admitted.  But skin color is not a measure of merit.  To make an admissions decision on the basis of skin color is the opposite of merit.  It is blatant racism.

Stuyvesant High School wants to admit students who can solve a certain class of mathematical problems so they test on the math and select the students who can solve them, irrespective of skin color or national origin or religion or any other irrelevant and extraneous factor.  That is meritocracy, plain and simple.

To demonstrate there is something nefarious with this process, Mr. Hewitt would have to show that there is a significant number of Black and Latino students who can solve these problems but who are still not selected.  He did not even attempt to do that.

Second, Mr. Hewitt then declares that by focusing exclusively on one single test, specialized high schools ignore all the "traditional hallmarks of a great student," which he enumerates, and again concludes the test is discriminatory.  And this again is an evident non sequitur.  Whether it is solving calculus problems or declining Latin nouns, every test filters on something (eg, those who can decline Latin nouns and those who cannot), and so long as it does not filter on skin color it is necessarily not discriminatory in the sense Mr. Hewitt uses that word.

Finally, Mr. Hewitt implies that he knows better than the principal and teachers of Stuyvesant High School what should be done in Stuyvesant High School, a highly dubious proposition.  Imagine, he says, if a test to determine who could become a firefighter had little relation to the actual job.  So, Mr. Hewitt knows what Stuvyesant should be doing and he is sure the admissions test has
nothing to do with that.  I do not believe Mr. Hewitt knows any of this.

However, let's suppose Mr. Hewitt is right.  First, if the admissions test ignores all the traditional hallmarks of a great student, as he claims, then there remains a sizable pool of great students available to someone who wants to serve them.  Second, if the existing admissions test does in fact align with what the specialized high schools are doing, then they are doing education all wrong, according to Mr. Hewitt.  So, why does he want to send great students to bad schools?

If Mr. Hewitt is right, and he has the courage of his convictions, there lays before him a fantastic opportunity.  Let him and his friends band together and create a school on the principles he espouses, and let them admit students by the criteria he recommends to others.  If he is right, he will have created a great high school and done much good in the world.

This is exactly what the president of Bard College did.  Around 2001, Leon Botstein thought he had a better idea for a New York City high school, so he called then chancellor Joel Klein, and Bard High School Early College was conceived over lunch.  So far as I know, Bard High School is a great success, and they did not have to wreck Stuyvesant High School to create it.

It seems to me that Mr. Hewitt and his colleagues are more interested in wrecking Stuyvesant and the other specialized high schools than they are in serving the interests of the students he claims to champion.  If Mr. Hewitt were sincere in his beliefs, he would build a new high school rather than work so hard at tearing down an old one.

Defending Islam against Muslims

There is a strange tendency among Westerners to defend Islam against Muslims.  So, when Muslims do horrific things, the Westerners, who themselves know nothing of Islam, will instantly rise to the defense insisting, "Oh, this is not the correct interpretation of Islam."  Or, they will say there are many interpretations of Islam and this is not the canonical one.  As if they would recognize the canonical interpretation when they see it (it will look remarkably like Methodism, in their eyes).  Essentially, they claim to know Islam better than the Muslims.

Specifically, they know Islam better than Osama bin Laden knew Islam.  They know Islam better than the Caliph Abu Bakr al Baghdadi or even the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  And better than the millions and millions of Muslims who see things just the way these gentlemen saw them and whose lived experience of Islam comports entirely with their views.

The enormity of this claim still leaves me speechless.  Recently, however, my discussion with a friend centered on one specific point:  apostasy in Islam.  It is widely understood that apostates from Islam must be killed by Muslims, but my friend was certain---certain, you understand---that this could not possibly be true.

It's true.

As with every religion, much of Islam remains debatable.  Even the apostate is debatable in Islam, but not in the way naive Westerners might imagine.  The doctors of Muslim law (the "ulema") dedicate much thought to apostasy and the issue is discussed all over the ahadith (the words and deeds of Muhammad) and fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence).  In several verses, the Koran is highly suggestive, but the definitive ruling comes from the ahadith,

Sahih Bukhari (52:260) "The Prophet said, 'If somebody discards his religion, kill him.' "

There are several other such verses that specifically state that a person who leaves Islam must be killed.  But Sahih Bukhari (52:260) is the verse that introduces uncertainty.  This verse does not restrict apostasy to Islam.  So, there is no doubt about what must happen to a Muslim apostate, but the gravamen of the debate among the ulema is whether a Christian should be killed, by the Muslim authorities, for leaving Christianity or if a Jew should be killed, by the Muslim authorities, for leaving Judaism.

The conclusion is a tad complicated.  After all, Islam invites converts, so it would be strange indeed if a Christian were to accept the invitation to Islam and then be killed for leaving Christianity.  Furthermore, while Christians and Jews have Koranic standing as "People of The Book" and are tolerated (under certain social and legal disabilities) in Muslim society, most other religions, especially polytheistic religions like Hinduism, are intolerable.

So, the basic Muslim position on apostasy is this.  A Muslim who leaves Islam must die.  Polytheists must convert to Islam or die.  Christians and Jews who convert to any religion other than Islam should probably die, but Muslims may not care enough about that.  That is, Muslims can't get too exercised if a Christian converts to Judaism or a Jew converts to Christianity.  I.e., in most times and most places, Muslims saw that as merely a pointless act and nothing more, but sometimes it would have been a dangerous act.

The discussion necessarily continues.  How do you know when a person is a Muslim and how do you know he has apostasized?  Must there be an official adjudication?  Is there a process?  Who is obliged to take action?  And so on.

These are not questions I will explore to any length, but I leave you with an outline.  In most cases, it is easy to know if a person is an apostate from Islam.  He can declare his apostasy in words or reveal his apostasy in actions.  An apostate must be invited back to the sharia (the righteous path) three times.  If he declines a third time, his life is forfeited.

Responsibility is a matter of debate as we might understand the concept.  In matters of religious law, Islam separates personal responsibility and communal responsibility.  For example, offensive Jihad is strictly a communal responsibility while defensive jihad, while certainly a communal responsibility, is also a personal responsibility.

In the matter of apostasy, one tradition places the responsibility squarely on the individual.  If you believe I am an apostate, you must make a definitive judgement and invite me back to the faith three times.  If I decline a third time, it is your personal responsibility to cut my throat.  A more liberal interpretation prefers the involvement of the state in this matter.

I hope you agree all these issues are mere quibbles.  In Islam, in one way or another, an apostate's life is in danger.  Apostates are going to be secretive, and that is why it is hard to know just how many Muslim apostates there are.  There are reasons to believe the numbers are much larger than is generally acknowledged.  And that is why death is the answer in Islam.  Islam is such an obviously perverse ideology it is widely believed, even among Muslims themselves, that if death were not the punishment, Islam would have long since evaporated.  Islam is the original "bucket of crabs."

In other words, these people are not just gratuitously crazy.  Death for apostates is one of the earliest, most persistent, and clearest tenets of Islam.  And it is one---and only one--of the several reasons I believe Islam is a fragile religion.  If the West, itself, were not so culturally weak at this moment in our historical development, we might have seen the end of Islam as we know it, in our lifetimes.

Feminism, The Left, and The Private Sector

Fascinating presentation, for many reasons.  Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, discussing aspects of feminism.  At minute 8:40, Peterson says,

Just imagine for a minute trying to run a billion dollar corporation...those things are complicated.  And you have enemies and they are trying to take you out all the time.  You look at Apple and Samsung and they are just torturing each other in the courts non-stop.  If you are running a big corporation you'll be handling two or three hundred lawsuits at a time.

So, Peterson is describing the natural order of things.  And then I think of the Leftist criticism of our President because, as a businessman with national and international interests, Trump gets sued a lot.

Officially, I am agnostic on this question:  do the Left actually understand the situation and are just talking shit to score political points, or do they really not know?  I have to believe that some of them know.  And then there is the case of the famous Leftist U.S. senator George McGovern.

George McGovern (d. 2012) was the Elizabeth Warren of the 1960's and 1970's (except he was a decent person), the Old Battle Axe of the Left.  After spending most of his adult life in public service, McGovern retired, and purchased and operated an inn in Connecticut.  For the first time in his adult life, he worked in the private sector, responsible for employees and customers and meeting a payroll and paying vendors, etc.  His reaction?

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn’s 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.

He went bankrupt.