AHH, THE JOYS OF LEFTY VIRTUE SIGNALLING: Things the World’s Most and Least Privileged People Say.
Archive for 2016
May 25, 2016
MEGAN MCARDLE: The Danger Of President Trump Isn’t Dictatorship:
There are two stages to becoming a scary autocrat. First, you have to get into a position to seize power. The most traditional routes are the military (a task for which Donald Trump’s bone spurs left him tragically disqualified), or winning elected office to abolish or corrupt the electoral process. The former route has its risks, but once you’ve safely arrived in the presidential palace, it’s pretty easy to dispense with democracy, since you have all the guns. The latter route means you need the rest of government, including all the folks with guns, to go along with you.
This certainly does happen, even in countries that have been practicing democracies for a while. But it’s by no means a given. Franklin D. Roosevelt took a certain amount of constitutional liberty with his wackier notions, and when the courts pushed back, he hit on the scary idea of basically throwing out some Supreme Court justices and replacing them with others who would rubber-stamp his policies. (The phrasing was nicer than that, but this was the basic idea, and just the sort of first step that dictators like to take toward cementing themselves as Autocrat for Life). FDR’s own party rebelled, but the Supreme Court began cooperating, too.
There were also civil liberties violations under FDR, notably the internment of the West Coast Japanese population.
Well, if a Republican did that he’d be a dictator. But since it was FDR it was just an unfortunate incident that really didn’t have much to do with him, just happened under his presidency somehow. Plus:
So the question is not just whether Trump wants to be a dictator, but what the other branches of government will do if he tries to actually become one. I don’t just mean Congress and the courts; I mean “will the bureaucrats of the civil service follow his orders, and will the people with guns agree to go out and arrest his enemies?”
There’s clearly a portion of the electorate that thrills to the more authoritarian and violent parts of his message, and presumably some of those folks are in the military and the civil service. But I’m still fairly confident that the FBI is not, say, going to start tapping journalists’ phones to find out if they’re making fun of President Trump’s comb-over, or disappearing the ones who do.
This is why, as I’ve said, if you favor liberty then the President should be a white, male Republican. Because then the Deep State will keep him in check.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: What has happened to Venezuela? “Revolutions in the 20th century, usually create billionaires and slaves,” Michael Kennedy writes at the libertarian Chicago Boyz econo-blog, along with some related thoughts on how “the Curse of Natural Resources” can stunt the growth of seemingly wealthy nations.
2008: OBAMA WILL SAVE THE ECONOMY!
2016: The Myth That the President Can Save the Economy.
It’s not the fault of Obama or his cheerleaders, it’s just that America has become ungovernable.
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NOW DO BILL CLINTON. Vanity Fair: What’s Wrong With Anthony Weiner? We Asked Some Psychotherapists.
GET YOUR YA-YA’s OUT: ‘They’re here for therapy’: Houston’s ‘rage room’ a smash as economy struggles.
Funny, in past era when unemployment has historically been much higher, societies didn’t need “rage rooms” to cope. What changed?
YUUUUGE IF TRUE: NBC and ABC News Shine Spotlight On Democratic Divide, 15 Percent Of Obama Voters Supporting Trump.
And why not, considering how similar the candidates have been on the stump, and possibly in office as well.
POLITICO ADMITS THAT Hillary’s Email Scandal Has Legs. “The former secretary of state’s email woes will produce plenty of headlines in the coming months — and ripe targets for Donald Trump.”
ASHE SCHOW: When Feels Matter More Than Facts.
Copeland recounted a story about how he was investigated for violating Title IX because he once hurt the feelings of a female student. Copeland was coordinating rehearsals for a play, and “spoke sharply,” according to Heller, to a female student, who ran out of the room. Copeland wanted to make things right and meet with the student and the department chair. The student requested he leave the room so she could speak to the department chair.
Copeland was later called to meet with the school’s dean of arts and sciences. Copeland had allegedly created “a hostile and unsafe learning environment” because he “verbally berated” that student. He was told he couldn’t be told which students complained or the specifics of the complaints. He was asked to sign a document acknowledging the complaints.
“I’m thinking, Oh, God! I’m cast in one of my least favorite plays of all time, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller!” Copeland told Heller.
Copeland gave the dean a list of students that could confirm he never “berated” anyone. The dean brushed it off, apparently telling Copeland: “What matters is that the student felt unsafe.”
Get that? It didn’t matter what the facts were, what matters is that someone’s feelings were hurt.
As a purely strategic matter, people on the right would probably be well-advised to stand back and let lefty institutions eat themselves. But I don’t think people can stay silent in the face of this injustice.
BRING BACK DDT: How ’60s and ’70s-era Environmentalists Opened The Door For Zika.
Earlier: Victor Davis Hanson on California’s “Engineered Drought:” “[Jerry] Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population) to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more recent allowance of massive water diversions for fish and river enhancement, left no margin for error in a state now home to 40 million people.”
Related: Glenn Reynolds in USA Today: “After regulation exploded in 1970, innovation hit a sustained speed bump…1970 marks what scholars of administrative law (like me) call the ‘regulatory explosion.’ Although government expanded a lot during the New Deal under FDR, it wasn’t until 1970, under Richard Nixon, that we saw an explosion of new-type regulations that directly burdened people and progress: The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, the founding of Occupation Safety and Health Administration, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, etc. — all things that would have made the most hard-boiled New Dealer blanch.”
NOAH ROTHMAN: How The Left Cheapened Rape. Inflation is what they do, whether the currency is financial or moral.
NEXT, HE’LL DISCOVER THAT GAMBLING IS GOING ON IN RICK’S CAFE: McAuliffe shocked over FBI investigation of campaign money, personal finances.
Related: CNBC’s John Harwood Labels VA Gov. McAuliffe a Republican Under FBI Investigation.
PALACE GUARD WATCH: Feds Paid Politico $710K in 2015.
DAVID BROOKS WONDERS WHY PEOPLE DON’T LIKE HILLARY: “But the ‘public service’ is being a politician. Where did Brooks get the premise that people like politicians?”
NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER: Sanders Wants Recanvass of Kentucky Vote: Sanders’ campaign formally requests recanvass after apparent narrow Clinton win.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is requesting a recanvass of the vote in the wake of the tight finish in last week’s Kentucky Democratic presidential primary.
Sanders’ campaign sent a signed letter on Tuesday to Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, requesting “a full check and recanvass of every one of the voting machines and absentee ballots.”
Clinton appeared to narrowly win the contest last week by less than a percentage point.
“My office is notifying all county boards of elections that Sen. Sanders has requested a recanvass, and we are reminding them of the laws and procedures to be followed,” Grimes said in a statement upon receiving the request.
Sanders has been criticized for staying in the race despite the overwhelming odds against his overtaking Clinton in the delegate count.
Don’t listen to them, Bernie. Fight the power!
PREDICTION FULFILLED:
“Fair warning: If you come to New York and you see a dodgy looking dude hanging around the little girl’s room, you’re better off keeping it to yourself. His reality is all that counts.”
—Matthew Hennessey, “The Battle for the Bathrooms,” Ricochet, March 28, 2016.
● Man Who Wants To Use Women’s Bathroom Complains In New York Times.
—Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire, yesterday.
Related: “[Classical] Liberals believe truth is external and can be determined through reason. A good liberal uses his reason to achieve justice and equality for all. But postmodern progressives are moral relativists. For them, truth is internal, discerned by and specific to particular individuals. Today a good progressive defends the individual’s internal truth—particularly if the person is an ‘oppressed minority’—against all foes, including reason. Small wonder that the postmodern left has turned on its own.”
EXPIRATION DATE, PASSED: Obama promised transparency. But his administration is one of the most secretive.
FREE MARKET? CALIFORNIA? FORGET IT, HE’S ROLLING: Heavy Rainfall Is Easing California’s Drought Crisis. A Free Market in Water Would Actually Solve the Problem.
Related: Sacramento Believes It Can Run Your Life, even as its members get caught up in scandal after scandal.
Sacramento grafters have no time for your puny ethics, voter!
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:
JOHN HINDERAKER: “The Bush administration and Republican Senators have badly misjudged both the attitudes of most Republicans (and, of course, most Americans) toward illegal immigration, and the intensity of those views.”
IT’S WHAT THE DEMS DO TO REPUBS WHEN THEY’RE IN POWER: The Hill: House GOP changes rules to thwart Dems.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is changing the rules of how the House considers spending measures to try to prevent Democrats from offering surprise amendments that have recently put the GOP on defense.
House Republican leaders have been blindsided multiple times by Democrats offering politically volatile amendments to appropriations bills. And, starting as soon as next month, Ryan will make it harder for the minority party to attempt to embarrass the majority.
Ryan announced at a House GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning that members will now have to submit their amendments ahead of time so that they are printed in the Congressional Record, according to leadership aides.
The change will not yet be in effect this week for a bill to fund the Energy Department and water infrastructure projects. But lawmakers will have to abide by the requirement, which before now was optional, starting with appropriations bills considered after Congress’s Memorial Day recess.
A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted the proposed change.
Ha, ha.