January 2, 2017

Don Lemon (Simerman, p 2B). I attended F. King Alexander’s “Moment or Movement?” Symposium on October 3-4, 2016 and reported the sessions I attended. Don Lemon spoke in one of the most beautiful auditoriums on campus and said, he could not understand the conflicts in Baton Rouge, his home town, because in NYC, it’s just one big community with everyone trying to “slip-it-in,” to raucous laughter by women on the front row. I oppose communitarianism in general and Lemon-social-democracy in particular.

George Washington (Neelis). IMO classical liberal debates individual-independence-with-civic-morality v. group favor on some basis. Most political parties bemuse themselves with variations on the individual v. group struggle: men v women, young v old, religious v non-religious, strong v weak, wealthy v poor, few v many, and so on. In June, 1783 Washington wrote: “There are four things, which I humbly conceive, are essential to the wellbeing, I may even venture to say, to the existence of the United States as an Independent Power:  An indissoluble Union of the States under one Federal Head; A Sacred regard to Public Justice; The adoption of a proper Peace Establishment; and The prevalence of that pacific and friendly Disposition, among the People of the United States, which will induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.” (My emphasis)

Whining (Sellen). Not to diminish my gratitude to Sellen for this point; Snopes has it 3084/3141 or 98.2% of counties for Trump. See snopes.com/trump-won-3084-of-3141-counties-clinton-won-57/. That is indeed an indication of Trump’s ability to succeed and a promise of good things to continue coming.

Michael Barone column. “. . . explaining . . . to their disappointed children.” The human body has not completely constructed the wisdom parts of the brain until age 25, and it takes a few mistakes for wisdom to start kicking in, so I hope these children expected to understand the Trump victory are in their thirties at least.  The value civic people try to establish is broadly-defined-civic-safety-and-security: That’s what Trump promised his cabinet will deliver. Iterative-collaboration to establish civic-morality is indeed a citizen’s duty and responsibility. And communitarianism is indeed inferior to individual-independence-with-civic-morality.

George Will column. I appreciate the relief from imagining thousands of troops in foreign lands. I wasn’t tuned in to 2017 technical superiority as a means of defense. Hypervelocity by many small projectiles to stop something too big to imagine sounds good to me. Why does the world need to learn this from you, Mr. Will? Why not leave in the elite literature?

Jeff Sadow column. Am I to understand that Gov. John Bel Edwards campaign promise respecting Medicaid expansion was predicated on a “sick tax” that is collected from doctors when they treat a Medicaid patient? And that tax is passed on to me? And it amounts to $223 million state revenue in taxes and fees? If so, somebody start a recall petition. I’ll sign.

Conservative law professors. See libertylawsite.org/2016/12/31/classical-liberal-resolutions-for-2017-part-i/#comment-1511808.

  

Recall: Phil Beaver trusts and is committed to but does not know the-objective-truth of which most is undiscovered yet some is understood. He works for opinion when the-indisputable-facts-of-reality have not been discovered and seeks refinement through other people’s experiences and observations. Please use the comment box below.