Politics is downstream from culture in that politics is shaped by culture. Famous writers like George Orwell (1984), Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon) and Mario Vargas Llosa (The War of the End of the World) have ruminated on this and warned of the dangers of fanaticism, ideology and detachment from reality.
Unfortunately, lots of artists, and certainly many important ones, have had long term love love affairs with various forms of collectivism. Unbeknownst to the public at large, these artists and writers have had a powerful influence on shaping the culture in which we now live. They include everyone from pop stars to serious philosophers. These would include a wide variety of players ranging from the unserious (e.g., James Cameron, Madonna, Sean Penn, Woody Guthrie) to serious writers and thinkers (e.g, Jean-Paul Sartre, Isaac Brodsky, John Steinbeck).
As a result, art has too often simply become a propaganda tool that totalitarians are only too happy to use. Large works of sculpture celebrating “Socialist Realism” are still featured in Tiananmen Square, for instance. Interestingly enough, one art form that has not been seriously compromised (yet anyway) is the art of the stand-up comic.
Dictators (and for that matter social justice warriors, AKA totalitarians in waiting) are fearful of comedy for the obvious reason that their power is diminished when they are the subject of jokes and are easily made to look like fools. Not to put too fine point in it, there are not a lot of easy laughs emanating from North Korea or Cuba. That said it is worth considering that people like Jerry Seinfeld have indicated they are not interested in doing shows on “woke” campuses.
With that in mind, it is worth watching th short video clip by John Stossel below.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the Republicans might get around to acknowledging the obvious: President Trump is guilty of the main accusation lodged against him. He attempted to get the government of Ukraine to investigate, or at least announce that it intended to investigate, the activities of the Biden clan for the purpose of damaging the presidential prospects of his potential rival, Joe Biden. Congressional Democrats argue that this is not only conclusively proven, but that it constitutes an impeachable offense. Consequently they fully intend to impeach him, hopefully, in their view, before Christmas.
Let’s unpack this. No one this side of sanity truly believes that Trump didn’t or wouldn’t use the power of his office for his own political benefit. Of course he would and he has. Just like pretty much every President has. The relevant question is not whether or not policy helps or hinders the President’s political position. The relevant question is whether or not he has deliberately sacrificed the interests of the United States to further his own interests in a demonstrable manner.
It has yet to be shown that Trump deliberately acted in a way that sacrificed U.S. interests so as to further his own political interests. Note the word deliberately. Certain actions a President may take, especially with respect to foreign policy, may harm U.S. interests; but a policy decision that helps the Administration politically even though it is a strategic error, or results from miscalculation, does not in itself constitute an impeachable offense.
The subsidiary argument, that Congress appropriated the money and the President abused his office by threatening to withhold the funds simply lacks the gravitas necessary to justify the President’s removal from office, although it is ample reason for the exercise of Congressional oversight. We can, for example, turn to how the Obama Administration lied to the Federal Courts as it sough to avoid enforcing immigration law with respect to the “Dreamers”. (See for instance this article published by the CATO Institution: https://www.cato.org/blog/judge-sanctions-obama-lawyers-ethical-violations-wishes-he-could-disbar-them)
It seems clear that the motivations of the players in the impeachment inquiry are simply self-serving rather than principled. Most Democrats are from districts where their constituents (a) loathe Trump and (b) for that reason would like to see him removed from office. Republicans are from districts whose constituents are (a) overwhelmingly opposed to removal by impeachment and conviction and (b) are terrified of being “primaried” were they to support impeachment. Moreover, since the Senate majority is Republican the chances of a 2/3rds super-majority voting to remove Mr. Trump from office are exceedingly slim.
Finally and most importantly, it would be naive in the extreme to believe that any of these people are acting out of anything other than ideological and political self-interest, particularly given the Democrats’ lunge to the left. They still do not accept that they lost in 2016, and are on a mission to delegitimize the result. The Republicans on the other hand are not lunging in any direction. They more closely resemble a bunch of 12 year olds playing soccer with everybody chasing the ball wherever it goes.
So where does that leave us? With a national election 11 months away, it makes little sense to remove Trump by impeachment. The voters will have their say in a relatively short period of time. And Trump’s behavior is more than fair game. That’s the way it should be in a democracy.
After 6 months of studied silence, On Liberty Watch is going to re-open. In addition, the website will be revamped a bit over the next few months. The mission however, remains the same: the defense of liberty. The inanity of the state of the culture and politics demands it.
In the meantime, here is a video of Judge Andrew Napolitano discussing the current impeachment proceedings with Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine.
George Will, the nation’s preeminent conservative columnist, has just published what is perhaps his finest book yet–and it’s not even about baseball. As the title suggests, it’s about Politics with a capital P.
The Conservative Sensibility provides a robust defense of American Conservatism, really classical liberalism, that is based on the work of the nation’s Founders. There will be more on this topic in the future. In the meantime here (below) is a You Tube video of a conversation between Matt Welch of Reason Magazine and George Will, occasioned by the publication of The Conservative Sensibility.
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Evidence is beginning to emerge that suggests former CIA Chief John Brennan lied to Congress about his actions with respect to the FISA application that authorized the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign.
See the interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano below.
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Robert Mueller did not find enough evidence to charge either Donald Trump or his campaign with conspiracy in the matter of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump promptly claimed he was “totally exonerated” despite the fact that prosecutors are not, and never have been, in the exoneration business.
Since the Democrats have staked their future on finding Trump guilty of something, they quickly moved on to pursuing an obstruction of justice charge. In the meantime, Attorney General Barr announced that (1) Trump did not, in his view, obstruct justice, and that (2) the DOJ was going to investigate how the FBI and associated agencies came to investigate the Trump campaign.
Republicans closed ranks and announced that there could be no obstruction without an underlying crime. Judge Andrew Napolitano, a strong libertarian, begs to differ. Reason Magazine recently interviewed him on the subject. A 15 minute video of the interview appears below.
Judge Napolitano Interview by Reason Magazine
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It has become accepted wisdom that the uneven distribution of outcomes across different groups is evidence of unjustifiable discrimination based on animus. In his latest book, Discrimination and Disparities, economist Thomas Sowell, now a scholar at the Hoover Institution, blasts that idea to smithereens.
Not too long ago Dr. Sowell sat down for an interview by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution to discuss the subject. That interview can be viewed below.
Dr. Thomas Sowell being interviewed by Peter Robinson
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Christopher Hitches was a writer and polemicist with extraordinary talents who, in December of 2011, died much too early at age 62. An iconoclast throughout his adult life, Hitchens eventually drifted away from the left — early on he was a Trotskyist — to something vaguely resembling the sensibilities of classical Liberalism. But he would probably object to that characterization.
Christopher Hitchens
He was, like his hero George Orwell, a man of the left. He was a public intellectual who maintained an abiding distrust of the market; he was fearless in the pursuit of truth, and was a brilliant writer and speaker. He had over 30 books to his name as well as countless articles in journals like The Nation, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, to name a few.
He is probably best known for what has become known as “Hitchens razor”, so named after his quip that “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”.
In 2001, when he was writing for The Nation, he participated in a debate on reparations in which he represented the “pro” side in favor of paying them. He was, as always, a force to be reckoned with. Here below is a You Tube video of his presentation in that debate.
“We are now in a Constitutional crisis” — Jerry Nadler (D, NY).
So said House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler after the committee proceeded to vote along strict party lines to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. Nadler’s stated rationale was that Barr failed to turn over the entirety of Robert Mueller’s report to Congress without any redactions. This failure, according to Nadler, is emblematic of the lawlessness of the Trump Administration.
Jerry Nadler (D, NY)
We should also note that while the Judiciary Committee has voted to hold Barr in contempt, the matter still has to be taken up by the entire Congress, which we can expect to happen in relatively short order.
Interestingly enough, Congressman Nadler didn’t seem to think there was a constitutional crisis the last time the Congress held a sitting AG in contempt of Congress. Perhaps that is because the AG at the time was none other than President Obama’s wingman, Eric Holder. That vote, taken in 2012, was 255 – 67, with 17 Democrats voting in support of a criminal contempt resolution, which authorized Republican leaders to seek criminal charges against Holder. A second contempt citation, this one civil, authorized the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to sue the Justice Department to get documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal that was at issue. That resolution passed by 295 to 95, with 21 Democrats voting in favor of the measure.
In the end, Justice Amy Berman Jackson declined to hold Mr. Holder in contempt, but ordered the Justice Department to turn over unprivileged documents to the House Committee. Something similar will probably wind up happening in this case.
What is amazing about all this is that Congressman Nadler, despite all appearances to the contrary, is not a stupid man. He knows that this is not even close to a Constitutional crisis. Nor is the Trump Administration unique in its quest to expand the power of the Executive branch or in its disdain for Congress. There was, for instance, the Obama Administration’s routine rewriting of laws it didn’t like, only to be consistently rebuffed by the Courts. Not to mention the obvious lawlessness of Hillary Clinton and her e-mail caper, or the money laundering operation that was the Clinton Foundation. Or the Obama Administration setting Lois Lerner loose to use the IRS as a political tool to attack conservative advocacy organizations. Then there was the appalling behavior of Bill Clinton in the White House and the perjury that attended it.
Of course we don’t want to leave out the criminal behavior of Richard Nixon and his Attorney General, John Mitchell. Nor do we want to ignore how Lyndon Johnson used the FBI to spy on his opponents, which, as seems increasingly obvious, is a habit that Obama was all too happy to resurrect. And not to put too fine a point on it, the next time someone refers to Barr as Trump’s “handpicked” Attorney General, it might be worth tossing in a gentle reminder that all Attorneys General are “handpicked”. And that when Jack Kennedy picked his 35-year old younger brother to be Attorney General, he picked someone who was hardly disinterested in politics. Not to mention barely out of law school.
If we take a look at the bigger picture without getting distracted by all the smoke on the battlefield, it seems fairly obvious that the last President who pointedly did not expand, nor seek to expand Executive power was Calvin Coolidge. Silent Cal, who famously said he would only speak if it improved the silence, was one of America’s better Presidents. Unlike most modern presidents he was not an egomaniac. Moreover he was perfectly content to do what he took an oath to do, namely to “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The usual suspects are up in arms over President Trump’s assertion that some women and doctors are in the business of “executing” new born babies. Ilhan “It’s all about the Benjamins” Omar, in a Tweet, asked rhetorically if a deranged President Trump was actually suggesting that parents and doctors were working together to commit infanticide. Not to be outdone, Bernie Sanders (Socialist, VT), chimed in with the usual sloganeering about the moral imperative of a woman controlling her own body.
Perhaps it’s time for a dose of reality.
To begin with, while referring to Trump as being deranged may be a tad hyperbolic, it may not be very far from the mark. Regardless there is very little reason to take anything he says all that seriously. Even on those rare occasions when he knows what he is talking about, he has little credibility since he just routinely makes things up. But Trump is not the issue here, as much as the abortion lobby would like it to be. The real issue is abortion up until the moment of birth—and after.
Apparently abortion enthusiasts have taken exception to Trump’s reference to “executing” babies. So let’s take a look at what really happens in a late term abortion, a subject that the abortion lobby tries very hard to avoid.
For the purpose of this discussion, late term abortions are defined as those that take place after 20 weeks gestation. For these pregnancies the most common method of abortion is known as dilation and evacuation (D&E). This procedure involves the crushing, dismemberment and removal of a fetal body from a woman’s uterus. In very late-term abortions intact dilation and evacuation may be used. In this procedure the fetus is removed from the uterus in breech position, the skull is then crushed and the dead fetus is delivered. (See this paper). In some cases the fetus is born alive in a “botched” abortion. In these cases, in some states, there is a move to allow the physician, in consultation with the mother, to refuse to treat the baby and allow it to die.
It is important to realize that the abortion rights regime crafted under Roe (1973) and Casey (1992) essentially protects abortion rights up until the moment of birth. Some states are simply codifying Roe. Moreover it should be noted that, Omar notwithstanding, it has nothing to do with the parents of the child. The woman has legal rights, the man does not. He has no legal standing.
But what about cases where the child is born alive? The Senate had the chance to vote on a bill introduced by Senator Ben Sass that would have required medical personnel to provide the same medical services to that child as they would have provided to any other baby born at the same gestational age. All the Republicans voted for it; all the Democrats except two (Jones, AL and Manchin, WV) voted against it. Here is the record of the vote.
It is often asserted that late term abortions are rare and that women obtain them because they are faced with serious medical problems. These are difficult hypotheses to test because there is a relative paucity of data. However, we can turn to a paper in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health published in conjunction with the (pro-abortion rights) Guttmacher Institute. In the article “Who Seeks Abortions at or After 20 Weeks?” Authors Diane Greene and Katrina Kimport addressed both questions.
First, they estimate that “a substantial number of abortions” take place after 20 weeks. They estimated a little over 1% of the 1.21 million abortions performed annually in the U.S. or about 15,000 take place after 20 weeks. Second, is the crux of the article. They compared a sample of women who received abortions in the first trimester with a sample of women who received abortions after 20 weeks. Their data contradicted the popular narrative about women seeking late term abortions because of extreme circumstances. In their study they found that the women who got abortions in the first trimester were “remarkably similar” to the ones who got abortions after 20 weeks. I quote the study directly below:
“In contemporary discussions of later abortion, few empirical data exist about the women who seek these procedures, but speculation abounds, including the presumption that these women are intrinsically different from those seeking early abortions. Despite this common narrative, women in our study who obtained first‐trimester abortions and women who obtained abortions at or after 20 weeks’ gestation were remarkably similar. Demographically, the only significant differences between the two groups were in age (women aged 20–24 were more likely than women aged 25–34 to seek later abortion) and in employment status (employed women were less likely than unemployed women to have later abortions).”
To sum up: Late term abortions are probably not all that rare—somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 a year. In addition, the evidence seems to suggest that women getting late term abortions are not significantly different in their motivations from women obtaining abortions in the first trimester. Further, the abortion regime in the U.S., constructed by the Supreme Court, is defined as a woman’s liberty right under the 14th amendment. The right is effective until very late in the term, and sometimes up until birth. Moreover, the father has no say in the matter; he has no legal standing.
Finally, let’s not forget that while Trump stated the anti-abortion case in a most inflammatory and not exactly accurate manner, he was a supporter of late term abortions until the moment he decided to seek the Republican nomination for President. Having said that let us also not forget that the U.S. abortion rights regime has created a legal right to take innocent human life for any reason or no reason at all, very late into the term when the child is without doubt viable outside the womb.
Don’t be fooled by the Progressive attempt to change the subject to Trump’s overblown rhetoric and away from the brutality of the U.S. abortion regime. Perhaps instead it’s worth thinking about why it is that Sanders, Omar and the rest of the Progressives are so intent on protecting the abortion license at the expense of all those innocent lives crushed out by abortionists plying their trade.
