Something to Avoid

One of my favorite books on modern history is Hugh Thomas’s The Spanish Civil War.  Among other things it tells how the course of events left Spaniards of liberal sentiments with no influence and with no good choices in the conflict but only one between fascists and communists  - between Franco and proxies for Stalin. Though we in America are far from anything like that,  there is enough going on to justify being a little bit worried about trends in our politics.

That many on the American left are openly rejecting the liberal values of open discourse, freedom of speech, tolerance of dissent and dissenters, individual rights,  limits on the powers of governments, and  the uniform application of laws is obvious enough and has been for a while.  What seems new, at least in terms of frequency and intensity,  is some of the stuff happening among  the conservatives. I recently read an article at a mainstream conservative site calling for abandoning the practice of governmental neutrality with respect to religion and replacing it with “Christian nationalism”.  I’ve seen enough in various other places attacking the Enlightenment  and claiming liberal values have failed and need to be abandoned in favor of older traditions to make me think some conservatives  are getting more stirred up and becoming more right wing in the European sense than usual.

Decent Democrats and Republicans need to reject the authoritarians among them and do so plainly. All of us who care about a free society need to pay attention and do what we can to keep things from getting out of hand. 

Epstein, the Clintons, and Trump

There is nothing wrong with people making jokes about the Clintons being responsible for the death of Jeffrey Epstein.   Bill and  Hillary are fair game for rough satire. Their records for ruthlessness together with their unpopularity with many people  and the convenient timing of Epstein’s demise would naturally lead to a lot of people having fun on the internet. My favorite  among the ones I’ve seen is a picture of Hillary in a nurse’s uniform with the caption something like “the Nurse at Epstein’s Jail”. It calls to mind the particularly appropriate image of Nurse Ratched.

 Neither is there much wrong with private citizens speculating that the Clintons really might have had Epstein done in as long as they don’t  get carried away and confuse their speculation with knowledge.  People enjoy toying with notions of conspiracies, and within bounds it is usually fairly harmless.  Besides it is not as though one would  say the Clintons have such high scruples as to make  such a thing  impossible.

However, that does not apply to the President of the United States. The person holding that office has a responsibility to hold his  tongue on certain kinds of humor and keep any thoughts about imagined conspiracies to himself.  Trump should learn that and wait to see what, if anything,  an investigation turns up. He not only needs to grow into the office. He needs to grow up.

Getting along Peaceably

Self-righteous Manicheanism is always undesirable and often dangerous. We are seeing a some  of it lately from the winning side of the so-called culture war concerning homosexuality.  Millions of traditionally minded religious people in this country  - Christians mainly but also Muslims, Jews, and others -  believe that homosexual activity is sinful. Their holding this  opinion does not by itself mean they are hateful, bigoted, or enemies of decency. (It is worth noting that most of them also believe that non-marital heterosexual activity is sinful.) 

Attempts by leftists and homosexual political activists to brand such people as children of darkness who must be shunned and punished are wrong.  Some of them may be bigots, but many are decent, respectable, fair, worthwhile people who take the traditional doctrines of their religion seriously. They generally are not advocating making homosexual behavior illegal again or for anything else politically that would harm homosexual people. They certainly have a right to their opinions and should be free to express them without fear of reprisal.  

Homosexuals were completely right to demand tolerance.  Activists are completely wrong  to go beyond that and demand approval. No one has a right to demand others approve of him or his actions. That is their choice.  It does a person no harm if his neighbor thinks his sexual interests  are sinful or distasteful or ridiculous as long as that neighbor leaves him alone to live as he likes. (Of course it also does a person no harm if his neighbor thinks his religious opinions are superstitious or distasteful or ridiculous as long as that neighbor leaves him alone to live as he likes.) 

There is a lot of strong diversity of opinion in this country on lots of things, and it isn’t going away.  If we want to live together peaceably, we must learn to leave each other alone and not force our opinions on others.  It is not only right. It is practical in a game theoretic sense.  A’s forcing his orthodoxy and notions of correctness on B creates a precedent and incentive for B to return the favor if he gets the chance. Political winds change, and the loser now may be later to win. 

Nonsense about El Paso and Dayton

There is a lot of predictable nonsense going around after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton. In the first place, the only ones to blame are the two  who did the shooting. The facts that  one of them did not like immigration and the other supported Elizabeth Warren are irrelevant in terms of responsibility for what happened, and attempts to claim otherwise are absurd. So are efforts to blame video games, the NRA, the decline of religion, liberal social attitudes, conservative social attitudes, public schools, Republicans, Democrats, global warming,  or anything else except the choices and actions of two bad, deranged people (and their accomplices if any turn up). 

There is also the silly spectacle of opportunistic politicians running around declaring that a crisis is upon us, and they are just the boys and girls to pull us out of it. In fact mass shootings of random strangers, as separate from multiple homicides in domestic disputes or conflicts between rival groups of criminals, though horrible events,  are so rare as to be insignificant  in terms of life’s risks.  They are a small fraction of the total number of murders in the country, and the probability of becoming a victim of one is very close to zero.  Any efforts to “do something” to prevent murders would be far more effectively spent in working to lessen the larger dangers people face routinely in many parts of the country’s large cities. 

Of course one of the somethings some politicians want to do is use the crimes as a possible opportunity  for disarming private citizens.  So it is worth remembering that the right to self defense is a right, not a favor bestowed on the proles by their rulers, contingent on no crooks or psychopaths ever doing anything bad with a gun.