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Now, that was a week. We try to put it all in some perspective — the protests, the riots, the looting, and the politics and we do so with the help of our guests, Andrew C. McCarthy and Victor Davis Hanson. And yes, the Lileks Post of The Week is back to blow the lid off knitting clubs. And, Rob outs himself as a super hero, Peter deals with civil unrest induced anxiety by reading biographies, and James, well, we’re not sure what James does.
Music from this week’s show: The Dream Police by David Byrne
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I’m not so sure buying private jets is so bad. If I could afford to, I’d definitely have a private jet and feel no guilt at all. That said, their hysterical religion over climate change is quite another matter .
Well exactly. According to THEM, ALL jets are evil, but especially PRIVATE ones, and anyone who has beachfront property is a sucker because next week it will be under 50 feet of water. That they don’t observe either of their own diktats, proves that THEY don’t take them seriously.
Remember, we don’t have an infinite amount of information or an infinite amount of time to apply to every argument. Just like climate modelers, we are forced to use approximations and shortcuts.
If we discover that even the advocates for a particular position find their own arguments unconvincing, we should probably cut our losses and spend our intellectual efforts elsewhere.
Flying private pollutes like crazy, but it creates huge efficiencies for big companies. It’s also the most addictive drug ever invented.
Flying private is comprehensively un-woke.
People that fly private and complain about climate change or pollution are frauds.
What a hoot and a good point. I love the military but I can barely keep up with my husband (Marine Vietnam veteran) and my son (current Marine Reserve).
Amen. VDH was muy fuego on this episode. Again the President ‘says’ a lot of stuff but I haven’t heard/read about him having a meeting like Senator Obama had on January 5, 2017. You’ve got to admit that President Trump is about as open a book as a president as we’ve ever had.
What I learned on this podcast is the US will probably lose our next major war. Americans believe all our institutions are rotten except the military. However, its obvious given how partisan and lacking in discipline the military leaders are, that the military has also been deeply corrupted. They lack the self restraint and decorum just to be silent but instead want to mouth of and get involved in politics. Shameful and sadly a sign of deep rot.
True. It has been thoroughly politicized.
You are right that there are kinds of inconsistency that are not very important (or actually desired, if it corrects in the better direction).
Yet, there are other kinds of inconsistency that are very important and relevant to consider in public discourse.
A good policy can be held with consistency. When it becomes, “Rules for thee, but not for me.”, then that inconsistency is a hallmark of a bad policy that is unjust and not livable in an even handed way.
Example: “Believe all women” when the accusations are against someone you don’t like (e.g. Ford against Kavanaugh), but when an accusation that has stronger support in every way is raised against someone you do like (e.g. Reade against Biden), then every rationale justifying the former standard is ignored or revised and the narrative switches to “Hear all women”, but presume innocence and expect a standard of proof that is stronger than this more strongly supported accusation. That’s Calvinball, changing the rules as you go. (Consistent conservatives, on the other hand, were able to apply the very same standard to Biden as they had demanded for Kavanaugh.)
The inconsistency shows the original standard was an unjust, unworkable, unlivable standard that even its former advocates cannot abide with themselves. This also applies to how media handled these cases very inconsistently.
@taras gave the great education example and @kedavis referenced climate change. More examples can be found in any policy where there is an exemption from having it apply to the legislators that established the law.
Sorry for the delay, but I had meant to say that this is a great insight, i.e. that the Constitution was written to constrain the American government, not chiefly to constrain Americans.
Thanks for sharing that!
It is for that very reason that I actually believe the statement by Adams works as he wrote it. I believe his point is that in making the Constitution (with its relative lack of expressed constraints on Americans), they are presuming that a moral and religious people generally will not abuse and misuse their individual liberty that the Constitution affirms as their right.
Rather, it is those who hold power that they primarily did not trust. There, power must be carefully balanced against power to mitigate the expectation that unrestrained power would be corrupting.
Excerpt from a significant document,
Federalist #51:
The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments
If you are in to they are talking about #100, I highly recommend this. It’s Mark Levin from Friday night talking about positive and negative rights. The content is much better than the description makes it sound
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-levin-audio-rewind-6-12-20/id209377688?i=1000477807691
What do you mean? That sounds awesome, comparing positive vs. negative rights is my jam.
It was a different version of the discussion that was based on a philosopher I had never heard of. It was really, really, good.
I think part of the disadvantage of being a conservative or libertarian is nobody knows what you’re talking about when you talk about “negative rights”, and “non-public goods”. We would be a lot better off if those terms were in more common use.
I mean the description in Apple podcasts.
One other thing about #103.
You can talk like that all you want, but realistically you have to account for how much the Federal Reserve and government is pushing everything around already, too. It’s not easy to deal with that, politically and on an individual basis. So when you try to gain ground in ant way, you have to factor that in.