Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with a column by Dick Morris.

Men and women are different—by nature. Anyone with any sense, including honest scientists, knows this. Feminists either don’t know it, in which case they’re ignorant, or pretend not to know it, in which case they’re deceptive. I think it’s a combination of both: what we might call motivated (and therefore culpable) ignorance.

Mark Spahn sent a link to this blog post, which comes close to expressing Keith’s Law. For those of you who don’t remember what this is, see here.

The three greatest showmen in rock ’n’ roll history are David Bowie, Alice Cooper, and Iggy Pop. (The second tier includes Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Jon Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Steven Tyler, Ozzy Osbourne, Ian Anderson, Freddie Mercury, and David Lee Roth.) Here is a New York Times story about Iggy and the Stooges, who are having a second run at stardom. This one is fueled, in large part, by nostalgia. Aging hippies want to see their heroes one last time before they fade away.

It’s early in the process for choosing a presidential candidate, but perhaps that makes it a good time to reflect on what one requires in a candidate. I make a clear distinction in my mind between political morality (i.e., ideology in the nonpejorative sense) and political party. Conservatism is a political morality; the Republican Party is a political party. Political moralities can afford to be pure and principled; political parties cannot, at least if they hope to win. Most conservatives, I suspect, vote for Republican presidential candidates—not because they agree with those candidates on every issue, but because they agree with them on most issues, or on the important issues. I’ve never been completely satisfied with anyone for whom I’ve voted, going back to my vote for Gerald Ford in 1976. Have you? I choose the candidate who agrees with me on the most important issues, or who, as in the case of Ralph Nader, has the character I most admire. So which issues are the most important to me this time around? Here is my list:

1. The judiciary. I want law-abiding judges. I want judges who interpret the law rather than make it. I want judges who don’t view law as politics in disguise; who don’t try to implement their own personal or political values; who defer to legislatures; who respect the integrity of the law; who understand that ours is a federal system, not a unitary system. In short, I want judges who understand the role of a judge, and who strive mightily to discharge the obligations of that role.

2. Immigration. I want sealed borders. I’m not against immigration and I’m not anti-Hispanic. I want lawful, orderly immigration. The first step is to seal the borders. The second is to deport anyone who is here illegally. Those who are deported are free to get in line behind the others. Doing these things will require standing up to the business community, which many Republicans find difficult, if not impossible, to do.

3. National defense. I want a president who will not only protect this country from attack, but who will protect American interests abroad. This doesn’t necessarily mean invading other countries, although it doesn’t rule it out, either. It means doing whatever is necessary to keep Americans safe. The president of the United States is president of the United States.

My libertarian friends will not like my saying this, but I have no absolute opposition to tax increases, provided the tax monies are spent wisely. In distributing tax monies, we must be careful not to subsidize vice. Rewarding people for bad choices is unacceptable. Helping people help themselves is not. There should, of course, be a presumption against taxation, since it’s coercive, and coercion is bad; but the presumption is rebuttable.

Feel free to list your own requirements as a comment. Who knows? Maybe the presidential candidates will read this post and act accordingly.

In a series of books for different if overlapping audiences, Haught has endeavored to show that Christian theologians have nothing to fear from evolution, understood as the emergence of species of living beings by random mutation and natural selection over the course of “deep time.” Nothing, that is, unless they insist on upholding certain ideas such as the literal truth of the two creation accounts in Genesis.

(Michael Liccione, “Natural Religion,” review of Is Nature Enough? Truth and Meaning in the Age of Science, by John F. Haught, First Things [February 2007]: 39-42, at 39)

Here.

To the Editor:

The Iraqis want us to get our military out of their country. Most American troops want to come home. Most Americans want us to get out of Iraq. Most of the world wants us to get out. Only the Bush White House wants to continue, and even escalate, this war.

We must have answers to some fundamental questions. Why did the Bush administration invade Iraq, why are we still there, and why does it want to keep our military in Iraq indefinitely?

Even after four years, we have had no truthful answers to those questions. It’s past time that we learned what we are fighting for. Is it only to stabilize what President Bush destabilized?

Charles F. Wurster
Seattle, April 10, 2007

Note from KBJ: The letter writer needs one of three things: (1) glasses (so as to read presidential documents about the war); (2) a hearing aid (so as to hear President Bush’s speeches about the war); (3) a brain (so as to think).

I’m excited about Fred Thompson. The more I learn, the more I like. Conversely, the more I learn about Rudy Giuliani, the more I dislike him. John McCain inspires no enthusiasm; he is a worn-out political hack. Here (courtesy of Will Nehs) is a column about the growing momentum for a Draft Thompson campaign.

Addendum: Here is the latest about Thompson. If his cancer really is in remission (and you can be sure that journalists will be all over it), then it shouldn’t affect his presidential candidacy. Rudy Giuliani had a bout with prostate cancer. I don’t hear anyone saying that it disqualifies him.

Harold Baines. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)

I just realized that I haven’t added Hugh Hewitt’s blog to my blogroll. When I moved my blog to BlueHost at the start of this year, I intended to build the blogroll gradually. I’ve been derelict in doing so. Here is information about Hewitt. Like Ann Coulter and Brian Leiter, who are mirror images of one another (Coulter on the right, Leiter on the left), Hewitt is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. The difference between Leiter and Hewitt is that Hewitt is civilized.

Here.