On October 19, 1781, representatives of British commander Lord Cornwallis handed over Cornwallis’s sword and formally surrendered to George Washington and the comte de Rochambeau, at Yorktown, Virginia. The Revolutionary War (or War for Independence, or Colonial Rebellion, or whatever you wish to call it) was over except for the paperwork.
Harris came to the interview “fashionably” (strategically?) late, which added some frisson to the affair. But what stuck out to me was a repeated evasion, which to Kamala no doubt felt natural, but to this onlooker, anyway, seemed bizarre.
Trump.
When challenged about Biden Administration failures of policy, leadership, or efficacy, candidate Harris — in addition to insisting that she will lead in a totally new direction, mostly unspecified — kept on blaming, somehow, Donald Trump.
Republican Vice Presidential candidate J. D. Vance noted this, saying “something pathological is going on.”
That pathology is TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome.
“You’ve been in office for three-and-a-half years,” Baier challenged in the interview’s most memorable exchange, eliciting from the Democrat an immediate response: “And Donald Trump has been running for office since …” A stunned, incredulous Baier watched Harris rant on against Trump, declaring that “he is unfit to serve, that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances, and it being about him instead of the American people.”
This is her appeal to the middle, to non-partisan voters: not for her or her policies, but against Trump.
Democrats need their devil. Without him could they win a national election?
And we should inquire whether the reverse is also true.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Watch the entire interview is here.
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A leader is best when people barely know that he exists,
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, chapter 17.
not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
worst when they despise him.
Fail to honor people,
They fail to honor you.
But of a good leader, who talks little,
when his work is done, his aims fulfilled,
they will all say,
‘We did this ourselves.’
On October 18, 1775, African-American poet Phillis Wheatley was freed from slavery, upon the death of her master. Widely appreciated in her day, she was the first African-American to publish a book.
That’s how you cook up the latest leftist madness.
According to the wizards running Columbia University, deliberately race-neutral policies are discriminatory if they have a “disproportionate impact.”
Columbia has updated its antidiscrimination policy about bad things you can do on campus that might get you investigated and sanctioned. The revised policy declares that one bad thing is “having a neutral policy or practice that has a disproportionate and unjustified adverse impact on actual and/or perceived members or associates of one Protected Class more than others.”
This, the policy asserts, “constitutes Discrimination” — with a capital D.
Those “protected classes” make up a formidable list. If the idea is that treating another person abusively subjects one to penalties, why not just say this? Then no groups need be listed.
But Columbia University seems to find focusing on discriminatory nondiscrimination a more productive way to spend its time than coping with unambiguous racial and ethnic hatred on campus.
Columbia is among the schools that has responded to vicious harassment of Jewish students with little more than pro forma protest. Even as a Columbia representative tells USA Today that “calls for violence have no place at Columbia,” anti-Israel and anti-Jewish students keep calling for violence. Will they be kicked out?
Eliana Goldin, a Jewish student at the school, says that the administration is well aware of “the credible threat to Jewish students, and they’re still playing both-sideism.”
Which strikes me as Discrimination with a Capital D.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (January 17, 1961).