Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

When I say (as I often do) that free trade has been a disaster for this country, I'm not saying that nobody benefits from it, for surely some do. Nor am I saying that free trade doesn't produce cheaper consumer products for all or most Americans, for surely it does. What I'm saying is that the main beneficiaries of free trade are people who are already wealthy and powerful. What good is it to have cheaper consumer products when you no longer have a job, when your community is disintegrating, when your family is suffering, and when you've lost your self-respect?

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that free trade produces, in the aggregate, more good than bad for Americans (in the cost-benefit sense). That doesn't resolve the issue of whether free trade is on balance a good thing, because the gainers from trade don't have to compensate the losers. This column by Robert Reich explains what I'm talking about. (Please don't say that I'm siding with the enemy by agreeing with Reich. There is common ground between progressives and conservatives when it comes to protecting working people from globalists.)

Here are the Silver Slugger awards for 2016. No Rangers, Yankees, or Indians in the American League.

Here is Ann Coulter's latest column.

Here is an excellent blog post by Daniel Greenfield, courtesy of a friend. My take: Barack Obama was elected by guilty, self-loathing whites. The thought was that, by voting for the dark(er)-skinned man (he's only half black, after all), all would be forgiven. Nobody who voted for Obama would ever again have to suffer the indignity of being called a racist. Obama didn't understand this. He thought he was elected because of his beliefs and values, and of course he proceeded to act on them. He thought whites shared his beliefs and values, when in fact whites were saying nothing more (or less) than "Let's give the black man a chance." As it turns out, Obama was no better than any white president has been or would have been. In many ways, he was worse. It would be unfortunate if Obama's weak and wandering presidency made it less likely for an authentic black person (by which I mean someone who descended from slaves) to be elected, but that may well happen. Only time will tell.

Did Donald Trump win in a landslide? That depends on what "landslide" means. Here's the definition in the Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999): "an overwhelming majority for one side in an election." What makes a majority "overwhelming"? The same dictionary says: "irresistible by force of numbers, influence, amount, etc." Admittedly, that's not very helpful. Reasonable people can disagree about whether a particular majority is overwhelming. This doesn't mean that the concept of a landslide is perfectly unclear; it means that the concept is not perfectly clear. All reasonable people will agree that getting 51% of the vote, as compared to 49%, is not a landslide, just as all reasonable people will agree that getting 75% of the vote, as compared to 25%, is a landslide.

Next question: majority of what? In our political system, the two obvious answers are (1) popular votes and (2) electoral votes. But there are other answers. Who won the most counties? Who won the most states? It's clear that Donald Trump did not win a landslide in the popular vote. Indeed, he may end up losing the popular vote. But he will end up with 306 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton's 232. In terms of percentages, that's 56.8 to 43.1, a gap of 13.7. Is that a landslide? It's not clearly not a landslide. A reasonable person may well consider it a landslide. And what about the number of counties won? According to the maps I've seen, Trump won far more counties than Clinton. I'll try to get the figures. Finally, Trump won 30 states to Clinton's 21. (Clinton's total includes the District of Columbia.) In terms of percentages, that's 58.8 to 41.1, a gap of 17.7. I consider that an overwhelming majority, and hence, by definition, a landslide. (In 1984, Ronald Reagan received 58.8% of the popular vote, to 40.6% for Walter Mondale, a gap of 18.2%. That was considered a landslide.)

Scroll to the bottom of this website for a look at President-Elect Trump's plans, which include "nominating Judges and Supreme Court Justices who are committed to interpreting the Constitution and laws according to their original public meaning." Scalia lives! Two Supreme Court appointments will consign Roe v. Wade (1973) to the ash heap of history and return the regulation of abortion to the states, where it has always belonged.

To the Editor:

I am insulted by the knee-jerk reaction of liberals that anyone who voted for Donald Trump is a racist, a homophobe and a woman hater. Such characterizations show a lack of tolerance for legitimate differences in political views of how our government should be managed.

Mr. Trump was not my choice among the Republican candidates (my choice was Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio), but his views on selection of Supreme Court justices and the “Affordable Care” Act were enough to convince me that I would vote for the Republican nominee.

I also had legitimate concerns about Hillary Clinton’s performance as secretary of state, such as her failure to provide security for the consulate in Benghazi. I was also disturbed by her lack of security for her emails and the selling of influence through the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees to her husband.

I have no apologies for my vote, but I believe that there are apologies owed to me and millions of Trump voters who have no hatred toward people of different races, sex or sexual orientation.

DENIS PAUL JUGE

Metairie, La.

Note from KBJ: Mr Juge is behind the times. Merely by being white, he is racist. Not "presumed to be racist," which is bad enough, but racist. Merely by being male, he is sexist. Merely by being heterosexual, he is prejudiced against homosexuals. Progressives live in a Manichean world of good and evil. If you're not with 'em, you're against 'em.

The first person to speak in this video, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, is a certified imbecile. The second is a retard.

Can't endorse Trump? Bye bye.

A person is a monist about values if he thinks there is only one property the possession of which to some degree makes a thing intrinsically valuable. A person is a pluralist about values if he thinks there is more than one property whose presence in an object can make a difference to the object's intrinsic worth. Hedonism is a form of monism, at least if we count both pleasantness and unpleasantness as simply degrees of one kind of property (otherwise it is dualism). Usually, critics of hedonism are pluralists; but a nonhedonist could be a monist, thinking, perhaps, that knowledge or quality of character is the only property that makes something intrinsically worthwhile.

What kinds of thing might a nonhedonist think affect intrinsic worth? Such things as knowledge, strength of character or the possession of various virtues, human life, kindly deeds, suffering for one's community, keeping a promise it is hard to keep, grateful recognition of services done, beauty even if not enjoyed by anyone, a distribution of happiness among people in proportion to their merits. Some of these, we see, are properties of single conscious organisms (for example, knowledge and being alive); persons who confine "good-making" (those that affect intrinsic worth) qualities to this sort are personalists about values. Others of these are not properties of single conscious organisms (for example, the distribution of happiness according to merit); writers who believe there are "good-making" qualities of this kind, we shall call impersonalists about values (although the term may be misleading, since no impersonalist fails to allow that states of persons are of intrinsic worth). Correspondingly, we shall speak of personal and impersonal "good-making" qualities. Obviously, a hedonist is not only a monist but a personalist in his view about what makes for intrinsic worth. We might say that a personalist about values is one who counts only states of welfare as having intrinsic worth; but "welfare" is itself a rather vague term, although one widely used.

(Richard B. Brandt, Ethical Theory: The Problems of Normative and Critical Ethics, Prentice-Hall Philosophy Series, ed. Arthur E. Murphy [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959], 303-4 [italics in original])