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

Evolution (1979). Heavenly.

The great irony of academia is that the only type of diversity that matters—intellectual diversity—is virtually absent. Who cares about skin color, genitalia, ethnicity, or sexual proclivity? As for why conservatives are so poorly represented in academia, there are many reasons. Among them are:

1. Conservatives are practitioners, not theoreticians. They want to make the world a better place, not merely speculate about what would make it a better place.
2. Conservatives are risk-preferring or risk-neutral, not risk-averse, and so are unlikely to be drawn to a secure environment shaped by tenure and bureaucracy.
3. Conservatives are made to feel like outcasts and so choose to stay out.
4. Conservatives are kept out by those who want an echo chamber rather than vibrant debate.

What I don't understand is why any self-respecting progressive would want to live in an echo chamber. For one thing, it makes your analytical and argumentative muscles atrophy. Many progressives have lost the capacity (if they ever had it) to analyze, argue, and criticize, which is how truth is discovered. For another thing, it's boring. Even when I was a progressive, I wanted conservatives in my midst to enliven my mind. Now that I'm a conservative, I have plenty of progressives in my midst. I am never bored.

To the Editor:

I have no problem with your two-page, tiny-print list of Donald Trump insults. They are what they are. But how about some equal attention (perhaps at least half a page) to all of Hillary Clinton’s lies, insults and double dealings? They are both extremely flawed candidates.

The New York Times’s actions to influence the outcome should be limited to the editorial page, not the news section. You only prove Mr. Trump’s claim that the system is rigged.

SCOTT J. MACEY

Hillsborough, N.J.

Note from KBJ: Does anyone take the New York Times seriously as a newspaper? It's a propaganda rag, devoted to advancing the progressive agenda. By the way, many of us like Trump's tweets. It's refreshing to have a candidate who doesn't take shit from anyone. We have suffered through George H. W. Bush (1988 and 1992), Bob Dole (1996), George W. Bush (2000 and 2004), John McCain (2008), and Mitt Romney (2012), milquetoasts all.

Translation: Bison from New York, whom New York bison bully, themselves bully New York bison.

A law, in the most general and comprehensive acceptation in which the term, in its literal meaning, is employed, may be said to be a rule laid down for the guidance of an intelligent being by an intelligent being having power over him. Under this definition are concluded, and without impropriety, several species. It is necessary to define accurately the line of demarcation which separates these species from one another, as much mistiness and intricacy has been infused into the science of jurisprudence by their being confounded or not clearly distinguished. In the comprehensive sense above indicated, or in the largest meaning which it has, without extension by metaphor or analogy, the term law embraces the following objects:—Laws set by God to his human creatures, and laws set by men to men.

The whole or a portion of the laws set by God to men is frequently styled the law of nature, or natural law: being, in truth, the only natural law of which it is possible to speak without a metaphor, or without a blending of objects which ought to be distinguished broadly. But, rejecting the appellation Law of Nature as ambiguous and misleading, I name those laws or rules, as considered collectively or in a mass, the Divine law, or the law of God.

(John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, in The Province of Jurisprudence Determined and The Uses of the Study of Jurisprudence [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998 (book first published in 1832)], 10 [italics in original])

Asia (1982). Steve Howe on guitars; Geoff Downes on keyboards; John Wetton on bass guitar; Carl Palmer on drums. I still get chills.

The comments on this article unwittingly prove the author's point.

Here.

Here.

I'm on record as saying that Donald Trump will be elected president on 8 November. Here are my reasons for saying so:

1. We saw in Brexit that there is a wide gulf between the elites and the people. The people rule. They're sick to death of being ruled by self-appointed elites, whether in Brussels or in Washington, DC.
2. The polls are all over the place. Polling isn't science; it's politics. Garbage in; garbage out.
3. Donald Trump's crowds are large and raucus. Hillary Clinton's crowds, by comparison, are small and uninspired.
4. The American people are reluctant to give the White House to the same party for 12 consecutive years. It hasn't happened since 1988.
5. Barack Obama's presidency was a one-off. It was based on white guilt. There is no "black" candidate this time around. (Please don't say that there's a female candidate; there is little or no "male guilt" in this country.)
6. Trump and his supporters have been vilified, mocked, and abused for months. Why would anyone say, publicly, much less to a pollster, that he or she intends to vote for Trump? Would you put a Trump sign in your yard, a Trump bumper sticker on your car, or a Trump poster on your office door? I didn't think so. But I'll bet many of you intend to vote for Trump. When you go behind the curtain in the polling place, nobody but you knows how you voted.
7. Trump makes people feel good (sunny, optimistic), just as Ronald Reagan did. Hillary Clinton is a bitter old woman who makes people—even her supporters—feel bad. Don't underestimate the nonrational element in politics. (Don't confuse "nonrational" with "irrational.")

As you were.