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

To the Editor:

Re “The new New Cold ideology,” by Jochen Bittner (Op-Ed, Aug. 2):

While the Donald has proclaimed his admiration for his dear friend Vladimir, applauded Erdogan for “turning it around” and babbled about “law and order,” I reject the notion that his rise can be explained by Bittner’s worldwide orderist revisionism.

The middle-age white man is susceptible to a specific illusive promise of order that is distinct from the one that is prevalent in non-Western parts of the world. He seeks order, not for order’s sake but for its promise of preserving the status quo with a political system where the 1 percent exercises excessive influence and an anachronistic social structure where white and male still dominate. Simply put: He is alarmed not by moral weakness and decadence, but by the threat of losing his beloved privileged status.

How can Western leaders learn or even be inspired by anti-liberal sentiments the same way as Roosevelt, Adenauer or Monnet when today’s Trumps, Johnsons, and Le Pens not only reject the liberal ideas of our founding fathers but seem to only offer demagogic resentments and xenophobic sentiments?

JAEWOO SHIN

St. Gallen, Switzerland

Note from KBJ: I've read a lot of crazy things in my day, but this takes the cake.

Brandon Crawford of the San Francisco Giants went seven for eight in yesterday's extra-inning game. For most players, that's a good week.

Here.

Here.

To the Editor:

Your article conceals an unfortunate reality of much of the contemporary media and liberalism: a basic distrust of democracy. Through the process of democratic elections, a significant plurality of those voting in the Republican primaries selected Mr. Trump as their preferred candidate for president. This was democracy in action.

If objective journalists truly believed in the fundamental principle of a democratic form of government, they would be respecting this choice and would be performing their job of objectively and fairly presenting the facts concerning both candidates and letting the voters decide. But as this article makes clear, many journalists cannot bring themselves to be fair, balanced and objective. Instead, they believe that they know better than the people, and are unwilling to provide just the facts and let the electorate decide.

CHRISTOPHER HODGKIN

Friday Harbor, Wash.

Note from KBJ: And now you know why journalists are held in such low repute. They've become partisan, which, by Keith's Law, undermines whatever authoritativeness they once had.

I bought my first bike (a Sears Free Spirit 10-speed) on 9 August 1981, when I was 24 years old. Today is the 35th anniversary of this purchase. Since then (on a total of five bikes), I have pedaled 88,234.5 miles, which is an average of 2,520.9 miles per year, 6.90 miles per day, and 48.3 miles per week. Today's ride of 34.2 miles gives me 3,773.4 miles for 2016. The heat index was 104º when I returned to my house. Having ridden in Tucson and Dallas/Fort Worth for 33 years (since August 1983), I'm used to the heat. I hardly notice it.

Addendum: I've pedaled 5,902.3 miles in the past year (counting the leap day in February), which is an average of 16.1 miles per day and 112.8 miles per week.

This man is indifferent between

1. Hillary Clinton nominating the next two, three, or four Supreme Court justices; and
2. Donald Trump nominating the next two, three, or four Supreme Court justices.

In other words, he's indifferent between

1. Evil; and
2. Good.

No matter; he's morally pure and wants everyone to know it! (Thank God his vote makes no difference; he lives in Texas, which will give its electoral votes to Trump.)

Steppenwolf 7 (1970).

Too often when we take a course in ethics, we are given for analysis moral problems of an altogether too dramatic sort. You are marooned in a lifeboat with four others and a limited supply of food and fresh water. Days pass on the briny deep. Food runs low, and water is at a premium. When is it permissible to eat the First Mate? Or, the city is under siege, surrounded by barbarians, and inevitably the demand is made. Release the king's daughter to the savage pleasures of the barbarian chieftain, or the city will be razed. What to do? The problem with such problems is that they suggest that most of us have never yet confronted a moral problem and are unlikely to do so in the future. If the moral life is made up of problems such as these, the moral life at best—or worst—would look like a line disturbed at rare intervals by pips of magnitude. But what goes on in the interim, in the interval between moral problems of the dramatic sort?

(Ralph McInerny, Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, rev. ed. [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997], 93)

Scott Adams thinks Hillary Clinton has brain damage. Do we want her finger on the red button?