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

I hope Paul Ryan's constituents in Wisconsin throw him out of office. With conservatives like Ryan, who needs progressives?

To the Editor:

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion on affirmative action (“Justices Uphold Race-Aware Admissions,” front page, June 24) provides a healthy reminder. While I applaud what I consider the wisdom of his call, I’m even more grateful for what it illustrates: the crucial value of a justice who takes a less ideological approach to each case, whose decisions can actually be “unexpected.”

Justice Kennedy is often the swing vote, sometimes siding with the more liberal members of the court and sometimes with the conservatives. My instinctive liberal side wishes he would more consistently swing that way, but my dispassionate, citizen side appreciates his willingness to consider each case on its own merits.

Disinterested judgment, employed or arrived at in spite of one’s political or moral inclinations, is a behavior to be treasured. Our next president could do worse than heed that lesson when he or she nominates a new justice.

JAMIE SPENCER

St. Louis

Note from KBJ: Do progressives think before they write? This letter writer claims to appreciate unexpected, nonideological decisions. Has an unexpected, nonideological decision ever emanated from the pen of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, or Elena Kagan? They are as predictable as a machine, as rigid as a steel pipe, as ideological as Karl Marx, and as stupid as a stump.

What shocks me about George Will's leaving the Republican Party is not that he's leaving, but that he was ever a member. Whatever happened to intellectual independence? I haven't been a member of a political party since 31 July 1981, when I allowed my one-year membership in the Libertarian Party to lapse. I still have the card (click to enlarge):

In case you're wondering, I didn't change my name to "Keith Burgess-Jackson" until May 1981, many months after this card arrived in the mail.

Addendum: It occurs to me that Will may never have been a dues-paying member of the Republican Party, as I was of the Libertarian Party. Maybe he simply registered as a Republican so as to be able to vote in Republican primaries. If that's the case, then all he has done is prevent himself from voting in future Republican primaries. Why is that even newsworthy? As for whether Will's call to action will be heeded, that depends on how much influence he has. I find it hard to believe that someone will reason as follows: "I was going to vote for Donald Trump, but George Will says he's not going to, and George Will is my authority on matters political, so I won't, either." George Will is senile. Nobody cares what he thinks, says, or does. The more he writes, the more ridiculous he becomes.

I don't understand Jonah Goldberg's end game. In column after column (such as this one), and in television appearance after television appearance, he runs Donald Trump down. Does he want Hillary Clinton to be president? Does he want Clinton to name the next three or four Supreme Court justices? I don't get it. I honestly don't get it. How can you claim to care what happens to this country if you're indifferent between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? Certainly no conservative could be indifferent. Is it possible that it's all been a lie—that Goldberg has only been professing to care about what happens to the country, but that all along he's been promoting himself and building his career?

Machine Head (1972).

Here.

Here.

William Kristol's delusion continues—proof that being highly educated (Kristol has a doctoral degree in government from Harvard University) is compatible with detachment from reality. By the way, someone asked me why I read Kristol, given that I find him an insufferable buffoon. My answer is another question: Why do people gawk at accidents? I enjoy watching people self-destruct, especially when the destruction is deserved. I watched it with Brian Leiter (the Academic Thug), and now I'm watching it with the likes of William Kristol, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, and Stephen Hayes.

To the Editor:

Could I thank President Obama for coming to Britain and telling us to vote Remain? His exhortations, along with those of other foreign politicians, multimillionaire businessmen and bankers, helped persuade the British people that the wealthy Davos elite was interested in keeping Britain in the European Union for its own political and commercial reasons rather than for the good of the Brits.

No American would tolerate being governed by a group of unelected bureaucrats with laws imposed on them by politicians of other countries. That is why we voted for Leave. The United Kingdom has now become a free, independent nation once again, and we will continue to work and trade with the whole world.

We are pleased that, after the Brexit victory, President Obama said, “The United Kingdom and the European Union will remain indispensable partners of the United States,” which is a welcome change from his comments when he visited here that if we voted to leave, then we would be at the end of the queue to get a trade deal.

DAVID BLENCATHRA

London

The writer, a former member of Parliament, is now a Conservative member of the House of Lords.

Note from KBJ: This isn't about progressivism and conservatism; it's about cosmopolitanism and nationalism. The cosmopolitans (e.g., Barack Obama) lost. Get right with Donald. Let's make America great again.

Note 2 from KBJ: Donald Trump gets it.