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

Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (1990). Wow.

To the editor:

North Carolina's House Bill 2 is intended to make bathrooms safe. The possibility of a male predator dressed as a woman molesting a girl in a bathroom is certainly a worry, but the incident is in no way enabled by transgender bathroom usage. ("How to stamp out the transgender 'bathroom panic,'" Opinion, April 15)

A predator can do that now. Just walk right in—no costume, no deception. If and when he is arrested and prosecuted, it won't be for pretending to be transgender; it will be for a sex crime.

The fear that this will happen over and over again is just ludicrous. And it belittles the trauma that a transgender man or woman feels every day on entering a place where too often, bullying and intimidation make it unsafe.

North Carolinians should think of what other people go through before denying them their freedoms.

James Severtson, Reseda

Note from KBJ: It's really quite simple: No penises in women's bathrooms.

Note 2 from KBJ: I don't have a problem with vaginas in men's bathrooms.

This man needs professional help for his Trump Derangement Syndrome. Ask yourself whether the National Review has devoted even one-tenth of the energy to attacking Democrats that it has expended attacking its own standard-bearer. How sick is that? Barack Obama gets a pass for over seven years. Donald Trump, who has brought more people into the Republican Party than any other candidate since Ronald Reagan, is vilified. The National Review deserves to die, and I predict it will.

Here.

Here.

To the Editor:

Re “The Case for Trump” (Op-Ed, April 16):

Representative Chris Collins praises Donald Trump for refusing to be politically correct. I disagree. Mr. Trump regularly deploys coded language, implication and backtracking. He doesn’t tell it like it is at all; he implies it, denies the implication, then denies the denial.

From his reluctant disavowal of David Duke’s endorsement to his vacillation on abortion, it’s Mr. Trump who has learned to (mostly) couch his unambiguously racist and sexist ideas within vague statements. It is Mr. Trump, and by way of endorsement Mr. Collins, who are too “politically correct” to admit their own racism and sexism.

STEVEN T. SACCO

Forest Hills, Queens

Note from KBJ: We're doomed! Steven T. Sacco has broken the code! Whatever shall we do? (By the way, I'll give you ten to one odds that Steven T. Sacco of Forest Hill, Queens, is far more racist and sexist than Donald Trump.)

What follows is a snippet of dialogue between Ronald Trump, a student, and his teacher, Mr Establishment:

Trump: I came to see you because you gave me a D in the course.

Establishment: That's what you earned.

T: What do you mean, "That's what I earned"? My final score in the course was 86, so I should have received a B.

E: I don't assign scores that way. I assign scores on the basis of height, and you're one of the shortest people in the class.

T: Height?! Are you serious? What does height have to do with one's grade in a course?

E: I laid out the rules on the first day of class; don't you remember?

T: Yes, I do; but the rules are stupid.

E: Why did you take the course, if you don't like the rules?

T: I had to! This course is required for my major. I can't graduate without this course.

E: Rules are rules. You knew the rules.

T: But the rules are stupid and should be changed!

E: Go away.

If you're one of those people who keep saying that the rules in states like Colorado were in place months ago, and that Trump knew the rules, I have news for you: Trump is (as usual) five steps ahead of you.

Despite his repeated and vociferous denials, Jonah Goldberg will get right with Donald. He will get right with Donald because otherwise he will be irrelevant, unread, and powerless. Take it to the bank. Count on it. The question is not whether Goldberg will get right with Donald, but when.

Addendum: The more people who predict that Goldberg will come around to Trump, the more he digs in. This is only going to make it more humiliating for him when he comes around. Stop digging, Jonah. You can't stop Trump from being the Republican nominee, so lie back and enjoy it.

All attempts to disprove the reality of moral obligation, to show that it is an illusory notion to which nothing or only something very different really corresponds, fail. But it may be said that all attempts to prove its reality are equally futile. And this is true. You can no more prove that there are duties than that there are beautiful things or true judgements. The truth of some judgements and the existence of some duties are self-evident. And nothing is more certain than what is self-evident, for that does not need or gain by proof and is generally incapable of it. Everything that can be proved is proved from something which is itself evident, ultimately from something self-evident, and by arguments whose validity is self-evident and cannot be proved. If everything had to be proved nothing could be, for the process would be infinite, and infinite in two directions, an infinite regress of premises to be proved and an infinite regress of proofs to be validated. The distinction of right and wrong can no more be deduced from any non-moral conception than that between truth and falsehood from anything non-rational. We see the necessity of both with equal clearness. To fail of making either would be an equally sure mark of insanity, of falling outside the human pale.

If any one ask us, 'Why ought I to do these acts you call my duty?' the only answer is, 'Because they are your duty', and if he does not see this we cannot make him, unless by informing him about matters of fact; if he sees they are duties, he can no more ask why he ought to do them than why he should believe what is true. To answer, 'Because they are the best policy', would not answer the question why he ought to do them.

(E. F. Carritt, The Theory of Morals: An Introduction to Ethical Philosophy [London: Oxford University Press, 1928], 28-9 [italics in original])