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

But is desert really inegalitarian? And should the very notion of desert be rejected by egalitarians? The fact that desert is often used to defend unequal distribution does not, of course, show that there is anything inegalitarian about desert itself. Desert may be used in both inegalitarian and egalitarian arguments. If the ground or grounds on which people deserve to be treated—the desert bases—vary from one person to another, then different people may deserve different treatment. But where a relevant desert base is possessed in equal measure people do not merely not deserve different treatment, but deserve not to be treated differently.

Indeed I want to suggest that for egalitarians to eschew the notion of desert is perverse, for there is good reason to view desert as the most appropriate notion for expressing what egalitarianism is. Egalitarianism is not simply a view of how people should be treated (namely, as equals), but a view about why they should be treated in a particular way. The egalitarian holds that people should be treated as equals because they are equal. But, as we have seen, such a relation between the status of a being and treatment which expresses that status is precisely the relation embodied in desert. It may be that egalitarians also hold that all have a right to treatment as an equal; but we should not identify an egalitarian with someone who holds such a view, for we may believe that people have a right to be treated as equals without holding that they are equals.

(Geoffrey Cupit, Justice as Fittingness [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 58-9 [italics in original; footnotes omitted])

I've always loved this song (which came out when I was 20) and have always gotten emotional while listening to it. A funny thing happened yesterday when I learned the chords and played the song on my acoustic guitar. I cried. I couldn't believe that I was producing such beautiful sounds.

As a service to those of you (such as William Kristol, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Stephen Hayes, and Jonah Goldberg) who have been vilifying Donald Trump for several months, but are going to come around to him this summer, let me help you explain your apostasy. Choose whichever explanation seems most appropriate and least humiliating:

1. His hair made me temporarily insane.
2. When Trump said he was going to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, I thought he said he was going to kill a squaw between the United States and Mexico.
3. I didn't realize that all the other candidates were total losers.
4. I thought Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton, but now I realize that he will demolish her.
5. Ted Cruz scares the bejesus out of me with his Bible thumping, his plan to abolish the IRS (how's that for slow and incremental change?), and his greasy, spotty hair.
6. When Trump said we should have a moratorium on Muslim immigration, I thought he said we should build a gymnasium for muscle stimulation.
7. I didn't think a middle-aged man could look so good in a baseball cap.
8. I now realize that Trump has better taste in women (not to mention far more success with them) than I do.
9. When Trump said he favors waterboarding, I thought he was talking about wakeboarding.
10. I now realize that Trump is five steps ahead of everyone else, including me. It's time we had an intelligent president.

Get right with Donald.

To the Editor:

Since I grew up idolizing John and Bobby Kennedy, voting for George McGovern, and opposing the war in Vietnam and Jim Crow laws, I should therefore support Bernie Sanders in the New York primary.

Is he an idealist, a dreamer? Sure, but so was John Kennedy when he pledged to put a man on the moon, and so was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he envisioned equality for all. And so was I as an 18-, 25-, 40-year-old.

But if Hillary Clinton is almost surely going to be the eventual nominee and if the objective is ultimately to keep the meanspirited Ted Cruz or the fear-mongering Donald Trump out of the White House, shouldn’t I vote for Mrs. Clinton?

A big dilemma. Heart or brain?

MICHAEL LISSAUER

Melville, N.Y.

Note from KBJ: How about spleen?

Megyn Kelly has gotten right with Donald. William Kristol has not. Kristol will, and it's going to be fun to watch. If you haven't gotten right with Donald, do so at your earliest convenience so as to avoid further embarrassment.

Make America great again.

Here.

Here.

Abacab (1981). 1:04. O.M.G.

To the editor:

Being allowed to choose between candidates preferred by lobbyists and party officials is not the type of “democracy” the American people need right now. This may have been acceptable in earlier times when the issue of money controlling politics was less critical, but nowadays the military-industrial complex and Wall Street are leading us toward perpetual war and the destruction of the middle class. ("Is the GOP primary rigged?," editorial, April 14)

Republican candidate Donald Trump is perfectly correct that the system is corrupt and Americans need to become outraged by this. The editorial talks about Trump not understanding the rules, but it's been made quite clear that the Republican Party can make or change rules at virtually any stage in the process (as it did with convention Rule 40B, originally designed to stop Ron Paul in 2012).

It is also clear that our biased media are part of the problem. A free press is valued and needed to protect us against repressive government, but now we have a media attempting to preserve government corruption and attack those who are trying to reform the process.

Richard Keeling, Torrance

Note from KBJ: "Corrupt" is an understatement. The rules are designed to stop a particular candidate who is much beloved by ordinary, everyday, hard-working, God-fearing people.