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

British Steel (1980).

Permit me to muse. Donald Trump is a presidential candidate such as we've never seen. He is expert at planting seeds in people's minds. For example, he has repeatedly described Jeb Bush as "low energy." He said this so often and so firmly, from the beginning of the campaign, that it became conventional wisdom. Bush wilted under the onslaught. Now Trump is going after Ted Cruz, calling him "nasty" and "a liar" and repeating the claim that Cruz is disliked even by members of his own party. (For what it's worth, I consider that a good thing.) Over and over again, day after day, Trump repeats these scurrilous charges. CNN and the other networks dutifully (gleefully?) play the videos every hour (or so it seems). The problem with these attacks, which are personal, is that, if Trump is not the Republican nominee, the recipients of his abuse will be damaged, perhaps fatally so, in the general election. You can't unplant a seed. I think Trump is doing this on purpose. His desire to win the nomination is so strong (one might describe it as "burning") that he's willing to destroy everyone else in the process, even if that means electing a Democrat. I'm not taking sides here; I'm simply trying to analyze (and understand) what is happening. I wish the Republican candidates would set forth their policy positions and leave it at that, letting the voters decide whom to support. Personal destruction only helps the Democrats.

Especially in theistic religions, that is, religions which construe God as being a person or very much like a person (though He is not, of course, thought to be a human person), the notion of "revelation" is likely to be much more prominent than that of religious experience.

The special features of revelation refer primarily to the nature and action of the object involved and, to a lesser extent, to the type of effect produced. Perhaps we can see some of these features if we think of how a human person's revealing himself to us differs from our merely seeing him. The person who reveals himself must be active—he must do something deliberately for the sake of the revelation. His action, intention, and purpose are essential to his being revealed, but these are irrelevant to a person's merely being experienced. He can be seen, for example, as a rock can be seen, with no initiative on his part.

In general, then, a revelation is an experience that is brought about deliberately by its object and, at least in part, for the sake of the knowledge which the experiencing subject is to gain. It is not, therefore, hard to see why theistic religions, like Christianity and Islam, should find greater use for the revelation terminology. If God is as these religions describe Him, then it seems likely that there is no experience of Him that occurs apart from His initiative and purpose; or simply, that every experience of God is a revelation. But it will still remain true that, since revelation is a species of experience, much of what can be said of experience applies also to revelation.

(George I. Mavrodes, Belief in God: A Study in the Epistemology of Religion [Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1970], 53 [italics in original])

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be 83 years old next month. It's virtually certain that she will be replaced by the next president, either because she has died (God forbid) or because she has resigned. So let's think this through. Suppose Barack Obama replaces Justice Antonin Scalia with (for lack of a better term) a judicial activist. If a Democrat is elected president this fall, then that's the result we would have had anyway. If a Republican is elected president, however, then, when Justice Ginsburg leaves the bench, she will be replaced (presumably) with a textualist such as Justice Scalia and the Court will be what it was until a couple of days ago. My point is that if a Republican is elected president, then it won't matter that Justice Scalia was replaced by a judicial activist; and if a Democrat is elected president, then all will be lost anyway (from a conservative's point of view). Could the presidential election be any more important?

Here.

Here.

To the editor:

When it was time to end slavery, Scalia would have said, "No!"; when Social Security and Medicare were experiencing growing pains, he would killed both in their infancy; when a woman's right to vote was being debated, he would have argued that such a thing was not written into the Constitution; he would have upheld Jim Crow, citing states rights.

Scalia voted for fossil fuels and against climate science; for guns and against safety; for government intrusion into a woman's pregnancy; for billionaires pillaging our political process; for a price-gouging, benefit-denying healthcare system; for voter suppression; for George W. Bush.

Scalia's family, friends and colleagues will miss him. On the other hand, a society that values fairness, reason and progress will not miss him on the court.

Eugene Sison, San Dimas

Note from KBJ: This letter is a perfect storm of ignorance, stupidity, and malice. The irony is that Justice Scalia, whom the writer presumes to condemn, was the opposite of these things: knowledgeable, intelligent, and, in keeping with his Catholic faith, charitable.

This man is off his rocker. In one column, he uses all of the following terms in reference to Donald Trump:

• "awful"
• "horrible"
• "disgusting"
• "lies"
• "distortions"
• "deceits"
• "libels"
• "monstrous"
• "repellent personality"
• "dishonesties"
• "disgusting jerk"
• "attention-whore lungs"

Get some professional help, Podhoretz. Most Americans love the things you hate about Trump.

Lower Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan. Click to enlarge.