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

Here.

Bad Company (1974).

Re “A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad president builds an empire” (Opinion, June 13): Niall Ferguson’s attack on those “highly educated people” he knows who believe that President Trump is not only a bad president but a dangerous one is based upon his appraisal of Trump as an ascending emperor who is winning a battle with the dual competing empires of China and Europe.

Ferguson’s argument, like the mind of Trump that is displayed daily in his tweets and in the media, is filled with conspiracy theories that identify China as the major villain in a struggle to the death between the United States and its rivals.

Is there any way to view this other than as paranoid fantasy? Ferguson, who should know better, chooses to find a way to rationalize his support for a president who is out of his mind and out of control.

The danger of Trump’s presidency, to the United States and to the world, can be seen by all who are capable of recognizing that the emperor’s new clothes are nonexistent, whether those observers have no academic degree, one degree, or, like me, two degrees. Fortunately, it doesn’t require advanced degrees to be made uncomfortable by the president’s disturbed thinking, his lying, and his destruction of our government and our values.

Ferguson, as a political commentator, should be able to resist the draw of Trump’s paranoid grandiosity.

Dr. Henry J. Friedman

Cambridge

The writer is an associate professor of psychiatry, part time, at Harvard Medical School.

Note from KBJ: What do you do when even the psychiatrists are crazy?

We must maintain a Strong Southern Border. We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections. Obama and others had the same pictures, and did nothing about it!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2018

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Many years ago in this blog, I was laughed at by certain readers when I claimed that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had been transformed from a liberal (centrist) organization to a progressive (leftist) organization. I stand vindicated. The ACLU should change its name to ACLWWCBOGU: the American Civil Liberties for What We Consider to Be Oppressed Groups Union.

Eve of Destruction (1965).

The eastern world it is explodin’

Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’

You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’

You don’t believe in war but what’s that gun you’re totin’?

And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

But you tell me

Over and over and over again my friend

Ah, you don’t believe

We’re on the eve of destruction

Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say

Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?

If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away

There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave

Take a look around you boy, it’s bound to scare you boy

And you tell me

Over and over and over again my friend

Ah, you don’t believe

We’re on the eve of destruction

Yeah my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’

I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’

I can’t twist the truth it knows no regulation

Handful of senators don’t pass legislation

And marches alone can’t bring integration

When human respect is disintegratin’

This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

And you tell me

Over and over and over again my friend

Ah, you don’t believe

We’re on the eve of destruction

Think of all the hate there is in Red China

Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama

You may leave here for four days in space

But when you return it’s the same old place

The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace

You can bury your dead but don’t leave a trace

Hate your next door neighbor but don’t forget to say grace

And tell me

Over and over and over and over again my friend

You don’t believe

We’re on the eve of destruction

Mmm, no, no, you don’t believe

We’re on the eve of destruction

During the 1960s, I met frequently with students who said that we had nothing in common, because I was over thirty and I was running a corrupt university. I was fascinated that they kept insisting we had nothing in common. And I was troubled that we have educated students to understand individualism but have not reminded them of our essential connections. We affirm the differences, but fail to capture the commonalities. And in the absence of larger loyalties, we're settling for little loyalties. Students are hunkering down in their separate interests, failing to find the relationships that bind.

This led me to try to identify the human commonalities that might be an organizing framework for a larger, more integrative course of study. I finally concluded that there are eight universal experiences that bind us all together—all cultures, all people on the planet—and these might be the means by which our students could discover the fabric of integration. First, we are all bound together by the imperative of birth and growth and death, and at the core of every curriculum should be a study of the life cycle—the miracle of our own existence, the majesty of conception, the inevitability of death. Second, we are all connected through our ability to use symbols, as I've discussed. Third, every human being on the planet responds to the aesthetic. Fourth, we are all members of groups and institutions, even though they differ from one culture to another. Fifth, there is a natural world, "an enormous imponderable system of life in which we're embedded," as Lewis Thomas said, "as working parts." To understand ecology and our place in it is absolutely crucial. Sixth, we all can recall the past and anticipate the future, a marvelous capacity that we do not exercise well these days. Seventh, we all engage in producing and consuming, though far too many people in this country are preoccupied with consumption and have very little understanding of production. And finally, we all search for ultimate meaning and purpose in our lives. It's here that religion plays a central role in our intellectual quest.

(Ernest Boyer, "Teaching Religion in the Public Schools and Elsewhere," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60 [autumn 1992]: 515-24, at 521-2 [boldface added])

Note from KBJ: Identity politics had yet to rear its ugly head. People are divided more than ever—by race, sex, age, sexuality (sexual identity), religion, ethnicity, and nationality, though not (yet) by handedness.

Here.

Here.

Here is Kurt Schlichter's latest column.