Writer for website "Presidential Politics for America"
Author of book "Who Made the West: A Ranking of the 30 Most Influential Figures in Western History"
@rtbrownjr@AOMextradry@davo_arid McKinley appointed McKenna in 1897, making McKinley a President who in the 19th century appointed a Supreme Court justice.
This semantic interpretation existed only to make a joke.
In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis has an awesome opening riff about how most people know the difference between right and wrong, but they justify acting immorally by appealing to "special exception." They know they shouldn't hit a friend, but what if that friend was being so mean? They know they shouldn't steal a seat a bus, but what if that person got up and created a moment's confusion and then the seat was up for grabs? Etc.
When I read this section, I thought a lot about contemporary politics and the way that people justify their politics, not by appealing to higher principles, but rather by appealing to "special exception" to argue that their admitted indecency is justifiable in context.
A lot of MAGA vice is justified by special exception. Trump's defenders rarely defend his crookedness directly. They don't say "it's wonderful to use trade policy to enrich the Oval Office, it's really awesome." They say: Well, look, it doesn't really matter, because the left is so dangerous, Biden maybe did something similar 3 years ago, Democrats would do the same in power, and so forth.
I heard something similar in that NYT conversation everybody's talking about. You even see it in the headline: ‘The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ Why, hello, special exception. When you start arguing that stealing food and French paintings is justifiable in the context of political protest in an age of prevailing distrust, you're similarly not arguing *for* any kind of a universal principle. Nobody actually wants 300 million people stealing fruit from the grocery store. Nobody actually wants every Louvre visitor trying to rip a Manet off the walls. These virtues don't scale. (Because they're not virtuous!)
Sap that I am, I want us to get to a place where politics is about fighting for what is right and decent, not about justifying what sort of indecent behavior might be somewhat understandable or technically justifiable given the other side's vice or the prevailing levels of indecency. The point is to build the kind of goodness that scales.
https://t.co/iPF65NuyeU
When the right adds $12 trillion in debt in six years and the left nominates a NYC mayoral candidate who speaks of “seizing the means of production”, it’s time for a new American political movement committed to common sense.
“Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president.”
From The Ezra Klein Show: Don't Believe Him, Feb 2, 2025
https://t.co/IkksAVuOUR
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