How an Ancient Philosopher Predicted the Outcome of the #2016Election

My newest post at Intellectual Takeout: 

Many people depend upon polls to predict the outcome of elections. What pollsters do appeals to all the prejudices of the post-Enlightenment modern mind: They employ a distinctive technique (thank you Rene Descartes), they focus on empirical evidence (thank you Francis Bacon), and they invoke the mathematical forms of statistics (thank you John Graunt and William Petty).  

But the responsibility for making an accurate prediction of this year's election might better have been put into the hands, not of a pollster, but a philosopher.

Read the rest here.

Evolving conservatism

Anthony Esolen on the election:

I fear that the battle, not always but all too often, is between a radical materialism and a softer materialism, a radical worship of Progress (to where, is never specified) and a softer worship of Progress. For instance, I saw the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, on television with Geraldine Ferraro, the two of them commenting upon the difficulties of being a woman in national politics. One of them said, "There are still some Neanderthals out there who believe that it is impossible for a woman to have a family and raise her children properly while embarking on a political career. We hope that they will soon evolve beyond that position." Those italics are mine. Note the assumptions here. People in previous generations were bigots. What they actually believed about the relations between men and women, and their roles in private and public life, can be dismissed with a sneer. We, who divorce half of the time, when we bother to marry in the first place, we whose cities are sinkholes of sexual and familial chaos, we can safely ignore the so-called wisdom of past ages. We have evolved, don't you see. Just as, I suppose, our understanding of freedom has evolved beyond that of that fellow Jefferson -- that ascetic and patrician landowner, to use William F. Buckley's words, whom we can call upon to justify denuding the public square of all expressions of religion, but otherwise dismiss.

The person who made that comment, of course, was Governor Palin. I guess I shouldn't single women out for the collapse of our political thinking -- that we are not producing even an eloquent and somewhat addled populist like Bryan, or a stubborn constitutionalist such as Cleveland; and those fellows are rather dwarfed by the political intellects of the Adamses, or Jefferson and Madison, or Webster and Calhoun. Yet I wonder sometimes what a Palin or a Pelosi can be thinking. Are they entirely unaware of the great (and sometimes failed) statesmen of the American and British past? Are they not embarrassed by the vulgar cackling of the commentators on that show that is inevitably on the screen when I go to the doctor's or the dentist's, The View? Cackling which makes Rush Limbaugh appear like Demosthenes. Or are they aware in the slightest of the collapse of the American family, which in certain sectors of our population is evident in the disappearance of responsible men, the should-be fathers of their communities?

...Ah well. The fiscal conservatives have no idea that they lack a proper understanding of the human being and of the common good, and that they therefore play the secularist's game on the secularist's own turf. The social conservatives have either bought the idea that "government," for good or bad, means management by bureaucrats from afar, or have bought so much of the sexual revolution that their residual opposition to killing children remains utterly unmoored from any consistent vision of what a good human life or a virtuous and just human community looks like.

Read the rest here.

What happens when academics get involved in politics

HT: Inside Higher Ed

The Issue of Question #9: Is the Rand Paul campaign throwing a state pro-life group under the bus to cover up its own mistake?

Have we found the Rand Paul campaign's tragic flaw?

I have thought for several months now that Rand Paul has been, if not the superior potential senator, at least the superior candidate. He is smarter, more thoughtful, and more articulate than Trey Grayson. These are nice qualities to have when you are an elected lawmaker. I was even thinking of personally endorsing him here on this blog.

But now we've got a problem.

I was disappointed when Paul did not receive the endorsement of the Kentucky Right to Life Association (KRLA), and pleased when he got it from the Northern Kentucky Right to Life group. I'd like to see him do well.

It appears that the Paul campaign didn't receive the KRLA endorsement at least partly because of an administrative snafu in answering the KRLA survey, which looms large in the group's endorsement process. An administrative error is forgivable, and if that was where it ended, that's something most of us could live with. But now a more important issue has been created, and it appears to have been created by the Paul campaign itself.

Here's what happened:

• The Paul campaign answered the KRLA survey, but left one question (Question #9) blank. It was the question about human cloning and stem cell research.
• Because of the blank question and for several other reasons, KRLA endorsed Grayson over Paul.
• KRLA was asked about the matter, and responded politely that the Paul campaign had not answered Question #9, and therefore could not be said to have answered the survey "100 percent pro-life," as Grayson did. KRLA has the originals on file--and has posted them on its website--for anyone to view.
• In mid-May, KRLA received a phone call informing them that the Paul campaign was claiming that KRLA was "lying" about the survey and that KRLA was "blocking" the Paul campaign's phone calls.
• KRLA then called the Paul campaign and asked that they stop telling people that they had lied and that they were blocking their calls. In fact, according to KRLA, their phone records show no calls being received from the Paul campaign on any of their three lines.
• KRLA executive director Margie Montgomery then received a fundraising letter from the Paul campaign, stating that Paul had answered the survey "100 percent pro-life."
• After KRLA tried to set the record straight with a press release, the Paul campaign posted a screen shot on its website of their questionnaire, completed, including a "yes" next to Question #9--implying that that is what they had sent to KRLA, and continuing to claim that KRLA had, in fact, been less than truthful about what it had received.
• Then, at a debate on April 23rd (and here is what is really disturbing), Rand Paul said “Whatever they have – I don’t know how it became unmarked, but what we have is marked. We sent it to ‘em by certified mail, and they need to stop, also, not telling the truth on this.” "Sent" in that sentence is in the past tense, but, as it turned out the "certified mail" that was "sent" was sent only after Paul made the statement. KRLA has the tracking number. The debate in which Paul made the statement ended at 1:30 p.m. The certified mail was received at the Bowling Green Post office at 2:40 p.m.
  

Either Rand Paul is lying about this, or his staff is lying to him. In either case, it needs to be addressed.

The Kentucky Right to Life Association has, in my opinion, been more than polite about this considering that a major U. S. Senate campaign is accusing it of lying. But the gloves are starting to come off. The Paul campaign has been almost picture perfect in getting its message out, but this incident could seriously damage the campaign in its final weeks of the Republican primary.

The thing about all this is that it didn't have to happen. All of this could have been cleared up by a polite phone call from the Paul campaign to KRLA. Instead, in an uncharacteristically clumsy (not to mention dishonest) move, the campaign has alienated an important state conservative political organization, and is on its way to alienating the many conservative Kentuckians who support it and consider themselves pro-life.

Rand Paul has billed himself as the outsider, the enemy of politics as usual. But what is more usual about politics than untruthfulness? Grayson has made himself easy pickings for Paul through the incompetence with which it has conducted its campaign.

Let's hope that Paul doesn't force Republican voters in this state to choose between a candidate who has trouble conducting a campaign and a candidate who has trouble being honest.