Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker writes wisely about reactions to the attempt on Donald Trump’s life. Two slices:
But while those of us who call ourselves believers accept the idea of divine intervention in human affairs—otherwise why pray?—there is a dangerous difference between belief that divine mercy can work in seemingly random ways and thinking that the Father of the universe stopped by a Pennsylvania field to bestow eternal blessings on the MAGA agenda.
If you doubt that, consider the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust and the countless others murdered by the Nazis, and ask if God intervened on numerous occasions to spare Adolf Hitler from the various bombs and bullets that could have prevented or mitigated that atrocity. Let’s leave God’s plans to himself for now.
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A third lesson will be more controversial to some: Avoid the idea that, even if they didn’t actually pull the trigger, Democrats are somehow to blame because of their rhetoric.
It’s true that the language about Mr. Trump and the Republicans is often absurdly overblown: the recent ululations about Project 2025 are a case in point. But it must be within the bounds of acceptable political discourse to claim that Mr. Trump represents a threat to democracy, not least because some of his behavior and rhetoric support the claim. So is it acceptable for Mr. Trump and Republicans to say that President Biden and the Democrats are destroying America without it being interpreted as a signal to anyone with a rifle to take out the Democratic candidate.
Jeff Jacoby (and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) are correct:
I AM of the view, heretical in some quarters, that no one has a civic duty to vote and high turnout is not a measure of democratic health. The popular belief that everyone should be expected to take part in elections has always struck me as perverse. Many people don’t care about politics and policy; they shouldn’t be hectored to vote for the sake of voting. I agree with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA superstar turned cultural critic. “Stop encouraging people who don’t want to vote to vote,” he has written. “When we pressure people to vote, we’re diluting the democratic process, by bringing out those who are easily manipulated.”
So I have consistently, if vainly, opposed election “reforms” designed to make voting as effortless and convenient as possible. Extended early voting, elections by mail, automatic voter registration, an Election Day holiday — in my view, they are all misguided.
Jason Sorens compares Idaho to California.
Richard Ebeling remembers the late Bob Formaini. A slice:
A particularly important contribution by Bob Formaini, in my opinion, is to be found in his book, The Myth of Scientific Public Policy (Transaction Publishers, 1990). He challenges the assumptions and presumptions of mainstream economics both then, and I would argue now, that the pursuit and development of statistical and related “empirical” quantitative methods by economists provide the “scientific” tools and precision to successfully manage and manipulate the economic processes at work in the marketplace for better results than from an unhampered free market system.
