Category: Politics

Nikki Haley ’28!

(Or, JoshuaLetter’s first foray into electoral politics.)

A September 9, 2024 ABC News piece by Oren Oppenheim articulates why I admire Nikki Haley and why I expect to be voting for Donald Trump for president in 2024:

Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley pushed back against criticism from former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney on Haley’s support for former President Donald Trump despite previous comments saying she found him unfit for office.

In an exclusive “This Week” interview on Sunday, co-anchor Jonathan Karl asked Cheney about Haley saying she’s on “standby” to campaign for Trump after the former South Carolina governor openly opposed him in the Republican primaries.

Cheney, who last week endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, told Karl, “I can’t understand [Haley’s] position on this in any kind of a principled way. I think that, you know, the things that she said, that she made clear when she was running in the primary, those things are true.”

During the Republican presidential primary, Haley said Trump lacked focus and that “chaos follows him.”  Months later, Haley said she would vote for Trump despite her disappointment with him.

Reacting to Cheney’s remarks, Haley told “Fox and Friends” Monday morning, “I respect her decision, but she can’t say my decision is not principled. It actually is.”  Haley continued:

We can either vote based on style or we can vote on substance. I’m voting based on substance.  I’m looking at the fact we can’t live the next four years like we did the last four years. This is no contest.

Seeking to contrast Trump with Harris on the economy, border and energy, Haley added, “We should be very clear, if you don’t like him, say you don’t like him, but you can’t say that his policies are worse than Kamala Harris’s.”

Haley also directly criticized Trump and running mate Sen. JD Vance when asked about the “gender gap” with women supporting Harris more than Trump.  “I think it’s because Donald Trump and JD Vance need to change the way they speak about women. You don’t need to call Kamala dumb. She didn’t get this far, you know, just by accident – she’s here. That’s what it is. She’s a prosecutor,” Haley said. “You don’t need to go and talk about intelligence, or looks or anything else. Just focus on the policies. When you call even a Democrat woman dumb, Republican women get their backs up too.”

Last month, Trump said he’s “entitled” to the personal attacks aimed at Harris – because he doesn’t respect her and doesn’t “have a lot of respect for her intelligence.”

Haley reiterated that Trump should ditch those attacks to focus on substance.  “The bottom line is, we win on policy. Stick to the policies, leave all the other stuff. That’s how he can win,” Haley said.

Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat amplifies Haley’s remarks and provides the Trump campaign with a winning theme by listing the policy failures of the Biden administration:

A historic surge in migration that happened without any kind of legislation or debate. A historic surge in inflation that was caused by the pandemic, but almost certainly goosed by Biden administration deficits. A mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan. A stalemated proxy war in Eastern Europe with a looming threat of escalation. An elite lurch into woke radicalism that had real-world as well as ivory-tower consequences, in the form of bad progressive policymaking on crime and drugs and schools.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/opinion/trump-harris-undecided-voter.html)

Further, Douthat articulates a decisive factor which is not to be overlooked:

But this unfit man was already president for four years, and for three of them his personal chaos coexisted with decent outcomes in arenas — foreign policy, inflation and immigration — where things have been much worse under the rule of the serious people, the good meritocrats, the smooth and respectable elites. And even when Covid overmastered his administration, his flailing was matched by progressivism’s period of mania, and his White House still managed to keep the middle class solvent, the stock market high, and also delivered a Covid vaccine faster than almost anyone expected.

Thomas Alderman

September 14, 2024

Rejoice!

303 Creative, LLC v. Elena

Supreme Court of the United States
June 30, 2023
Slip Opinion No. 21-476

Americans of all persuasions have cause to rejoice, now that Lorie Smith, a Christian and a Colorado web designer, has prevailed in the Supreme Court of the United States in her action against the State of Colorado, which had sought to use its Anti-Discrimination Act to compel her to design web sites celebrating gay marriage, against her sincerely-held belief that marriage should be reserved for unions of one man and one woman.  The Supreme Court, in a 6-to-3 opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, held in 303 Creative, LLC v. Elena that Smith’s right of free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, protects her from such action.  By doing so, the Court spared the country a dramatic escalation in the culture wars.

What effect would a ruling in Colorado’s favor have had?

Continue reading “Rejoice!”

Social Media, Woke Culture, and the 2020 Election

Do you find yourself wondering what just happened?  The last four years are bewildering without some coherent theoretical framework by which to make sense of them.  I want to share with you an article which for me, at least, significantly helps me to understand the time we live in.

After the 2016 election I saved a half dozen opinion pieces by national columnists who identified an important factor in Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, namely, his skill in exploiting the resentment which many Americans felt toward political correctness and the superior attitude of most American elites.  At no time since then have I seen any indication that the Democrats were conscious of that phenomenon.  But now here is an opinion piece that helps to explain why the Democratic Party is so out of touch with exactly half of the American populace: “Slouching Toward Post-Journalism: The New York Times and other elite media outlets have openly embraced advocacy over reporting,” by Martin Gurri, City Journal, February 13, 2021 (https://www.city-journal.org/journalism-advocacy-over-reporting).

Gurri reports that the Times had given Hillary Clinton an 84% chance of winning the 2016 election.  The actual outcome was profoundly disorienting for them.  “In a somber column published the morning after, Liz Spayd, public editor, announced that the Times had entered ‘a period of self-reflection’ and expressed the hope that ‘its editors will think hard about the half of America the paper too seldom covers.’  The reflective mood quickly passed.”

Indeed it did, and it never returned.  Gurri shows how social media delivered a one-two punch to traditional journalism and produced what he describes as “an extinction-level event.”

Do you remember Marshall McLuhan’s “The medium is the message?”  What about Neil Postman’s Entertaining Ourselves to Death?  Ever wonder why critical race theory and woke culture don’t die a natural death, given the tsunami of penetrating critical analysis they have attracted?  Here it is.  READ. THIS. ARTICLE (if you want to).

https://www.city-journal.org/journalism-advocacy-over-reporting

Pray for the Church in Lebanon

Here is an important blog post from the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, Lebanon.  There is a lot going on there, as you may have heard.

This was my comment:

As an American Christian with roots in Jordan, I want to say AMEN to Nabil Habiby’s wise counsel.  Jesus is the LORD of Lords, the KING of kings.  Therefore there is no escaping the political implications of the Gospel.  Moreover, the primary political significance of the Gospel is what happens when the governor repents of his sins and gives honor to the One to whom honor is due: then there is political freedom!  How then can the church neglect her prophetic role in society?

The American church is praying for you.  Courage, my brothers and sisters!  God is with us!

Thomas Alderman

The Jewish Prophets

When we took up residence in the Middle East, one of my goals was to understand how Arab Christians viewed their relationship with Israel.  I am happy to be able to say that I succeeded: Arab Christians are very critical of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and they are deeply frustrated by what they see as American evangelicals’ unquestioning support of Israel’s actions there.  They believe that it is at least in part due to that support that the United States has not pressed Israel to reach a settlement with the Palestinians or even to suspend its settlement activity in the West Bank.

I think that generally, Arab Christians are loathe to speak of the ways in which Palestinians also contribute to the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian relations.  But it is clearly Israel which dominates the power relationship with the Palestinians, and it grieves me most of all that the Israel I love refuses to do justice toward them.  I want to bring to your attention an excellent sermon by Hikmat Kashouh, Research Professor of New Testament and Biblical Interpretation at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and Senior Pastor at Resurrection Church in Beirut.  Dr. Kashouh shows how the Jewish prophets themselves denounced in ancient Israel the very practices in which the modern Israeli state is engaged today, and warns of the potentially disastrous consequences.  To hear and/or read the sermon, click here.

The Meaning of the 2016 Presidential Election

Here are four more recent and very thoughtful opinion pieces from the New York Times on the meaning of the 2016 presidential election.

Ross Douthat, October 16: In Defense of the Religious Right

David French, November 24: Is Criticism of Identity Politics Racist or Long Overdue?

Maureen Dowd, November 26: Election Therapy from my Basket of Deplorables

Jennifer Finney Boylen, December 2: Really, You’re Blaming Transgender People for Trump?