For the last ten years I have been saying that I didn’t understand Donald Trump. I don’t know why he does things. And I can’t simply trust that what he does will be the right thing. Those two reasons were sufficient for me never to vote for him. In his Wall Street Journal column Holman Jenkins presents his unified theory of Trump:

I find myself joking with die-hard Russiagate believers that their theory of Trump treason explains only half of Mr. Trump’s Russia actions. My theory explains 100%: Mr. Trump says and does whatever, in his cynical mind, he thinks will benefit Mr. Trump in the next five minutes. This is a universal theory of Trump behavior to which I have yet to find a significant exception.

That isn’t precisely “circular reasoning” but it’s close enough to it for government work. That sort of reasoning may be explanatory but I don’t believe it’s sufficient. It’s not predictive.

I wanted to share some misgivings I had about an op-ed I read recently in the Washington Post. In it a professor of Islamic law attempts to reassure Americans who fear that Muslims want to impose sharia on everyone else. His argument is that classical Islamic jurisprudence distinguishes between fiqh, the rules governing personal religious conduct, and siyasa, the rules by which governments maintain order and promote the public good.

He explains:

Even Muslims can miss this distinction. Too often, I hear American Muslims approach an election by looking for which candidate or policy most closely reflects the religious rules by which they personally live.

I think the author has inadvertently identified the principal weakness in his own argument.

The problem isn’t whether Islamic jurisprudence contains such a distinction. I’ll take his word for that. The problem is that not all Muslims make it. Indeed, he acknowledges as much himself.

There is a tendency in religious communities, hardly confined to Islam, to conflate religious obligations with customary practices. “The way we’ve always done things” becomes “the way God commands us to do things.” Once that happens, distinguishing between personal religious observance and public law becomes considerably more difficult than the author suggests.

There is another complication. Not all Muslims agree about who possesses the legitimate authority to make siyasa. Some believe that authority properly belongs to the caliph. Others recognize different forms of political authority. The author’s suggestion that an American Muslim entering the voting booth is, in effect, standing in the shoes of the sultan is an interesting analogy but not one that all Muslims would necessarily accept.

Nor does accepting the distinction between fiqh and siyasa settle the matter. The author argues that government should act in the public good. But what constitutes the public good? A devout Muslim might quite sincerely believe that requiring everyone to observe certain religious rules would benefit society as a whole. The distinction between personal religious obligations and public policy doesn’t resolve that disagreement.

There is also a difference between acknowledging the authority of a government and regarding that government as religiously legitimate. Muslims who reject the latter may nonetheless accept the former. That distinction deserves consideration, too.

The author illustrates his argument with abortion. He suggests that a Muslim woman deciding whether to have an abortion is asking a question of fiqh, while deciding whether abortion should be prohibited by law is a question of siyasa. I understand the distinction. But if she believes abortion takes an innocent human life, why would that belief cease to inform her understanding of the public good when she enters the voting booth? Secular voters face precisely the same problem.

My principal objection is that the author is attempting to answer an empirical question with a theological argument.

The question that concerns Americans who fear the imposition of sharia is not whether a scholar can construct an interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence compatible with religious pluralism. It is whether Muslims who participate in American political life actually accept that interpretation and act accordingly.

Those are two very different questions.

It would be equally mistaken to assume that all Muslims want to impose their religious practices on others. Islam is not monolithic, and neither are Muslims. But the existence of a jurisprudential distinction between fiqh and siyasa tells us little about how widely that distinction is accepted or how it is applied in practice.

I don’t doubt the author’s sincerity. I think his argument for religious pluralism is worth making, particularly to his fellow Muslims. What I question is whether it provides the reassurance he intends for non-Muslims.

Indeed, when he acknowledges that even Muslims can miss the distinction on which his entire argument depends, he has supplied a reason for asking the very questions he is trying to put to rest.

I’ve got to admit that I’m confused by Fareed Zakaria’s most recent Washington Post column. I don’t like President Trump’s foreign policy any more than he does but I don’t think the key asset that prevented the use of nuclear weapons or nuclear proliferation was trust. The slug is “For decades, global trust in Washington kept nuclear weapons in check. Now that restraint is fading.” Here’s the meat of the column:

After World War II, the United States pulled off something close to a geopolitical miracle. Japan and Germany became the second- and third-most-powerful economies on earth, yet neither sought nuclear weapons or the ability to defend itself alone. They aligned their security policy with Washington and entrusted their ultimate defense to American soldiers and American nuclear weapons.

Think how strange that arrangement was. Great powers throughout history have acquired armies to counter the top dog. Yet America’s allies agreed to depend on it for their survival. They did so not because America was invariably wise or generous but because the entire international system thus created benefited the U.S., too. American power was formidable but trust in America was priceless.

Nowhere in the column does he mention global strategic superiority, unsurpassed industrial capabilities, or mutually-assured destruction. IMO what stayed the Soviets’ hand from using nuclear weapons was their belief that the United States would retaliate overwhelmingly with nuclear weapons. Those were the same forces that prevented other countries from developing their own nuclear weapons.

The perfect counter-example is North Korea. North Korea did not develop nuclear weapons because they did not trust us. They developed nuclear weapons because the Chinese allowed them to and the Chinese had a nuclear deterrent of their own.

To me the more important question is why did the Chinese allow the North Koreans to develop nuclear weapons? Certainly they didn’t trust the North Koreans. My best guess is that the Chinese trust the North Koreans more than they do us and believe their own nuclear weapons deter the U. S. sufficiently. China did not have to trust North Korea with nuclear weapons. It merely had to be unwilling to accept the consequences of preventing North Korea from acquiring them.

I wanted to call your attention to the post at the Uncharted Territories Substack analyzing the riots presently going on in France. Here’s a snippet:

How did we get there? Initially, students were complaining about their terrible conditions: There’s not enough money for schools and teachers. They said it’s because there’s too much austerity. Is it?
Others say it’s the immigrants—especially Muslims—who wreck everything.
Or the opportunities of non-Whites.
Others say it’s the islamo-leftist alliance.
Or the police, because they’re too violent.
Or the justice system, which doesn’t imprison agitators enough.

I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out, especially as a veteran of French education (I did all my primary and secondary schooling in the French system and got one of my undergrad degrees from a Parisian university). So I did. The following is a detailed account of what has happened, and why I think it happened, based on plenty of videos and data.

In the author’s characteristic manner he goes on to review the matter in a dispassionate, highly factual, supported manner. The TL;DR version is

What did not cause the riots

• Not enough spending on education
• Too many immigrants

What did cause the riots

• The French are spending too much on pensions
• The French are not screening their immigrants properly
• The French are not enforcing their own laws sufficiently

I have my own views but I’ll keep my opinions to myself. The United States has problems of its own and, honestly, I’d rather have our problems than France’s.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed saddens me a bit, as most of his op-eds do. In the op-ed he urges Democrats to use their putative new Congressional majority to become more moderate:

There is little question that President Trump and the GOP will lose this election. With Mr. Trump’s approval rating hitting a historic low for an incumbent president before the midterms, Republicans will cede control of the House and likely the Senate. What is still far from clear is whether Democrats will win. That question won’t be answered on Nov. 3 but over the next two years.

The top story from the 2026 cycle will be the electoral opening Democrats seized—and will have to maintain. Most important, the McCain-Romney Republicans, who are politically homeless, need to be welcomed into Democrats’ governing and electoral coalition. More than 25% of self-described “non-MAGA Republicans” would prefer Democratic control of the next Congress. That is crucial because as in 1991 and 2007—the years before Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won the White House—how Democrats govern in 2027 will determine what happens in 2028 and beyond.

and

Millions of McCain-Romney voters are redefining their political identities, and they will be most responsible for Democratic gains in November. These voters don’t want to be associated with MAGA, and they see themselves as free agents. The question for Democrats is whether we’re willing to give them a permanent home.

Here’s his advice:

First, ban stock trading for elected and appointed officials in all three branches. Second, prohibit their participation in prediction markets. Third, require government officials who have a net worth of more than $1 million to put their assets in a blind trust while serving. Finally, to prevent the foreign interference the Founding Fathers worried about, ban all foreign gifts and investments to public officials while serving and for two years after they leave office. This would have precluded a firm linked to the United Arab Emirates from investing $500 million in the Trump family’s crypto enterprise.

Democrats should also address the cost of living. We should immediately raise the federal minimum wage, the first hike in nearly two decades. Next, we should reduce the tariffs that have proved so counterproductive. By making government deliver again, we’ll come out ahead politically and, more important, substantively.

The reason it saddens me is that I fear Mr. Emanuel is engaging in nostalgia. I think he’s nostalgic for the midterm victory of which he was the principal architect in 2006. His success in 2006 depended on recruiting candidates whose views sometimes differed substantially from those of the Democratic Party’s leadership and activist base. Would today’s Democratic Party tolerate such candidates?

I can agree with his proposals with some quibbles (for example, a $12/hour minimum wage is different than a $25/hour wage and the candidate likely to be our next senator is arguing for a $25/hour minimum wage). His proposals might not being as strongly supported among his presumed audience as he thinks. In December 2021, House Speaker Pelosi explicitly defended lawmakers’ right to trade stocks.

For me the question is less whether from a policy standpoint, historic standpoint, or strategic standpoint the Democratic Party should take those steps but whether today’s Democratic Party can take those steps from a political standpoint? I see this op-ed as yet another salvo in Mr. Emanuel’s bid to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2028. Would he be a viable candidate in today’s Democratic Party?

I don’t know that there has ever been an editorial with whose opening passages I agreed with less than this one from the Washington Post:

Health care keeps growing more expensive because the American system is less and less a free market. Fewer people pay directly for medical care, and government heavily subsidizes demand without increasing supply, a sure route to higher prices. The Biden administration worsened these dynamics by making it too easy to sign up for zero-premium insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act — which invited rampant fraud — and by extending unnecessary Medicare Part D subsidies.

but with whose conclusions I agreed with so strongly:

The Trump administration took reasonable and modest steps to address both problems. Democratic leaders characterized them as draconian cuts. Now the numbers are in, and the sky didn’t fall.

These are the “numbers” that I found startling:

Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tell us that just 51 of the 760,000 removed enrollees have requested reinstatement. Those 51 accounts have yet to be verified “due to suspicious agent and broker activity, possible impersonations and other red flags warranting further scrutiny,” according to a CMS official.

51 is roughly .001% of the total removed. Less than one ten-thousandth. Not bad for government work. And even that number may be an overstatement.

What’s wrong with doing something that saves more than $2 billion and hurts no one? Youth wants to know.

What I disagree with most is the opening sentence. We haven’t had a “free market” in healthcare for more than a century and there is no longer a path to one that most Americans would accept. I’ve already proposed my solution and it isn’t a free market. You cahn’t get the-ah from he-ah.

The old friend I mentioned in a previous post made Variety.

I continue to take note of the sharp difference between the editorial policies of the Washington Post prior to its acquisition by Jeff Bezos and its present editorial policy. At times I’m not sure whether I’m reading a Washington Post editorial or a post at Reason.com (a libertarian organization/journal). The most recent example is this editorial on President Trump’s offer to bail out farmers:

President Donald Trump is trying to rescue vulnerable Republicans in the Midwest by promising an $8 billion bailout for farmers two weeks before the midterms. That would bring direct federal payments to farmers this fiscal year to about $55 billion. The amount is about a quarter of what farms add annually to U.S. gross domestic product and nearly five times the level of direct payments in 2017.

I don’t support either President Trump or farm subsidies. As should be no surprise IMO the Trump Administration’s most recent offer is feckless. Here’s the part I found interesting:

Farmers face real hardships. Diesel prices per gallon have risen about 75 percent and trade disruptions from the Iran war have boosted fertilizer prices. Pointless trade wars and tariffs have reduced foreign markets where American farmers can sell their crops and have raised prices for equipment. Ranchers have also voiced frustration at the chilling effect immigration raids have had on the meatpacking workforce.

That’s the sole mention of migrant workers, immigrants, immigration, or immigration enforcement in the piece. That’s interesting considering that, if the Trump Administration has a key focus, I would think it was immigration enforcement.

I think it would be interesting if the editors quantified the effects of those on farmers. I would genuinely like to know their relative impacts. I don’t know what their relative importance to farmers might be. Maybe their significance is cumulative.

Here’s something I haven’t done before. It’s a picture of me hard at work on a post for this blog.