Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

This is from the blog of the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff: "John Bolton :    Bolton is a genuinely dangerous man, and I am delighted to see him gone.    His summary dismissal highlights the odd but welcome fact that Trump is a dove.    A belligerent dove, a bullying dove, a bombastic dove, an ignorant dove, a feckless dictator-loving suck up of a dove,  but a dove nonetheless.    This is a dangerous world.    We must take our comfort where we can find it." No comment. 

I've made no effort to edit or make sense of this. It's just what I jotted down at the time. He is in his reading-carefully-from-the-teleprompter mode. "Horrors on the scale of September 11, and we can never forget that, have not been repeated on our shores." "The American people are weary of war without victory."  Criticized nation building, not interested in re-creating other countries so that they are "in our own image."  His first instinct was "to pull out," but ...  he has come to distrust his instincts.  Three conclusions 1) our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome...  2) consequences of a rapid exit are predictable and unacceptable.  [But isn't this what HRC was saying? She took flak on that both from Sanders and then from Trump himself.] 3) security threats we face in Afghanistan and the broader region are immense.  With regard to the "broader region," he soon bring...

Another term of the U.S. Supreme Court has come and gone. This year, the one case that is THE ONE, destined for the history books, not just the law books, is clearly ... well, there are at least two, and they were both decided very near the end of the term. The court addressed the latest challenge to a pillar of Obamacare, and it offered constitutional protection to the institution of marriage between homosexuals.  I'll discuss each of those opinions in the second part of this three-part review. Today, I'll say a few words about each of three second-tier decisions, so to speak.  In increasing order of importance as I quite subjectively determine that, I've decided to include here Oneok v.Learjet (on preemption in the US energy markets); Brumfield v. Cain (on the death penalty and the mentally handicapped); Zivotofsky v. Kerry (separation of powers and recognition of the boundaries of foreign countries). They each raise questions foundational enough to make ...