What Are We To Believe?
Scottish philosopher David Hume, one of the 18th Century empiricists, told us, “We always disbelieve the greater miracle.” This means that, when confronted with two conflicting but highly improbable statements, one of which is true and the other false, we believe the one that is more probable and discard “the greater miracle.”
Note how the meme to the left speaks to that. We can believe that our most learned and historically credible people have conspired to fool us with respect to climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, or we can believe that they are all wrong and that Donald Trump is the only reliable source of information on these issues.
Similarly, we can believe that the entirety of our top people in our military, intelligence, and justice communities are conspiring and lying to us, or that Donald Trump, who trusts Putin over these learned, historically honest and patriotic loyal people is again, the only reliable source of information.
Regardless of how you personally come down on this decision, you need to remember that almost 40% of American voters back Trump, regardless of the fact that his claims on these and other matters (do we have a national emergency?) are becoming more outrageous as time passes.
Maybe you want to apply logic and reason, and insist that others do too. Good luck with that.
Craig,
By trying to intertwine and misrepresent the opinions of scientists working in the field of climate change with your own political agenda, you do harm to both the credibility of the scientists (whom you do a great disservice), you own political agenda( which loses credibility by such disingenuous tactics) and you own credibility as an environmental advocate.
Why bother?
These endless anti-trump rants are counter-productive.
Currently, the President’s approval rating across twelve major polls is 45% (not nearly 40%) which remains consistent with his overall performance. (highest Rasmussen 49.9% v lowest CNN 42%).
(Nancy Pelosi, 28% Chuck Shumer 26%).
The issue of border control and illegal migration is very emotive and difficult. The hypocrisy of the democrats has been noted by the electorate and although the President’s plan is also unpopular, it stands in stark contrast in terms of clarity and honesty.
As the debate intensifies over the next two years, the average American voter’s opinion will harden in support of stricter border control and demand a permanent solution.
The US voter’s at an election, will not vote for ‘open borders’ or a weak and hypocritical immigration policy.
The US is quite capable of engineering a border wall which couldn’t be penetrated without massive and easily detected tunneling through bedrock, an undertaking far beyond the capacity of any unlawful enterprise.
To pretend US engineers are so stupid or incompetent as to not foresee and prevent such an occurrence on a wide scale, is absurd.
Obviously, a well engineered, highly visible barrier will act as a major deterrent to large scale ‘caravans’ or illegal migration. It will symbolize US determination to control border security. It will not be a 100% solution, but will stem the tide.
Equally obvious is the need to develop in conjunction with increased security a wide range of policies to prevent and deter, as well as regulate, illegal migration while encouraging legal migration.
The President has a valid argument for declaring a State of Emergency on humanitarian, health and economic grounds.
President Trump has argued his case badly, but his case does have some merit.
The end of the recession and boom in the US economy since the election of President Trump has seen swelling numbers of illegal migrants seeking entry through the southern border.
These migrant are easily exploited by criminals, drug cartels, sex slavers, sweat-shop slavery and pedophile sex rings.
Between 2011-2016, U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 178,825 unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Honduras,Guatemala and other Central /South American nations. The US border patrol estimated it catches only 1 in 4.
Illegal unaccompanied children are difficult and expensive to deport. President Barack Obama was forced to call on Congress for an emergency appropriation of $4 billion and sought advice from the DoJ and Congress as how to revise the law in order to expedite handling large numbers of children by removing the protections of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.
It’s estimated that nearly 150 million people wish to migrate to the US !
Recent upsurge in US employment and economic prosperity has attracted large numbers of Central-South American women and children to risk illegal migration to the US.
Lured by propaganda from organizations such as “Pueblo Sin Fronteras”( “People Without Borders) Drug smugglers, people smugglers, etc, hundreds of thousands undertake the journey.
The migration trail is a long, dangerous humanitarian tragedy. United Nations agencies estimate that at least 60% of women, girls and young boys are murdered, kidnapped, enslaved, or repeatedly raped along the trail.
These highly traumatized victims arrive illegally in the US each year in staggering numbers. Estimates of more than 300,000 are widely accepted.
Many of these women and children enter a life of “slavery’ in the US. The health problems and social consequences are becoming a huge, but never discussed, social and economic time bomb.
Most frightening is the high instances of the unfortunate people who have contracted infectious, communicable diseases, often new strains of ‘super-bugs’ resistant to antibiotics and treatment.
One woman or child, infected with such an undetected disease diseases, forced into underground prostitution, may infect tens of thousands of US citizens, the results of which will not be realized as an epidemic for 10 years or longer until the symptoms begin to be apparent.
That is just one woman. This year alone thousands of such tragic carriers of misery will enter through the US southern border undetected.
Emotive compassion is understandable, but when misplaced can lead to greater harm.
This is one of the President’s argument for a “national emergency”.
However, the President’s declaration, however understandable, is ill-conceived. The Constitution clearly vests funding in the control of Congress, and in particular the House of Representatives.
President Trump is wrong to invoke emergency powers to circumvent the Constitutional political process.
The democrat controlled Reps, might be playing partisan politics against a President they hate, they might be selfish and bloody-minded, even irrational and hypocritical, but the Constitution requires the President to leave that judgement to the voters and the President must take his case to the people through the ballot box, however frustrating that may be.