Proportionality in War

Just-war theory is useful if it’s interpreted properly.

Take the principle of proportionality, for example:

Combatants must make sure that the harm caused to civilians or civilian property is not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated by an attack on a legitimate military objective.

If the enemy’s objective is the destruction of your nation — civilians and all — it is just to seek the destruction of the enemy’s nation — civilians and all.

Thus endeth today’s lesson in how to wage war.

Trump vs. Biden: 6 (Trump Resurgent)

RealClearPolitics maintains a running tally of presidential election polls. I construct a moving average of the results, where the average represents Trump’s lead (or deficit) for the 10 most recent polls. I also construct a 95-percent confidence interval around the moving average, using the margins of error reported by pollsters. (Having done this for a while and observed some erratic and incredible results from Rasmussen Reports, I removed the results published by that formerly reliable polling organization from my calculations.)

Here’s the trend since late July 2023:

Back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire boosted Trump considerably. His margin is now (barely) back in positive territory (i.e., the lower band of the 95-percent confidence interval is just above zero).

CAVEAT: This isn’t a prediction of the outcome of the election. The figures simply reflect the stated preferences of respondents when the polls were conducted. Also (and positively), a GOP candidate can win even when he is behind in the (meaningless) nationwide popular vote (see this).

What Do I See in My Crystal Ball?

Nothing good:

The Biden administration overcomes the resistance of Texas and other GOP-led States and continues to allow illegal aliens (potential Democrat voters) to inundate the nation.

Perversely, in response to the resistance from Texas and other GOP-led States, the Biden administration declares a “national emergency” and effectively seizes control of GOP-controlled States. All policies that affirm life and liberty are suppressed (e.g., abortion bans and limits, school choice, effective law-enforcement, and — course — the freedoms of religion and speech).

If the immigration crisis doesn’t result in a “national emergency”, a different predicate will be found. The left’s need for control has is obsessive.

One result of the “national emergency” is the cancellation of the 2024 presidential election and the installation of a “provisional” government, led nominally by Biden (with Obama pulling the strings).

Even if there’s no national emergency or a provisional government, the left will remain in control through electoral chicanery.

Among many things, Biden administration’s egregious policies continue; for example, privileges for violent criminals, blacks, queers, and other “identity groups” (despite their known anti-social predilections and lack of accomplishments and abilities); the impoverishing war on fossil fuels and their efficient use (e.g., in gasoline-powered automobiles, gas furnaces, and gas cooktops); and the aforementioned flood of illegal aliens whose are supported the tax-paying citizens who are also the victims of the criminals among said aliens.

The regime finds a way around the GOP’s efforts to block aid to Ukraine and persists in a war that spreads to Western Europe and thus (via NATO) to the United States — perhaps involving exchanges of nuclear weapons.

The regime fails to take decisive action in the Middle East (and against Iran, specifically), with the result that critical resources and a critical trade route are throttled — re-igniting inflation and imposing real burdens (e.g., soaring energy prices) on working-class Americans.

Israel stands alone and eventually succumbs to the Muslim hordes, which leads to a second Holocaust. The provisional government tut-tuts and does nothing.

Iran, North Korea, and China — having observed the regime’s fecklessness — attack allied nations and international-trade routes, thereby exacerbating the effects of the conflagration in the Middle East. Diminished U.S. armed forces will only stand by as South Korea and Japan are assailed by missile attacks, Taiwan is subjugated to China, and the South China Sea and its bordering nations become China’s possessions.

The regime — under heavy pressure from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea — enters into an alliance of “peace and prosperity” with those nations. The effect of the alliance is the subjugation of working Americans (i.e., the people who produce things, not ideas) to the regulatory state and the gradual reduction of working people’s living standards to the those of the 1940s (at best).

Further emulating Soviet-style “democracy” the labor of the masses (including the illegal hordes) enables the ruling classes and their favorite to live high on the hog.

Continuing the lawfare conducted against Donald Trump and the J6 protestors, Soviet-style “justice” is exacted upon those who openly dissent from the new dispensation. True justice dies with the effective revocation of the Constitution and the emasculation of those courts that might have resisted the new dispensation.

These are my worst fears. I hope that I’m badly wrong.

Related reading:

Brandon Smith, “Cultural Replacement: Why the Immigration Crisis Is Being Deliberately Engineered“, Alt-Market.us, January 25, 2024

Graham McAleer, “Is Conservatism’s Future Strauss or Vogelin?“, Law & Liberty, January 26, 2024

Hans von Spakovsky, “Biden Doesn’t Have Any Legal Authority to Seize Control of the Texas National Guard“, The Daily Signal, January 27, 2024

Another Measure of Political Polarization: The Winner’s Share of the Popular Vote in Presidential Elections

In “A Measure of Political Polarization: The Decline of Collegiality in the Confirmation of Justices“, I concocted an index of collegiality for the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court justices:

C = Fraction of votes in favor of confirming a nominee/fraction of Senate seats held by the nominating president’s party

A C score greater than 1 implies some degree of (net) support from the opposing party. The higher the C score, the greater the degree of support from the opposing party.

Examples:

Tom Clark, nominated by Democrat Harry Truman, was confirmed on August 18, 1949, by a vote of 73-8; that is, he received 90 percent of the votes cast. Democrats then held a 54-42 majority in the Senate, just over 56 percent of the Senate’s 96 seats. Dividing Clark’s share of the vote by the Democrats’ share of Senate seats yields C = 1.60. Clark, in other words, received 1.6 times the number of votes controlled by the party of the nominating president.

Samuel Alito, nominated by Republican George W. Bush, was confirmed on January 31, 2006, by a vote of 58-42; that is, he received 58 percent of the votes cast. Republicans then held 55 percent of the Senate’s 100 seats. The C score for Alito’s nomination is 1.05 (0.58/0.55).

The index, which I computed for nominations since World War II, looks like this:

My commentary:

C peaked in 1975 with the confirmation of John Paul Stevens, a nominee of Republican Gerald Ford. (One of many disastrous nominations by GOP presidents.) It has gone downhill since then. The treatment of Brett Kavanaugh capped four decades of generally declining collegiality.

The decline began in Reagan’s presidency, and gained momentum in the presidency of Bush Sr. Clinton’s nominees fared about as well (or badly) as those of his two predecessors. But new lows (for successful nominations) were reached during the presidencies of Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden.

There’s another measure of political polarization, one that might be said to capture the general mood of the electorate. That measure is the share of the nationwide popular vote that has accrued to the winner of each presidential election. The nationwide popular vote is irrelevant to presidential elections because of the electoral college (see this post and this one). But the tally has some value as an indicator of the degree of divisiveness among the electorate.

Here are the numbers since the inception of the Republican Party in 1856:

The sharp dips were caused by the good showing of third parties (and sometimes fourth and fifth parties).

What I find interesting is the era of “big wins”, which began in 1920 and ended in 1984. It wasn’t an era of big wins by one party. Voters were (then) quite willing to flock to a Democrat or Republican when they were fed up with incumbent president of the other party for whatever reason (policies, economics, scandals, etc.).

A clearer picture emerges when the winner’s share is averaged over three elections:

By this measure, “national collegiality” peaked in the 1920s-1930s and remained high through the 1980s. It has since declined to a level similar to that of the rancorous and volatile post-Civil War era — the era that saw the rise of “progressivism”, which again poisons political discourse and stifles economic progress.

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