I’m starting this draft on Friday.

I spent the majority of this week up in Miami for a conference. I stayed in a nice little hotel a stone’s throw from Trump Doral. It’s a niche place called “La Quinta Inn.” I brought a 35-pound kettlebell and a 25-pound mace, so early mornings and evenings were spent grappling with physics.

America’s new socialists, those Bernie Sanders acolytes, are now all the rage among the Democrats. They share a certain naiveté along with an absolute assurance that they alone can see humankind clearly; that they can find a better way. Seduced as they are by this sense of confidence, they ignore the wisdom of others and (at best) reject the lessons of history. This is all irrelevant, they believe, and they make no effort to learn otherwise. They will guide us with their superior intellect and their overarching empathy. They will make things better. They are the ones they are looking for.

The problem isn’t just them. The problem is that most Americans are equally ignorant of history, hence susceptible to a kind of generational serial socialist seduction. And it’s not as if the lessons of history are ancient or obscure. These lessons are both modern and ongoing. Take China. Americans know nothing of, nor can they even imagine in their wildest nightmares, the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1950s and 60s. It was a policy of grassroots chaos encouraged by the party. There was no organized restraint; enemies of the “revolution” were fair game for harassment, incarceration, torture, and assassination. Mao’s populist and self-ascribed army of “Red Guard” revolutionaries were relentless. Books were burned. Religious and cultural buildings and artifacts were torn down and destroyed. Even cemeteries were pillaged, graves and bodies desecrated. There was no such thing as collateral damage when ridding China all non-communist impurity.

So, this is the scenario:

Under Senate rules, in order to reschedule a hearing one week’s notice must be given. A hearing next Thursday cannot happen; at the earliest, it would happen next Friday. With attendant negotiations tomorrow, probably the earliest would be the following Monday, after the start of the Supreme Court’s term. A committee vote for referral to the whole Senate would be later, as would be a confirmation vote. Judge Kavanaugh would miss a significant number of cases. As the Court’s term would have already started, Democrats would renew their cry of “What’s the hurry, now?”

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