Paul D. Miller

Is It Time to Fight? Our differences are best solved through the ballot and the protest, not through the bullet or the bomb.

Seems a good time to re-up this piece from last year.

thedispatch.com/arti...

But the Oklahoma school wasn't trying to get public money for a nonsectarian purpose. It was trying to get public money to teach theology, not build a playground. That's why it was good to say no.

Oklahoma was different from the Trinity Lutheran case. Trinity Lutheran was about religious institutions being singled out for exclusion from public resources for nonsectarian purposes (a playground) on the basis of their faith. That's discriminatory.

I'm an accommodationist on the First Amendment. The Oklahoma school wasn't "accommodation." It was an outright establishment of religion. Courts were right to shoot it down.

My latest, for @TheBushCenter

www.bushcenter.org/c...

The audiobook for "The Religion of American Greatness" is 50 percent off:

www.audiobooks.com/p...

A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment Plus: A century of Flannery O’Connor.

My latest:
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Happy to share that my next book, about the war in Afghanistan, is available for preorder now:

www.amazon.com/Choos...

National greatness is overrated.

I'm much more interested in making American good again.

The foreign policy cost of Trump's first term was losing Afghanistan.

The cost of his second term will be losing Ukraine.

As bad as the first was, the second is way more consequential.

Coming this October.

The best thing about the Super Bowl is that now its time to talk about baseball.

On birthright citizenship: Trump may actually have a point about "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" in the 14th amndt. BUT: POTUS doesn't get to unilaterally reinterpret constitutional law and overturn 150 years of precedent. If we change it, do it right, w/ another amdt.

Justice and Strategy in Just Statecraft - Providence The term “just statecraft” is a novel but needed term which acknowledges the just war framework’s usefulness, not just for foreign policy but all areas of grand strategy

My latest:
providencemag.com/20...

7. Move slow, and respect stuff, especially old stuff.

Remember Chesterton's Fence: understand why the old fence was there before you tear it down.

DOGE's AI is not respecting Chesterton's Fence.

6. Silicon Valley's mantra, "move fast and break stuff," is a fun frat-boy slogan that captures the brash excitement of young entrepreneurs.

It's a stupid ethos to organize your whole life around, and dangerous for government, which has to *build* stuff.

5. Also, Musk's approach seems to have limitless optimism and faith in AI. This also strikes me as a very bad idea. It's a new technology with potentially revolutionary implications. Maybe go slow and test it on smaller things before the entire US govt?

4. Imagine, say, J. Edgar Hoover with access to DOGE's AI-powered database. That should terrify you.

3. As troubling is the potential for abuse. A virtue of the US govt's decentralized structure is that it limits the damage any one corrupt official can do. More centralization means fewer checks, more opportunities for someone to abuse access for private gain.

2. The concentration of information, and its accessibility to AI, is a really, really bad idea. Any big database is an obvious target for foreign intelligence. Hack one computer and get the entire US government's information warehouse.

Couple thoughts on AI, DOGE, and the future of government.

1. Musk will probably succeed in finding waste, fraud, and abuse (it's not that hard), and finding *some* ways to improve govt efficiency & eliminate redundancy.

But....

The USAID thing is a classic of the Trump era.
1. Not a terrible idea to reform USAID, integrate w/ State.
2. Terrible idea to just end it overnight.
3. Possibly an illegal abuse of power for POTUS to unilaterally halt operations of an agency that Congress established and funded.

Apropos of nothing, could the Weimar Republic have survived? If we could re-run history, what were the key decision-points, and what different choices might have stopped the collapse?

I have an idea for President Trump.

Since we're going to take over Gaza, I recommend that he establish a federal agency that specializes in reconstruction and development.

If only we had thought of such a thing earlier.

This is a good idea and I see zero problems and there is no chance of unexpected problems and this won't drag the US into an unnecessary war. Another win for the US.

www.washingtonpost.c...

My point is that we shouldn't have spent the last hundred years normalizing it. We're already normalized the imperial presidency to the point that, to at least half the country, Trump looks normal. That's the problem.

But since we spend 37 percent of GDP* on aid, you know, you're right, time to cut costs and do nation building at home, right?

*(actual figure is 0.14 percent).

Biggest recipients of aid are Israel and Ukraine, who use our aid to shoot down Iranian missiles and kill Hamas terrorists and Russian soldiers. Kinda thought Trump was into that sort of thing.

Foreign aid is strategy, not charity. It is investment in partner capacity. Teaching fishing, not giving fish.

Most of it is military and security aid, helping other countries secure borders, catch terrorists and drug traffickers over there so we don't have to over here.

What we're seeing is the culmination of a century-long growth of the imperial presidency.

Trump is taking it further than most, but it's a continuation of a trend, not a wholly new thing.

If you don't like what you're seeing, maybe rethink your admiration of TR, Wilson, & FDR