"In the current chaos, I’ve come to appreciate Marcus Aurelius’s maxim that 'The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.'"

"And I have to say I’m horribly conflicted on some issues. I’m supportive of attempts to interrogate the sins of the past, in particular the gruesome legacy of slavery and segregation, and their persistent impact on the present. And in that sense, I’m a supporter of the motives of the good folks involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. But I’m equally repelled by the insistent attempt by BLM and its ideological founders to malign and dismiss the huge progress we’ve made, to re-describe the American experiment in freedom as one utterly defined by racism, and to call the most tolerant country on the planet, with unprecedented demographic diversity, a form of 'white supremacy.' I’m tired of hearing Kamala Harris say, as she did yesterday: 'The reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human.' This is what Trump has long defended as 'truthful hyperbole' — which is a euphemism for a lie. But here’s one thing I have absolutely no conflict about. Rioting and lawlessness is evil. And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy. This comes first. If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does. In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue.... One of the most devastating lines in president Trump’s convention speech last night was this: 'Tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?' A cheap shot, yes. But in the current context, a political bullseye."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, in "The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into/If law and order are what this election is about, they will lose it."

IN THE COMMENTS: People are not buying that it was a “cheap shot” or a “trap.”