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Hier — 28 mars 2024The American Conservative

Joe Lieberman, Man of the Inside Party

Politics

Joseph Lieberman, Man of the Inside Party

Lieberman demonstrated how character can disguise morally radical politics.

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Joseph Lieberman was a Democrat who somehow belonged to both parties without fully fitting in with either. This is another way of saying that Lieberman’s true party was the Inside Party. To the extent that Republicans and Democrats have to answer to outsiders who want to change Washington, the Connecticut senator couldn’t be entirely at home on either team.

Ironically, Lieberman won national office in the first place because change-minded conservatives wanted to purge one of the last fossils of the GOP’s old “Eastern establishment.” Sen. Lowell Weicker was a Rockefeller Republican who irked the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. so much that Buckley—a Connecticut resident—endorsed his Democratic challenger in 1988. The state went Republican in that year’s presidential election: George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by more than 5 points. Lieberman, the Democratic challenger, beat Weicker by less than a single point in the Senate race.

Conservatives made the difference, but they paid a price. Connecticut has never again elected a Republican to the United States Senate. And the state—which voted for Ronald Reagan twice in the 1980s and even for Gerald Ford in 1976—has been won by the Democrat in every presidential election of the last 32 years. Rockefeller Republicans and conservative Republicans together could win federal elections in the state. But conservatives preferred a Democrat like Lieberman to a Republican like Weicker, and Rockefeller Republicans likewise came to prefer Democrats to any halfway conservative Republican.

Lieberman’s election was a disaster for conservatives in another way. The newly minted senator helped to accelerate the rise of the “New Democrats,” who presented themselves as more market-oriented than the big-government Democrats of old and less culturally radical than the left wing of the party. Bill Clinton and Al Gore were among the champions of this new movement, and the Clinton-Gore ticket would win both presidential elections of the 1990s. 

But from the start, the New Democrats were a fraud. In his first two years in office, while his party controlled Congress, President Clinton pursued left-wing policies on every front, from the FACE Act, which restricted the free speech and assembly rights of pro-life protesters, to gun control, gays in the military, and socialized medicine (“Hillarycare”). Lieberman was as socially liberal as Clinton, and later in the decade he even voted against a ban on partial-birth abortion. Yet he maintained an appearance of moderation by substituting the personal for the political: He voted radically, but he was serious about his Jewish faith and was outspokenly critical of violent video games and Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky—though that didn’t stop Lieberman from voting against Clinton’s removal from office after he was impeached for lying under oath about the tryst. 

Lieberman demonstrated how character can disguise morally radical politics. He was a kind of whitewash, and that won him a spot on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2000. Vice President Al Gore didn’t need Lieberman as his running mate to provide policy experience or factional balance—they were both New Democrats—and the Connecticut senator wasn’t going to win Gore any state he couldn’t already count on. What Lieberman did was to lend his good character to absolve the vice president from association with Clinton’s sins. 

If New Democrats like Lieberman were not so different from the earlier McGovernite left where abortion and other cultural issues were concerned, however, they were indeed a break with the progressive tradition when it came to foreign policy and neoliberal economics. Lieberman, like his close Republican friend John McCain, was one of the most consistently bellicose figures in American politics. He was an early supporter of the Iraq War—and a late one, too, which cost him his party’s nomination for the Senate in 2006. But he again used Republicans to win a general election that he would otherwise have lost. 

That November, the Republican nominee for Senate received less than 10 percent of the vote—and while Connecticut was very much a blue state by then, it wasn’t so blue that a Republican could expect to draw only single-digit support. The Republican vote simply went to Lieberman instead of the GOP candidate, and enough of the Democratic vote did so as well that Lieberman, running as an independent, beat the antiwar Democratic nominee. 

America as a whole turned against the Iraq War in that election, causing Republicans to lose both the House and the Senate. But Lieberman secured re-election with plurality support in a three-way race by representing the establishment positions within both parties—the hawkishness of the Bush-era GOP and the social liberalism of Democrats then and now.

He continued to vote and caucus with the Democrats, but Lieberman increasingly exploited his Inside Party prestige with Republicans as well. He endorsed John McCain for president and spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention. McCain seriously contemplated making Lieberman his running mate and was only dissuaded by the unavoidable fact that social conservatives in the GOP would never countenance such a thing. But if the choice had come down solely to Inside Party preferences, Lieberman would have been the pick. There was no other politician in America closer to McCain’s priorities. They were warhawks of a feather.

Lieberman retrospectively recognized that voters wouldn’t have bought what he and McCain wanted to sell. He joked that if he’d been selected by McCain he’d have had “the opportunity to take a unique place in history to have run for vice president on two different party tickets—and to have lost twice.” He was glad that “God saved me from that—or the Republican delegates saved me from that.”

Yet up to his death on Wednesday, Lieberman still dreamed of making the Inside Party a force that could win elections. He became the founding chairman of “No Labels,” a project aspiring to field a centrist presidential candidate without a traditional party apparatus. Democrats, especially this year, perceive the initiative as a threat, given the conflicts within Joe Biden’s coalition over Israel and the risk that No Labels would split socially liberal voters with the Democrats while leaving social conservatives united within the GOP.

He will be remembered for being the first Jew on a major party presidential ticket. But he’s also significant as an archetype of his time. No politician better embodied the overlap between the Clinton and George W. Bush eras. Military adventurism, crony capitalism, and “character” as a quality that could spellbind social conservatives without inconveniencing social liberals—this was the Lieberman formula, and it’s still employed today, not least by those ex-conservatives who invoke “character” as their justification for siding with the party of the cultural left over the party of Donald Trump.

Lieberman was not a moderate. From war to abortion, his views were extreme. Those who only imagine a political spectrum with moderates in the middle and maniacs at the ends are wrong: Sometimes the middle is precisely where the culture of death is strongest. The senator was a man of good character but bad politics, and only voters more committed to the left and the right prevented him from doing greater harm in higher office.

The post Joe Lieberman, Man of the Inside Party appeared first on The American Conservative.

Convicting Julian Assange Would Mean the End of Free Speech

Politics

Convicting Julian Assange Would Mean the End of Free Speech

Why the jailed publisher’s extradition case should be everyone’s concern. 

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How much is a non-binding “assurance” worth from people who probably want to see you dead? This is the linchpin question as a British court deliberates on the Biden administration’s latest conniving to bring Julian Assange to America for his legal destruction.

Since Julian Assange was indicted in 2019 for 17 charges of violating the Espionage Act, the U.S. Justice Department has sought his extradition from Belmarsh, the supermax prison in Britain where he has spent almost five years. The fight against extradition is probably the last best chance for even a facade of due process for Assange.

On Tuesday, the British High Court announced that it had effectively accepted assurances from U.S. politicians to British politicians that the Assange case is non-political, but the British judges did recognize three potential grounds for appeal. That court gave the U.S. government three weeks to provide “satisfactory assurances” that “Assange is permitted to rely on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution… that he is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen and that the death penalty is not imposed,” and that the U.S. court would not be prejudiced against him because he is a foreigner.   

None of the British or American officials recognized the supreme irony of the court decision. Assange and Wikileaks exposed deceptions and depredations by many governments around the world. Yet his legal fate depends on whether the British government chooses to trust the U.S. government—regardless of the endless lies that Assange exposed.

Stella Assange, Julian’s wife, scoffed that the decision was “astounding”: “What the courts have done is to invite a political intervention from the United States, to send a letter saying, ‘It’s all okay.’” Amnesty International stated, “While the U.S. has allegedly assured the UK that it will not violate Assange’s rights, we know from past cases that such ‘guarantees’ are deeply flawed—and the diplomatic assurances so far in the Assange case are riddled with loopholes.” 

If Assange is brought to the U.S., his fate will be settled in an Alexandria, Virginia federal courtroom notorious for stacking the deck against anyone who exposed government crimes or wrongful killings. Ask John Kiriakou—the former CIA agent and torture whistleblower who was convicted there and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Ask Daniel Hale—the whistleblower who exposed the coverup of mass killings of innocent people by Obama’s drones, convicted and sentenced to prison for 45 months. Edward Snowden was charged in the same court but prudently omitted showing up for a kangaroo trial. 

Assange’s fate threatens to be a bellwether for the destruction of journalists who vex officialdom. David Davis, a Conservative member of Parliament, warned, “The successful extradition of Julian Assange would effectively criminalize investigative journalism as espionage. It would set a legal precedent allowing the prosecution of anyone who breaks the duty of silence on classified American information and state sponsored crime.” Jodie Ginsberg, chief of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warned that Assange’s prosecution “would have disastrous implications for press freedom. It is time that the U.S. Justice Department put an end to all these court proceedings and dropped its dogged pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder.”

The U.S. government has been vilifying Assange ever since he and Wikileaks commenced revealing that thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis were killed by the U.S. military. Vice President Joe Biden denounced Assange in 2010 as a “high-tech terrorist.” But even Biden admitted at that time: “I don’t think there’s any substantive damage” from the Wikileaks revelations. “Look, some of the cables that are coming out here and around the world are embarrassing,” he said.  

Federal agencies also never proved that any of the information that Assange and Wikileaks released was false. At the court martial of former Army Corporal Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, who leaked the documents, prosecutors failed to show that any information Wikileaks disclosed had led to the death of a single person in Afghanistan or Iraq. That conclusion was re-confirmed by a 2017 investigation by PolitiFact. But Assange was guilty of violating the U.S. government’s divine right to blindfold the American people. 

The fact that Assange disclosed classified documents is sufficient to seal his legal doom—at least according to how the game is played in federal courts. After Britain arrested Assange on behalf of the U.S. government in 2019, Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, whooped that Assange “is our property and we can get the facts and the truth from him.” But Manchin had no recommendations on how Americans can “get the facts and the truth” from the federal government. Federal agencies are creating trillions of pages of new “classified” secrets each year.  

Ironically, while howling for Assange’s scalp, the Biden White House purportedly launched a “new war on secrecy” and is especially concerned about “potentially illegal [government] activities that have been shielded from the public for decades,” POLITICO reported in late 2022. A Biden administration official, speaking anonymously, declared that it is in the “nation’s best interest to be as transparent as possible with the American public.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, groused, “We spend $18 billion protecting the classification system and only about $102 million … on declassification efforts… That ratio feels off in a democracy.” But inside the Beltway, rigging the game 176-to-1 is “close enough for government work” for transparency. Thus far, Biden’s “war on secrecy” has apparently not gone beyond self-serving White House statements. 

Perhaps the most important testimony for Assange dribbled out during a sometimes scatter-brained interview last October conducted by Special Counsel Robert Hur. As Hur was pressing President Biden about the stashes of confidential documents discovered illicitly stored in his garage, his den, his think tank, his office, etc., Biden declared, “We over-classify everything…. And 99.9 percent of it has nothing to do with anything I couldn’t pick up and read out loud to the public.” Special Counsel Hur deigned not to file charges against Biden—even though his violations of federal law had plenty of similarities to the conduct that spurred 40 felony charges against former President Donald Trump. The bizarre dichotomy in the Biden and Trump cases is showcasing the arbitrariness and absurdities of federal classification policy. 

Another key to the Assange case is whether he is “permitted to rely on the First Amendment,” as the British judges wrote. Assange can’t rely on the First Amendment when telling the truth is the only war crime now recognized by the U.S. government. Defendants on espionage act cases routinely face so many piled-on court charges that they plea bargain, muzzling themselves as the price for not being locked up forever. 

There are lessons from an early American landmark court case that could help resolve the Assange case. In 1735, John Peter Zenger was charged with seditious libel for an article he published on the Royal Governor of New York. Zenger’s criticism was accurate but that was irrelevant. In Britain and its colonies, truth was no defense against seditious libel; thus, any criticism of the government risked personal destruction. But a jury of New Yorkers heroically refused to convict Zenger, thereby revolutionizing both freedom of speech and the relation of citizens to government. 

 Could a similar legal standard be used to end persecution of anyone who publicly reveals official documents that never should have been classified? Instead of rubberstamp convictions, the government should be obliged to prove that a disclosure harmed the public interest or endangered the nation. That would also undermine the perverse incentive that perpetually propels overclassification. Unfortunately, it would not be possible to get the same positive impact simply by relying on jury trials. Since that federal court is inside the Beltway, the jury pool would be overstocked with people who work for the feds and/or believe everything they hear on National Public Radio. Washington jurors are prone to behave like Soviet mobs in the 1930s who howled for death sentences for anyone the Communist Party accused of being a “wrecker.” 

Almost all the media coverage of the Assange case is failing to credit him for revealing how blindfolding citizens defines down democracy. Self-government is a sham if citizens are prohibited from knowing what elected officials are doing in their name. Politicians and Washington’s “best and brightest” have long been accustomed to covertly and recklessly intervening around the world with none of the usual checks and balances of democracy. But there is never a penalty for officialdom deceiving the public they claim to serve. 

Biden’s Justice Department and Assange’s lawyers have reportedly discussed a possible plea deal that would drop the most serious charges against him. Fair play would be satisfied if Assange pleads guilty to lese majeste—embarrassing the government by exposing its follies, frauds, and crimes. I still believe that Assange deserves a presidential Medal of Freedom, as I recommended in USA Today in 2018. 

But that would never satisfy people like Hillary Clinton, who joked about seeing Assange dead, or former CIA chief Mike Pompeo, who plotted on kidnapping and killing Assange. Hell-raisers like Assange are necessary to prevent America from becoming an Impunity Democracy in which government officials pay no price for their abuses.

The next hearing in the Assange case will be May 20 in London, a few weeks after the annual World Press Freedom Day. Biden marked that day last year by proclaiming, “Courageous journalists around the world have shown time and again that they will not be silenced or intimidated. The United States sees them and stands with them.” Except, of course, for any courageous journalist that Biden seeks to destroy. 

The post Convicting Julian Assange Would Mean the End of Free Speech appeared first on The American Conservative.

How New York and Baseball Rose Together

Books

How New York and Baseball Rose Together

In a probable overstatement, a new volume argues that New York never recovered from the Great Depression.

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The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of New York City, Kevin Baker, Knopf, 2024, 511 pages

This book is one long love letter to New York City and to the baseball that was played there. What comes across to the reader is the author’s sheer joy in writing about the city, its boroughs, its streets, and its baseball culture.

Baker’s basic argument is that baseball was a New York creation with its origin not in the countryside but in the streets of the city. Something called “base” was played in other parts of the country, New England and Philadelphia in particular, but its consolidation took place in New York in the 1840s and 1850s: Bases were placed 90 feet apart, the diamond shape was adopted, a batting order was created, three outs constituted an inning, and balls had to be caught in the air. He also argues that the role of statistics, batting average, and totaling a pitcher’s wins and losses helped secure the popularity of the game. The box score invented in 1859 by Henry Chadwick, a former fan of cricket who became the first major baseball writer and cheerleader, created what Branch Rickey called “the mortar which held baseball together.” 

Baker sprinkles the text with odd baseball items: In 1883–1884, two New York pitchers took part in every game but one for their team while hurling 206 complete games. Babe Ruth played in over 800 exhibition games during his time with Yankees, enriching the coffers of the team while risking the careers of its players. The brother of Dolph Camilli, Dodger first baseman in the late 1930s and early 1940s, was killed in the ring by the heavyweight champion Max Baer.

Baker builds his argument about the centricity of New York’s importance for baseball around the characters who became the faces of the game: first John McGraw and then Babe Ruth. He argues (correctly, in my view, especially so far as Ruth is concerned) that they were responsible for baseball’s true acceptance as America’s game, a term that dated back to the 1850s and 60s. 

Baker may overdo McGraw’s importance for establishing baseball’s popularity in the early years of the 20th century, if only because Connie Mack played a major role also. The irascible “Muggsy” McGraw and the kindly “Tall Tactician” set the tone for almost all future baseball managers. The line from McGraw to Durocher to Casey Stengel is a straight one, while Mack influenced more quiet and cerebral managers like the Yankees’ Joe McCarthy and Al Lopez, who managed the White Sox and the Cleveland Indians in the 1950s and 60s.

While McGraw is Baker’s first New York hero, it is Babe Ruth whom he idolizes, writing about him with something approaching awe. Ruth commanded sport like no other figure—Mohammed Ali is a distant second. After the Black Sox scandal, about which Baker writes one of the best and clearest sketches this side of Eliot Asinof’s Eight Men Out, Ruth (with the help of baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s crackdown on gambling) literally saved baseball.

In the words of the baseball historian Bill Jenkinson, Ruth’s “real life accomplishments transcend his myth.” Among Ruth’s 714 home runs 198 were over 450 feet. For comparison, Barry Bonds hit 36 that distance and even Mark McGwire with some chemical help, only did that 74 times. Ruth was also a talented pitcher, winning 94 games with a career 2.28 ERA.

The success of the Yankees, personified by Ruth’s dominance of the game, enabled the Bronx Bombers to build the first modern ballpark, Yankee Stadium with its 70,000-seat capacity—the first ball field to be called a stadium, not a ballpark.

Ruth personified the New York of the 1920s when the city reached its Golden Age, and Baker enjoys nothing more than long disquisitions about the expansion of the city—the growth of its skyscrapers, the development of new neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn, the expansion of the subway so that, by 1930, 91 percent of New Yorkers were within a half mile of a station.  

New York teams dominated both leagues in the 1920s, winning 11 pennants among the three teams. Baker argues as many others have that the 1927 Yankees were the greatest team in baseball history, outscoring their opponents by almost 400 runs. Ruth out-homered every other team in the American League, while he and Lou Gehrig hit one less home run than the Giants team that led the National League in circuit clouts.

In what I believe is an overstatement, Baker argues that New York never recovered from the Great Depression. “The city would get rich again,” he writes, “grow again. But the easy confidence in its genius that had existed before the great slump was gone for good.” Surely in the post-war era up to the early 1960s, New York dominated as it had in the ’20s, culturally, financially, and certainly in baseball terms. In the decade and half after World War II, the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers won a collective 19 pennants.

The second half of Baker’s paean of praise to New York is not as lively as the first part, but there are still some wonderful portraits. The passing of the Yankee dynasty from Ruth to Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio is handled well. DiMaggio fascinates him, but Baker cannot humanize the cold, aloof Yankee Clipper.

Also, by stopping at the end of World War II, Baker misses out on one of the last great contributions of New York to baseball and America: Branch Rickey putting an end to baseball’s original sin, the banning of African Americans from America’s game. A chapter on the integration of baseball, which, after all, was a New York phenomenon, is a missed opportunity in my mind, a chance to measure Jackie Robinson’s impact on the sport and nation—the most dramatic change in baseball since Babe Ruth launched the modern game in the 1920s.

Baker’s sheer joy in writing this book comes through almost every page. The reader has almost as much fun reading the book as Baker obviously had in researching and writing it. I found a few minor mistakes, but they do not detract from a book that should be on every baseball (and New York city) fan’s bookshelf.

The post How New York and Baseball Rose Together appeared first on The American Conservative.

U.S. Officials Believe That ‘We’ Are at War With Russia

Politics

U.S. Officials Believe That ‘We’ Are at War With Russia

American officials should unashamedly act for the American people.

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(Photo by YURIY DYACHYSHYN/AFP via Getty Images)

Could someone please tell Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the Senate’s premier warmongers, that “we” are not at war with Russia? Ukraine is. 

The grandstanding warrior wannabe recently visited Kiev. The Zelensky government is under pressure to expand conscription to bulk up its army. Graham enthusiastically backed the effort. Reported the Washington Post: “‘I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27,’ he told reporters Monday. ‘You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving—not at 25 or 27’.” He insisted: “We need more people in the line.”

We? When did Graham accept Ukrainian citizenship and enter the Ukrainian Rada?

Graham is one of many witless American officials who seem to believe that they are to represent foreign countries dealing with the U.S. rather than the U.S. in dealing with foreign countries. This isn’t a new phenomenon. People often have been devoted to other nations reflecting their ethnic or religious background, supporting everything up to military intervention by Washington, often to America’s great disadvantage. A commitment to ancestral homelands accounted for significant backing for NATO’s ill-fated expansion up to Russia’s borders. (So did the desire of the merchants of death to open new markets for weapons sales.)

Graham appears to have a bizarre enthusiasm for sending others off to war, here, there, and almost everywhere. Send is the key verb, at least until now. If we really “need more people in the line,” he could join Ukraine’s forces. After all, Kiev is calling on foreigners to bolster its defense. Several already have died fighting for Ukraine. Graham could finally put his life, rather than the rest of our lives, where his mouth is.

Ukrainians would welcome the move. Many Americans would as well. Graham could demonstrate that he isn’t just a showboating blowhard pretending to be tough, finally fighting in one of the wars into which he desperately sought to plunge the U.S.

The overriding duty of American officeholders is to serve the American people. Indeed, that is why the national government exists. Washington’s foreign policy should focus on U.S. national interests, particularly protecting America’s people, territory, prosperity, and constitutional system.

Of course, the means adopted should reflect the rights and interests of others. Washington has often fallen short of that ideal. Support for a murderous medley of repressive regimes during the Cold War was terrible but at least understandable. Underwriting mass killers and oppressors in such nations as Egypt and Saudi Arabiaparticular favorites of dictator fanboy Graham—today is less forgivable.

At least Ukraine deserves our sympathy, in contrast to such ruthless autocracies. Nevertheless, even Kiev’s fight is more complicated than commonly presented. Ukraine is hardly a Western-style liberal democracy. Freedom House rates Kiev only “partly free,” hardly a ringing endorsement. The latter’s leaders indulge in demagoguery and demonization against foreigners who don’t kowtow and back their demands. (Russia, of course, is more oppressive and its brutal invasion, which has wreaked such carnage for both countries, was not justified, despite the West’s reckless and belligerent behavior. Primary blame for the war remains with Moscow.)

Nevertheless, for Washington, Americans’ interests should remain central. It is one thing to wish Kiev well. It is quite another to launch a global nuclear war on its behalf, as proposed by Mississippi’s reckless, even unhinged, Sen. Roger Wicker. Those pressing to arm Ukraine irrespective of consequences and undertake the most aggressive ends—retake Crimea, overthrow the Putin government, and break up the Russian Federation—are only slightly less foolish. The U.S. already is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers. With a nuclear arsenal that matches America’s, Moscow can respond forcefully, and with a military doctrine that relies on nuclear weapons to cover its relative conventional weakness is likely to do so if it fears defeat. 

Nothing about the Russo–Ukrainian conflict warrants risking war with Russia.

Of course, the Ukraine lobby puts forth several reasons why Washington policymakers should put Kiev’s desires first. None are persuasive. One is that if victorious, Putin’s legions aren’t likely to stop, but would surge westward. A new evil empire would be born. 

It is difficult to articulate what Moscow would hope to gain from assaulting the rest of the continent. Indeed, Putin, noting such hysterical claims, responded, “The whole of NATO cannot fail to understand that Russia has no reason, no interest—neither geopolitical, nor economic, nor political, nor military—to fight with NATO countries.” Of course, nothing he says should be taken on faith, just as it would be foolish to trust U.S. and allied officials who have violated their commitments and lied about their plans. 

Nevertheless, while Putin is not a gentle liberal, he also isn’t a militaristic lunatic. Indeed, he originally hoped for a positive relationship with the West, telling the German Bundestag in 2001: “No one calls in question the great value of Europe’s relations with the United States. I am just of the opinion that Europe will reinforce its reputation of a strong and truly independent center of world politics soundly and for a long time if it succeeds in bringing together its own potential and that of Russia, including its human, territorial and natural resources and its economic, cultural and defense potential.”

Nothing Putin has said or done since suggests he is interested in European conquest. His military assaults, while lawless, have been limited to Georgia and Ukraine, and do not make him Hitler reincarnated. Even now President George W. Bush is responsible for far more civilian deaths. Moscow always viewed Tbilisi and Kiev differently and made clear NATO expansion could trigger a violent response. In 2008, CIA Director William Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, expressed what today would be dismissed as Putin talking points: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players…. I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Equally important, who imagines that the Russian army, which in more than two years of war in Ukraine has suffered severe losses while making only modest territorial gains, would go on to conquer the Baltics and Poland, march down the Unter den Linden in Berlin, sweep past the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and reach the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean? Even over the long-term Moscow’s military potential remains limited. Europe possesses a much larger economy and population than Russia; the European governments already spend far more on the military. The key to Europe’s defense is Europe, not Ukraine.

Much is made about the supposed malign precedent set by a potential Russian victory. Then authoritarians everywhere—meaning China, North Korea, and Iran, after which the list of expected evildoers and aggressors runs out—would take note and launch their own bids for world domination. Yet this claim also makes little sense. 

Aggression almost always reflects local conditions. Iran’s conventional military is weak; Tehran’s main ability is to strike out unconventionally, which it already is doing. Ukraine is meaningless as a precedent for the Korean peninsula, where the U.S. previously defended the South, and with which America retains a defense treaty and troop tripwire 

Beijing knows that the U.S. would provide weapons and training to Taiwan since Washington is already doing so. In Ukraine Europe has already demonstrated its willingness to impose restrictions on commerce and finance. Privately, Chinese officials indicate that their government already expects an American military response to any attack, especially since President Joe Biden has several times said that he would intervene. From Beijing’s standpoint, Ukraine is a welcome distraction for Washington. The conflict also drives Russia closer to China.

Finally, advocates of perpetual war argue that failure in Ukraine would hurt America’s credibility. Washington has survived multiple mistakes, disasters, and crimes over the years. Despite Hungary, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Poland, Somalia, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Hong Kong, Venezuela, and Afghanistan, foreign governments, including Ukraine and Taiwan, continue to flock to Washington begging for money, arms, treaties, and promises. After nearly 80 years punctuated by frustration and disappointment, the Europeans still put their defense in Washington’s hands, whining and wailing at the slightest suggestion that the U.S. might leave them responsible for their own defense. America would survive failure in Ukraine.

In short, the conflict, though a humanitarian horror, is not a vital security interest for the U.S. It does not warrant fighting an endless proxy war. There is no “we” when it comes to the Russo–Ukrainian war. America’s interests stand apart.

The U.S. retains a stake in a stable and peaceful Europe. Washington also prefers Kiev’s survival as an independent and sovereign government, with its people free to make their own political and economic choices. The best way to achieve both these ends would be to engage Russia over a revised security order. Reaching a workable compromise wouldn’t be easy. Nevertheless, with Ukraine as the battlefield, it is in Kiev’s as well as America’s interest to end the conflict sooner rather than later. 

Foreign governments long have sought to influence the U.S. government, distorting American foreign policy for their benefit. Graham and other members of the Washington War Party have been only too willing to do the bidding of favored foreign interests, confusing “them” with “we.” American officials should unashamedly act for the American people.

The post U.S. Officials Believe That ‘We’ Are at War With Russia appeared first on The American Conservative.

The Financial Times’ Disingenuous Sermons on Fascism

Politics

The Financial Times’ Disingenuous Sermons on Fascism

State of the Union: Oh, is this what fascism looks like?

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If a work of writing is intellectually shoddy, it can be attributed to either stupidity or dishonesty. I have not met Martin Wolf in person, so I have no idea whether he is a functional imbecile or not, and so have no other option than to give him the benefit of doubt. Perhaps his heart wasn’t in it, and he was in a rush to finish his weekly quota of writing. We have all been there. 

Whatever it is, it is unjustifiable for the Financial Times to publish his nonsense. 

Consider this statement: “One feature [of fascism] is the cult of tradition. Fascists worship the past. The corollary is that they reject the modern. ‘The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason,’ [Umberto] Eco writes, ‘is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.’”

Eco was obviously an arch-liberal, but Wolf’s assertion that fascism is opposed to modernity—and modernism—is frankly so absurd that one almost questions his comprehension skills. Italian Fascists committed state power to crush dissent while perpetuating a novel state-sanctioned version of spirituality, architecture, and art. Early 1920s sanctioned style of architecture in Italy was known as Architettura razionale (one can guess the translation). A noted artistic school that supported fascism to its end was Futurism. The clue is in the name

Wolf isn’t a historian, so I am guessing he failed to read any original sources, but here is a quote from a book that might be considered an authority on Fascism: Benito Mussolini’s succinctly titled The Doctrine of Fascism.  

The Fascist negation of socialism, democracy, liberalism, should not, however, be interpreted as implying a desire to drive the world backwards to positions occupied prior to 1789, a year commonly referred to as that which opened the demo-liberal century. History does not travel backwards. The Fascist doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet…. The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State.

In our times, on one hand you have localized reactionary uprisings, from questions of parental rights and national sovereignty, from Loudon County all the way to Texas, Florida, and Great Britain. On the other, you see the all-encompassing state, all-powerful, ever-growing, capable of shutting down countries and livelihoods for years in the name of science and modernity, albeit backed up by a powerful quasi-theology, its own holy months, holy flags, saints, sinners and sacrilege; a state with the enormous surveillance power and bureaucracy, with five to ten top corporate entities all mouthing the same theological underpinnings of modernity; a state that revises and relitigates the historical memory of the worst of 1920s Euro-American eugenicist ideas, from forced vaccination to abortion to euthanasia; a state that opposed localism of any form, in favor of ideological homogeneity. 

Anyone—from Donald Trump to Elon Musk to the Asian nerds discriminated against at Harvard—who dares to oppose the state dicta on any questions of merit, neutrality, race, gender, or sovereignty faces the full wrath from state-aligned major media mouthpieces (and they are somehow all state-aligned), including that of Herr Wolf. They all somehow speak the same language, support the same worldview, and are funded by the same plutocrats and oligarchic entities. All in the name of democracy, future, science, people, and progress. 

Which side sounds more fascistic to you? 

The post The Financial Times’ Disingenuous Sermons on Fascism appeared first on The American Conservative.

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With VP Pick, RFK Jr. Is Gunning for the Democrats

Politics

With VP Pick, RFK Jr. Is Gunning for the Democrats

Nicole Shanahan appeals to the disaffected, West Coast–style leftist voters who feel lost in the Democratic Party.

Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Announces His Running Mate

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate for the presidency, announced Tuesday that he had selected Nicole Shanahan as his running mate. Kennedy introduced the 38-year-old, who has no political experience, at an event in Oakland, California, her native city.

In her first speech as a vice-presidential candidate, Shanahan praised Kennedy’s anti-war commitments, criticized both major parties for offering “vague promises that never amount to real change,” and listed the foci of Kennedy’s campaign to which she was most attracted after a friend encouraged her to watch “just one” interview with Kennedy: chronic disease issues, electromagnetic pollution, and non-healing medications. 

“I wanted a partner who is a gifted administrator, but also possesses the gift of curiosity, an open, inquiring mind, and the confidence to change even her strongest opinions in the face of contrary evidence,” Kennedy told the crowd in his introduction. “I wanted someone with a spiritual dimension and compassion and idealism and, above all, a deep love of the United States of America.”

Shanahan’s career is a Bay-Area success story. In 2013, while still studying at the Santa Clara University School of Law, she started an IP management company called ClearAccessIP, which was bought in 2020 by patent hawk Erich Spangenberg’s finance tech company, IPwe. That same year, she founded a philanthropic outfit called the Bia-Echo Foundation, which seeks to harness the “creative spirit and life force behind our human capacity.” In 2022, the foundation reported over $25 million in total assets.

The invited speakers at the announcement event reflected the colorful and sometimes contradictory coalition that has formed around Kennedy. The candidate’s speech was preceded by a land acknowledgement from the chairwoman of the Muwekma Ohione Tribe of the San Francisco Bay. This solemn affair was followed by more lively addresses from Del Bigtree, the campaign’s communications director, Kelly Ryerson, the founder of the public awareness group Glyphosate Facts, Jay Bhattacharya, the anti-lockdown Stanford health policy professor, Chris Clem, the former deputy chief patrol agent with Customs and Border Protection, Calley Means, an author and cofounder of the Austin-based tech payment company TrueMed, and the former Lakers forward Metta World Peace, born Ronald William Artest Jr.

In her own address, Shanahan mentioned two experiences that formed her political consciousness while she was in high school. In her junior year, she spent time with families recovering from the civil war in El Salvador that ended in 1992; and, at graduation, she led a walkout protesting the American invasion of Iraq.

Most of the coverage surrounding Shanahan’s selection revolves around Kennedy’s quest to get on the ballot in all 50 states, which requires building a ground game from scratch—an expensive project from which the major party candidates are exempt. To that end, the Kennedy campaign, which reported a little over $5.1 million on hand in a March FEC filing, could see Shanahan as a real asset. In the lead up to Shanahan’s divorce from the Russian émigré and Google cofounder Sergey Brin, in July 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that Shanahan sought over $1 billion in the proceedings. 

That cash is already working for Kennedy. In February, the New York Times reported that it was Shanahan who coughed up $4 million to fund the nostalgic Super Bowl ad that was sponsored by the pro-Kennedy Super PAC American Values 2024.

Perhaps the most comprehensive—and revelatory—coverage of Shanahan’s comings and goings can be found not in the hard news dailies but in People, which offered coverage in July 2023 of Shanahan’s barefoot “love” ceremony with 39-year-old Jacob Strumwasser, to whom she committed herself in part because of his “love of nature.”

Shanahan’s campaign donation history reflects this crunchy “Left Coast” sensibility. During the 2020 election, Shanahan donated $2,800 to Marianne Williamson, $2,800 to Pete Buttigieg, and $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising operation of the Biden campaign, the DNC, and state Democratic parties. 

The Williamson-style spiritual leftism to which Shanahan appears to adhere may have appealed to Kennedy’s sensibilities: her selection, along with the pride of place offered to the Muwekma Ohione during her announcement event and her recent political alliances, has certainly given his campaign an overtly left flavor. This could be a cause of worry for the Biden campaign; while some polls have shown the Kennedy run pulling more votes from the former President Donald Trump than from Biden, Shanahan shifts the ticket to appeal directly to disaffected Democratic voters.

“I am leaving the Democratic Party,” Shanahan said in her acceptance speech. “I do believe they’ve lost their way and their leadership.”

In his introduction, Kennedy highlighted Shanahan’s appeal to a historically blue constituency, young voters. “I want Nicole to be a champion to the growing number of millennials and Gen Z Americans who have lost faith in their future and lost their pride in our country,” he said.

The post With VP Pick, RFK Jr. Is Gunning for the Democrats appeared first on The American Conservative.

One Hundred Days of Libertarian Populism in Argentina

Foreign Affairs

One Hundred Days of Libertarian Populism in Argentina

Milei has made strides toward pushing back the left—but is his time running out?

President,Of,Argentina,Javier,Milei,Speaks,During,Cpac,Conference,2024

On December 10, 2023, Javier Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist, was sworn in as president of Argentina.

Milei, best known for the hair that he claims is combed by Adam’s Smith invisible hand and an eccentric and irascible demeanor, promised to end the country’s economic woes—prevalent in the last 80 years but heightened in the last couple of decades—by launching a full-blown libertarian economic program of privatization, deregulation, and tight monetary policy. On the way, he would rid the country of the unholy marriage between socialism and wokeism that has assaulted Argentine institutions over the last 20 years.

After 100 days in power, has “the wig,” as he is known, laid the foundations for a libertarian populist revolt, or is his project showing early signs of foundering?

Milei is a culture warrior, which is why, despite being a radical libertarian, he has rallied conservatives and nationalists behind his agenda. But make no mistake: Most Argentines voted for him hoping he would fix the economic mess the country has been in since the early 2000s.

On the macroeconomic side, some of the measures are working. Monthly inflation fell in both January and February, after reaching its highest point in decades in December.

Milei promised to achieve a budget surplus (before interest payments) of 2 percent this year, after last year’s 3 percent deficit. So far, so good: The first two months of the year brought surpluses, the first in more than a decade.

Moreover, Argentina has an exchange control. Milei has not eliminated it yet, seeking to reduce the gap between the official and black market exchange rates (it now sits at around 20 percent) and improve the macroeconomic output of the country before eliminating it. Foreign reserves have increased by over $7 billion and the country-risk index has dropped significantly.

But this all has come at a cost.

Milei reduced energy and transport subsidies drastically. He also cut down on transfers to provinces. And, even though he has been raising spending on retirement pensions, he has done so by less than inflation, which means that, in real terms, he has also cut down spending.

In the first handful of days in his government, he devalued the peso by over 50 percent, causing inflation to skyrocket.

This has of course worsened the situation for Argentines, at least in the short term. Fifty percent of the country is in poverty and the economy is set to shrink by 4 percent in 2024.

Milei has been clear since day one that things in Argentina had to get worse before they got better; so far, his approval ratings are still relatively high, sitting close to 50 percent. He has achieved this because most Argentines believe the “caste”—the left-wing elites of the country—are to blame for the economic woes.

How long will Milei’s popularity last? That remains to be seen.

One of Milei’s key problems is that he doesn’t have enough parliamentary support for some of the most radical proposals in his agenda, such as labor reform and some deregulation policies. In fact, his party only holds seven seats in the Senate (which has 72 senators), and 41 representatives (which has 257), hardly enough to pass any kind of legislation. 

He depends on PRO, the party of former president Mauricio Macri, some smaller parties that hold some seats in the House, and some breakaway members of opposition parties to pass legislation, which has proven difficult in his first 100 days in government.

In less than two years, Argentina has midterm elections, renewing parts of both houses of Congress. If Milei’s plan to stabilize the country’s economy has not worked by then, he may suffer a defeat that will end up derailing the rest of his term.

In fact, Milei’s lack of legislative support has not allowed him to take advantage of his popularity to pass essential elements of his agenda.

His first 100 days of government have been marked by two main measures: the Omnibus Law and the DNU.

Milei sent to Congress an all-encompassing bill with 664 articles that covered everything from fishing permits and privatization of state companies to shutting down the National Theatre Institute and reforming the pension system. This gave the opposition, and even some of his supporters, enough reason to pick the law apart, until Milei eventually withdrew it. He will likely try to pass it as individual laws, slowing down the process of reform.

Milei’s DNU (Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia, Decree of Necessity and Urgency in English) was passed in December and was almost as all-encompassing as the law above. It covered labor market regulations, increasing interest on credit card debt, and reforming pharmaceutical companies.

Being a presidential decree, it technically does not need congressional approval. However, if both houses of Congress vote against the measure, they can strike it down. The Senate already voted against Milei’s decree, but until the House follows—and it is unclear whether it will, as Milei might reform the decree to garner some support—the decree remains on its feet.

Labor reform is key to Milei’s success. After the state bureaucracy built by the Peronist left, the trade unions are perhaps the most significant element of the “caste” Milei seeks to tear down. Mauricio Macri, today one of Milei’s most important allies, was president between 2015 and 2019 and tried to enact some of the same reforms; he was derailed by both the Argentine congress and the all-powerful labor unions that constantly called for strikes against Macri and to close main roads of the country.

Unions in Argentina are closer to a mafia than to organizations built to defend worker’s rights. For example, the truckers’ union has had the same president, Hugo Moyano, for 36 years. His eldest son is the vice president, while a daughter and a son are part of the work. Another son used to run a union for toll workers before becoming a congressman. The family has owned some of the most important football clubs in the country and has a political party close to the Justicialista Party, the traditional Peronist party in Argentina.

This family, allied with the traditional left of the country, is able to freeze the transport of food and oil in the blink of an eye, as they did under Macri. 

Milei, so far, does not seem intimidated. He has shown a very un-libertarian impulse to wield state power to achieve his political ends—and this is what scares the left and makes the populist right stand by his side.

Milei’s long-term goal is dismantling most of the Argentine state. Make no mistake, he sees himself as an Argentine Reagan, tasked with becoming a libertarian hero. Many of his economic formulas seem to come out of the IMF rulebook, and he believes in international free trade with passion. Without the antics, Milei might seem like a product of an American think tank.

But what makes him different is his muscular use of state power. Milei is not afraid to wield public power—whether with far-ranging decrees or by using legitimate force to stop protests that threaten the stability of the state and his reforms—to achieve his political goals.

This has been particularly clear with unions: Milei tried to pass legislation to make union affiliation voluntary (it is currently compulsory and automatic) and also wants to allow companies to fire workers who take part in street blockades during protests. However, both are still frozen in the courts with all his labor reform until the Supreme Court decides on the matter.

Similarly, he has suspended all government publicity in media for a year, which was the main source of income for many privately-owned media outlets that served as parasitic propaganda entities on behalf of the government.

For years, Peronism enlarged the number and size of organizations that depended on the state through government funds or beneficial regulations. These organizations entered into a parasitic relationship with the “caste.” Milei has started eliminating these privileges. Lawyers are now not needed in some fast-track divorce procedures, which used to be an easy source of income. Artists relied on government funds to produce works that no one saw, and Milei gutted them. Fishermen and sugar producers relied on regulations, subsidies, and tariffs to sell their products, and unions depended on the automatic enrollment and payment of dues of their members to continue accumulating power.

Moreover, even though he is playing it smart (for example, by delaying the elimination of the exchange control or discussions on the dollarization of the economy), he is riding his popularity to enact the strongest, most painful reforms he needs to pass.

He does face a big challenge: If Congress stops his decree and does not pass his reforms (or they are stopped by the courts), Milei may run out of time. The Argentine people are becoming poorer by the day and their patience might not be great enough to wait until he can strike a deal in Congress or to see if he wins a congressional majority at the midterm elections.

He has floated the idea of holding a referendum to pass his reforms. Even if it is a non-binding consult, it might put enough pressure on some congress members to accept part of his reforms, and he seems popular enough to win such a referendum.

Also, his goal of maintaining a fiscal surplus might prove to be harder than expected. The recession is affecting tax revenues, and savings on energy subsidies were due to deferrals, not a budget reduction. 

Milei has another front of opposition: provincial governors. None of them are members of his party, and many rely on generous discretional transfers from the central government, which Milei has reduced dramatically. Governors hold a significant level of power within their parties, meaning they can influence members of Congress from their parties to not negotiate with Milei and also continue challenging his agenda in the courts.

The last major challenge he faces comes from within: Milei’s banner is the economy, but his brand also includes the fact that he is a culture warrior, which is why he was able to garner support from conservatives and nationalists despite his defense of gay marriage and drug legalization in the past.

He quickly delivered by closing the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, which was widely considered a do-nothing organ that existed simply to keep members of the ruling party as employees and fund left-wing propaganda. Milei also banned “inclusive” language and any reference to “gender perspective” in government documents and eliminated the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity.

Nevertheless, these were mostly symbolic measures. Milei has not been shy to use state power to cut relations with its parasitic entities and eventually reduce its size. On the socio-cultural side, he seems to do the same: eliminate, cut down, reduce. But if Milei wants to fight the culture war and enact a long-term change, it seems that negative movements, focused on reduction and elimination might not be enough.

If he fails at his task of reforming the Argentine economy, his presidency will end up feeling like a fever dream. And to succeed, he might have to let his populist impulses overtake his libertarian mind.

The post One Hundred Days of Libertarian Populism in Argentina appeared first on The American Conservative.

Deplatforming Ronna McDaniel Won’t Deradicalize Anyone

Media

Deplatforming Ronna McDaniel Won’t Deradicalize Anyone

Canceling even milquetoast figures won’t make conservatives feel more heard.

Screen Shot 2022-02-05 at 6.31.44 PM

Greater injustices have been perpetrated in the media world than the premature conclusion to Ronna McDaniel’s punditry career at NBC News. 

By the end of her tenure at the Republican National Committee, no wing of the party was entirely pleased with her performance and it was not clear which constituency she best represented. But whatever McDaniel’s faults, the revolt against her brief broadcast news star turn was motivated by the belief that a majority of the Republican Party does not deserve representation. At most, very watered down versions of what they want should be granted a place on the 2024 ballot or platformed at major media institutions this side of shortwave radio.

When Donald Trump first took his magic escalator ride nearly nine years ago, his support was so thin even within conservative media that the cable networks had to go out and hire new pundits to speak favorably about him on air. 

Sometimes while working at night, I would see the televisions playing in the background of the newsroom with the sound off. If I did not know any better, I would have assumed Kayleigh McEnany was being surrounded by her mother and aunts, who were all yelling at her for failing to clean her room.

That was essentially the most favorable treatment a political operative could expect to receive for appearing on a television channel with a liberal or politically mixed audience and explaining their preference for one of two major-party candidates for president. When nearly half the country voted for Trump, including pluralities in the battleground states that sent him to the White House, the problem got worse rather than improving. 

It worked out much better for McEnany’s career than McDaniel’s, even if both experiments were relatively short-lived; other pundits found they had to switch sides to keep theirs going. But the gradual increase in ideological diversity on the networks that once hosted liberal monologues rather than debates was increasingly ghettoized, with each cable behemoth identifying which market segment they existed to outrage and then outraging them all day long.

POLITICO’s Jack Shafter nevertheless published a lengthy, if not quite exhaustive, list of people with resumes similar to McDaniel’s who made the jump from politics to punditry. The greatest pundit of a generation worked for and largely defended Richard Nixon during the height of the Watergate scandal and wrote some of Spiro Agnew’s most famous media-bashing speeches

Yet not even at the apogee of liberal domination of the media did the network heads and newspaper editorial pages imagine they could indefinitely silence perspectives that were winning 49-state presidential landslides. 

Partisan political operatives often lie, or, more charitably, repeat without careful examination suspect claims that are good for the party. This includes things that are of far greater consequence, and come with less public ability to scrutinize, than inaugural crowd sizes, such as weapons of mass destruction before going to war and a family’s ability to keep their doctor under new healthcare laws. Many operatives once involved in that type of spin currently grace the airwaves of MSNBC.

Those airwaves are also routinely full of assertions about the 2000 and 2016 elections that are as dubious as Trump’s nonsense about 2020. It is true, thank goodness, that no one responded to those conspiracy theories and lies as violently as the mobs at the Capitol on January 6 did. A sincerely held belief that the Russians manipulated or altered the 2016 vote totals easily could have provoked such a reaction.

Is Trump the only reason some election conspiracists behaved worse than others, such as the Russigate maximalists or those who believed George W. Bush was “selected, not elected”? Trump certainly insisted on pressing his case far beyond the point of legal or constitutional plausibility, sparking a dangerous and violent national embarrassment that but for the grace of God could have been much worse. 

But Trump also appealed to some voters who were already more radicalized, and believed themselves to have less effective representation from the political class and its media allies, than the people who thought Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Stacey Abrams got robbed on Election Day

A few Ronna McDaniel cable hits probably wouldn’t have made these voters less radicalized. But her banishment won’t make them feel better represented, either. 

The post Deplatforming Ronna McDaniel Won’t Deradicalize Anyone appeared first on The American Conservative.

Trump 2028

Politics

Trump 2028

The Twenty-second Amendment is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms—and on democracy itself.

Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Support Of Arizona GOP Candidates
(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Lost in the Left’s endless babbling about Donald Trump’s alleged threat to democracy is a very simple but inconvenient truth: Trump’s re-emergence as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 is a triumph of democracy.

Not only did Trump secure the nomination following his defeat in 2020—a rather incredible feat in and of itself—but did so in spite of every obstacle the mainstream media, the Republican establishment, and the lawfare apparatus have put in his way.

The primary voters and caucus-goers who chose Trump did so in spite of January 6, the prosecution of the former president, or even the popularity in some MAGA quarters of Ron DeSantis. They chose him because they damn well felt like it. 

This is democracy in action: The voters surveyed the scene, tuned out the noise, and selected the man the rest of the world loves to hate. What could be more democratic than voting for your preferred candidate against the advice—the warnings, the threats, the fear-mongering—of your betters?

Yet, even if Trump returns to the White House this November, the Twenty-second Amendment will bar him from standing for re-election in 2028. Ratified in 1951, the amendment is largely seen as a kind of constitutional course correction following the four consecutive presidential terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The amendment reads, in part: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

This sounds reasonable enough, especially in light of FDR’s hold on the office. Yet those who supported the amendment more than 70 years ago could not have foreseen the prospect of a one-term president who lost the office but who later regained it in a subsequent election. Grover Cleveland remains the only president to have successfully vaulted himself to the White House in nonconsecutive elections, in 1884 and in 1892. (Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, also gave it a try by running as the Progressive Party standard-bearer in 1912.)

In modern times, it is virtually inconceivable that any of the ousted one-term presidents would have seriously thought of running anew against the same opponent (now the occupant of the White House) who had bested them four years earlier. (Think about it: George H.W. Bush running against Bill Clinton in 1996?) This is not a reflection of a weakness in their character but the reality of American public life: Voters are fickle, and by the end of the first term of any presidency, they have long forgotten the loser from four years earlier. 

As the primary season has shown us, the Republicans have not moved on from Trump—yet the Twenty-second Amendment works to constrain their enthusiasm by prohibiting them from rewarding Trump with re-election four years from now. 

This is plainly unfair. Indeed, there has long been support for axing the Twenty-second Amendment due to the artificial limits it places on voter choice. Many popular presidents have agreed. In 1985, the Washington Post reported that Ronald Reagan supported repealing the amendment, saying in private remarks that the lame-duck label being applied to his second term left him feeling “handicapped.” In 2016, Barack Obama told David Axelrod that he was sure he would have coasted to a third term if such a thing were permissible: “I am confident in this vision, because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.” 

The case of Donald Trump, however, makes an even more forceful ethical argument against the Twenty-second Amendment and for its repeal: If a man who once was president returns, after a series of years, to stand again for the office and proves so popular as to earn a second nonconsecutive term—as Trump seems bound to do—to deny him the right to run for a second consecutive term cuts against basic fair play. If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?

Don’t let questions of Trump’s age in four years fool you. 

Besides the glaringly obvious differences between the men in their brain power, physical strength, and ability to walk in a straight line, Trump and Biden are about four years apart, making this issue something of a wash. If Trump wins in November and would be eligible to run for re-election in 2028, he would be 82 years old during that election—the same age Biden will be later this year. And at the end of Trump’s hypothetical second consecutive term, in 2032, he would be 86—the same age Biden would be at the end of his second term if he is returned to the White House. 

Conservatives have gritted their teeth for years as the Left, in their hatred of Trump, has attempted to pervert the meaning of first the Twenty-fifth Amendment and, more recently, the Fourteenth Amendment. The case for repealing the Twenty-second Amendment is far more straightforward: As with Prohibition, it is simply a matter of finding the will to get rid of a bad idea that needlessly limits Americans’ freedom. 

Trump in 2028! 

The post Trump 2028 appeared first on The American Conservative.

Dune, Belief, and the Entrepreneur Messiah

Religion

Dune, Belief, and the Entrepreneur Messiah

Dune: Part Two raises the question of whether all religions are synthetic.

Dune,Part,Two,Movie,In,The,Cinema.,Watching,A,Movie

Dune: Part Two—the second installment of Denis Villeneuve’s planned trilogy based on the Frank Herbert science-fiction saga—raises a problem for believers. That problem is the historicity of faith: the fact that intense, sincere religious belief has often taken hold among people as a result of social conditions, a hustling clerisy, or both. The movie’s principal theme is the formation of faith under such circumstances, and it confronts us with a challenge: To look too closely at the human and historical agency involved in the spread of religion is to endanger the possibility of faith.

Set some 8,000 years in the future, Dune centers on the fate of Arrakis, the desert planet supplying the mysterious “spice” that fuels interstellar travel for our distant human descendants. Arrakis’s vaguely Islamic indigenous population is ruled despotically by the feudal Imperium. The Fremen, as they are known, mostly acquiesce in their oppression, only occasionally mounting guerilla attacks against the imperialists’ spice-mining operations.

What keeps most Fremen passive is the belief that a Mahdi figure will one day bring them succor and salvation. This faith has been propagated by the Bene Gesserit, a Jesuit-ish order of priestesses who help stabilize the feudal regime—even as, for generations, they have secretly been crossing genetic lines to bring forth a super-being, the Kwisatz Haderach, who they believe will “bridge space and time” and usher in a brighter future for all.

Our protagonist, the young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), seems to possess some of the powers of the Kwisatz Haderach. In the first installment, Paul’s humane House Atreides was granted control of Arrakis, only to lose it to the brutish, post-human House Harkonnen. With his father dead and the Atreides army destroyed, Paul found himself cast into the planet’s wilderness, where he sought refuge with the Fremen, some of whom suspected that he might be their long-awaited Mahdi.

At the outset of the second film, Paul’s mother, a Bene Gesserit acolyte named Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), urges him to embrace his prophetic role and exploit the legends disseminated by her cultish sisterhood. Paul is reluctant to play the messiah. He prefers to lead the Fremen as an adopted member of their community, learning their language and desert ways and even taking a Fremen lover, Chani (Zendaya). The film’s funniest, most poignant moments involve the Fremen insisting he must be the messiah. When Paul demurs, they take it as one more sign: The Mahdi would be humble. A Fremen leader, Stilgar (Javier Bardem in a moving turn), tells him, “I don’t care what you believe—I believe!

But gradually Paul accepts the role of Mahdi. In depicting this transformation, Villeneuve achieves a remarkably realistic character study, notwithstanding the fantastical backdrop. Prodded by his mother and his own ambition, Paul uses the sincere fervor of the Fremen to bring his family to victory over its aristocratic rivals. At the film’s end, Paul urges the Fremen to take on the other feudal houses, ordering Stilgar to “lead them to paradise.”

Amid the disruption of their world by social change, people naturally yearn for a messiah. A spiritual entrepreneur knows how to capitalize on patterns of belief to become the master subject of existing prophetic traditions. True of Dune’s warrior Mahdi, this demystifying account is important also in understanding the origins of at least one ancient Mideast religion.

In this real-world religion’s own telling, the prophet’s body was sown in the womb of a woman named Mary. As he grew to manhood, he was called by the Holy Spirit to confront his people with a bold new teaching: that purity comes from freeing the divine spark trapped in fallen flesh. Though he performed miracles, healed the sick, and won many disciples, the new teacher was reviled by religious authorities. Tried before the temporal power, he was tortured and crucified. Yet the church he founded would go on to win adherents across the known world, stretching from the Latin West, where it attracted a young seeker named Augustine, all the way to eastern China. After his martyrdom, the prophet would continue to guide his church’s affairs from heaven, making himself present in their most important liturgy, which commemorated his passion.

I’m speaking of Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, the world’s first truly global religion—and a figure who, as the historian Jason BeDuhn has written, “in key ways helped to define what a ‘religion’ is.” Mani’s religion was perhaps the strongest and strangest expression of the gnostic impulse that seized the “East” in Late Antiquity. It also benefited from Mani’s astonishing talents as a mythmaker, artist, linguistic innovator, and church organizer.

Mani was born in the early third century AD in Persian-ruled Babylonia, in present-day Iraq. According to the tradition of the church he founded, his mother’s name was Mar Maryam (Mary). She and Mani’s father were descendants of Parthian and Persian royalty, respectively — hagiographic flourishes likely intended to parallel the birth story and Davidic lineage of Jesus.

The community he grew up in spoke Aramaic and was broadly Judeo-Christian: These believers thought the Christ event had taken place, but they continued to observe purity rituals redolent of Jewish law. For example, only certain vegetables could be eaten, and then only if they were “baptized” beforehand. “Male”-coded vegetables were kosher, “female” ones weren’t.

As a young man, Mani began to reject his community’s ritual precepts. Since the body itself was impure, he taught, no ablution could stave off impurity. Rather, salvation required liberating the elements of spiritual light which, admixed with the darkness of physical matter, made up the human person and, indeed, the whole cosmos.

His missionary travels resembled those of Paul—though unlike the Christian apostle, who preached Christ Jesus, Mani preached himself. Shapur I of Persia’s Sassanid dynasty granted him permission to preach his new religion. “By 270,” the scholar Michel Tardieu summarizes, “Mani’s religion was established throughout Iran; outside this country, the network of missions extended, as Mani [himself said]…‘from East to West.’ ”

Yet after Shapur I’s death in AD 272 or 273, Mani lost ground to the Zoroastrian prelate Karder, the figure most responsible for codifying Zoroastrianism into an orthodoxy and enshrining it as the public religion of the Persian Empire. In the end, Karder prevailed on the throne to suppress a figure he viewed as his rival. Mani was fettered with more than 100 pounds of chains and died in detention, though Manichaean legend had the Sassanids flaying his skin and stuffing his body with straw before crucifying him.

Manichaeism’s influence ranged 6,200 miles, from the East China Sea to the Mediterranean, before persecution and internal contradiction sounded its death knell. Scholars today consider it the only major world religion to have disappeared completely.

Mani saw himself as the heir to the Jewish line of patriarchs and prophets running “vertically” from Noah to Jesus. But as Tardieu notes, he also expanded the prophetic line “horizontally,” to include Buddha and Zoroaster. He blended these sources, adding his own genius for intricate revelation-making. The result was what scholars Iain Gardner and Samuel N. C. Lieu have called the “first real ‘religion,’ in the modern sense.” That is, “Mani established it directly and deliberately, with its scriptures and its rituals and its organization all in place.” Mani’s religion promoted some of the most radical and disturbing but also heartbreakingly beautiful—ideas in human history.

Mani’s labyrinthine cosmology defies brief summary. It boasts a huge cast of characters divine and demonic, including a Trinitarian-ish Father who acquiesces in the “crucifixion” of his Son—a distinct person and event from the historical Jesus and his execution—and numerous other demigods and angelic beings. The basic cosmic drama is simple enough, however. It was set in motion when the primordial forces of darkness—slithering, disgusting, embodied creatures—glimpsed the realm of light and resolved to conquer it.

The created world we know came about amid the ensuing tug-of-war between light and dark. The universe was constructed out of the bodies of dead demons in battles between these cosmic antipodes: dark and filthy matter, suffused with shards of light. The demons, desperate to hold on to the light they had, fashioned Adam and Eve in the images of the divine beings whose beautiful forms had driven them to a sexual frenzy. They then poured the light sparks into these new creatures—man and woman. Humankind emerged out of a literal demonic orgy, the product of the darkness’s determination to prevent the divine sparks from ascending to their true home; thereafter, each baby conceived in Eve’s descendants furthered the imprisonment of light.

In the present scene of our cosmic misery, spirit and matter are tragically intermingled. The kingdom of light sent many prophets to awaken humankind to this disturbing truth behind mundane reality, including Buddha, Zoroaster, and the historical Jesus. Mani saw himself as the last and definitive figure in this prophetic line, called to proclaim the truth about the spark within and to recruit a religious elect.

The Manichaean elect would practice the religion’s rigors. These included the avoidance of sex, alcohol, agricultural labor, and any other action that could harm the light particles trapped in matter or, in the case of coitus, to trap yet more light-spirit in matter. In this way, Mani’s elect would lead the way to the final redemption willed by the light gods: the liberation of spirit from matter and its return to an acosmic home.

Like Dune’s Fremen, the peoples of the “East” had suffered a series of disorienting events in the period before Mani’s rise. Most notably, Alexander the Great and his troops had swept the Middle East and North Africa in the late fourth century BC, bringing in train a confidently rationalistic way of being in the world. This infusion of Hellenic ideas generated the synthesis of philosophy and revelation that defined historic Christianity well into the medieval period.

Yet as Hans Jonas, the great philosophical interpreter of Gnosticism, argued, Hellenic cultural ascendancy also gave rise to a subversive counterattack, a “subsurface stream” of “secret tradition” that resisted Greek rationality and its picture of human beings as part of an orderly cosmic whole. Gnosticism was a rebellion against cosmic at-homeness. It’s easy to see why, with their own little cosmos a site of geopolitical and ideological contestation, people might come to believe their own existence the product of a cosmic mishap.

And like Dune’s synthetic Mahdi and his Bene Gesserit allies, Mani prepared the ground for his own acceptance as a prophet. First, he brought forth an elaborate revelation, presenting a clear, if bizarre, answer to the timeless problems of being human, especially the mystery of evil and our sense of alienation from the world. The other prophets had likewise addressed these problems, but Mani believed that their teaching had been garbled: Jesus, Buddha, and Zoroaster had spoken allegorically, whereas Mani claimed to speak in “precise, plain, literal language,” as BeDuhn, the historian, tells us.

Next, Mani inscribed his own message. One Manichaean text has him saying: “For all the apostles, my brothers, that came before me, [they did not write] their wisdom in books, as I have written it.” Not only did Mani write his own scriptures, he created an alphabet to render them accessible to his main audience, Iranians. He was a master of his native Aramaic, written in Syriac script. To reach Iranians, however, he had to translate his message into their language. Trouble was, ideographic Persian writing was prone to ambiguity, and it bloated even short texts.

Mani’s audacious solution was to reform how Persian was written, substituting the Syriac script, with its 22 letters, for the old ideograms, to ensure “that Iranian would be written as it was pronounced,” per Tardieu. The resulting system, called the Manichaean Alphabet, “was so practical and so clear that it not only became an indispensable tool of Manichaean missions throughout the Iranian domain but was also adopted by non-Manichaeans to translate the Indian and Buddhist scriptures.”

Mani wasn’t content just to transmit his ideas in words. He had a keen appreciation for the power of images to transcend linguistic and cultural barriers. A painter of great talent, he illustrated his own scriptures in a work called Image. The book proved immensely popular in Persia and later in the wider Islamic world, where he came to be reviled as a heretic but honored as an artist.

A great systematizer and organizer, he created a formal structure, his church, to develop and spread his religion. It featured a supreme pontiff, major and minor orders, and lay followers or “hearers.” (Augustine was a Manichaean hearer before converting to Catholicism.) Interestingly, women were not barred from climbing the Manichaean hierarchy.

In short, Mani hustled. He was Jesus, Paul, Augustine, and Caravaggio rolled into one. Yet precisely his resourcefulness, his mastery of the Zeitgeist and willingness to fashion a religion that suited it, raises the problem central to Dune: Doesn’t all religion boil down to the soothing promise of a transmundane salvation, of a “Voice from the Outer World” coming to save us from confusion and misery?

How different, really, was Mani from Jesus of Nazareth? Hadn’t Jesus played a similar role among Roman-occupied Jews two centuries earlier, offering the consolations of the transmundane Kingdom of God? Jonas, the philosophical interpreter of Late Antique Gnosticism, more or less considered Christianity an iteration of the same phenomenon: an “acosmic” faith for a people whose own little cosmos had been thrown into chaos.

Here, I mustn’t speak “objectively” in defense of religion as such. I carry no brief for Muhammad, Joseph Smith, or L. Ron Hubbard, later figures who replicated Mani’s self-conscious religion-making. I can only speak as a Christian. Reading Mani’s life, let alone that of Paul Atreides, finally doesn’t menace my faith in Jesus, for a reason offered by C. S. Lewis: namely, that if you set about creating a religion, you wouldn’t invent Christianity. It’s a faith that, at key points, is defined by divine vulnerability, featuring a God who condescends to come into the world as an infant, and who later permits his creation to scourge, humiliate, and crucify him.

Pope Benedict XVI spoke of Christianity’s “great reversal” of humanity’s natural religious expectations. We anticipate otherworldly fire and thunder but find instead a cooing infant in a manger, or a man breaking bread with his friends, or the same man crying out, “Eloi, eloi… For Pope Benedict, this great reversal was prefigured in the development of the image of God in the Hebrew Bible. “Elijah,” he wrote in the second book of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy, “was granted a transformed version of the Sinai experience: He experienced God passing by, not in the storm or in the fire or in the earthquake, but in the still small breeze.” In Jesus, the reversal is complete: “God’s power is now revealed in his mildness, his greatness in simplicity and closeness”—finally in “crucified love.”

It is also of great consequence that the religion of Jesus didn’t develop into the cult of an easy messiah with antinomian precepts. That was certainly true of gnostic Christian offshoots like Marcionism, and of standalone gnostic faiths like Manichaeism. Notwithstanding the rigors prescribed by Mani to his spiritual elites, Manichaeism had no concept of natural law; this-worldly creation was fashioned out of filth, after all.

Historic Christianity arose from a similar context. And though its founder insisted that his kingdom was not of this world, Christianity never succumbed to the radical hatred of nature and creation that marked other movements of its kind. This was because Christianity saw itself as the fulfillment of the Jewish religion, and the Jews had always insisted that creation was good, because the one God had made it. Then, as it spread its new faith among the Hellenes, the early Church appealed to Greek reason: God was reasonable—indeed, reason itself—and his reasonableness could be detected in his orderly creation.

True, Christianity taught that human beings couldn’t complete their journey to final perfection in this world, nor reach the destination without the aid of grace. Yet the basic structure remained: Creation has a norm, and we are called to exercise freedom and responsibility in conforming ourselves to it.

Again, if I were making up a religion, I’d make it all easier. The “easiness” of a faith, of course, needn’t equate to an absence of ascetic demands. Manichaeism had plenty of those, including some that were downright bonkers. But ascending the heights of asceticism out of a fear of contamination by filthy creation isn’t the same as living freely and responsibly in the Christian way, fulfilling the norms inscribed into nature.

The sheer arduousness of the latter kind of religion reassures me that in Jesus I’m not dealing with a huckster or spiritual entrepreneur, nor in Christianity with a religion born merely of the political conditions of an oppressed people in a specific time and place. Still, faith is faith, and there are limits to such arguments. The thoughtful believer is at times forced to confront the secular historian of religion with the same attitude as Dune’s Stilgar: I don’t care what you believe—I believe!

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The Tailspin of American Boys and Men

Culture

The Tailspin of American Boys and Men

American males are turning off, and tuning and dropping out.

Father,And,Son,Playing,In,The,Park,At,The,Sunset

Many boys and men are struggling to flourish in their roles as sons, students, employees, and fathers, and to achieve the sense of purpose that comes from being rooted within marriages, communities, churches, and country.

Much of the literature on the boy crisis contains impressive, even essential social science work that clearly demonstrates that boys and men are falling behind. My recent essay, “Men Without Meaning: The Harmful Effects of Expressive Individualism,” is an attempt to distill this literature and explore how expressive individualism—the notion that the inner self is the true self and is radically autonomous—plays a central role in the boy crisis. 

The ascendance of expressive individualism, which can be traced to the Sexual Revolution, is partially responsible for the breakdown of marriage and has gained a foothold in religious institutions. Among others, it combines the thinking of Simone de Beauvoir, who divorced sex from gender; psychologist Sigmund Freud, who elevated human sexuality as central to identity; and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that man is innocent and corrupted by society.

Political scientist Warren Farrell and counselor John Gray’s The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It is the go-to text for understanding the dad deprivation that is the primary cause of the boy crisis. It lays out how a dad’s presence can positively impact a child’s scholastic achievement, verbal intelligence and quantitative abilities, and development of trust and empathy. Likewise, it shows that the absence of a father’s presence increases the likelihood that a child will drop out of school, commit suicide, use drugs, become homeless, end up in poverty, develop hypertension, and be exposed to or commit bullying and violent crime, including rape.

Fathers, like mothers, contribute in unique and indispensable ways to the raising of children. One example is through play, which helps children develop, learn the limits of their bodies, and properly channel aggression. According to, “Theorizing the Father-Child Relationship: Mechanisms and Developmental Outcomes”: “Children seem to need to be stimulated and motivated as much as they need to be calmed and secured, and they receive such stimulation primarily from men, primarily through physical play.”

Dad deprivation is especially disastrous for boys. As mimetic creatures, theoretical arguments about  masculinity and virtue fall short of a father’s lived witness of their mastery. Boys learn how to become good men by imitating a good man, and the mentors of their lives are their fathers.

Thanks to expressive individualism’s effect on our moral imagination, however, today many people dismiss the benefits of embodied play and assume that fathers and mothers are interchangeable. We have accepted the premises that the mind and body are disconnected and the body is unimportant.

Expressive individualism has also changed the way we think about marriage, making it more fragile. Marriage is no longer geared towards the character formation of each spouse and to providing a loving environment for the raising of children, but rather is now primarily viewed as a means to achieving emotional satisfaction and personal improvement. Rather than both husband and wife sacrificing for the good of the marriage, each spouse aims separately to achieve his and her personal subjective idea of “self-actualization.” 

As Andrew Cherlin, a sociology and public policy professor at Johns Hopkins University, articulates in The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, marriages based on expressive individualism involve:

Growing and changing as a person, paying attention to your feelings, and expressing your needs…[M]arriages are harder to keep together, because what matters is not merely the things they jointly produce—well-adjusted children, nice homes—but also each person’s own happiness.

Over twenty years ago, in The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men, philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers drew attention to the fact that boys were falling behind in school. Some of the precipitating causes were newer, such as zero tolerance policies, the decline of free play and recess, and the rise of a self-esteem centered safety culture. Others reach back much further. Our education system, in many ways, is not designed for boys. Simultaneous shifts in our economy have lengthened the time spent in school and raised the stakes of getting an education.

On average, the energy level of boys makes it difficult for them to sit still for long periods. They can be unorganized and frustrate their teachers, who factor behavior into grading. Perhaps some teachers, mired in expressive individualism, expect girls and boys to behave the same, as “boys on average receive harsher exclusionary discipline than girls for the same behaviors.” In truth, as senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute Richard Reeves writes: “The parts of the brain associated with impulse control, planning, future orientation, sometimes labeled the ‘CEO of the brain,’ are mostly in the prefrontal cortex, which matures about 2 years later in boys than in girls.” 

The progressive style of education, relying on Rousseau’s romantic vision and promulgated by reformers like John Dewey and others, contends that theoretically children should direct their own educational trajectory. This has been particularly harmful to boys. Approximately since the 1970s, as Sommers writes, children have been treated as their “own best guides in life. This turn to the autonomous subject as the ultimate moral authority is a notable consequence of the triumph of the progressive style over traditional directive methods of education.”

Changes in education were greeted with changes in the economy itself. Precipitated by free trade and automation, America is now a global knowledge economy. Overall, those most negatively impacted have been men without much education. According to “The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men”: “Between 1973 and 2015, real hourly earnings for the typical 25-54 year-old man with only a high school degree declined by 18.2 percent, while real hourly earnings for college-educated men increased substantially.” American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt’s Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis details how over seven million men ages 25-55 have checked out of the workforce. Such men often receive disability payments or are living with a relative who serves as a source of income.

 These disengaged men are spending a great deal of time in front of screens that promote disembodied expressive individualism. This includes an average of 5.5 hours of movies and TV per day, not to mention the rise of exceedingly popular online pornography. Some estimate that Gen Z boys are being exposed to porn at the average age of nine. Studies indicate that pornography rewires the brain, causing boys and men to desire more and more novel content rather than a relationship with a real woman. Male employment is often tied to family structure, and marriage rates for low-income men have declined, demonstrating the unique causes and reinforcing mechanisms of the boy crisis.

The devastating impact of the opioid epidemic is another factor. Some estimate that it could account for 43 percent of the decline in male labor force participation from 1999 to 2015. During that time, the number of overdoses quadrupled, and men made up almost 70 percent of such deaths. The incarceration rate has also risen, and years behind bars reduce the likelihood of finding employment

These phenomena are not equally distributed across the country, and some have hypothesized that increased deaths of despair (deaths from suicide, overdose, etc.) “among less-educated middle-age Americans might be rooted in ‘a long-term process of decline, or of cumulative deprivation, rooted in the steady deterioration in job opportunities for people with low education.’” The second leading cause of death for American men under 45 is suicide

All this has left many men without purpose and hope. The boy crisis both reflects and contributes to the broader crisis of America and the West, in no small measure driven by the expressive individualism that has left men and women disconnected from relationships, human nature, and objective truth. America and the West are running on the fumes of our heritage, no longer able to articulate our principles or the gratitude we owe the past.

For much of history, human beings have been most willing to give the last measure of their devotion for what truly provides identity: God, family, and country. Each of these encompasses the individual, pulling him out of himself and toward a life of sacrifice, responsibility, and devotion. Expressive individualism is a stark deviation from the traditional understanding that freedom and virtue are intertwined. As articulated in the classic work Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

influenced by modern psychological ideals, to be free is not simply to be left alone by others; it is also somehow to be your own person in the sense that you have defined who you are, decided for yourself what you want out of life, free as much as possible from the demands of conformity to family, friends, or community. 

Solutions to the boy crisis must counteract such messaging and ideas, putting forth a substantive view of marriage, revitalizing religious institutions, and honoring fatherhood and male mentorship as fundamental sources of meaning. They will reestablish a proper understanding of the human person and the ties between happiness and virtue. Sadly, there are no silver bullet solutions to these issues. The devastation is far-reaching and multitudinous, and the work we have to do matches the price we have paid. 

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Biden’s Parole Abuse Is Driving the Border Crisis

Politics

Biden’s Parole Abuse Is Driving the Border Crisis

With one weird trick, a million people have been allowed into the country.

President Biden Meets With Mexican President Obrador In The Oval Office
(Photo by Chris Kelponis-Pool/Getty Images)

Joe Biden could reduce the number of migrants coming into the United States by a million a year, no Congressional action (except cheering by Republican members) necessary. Here’s how.

More than one million people have been allowed to enter the U.S. under Biden administration programs based on humanitarian parole authority. Since 2021, Biden has used parole on a historic scale, invoking the 1952 law to welcome hundreds of thousands of foreigners fleeing conflict in Afghanistan and Ukraine, or perpetual political and economic crises in countries like Haiti and Venezuela.

In 2023, the administration opened this path to immigrants from Ecuador, adding that country to a long list that includes Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In FY2023, the Border Patrol apprehended over 99,000 Ecuadorians who entered the U.S. without authorization, a 312 percent spike from FY2022 and an annual record. By sweeping people from these countries into the humanitarian parole program they are automatically made “legal” with work permits for one or two years. During that time they are able to apply for asylum, or wait out an immigrant visa application filed by a relative, bypassing the family reunification–based visa system, massively backlogged and numerically limited. Or they can just disappear into the heartland.

The Biden theory is that the humanitarian parole route draws people away from the southern border. The problem is that it draws them directly into America. Biden administration officials say they’ve acted unilaterally since Congress has not expanded legal immigration pathways since 1990.

Biden is also using the parole law to process 1,500 asylum-seekers along the U.S.–Mexico border each day who secured an appointment to apply through a phone app. The underlying program, which began in fall 2022, has admitted more than 357,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela as of this January—74,000 Cubans, 138,000 Haitians, 58,000 Nicaraguans, and 86,000 Venezuelans. Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the program “a key element of our efforts to address the unprecedented level of migration throughout our hemisphere.”

So what is this humanitarian parole authority Biden has repurposed into a fire hose driving migrant numbers?

Humanitarian parole refers to a discretionary mechanism employed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to allow individuals to remain in the United States on a (theoretically) temporary basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. It was never intended to replace regular visas or green cards but rather to be a form of temporary relief.

Prior to Biden, humanitarian parole was typically granted in cases involving medical emergencies, for humanitarian reasons, or for significant public benefit. Examples of situations warranting parole include medical treatment that is not available in the individual’s home country, urgent family needs, or situations where the person can contribute significantly to the public interest in the United States, say as an artist fleeing a repressive government. Pre-Biden, it is important to note that the decision to grant humanitarian parole was mostly made on a case-by-case basis.

The previous two administrations averaged about 5,000 individually selected cases per year. Past uses of mass parole include the one-time flood of migrants after the Vietnam War (340,000 people) and the Mariel Boatlift (125,000) from Cuba. Every administration, Republican and Democratic, has used parole in emergencies; none had made it the cornerstone of an ongoing mass migration program before Biden.

Trump said during his campaign he would end this “outrageous abuse of parole” if re-elected. Until then, absent new law from Congress, it looks like only Texas can stop Joe.

Earlier in March a federal judge allowed the Biden administration to continue the program against Texas’s wishes. Judge Drew Tipton—a Trump appointee who previously ruled against a Biden initiative, a proposed 100-day moratorium on most deportations—of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas sided with the administration, saying the states failed to establish they had standing on any of their claims to force Biden to end the parole program.

The 19 states that signed onto the lawsuit, including Florida, Tennessee, and Arkansas, argued the program burdened them with additional costs for health care, education, and law enforcement. They also argued the Biden administration was simply re-categorizing people who otherwise would have entered the country illegally to come to the United States quasi-legally and thus does little to address the underlying issues along the southern border. They asserted the policy flouts the limits Congress placed on legal immigration.

Texas is almost certain to appeal the decision, and the case could end up in the Supreme Court, as it can be read as addressing the limits of state power on traditionally federal issues like immigration.

Texas has not gone away quietly, pursuing other avenues to stop Biden’s parade. Operation Lone Star is Texas Governor Abbott’s multi-billion-dollar border security initiative. A new section of border wall was built. The Texas legislature supported the operation by increasing penalties for smuggling. The initiative establishes a Texan law enforcement presence on the Rio Grande and empowers state and local law enforcement officers to jail migrants on trespassing charges—a provision recently temporarily upheld by the Supreme Court, then struck down by the appeals court.  

Another measure is Texas Senate Bill 4, which makes it a state crime for migrants to cross the U.S.–Mexico border into Texas without legal documentation. It also authorizes Texas to deport undocumented illegals. A judge put the law on hold in February, saying it violates the constitutional requirement that the Federal government, not the states, regulate immigration and the border. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit blocked the judge’s decision and said the law could take effect while the litigation proceeded. The Supreme Court let the law stay in temporary effect, until an appeals court re- reinstated the block.

Bottom Line: while the battle is being fought in the courts, Texas is currently barred from making arrests and effecting deportations. The flow of migrants into America continues unabated.

The city of Eagle Pass became another focal point of state efforts, seeing Texas National Guardsmen unspool razor wire and deploy river buoys to stop migrants. In January, the Guard took over a municipal park, blocking border agents from the riverfront. Authorities from other Republican states sent their own Guardsmen to help. Plans are also in the works to create an 80-acre operating base. 

Texas sued the Biden administration to prevent Federal border agents from removing or cutting the wire barriers. A district judge sided with Texas, finding that the barriers limit illegal crossings, which impose costs on the state. Ultimately, however, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, saying border agents may remove the barriers as needed until their legality is fully resolved in lower courts.

Texas’s most nationally visible and certainly most controversial measure to do something about the flow of migrants has been to put them on buses and internally deport them to sanctuary cities like New York. Since April 2022, Texas has bused more than 100,000 migrants to at least six cities. Spreading the migrant crisis northward has been a genius move by Texas, turning a regional humanitarian crisis into a national one sure to drive votes in November. Before Biden, immigration had never polled as a number one concern for Americans.

So, when angry Joe Biden says that there is nothing he can do about the southern border without Congress acting, he is lying. The border crisis is caused solely by Biden’s decision to employ humanitarian parole on a large scale, a decision that can be rescinded anytime. There are also interim measures like razor wire to dampen the flow. Biden could solve the problem today. If he is still not sure how, he could always ask Texas.

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TAC Bookshelf: Le Carré 2024

Par : Jude Russo

Jude Russo, managing editor: “Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves…. You’re the last, George, you and Bill.” So the former head of research for the British Secret Service describes the gray prospects of ailing Albion’s intelligence community to the spymaster George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the first installment of John le Carré’s Karla trilogy.

The books, which detail Smiley’s long-distance chess game against the Soviet spymaster pseudonymed Karla, are redolent of the Britain of the ’70s—the failure and humiliation, the tanking pound and the withdrawal east of Suez. While the plots are as riveting and intricate as any spy novel’s, the books’ real power comes from the offhand scenes and observations from the end of a civilization: the Secret Service’s headquarters trashed after a listening bug search; the wistful comment that “there is a kind of Englishman for whom only the East is home”; most hauntingly for the American reader, an Air Force colonel shaking a British agent’s hand amid the Vietnam withdrawal.

His comment: “I want you to extend the hand of welcome, sir. The United States of America has just applied to join the club of second-class powers, of which I understand your own fine nation to be chairman, president, and oldest member.”

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The ‘Rules-Based Order’ Is Already Over

Foreign Affairs

The ‘Rules-Based Order’ Is Already Over

Russia has already shown that Western ostracism is not necessarily fatal.

Russian President Putin Attends Summit Of Shanghai Cooperation Organization In Uzbekistan
(Contributor/Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin’s resounding victory in Russia’s presidential elections will act as a mandate to the Kremlin for fighting the Ukraine war to completion. At the same time, attacks on Russian territory have expectedly increased over the past several weeks as Kiev’s strategic position has steadily deteriorated. In addition to targeting civilian population centers with missile and drone strikes, forces of the pro-Ukrainian Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK) have also unsuccessfully attempted to invade and consolidate territory in the direction of Belgorod; such attacks were meant to coincide with the elections and intended to demoralize Russian citizens, thereby increasing pressure on the Putin regime by sending the message that the current administration does not have things under control. 

All of this is and was predictable. What is less clear, however, is how the Western world will respond to the increasingly poor prospects for the Ukrainian war effort moving forward. In a March 15 meeting with the highest-ranking members of the Russian security and defense services, Putin specifically referred to the involvement of “foreign mercenaries” and Western-backed Ukrainian forces in the attacks on Belgorod and Kursk. In his initial remarks to the country upon winning reelection, the Russian president again referred to troops from NATO countries operating in Ukraine, and warned of the potential for escalation to “full-scale World War III.” These statements were made only several days after Putin declared in an interview that he would not rule out the possibility of using nuclear weapons, should certain “redlines” be crossed in Ukraine.

But such heightened rhetoric is hardly surprising in response to recent statements by Western leaders. Most notably, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has doubled down on his insistence that the possibility of eventually involving foreign troops in Ukraine is indeed possible, if not likely. Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski—husband of Atlantic columnist and prominent spokeswomen of the neoliberal order, Anne Applebaum—lauded Macron’s statements, and reiterated the latter’s evaluation that NATO troop deployments may eventually be called for. 

At the same time, the pressure campaign to punish Russia has failed to result in Moscow’s international ostracization, and instead served to accelerate the geopolitical reorientation of the non-transatlantic world. Russia may be just one (and by no means the strongest) of multiple centers of power in this emerging alternative to the “rules-based order”; it has nonetheless illustrated the conditions that must be established in order to successfully break with that previous order, as well as the characteristics of the developing new one.

For one, the Russian economy has largely been able to weather the massive sanctions regime launched against it. A large part of this has been due to its massive capacity for military production. Per the Wall Street Journal, the percent of federal expenditures devoted to defense related industries has jumped by 14 percent since 2020; tank production is 5.6 times greater than it was before the war, and ammunition and drone production are both 17 times greater. NATO intelligence likewise estimates that Russia is currently producing about 250,000 artillery shells per month, which is three times greater than U.S. and European production levels combined. 

The broader economic effect of having the country on the war footing has been to stabilize GDP and soften the effect of the sanctions for the Russian population. Russia’s economy beat expectations by growing at 3.6 percent in 2023, higher than all other G7 countries. The IMF predicts growth levels of 2.6 percent this year, twice as much as its previous forecasts; this looks particularly favorable when compared to the 0.9 percent growth level predicted for Europe. And while inflation remains rather high, its effects have been somewhat mitigated by an all-time low unemployment rate of 2.9 percent. 

The Russian rouble has likewise proved to be more resilient than expected. The percent of Russian export settlements being conducted in the U.S. dollar or the euro has plummeted from around 90 percent at the beginning of 2022 to less than 30 percent today; meanwhile, those in the rouble have increased from about 10 to more than 30 percent, with the share of transactions being conducted in other currencies—mostly the Chinese renminbi—higher than 40 percent. Despite Western boasting of its campaign to destroy the rouble, the currency has remained relatively stable despite temporary fluctuations, disproving the promises of its impending demise thanks in large part to capital controls (and perhaps an element of loyalty on the part of Russia’s exporting firms).

There is of course legitimate criticism that an economy built upon weapons production inevitably siphons investment from other sectors; Russia’s inflation level may also be representative of the more widespread systemic dangers of relying on massive state spending to keep things running hot. Still, as long as Moscow is able to keep revenue coming in, its deficit should remain manageable.

No single factor in keeping that revenue flowing and subsequently fortifying the Russian economy is more significant than that of its energy trade. At the same time, no single example stands as a better representation of Moscow’s defiance to the West’s punitive measures than the circumvention of Washington’s $60 price cap. Instituted around the beginning of 2023, the intention was to punish Russia by decreasing its revenue from the oil trade; the mechanism through which these caps are enforceable is that Russian ships transporting oil use Western maritime insurance and financial services. 

Expectedly, enforcement was largely ineffective at the outset, although the United States has since attempted to crack down. For instance, Washington pledged to increase its enforcement of the oil caps at the end of 2023, with sanctions placed on two tankers due to their flouting of the regulations last October. Most recently, oil shipments headed to India were rerouted to China due to New Delhi’s apprehension of tougher enforcement.

Almost exactly one year since the sanctions really started to bite, and Russian seaborne crude shipments remain high. Even with its massive budget amid the significant defense spending mentioned earlier, Moscow’s current deficit remains manageable at somewhere between 1 and to 2 percent, and the massive windfall from oil revenues will certainly keep the state coffers buoyed for the foreseeable future. Despite temporarily falling below $60/barrel for its Ural crude blend at various points over the past year, the average price has stayed above the price cap; and after starting off 2024 at around $60, the price per barrel at present stands close to $80.

The politics around the oil trade further demonstrates Russia’s hardly isolated position in the international economy. Increased revenue based on such prices as those listed above can be expected for at least the next several months—if not beyond—as OPEC and its partners initiate coordinated oil cuts that will drive up prices. Cuts will take place over the next several months, with Russia choosing to focus on decreasing production rather than exports. One factor in the latter decision is that Ukraine and its Western backers recognize the independence and geopolitical maneuverability that the oil trade gives to Moscow, and have therefore specifically targeted refining facilities with drone and missile strikes as part of their attacks on Russian territory. The cuts to production could provide the needed space to implement repairs. 

Of course, the U.S.-led West still exerts enormous influence on the world stage, as represented by India’s denial of the shipments of Russian crude in the face of mounting pressure. Yet Russia at present remains near the top of India’s oil imports, specifically due to the discounted prices since the start of the Ukraine war; New Delhi started off the year with a 41 percent year on year increase of shipments from Russia. It is hard to believe that India will permanently shun Moscow at the behest of Washington, rather than figure out a way to circumnavigate the sanctions regime.

India may look to the United States in helping to balance China, but Russia’s growing relationship with both of the two Asian heavyweights has provided leverage in its geopolitical maneuvering. (Xi and Modi were both among the first to call and congratulate Putin on his electoral victory, as was Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.) The diverted Sokol oil shipments from India ending up in China is likewise no coincidence; Beijing subsequently set a record for the amount of Russian oil imports for a single month in March. A major meeting between Xi and Putin has also been scheduled for May; it is to be the Russian president’s first trip abroad since winning reelection. Putin reaffirmed that the two leaders share a similar outlook in international relations, ensuring that bilateral cooperation between the two nations will continue to expand in the coming years. 

Meanwhile in Europe, Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko announced this past Sunday that his country will refuse to prolong a five-year deal on the transport of Russian gas through pipelines in its territory. The agreement expires on December 31, and besides attempting to harm Moscow’s revenue flows further, the halt in gas transits is undoubtedly intended to leverage Ukraine’s position between Russia and energy-hungry NATO members. 

The hardball tactics are logical, as Kiev needs to do all it can to tip the scales in favor of greater Western intervention. Over the past several decades, the United States has continually placed Moscow in a position either to accept the fait accompli of NATO expansion at the expense of Russian security interests, or to escalate with force and suffer the consequences of increased economic and political ostracization. This disincentive to avoid escalation has been effectively removed. Explicating the altered state of international relations is not cheerleading for the Russian position—although it may be treated as such by those who disingenuously present any realistic assessment of the situation as “appeasement”—but rather illustrating how Moscow has insulated itself from Western ostracization, thus changing the entire balance of power in not only Europe, but the world.

Now, it is Russia that has the West on the horns of a dilemma: It can either watch the Kremlin achieve its strategic objectives, guaranteed in a one-sided negotiated settlement or through the continued attrition of Ukrainian forces, or it can escalate with force. Putin’s statement regarding nuclear weapons was not mere rhetoric—it was the Russian president defining the limits of the current conflict from a position of authority.

Anything short of total Ukrainian victory is therefore an implicit admission that the “rules-based” economic and political order has been irreversibly altered. Despite getting the premises right, Putin may have subsequently erred in his conclusion that Western leaders understand the Ukraine war as a mere matter of improving their tactical position. With the likelihood of official NATO deployments increasing by the day, the world stands on edge to see where things go next.

The post The ‘Rules-Based Order’ Is Already Over appeared first on The American Conservative.

The U.S. Should Work With Turkey to Leave Syria

Foreign Affairs

The U.S. Should Work With Turkey to Leave Syria

The other options are abandonment and a perpetual military presence.

Homs,,Syria,,September,2013.,Syria,,September,2013.,The,Flag,Of

Thanassis Cambanis argued that the United States should withdraw from Syria as it acknowledges its real priorities and makes hard tradeoffs. On the other hand, former U.S. Special Envoy to Syria James Jeffrey believes that the U.S. has multiple missions in Syria and should not withdraw. Both authors have valid points and advocate for different strategic objectives for the U.S. 

To achieve both goals, the U.S. should make a tactical compromise and work with Turkey in Syria. The U.S. partnership with the YPG-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) was described as temporary, transitional, and tactical by officials. Now is the time to act on this official rhetoric.

Although the viewpoints of Thanassis Cambanis and James Jeffrey may appear to contradict each other, the United States can still withdraw from Syria and accomplish its regional objectives. By collaborating with Turkey, a NATO ally, the U.S. can exit Syria while continuing its efforts to eliminate ISIS, limit Iran’s influence, and support the political process in Syria. 

The primary hurdle in reaching a Turkish-American agreement is the fate of the Syrian Kurds. The precise definition of “Syrian Kurds” is crucial in overcoming this obstacle. Generally, in the U.S., the Syrian Kurds are considered synonymous with the YPG-led SDF. In reality, the YPG does not speak for most Syrian Kurds and is mostly controlled by Turkish Kurds.

Many Syria discussions often focus on the SDF without delving into its true nature. As highlighted by former CIA officer Nicholas Spyridon Kass, it is crucial to recognize that the SDF essentially represents the Syrian faction of a well-known, originally Marxist, U.S.-designated terrorist group hailing from Turkey: the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). 

Over four decades, the PKK has perpetuated a violent and totalitarian revolutionary agenda centered around its incarcerated leader, Abdullah Ocalan. This organization has been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks and clashes, targeting Turkish security forces, Kurdish civilians, and others, resulting in a reported death toll of approximately 40,000 since its inception in 1984. Notably, the YPG functions as the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, further emphasizing the interconnectedness of these groups.

It is highly unlikely that the U.S. will be able to convince Turkey to accept the YPG-dominated SDF. Any attempts to push for a peace process between the SDF or the PKK with Turkey are doomed to fail. It will not gain any support in Ankara. On the contrary, any such suggestion motivates Turkish decision-makers to search for alternative solutions, including unilateral military operations. The Turkish president recently stated the desire to launch another military incursion into Syria. The failed peace process with the PKK serves as a strong reminder never to attempt it again. 

If the U.S. wishes to promote cooperation with Turkey in Syria, it must support Syrian Kurds who are acceptable to Turkey and who represent the majority of Syrian Kurds. The Syrian Kurdish National Council is a pre-existing organization that meets these criteria and should be favored over the YPG.

The Syrian Kurdish National Council is a political umbrella that includes several Syrian Kurdish political parties. It has a close relationship with the Iraqi Kurdistan region, and both the Iraqi Kurdish regional government and the Syrian Kurdish National Council maintain good relations with Turkey. The Syrian Kurdish National Council has offices in Istanbul and Erbil and is recognized as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition. Turkey has chosen it as the Kurdish representative of the Syrian constitution committee. The Rojava Peshmerga is the armed branch of the Syrian Kurdish National Council. They were expelled from Syria by the YPG and are now based in Iraqi Kurdistan. Since then, they have been trained and restructured by the Iraqi Zarawani Peshmerga and have fought ISIS. They have also been deployed to disrupt PKK logistical lines in northern Iraq.

The United States, after abandoning the YPG, should require Turkey to work with the non-YPG factions of the SDF and the Syrian Kurdish National Council. As part of the agreement between the U.S. and Turkey, some form of local governance should be secured for the Syrian Kurds. These efforts should be further strengthened with the assistance of Iraqi Kurdistan. Erbil should be involved in certain aspects of the agreement related to the future of Syrian Kurds. Erbil, a trusted partner of both the U.S. and Turkey, can support the Syrian Kurdish National Council in establishing the new order.

American-Turkish collaboration offers several potential benefits. The U.S. can find a way to withdraw from Syria while also supporting Syrian Kurds and Arabs who are acceptable to Ankara instead of the YPG. It is important to ensure that this collaboration does not lead to conceding Syria to Iran or abandoning the political process for Syria. Bluntly, the U.S. has three options: abandon its goals in Syria, commit to working with Turkey, or commit to an endless presence in Syria.

The U.S. cannot maintain a presence in Syria indefinitely. However, the U.S. reluctance to cooperate with Turkey in Syria may ultimately benefit Iran. If the U.S. withdraws, the only obstacle to Syria becoming a puppet state of Iran would be Turkey. The SDF, which the YPG dominates, would probably make a deal with Damascus and align with Iran. Given the recent regional escalation due to the Gaza conflict, it is worth considering what this would mean for Israel’s security. Additionally, Russia may be too preoccupied with its invasion of Ukraine to counter Iran’s growing influence in Syria.

The decision of the U.S. to cooperate with Turkey would help in achieving strategic objectives such as eliminating ISIS, limiting Iran, and adopting an effective approach towards both goals. This decision could have geostrategic importance in addition to accelerating the new momentum in Turkish-American relations, even beyond Syria. It is particularly important in light of the invasion of Ukraine, as resolving the biggest dispute between the two largest armies in NATO would be useful.

If the U.S. decides to withdraw from Syria without coordinating with Turkey and instead withdraws after making a deal with Damascus or continues to stay in Syria, Turkish-American relations will suffer. As I explained elsewhere, Syria—which has a 565-mile border with Turkey—is a major concern that could negatively impact the new momentum in Turkish-American ties.

Given the current systemic situation in Syria, I foresaw that the U.S. would have no other option but to either give up Syria to Iran or collaborate with Turkey. Thus, I drafted a comprehensive plan that outlines how both NATO allies could work together in Syria. The proposed roadmap involves a transitional period where the Turkish and American spheres of influence in Syria are combined. The Turkish army will move into regions where the U.S. has a presence in Syria. The Arab non-YPG elements, the Rojava Peshmerga, and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army will form a decentralized unity in Syria. 

After the military transition period, elections will be held across this united territory, where locals will elect their local councils. Following this, a bi-chamber parliament, consisting of local council representatives and the legitimate political Syrian opposition, will elect the Syrian Interim Government (SIG). The SIG will be restructured and function as the primary interlocutor of the U.S. and Turkey in Syria.

With this, the Syrian conflict will transform a three-axis conflict into a two-axis conflict. This development opens the path towards implementing UN Security Council resolution 2254. The SIG areas would benefit from trade with and via Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, oil revenues, and international investments. To pressure the Assad regime and its backers, Iran and Russia, the sanctions against Damascus will be upheld. With each day passing, the negotiating power of Damascus will diminish. This will incentivize Russia and Iran to convince the regime to engage in the political process.

After the end of the transition period, the responsibility of fighting ISIS in Syria will be handed over to Turkey and the SIG. Additionally, the presence of Turkish military forces will prevent Iran from extending its influence over Syria and taking control of the oil fields. The longstanding Middle Eastern principle of Turkey and Iran never being present in the same area would apply, as evidenced by the Turkish–Iranian border being the oldest in the region.

Looking ahead, the Iranian land bridge connecting Tehran and Beirut runs through the important town of Abu Kamal. The PKK leaders depend on Iran to escape Turkish airstrikes, fleeing from the Iraqi parts to the Iranian parts of the Qandil Mountains. Because of this, the YPG-dominated SDF have been hesitant to attack Abu Kamal. This new situation would present policy options that could potentially cut off the Iranian land bridge from Syria to Iraq completely.

After withdrawing troops from Syria, the United States could maintain its air superiority in the region by using NATO assets stationed in Turkey, airfields in Kuwait, and bases in Jordan. With no American troops on the ground in Syria, Iran-backed Shia militias’ ability to target U.S. military personnel would be reduced. The U.S. air dominance would also assist U.S. allies in Syria.

This new approach to combating ISIS would represent a significant shift in perspective. While the current strategy centers on battling ISIS, it falls short of eradicating the group. The YPG-dominated SDF may indeed engage in anti-ISIS efforts, yet they also benefit from the continued existence of ISIS as it bolsters their legitimacy. Without the ISIS threat, they risk losing crucial support from the U.S. and their main source of legitimacy.

The current strategy aimed at defeating ISIS is unlikely to eliminate ISIS due to this legitimacy paradox. To address this issue, a new approach will be taken in the new period where Arabs and the reformed SIG will lead the fight. ISIS is no longer capable of launching assaults like it did in 2014. Now, the root causes of their existence must be tackled with political representation, legitimacy, popular support, and the region’s economic revival. 

The strategy to fight ISIS in 2014–2019 had to transform after the de-territorialization of ISIS, but it didn’t. That strategy facilitated a minority rule over the Arab majority, alienating the local Arab tribes who had already revolted. In the new period, once the initial transition is complete, the new fighting force will likely be more capable and more locally embedded than the current SDF with the support of the U.S. and Turkey. As a result of the tradeoff, Turkey will be responsible for ensuring that the strategy against ISIS is working.

In this new phase, the reformed SIG and local councils must address the ISIS threat. As local governance grows, social tensions are expected to diminish, reducing the pool for extremist recruitment. This strategy aims to tackle the root causes of ISIS in Syria. ISIS members and their families will face prosecution according to Syrian law in the courts of the SIG. Unlike the approach of the YPG-dominated SDF, the SIG adheres to Syrian legal standards for prosecuting crimes.

For the U.S. to honor its commitments to not only the Syrian Kurds but to all Syrians who still hope for a political solution, it must change tactics while maintaining strategic objectives. If the U.S. doesn’t work with Turkey, it will hand over control of Syria and the YPG-dominated SDF to Iran, either soon or at a later date.

The post The U.S. Should Work With Turkey to Leave Syria appeared first on The American Conservative.

FEC: Biden Outraises Trump by Millions

Politics

FEC: Biden Outraises Trump by Millions

State of the Union: In the leadup to the November election, fundraising will become critical to the success of the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

Wilkes-barre,,Pa,-,August,2,,2018:,Donald,Trump,,President,Of

President Biden’s reelection campaign has thus far raised more money than that of the former President Donald Trump according to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). This news comes as the former president’s legal bills continue to skyrocket.

In February 2024, the Biden campaign raised $21.3 million and spent $6.3 million over the same period of time. Since Biden announced his bid for reelection in April 2023, he has raised a total of $114.7 million and spent around $45.1 million. He also reportedly has $71 million cash on hand to spend on campaigning in the leadup to November’s election.

On the other hand, the Trump campaign has raised $10.9 million, just half as much, and spent $7 million in February alone. Since launching his third presidential campaign in November of 2022, Trump has reportedly raised about $99.4 million and spent $66 million, leaving just $33.3 million in cash on hand.

Trump also has expenses his adversary does not have to contend with: legal fees. The former president is currently facing 88 criminal charges across four different criminal cases (New York hush money, federal election interference, Georgia election interference, and the classified-documents case) in addition to two civil proceedings. Although the cases have yet to go to trial, Trump has already been ordered to pay exorbitant sums for the civil proceedings.

Trump has turned to the “Save America PAC” for help with covering these legal expenses. The FEC reported that the PAC spent about $5.6 million in legal fees in February 2024, which was more than what it raised during that month.

Another super PAC backing the former president, “Make America Great Again Inc.,” reported $25.5 million at the end of February, which is a notable jump from their $19.7 million in January.

The relatively recent departure of Trump’s GOP competitor, Nikki Haley, might improve fundraising numbers for the Trump campaign. Since Haley’s departure from the race following her decisive Super Tuesday loss, the Trump campaign and joint fundraising committees have seen an increase of money from January ($14 million) to February ($20.3 million).

Additionally, the Republican National Committee (RNC), now led by Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, has made raising money for the Trump campaign a top priority over the next few months.

The post FEC: Biden Outraises Trump by Millions appeared first on The American Conservative.

Saddam’s Secret Weapon

Par : Nic Rowan
Books

Saddam’s Secret Weapon

Saddam Hussein was a cruel, evil man, but that is hardly how he is remembered.

Screen Shot 2024-03-22 at 10.39.49 AM

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the CIA, and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq, Steve Coll, Penguin Press, 576 pages

Saddam Hussein was the first person I saw die on television. It was December 30, 2006. CNN pointedly chose not to show the actual moment of execution, but some other station must have because I remember with great clarity the grainy video of the hanging, filmed surreptitiously on an Iraqi cell phone. I was in fourth grade, and what impressed me most was not the rope nor the scaffold nor the loud crack when the dictator’s neck broke, but Saddam’s face in the moments beforehand. It bore more than a look of defiance. I would call it melancholy, with a touch of the smug. It was as if Saddam believed that through this inglorious death he would become, permanently, the martyr in whose image he had always drawn himself.   

Saddam was forever prophesying about his place in history, and those last few minutes with his executioners were no exception. On the way to the scaffold he argued about his legacy, and when the rope was put around his neck he taunted his captors. “Do you consider this bravery?” he asked. Someone in the crowd below shouted, “Go to hell!” and Saddam fired back, “The hell that is Iraq?” The shouting increased in its intensity, and Saddam defended himself. “I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persians and Americans,” he said, and soon began to recite the Shahada. Halfway through his second profession, the trapdoor beneath his feet swung open, and moments later he was dead. To the end, he had maintained belief in his personal myth. For Saddam, it was not what actually happened to him that was significant, but what he thought had happened.

In the 15 years or so leading up to that moment, personal myth was one of Saddam’s only comforts. American troops had humiliated him in 1991 on that long highway out of Kuwait. Worse, American camera crews had filmed the whole affair for the world’s entertainment. The leaders of all the richest nations had denounced him and isolated his regime. They had imposed crippling economic sanctions on his country. And soon officious Swedish diplomats from the United Nations had begun hounding his scientists, demanding a full accounting of Saddam’s secret nuclear weapons program, even after the scientists told the inspectors repeatedly, and, after a fashion, truthfully, that the nuclear weapons program never existed…we destroyed it! It didn’t help that Saddam faced his troubles alone. His half-brothers were ne’er-do-well sycophants; his sons spoiled wastoids; and his right-hand man, Hussein Kamel, whom Saddam had been grooming to succeed him, was in actuality a traitor, a monster to whom the harshest justice must be applied. The aging dictator looked out of his twilit window and saw nothing but ruin; only within the palace of his mind could he still rule the kingdom of his longing.

About this time, in the mid-1990s, Saddam turned to literature. He had always been a great reader, of course, and as a young man attempting to prove himself among older Ba’ath revolutionaries, he had developed a Jay Gatsby–like regimen of self-education. He read novels, international newspapers, political philosophy—anything he could get his hands on. He counted The Old Man and the Sea and Hemingway’s work more generally among his favorite books, in large part because he identified personally with Papa. And Saddam wasn’t hesitant to advertise his self-cultivated literary prowess. His longtime advisor and deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, recalled how when he first met Saddam at a 1963 Ba’ath conference in Syria that the young man consciously presented as someone who “worked on improving himself” and “read a lot.” But it was only when Saddam entered his 60s and began to think seriously, as old men do, of his own death, that he himself began to write. Soon a novel began to form in his mind.

This was Saddam’s creative process: He woke up every day at about 5:00 a.m. and dressed in clothing that had been laid out for him by a valet. He then drank his tea and armed himself with a small pistol and a handful of cigars to carry him through the long afternoons. (He limited himself to four Cubans per diem.) When it was a writing day, he holed himself up in one of his many palaces—far away from the affairs of state—and, to paraphrase the words of his hero, sat at his desk and bled. Saddam always wrote longhand. On a good day he would produce fifty pages of elegantly inscribed Arabic script; on most days he could only manage ten. His sentences were long and tangled, like something out of the novels of William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon. Saddam would frequently begin with a straightforward declarative phrase, slash through the middle of the sentence with a parenthetical digression, and then conclude with a wry comment, a bitter observation—always something unexpected.   

His copy editors suspected that the dictator simply did not know how to write. “Even when he tackled simple ideas, he couldn’t help himself and used a complex style,” said one of Saddam’s aides who worked in his press office. “He would get lost in parenthetical phrases.” But Saddam insisted that his choices were intentional; they were “his own personal touch.” When the copy editors sent him marked-up drafts correcting his grammar and syntax—and wondering aloud what to do with the mess of Arabic proverbs and Koranic verses interjected into his story—Saddam rejected most of their changes. Style was his province. His editors were just there to type his manuscript and run fact checks on historical dates, name spellings, and the like. 

In any case, this is how Saddam produced his first novel, Zabiba and the King, an allegorical tale which was released in 2000 to rave reviews in Baghdad. The dictator chose to publish the book anonymously (its cover advertises it only as “by its author”), but everyone knew he had written it. Zabiba quickly became a bestseller (it is estimated that more than a million copies were distributed throughout Iraq). Saddam’s foreign office ordered that the book be handed out to members of visiting foreign delegations. It was adapted into a twenty-part miniseries for Iraqi television and a musical at the Iraqi National Theater, whose premiere Saddam attended. 

Obviously Zabiba owes much of its success to the fact that a brutal regime forced it to become successful, but the novel does have its points of interest. It tells the story of a medieval pagan king (Saddam) ruling Tikrit (Saddam’s hometown), who falls in love with Zabiba, a beautiful and wise peasant woman (the Iraqi people). Although the king is powerful, he fears his queen and courtiers; he knows there are plots against his life everywhere in his palace. Zabiba alone gives him good counsel and dares to tell him the truth about the evil lurking in his midst. She suffers for her candor. Her husband (the United States), jealous of the favor the king shows to her, brutally rapes her in a forest, “like a wild animal in the attack of desire.” Meanwhile, the other lords (the coalition forces in the Gulf War) rebel against the king and attempt to depose him.

But all ends well. Zabiba rushes to the rescue and leads the people to the defense of the king. Before going into battle, she declares her love for him, divorces her husband, and becomes the king’s lawful wife. Then she dies a glorious death. The book ends with a long post-mortem citizens’ assembly meeting, in which characters representing Saddam’s enemies—the United States, Israel, various Iraqi resistance leaders—are punished for their disloyalty. The king, too, dies, the death of a martyr. Yet Saddam spends little time glorifying him. His comment on the king’s passing, the most memorable line in the whole novel, is a fatalistic sigh: “Every day, there were fewer and fewer kings.” 

For years, Saddam-watchers at the CIA assumed that there was no way that the dictator could have actually written Zabiba himself; he must have employed a ghostwriter. Too much of it reads like a real novel—even if a rather clumsy one—and Zabiba seems almost too well-rounded to have come from such a crude mind. But in this, as in many of its other assumptions about Saddam, the CIA was wrong. So writes Steve Coll in The Achilles Trap, which details for the first time the entire history of Saddam Hussein and his regime’s relationship with the American intelligence community, from its covert actions with the Reagan administration in the Iran-Iraq War to its demise at the hands of George W. Bush’s invasion forces in 2003. 

Coll focuses primarily on the history of the faulty information passed around about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, but The Achilles Trap doubles as a surprisingly sympathetic study of a man who, as his powers slipped away, spent the last decade of his life jerry-rigging monuments of his own magnificence. Coll draws much of his material from extensive interviews with retired American intelligence officers and former members of Saddam’s bureaucracy, as well as from a previously unavailable archive of audio tapes from Saddam’s own state offices. What emerges is a portrait of Saddam as an eccentric in the mold of G.K. Chesterton—if Chesterton were bloodthirsty, paranoid, and power-mad—a man driven ultimately by deep reverence for the sense that hides beneath nonsense.         

Saddam almost always spoke in paradoxes, but most frequently when he discoursed on foreign policy. Throughout the whole Iran–Iraq War, he suspected that, although the CIA was passing him intelligence about Iranian tank movements, the United States, Israel, and Iran were nevertheless involved in a recondite conspiracy against him. On its face, this was an insane belief—two of those countries were bitter enemies, at least on paper—but when the Iran–Contra affair became an international scandal in 1987, Saddam declared he had been vindicated. “Zionism is taking the Iranians by the hand and introducing them to each party, one by one, channel by channel,” he shouted during a cabinet meeting. “I mean, Zionism—come on, comrades—do I have to repeat that every time?”

This claim was not, strictly speaking, true. But there was something undeniable about the attractiveness of the proposition. Israel did sell arms to Iran and, as it happened, the CIA also facilitated weapons transfers to the Iranian army. But there was no coordination, no grand plan—only the contradictory movements of little powers within great powers, each pursuing its own ends. Saddam’s genius, the unique ability that both made and unmade him, was a refusal to see the world like that. For him everything was connected; there was always unity beneath chaos. “It was a pattern that would recur between Washington and Baghdad,” Coll writes. “What many Americans understood as staggering incompetence in their nation’s foreign policy, Saddam interpreted as manipulative genius.”

This same attitude guided Saddam’s justification for his plans to develop nukes. In 1990, for instance, he explained to Bob Dole and a delegation of other American senators that, under the principles of nuclear deterrence, Arab nations should have the right “to possess any weapon that their enemy possesses.” He was referring to Israel. “Iraq does not possess atomic bombs,” Saddam continued. “If we did, we would announce that, to preserve peace and to prevent Israel from using their atomic bombs.” Over the years, Saddam repeated those words many times, though after the Gulf War, no one believed he really was interested in deterrence. Besides, when had Israel ever threatened to nuke him? Do the principles of nuclear deterrence even apply among regional powers? It all sounded too crazy to be true. But I suspect that in some weird way, Saddam meant exactly what he said.

So firmly did Saddam believe in the underlying unity of the world that after enduring years of unrelenting UN inspections, he began to wonder if maybe Iraq did secretly possess WMDs after all. Why else would the Swedes keep badgering him? “Do you have any programs going on that I don’t know about?” he asked his deputy prime minister in 1998. “Absolutely not,” the minister replied, thinking this was a loyalty test—and only later realizing that the dictator was in earnest. Not long after, another one of Saddam’s aides approached him with the same question. “Do we have WMD?” he asked. “Don’t you know?” Saddam replied. “No!” the minister yelped. “No,” Saddam said. And when Saddam announced to his generals on the eve of the Iraq War that Iraq definitely did not possess nuclear weapons, many were surprised. They had always assumed that his constant questions about the subject implied some radiant secret, hidden from all eyes but his own.

Saddam did, however, occasionally refer to his “secret weapon” in the months leading up to Bush’s invasion. This weapon was something that he seemed to believe was far more powerful than any nuclear bomb. “Resist one week and after that I will take over,” he told his ministers at their last cabinet meeting. And, gathering his generals, he instructed them “to hold the coalition for eight days.” Then he promised to swoop in with a secret force of untold power.

That force turned out to be a book, another novel. Since the success of Zabiba, Saddam had written two works of fiction, The Fortified Castle and Men and the City, but neither had caused quite the same stir. It was only as the United States turned its big black eye on Baghdad that inspiration struck once again. Saddam began pulling all-nighters, simultaneously sketching out his war plan and scribbling away at his new novel. Every morning his editors received fresh installments of the manuscript, which, it must be admitted, were looked over with perhaps a little too much haste. But there was no time for stylistic quibbling. Two days before the American bombing began, Saddam retreated to a villa in a suburb of Baghdad and banged out the rest of his book. It was rushed to the presses—even as the invasion began—and the regime managed to print about forty thousand copies.  

I happen to have one of these copies on hand—borrowed from a university library—and I have been working though it with bemusement. A Farewell to Arms it is not. The book, so far as I know, has never been published in English, and it is difficult to find even in Arabic. It is known under varying titles, among them Begone, Demons; Get Out, You Damned One!; and Devil’s Dance. Like Zabiba, it is an allegorical historical novel, set somewhere in the outposts of the Roman empire. It tells the story of the three grandsons of Ibrahim: Ezekiel, Youssef, and Mahmoud, each of whom represents the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims, respectively. It is a moral tale, and the morals are deadeningly predictable. The Jews are perfidious; the Christians feckless; only the Muslims possess any degree of integrity.

There is one scene, however, that is quite striking. It is the novel’s conclusion. Ezekiel, in an alliance with the Romans (the United States), has built two towers in which he stores his ill-gotten riches. The Arabs in a self-sacrificial act burn the towers, destroying them utterly, a calamity that prompts Ezekiel to throw dust in his face and wail in anguish. Saddam treats the destruction of the towers as an event ordained by God, a sign of great victories to come. From far away, the smoldering ruins can be seen by all. Birds descend from heaven, and the common people weep for joy. Allahu Akbar, God is great, Saddam concludes.

Begone, Demons was intended to instill courage in the Iraqi people, to inspire them to resist the invading forces to the bitter end. Everyone knew that Bush was using 9/11 to invade Iraq, and with the novel, Saddam attempted to flip the script on him, to use 9/11 to repulse Bush. He saw himself as a sort of warrior poet, leading an insurgency not with the power of his weapons, but by the strength of his words. From the underground, he published several poems and recorded many exhortations much in the same spirit of Begone, Demons. And, even as the Ba’ath regime collapsed and Saddam’s comrades surrendered, the dictator persisted in his fervor. He was living his personal myth, right up until the moment when American forces dragged him out of a shallow hole in December 2003. Just before they found him, Saddam had been hard at work on a new novel.

Prison seemed to confirm Saddam’s belief in his own myth. Finally, he knew with certainty that he would not die in his bed; he would not leave this world an old man beset by the cares of domestic life. He would be executed, and, like all of the heroes of his novels, die a martyr’s death for the only cause more noble than himself: his image of himself. A strange calm settled within the dictator. He laughed with his jailors. He wrote more poetry and smoked cigars with his nurse. When the CIA came to interview him, he fooled around with his interrogators, answering their questions with questions and often speaking in parables. One of his handlers remembers Saddam as remarkably lucid, free from any signs of “anxiety, confusion, paranoia, or delusion.” At times, “he even displayed a self-deprecating sense of humor.”

Nearly twenty years after his death, which, probably to Saddam’s satisfaction, was watched by millions of people worldwide, it is hard to escape the suspicion that in some crazy, backward way, Saddam was right about himself. Indeed, his personal myth has long outlived him and become embellished to the point of absurdity. Saddam Hussein was a cruel, evil man—it is said that he once fed one of his adversaries to a Doberman Pinscher for sport—but that is hardly how he is remembered today. Rather, he is remembered as a stabilizing force in the Middle East, a prudent moderate in comparison to those who followed. His death was not quite a martyrdom, but there are those who say it was something near to it. Jacques Chirac, one of the few Western politicians to understand Saddam, spoke rightly when he advised in the run-up to the invasion for the United States to leave the dictator alone. Ultimately, he said, Saddam would only use antagonism to his advantage. “The way Saddam thinks is the best way to regain control of the people is to pretend to be a martyr,” Chirac predicted. Perhaps the secret weapon worked after all. Even now, the martyr’s myth lives on, dazzling so many who cast a glance toward Saddam.

The post Saddam’s Secret Weapon appeared first on The American Conservative.

The U.S. Should Let Haitians Decide Their Own Future

Foreign Affairs

The U.S. Should Let Haitians Decide Their Own Future

American interventions only destabilize Haiti further.

Port-au-prince,-,August,21:,Busy,Streets,Of,The,Iron,Market

Haiti’s simmering political crisis reached a boil late last month when local armed groups, led in part by ex-cop Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, declared war on Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s government. In just a few weeks, these disparate gangs have forced Henry to step down and enter impromptu exile in Puerto Rico as unrest wracks his country.

But fear not—as Haiti descends into political chaos, Washington’s brightest minds have developed a two-pronged plan to fix it. It’s a classic of the genre.

The Biden administration’s plan revolves around a Kenyan-led police intervention to restore order, which the United Nations Security Council approved last year. On the political side, the U.S. is leading talks in Jamaica to install a transitional council that would take Henry’s place until new elections can be held.

But there’s a catch. Anyone who wants a seat on the council must agree to an international intervention, leaving all Haitians opposed to such a move out of the conversation. Worse, Kenyan courts have serious reservations about sending their police to fix a crisis abroad; following Henry’s resignation, authorities in Nairobi have said they will consider deploying security forces only once a new government is in place and a fact-finding mission can be conducted. This is perhaps why the U.S. has haltingly begun to entertain the idea of sending American troops as part of an international coalition to restore order. 

If all of this seems a bit illogical, that’s because it is. In a world wracked by crises, the U.S. has little to gain by imposing a half-baked plan on a country that has long opposed American intervention in its internal politics.

And, as POLITICO revealed this week, “half-baked” may be a bit generous. A 33-page planning document that the White House has been circulating in Congress gives no real detail about how the UN force would be funded, how Kenyan forces would work with local police to beat back the armed groups, and whether foreign troops will engage directly in the fighting. Indeed, it doesn’t even give a clear timeline for success, saying only that the mission will start with a nine-month mandate that can be renewed as needed. Little wonder, then, that congressional Republicans are blocking funds for the vaguely defined effort.

The best path forward is far simpler. As was the case in Afghanistan, the U.S. can best serve Haiti by taking a step back and allowing Haitians to decide their own future. As Jake Johnston—a Haiti expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research—recently told me, the tortured history of U.S.-Haitian relations leaves no other choice. “You can’t impose the government from an external source or power,” Johnston said. “It’s not going to work in the long run, however much we might want it to.”

Conversations about Haiti tend to focus on images of chaos and poverty, but few Americans ask where that chaos comes from. In reality, much of Haiti’s current woes stem from shoddy, short-sighted U.S. policy. Over the past century, consecutive American governments have posed as the island nation’s savior only to undermine its hopes for democracy at every turn.

Haiti’s financial woes date back originally to its founding in 1804, when Jean-Jacques Dessalines squared off against Napoleonic France and, beyond all odds, won independence for his countrymen. The upstart nation got the cold shoulder from its neighbors, many of whom feared that the successful slave revolt in Haiti would inspire copycats across the Western hemisphere. 

Haiti would only reach a modus vivendi with Western powers when it agreed, under threat of a new invasion, to pay France a kingly sum to recognize Haitian independence. The ransom strangled Port-au-Prince for over 100 years, forcing Haitian leaders to fork over most of their annual tax revenue just to service the debt.

While President Woodrow Wilson preached sovereignty for all nations, he sent U.S. troops to occupy Haiti in 1915. Wilson’s reasons were twofold: Policymakers feared that chaos in Haiti could threaten U.S. security, and American banks held a great deal of Haitian debt. In short order, U.S. occupation forces rewrote the country’s constitution (including new provisions that legalized foreign ownership of Haitian land and established a national army) and set out to control its political scene, an arrangement that would hold until America’s withdrawal in 1934.

The U.S. continued an uneasy but often close relationship with Haitian authorities in the ensuing years. Washington lent support to a notorious father-son dictatorship from 1957 until 1986, when military leaders forced dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier into exile. A shaky transition gave way to the country’s first ever democratic elections in 1990, won by a leftist Catholic priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

American officials were opposed to Aristide’s redistributionist, left-wing agenda and often accused him of being an authoritarian in democratic clothing. His tenure only lasted a few months before a new coup, backed by intelligence agents who had worked closely with the CIA, forced him into exile. The priest managed to claw his way back and win election again in 2000, only to be deposed in a second coup in 2004, with the alleged backing of U.S. officials anxious to see Aristide leave power.

Things have only gotten worse since. A UN force occupied the country from 2004 to 2017 in a mission that helped stabilize the security situation but also led to a massive outbreak of cholera. When elections took place just months after the 2010 earthquake, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton allegedly intervened to help elect Michel Martelly—an erratic former pop singer who pushed the country toward authoritarianism. (American officials also went to great lengths to oppose Aristide’s return to Haiti despite his continued popularity, as WikiLeaks cables revealed.)

The past few years have been no different. When Martelly was pushed out, the U.S. backed his successor Jovenel Moïse to the hilt, including when he dissolved parliament and began ruling by decree. Following Moïse’s 2021 assassination, American officials threw their support behind Henry as Haiti’s rightful ruler, even though he had only been named prime minister two days before the killing and had never been sworn into office. With U.S. backing, Henry followed in the authoritarian footsteps of his predecessors and gradually lost control of the country.

This history leads to an inescapable conclusion: When Washington puts its finger on the scales of Haitian politics, chaos ensues. This brings us back to the current crisis.

In short, years of corruption and poor governance have empowered armed groups to act like neighborhood mafias, providing some services to local communities while shaking down shop owners for protection money and warding off police attention. These disparate gangs have at times worked with the government, as in 2018 when they helped break up a popular protest movement.

Popular hatred for Henry’s regime led the local armed groups to attempt to overthrow the government last year, but their effort faded within weeks following disagreements over a path forward for the country. This year’s effort has been much more successful, though significant doubts remain about whether the gangs will manage to hold the line this time around. If they do, any military intervention from abroad will likely lead to a protracted civil war.

The latest flare-up in violence is certainly concerning for Haitians, who now face a breakdown of social order that has only worsened food insecurity in the cash-strapped country. Gang violence has pushed at least 300,000 people from their homes over the past year, and some form of humanitarian aid remains necessary to prevent total collapse.

But we have to accept the fact that U.S. intervention—military or political—isn’t going to make the situation better. Haitians are the only ones capable of solving their own crises. It’s time that foreign powers give them the space to try.

The post The U.S. Should Let Haitians Decide Their Own Future appeared first on The American Conservative.

Getting Ike Right

Par : Sean Durns
Politics

Getting Ike Right

Claiming Eisenhower for the liberal internationalist crowd isn’t just a simplification—it’s plain wrong.

Abilene,,Ks,09-03-2023,Eisenhower,Presidential,Library,And,Museum

Dwight Eisenhower was one of the most successful foreign policy presidents of the modern era. Under his leadership, Americans enjoyed peace abroad and prosperity at home. Yet, despite his presidency’s lessons for today’s policymakers, Eisenhower remains one of our most misunderstood chief executives.

In a recent column, the New York Times’ David Brooks misremembers Eisenhower’s policies. Brooks casts Eisenhower as an internationalist who successfully battled isolationist forces within his own party, setting the course for GOP foreign policy for the next seven decades. Ike, he writes, “gradually created a party that helped defeat Communism and ushered in more global prosperity.” He compares the positions of Eisenhower’s opponents, like Senator Robert Taft, to current trends in the Republican Party. 

Taft ran against Eisenhower for the GOP nomination in 1952. The Ohio senator supported the America First movement before the United States joined World War II, and afterwards he “opposed the Marshall Plan, NATO, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was designed to lower trade barriers,” Brooks notes. Taft was the likely nominee in 1952—a fact that compelled former nominee Thomas Dewey, among others, to encourage Eisenhower to run. They staunchly opposed many, but by no means all, of Taft’s views on America’s role in the world. Brooks argues that today’s Republicans are analogous to Taft. He presents them as “isolationists” whose views run counter to the internationalism that Eisenhower embodied. 

This misunderstands many of today’s Republicans. It also misunderstands Eisenhower.

Wanting allies in Europe and elsewhere to share more of the defense burden isn’t “isolationism”; nor is believing that the United States must prioritize the threat posed by China; nor is recognizing that national security strategy must account for constraints imposed by the nation’s fiscal state and popular will. A look at Ike’s presidency suggests that he may have shared some or all of these concerns.

Eisenhower took office at a perilous moment in American history. The Cold War was new. The United States had recognized, albeit belatedly, the threat posed by the Soviet Union and communism. Ike’s predecessor, Harry Truman, had overseen the establishment of a vast national security architecture, including the creation of the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. He set a foreign policy that was cognizant of the Soviet thirst for expansion, recognizing—quite rightly—that communism needed to be contained.

Yet under Truman the defense budgets had seesawed, eventually reaching astronomical heights with the Korean War. Ike worried that the present fiscal course was unsustainable. As his biographer William Hitchcock notes, he “abjured” the drastic swings in defense spending that occurred under Truman, “believing that they suggested an unwillingness to think ahead and stay prepared for future conflicts.”

 Sustainability, he knew, was key to crafting an enduring strategy. Ike believed that Truman’s foreign policy had been too haphazard, lurching from one crisis to the next. Stolid and dependable, Eisenhower sought to bring order and definition to American foreign policy at a time of great uncertainty. As he remarked: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. If you haven’t been planning, you can’t start to work, intelligently at least.” 

As President, Ike empowered the moribund National Security Council, attending 90 percent of its meetings. The modern conception of a White House chief of staff dates to Eisenhower, who largely created the title, his military experience having taught him the importance of delegating. Project Solarium, a national-level exercise convened at the beginning of his presidency, was designed to impose order and consensus among policymakers during an early period of the Cold War that was fraught with uncertainty.

Eisenhower recognized reality, bringing troops home from the stalemated war in Korea and even employing threats of a potential nuclear war to cajole friend and foe alike to that end. But the centerpiece of Ike’s national strategy—dubbed the “New Look”—was predicated on America’s financial, and spiritual, health.

Despite his robust concern for American security and his own career as a soldier, Eisenhower feared America becoming a “garrison state.” He knew that defense budgets, like all budgets, could be chock full of waste and pet projects. And he was keenly aware of the cost of maintaining a massive military. Ike knew that the Soviet Union threatened the American way of life, but he didn’t want America to lose itself in confronting that threat.

“Rather than turn the country into a garrison state built upon a command economy, Eisenhower proposed to wage the cold war along free market principles moderated by wise fiscal management,” Hitchcock observed.

To Eisenhower, a strong foreign policy was inseparable from long-term fiscal health. He believed that America must play to its strengths. As Hitchcock noted: “To win the Cold War, Eisenhower believed [that] the United States must remain economically dynamic, robust, and expansive. Spending huge sums on armaments and national defense might be unavoidable, but it had to be done carefully.” 

Truman’s last budget had proposed a total spending of $78.6 billion against a revenue of $68.7 billion—leaving a deficit of $9.9 billion. The cuts, Ike knew, would have to come from the military. This was the key basis for the “New Look,” which consciously emphasized collective security agreements, burden sharing, and a reliance on armaments and tech instead of personnel. 

Eisenhower was no dove. Defense spending grew steadily under his watch. But he sought to provide order and planning to expenditures. This meant ensuring deterrence—“no more Koreas,” as the refrain went—but it also meant being judicious with hard power.

Eisenhower eschewed military force on several occasions. In addition to ending active hostilities in Korea, he avoided U.S. military intervention in Indochina in 1954 and declined to involve U.S. forces in Hungary in 1956, among other instances. Ike’s strategy was predicated on preventing war.

A lifetime soldier and student of Clausewitz, Ike understood that nations embarked on war were often overtaken by events. He also knew that in the modern age, warfare was industrial slaughter; once committed, half-measures would not suffice. Accordingly, he sought to impose discipline while avoiding conflict at all costs. 

Eisenhower, Hitchcock notes, wielded a “nuclear stick.” On several occasions, he and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles threatened to use nuclear weapons, successfully deterring incursions by Communist China into the Taiwan Strait in 1955 and 1958. One senses that today’s media would have had a field day with the president’s 1955 press conference in which he said of nuclear weapons, “I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.” The Chinese and Soviets certainly paid attention.

“Wars,” Joseph Stalin allegedly remarked, “are won in the factories.” As a young soldier, Eisenhower summed up the great lesson of World War I: “When great nations resort to armed conflict today, the readiness of each to meet promptly the needs of its armed forces in munitions, and of its civilian population in the necessities of life, may well prove to be a decisive factor in the contest.” 

Early in his military career, Ike spent years studying the problem of industrial mobilization in wartime, touring factories and plants and publishing his findings in a journal. As Hitchcock notes, “As early as 1930 he grasped the need for modern states to build a standing ‘military–industrial complex.’” He recognized that economic power—when properly harnessed—was key to military strength. NSC 162/2, authored in the Eisenhower administration’s first months, illustrated Ike’s recognition of the importance of the defense industrial base by calling for stockpiles of munitions and securing raw materials and key industrial plants.

Eisenhower “built the United States into a military colossus of a scale and lethality never before seen,” but he was conscious of its limitations. Ike believed in deterring and intimidating his enemies, but he didn’t believe in writing checks that the United States couldn’t cash.

And he knew that a massive undertaking—be it fighting war or preserving peace at times of great peril—required consensus. Accordingly, he viewed himself as both responsible for building consensus, but also beholden to the limitations of popular will. This goes far in explaining his reluctance to intervene in Indochina, Hungary, and elsewhere.

Ike mobilized science and universities to fight the Cold War, recognizing that American ingenuity and innovation were key to defeating totalitarianism. But he also appreciated that the battle was a spiritual one, putting values and religion front and center. Eisenhower, who was not a regular churchgoer prior to his election, remains the only president to be baptized while in office. If war was politics by other means, Eisenhower was keenly aware that politics itself was downstream from culture. An America that believed in itself and its greatness was an America that could defeat its enemies; nothing less would suffice.

Eisenhower presided over peace and prosperity, yet he was widely mocked by the liberal intelligentsia, many of whom labeled him as dimwitted and ill-spoken. The record, of course, shows that he was neither. And it also shows that the characterization of Eisenhower as the antithesis of today’s Republican party is too simple by half.

The post Getting Ike Right appeared first on The American Conservative.

Johnson’s Speakership on Life Support After MTG Files a MTV

Politics

Johnson’s Speakership on Life Support After MTG Files a MTV

The $1.2 trillion minibus is headed to the Senate, but will House Speaker Mike Johnson be headed for the door?

Congress Considers Spending Bill To Avert Government Shutdown

While the $1.2 trillion, 1,012-page minibus is on its way to the Senate, House Speaker Mike Johnson could be on his way out of the Speaker’s office.

Just before noon on Friday, the House passed the $1.2 trillion minibus, a bundle of six appropriations bills loaded with earmarks, by a vote of 286–134. Just 101 Republicans, less than a majority of the GOP conference, supported the more than 1,000-page bill that was released less than 36 hours before the vote. In forcing the passage of the minibus, Johnson violated a number of rules conservative House members negotiated with former Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California in exchange for McCarthy becoming speaker, such as 72 hours to consider legislation and various government funding metrics.

One Republican member particularly outraged by Johnson’s decision? Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Remember, last Congress we were all complaining: ‘We can’t even read these thousands of pages before we have to vote on them.’ We’re now back to the House of hypocrites, and I’m so sick and tired of it,” Greene said. 

On Friday, Greene hinted she’d file a motion to vacate Johnson as speaker if Johnson overrode the will of the GOP conference in an interview with Steve Bannon. Just past 11 a.m. eastern time, that’s exactly what Greene did. She marched up to the House parliamentarian’s staff and handed them a resolution. The resolution, later confirmed to be a motion to vacate when Greene posted photos of it on Twitter, headed for the hopper.

“Why throw out a speaker for supposedly breaking the rules, and now we have a new speaker that is really breaking all the rules. So like, what changed?” Greene claimed before filing the motion. “All the precious rules are being broken.”

pic.twitter.com/a6Vdu1X03D

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 22, 2024

Yet Greene left the floor before heading to the rostrum to ask for privilege on the resolution. If Greene does go up to the microphone to ask for privilege at some point on Friday, leadership would be able to delay consideration of the motion for two days, which would take the issue into the two-week-long Easter recess. For now, the motion to vacate Johnson remains in the hopper.

Greene is an odd character to lead the charge against Johnson. When conservatives banded together to oust McCarthy after he worked with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass a continuing resolution with mostly Democratic votes instead of appropriations bills, Greene was one of McCarthy’s most vocal defenders. Now, Johnson has passed actual appropriations bills, though conservative wins are few and far between. Whether or not Greene’s past as a McCarthy backer, which has alienated Greene from some of her conservative colleagues, boosts or undermines Greene’s credibility in asking to vacate Johnson remains to be seen. It’s possible, however, that Greene’s character and credibility has very little to do with whether the motion succeeds.

After the string of defeats Johnson has suffered—which, to be fair, are mostly the fault of his predecessor and his Senate counterpart, the lame duck Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—other members might be just as fed up with Johnson. And with the GOP’s razor-thin margins in the House, Greene will only need a few allies to vacate Johnson. As it stands now, Republicans hold 219 seats, and Democrats hold 213. Three vacancies will soon become four as Republican Rep. Ken Buck will be stepping down at the end of the day Friday. Nevertheless, while the razor-thin margins makes it easy to vacate Johnson, it also might make it even more difficult for Republicans to replace him.

At this point, Johnson has to be asking himself if it was all worth it. It’s true: If the minibus does not receive the president’s signature before Friday’s end, the government would enter a partial shutdown. It’s best to avoid shutdowns, surely, but is a shutdown the worst thing in the world? Not when you can win the politics, and not when it’s just over the weekend. “I probably shouldn’t say this. But if we shut down, like, Friday night, nothing gets affected,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a GOP appropriator, claimed. “If there’s a shutdown for a weekend, that becomes a technicality more than a real problem.”

The post Johnson’s Speakership on Life Support After MTG Files a MTV appeared first on The American Conservative.

Can Trump Successfully Navigate an Abortion Middle Ground?

Politics

Can Trump Successfully Navigate an Abortion Middle Ground?

The expected maneuver could prove either electoral gold—or drive a wedge through his ranks.

Protesters,Holding,Signs,Abortion,Is,Healthcare,,My,Body,My,Choice,

Donald Trump is teasing a nationwide abortion policy. In answer to President Joe Biden’s promise to “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land” (so long as he remains vertical long enough), the former president and 2024 Republican nominee has hinted at a federal limit on abortion procedures, likely in the 15th week of pregnancy, to “make both sides happy” in the leadup to the general election.  

It’s a bold move from the former president, not that he’s a stranger to such things. Most Republican politicians and their advisors have declared mum on the subject of infanticide, at least until November 6. (The midterm ballot-proposal trouncing remains an intimidating specter to most.) But Trump is liked precisely because he ignores advisors, and in an election which may well be a referendum on abortion, not to mention IVF, it would be refreshing to know what we’re actually choosing between in November. 

The idea that both sides may be contented is bolder still. Unlike a national budget, what is at stake here are two fiercely opposed ideas, one which says all human life is sacred, and another which says some humans are more sacred than others. Compromise on this issue is perceived as total betrayal, at least for the left. As one example of this, 15-week abortion bans are just as unpopular with left-leaning voters as 6 week abortion bans, despite the wide difference between them in terms of abortions prevented. Pro-abortion voters polled by NARAL overwhelmingly rejected the idea that 15 weeks was even a compromise; the same cohort has frequently depicted the idea of a 15-week ban as “an extreme position.” It is hard to imagine any limit on abortion, by timeline, cost, or otherwise, that would not evoke a similar response. 

The same conscience does not seem to guide Republicans. While the party has spent decades affirming life begins at conception, the ease with which many have already settled on 15 weeks looks borderline chumpish. The vast majority of abortions nationally happen before 15 weeks: Only 6 percent occur at any point afterward. 

The very idea of a middle ground is premised on concessions. It is worth asking why the right continues to give them, while the left does no such thing. Abortion activists have increasingly succeeded in making anything less than abortion on demand with no exceptions, covered by insurance, and up to the point of birth appear to be tyranny, denying women lifesaving reproductive medicine: The human sacrifices must continue. Instead of resisting the ratchet effect, meeting this vigor with truth, many on the right have winced or apologized. In due time, a law preventing abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy becomes not just a “necessary compromise” but even a stunning win. After all, Virginia allows abortions until the 27th week of pregnancy. We’re better than that.

Thus we find ourselves celebrating a little bit less baby killing. The choice has become total death or something less than total death, the amount of which remains to be determined. Still, it is worth asking at what point a party has given away more than it has gained. Case in point: A 15-week national ban is unlikely to actually pass, even with a Republican executive. Despite polling from the GOP suggesting the magic compromise line may be found somewhere in the second trimester, every referendum on it at the ballot box has decidedly not borne this out, and Republicans in the House and Senate have taken note. 

That is probably at least in part because there is no rationale for 15 weeks: It is a simple median, and people rarely go to bat for medians. People do go to bat, especially women, when you tell them that men are going to take away their rights. We might learn to work with that.

All of this combines to make a very unpleasant picture for the unborn. With chemical abortifacients far more readily available since 2020, and a plethora of radically pro-abortion laws passed in blue states since the Dobbs decision, the total number of reported abortions in the United States have reached a record high in recent months, even though individual states like Texas and Tennessee have seen declines. 

Nevertheless, while making both parties happy seems like a pipe dream, there is one position which will make the majority of women happy—actually happy, that is, not happy-on-medication, gender-confused, girlbossing, quiet quitting, divorced, in therapy, California sober, or writing trashy personals in the New Yorker. This policy is the one that leaves them with more babies rather than fewer. It is the law that protects them from post-abortion trauma, guilt, and depression. It is law that knows and loves the best of their nature, rather than catering to the worst.

The post Can Trump Successfully Navigate an Abortion Middle Ground? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Securing the Border: America’s Priority Number One

Par : Joe Earley
Politics

Securing the Border: America’s Priority Number One

The country needs GOP legislators who will get out of their own way.

US-MEXICO-BORDER
(Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

Our country is being invaded because President Joe Biden refuses to secure our borders. He has rolled out the welcome mat, and illegal immigrants are pouring in by the millions. 

The current surge is easy to blame on Biden. Nevertheless, there are certain Republicans who must also take responsibility. When Donald Trump was elected president, the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and White House; it should have been easy to encode Trump’s executive orders into law, but the moderate wing of the GOP stopped the legislation. Hence, this November, it is not enough to re-elect Trump as our President; we must elect more real conservatives to Congress. 

So, how would a conservative Congress stop the invasion?

First and foremost, our country needs to build and then protect the wall. A hard southern border will stop the lion’s share of illegal immigration.

But, as we all know, that is not enough. We must end all the asylum loopholes that allow illegal immigrants to abuse our justice system in order to remain here. Asylum and refugee claims should only be allowed for people of certain countries and should be processed according to the traditional first-safe-country standards. Birthright citizenship should be reserved for babies born of legal residents of our nation. And we must end the visa lottery system and visa overstays, along with strengthening background checks. 

To strictly enforce the rules, protect the wall, and end Biden’s catch-and-release policy, Congress needs to increase the funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and permit officers to properly execute their mission. Having traveled to Eagle Pass, I can tell you firsthand that they are overwhelmed.

We also need to increase funding for the courts so that they can dispose of the deportation disputes and false asylum claims.

To protect the taxpayers, we need to withhold federal funding to all sanctuary cities and states. Why should we give them our tax dollars to help law-breakers? The funds for sanctuary states should be sent to Texas and Florida for their efforts to protect our nation from foreign threats. 

Other taxpayer-funded programs such as welfare and free lawyers for court hearings should not be made available to illegal immigrants. By cutting off all benefits, that will substantially decrease the motivation for illegally entering our nation, and maybe some illegal immigrants will self-deport.

Now the moderates and the Democrats will demand immigration reform as part of any package. Once again, this is why we need a conservative Congress to hold the line. There should be a 5-year moratorium on legal immigration, giving us time to clean up the Biden mess. For those who have been on the waiting list, we should give them consideration. 

Once we have secured the border, immigration reform must include a merit-based system, an end to chain migration, and increasing penalties in human trafficking. 

These items I have outlined are a must for ending the invasion and dealing with the millions who are presently in our country. Getting this done requires electing bold conservatives not weak Republicans. 

The bottom line is that while we are a nation of immigrants, we are also a nation of laws. If you don’t respect our laws, you are not worthy of being in our country. 

The post Securing the Border: America’s Priority Number One appeared first on The American Conservative.

What Can $1.2 Trillion Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

Politics

What Can $1.2 Trillion Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

The more-than-1,000-page, $1.2 trillion minibus dropped just before 3 a.m. Thursday morning. Will anyone finish reading it before Congress votes on it?

Ghost Army Ceremony

In what has been a long, drawn-out appropriations process for fiscal year 2024, Congressional leaders believe they’ve finally come to an arrangement on the final six spending bills. Will legislators have the time to finish reading the leadership’s back-room deal before it comes to the floor, let alone the opportunity to amend it? Legislators on the Hill doubt it after leadership dropped the 1,000 page bill just before 3 a.m. on Thursday morning, less than 48 hours before a partial government shutdown. 

The 1,012 page bill is six appropriations bills clumped together in what’s being called a minibus (short for “mini omnibus”). Legislators in both chambers will have just hours to read through the minibus that carries a $1.2 trillion price tag before likely voting on the package that is set to be rushed through both chambers, despite a rule in the House that promises members 72 hours to review legislation. In an email to The American Conservative, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas put it this way: “House Republicans believe they will inspire Americans to polls by jamming through almost $1.2 trillion in over 1000 pages of open-border funding nonsense with about 24 hours to read it?  Situation normal….” The Texas Congressman encouraged TAC to finish the sentence.

Nevertheless, House leadership and GOP appropriators took a victory lap. “House Republicans have achieved significant conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts to wasteful agencies and programs while strengthening border security and national defense,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger said the package “funds our highest national security priorities—it invests in a more modern, innovative, and ready fighting force, continues our strong support for our great ally Israel, and provides key border enforcement resources.”

“At the same time, we made cuts to programs that have nothing to do with our national security and pulled back billions from the administration,” the GOP appropriations lead claimed.

Senate leadership has been quiet. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continued his public dispute with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been silent on the bill so far, presumably as he deals with the bizarre death of his sister-in-law. Both point to a confidence that this bill, given the constraints and potential consequences, will sail through.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah could be making a victory lap of his own: His prophecies about the minibus have all come true. “I made a few predictions earlier in the week,” Lee told TAC. “I predicted that the bill would be more than 1,000 pages. It is. It’s 1,012 pages long. I predicted that it would contain hundreds of earmarks. It does. And I predicted that it would do nothing to address the massive deficit debt that we face. It doesn’t. And I predicted that it would do nothing to force the Biden administration to secure the border and stop the invasion at our southern border. And it doesn’t.”

Lee called the maneuver and the bill “insulting” in a phone interview with The American Conservative. “They’re giving it to us literally the day before the government is going to shut down? And they’re saying, ‘Sorry, there’s no more time to do it. You have to pass this now, or shut down the government and be blamed for the consequences’?”

Lee has taken to calling leadership in both chambers “the firm” as it negotiates massive spending deals behind closed doors. “What they’re saying [in this bill] is that the firm matters more than the people. That the firm’s interest in making sure that only the firm’s language, the firm’s earmarks, that the firm is blessed, is more important than allowing the American people through their elected lawmakers in Washington to have a say in how they spend the people’s money. Trillions of dollars’ worth.”

“No Republicans should vote for the bill for several reasons,” Virginia’s Rep. Bob Good, the House Freedom Caucus chair, told TAC over the phone. “One, it’s got thousands of earmarks for billions of dollars, which is a reason to vote against it to begin with. But of course, some Republicans are benefiting from those. Secondly, we don’t have time to read it to even know what we would be voting for—which is easier for me, since I knew I wasn’t going to vote for it anyway. But if I was going to own everything in that bill, I might want some time to read it to know what I have to defend after I vote for it.”

“At some point, having $35 trillion in debt is going to have an impact, and it’s not going to be sustainable,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida told TAC in a phone interview. “I don’t know when that will be, but something’s going to happen because our interest expense now exceeds defense, exceeds Medicare. And inflation will not come down as long as we run massive deficits.

“In 2019, before the pandemic, the federal government in total spent $4.4 trillion. But Biden is budgeting an increase of basically $3 trillion over that for fiscal year 2025. This year, we’ll probably have a 56 percent increase in terms of total outlays. Discretionary spending has gone up 41 percent since 2018. Our population has grown at probably less than 2 percent, and discretionary spending is up 41 percent, total spending up 56 percent,” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin explained to TAC. 

“What’s really gross is that this is being reported like it’s austere. I don’t think this is an austere budget,” Johnson added. “How can anybody justify that when we are running trillion and a half dollar deficits every year?”

The six-part minibus funds the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Homeland Security. The DOD will receive $886 billion, a 3 percent increase compared to last year. While DOD accounts for two-thirds of the package’s price tag, the biggest difficulty in spending negotiations since October, whether its base appropriations or supplemental funding, has been DHS, given the chaos on the southern border. At the 11th hour, the Biden administration encouraged congressional leaders to pass a full appropriations bill for DHS rather than another stopgap. Congressional leaders obliged.

$1.2 Trillion.

~216,000 words.

The #SwampOmnibus spends $5.5 million for every word.

~32 hours before the vote.

That’s 112 words a minute just to finish reading (not real analysis) before the vote…

That’s signing off on over $600 million per minute.

Is Pelosi in charge?

— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) March 21, 2024

It’s no surprise, however, after McConnell’s recent maneuvering to ensure any border deal made during this Congress would be toothless, that the border security provisions of the minibus will do little to restore order on the southern border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receives $19.6 billion, which is $3.2 billion more than fiscal year 2023  and amounts to a nearly 20 percent increase in funding. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will receive $9.5 billion, which amounts to about a 14 percent increase compared to FY23.

The southern border is one of the few places where it currently makes sense to boost federal spending, but what is nearly $30 billion buying American taxpayers in border security? Republican appropriators boast that the money provides for 22,000 additional border patrol agents, “which is consistent with H.R. 2.” For a $2.273 billion price tag, GOP appropriators said DHS will add another 7,500 detention beds to increase the total to 41,500. There is also $283.5 million in “new border security technology,” $10 million “for task forces dedicated to countering the flow of fentanyl,” $3.4 billion for custody operations (including the additional beds), and $721 million for removal operations.

It’s $30 billion of lipstick on a pig.

At first glance, more border patrol agents sounds nice. So do more detention beds, when the alternative is catch and release. In the minibus, the GOP completely adopts Democrats’ framing on immigration: It’s simply a process and optics problem. The minibus affirms Democrats’ immigration narrative by providing “$160.1 million for refugee processing, asylum, and work authorization backlog reduction” amid $281.1 million for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), $29.9 million for family reunification, and 12,000 additional Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans.

Further, while GOP appropriators boast these provisions are in line with HR 2, the legislation does not include any provisions that leverage these resources to ensure the Biden administration enforces federal law. What good are 22,000 more CBP agents when the Biden administration orders them to sit on their heels or to rush illegal immigrants into the country as quickly as possible? ICE will, however, be compelled to publish crucial detainee data online, such as the number of transgender detainees.

“It doesn’t matter how many more. We could have 100,000 border agents, but when you have a White House that’s not going to secure the border, they’re just going to process people faster,” Scott told TAC. “There’s nothing in here that’s going to require him to secure the border. This president has made his decision that he’s going to completely be lawless.”

Not to worry, says Republican appropriators—$117 million will be directed towards the Emergency Food and Shelter program for sanctuary jurisdictions struggling to handle the massive influx of illegals. “Well, that’s a huge incentive,” Johnson said in response to more sanctuary jurisdiction funding.

“It contains nothing that forces the Biden administration to stop the invasion, and the chaos, and the humanitarian crisis at our southern border,” Lee told TAC of the supposed border security provisions.

“My concern would be they’re increasing spending for detention and more CBP officers—is that how it’s actually going to be used? Or is it going to be used, as I suspect, to become more efficient at encountering, processing, and dispersing,” Johnson told TAC. “How do you force this President to use the authority he has to secure the border? No matter what agreement we would reach with this guy, you can’t trust him. So now we’ve reached agreement on an appropriations bill. What kind of enforcement mechanism does it have? Can you trust him?”

Johnson reflected on the appropriations and supplemental negotiations since October of last year that led to Republicans being on the back foot. He said that “what was so disappointing in what was masterminded by McConnell, the secret negotiations within our conference” was that “we were looking for an enforcement mechanism” that McConnell, it was later revealed, prevented from the outset.

“What we really need is something that forces action. Because right now, he’s using his discretionary authority to just leave this stuff wide open. We need things that would remove some of his discretionary authority. And we also need things that would force outcomes or condition funding on the achievement of operational control of the border,” Lee said. “This bill doesn’t do any of those things. This is a fig leaf! They’ve offered a fig leaf in favor of border security, and nothing more.”

“The bill does not address any issues we have right now,” Scott claimed. “It’s not addressing the two biggest issues. It’s making inflation worse, and it’s not addressing the border crisis at all.”

Good told TAC that actual border security measures are “essentially non existent” in the bill. More border patrol agents and beds “are both intended by this administration to allow them to more quickly process more illegals into the country,” Good added. “We’ve got a willful, purposeful facilitation of the invasion by this administration who has done this on purpose and obviously doesn’t want any border security.”

Speaker Johnson has admitted as much: “While these changes are welcome, only a significant reversal in policy by the president to enforce the law can ultimately secure our border,” a statement from the house speaker read.

Congressional leaders and appropriators don’t seem to care much about America’s borders, but the minibus does provide millions to protect Ukraine’s borders. The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative will receive $300 million, and another $335 million will be directed towards “U.S. allies and partners facing Russian aggression.” 

“Yet again, we’re fetishizing Ukraine’s border security issues, while ignoring our own,” Lee told TAC. “It is criminally reckless.”

“There’s so many questions that remain even unasked, much less unanswered, throughout this appropriation process,” when it comes to Ukraine, Johnson said. “I’m just getting repulsed by it quite honestly.”

This $635 million for the war in Ukraine, which some lawmakers apparently believe is much broader than the administration currently acknowledges, is likely just the tip of the iceberg. “Our foreign policy experts suspect the hundreds of millions for Ukraine is actually billions, due to various slush funds and gimmicks,” one senior Senate Republican staffer told TAC.

The minibus also provides $200 million for a new FBI headquarters—the FBI that has trained its sights on parents at school board meetings and Catholics who attend the traditional Mass. “Obviously, the FBI headquarters issue is a real big disappointment to a lot of Republicans,” Lee said. “This has become a symbolic and a substantive issue for many Republicans and with good reason. Democrats got huge wins with earmarks like that.”

The new FBI headquarters isn’t the only earmark conservatives should deplore, Lee suggested. He started rattling off earmarks in the minibus:

$1.8 million for a hospital in Rhode Island that performs late term abortions. It gives $475,000 for an activist organization that’s curriculum and materials are put together for kids ages two through five and introduces kids to “a wide variety of gender expressions and family structures,” whatever that means. $676,000 for an organization that has been actively supportive of Black Lives Matter. $2.8 million for an institution that released an inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility charter in 2020. $500,000 for a radical activist organization that hosts training workshops on implicit bias, social inclusion, inequity, decolonization, and land acknowledgement. $450,000 for a child care initiative that is being established to give childcare for immigrant families—so instead of securing our border, we’re using our taxpayer money not to secure the border, but to create welfare programs for illegal immigrants who have invaded our country at the invitation of President Biden.

Democrats also secured another billion in climate change funding.

“We ought to at least get something out of it if we’re going to spend this ungodly sum of money on these ridiculous earmarks and all the other bloated spending that this provides,” Lee added. “On border security, and we get nothing—nothing!”

Scott also expressed his disdain for the amount of earmarks in the bill. “We are in $2 trillion dollar deficits, and they’re doing special projects so somebody can brag that they brought money back home and act like that’s free?” Scott asked rhetorically. “It’s not free, somebody has to pay for it.”

Democrats not only boasted about getting their earmarks. They also claimed to have blocked a number of Republican “poison pill[s],” which certainly relate to the most pressing issues facing Americans today. Democrats declared victory over Republican attempts to block funding for “diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community,” prohibit the government from being the arbiters of misinformation, and prevent flying the pride flag over some federal buildings, to name a few.

Leadership in both chambers are expected to jam the bill through as to get the president’s signature before Friday’s end. The House will likely vote on the bill under suspension of the rules around 11 a.m. Friday morning. There’s not much House conservatives can do to stop it. 

In the Senate, however, things could get interesting. Lee explained how conservatives might put up a fight in the amendment process:

The majority leader has a tool by which he can effectively block out amendments. He can effectively forestall other senators from having their amendments become pending, and, therefore, making sure that they are addressed, that they get voted on, or are dealt with in some meaningful manner. That procedural tool is colloquially referred to in the senate is “filling the tree.” Once he fills the tree, that power is significant, but a Republican minority, as long as we have at least 41 votes (and currently we have 49 Republicans in the Senate), can push back on that. 

The pushback that you give to a majority leader who fills the tree and thus blocks amendments is to, as we say, hold 41. If you hold 41 votes to oppose cloture, that is to vote “no,” on a motion to bring debate to a close, then you can effectively force the majority leader to reconsider and to allow some amendments. Normally, what happens, especially if they see that we have the ability to hold 41 and that we intend to do so, the majority leader will become a lot more gracious, a lot more hospitable, to the idea of having an amendment process, and he will schedule them. So that’s more or less what we’re looking at.

What such a delay can accomplish remains to be seen. “It is fascinating to me that we can’t have a robust amendment process,” Scott told TAC. “If I cant talk somebody into it, that’s my problem, but if I don’t have a chance to talk to people about my ideas, that’s a leadership problem. So this will just be another failed exercise for Republicans, but a great exercise for Democrats where they get exactly what they want, and we get no wins.”

Sen. Johnson would like to see amendments, too. “I think it’s important to have amendment votes because we should be highlighting how Democrats will oppose sending back criminals who are in this country illegally. They will support sanctuary cities getting funding even though sanctuary cities refuse to cooperate with ICE in detaining, or even providing notice when they’re going to release somebody that’s a criminal in this country illegally.”

But Sen. Johnson isn’t optimistic that amendments can stave off the inevitable for long. “Unfortunately, because of this process, it’ll be probably passed within about 48 hours, or something like that, then we’ll move on, we’ll forget about it,” he said. “That’s the well-known process of mortgaging our children’s future.”

The post What Can $1.2 Trillion Buy In Washington? Nothing Good. appeared first on The American Conservative.

What Can $1.2 Trillion Can Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

Politics

What Can $1.2 Trillion Can Buy In Washington? Nothing Good.

The more-than-1,000-page, $1.2 trillion minibus dropped just before 3 a.m. Thursday morning. Will anyone finish reading it before Congress votes on it?

Ghost Army Ceremony

In what has been a long, drawn-out appropriations process for fiscal year 2024, Congressional leaders believe they’ve finally come to an arrangement on the final six spending bills. Will legislators have the time to finish reading the leadership’s back-room deal before it comes to the floor, let alone the opportunity to amend it? Legislators on the Hill doubt it after leadership dropped the 1,000 page bill just before 3 a.m. on Thursday morning, less than 48 hours before a partial government shutdown. 

The 1,012 page bill is six appropriations bills clumped together in what’s being called a minibus (short for “mini omnibus”). Legislators in both chambers will have just hours to read through the minibus that carries a $1.2 trillion price tag before likely voting on the package that is set to be rushed through both chambers, despite a rule in the House that promises members 72 hours to review legislation. In an email to The American Conservative, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas put it this way: “House Republicans believe they will inspire Americans to polls by jamming through almost $1.2 trillion in over 1000 pages of open-border funding nonsense with about 24 hours to read it?  Situation normal….” The Texas Congressman encouraged TAC to finish the sentence.

Nevertheless, House leadership and GOP appropriators took a victory lap. “House Republicans have achieved significant conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts to wasteful agencies and programs while strengthening border security and national defense,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.

House Appropriations Chair Kay Granger said the package “funds our highest national security priorities—it invests in a more modern, innovative, and ready fighting force, continues our strong support for our great ally Israel, and provides key border enforcement resources.”

“At the same time, we made cuts to programs that have nothing to do with our national security and pulled back billions from the administration,” the GOP appropriations lead claimed.

Senate leadership has been quiet. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continued his public dispute with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been silent on the bill so far, presumably as he deals with the bizarre death of his sister-in-law. Both point to a confidence that this bill, given the constraints and potential consequences, will sail through.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah could be making a victory lap of his own: His prophecies about the minibus have all come true. “I made a few predictions earlier in the week,” Lee told TAC. “I predicted that the bill would be more than 1,000 pages. It is. It’s 1,012 pages long. I predicted that it would contain hundreds of earmarks. It does. And I predicted that it would do nothing to address the massive deficit debt that we face. It doesn’t. And I predicted that it would do nothing to force the Biden administration to secure the border and stop the invasion at our southern border. And it doesn’t.”

Lee called the maneuver and the bill “insulting” in a phone interview with The American Conservative. “They’re giving it to us literally the day before the government is going to shut down? And they’re saying, ‘Sorry, there’s no more time to do it. You have to pass this now, or shut down the government and be blamed for the consequences’?”

Lee has taken to calling leadership in both chambers “the firm” as it negotiates massive spending deals behind closed doors. “What they’re saying [in this bill] is that the firm matters more than the people. That the firm’s interest in making sure that only the firm’s language, the firm’s earmarks, that the firm is blessed, is more important than allowing the American people through their elected lawmakers in Washington to have a say in how they spend the people’s money. Trillions of dollars’ worth.”

“No Republicans should vote for the bill for several reasons,” Virginia’s Rep. Bob Good, the House Freedom Caucus chair, told TAC over the phone. “One, it’s got thousands of earmarks for billions of dollars, which is a reason to vote against it to begin with. But of course, some Republicans are benefiting from those. Secondly, we don’t have time to read it to even know what we would be voting for—which is easier for me, since I knew I wasn’t going to vote for it anyway. But if I was going to own everything in that bill, I might want some time to read it to know what I have to defend after I vote for it.”

“At some point, having $35 trillion in debt is going to have an impact, and it’s not going to be sustainable,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida told TAC in a phone interview. “I don’t know when that will be, but something’s going to happen because our interest expense now exceeds defense, exceeds Medicare. And inflation will not come down as long as we run massive deficits.

“In 2019, before the pandemic, the federal government in total spent $4.4 trillion. But Biden is budgeting an increase of basically $3 trillion over that for fiscal year 2025. This year, we’ll probably have a 56 percent increase in terms of total outlays. Discretionary spending has gone up 41 percent since 2018. Our population has grown at probably less than 2 percent, and discretionary spending is up 41 percent, total spending up 56 percent,” Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin explained to TAC. 

“What’s really gross is that this is being reported like it’s austere. I don’t think this is an austere budget,” Johnson added. “How can anybody justify that when we are running trillion and a half dollar deficits every year?”

The six-part minibus funds the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, and Homeland Security. The DOD will receive $886 billion, a 3 percent increase compared to last year. While DOD accounts for two-thirds of the package’s price tag, the biggest difficulty in spending negotiations since October, whether its base appropriations or supplemental funding, has been DHS, given the chaos on the southern border. At the 11th hour, the Biden administration encouraged congressional leaders to pass a full appropriations bill for DHS rather than another stopgap. Congressional leaders obliged.

$1.2 Trillion.

~216,000 words.

The #SwampOmnibus spends $5.5 million for every word.

~32 hours before the vote.

That’s 112 words a minute just to finish reading (not real analysis) before the vote…

That’s signing off on over $600 million per minute.

Is Pelosi in charge?

— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) March 21, 2024

It’s no surprise, however, after McConnell’s recent maneuvering to ensure any border deal made during this Congress would be toothless, that the border security provisions of the minibus will do little to restore order on the southern border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receives $19.6 billion, which is $3.2 billion more than fiscal year 2023  and amounts to a nearly 20 percent increase in funding. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will receive $9.5 billion, which amounts to about a 14 percent increase compared to FY23.

The southern border is one of the few places where it currently makes sense to boost federal spending, but what is nearly $30 billion buying American taxpayers in border security? Republican appropriators boast that the money provides for 22,000 additional border patrol agents, “which is consistent with H.R. 2.” For a $2.273 billion price tag, GOP appropriators said DHS will add another 7,500 detention beds to increase the total to 41,500. There is also $283.5 million in “new border security technology,” $10 million “for task forces dedicated to countering the flow of fentanyl,” $3.4 billion for custody operations (including the additional beds), and $721 million for removal operations.

It’s $30 billion of lipstick on a pig.

At first glance, more border patrol agents sounds nice. So do more detention beds, when the alternative is catch and release. In the minibus, the GOP completely adopts Democrats’ framing on immigration: It’s simply a process and optics problem. The minibus affirms Democrats’ immigration narrative by providing “$160.1 million for refugee processing, asylum, and work authorization backlog reduction” amid $281.1 million for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), $29.9 million for family reunification, and 12,000 additional Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans.

Further, while GOP appropriators boast these provisions are in line with HR 2, the legislation does not include any provisions that leverage these resources to ensure the Biden administration enforces federal law. What good are 22,000 more CBP agents when the Biden administration orders them to sit on their heels or to rush illegal immigrants into the country as quickly as possible? ICE will, however, be compelled to publish crucial detainee data online, such as the number of transgender detainees.

“It doesn’t matter how many more. We could have 100,000 border agents, but when you have a White House that’s not going to secure the border, they’re just going to process people faster,” Scott told TAC. “There’s nothing in here that’s going to require him to secure the border. This president has made his decision that he’s going to completely be lawless.”

Not to worry, says Republican appropriators—$117 million will be directed towards the Emergency Food and Shelter program for sanctuary jurisdictions struggling to handle the massive influx of illegals. “Well, that’s a huge incentive,” Johnson said in response to more sanctuary jurisdiction funding.

“It contains nothing that forces the Biden administration to stop the invasion, and the chaos, and the humanitarian crisis at our southern border,” Lee told TAC of the supposed border security provisions.

“My concern would be they’re increasing spending for detention and more CBP officers—is that how it’s actually going to be used? Or is it going to be used, as I suspect, to become more efficient at encountering, processing, and dispersing,” Johnson told TAC. “How do you force this President to use the authority he has to secure the border? No matter what agreement we would reach with this guy, you can’t trust him. So now we’ve reached agreement on an appropriations bill. What kind of enforcement mechanism does it have? Can you trust him?”

Johnson reflected on the appropriations and supplemental negotiations since October of last year that led to Republicans being on the back foot. He said that “what was so disappointing in what was masterminded by McConnell, the secret negotiations within our conference” was that “we were looking for an enforcement mechanism” that McConnell, it was later revealed, prevented from the outset.

“What we really need is something that forces action. Because right now, he’s using his discretionary authority to just leave this stuff wide open. We need things that would remove some of his discretionary authority. And we also need things that would force outcomes or condition funding on the achievement of operational control of the border,” Lee said. “This bill doesn’t do any of those things. This is a fig leaf! They’ve offered a fig leaf in favor of border security, and nothing more.”

“The bill does not address any issues we have right now,” Scott claimed. “It’s not addressing the two biggest issues. It’s making inflation worse, and it’s not addressing the border crisis at all.”

Good told TAC that actual border security measures are “essentially non existent” in the bill. More border patrol agents and beds “are both intended by this administration to allow them to more quickly process more illegals into the country,” Good added. “We’ve got a willful, purposeful facilitation of the invasion by this administration who has done this on purpose and obviously doesn’t want any border security.”

Speaker Johnson has admitted as much: “While these changes are welcome, only a significant reversal in policy by the president to enforce the law can ultimately secure our border,” a statement from the house speaker read.

Congressional leaders and appropriators don’t seem to care much about America’s borders, but the minibus does provide millions to protect Ukraine’s borders. The Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative will receive $300 million, and another $335 million will be directed towards “U.S. allies and partners facing Russian aggression.” 

“Yet again, we’re fetishizing Ukraine’s border security issues, while ignoring our own,” Lee told TAC. “It is criminally reckless.”

“There’s so many questions that remain even unasked, much less unanswered, throughout this appropriation process,” when it comes to Ukraine, Johnson said. “I’m just getting repulsed by it quite honestly.”

This $635 million for the war in Ukraine, which some lawmakers apparently believe is much broader than the administration currently acknowledges, is likely just the tip of the iceberg. “Our foreign policy experts suspect the hundreds of millions for Ukraine is actually billions, due to various slush funds and gimmicks,” one senior Senate Republican staffer told TAC.

The minibus also provides $200 million for a new FBI headquarters—the FBI that has trained its sights on parents at school board meetings and Catholics who attend the traditional Mass. “Obviously, the FBI headquarters issue is a real big disappointment to a lot of Republicans,” Lee said. “This has become a symbolic and a substantive issue for many Republicans and with good reason. Democrats got huge wins with earmarks like that.”

The new FBI headquarters isn’t the only earmark conservatives should deplore, Lee suggested. He started rattling off earmarks in the minibus:

$1.8 million for a hospital in Rhode Island that performs late term abortions. It gives $475,000 for an activist organization that’s curriculum and materials are put together for kids ages two through five and introduces kids to “a wide variety of gender expressions and family structures,” whatever that means. $676,000 for an organization that has been actively supportive of Black Lives Matter. $2.8 million for an institution that released an inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility charter in 2020. $500,000 for a radical activist organization that hosts training workshops on implicit bias, social inclusion, inequity, decolonization, and land acknowledgement. $450,000 for a child care initiative that is being established to give childcare for immigrant families—so instead of securing our border, we’re using our taxpayer money not to secure the border, but to create welfare programs for illegal immigrants who have invaded our country at the invitation of President Biden.

Democrats also secured another billion in climate change funding.

“We ought to at least get something out of it if we’re going to spend this ungodly sum of money on these ridiculous earmarks and all the other bloated spending that this provides,” Lee added. “On border security, and we get nothing—nothing!”

Scott also expressed his disdain for the amount of earmarks in the bill. “We are in $2 trillion dollar deficits, and they’re doing special projects so somebody can brag that they brought money back home and act like that’s free?” Scott asked rhetorically. “It’s not free, somebody has to pay for it.”

Democrats not only boasted about getting their earmarks. They also claimed to have blocked a number of Republican “poison pill[s],” which certainly relate to the most pressing issues facing Americans today. Democrats declared victory over Republican attempts to block funding for “diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community,” prohibit the government from being the arbiters of misinformation, and prevent flying the pride flag over some federal buildings, to name a few.

Leadership in both chambers are expected to jam the bill through as to get the president’s signature before Friday’s end. The House will likely vote on the bill under suspension of the rules around 11 a.m. Friday morning. There’s not much House conservatives can do to stop it. 

In the Senate, however, things could get interesting. Lee explained how conservatives might put up a fight in the amendment process:

The majority leader has a tool by which he can effectively block out amendments. He can effectively forestall other senators from having their amendments become pending, and, therefore, making sure that they are addressed, that they get voted on, or are dealt with in some meaningful manner. That procedural tool is colloquially referred to in the senate is “filling the tree.” Once he fills the tree, that power is significant, but a Republican minority, as long as we have at least 41 votes (and currently we have 49 Republicans in the Senate), can push back on that. 

The pushback that you give to a majority leader who fills the tree and thus blocks amendments is to, as we say, hold 41. If you hold 41 votes to oppose cloture, that is to vote “no,” on a motion to bring debate to a close, then you can effectively force the majority leader to reconsider and to allow some amendments. Normally, what happens, especially if they see that we have the ability to hold 41 and that we intend to do so, the majority leader will become a lot more gracious, a lot more hospitable, to the idea of having an amendment process, and he will schedule them. So that’s more or less what we’re looking at.

What such a delay can accomplish remains to be seen. “It is fascinating to me that we can’t have a robust amendment process,” Scott told TAC. “If I cant talk somebody into it, that’s my problem, but if I don’t have a chance to talk to people about my ideas, that’s a leadership problem. So this will just be another failed exercise for Republicans, but a great exercise for Democrats where they get exactly what they want, and we get no wins.”

Sen. Johnson would like to see amendments, too. “I think it’s important to have amendment votes because we should be highlighting how Democrats will oppose sending back criminals who are in this country illegally. They will support sanctuary cities getting funding even though sanctuary cities refuse to cooperate with ICE in detaining, or even providing notice when they’re going to release somebody that’s a criminal in this country illegally.”

But Sen. Johnson isn’t optimistic that amendments can stave off the inevitable for long. “Unfortunately, because of this process, it’ll be probably passed within about 48 hours, or something like that, then we’ll move on, we’ll forget about it,” he said. “That’s the well-known process of mortgaging our children’s future.”

The post What Can $1.2 Trillion Can Buy In Washington? Nothing Good. appeared first on The American Conservative.

Thus Far, Trump Has Huge Coattails. The Best Coattails. 

Politics

Thus Far, Trump Has Huge Coattails. The Best Coattails.

Trump’s chosen candidates are winning from top to bottom of the ballot.

Wilkes-barre,,Pa,-,August,2,,2018:,President,Donald,Trump,Portrait

President Donald Trump’s victories in last night’s primaries in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, and Ohio were foregone conclusions. All of Trump’s challengers have already exited the race and, for the third straight presidential cycle, Trump has secured the Republican nomination. This alone suggests Trump’s takeover of the GOP is near total, but there’s even more evidence down ballot.

On Tuesday, Trump’s chosen candidates beat expectations. Nowhere was that clearer than in Ohio’s senate primary. The businessman Bernie Moreno bested state Sen. Matt Dolan by nearly twenty points. Moreno received more than 50 percent of the vote and carried every county in the Buckeye state. 

Moreno had the momentum throughout much of the campaign, as both Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance not only endorsed Moreno but campaigned with him. At the 11th hour, however, a supposed scandal involving a profile seeking gay sex on Adult Friend Finder from 2008 was traced back to an email address allegedly owned by Moreno. Moreno said the incident was a prank by an intern of his at the time. The known facts of the incident, not to mention the fact that the former intern responsible for the prank came forward and confirmed Moreno’s story, suggest that Moreno is telling the truth. Nevertheless, Moreno’s opponents, both Democrat and Republican, tried to make the story stick, but to no avail.

In House primaries, most of Trump’s endorsed candidates breezed through their primaries. To use Ohio again as an example, all but one of Trump’s endorsements in Ohio were for incumbents, most of whom didn’t even face a primary challenger. While some of Trump’s endorsements cut would-be challengers off at the pass, Trump’s non-incumbent endorsements fared well, too. The Trump-endorsed state Rep. Derek Merrin defeated Rep. Craig Riedel despite entering the race only in December after audio leaked of Riedel criticizing the former president. Merrin quickly captured prominent GOP support.

Tuesday night wasn’t completely free of close calls, however. In Illinois’s 12th district, the Trump-endorsed incumbent Mike Bost edged out former state Rep. Darren Bailey, who had backing from major Trump allies such as Rep. Matt Gaetz. Simply put: Without Trump, Bost would have lost. 

The close race in Illinois’s 12th suggests something else, too. Bailey, as seen via Gaetz’s endorsement, sees eye to eye with Trump and Trump’s allies in Congress on policy. Bost, meanwhile, is seen as more establishment. Why Trump endorsed Bost, one can only speculate. But Bost’s narrow margin of victory suggests that, while the Republican base takes a lot of its cues from the former president, they do understand the agenda and politics of the movement Trump has started. When Trump comes into tension with a candidate in the America First mold, they feel it. This makes sense if Trump is truly a figure that tapped into latent attitudes that existed in the GOP before 2016; Trump has only heightened those attitudes and shaped the party around them. This is to say that America First, the MAGA movement, populism—whatever you call it, it will outlive Trump.

For now, however, Trump is still king and, for smaller realms all around the country, kingmaker. Trump has made 88 endorsements in the primaries thus far. Not a single candidate for federal office has lost their primary with Trump’s backing. Only three Trump-endorsed state legislative candidates have lost. Across state and federal primaries, Trump is 58 for 61 thus far. When November rolls around, the 58 winners will have the added benefit of Trump on the top of the ticket once again.

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‘Waivable Loans’ for Ukraine Are Just Grants

Par : Jude Russo
Politics

‘Waivable Loans’ for Ukraine Are Just Grants

If the GOP does an end-run around its own members, there should be consequences.

US Congress - Capitol building at Capitol Hill in Washington DC- sunny spring day and clear blue sky
(iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Americans seem to have, for the most part, signed a pact to forget about the Covid-19 era. A prominent exception: the hardworking prosecutors at the Department of Justice, who are still busily hunting down the enterprising citizens who were perhaps not entirely honest in their applications for economic relief, particularly Paycheck Protection Program cash. The Small Business Administration thinks it got ripped off to the tune of $200 billion, which is a number that still moves the needle in Washington, D.C. 

This is not much of a surprise; having gotten some PPP money myself amid the apparent death-throes of a startup I was working at in 2020, I can say first-hand that the oversight was not rigorous. My memory of the application for forgiveness is that the form more or less asked you politely whether you were ripping off the SBA; when you said no, you received an almost instantaneous congratulatory message about your loan being forgiven. 

So we might be excused for some skepticism about the latest idea for sending American resources to Ukraine: “waivable loans.” As part of the ongoing effort to relive the last war we felt really good about, pro-Ukraine Republicans are floating the idea of giving Kiev aid on a zero-interest “loan” basis, with the lending instruments written such that someone (presumably Congress, perhaps the president) can squelch the loans at a future date. This idea was floated in a speech given in South Carolina by, surprisingly, Donald Trump. (That classic Trump foreign policy technique, agreeing with the last person he spoke to, seems to be fully operational.)

It’s called a loan. Give them the money, and if they can pay it back, they pay it back. If they can’t pay it back, they don’t have to pay it back because they’ve got some problems. But if they go to another nation, they drop us like a dog, like a female drops a male after a date because he doesn’t like her. If that happens to our country, then very simply we call the loan. And we say, ‘We want our money.’ Because we give money, and then they go to another side. As an example, let’s say we give all this money. We’re already into Ukraine for over $200 billion. And they could make a deal with Russia in the next three weeks, and all of a sudden they don’t want to deal with us anymore. We’ve given hundreds of billions of dollars. And why are we at over $200 billion and the European nations are, if you add them up, it’s a very similar-sized economy, they’re at $25 billion.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, an implacable warhawk, took up this recommendation and ran with it (although without any mention of Trump’s inventive, if not clearly practicable, desire to use debt as leverage). In his upbeat post boosting the idea on Twitter, he speculated, “Once Ukraine gets back on its feet, they will be an economic powerhouse because of their access to mass deposits of critical minerals, oil and gas.” (Of course, if that were the case, you have to wonder why the place was such an economic backwater before the war.)

Per multiple outlets, much of the congressional GOP thinks that this is the way out of the impasse over Ukraine aid. POLITICO reports that the specific idea being floated is that the portion of Biden’s $60 billion that is going to the American defense industry to arm Ukraine will be a grant—the GOP has few qualms about corporate welfare for the military–industrial complex—and the $12 billion in cash aid will be a loan. This will allow the Republicans, who have been suffering their first serious attack of fiscal responsibility since the Gingrich era, to eat their guilt and face constituents who are growing skeptical of the gravy-train routine.

In other words, they’re banking on the American people being utterly stupid and letting them off the hook. For the first time in my life, I am compelled to agree with Illinois’s Sen. Dick Durbin, who commented, sneeringly but entirely fairly, “I also would like some waivable loans.” Is there any doubt that this is just grant aid under another name? If the president is the relevant waiving authority, it’ll get written off by Biden. If Congress is the relevant waiving authority, it’ll get written off by the Democrats and GOP warhawks. Functionally, this is a way to slip through a grant despite the ongoing legislative impossibility of a grant.

In a representative democracy, you win some and you lose some. The whole business here is that our legislature argues it out and makes law based on debate and horse-dealing. I, personally, think sending more free money to Ukraine is a pretty dubious affair. I realize there is a risk that this may not be a majority position in the legislature, and I will lump it if my position loses. That’s how these things work. What I resent is another end-run around actually doing the business of the legislature, the debating and horse-dealing part, and instead passing the thing through on what is patently a fig-leaf pretense. 

If Republican leadership allows this to go through, there should be consequences—ultimately from the voters, but also from any legislators who have something approaching a principle. The House motion to vacate rule is still there. Why not give it a spin again, for old times’ sake?

The post ‘Waivable Loans’ for Ukraine Are Just Grants appeared first on The American Conservative.

Fearing Trump, South Korea Prepares to Pay Its Fair Share

Foreign Affairs

Fearing Trump, South Korea Prepares to Pay Its Fair Share

Why do Americans still pay to defend South Koreans?

President Biden Hosts South Korean President Yoon On Official State Visit
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The possibility of Donald Trump returning to the Oval Office has set off hysterical wailing across the Atlantic and Pacific. American allies used to cheap-riding on the U.S. for their defense fear a second Trump administration would either demand greater contribution or drop Washington’s defense guarantee entirely.

Although European complaints about the possible loss of American military welfare have received the most public attention in recent weeks, South Korean officials are no less concerned about having to take over responsibility for their nation’s defense. Hence the imminent start of negotiations over the Special Measures Agreement, or “host nation support” for the U.S. garrison in the South.

The settlement won’t take effect until 2026. The two governments are rushing the talks to lock in a sweet deal for the Republic of Korea in case Trump wins in November. During his administration, he set off a tsunami of South Korean whining and whinging by threatening to withdraw American troops if the ROK didn’t contribute substantially more for Pentagon protection. Negotiations broke off and the newly installed Biden administration immediately took Seoul’s side, preserving the generous U.S. defense subsidy. Undoubtedly, American taxpayers will again get a raw deal.

Unfortunately, the alliance costs more than money, and the risks for America are steadily increasing. The Korean War was a terrible, bloody affair. But at least the battlefield was an ocean away from the U.S. Until recently, a renewed conflict would also have been fought “over there,” limiting Americans’ exposure. Despite the near certainty that the allies would prevail, casualties probably would be very high, much greater than in the Iraq or Afghan campaigns. Nevertheless, the U.S. homeland would remain secure.

No longer. First, diplomacy on the peninsula is dead, having suffered an apparently mortal wound with the failure of the 2019 Trump-Kim summit. Since then, talks between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and both Washington and Seoul have ceased. The Biden administration’s desperate begging for Pyongyang to engage have been contemptuously rebuffed. Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s sister referred to a statement of President Joe Biden’s as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.” (Which, in truth, characterizes most of what the president says these days.)

Even worse has been the DPRK’s treatment of South Korea. Pyongyang long viewed the Koreas as one nation, with the peninsula’s southern lands to be eventually “liberated.” Kim recently abandoned settled policy and proposed revising the North’s constitution to define the ROK as his nation’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” Although Kim disclaimed any intention to initiate hostilities against the South Koreans, he set “national policy to occupy their territory in the event of” an undefined “contingency.”

If the issue was only bluster, no one would take much notice. North Korea has long been the world’s number one in issuing insults against its foes. Yet Pyongyang now can count on Chinese support. Although Beijing long opposed the North’s nuclear ambitions, it evidently sees Washington’s containment policy toward the People’s Republic of China as a greater threat. Thus, the PRC has shown no willingness to back U.S. sanctions or other coercive measures, despite the Biden administration’s pious claims that they are in Beijing’s interest. Indeed, Biden’s repeated statements that he would defend Taiwan has given China a possible reason to back North Korean military action against the South.

Perhaps even worse, the North has gone all in with Russia, reviving a relationship that was near moribund in recent years. North Korea is thought to have provided substantial shipments of artillery shells for Moscow’s use in Ukraine. In return Pyongyang can expect Russia to shield it from the impact of sanctions and reward it financially. Much more is possible, including technical aid in missile and nuclear development. Such assistance would be highly provocative, but the U.S. and its European allies have provided advanced weapons to Kiev that have caused tens of thousands of Russian deaths. Moscow might believe that turnabout is fair play.

As tensions have risen, so has talk of war. Some Korea scholars fear that Kim might be planning military action of some kind, contending that “the situation on the Korean Peninsula is more dangerous than it has been at any time since early June 1950.” Their fears have gone mainstream. Reported the New York Times: “That new drumbeat of threats, while the United States and its allies have been preoccupied with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, has set foreign officials and analysts wondering whether the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has moved beyond posturing and is planning to assert more military force.”

Provocations appear on the rise. In February, Pyongyang staged an artillery exercise near disputed islands west of the peninsula, triggering a South Korean drill in response. The actions revived memories of a deadly North Korean assault in 2010 that killed four ROK civilians.

Despite the perhaps predictable fear-mongering, Kim appears to be fully rational, if sadly brutal. The North’s Supreme Leader explained, “As long as nuclear weapons exist on Earth, and imperialism and the anti-North Korean maneuvers of the U.S. and its followers remain, our road to strengthening our nuclear force will never end.” 

War would be a wild gamble for his regime and dynasty. China has shown no interest in fomenting armed conflict, Russia wouldn’t benefit from doing so and is busy in Ukraine. The U.S. remains capable of massive retaliation and, as yet the DPRK probably can’t target the American mainland. Most importantly, Kim is unlikely to empty his ammunition stocks for Moscow’s war if he is planning one of his own. 

Still, no one should feel comfortable. Kim claimed that he “does not want war, but will not avoid it.” And Kim has set forth a formidable arms development program, topped by plans to deploy tactical nukes, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs). If successful, Kim will possess an arsenal that will allow him to both use nuclear weapons on the battlefield and target the American homeland.

Washington can ill afford to add to its current defense burdens. The U.S. faces manifold social problems, lagging domestic investment, burgeoning entitlement programs, and rising federal deficits. It still possesses the world’s most powerful military but will find the cost of acting as globocop and dispensing defense welfare to populous and prosperous allies around the world ever tougher to bear. 

Moreover, in a few years any war would no longer likely remain on the Korean peninsula, or at least in Northeast Asia. Any American president would have to ask whether South Korea was worth risking the American homeland. Of course, Washington retains an overwhelming nuclear deterrent, so a first strike on the U.S. would result in the DPRK’s destruction. However, Pyongyang could threaten to inaugurate Armageddon if Washington entered a Second Korean War and threatened to defeat and occupy the North, overthrowing the Kim regime. The DPRK might even use tactical nukes in battle and dare the U.S. to respond. Would an American president decide that the ROK’s defense was worth the loss of one or more U.S. cities and hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans?

Recognizing that South Koreans are understandably skeptical that the answer is yes, Washington has been desperately trying to convince them that so-called “extended deterrence” remains viable. Last year the two governments issued the so-called Washington Declaration, by which U.S. officials promised to allow the immolation of America’s cities and slaughter of America’s citizens if things go bad on the peninsula. It’s a hard sell because even South Koreans recognize that this is an irrational policy. How many of them would voluntarily risk their territory and population to save the U.S.? The policy makes no more sense for Americans. 

Although Trump’s push for a dramatic increase in host nation payments, to some $5 billion annually, was better than the status quo, it wouldn’t justify the current one-sided “Mutual Defense Treaty.” American military personnel shouldn’t be rented out, even to wealthy friends. Washington should put its money and people’s lives on the line only when Americans have something vital at stake. They don’t in Korea. That doesn’t mean a conflict wouldn’t be truly awful, a humanitarian tragedy, economic disaster, and geopolitical challenge. But Americans would remain secure, though unsettled. The impact of the war wouldn’t justify the costs of intervening, especially against a nuclear North Korea.

As unsettling as this conclusion might seem, there is good news: the ROK. It required aid to survive North Korea’s initial invasion and later threats, but took off economically in the 1960s; today it enjoys a GDP more than 50 times that of the DPRK. The South also has a vast technological edge, twice the population, and far greater international support. Obviously, the ROK could defend itself from the North if it chose to do so.

Fear of North Korea, concern about China, and worries over U.S. abandonment have spurred Seoul to spend more on its own defense, even under the previous, liberal Moon administration. Although the North enjoys a quantitative edge, South Korea possesses an increasingly competent and sophisticated military. Today the ROK is among the world’s top ten military spenders. But it could do much more.

The most complicated issue is nuclear deterrence, but there is strong public support in the South for developing its own nuclear weapons. There also is increasing political backing. In fact, last year ROK President Yoon Suk Yeol observed that “if the issue becomes more serious, we could acquire our own nuclear weapons, such as deploying tactical nuclear weapons here in ROK.” 

This possibility triggers hysteria among nonproliferation advocates, but it is more important for America to end extended deterrence, and the resulting nuclear threat to the U.S., than it is to enforce nuclear nonproliferation. Washington has declared failure in the past—regarding India, Israel, and Pakistan, most obviously. Rather than imperil relations in a hopeless quest to reverse the irreversible, the U.S. has accommodated new international powers. North Korea is an acknowledged, if not formally recognized, nuclear power. Why not accept the South into the club? This might not be a good solution, but it increasingly looks like the best available.

Which ties back to the latest SMA negotiation. Instead of forging ahead, as if the alliance is immutable and permanent, the U.S. and ROK should transform it into a cooperative agreement between equals. After which America’s troop presence would be phased out. Host nation support should be adjusted accordingly, starting high and dropping to zero when the last American comes home.

There is much to criticize about Donald Trump’s presidency. Nevertheless, he had a better understanding of the Korean peninsula than did his predecessors or successor. It was stupid not to engage the North for decades. It was equally stupid to subsidize the South for decades. Before the onset of the latest SMA negotiations would be a good time to rethink the alliance’s future. And stop expecting Americans to defend South Koreans.

The post Fearing Trump, South Korea Prepares to Pay Its Fair Share appeared first on The American Conservative.

Niger’s Big Pivot Away From America

Politics

Niger’s Big Pivot Away From America 

State of the Union: When the epitaph of the American republic will be written, the chain of causality will lead to some interesting conclusions. 

A,Red,Pin,On,Niger,Of,The,World,Map

The most interesting couple of paragraphs about the latest Nigerien saga wasn’t about the country being a battleground for an emerging Sino–American competition in Africa. That much is guaranteed given out emerging multipolarity. It was this:

The last straw seems to have been a meeting between American and Nigerien officials last week. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee criticized a Nigerien deal to sell Iran uranium, growing Nigerien-Russian military ties, and Niger’s failure to return to democracy…. After the meeting, [the Nigerien Col. Amadou] Abdramane went on television to condemn the “condescending attitude” of the Biden administration.

In the grand scheme of things, Niger isn’t existential or even very important for America, but the extension of Chinese influence in Africa isn’t something to be happy about, especially for realists. 

But, fundamentally, it is a relatively new American malaise, easy to cure, but impossible to do given the current elite. Republics and empires have collapsed due to various reasons, from overstretch, to insolvency, to great power war. But never in human history was a single famous, successful, and long-lasting empire or republic that had such incredibly mediocre bureaucracy so determined to promote a rotten ahistorical worldview, in such a ham-fisted way, for such a long term. It’s pretty incredible, if you think about it. 

The biggest national security expansion happened under Presidents Bush and Obama, during the Global War on Terror; most of the people who got jobs in that period grew up under unipolarity, studying the same theories from the same professors, having the same credentials, and worldview. Bureaucracy has its own momentum and inertia, of course. But amplified to that is the fact that the American foreign policy is an echo-chamber where the worst people with the dumbest ideas often fail upward. It is more often than not a question of personnel over policy. 

And it all goes back to IR academia. For example, here’s a paper from 2008:

Fully half of female IR scholars devote between 6% and 25% of their introductory course to discussing constructivist arguments, while a little over one third of male IR scholars discuss this paradigm to the same extent. More than one third of women report spending between 6% and 25% of the class discussing feminism, whereas only one sixth of men spend a similar amount of time on the paradigm. It is interesting to note that women also give more class time to Marxism than do men—even though women and men are equally unlikely to identify themselves as Marxists (3% and 2%, respectively)…. Higher percentages of women than men teach international organization (15%), human rights (7%), global development (6%), and environmental politics (6%). Although women made up only 23% of the sample, 40% of the respondents who said they teach courses on human rights were women; 34% of the respondents who teach global development were women; and 33% of the respondents who teach international organization were women. Significantly higher percentages of men teach US foreign policy (17%), international security (10%), and IR theory (6%).

It’s presumably far worse now. 

It is easy to over-analyze setbacks such as these. Were they due to some complex geopolitical maneuvering? Did Russia or China outplay us? The answer is no. They weren’t; they did not. It is actually remarkably simple. 

Most parts of Africa and Asia do not like unoriginal, bureaucratic, corpulent, middle-aged mediocrities lecturing them about human rights and liberal democracy. When the Chinese try to influence a continent, they fund roads and railways, and lend them millions, only to grab up land and real estate after. It’s refreshingly old fashioned, in a way. When the Russians try to influence, they simply provide security for the most brutal of warlords and help them promote order. In short, they do what we used to do. We have forgotten how to play the game. They have not. 

There was a famous video of an NGO, heavily funded by our taxpayers, teaching and ostensibly liberating Afghan women by showing them how a stained urinal is the ultimate example of superior Western art. One needs to see it to believe that it is not fake. Anyway, that won the hearts and minds of Afghans, for 20 years, until it stopped. Africa is a similar case. 

Once again, for the sake of ideological clarity—Niger isn’t existential for the USA. But that is irrelevant. This will not stop at Niger, because the root of the problem goes deeper. 

It is, as always, bad ideas based on faulty notions about human nature, a deep misunderstanding of local culture, and a tragic lack of amoral realism, that lead to repeated damages. Reality has a tendency, as Peter Hitchens once wrote, to slap your face. 

The post Niger’s Big Pivot Away From America appeared first on The American Conservative.

What Is the GOP Position on TikTok Now?

Politics

What Is the GOP Position on TikTok Now?

Will the new TikTok bill prove that conservatives can wield government power effectively, or will it blow up in their faces?

Hangzhou,,China,-,Sept.,4.,2016,-,Chinese,President,Xi

The TikTok bill that recently passed the House by an overwhelming majority but faces an uncertain future in the Senate is an interesting test case for conservative use of government power.

On its face, it is written as narrowly as it could possibly be to apply directly to TikTok without being a bill of attainder, which would be unconstitutional.

A new generation of conservatives is arguing that the Republican Party must be willing to use the power provided by its constituents on their behalf, overcoming knee-jerk objections that doing so is always injurious to business, the economy, or a free society. This would seem like a good place to start.

Divestment from China is a legitimate policy objective. We have neither a free speech nor free market obligation to permit Beijing to easily access and store American users’ data. The Chinese Communist Party is using both the global marketplace and the openness of our society against us in a way the Soviet Union, with their greater fealty to the economics of long bread lines and two left shoes, never could.

There are, of course, other ways the Chinese government could obtain U.S. data that this bill does not address. Yet TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is based in Beijing and subject to Chinese intelligence law. It should be possible for lawmakers and regulators to take this into account without being hostile to business or social media in general.

Yet it does not take an amazing amount of foresight to see how a president like Joe Biden might attempt to abuse the power to deem a company that, say, disseminated news stories about Hunter’s laptop or irregularities in U.S. aid to Ukraine somehow “controlled by a foreign adversary,” even with all the checks contained in this particular bill.

Maybe the legislation perfectly anticipates all such chicanery and any effort along these lines would fail, with Congress or the courts rejecting them as biased and bogus.

Nevertheless, the recent track record of the federal government has not been impressive, to put it mildly. This particular bill does at least have the benefit of being bipartisan. Even so, whose warnings have been more prescient over the past 20 years? Those of the bipartisan authors of the Patriot Act or Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and their forerunners?

There is also the non-trivial matter that the congressional gerontocracy is not especially tech-savvy, recalling former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s quips about “Snapface” and “Instachat.” Belichick is a spry 71, nearly a decade younger than Biden and a dozen years younger than Nancy Pelosi.

This is to some degree rectified by younger and more technologically proficient congressional staffers, some of whom presumably know that the internet is not merely a series of tubes and is here for the long haul. But we’re still grappling with the societal effects of the internet’s ubiquity, even on the Right, even among the younger set.

The winning and wielding of political power should not be new topics for anything as old as the Republican Party or the conservative movement. They are nevertheless being discussed anew, on subjects far afield of TikTok or China.

Potentially banning a highly popular social media platform through the granting of powers that will someday—indeed, perhaps immediately—be held by their political opponents is a chance to demonstrate either competence or the law of unintended consequences.

There are some matters that are of genuine public and national interests, concepts that are not simply nice titles for magazines. A mature political movement and party must be able to legislate and govern constructively in these cases. 

At the same time, government action often fails even when well-intentioned. Authorities often seek to test the constitutional and statutory limits on their power, unless they find it politically advantageous to punt contentious questions to the administrative state or the judiciary. 

The fusionists of old were wrong to pretend they had achieved the perfect synthesis of liberty and virtue in their particular mix of war, welfare, and traditional values. The concept that these are two social goods often in tension with each other, that need to be managed prudently, remains valid. 

Let’s see if the cons of TikTok are able to succeed where the Paul Bremers and Anthony Faucis of the world so conspicuously failed.

The post What Is the GOP Position on TikTok Now? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Biden Continues to Imperil U.S. Troops in the Middle East 

Foreign Affairs

Biden Continues to Imperil U.S. Troops in the Middle East

As the Israel-Palestine crisis twists and turns, Washington risks being borne back ceaselessly into the past.

President Biden Responds To Special Counsel's Report On Handling Of Classified Material

“‘Hotel California’ should be the official song of the Biden administration,” former U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller recently told the Washington Post. “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.” Miller, a negotiator in the Oslo Accords and the Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty, quoted the Eagles’ classic in reference to the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. As the U.S. looks to put the region in the rearview mirror after disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, heightened American involvement in the Israel–Gaza war is causing a chain-reaction of military repositioning throughout the region.

In his State of the Union address, President Biden called the war in Gaza “heartbreaking.” While Biden claimed Israel has the right to defend itself, the president has grown increasingly frustrated with Israel’s prosecution of the war under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As Palestinians in Gaza remain in dire need of food, water, medicine, shelter, and other basic goods, Biden announced he is “directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast.”

“This temporary pier would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day,” the president claimed, while adding that “no U.S. boots will be on the ground.”

In the day that followed, however, reports clarified that while the undertaking might not put boots on the ground in Gaza, the construction of the floating pier would require more than 1,000 U.S. troops right off the coast. The pier could take approximately two months to build.

But it’s not just 1,000 U.S. troops that have made their way to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. According to the Washington Post, the Biden administration has been moving assets throughout the region since Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel last October. The primary objective of the initial repositioning was to deter Hezbollah from opening a new front in the war with Israel from Lebanon. Two aircraft carriers, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Gerald R. Ford, each with a 5,000-member crew, made their way to the Middle East. So too did more air defense systems, a squadron of F-16s, and ships from the Bataan amphibious ready group.

In March, as the Biden administration planned its next steps and sought to broker a ceasefire, the Army dispatched several ships, such as the USAV SP4 James A. Loux, the USAV Monterrey, USAV Matamoros, and USAV Wilson Wharf, from Virginia to assist in the pier’s construction. The crews make up part of the Army’s 500-soldier commitment to the pier’s construction. 

As the ships departed, Army Brig. Gen. Brad Hinson told members of the media, “We will not be on the shore but we will be on the pier and that pier can extend anywhere out from shore from 800 feet up to 2000 feet.”

On land, there has not been a significant increase in America’s footprint in the region since the Israel–Gaza war began. Although America’s wars in the Middle East have formally ended, 45,000 pairs of boots remain on the ground there. An estimated 13,500 troops are stationed in Kuwait, 9,000 in Bahrain, 8,000 in Qatar, 3,500 in the UAE, 3,000 in Jordan, 2,700 in Saudi Arabia, still 2,500 in Iraq, 2,000 in Turkey, 900 remain in Syria, and another few hundred are stationed in Oman. Just under an additional 1,000 troops were deployed to the region in October in response to the war in Gaza, including “a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery from Fort Bliss Texas, Patriot batteries from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Patriot and Avenger batteries from Fort Liberty, North Carolina, and associated air defense headquarters elements from Fort Bliss and Fort Cavazos, Texas,” according to Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder.

Admittedly, the 45,000 troops deployed throughout the region is a far cry from the 160,000 troops deployed to Iraq and the 100,000 in Afghanistan during the height of the war on terror, but 45,000 landed and an unknown number of troops at sea, is an awful lot for a nation supposedly at peace.

“After 20 years of forever wars in the Middle East, we should we be trying to find ways to extricate ourselves from this part of the world just like we did with the Trump-Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan,” William Ruger, President of the American Institute for Economic Research and former Trump nominee for U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, told The American Conservative. “It seems like policymakers imbued with a kind of primacist worldview are unwilling to restrain themselves and appreciate that we need to be prioritizing Asia over other regions of the world.”

Attacks on American troops in the region thus far have not caused the Biden administration, or the hawkish establishment in Washington, to question whether or not the American empire is still overextended in the Middle East. On January 28, three Army Reserve soldiers perished in a drone attack on the Tower 22 military installation in Jordan near the borders of Syria and Iraq. Forty more were injured. Over a four-month span, from October 2023 to February 2024, U.S. troops in the region have come under attack more than 160 times, injuring 80 more soldiers. Overextension has created a soft underbelly for Islamists and militants to slash, all the while risking further escalation via U.S. involvement. And U.S. strikes on the suspected perpetrators have done little to deter further action, such as U.S. strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen.

“The last time the United States inserted itself directly into a conflict between the Israelis and various Palestinian factions, nearly 250 U.S. Marines, sailors, and soldiers died in Lebanon 40 years ago,” Dan Caldwell, Public Policy Advisor for Defense Priorities, told TAC. “The move by the Biden Administration to establish this pier unnecessarily risks American lives and opens the door to the United States getting more deeply involved in the conflict in a way that doesn’t benefit either the United States or the Israelis. I also worry that this could lead to yet another permanent commitment in the Middle East at a time when we need to be deprioritizing the region.”

“Clearly Americans are both sympathetic to the need of Israel to create security for itself after October 7, but they also, I think, are worried about the plight of innocent people in Gaza,” Ruger said. “Diplomacy seems like a better answer than creating a situation that could lead to more Americans being in harm’s way.”

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The Miseducation of the Modern Lawyer

Politics

The Miseducation of the Modern Lawyer

Lawyers have become mere technicians—no wonder our legal system has gone haywire.

Scales,Of,Justice,Symbol,,Legal,Law,Concept,Image

Words can be hard to define, even by those who use them regularly. Still, one should be able to define one’s own words, those at the heart of his vocation and profession. Even after I had spent three years in law school and several more as a practicing attorney, if you had asked me, “What is justice?” or even, “What is a law?” I would not have been able to give a solid answer. 

Indeed, I am confident that not a single member of my graduating law school class could coherently answer these baseline questions about the nature, purpose, and sources of law. How can a nation produce lawyers who cannot explain what their profession is?

This is not an exaggerated statement by a disgruntled conservative about the state of higher education; the complaints are concrete and quite real. The Institutes of Justinian begin with the simple statement that “justice is the set and constant purpose which gives to every man his due” and that jurisprudence, the theory of law, is “the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of the just and the unjust.” Thomas Aquinas famously defines law as “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.” 

Yes, there are nuanced differences between the classical tradition and more modern legal commentators like Blackstone and Montesquieu; there are divergences between the modern teachings of utilitarians and positivists on the nature of law and justice. But lawyers should have at least a basic grasp of such things. One need not adopt the title “classical lawyer” or “common good constitutionalist” to acknowledge that those educated as lawyers should have at least a passing knowledge of the foundations of law. 

When one surveys the great lawyers of early American history, it is clear that the problem is indeed a modern one. The great American legal minds—from John Adams to Abraham Lincoln – had a deep grasp of the classical Western tradition. The same is true of lawyers throughout the West. It is also worth noting that these lawyers did not attend anything like the modern law school. John Adams had a deep knowledge of Latin and Greek, reading the classics in their original languages before going on to study at Harvard. James Madison (who, although not a practicing lawyer, did write much of the U.S. Constitution) focused his studies at the College of New Jersey (later called Princeton) on classical and biblical languages, as well as theology and political philosophy. Lincoln was largely self-taught, drawing his knowledge and legal prowess from the Bible, great literature, and even Euclidean geometry

These famous, successful, classically informed lawyers did not receive what Americans would consider a modern legal education. They did not go through a three-year program learning the basics of each area of law, followed by specialized electives and for-credit internships. They were schooled in the classical Western tradition and then worked as apprentices for established lawyers to hone their craft. 

The arrangement seems to have worked rather well. What changed so drastically between then and now?

There are likely several currents of modern thought that lead to the state of legal education today. The modern educational theory heavily influenced by men like John Dewey introduced a general disdain for abstract learning and memorization, for an emphasis on classical languages and high culture, preferring learning that is “democratized and made relevant and practical.” This educational theory was focused on lower education for the masses of school children, but it has trickled its way up. Out with Justinian, Aquinas, Blackstone, and all their abstract legal theory. We need to do law, not learn all these outdated aristocratic ideas. Further, it can be argued that it is safer in a relativistic society to form lawyers to be good technocrats who can speak the language of the law and navigate the courts. No need to get into questions of goodness and truth. 

The results, however, are not pretty. This appears to be a problem beyond law, and to have something to do with the very nature of technocratic credentialism. Observe some of the frightening Covid-era health recommendations—promoting months of isolation, constant mask-wearing, and immediate use of a new and experimental vaccine technology. Are the objective duties to promote health and to do no harm really the guiding principles at play? Notice houses built with bedrooms with west-facing windows (missing the morning sun) and living rooms with east-facing windows (missing the evening sun). Are architects really being educated in the basic theories that explain and justify their profession? 

It seems the whole professional credentialing system is fundamentally lacking, equipping people with certain practical skills but not with the foundational knowledge that makes sense of it all.

Where do we go from here? What do you do about a system of legal education that produces lawyers who cannot answer the question, “What is a law?” At least in the short-term, conversations about overhauling law school curricula are aspirational but unrealistic. The legal academy doesn’t even have the appetite to eliminate woke cancel culture from its lecture halls, where radical leftist ideology can be safely preached but anything remotely right-of-center can be shouted down and banned from campus. In such an environment, one sees little hope that a renaissance of classical legal education is on the horizon.

There are two incremental steps, however, that can be taken immediately to begin the project of restoring classical foundations in the legal profession. First, there is already a well-established network of right-of-center lawyers throughout the country. The Federalist Society stands as one of the most practically successful conservative groups of the last half century: in the 1980s, a group of lawyers and academics realized that a long-term strategy was necessary to prevent the monopoly of progressivism in the legal academy and the judiciary. Playing the long game, the group began to form student chapters at law schools as well as networks of lawyers throughout the country. Four decades later, the Federalist Society can claim thousands of lawyers, hundreds of federal judges, and several members of the Supreme Court. 

These Federalist Society chapters help form the next generation of lawyers in conservative legal theory and practice. A concerted effort should be made to include formation in classical legal theory within Federalist Society speaking circles. While the group still holds many libertarian and positivist views, young conservative lawyers and law students in particular hunger for more solid foundations. Post-liberal legal thinkers should work with, rather than separate from, these groups in an attempt to restore the classical and natural law tradition to the legal profession. If a law student goes through three years of law school classes without learning what a law is, perhaps one good Federalist Society lecture can change that for dozens of future lawyers.

The second improvement is to make the grassroot efforts to refocus lawyers’ intellectual sights. I spoke recently to Professor Adrian Vermeule, who said that his best hope for the future was young law students and lawyers taking the study of classical law upon themselves. He gets great joy every time he hears that his work has inspired a group of young legal minds to start an extracurricular study group that reads the Institutes of Justinian or the works of William Blackstone together. The power of such local efforts should not be undervalued. Young lawyers and students should band together, realize what is lacking in their legal education, and fill in the gaps themselves. 

It is true that understanding Justinian’s views of justice or the Thomistic theory of law and politics will not solve the legal crises of the day. Yet it is inexcusable for lawyers not to have at least a basic foundation in the sources and traditions that form the law they practice. We do not need to become scholars of legal philosophy, but we should know what law is, whence it comes, and what it aims to do. 

Lawyers are officers of the law, privileged members of society who make, enforce, practice, and judge the law. Surely we have a duty to understand what it is we are doing. Physicians cannot heal if they do not understand what health, medicine, and the human person are. Lawyers cannot practice law for the common good if they do not know what law and the common good are. If professionals do not understand the foundations of their own professions, there is little hope that they will become more than unhelpful technocrats.

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Illinois Primary: MAGA v. MAGA

Par : Jude Russo

One of the questions of the past eight years has been whether there be such a thing as “Trumpism without Trump”—some magical set of policies and postures that will activate the voters who carried President Trump to the White House once and may again. This hypothetical construction cuts out the part of the Trump phenomenon that many historical GOP voters find objectionable, namely the man himself.

It has been a bad cycle for that theory. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy both ran as close to Trump as humanly possible without killing the man and wearing his skin; the voters looked at them, thought for a minute or two, and threw the lever for Donald J. Trump, some of them for the fifth time, including both the 2016 and 2020 general elections. (Indeed, presumably one or two stalwarts for the sixth time, having supported his run for the Reform ticket back in the mists of time.)

If that didn’t end the idea of “Trumpism without Trump,” tonight’s display in Illinois’s 12th Congressional District will.

Mike Bost, the district’s incumbent congressman, decisively beat Darren Bailey, a former Illinois state representative and gubernatorial candidate, 53 percent to 47 percent. Bailey was supported by Florida’s Rep. Matt Gaetz, the most prominent exponent of “Trumpism” currently in the House, perhaps in the nation. (Bost and Gaetz had been at odds over support for the former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.) Bost was supported by Trump. That was that.

And, naturally, Trump won the presidential primary with overwhelming margins—not that it matters at this point, of course.

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Moreno Endures in Ohio With Trump and Vance’s Support

Politics

Moreno Endures in Ohio With Trump and Vance’s Support

State of the Union: Trump’s chosen candidates won Tuesday night in Ohio, but will they win in November?

Former President Trump Holds A Campaign Rally In Ohio

With the 2024 presidential election already set to be a 2020 rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, all attention has turned to crucial down ballot races that may determine the balance of power come January 2025. The GOP’s plan to recapture the White House and the Senate runs through Ohio, where Trump has demonstrated repeatedly over the last decade, and did so again Tuesday night, that his takeover of the Republican party is total.

When Trump squared off against Hillary Clinton, he carried the Buckeye state by 8 points after voting for Barack Obama in the two previous presidential elections. Trump won by the same margin in 2020. Two years later, J.D. Vance breezed through his senate election and would soon become Trump’s closest ally in the Senate. Now, another Trump-endorsed senate candidate is preparing to capitalize on Ohio’s shift towards the GOP. On Tuesday night, businessman Bernie Moreno handily defeated Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan in a primary matchup some believed to be a tossup. With a number of crucial endorsements, Moreno had momentum throughout the campaign. While an Associated Press story late in the campaign cycle that claimed an email account of Moreno’s was used to make an account on a website to solicit casual gay sex in 2008 risked derailing Moreno’s campaign, Trump and allies’ continued support proved enough for Moreno to win handily.

With the Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin from the deep-red state of West Virginia refusing to run for reelection when Democrats hold a one seat majority in the upper chamber, it’s safe to say the senate is 50–50 heading into the 2024 election cycle. The map already heavily favors Republicans, though one should not underestimate the party’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Nevertheless, none of the GOP’s currently held seats are considered tossups, whereas Democrats have to defend seats in Arizona, Montana, and Ohio.

Of these three races, Ohio seems like the GOP’s best shot to clear 50 senate seats. Ohio is simply more red than Arizona is today. While Montana could be another easy get for the GOP, Sen. John Tester is a political survivor who has won three tight races and remains popular in the state. Unseating Sen. Sherrod Brown, who won the seat in 2000 by defeating Ohio’s current and very popular governor Mike DeWine will be no easy task either, but Trump and the GOP believe they have their man.

In other competitive House races throughout the state, Trump-aligned candidates carried the day. All but one of Trump’s endorsed candidates were incumbents, and most went uncontested. A Trump endorsement doesn’t just have the potential to push a candidate over the line—sometimes it scares competition off entirely. 

The only non-incumbent Trump endorsed in Ohio was state Rep. Derek Merrin. Merrin defeated state Rep. Craig Riedel in the GOP’s primary for the 9th District by double digits. In 2016 and 2020, the 9th District went for Trump, but Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur has held the seat since 1983. The GOP aims to send the 77-year-old Kaptur into retirement and expand their razor-thin margins in the House. 

Riedel appeared to be the frontrunner and garnered national GOP support until a recording of a conversation in which Riedel criticized Trump was leaked in December. Merrin joined the race shortly thereafter as Republicans sought an alternative to Riedel and earned the backing of House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Congressional Leadership Fund. On Monday, Trump himself endorsed Merrin to help push him over the line.

As it stands now, not a single Trump-endorsed candidate running for federal office has lost a primary. But the real test, for Trump and his chosen candidates, is in November, and a whole lot might hang on Ohio.

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Chris Rufo, Man in the Arena

Politics

Chris Rufo, Man in the Arena

State of the Union: How should conservatives lead an active political life?

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Credit: Intercollegiate Studies Institute

On March 15, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute honored Chris Rufo, an activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, with their Conservative Book of the Year Award at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Rufo finished his first book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything, in 2023. In his speech after receiving the award, he said to the gathered crowd, “What I tried to do with this book is to make sure that it was not oriented just towards good prose, solid research, good line of argument, some historical value, but it was actually oriented towards active political life.”

This emphasis on active political life transcends the pages of America’s Cultural Revolution and bleeds into Rufo’s personal life. Rufo gained notoriety in 2020 for his fight against DEI and critical race theory, particularly in school curricula. 

Most recently, Rufo collaborated with Chris Brunet, a contributing editor to The American Conservative, to expose Harvard’s former President Claudine Gay for plagiarism. Their joint efforts sparked a nationwide conversation about the detriments of DEI policies at the university level.

Tackling such prevalent issues was at the center of Rufo’s book as well: “What’s critical race theory?” he asked the audience. “It’s an academic discipline that has captured elite institutions with public funding, even though in many cases, the public never voted for these ideas to be installed. It’s not just in California, New York, it’s actually you know, almost everywhere.”

He went on, asking, “The point being is that these ideas proliferated and propagated through institutions, and the real question is how?… The worst answer is to say, well, they’re bad or stupid at what they’re doing and it doesn’t work. The better question is, so how do they do it? What can you learn from it? And then, how can you adjust your own politics to respond effectively?”

Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age and contributing editor of The American Conservative, asked Rufo his opinion on a sense of complacency in America that has allowed DEI initiatives and critical race theory to take such a strong hold: “Some complacency or some weakness on the part of that stronger and more virtuous America opened the door to the insanity that we’ve seen the last 20 plus years. I’m curious, what do you think has created this sense of complacency, or this obliviousness, among so many conservative people towards the threat that they’re facing from a very radical revolutionary level?” 

Rufo explained that, in his opinion, baby-boomers and libertarians were to blame for the current state of conservatism in America, concluding that it is important to understand and be educated about the history of the ideologies ripping through today’s society in order to restore a recognizable American order. 

Nevertheless, even in the midst of this significant culture war, Rufo maintained that conservatives should hold the high ground and never mimic the often violent and aggressive fighting strategies of the left. 

“And, and I think, look, the right shouting and getting in people’s faces is always a loser for us,” he said. “The left can burn down a city and the media will cover for them. If there’s one bad person in a crowd at a conservative rally or something, it tars everybody. We have to avoid that.”

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Stuck With Putin for the Foreseeable Future

Foreign Affairs

Stuck With Putin for the Foreseeable Future

The weekend election offered neither a credible challenger nor a credible successor.

Yerevan,,Armenia,-,1,October,2019:,Russian,President,Vladimir,Putin

Vladimir Putin cruised to victory in the Russian presidential elections this weekend, receiving a higher share of the vote than in any of his previous four contests, around 88 percent. This election held few surprises but was notable for two absences: a credible opponent and a credible successor.

The lack of opposition is easy to explain. Western observers tend to blame Kremlin suppression of dissent, but the simpler explanation is that the majority of Russians are happy with the way the country is governed at present. A Levada poll last month showed 75 percent of respondents think Russia is headed in the right direction. 

Seriously challenging Putin would require two things: an alternative vision for Russia and an individual to represent it. Obviously the second half of that equation is difficult in a country where being an opposition leader carries serious personal risks, including hostile attention from authorities. But the first half is missing, too. It is not as if there is an ideological alternative to Putinism that enjoys widespread support among the Russian people and merely lacks a politician to champion it. Western liberalism was tried in the 1990s (at least as the Russians understand their recent history). The appetite for trying it again is nil. 

The lack of a successor is harder to explain. Putin is 71 years old. He probably expected to be handing over the reins of power at this point in his career. That hasn’t happened.

There are three reasons why we should not anticipate that Putin will indicate a successor anytime soon. The first is the ongoing war in Ukraine. It is thought that one of the reasons Putin chose to invade Ukraine when he did was that he wanted to resolve that ongoing challenge to Russian security before handing over power. He considered it dishonorable to saddle his successor with such a fiendishly difficult and constantly worsening problem. Or, to put it another way, he did not want such a formidable problem to be handled by an untried leader.

The second reason is the conspicuous failure of Putin’s past efforts at naming an heir apparent. Dmitry Medvedev, to whom Putin handed over the presidency in 2008, was a disappointment in office, conceding too much to the West and failing to adequately defend Russia’s interests on the international stage, at least as Putin saw things. Since leaving the presidency, Medvedev has been a different kind of disappointment, veering too far to the opposite end of the political spectrum and attracting mockery for his hardline nationalist pronouncements.

The final reason is Putin’s own history. When he was chosen as Boris Yeltsin’s successor, it was at the very last minute. Yeltsin had cycled through several other potential heirs as the end of his career approached, rejecting each of them one by one. When he announced his resignation in 1999, few people knew the name of the man to whom he handed power. Putin therefore has personal reasons for thinking that a good successor does not need to be paraded in advance like a debutante in order to succeed in office.

So we are stuck with Putin for the foreseeable future. There is a silver lining, though. As noted above, Putin’s priority now is to reach a stable settlement of the Ukraine question, one that he feels comfortable handing over to the next guy. That means he may not press the Ukrainians to agree to a lopsided peace agreement. The Russians could probably demand a humiliating peace deal given their current battlefield advantage, but Putin might agree to concessions if those concessions promised to lead to an enduring equilibrium. 

The Minsk agreements, which ended the last war in Ukraine, were treated by the U.S. and its allies as a holding pattern to give us time to prepare for the next war. If we decide this time to prepare for a lasting peace instead of looking ahead to round three, we may find that Putin is prepared to cooperate in that effort. On the other hand, the longer we keep the Ukraine situation unresolved, the longer we will be stuck with him.

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This November, Vote for a Balanced Budget

Politics

This November, Vote for a Balanced Budget

Our fiscal crisis should be among the top issues for voters in 2024.

Exterior,Of,New,York,Stock,Exchange,,Largest,Stock,Exchange,In

If we balance the Federal budget today, and keep it balanced, it will take 100 years to pay off the National Debt.

Each child born in the United States gets an ID bracelet and a pro-rata share of the National Debt, currently over $100,000 and growing. This is a terrible injustice inflicted on future generations due to the relentless expansion of the Federal government under Progressive policies of the past 150 years. Our perennial deficits have vaulted the national debt over $34 trillion and are increasing at a rate of $1.5 trillion per year.

These deficits and the debt they accrue are imprudent, dispiriting, unsustainable, and a national security risk, yet Congress lacks the resolve to do anything.

For years, commentators have been warning of the dangers of the deficit and the national debt. The hucksters hankering for a total economic collapse hoping to sell gold or Bitcoin have lately been joined by more respectable voices: Jamie Dimon, Brian Moynihan, and Jerome Powell.

It’s beyond time to take measures in line with the Constitution to balance the federal budget. Simple calculations conclude that balancing the budget without an increase in taxes will require a reduction in federal outlays (other than interest) of less than 20 percent. Only when the deficit is eliminated will it be possible to begin the burdensome chore of paying down the national debt.

My own preference is for a simple executive order requiring a 20 percent cut across every agency. Let the agency heads figure out how to accomplish that. Not spending every penny allocated and appropriated by Congress is entirely within the executive powers outlined in the Constitution. 

Assuming that will not happen, the only alternative is for Congress to act. Unfortunately, our elected representatives have repeatedly demonstrated that, though they have the power of the purse, they simply can’t muster the willpower to make such a courageous move. Even now, when the Republicans have the House, they are floundering in their effort to achieve a mere 2 percent reduction in outlays.

The deficit’s root cause is We the People. American voters are either too selfish reaping personal rewards to care about their grandchildren or fail to do due diligence on the character of candidates promising fiscal responsibility.

Every candidate running for the House of Representatives in 2024, Democrat or Republican, should present to his or her constituency a detailed plan to use the appropriations process to reduce federal outlays (other than interest) by 5 percent for each of the next four years. The proposed plans would smoke out who sincerely intends to protect the interests of the local people. Will the cuts be in Defense? The Department of Education? Bailouts of deadbeat states? Let the deliberations begin, and may they be spirited and boisterous!

The restructuring of the economy over these four years would unleash optimism, innovation, and heightened economic activity and, possibly, a corresponding increase in government revenues without raising taxes. In a recent report, the Competitive Enterprise Institute states that “U.S. households pay $14,514 annually on average in a hidden regulatory tax. This amount exceeds every item in the household budget except housing.” Almost $2 trillion of economic activity could be unleashed simply by eliminating disadvantageous regulations! 

A balanced budget would be a true benefit for families: more wealth would be created by making stuff than by financial speculation and that new wealth would go to families rather than elites. With more confidence in the future, more families will be formed, and couples will be more inclined to have children.

To the argument that this will put holes in the safety net, I turn to Dorothy Day, whom no one ever accused of being calloused. As the New Deal was being rolled out, she observed that if the government takes care of people, people will stop taking care of people. The wisdom of her prediction is manifest throughout America. It’s time for families to step up and be family once again, taking care of family and community members without expecting much help from the federal government. 

A balanced budget and its advantages for families depend on each American voter taking a more active role in the 2024 primaries and general elections, carefully selecting those they send to Washington to represent their interests, and holding them responsible.

The post This November, Vote for a Balanced Budget appeared first on The American Conservative.

Euthanasia in the Outback

Foreign Affairs

Euthanasia in the Outback

Australia’s Northern Territory was the first to legalize assisted dying, and Aboriginals did not approve.

Belinda Teh Walks from Kings Park to the WA Parliament With Euthanasia Advocates

Unless Canada’s government reverses course, in March 2024, the nation’s doctors will be permitted to kill patients with mental disabilities or assist them in dying. Proponents hail Canada’s leap into the bioethical unknown as a bold step towards true equity in end-of-life medicine. Montreal psychiatrist Mona Gupta admits that “some cases might be difficult” but, on the whole, excluding people with mental disorders from access to medical aid in dying “sends the message that they are not entitled to make choices about their own lives the way everyone else is.” 

Dr. Gupta might want to rethink her position after reading Caitlin Mahar’s The Good Death through Time. Mahar’s focus is Australia’s Northern Territory, which in 1995 became the first political jurisdiction in the world to permit doctors to assist people in dying. White Australians who supported the legislation were shocked to discover that Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, where they make up roughly a quarter of the population, didn’t share their enthusiasm for medically assisted death. It wasn’t simply that Indigenous people were reluctant to exercise their choice to have doctors help them die. They also felt there was something incompatible between modern notions of a right to die and “the aboriginal way.” 

“I have quite a bit of understanding of white man’s ways, but it is difficult for me to understand this one,” one of them said. The common refrain in Aboriginal communities was that medical aid in dying (MAID) was “whitefella business.”

As a result, Mahar argues, Aboriginal people avoided or delayed seeking medical treatment out of fear that a trip to the local clinic might end with a lethal injection. That fear might have been unrealistic, but, as Mahar points out, they were rooted in the larger truth that “conceptions of death and dying are not timeless or universal.” Reforms like Canada’s are “culturally specific,” in Mahar’s words, and not simply the latest extension of global human rights when it comes to end-of-life decisions. 

Mahar’s book is the latest in a series of scholarly attempts to find out how and why in recent years governments and courts in some countries have legalized what used to be called medical murder or assisted suicide. Mahar correctly notes that, until the late Victorian era, a good death or “euthanasia” was customarily defined as making patients as comfortable as possible while helping them prepare for death. Typically, doctors did not attend the dying. What Mahar calls “the ideal of the good Christian death” was largely respected. Doctors tended to believe it was “equally criminal to accelerate by one hour the death of a person as to cause it,” in the words of one Victorian physician. 

Big changes occurred in the late 1800s. As physicians became more adept at easing pain with narcotics, the definition of a good death increasingly included the elimination of painful suffering. What started as a way of alleviating the fear of a painful death bred its own kind of terror. “As methods for assuaging pain have improved,” Mahar writes, “we appear to have become more fearful of suffering.” As the twentieth century unfolded, the aim of removing fear and suffering grew increasingly popular and support for medically assisted death mounted.  

Which brings us to the unprecedented flurry of euthanasia legislation in various Western countries since the 1990s. Canada is playing catch-up to places such as The Netherlands, which has made MAID accessible to youngsters between the ages of twelve and sixteen with parental consent, adolescents as young as sixteen, and adults “tired of life.” In 2020, the Dutch approved mercy killing for children between one and twelve. Meanwhile, in Australia, the concept of medicalized death culminated in the 2017 Voluntary Assisted Dying Act, which made Victoria the first Australian state to legalize medically assisted dying and triggered a wave of similar laws across the country.

It is certainly true, as Mahar notes, that this state of affairs exists because of widespread fears, especially among the elderly, that death will be a painful, protracted, and undignified experience. She is also correct to maintain that the “vision that holds sway in modern Western societies is not natural or universal but the product of specific—predominantly white, middle class, ableist—cultural and historical milieus.” 

This was evident years ago in the early days of the Hemlock Society, the first American grassroots organization in support of assisted suicide. Hemlock’s members were described as “little old ladies in tennis shoes,” living in largely white retirement villages. By contrast, MAID has never caught on among African-Americans, among whom it consistently polls lower than among white Americans. One American physician told the New York Times that blacks view assisted suicide as a state-sponsored way of disposing of “throwaway lives.” To them, like Australia’s Aborigines, MAID is indeed “whitefella business.”

Mahar’s historical analysis reveals that, time and again, legalizing the medical murder of consenting, terminally ill patients is the “thin edge of the wedge” and MAID, once enacted, is extraordinarily difficult to regulate in practice. Yet advocacy groups have powerful resources at their disposal. Besides generous funding from corporations and philanthropic foundations, American groups such as Compassion and Choices rely heavily on sympathetic media coverage. Mahar notes how Australia’s MAID activists found the media to be an “invaluable” resource. They cultivated contacts with writers, reporters, and producers, and in return media bombarded the public with human interest stories about people in pain who wish to end their lives with medical assistance. 

Above all, Mahar’s book is a welcome reminder that all major religious communities around the world reject the notion that people should be killed to relieve the pain of dying. Even Reform Judaism, liberal in many ways, bans both assisted suicide and death by lethal injection. Euthanasia activists may not like to hear it, but, as Mahar concludes, celebrating these practices as exercises in “equity” and “choice” amounts to a form of cultural “bigotry.” 

Ian Dowbiggin, the author of two books on the history of euthanasia, teaches history at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada. He receives no financial support from any group with a public stance on the issue.

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Where Is Joe Biden’s ‘Devil’s Advocate’?

Foreign Affairs

Where Is Joe Biden’s ‘Devil’s Advocate’?

The wisdom of LBJ’s resident contrarian George Ball is as relevant today as it was in the Vietnam era.

Former under secy of State George Ball testifying on Capito

The phrase “the Wise Men” referring to the American postwar foreign policy elite was popularized by the authors Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas nearly 40 years ago, in a book of the same name. 

Isaacson and Thomas chronicled the lives of “six friends” who, they claim, shaped American foreign policy in the postwar era. Yet of these 20th century giants, perhaps the wisest of their number received second billing. Indeed, I would argue today that George W. Ball (1909–1994) is among the least heralded of that generation of diplomats and policymakers. But Ball, who came to be known as “the Devil’s Advocate” within the Johnson administration for his tenacious opposition to the American war in Vietnam, deserves another look—especially today, with the Biden administration leading the country into a proxy war against Russia, a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and military action against the Yemeni Houthis, among other foreign misadventures.  

Ball’s career in public service spanned half a century, from the 1930s to the 1980s. And everywhere one looks, from the New Deal to Lend Lease, from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey to the birth of the European Steel and Coal Community, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the war in Vietnam, one will find George Ball.

Such was the esteem with which Ball was held by his contemporaries that by 1980, our country’s wisest diplomat, George Kennan, was expressing to the era’s most famous historian, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., his wish that Ball be named Secretary of State. But that exchange took place nearly 45 years ago, and in the intervening years, Ball has fallen quite unfairly into obscurity alongside other giants of the era, including Charles “Chip” Bohlen and Llewellyn Thompson. 

As early as 1961, Ball warned President John F. Kennedy that, with regard to Vietnam, “Within five years, we’ll have 300,000 men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again.” To which Kennedy responded, “George, you’re just crazier than hell. That just isn’t going to happen.”

So who was George Ball, and how did he foresee that things would go so wrong before everyone else?

Ball, a brilliant, self-assured product of the American Midwest, was part of the wave of bright young New Dealers who came to Washington in the middle 1930s. Initially posted to Henry Morgenthau’s Treasury Department, he came to represent a species of Democrat that has nearly vanished, a foreign policy hand who intuitively understood the interplay of power, of interests, and of nationalism in an anarchic world. His early forays into foreign affairs came through his work on Lend Lease, the Strategic Bombing Survey, and then, fortuitously, through his work with the architect of the European Coal and Steel Community, Jean Monnet. Needless to say, the French experience in Vietnam in the 1950s, during which time Ball served as the French government’s chief legal counsel in the U.S., was not a happy one. In his memoir, The Past Has Another Pattern, Ball recalled that he

had listened to innumerable French military and civilian experts discuss their nation’s plans, fears and doubts…. From that experience, I concluded — and have never ceased to believe—that we should rigorously avoid land wars in Asia.

President Johnson’s decision to escalate the war in Vietnam met immediate opposition from Ball, who was by then serving as undersecretary of state. The series of memos and briefings put together by Ball throughout the mid-1960s were so prescient that years later the journalist and author David Halberstam observed that, “Someone reading his papers five years later would have a chilling feeling that they had been written after the fact, not before.”

As early as 1964, responding to the argument that American “credibility” was on the line in Southeast Asia, Ball wrote to the president that “what we might gain by establishing the steadfastness of our commitments, we could lose by an erosion of confidence in our judgment.” We were, in those years, in constant danger of, in Ball’s words, “becoming the puppet of our puppet.” The national security advisor McGeorge Bundy felt that what was really at stake was the country’s image abroad, or as he put it, “the confidence of America’s allies and America’s self-confidence.”  Looking back on that period, when all of the president’s top advisers, including Bundy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk counseled greater American involvement on that basis, Ball noted,

America had become a prisoner of whatever Saigon military clique was momentarily in power. Like a heroine in an eighteenth century novel who gets her way by fainting if anyone spoke crossly, each clique understood how to exploit its own weakness. If we demanded anything significant of it, it would collapse; so we never made any serious demands.

Does any of that sound familiar?

The arguments from the pro-interventionists of the Vietnam era are eerily, indeed, wearingly similar to those advanced in our own time in favor of further U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Rusk and the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., advocated for more boots on the ground on the basis of their belief that if we failed to stop the Communists there, there was no telling how far they would go. President Biden’s warning in his recent State of the Union address that, “If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not,” is simply a warmed-over recitation of the Domino Theory, which remains, all these decades later, nothing so much as a fantasy—and one that that becomes all the more dangerous the more one believes it. 

Given the risks as laid out so cogently, so painstakingly by Ball, why did Johnson and his men insist on moving forward? Why didn’t McNamara, who for years privately expressed grave reservations, step forward and challenge the escalatory policy of the President?

Part of the answer lies with the fact that the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy was driven by the fear of an influential foreign lobby.  In a 1968  interview with the pioneering oral historian Jean Stein, Sen. Joseph Tydings of Maryland found it “amazing” how

all of the top persons were deceived in Vietnam each time they would go over. It was partly the holdover atmosphere from the McCarthy era…the people in the State Department who should have been speaking out were scared to death. No one except George Ball seemed to question and speak out against our policy. They’d seen the power of the China lobby…the young, inquisitive objective voices in the State Department were so scared by what happened…and by the purges by Dulles, Congress, and others during and after the McCarthy era.

Today, the role of ideological enforcer is played not by the China Lobby but by the Captive Nations lobby, led, of course, by the most  fanatical interventionists in Washington. Anyone doubting that such a lobby exists might refer themselves to the current controversies roiling the Helsinki Commission on Capitol Hill. In such an atmosphere, where even relatively meek expressions of dissent are drowned out and condemned by pro-interventionists, one must wonder how many within the administration or on the Hill are dissuaded from speaking out by a fear of being smeared as apologists for Russia.

Johnson’s last secretary of defense, Clark Clifford (who emerged as a voice of dissent once Ball left State in September 1966) shrewdly observed that “individuals sometimes become so bound up in a certain course it is difficult to know where objectivity stops and personal involvement begins.” Clifford’s analysis applies with equal force to the current coterie of new cold warriors who seem to place foreign interests well before the interests of the United States. 

Ultimately, however, one must concede that Ball’s opposition to Vietnam was ineffective: By the end of 1968 the US had 549,000 troops in Vietnam. Ball later wrote that he had “no inflated view” of the effectiveness of his advocacy.  “I like to think that I somewhat slowed down the escalation,” but even so, “I provided no more than a marginal constraint on the momentum.”

The temptation, then, might be to say: So what if Biden does or doesn’t have a Devil’s Advocate of his own? 

Given the risks involved, it is far better to have a truth-teller like Ball on the inside, even if he, as Ball was, is faced with insuperable opposition. After all, the pressure on the President to escalate remains immense. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has in recent weeks repeatedly signaled his determination to send boots on the ground should the Russians break through the current line of contact. The Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, who has deep ties to the American political establishment, recently expressed his view that “the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine is not unthinkable.” And within the U.S. establishment the war drums beat as loudly as ever, with articles in organs like Foreign Affairs urging the president to send military advisers to Ukraine. 

Indeed, the U.S. has been a co-belligerent in all but in name for some time; after all, three weeks prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, national security reporter Dan Dorfman reported that “U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence have even participated in joint offensive cyber operations against Russian government targets.” And more recent revelations from the New York Times indicate that US involvement on the ground has been more robust than often assumed.

In the end, the absence of a Devil’s Advocate, means, inevitably, as Ball put it, “no restraints and no alternatives.” And alternatives to war are needed now more than ever.

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An Open Letter to Lawfare-Loving Democrats

Politics

An Open Letter to Lawfare-Loving Democrats

You’re going to have to win this one the old-fashioned way.

Donald Trump Holds Presidential Campaign Event In Indianola, Iowa

Speaking as a friend: Democrats, it is time to face reality. Your candidate is going to have to beat Donald Trump at the polls in November fair and square. You impeached our guy twice without lasting effect. None of the banana republic tricks and lawfare have worked.

There was also a real Republican primary which Trump won majorly. The guy is not made of Teflon or anything special like that; your efforts have just been lame and ineffectual. Time to splash some cold water on your faces and face the music. It is Biden vs. Trump. The voters will decide.

The battle to destroy Trump rather than just to beat him started way back in his first term, or even earlier. There was the initial rush to create some sort of rogue electors and deny the 2016 election. (Sounds familiar?) Then there was the Emoluments Clause, which was going to take down Trump for owning hotels that had foreign guests. Let us not forget Russiagate, a wholly-false effort to link Trump to Russian intelligence using made-up witnesses and a fake dossier.

That one could have escaped the lab, as we learn now the Trump campaign was subject to a full-court press by the Five Eyes intelligence services, who, if they could not find dope on Trump, were going to create it with false flag operatives. Along the way there were various impeachments that depended on Democratic control of the House to rig the game (both failing in the Senate). Each of these failures to weaken Trump or drive him from office was met with Democratic tears, that somehow he again escaped a carefully laid snare.

After Trump left office, the real games began, centered on the state of New York, which decided it would speak for the other 49 in trying to drive Trump out of business and into bankruptcy, and otherwise to prevent him from becoming president again. Things began with the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, in which the last remnants of the #MeToo movement were repurposed to have a court agree that Trump committed a sexual assault decades ago, so far back that the victim could not remember the year it occurred, never mind the date. No eyewitnesses and no physical evidence were presented. Nonetheless, an $83 million civil defamation judgment arising out of the alleged attack was rendered against Trump.

The next shot ended up with a judgment five times that size, over claims that for decades under the eyes of New York regulators and tax inspectors Trump had exaggerated his net worth and the worth of his properties to get better loan and insurance terms. Never mind that the state found that no harm was done, and that the creditors claimed no harm was done and indeed they profited from the loans—a conviction was possible so a conviction was made. Poison pills were embedded in that decision, making it impossible for Trump to seek an appeal without providing a multi-million dollar bond first. The interest alone on the fine runs $100,000 a day. New York might as well have revived debtor’s prison.

No matter the amounts likely reduced on appeal in both cases, neither will prevent Trump from running for president and polls show no effect on his popularity. They thus failed as much beyond harassment.

New York has one last round to expend, a Wonka-like criminal trial claiming Trump “falsified business records” in paying the adult film star Stormy Daniels to remain silent on their minutes-long affair. This one is so weak that Michael Cohen, convicted felon and certified liar, is the star witness. It is so weak that even the New York D.A. Alvin Bragg agreed to delay it. A local jury could find Trump guilty of something, but the most exciting outcome of the trial will be to see who SNL gets to play Stormy.

Outside of New York, a quick one was next, an attempt to remove Trump from the ballot in multiple states based on a fantasy reading of the 14th Amendment, Section 3, and arbitrary judgments by the Democratic secretary of state in blue Colorado and a traffic court judge in Illinois that Trump committed “insurrection” on January 6. Never mind the impeachment for insurrection found him not guilty, and that the case against him pending for his actions on January 6 (below) does not charge insurrection. In a unanimous decision (so much for court packing) the Supreme Court made short work of all that and Trump will remain on the ballot in all 50 states so that the people may vote him up or down. See a pattern here yet, Democrats?

Nathan Wade resigned as special prosecutor after a Georgia judge ruled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue prosecuting her racketeering case against Trump if Wade—with whom she had a secret romantic relationship—is removed from the case. While that is playing out, the underlying case itself has been hopelessly delayed, and even before the recent mess, Willis herself predicted it would take until early 2025 to decide. One pundit wrote “to call the case troubled would be a great understatement.”

That leaves the classified documents case and Jack Smith’s unconvincing January 6 case.

The classified documents case faces an uphill battle, as the defense is sure to raise the question of how classified documents at the homes of Mike Pence and Joe Biden himself did not bring on prosecutions while Trump is in a multi-year struggle and had his home dramatically raided by the FBI. It is a complicated case, involving presidential privilege and the rabbit hole of what is classified and how a document is unclassified. These complexities work to Trump’s advantage, most likely postponing the trial until well after November 5 when it really does not matter much anymore one way or another.

That pretty much is the story for the mother of them all, the January 6 case. There is a slim chance the Supreme Court will decide in favor (a ruling is expected in June) of Trump having presidential immunity for his actions on that day, and a greater chance the Court’s process will drag on such that the trial will not be ready to hear until smack in the middle of the actual election season.

The Justice Department has its own internal rule barring prosecutors from “selecting the timing of any action…for the purpose of affecting any election,” suggesting that it too will pend until after November. Again, if Trump wins the election all the wind leaves the sails of this case, and if Trump loses to Biden, no one will care about January 6 anymore anyway.

So, Democratic friends, where does that leave you?

Nothing on the legal horizon will prevent Trump from being the Republican nominee. Nothing even in worst case scenarios will leave him ineligible to serve as president. Polls consistently show these legal issues do little to reduce his popularity and in some cases appear to enhance it. Polls show Trump can win from inside a jail cell. You are wasting enormous amounts of time and effort on a strategy that is not likely to work and holds the possibility of actually working against you and helping Trump with the only thing that really matters in any of this, November 5.

Americans are turned off watching “people in positions of great power and responsibility, in the midst of a campaign, would use the justice system to ‘curb’ one of the two major presidential candidates. They might find it outrageous that those people, a coalition of elected Democrats, Biden administration appointees, Democratic Party activists, and career lawfare specialists, are in fact desperately pushing the system to work faster to win verdicts by Election Day.”

Your strategy is backfiring. No American election has featured this much meddling by the judicial system, and this much naked partisanship from the Justice Department and its proxy, the state of New York. It does not sit well with the American sense of fair play. You blew it. You threw it all against the wall and nothing stuck.

Meanwhile, the Republican primary with its Democratic Great Hopes like Nikki Haley, failed to move the dial on Trump. Sitting in first place, he refused to be drawn into being a punching bag during televised debates with his opponents, and instead one-by-one put them down, solidifying his position as the inevitable nominee as early as Super Tuesday. No one from the right is going to save you, Dems.

You’re just going to have to win or lose this one the old fashioned way.

Coming to the same conclusion from a very different angle is the New York Times, which editorializes Trump must be found guilty—of something—to convince Americans as the last line of defense to vote as if democracy is at death’s door. Slate writes “it’s clear that if anyone is going to save American democracy, it is going to be the voters…. It deludes us into thinking that someone else is going to rush in while we watch and cheer from the stands…. We need to stop deluding ourselves that a majority of the Supreme Court sees the same political emergency that many of us do in terms of the threat Trump poses to American democracy.”

Yes, well, never mind that last bit of editorializing; that’s just the mainstream media at work. Nobody besides the Democratic inner circle and Rachel Maddow’s butler believes democracy is going to end in November. The bottom line: You Democrats still have a chance to make this race about something other than Orange Man Guilty and the Two Minutes Hate.

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In Rioting, TikTok, and IVF, ‘Popularism’ Bewitches Both Parties

Politics

In Rioting, TikTok, and IVF, ‘Popularism’ Bewitches Both Parties

Principles come naturally to some; figuring out what voters want, and doing it, is something else.

United,States,Congress,Building,-,Capitol,,Washington,,Dc,,Usa.

Is it better for a politician to be popular or principled? That’s an age-old dilemma, tested, for instance, in 1774 Britain. In that year, Edmund Burke declaimed to the electors of Bristol, “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests.” Instead, MPs should meet, deliberate, and ascertain the “the general good.” In that spirit, Burke pledged that he would be a “faithful friend,” but not a “flatterer.” 

Having won office, Burke found himself caught betwixt high fidelity and low flattery. The crucial issue for his constituents was restricting the trading rights of rival ports in Ireland; on that clutch topic, Bristol’s shipping interests, for sure, wanted a flatterer. Burke, man of principle (and son of Ireland) that he was, would have none of it. In 1778, he declared, “If, from this conduct, I shall forfeit their suffrages at an ensuing election, it will stand on record…that one man at least had dared to resist the desires of his constituents.” In 1780, Bristol’s desires proved irresistible; Burke was defeated for re-election. 

In our time, the saga of David Shor, the Democratic data dude, has provided another illustration of the tug between popularity and principle. On May 28, 2020, just three days after the death of George Floyd, the 20-something Shor took note of rising unrest around the nation, tweeting a note of warning to fellow progressives: “Post-MLK-assassination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2 percent, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon.” Shor’s message to his mates was well-intentioned, if blunt: Rioting, no matter how righteous in their view, would play badly with the electorate of 2020, just as it had in the “law and order” election of 52 years earlier. By this reckoning, maybe the principle of rioting was okay; the problem was that it was unpopular with swing voters. 

Still, this was not what raging progs wanted to hear. Shor was fired from his job at a Democratic political firm. Yet he landed on his feet, especially as the November election results vindicated his findings—the GOP gained 16 House seats, mostly in places afflicted by unrest. In fact, amidst the continuing controversy, pro and con, Shor introduced the concept of “popularism,” which is pretty much what it sounds like: pick popular issues and focus on them. One could say, flatter the voters. 

In electoral politics, this is a tricky point. Yes, politicians instinctively wish to do all they can to get elected, but their actual latitude is constrained by their parties. A quarter-century ago, academics Lawrence Jacobs of the University of Minnesota and Robert Shapiro of Columbia University dealt with this in Politicians Don’t Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness. Their book’s shrewd thesis: Contrary to the popular impression of politicians as say-anything panderers—and no matter what their own private feelings on an issue might be—pols are typically locked into policy positions, dictated by their party and its orthodoxy. 

For instance, mindful of the intense activists that bulk up the base, most Republican politicos have no choice but to be pro-life and pro-gun. And most Democrats feel forced to take the opposite stances. The result, of course, is polarization, as candidates on both sides of the divide gravitate to their polarities. Thus they miss the opportunity, if that’s their inclination, to occupy the political sweet spot in the middle. Like it or not, they end up being principled. 

Now in 2024, Democrats are still having trouble with law-and-order issues; their base won’t permit tough measures on either crime or the border. This is hurting them—notably on immigration, which Gallup finds to be the hottest topic in the land. A recent NBC News poll found that by a 30-point margin, Americans support the Republicans’ hawkish position. No doubt many election-minded Democrats would love to play to the center-right majority on the immigration issue—and some have, and have succeeded—but instead, many Dems find themselves pinioned by their own left. 

Yet Republicans, too, have it rough. A flashpoint is the possible impeachment of President Joe Biden, as the GOP majority in the House has been contemplating. Actual impeachment would be deeply satisfying to the Trumpy base, and yet it would just as certainly play badly in much of the country—including the 18 Congressional seats held by Republicans in districts Biden carried in 2020. As POLITICO’s Playbook newsletter observed on March 13, the House GOP, boasting the narrowest of majorities, is “dealing with a brutal math problem. Republicans in swing districts continue to balk at taking an impeachment vote.” 

Smart Republicans recall the 1998 effort to impeach Bill Clinton, which proved unpopular and blew up the party in that year’s midterm elections. In a typical midterm, the average gain for the opposition party is two dozen House seats and a handful of Senate seats. Yet amid the national boomerang against impeachment, Republicans ended up losing seats—the first time that had happened to the “out” party in a midterm since 1934. 

Mindful of this history, today’s House Republican leadership is looking for a popularist finesse. The same edition of Playbook explains: “Don’t expect Republicans to just come out and announce an end to their impeachment inquiry altogether. Doing so, they realize, would be tantamount to exonerating Biden in an election year—hardly a smart political play, and one that would infuriate the GOP base.” So what to do? Possibilities for a face-saving “off-ramp” include making a criminal referral to the Justice Department (destined, of course, to be immediately circular-filed) or offering some sort of anti-corruption legislation (perhaps to be given some sort of signal-sending acronym, such as “HUNTER”). Will that be satisfying to the faithful while not antagonizing the middle? We’ll see. 

In the meantime, another issue has come barreling down on both the popularist and the principled: TikTok, the Chinese-made social media app. On March 13, amidst spiraling concerns over data-tracking, social dividing, and even outright spying, the House voted 352 to 65 to force a divestiture of the app from its China-based parent. As the lopsided numbers suggest, both parties are on board: Republicans voted against China by a spread of 197 to 15, and Democrats, 155 to 50. 

Here some, such as Kentucky’s Rep. Tom Massie, a Republican, were principled. As a hardcore libertarian, Massie was unbending: He doesn’t believe the state should be pushing a company around—even a Chinese company. As for others, they were, well, more flexible. The Biden-Harris re-election campaign joined TikTok on February 12; less than a month later, on March 8, Biden himself said he would sign the divestiture bill if it reached his desk.  

But is this bill popular? Would a popularist approve? That’s less clear. TikTok has built up a reported U.S. user base of 107 million. Younger politicians, especially on the left, see the app as key to their coalition, which explains why Democrats were relatively more supportive of the TikTok quo. For its part, the company says divestiture is unacceptable and is fighting it hard. So now the House bill goes to the Senate, where prospects are uncertain, perhaps even bearish.  

In this game of popularism, it’s possible, of course, that even the most calculating have miscalculated. In the meantime, a strange-bedfellows “horseshoe” coalition, connecting some on the left and some on the right, has come out in support of TikTok: AOC and MTG, the Washington Post’s digital rabble-rouser, Taylor Lorenz, and Donald Trump.  

While Trump’s change of heart on the TikTok topic—as president in 2020, he sought divestiture by executive order—has received much scrutiny, it should be noted that for all his personal vehemence, he is something of a popularist. For instance, Trump has attacked the maximalist Republican position on abortion, saying vaguely of this hottest of hot-button subjects, “We’ll get something done where everyone is going to be very satisfied.”  

Moreover, Trump last month denounced the Alabama Supreme Court decision against IVF. Yet in the meantime, other Republicans, representing moderate districts, are struggling with the same issue; a gleeful headline in the Washington Post crowed the party’s predicament: “Republicans want to stay away from the IVF imbroglio. Abortion foes won’t let them.” 

For their part, when they can, Democrats are practicing popularism. A different POLITICO story listed the Congressional party’s preferred priorities for the remainder of the year: “The House-passed tax deal; a rail safety bill responding to the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio; cannabis banking legislation, a new farm bill, a package of community health center funding and action to lower drug prices; and a new FAA bill.” We can immediately note what’s missing. Namely, the big issues that Biden mentioned in his March 7 State of the Union address: Ukraine, Gaza, tax increases, and climate change. Those Biden priorities are still priorities, of course; it’s just that House and Senate Democrats wish to talk about other, smaller, issues they think are more vote-getting. 

Yes, it’s a paradox: The country is as polarized as ever, and yet on policy issues, as opposed to political styles, the gap between the parties is narrowing as November nears. Whether they use the word or not, popularism is the game both parties play—when they can. 

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The U.S. May Need to Maneuver Around NATO Article 5

Politics

The U.S. May Need to Maneuver Around NATO Article 5

State of the Union: President Trump was right: We should not automatically protect an ally actively courting a nuclear showdown.

The,National,Flags,Of,Countries,Member,Of,The,Nato,Fly

One cannot name names, but I recently had some conversations in private with some northwestern European officials, and, more than at Trump or Biden, they are livid at their Baltic counterparts. 

And for good reason, one might add. Never in recent memory have there been more hawkish and reckless protectorates. So much so that it appears to be almost a natural law that the smaller a protectorate located in close proximity of a peer rival, the greater the hysterical lunacy of its political leaders. 

Consider the recent statements. “Just as Czechoslovakia did not satisfy Hitler, Ukraine would not satisfy Putin,” Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda recently said, adding that Putin can only be stopped with force. 

Not to be outdone, the president of Latvia, Edgars Rinkevics, tweeted his support for President Macron: “We should not draw red lines for ourselves, we must draw red lines for Russia and we should not be afraid to enforce them. Ukraine must win, Russia must be defeated. Russia delenda est!” 

Remember when someone wrote how Finland’s addition would finally allow the U.S. to quit providing for continental Europe? Here’s the Finnish foreign minister refusing to “rule out” Western troops in Ukraine. Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, echoed the sentiment. 

Why do we listen to these lunatics and treat them as our equals within NATO? Why are we to take people seriously when they claim they want to give a country with 6,000 nuclear weapons the Carthage treatment? The total combined population of the three Baltic states and Finland is under 12 million people. What do you mean “we,” kemosabe? 

Of course the main culprit of this sudden flare up is France. Emmanuel Macron—sensing that Germany is weak as a leader of EU, seeing the British Tories facing an electoral massacre, and himself facing a tough election at home—has suddenly changed his tune and is trying to form a bloc within a bloc, aligning France with the Baltic states. The Americans, the British, and the Germans rightly understand how reckless it is, and are opposed to it. POLITICO reported that “France’s top NATO partners, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, [had] to clarify that they would not be sending troops.”

But that is France being France, a historic great power with nuclear weapons, trying to take advantage of the European vacuum. Macron’s rhetoric dubbing Russia an existential threat is just that: rhetoric. There is no way Macron believes what he says, and it is purely to make a power play for EU leadership, to be the primus inter pares within Europe against Britain, and especially Germany. Granted, that rhetoric itself is reckless. On the other hand, the motivation for the Baltics are entirely different, as I have written.  

There is a simple way to stop this nonsense. The president of the U.S. and his NSC have so far specified their refusal to send troops to Ukraine under any circumstances, outside of NATO being under direct attack. This situation demands they go a little further. If any Baltic country decides to go to war with Russia, alongside France, they are free to do so. Any retaliatory attack on their home-soil or military assets in the high seas, however disproportionate, will not automatically invoke Article 5 of NATO. 

And that should be made explicitly clear to both the West and East Europeans. NATO is a defensive alliance. Once you’re in the club, you’re in it. But if you open the doors and try to punch someone outside, only to expect the other club members to go and defend you, then apologies, but you’re on your own. Clubs have walls. You can stay safe inside, on the condition that you don’t pick a fight outside the club. 

President Trump was correct. We should not defend anyone who is cavalier about collective security and seeks a nuclear confrontation. Given that the president’s ethical obligations are primarily towards defending his people and keeping them safe, that includes minimizing the chances of a nuclear conflict. Time for the protectorates to internalize that. If they want to drag America to war, or initiate a nuclear conflict, they will be treated as enemies of the American people. 

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More Weak Arguments for ‘Free’ Trade

Politics

More Weak Arguments for ‘Free’ Trade

American manufacturing is not doing just fine, actually.

Washington,Dc.,,Usa,,September,14,,1993,Former,Presidents,Ford,,Carter,

Is it too much to ask for the free trade people to freshen up their talking points? When you use the same arguments in 2024 as in 1994, it leaves the impression that you are not paying attention to the real world.

The failure of the libertarian side of the trade debate to learn any lessons from history is the main thrust of my piece in the last issue’s cover package on the 30th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Colin Grabow has written a 1,700-word response for the American Institute for Economic Research that, ironically, illustrates my thesis perfectly.

Grabow says that trade between nations is nothing new. “The first evidence of long‐​distance trade dates back to 3000 BCE,” he writes. But he fails to mention that the first tariffs date back to the same period. Foreign goods were taxed by many ancient civilizations, including by the Romans.

Grabow says that the World Trade Organization, too, was nothing new. Its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, predated the WTO and NAFTA by half a century. But he fails to note that the GATT system resolved disputes through negotiation whereas the WTO does so through litigation in the WTO appellate body, which eliminates the flexibility that many U.S. leaders, including Ronald Reagan, used to protect American manufacturing during the GATT era. He also fails to note that the GATT system excluded hostile and non-free nations like the USSR, whereas the WTO includes China.

The hoariest free trade talking point is that manufacturing in America is doing just fine, actually, and all the jobs that appeared to be lost to China and Mexico were in fact the result of improved efficiency, not foreign competition. Grabow writes:

Blame placed on globalization for manufacturing job losses is mistaken. The decline in US manufacturing jobs—something that has been taking place since 1979—is more a story of technology (robots, computers, and the like) and changing US consumer tastes than it is about trade. We know this because while the number of manufacturing jobs has declined, output has risen.

It is frustrating to see this blame-the-robots talking point continue to be used since it has been debunked. Possibly the talking point survives because the debunking was somewhat technical, but the basic argument is quite easy for a layman to understand.

The claim that globalization did not actually harm U.S. manufacturing rests on the growth in manufacturing output during the years when manufacturing employment dramatically fell. In 2011, economist Susan Houseman published a stunning finding: All of the growth in output in the decade after 2000 came from a single sector, computers, which is a small fraction of American manufacturing, about 12 percent. Other sectors were stagnant or declined. “It was staggering—it was actually staggering—how much that was contributing to growth in real manufacturing productivity and output,” she said. 

Moreover, the apparent growth in output in the computer sector was the result of the products becoming more valuable, not any improvements in the manufacturing process. Computers got a lot better between 2000 and 2010. If laptops sell for twice as much as they did ten years ago because they are nicer, then that will show up in the data as a doubling of output even if they come from the same factory with the same number of workers making the same number of laptops.

It should have been clear that something was wrong with the everything-is-rosy line from the fact that between 2000 and 2014 the number of factories in America declined by 78,000. You would not expect the number of factories to drop by 22 percent if we were producing the same amount of stuff just with fewer workers.

So, to sum up, the supposed increase in manufacturing output during globalization’s heyday came from a single sector, computers, and even that apparent increase was a matter of improvements in the product and had nothing to do with automation or efficiency. (For more, see this interview with Houseman from 2012, where she also addresses how outsourcing cheaper components from abroad can create the appearance of productivity gains.) We weren’t making more stuff with fewer people; we were making less stuff. 

Besides, the talking point is outdated anyway, because between 2011 and 2022 manufacturing productivity in the U.S. declined.

Robert Lighthizer, who served as Donald Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative, wrote last week in the Economist: “Since the end of the cold war, America has come as close as almost any major country in history to eliminating significant tariffs. It was a bold experiment, and it has failed.” Strong words, but entirely justified by the facts of recent history. If only libertarians would wake up and notice them.

The post More Weak Arguments for ‘Free’ Trade appeared first on The American Conservative.

The ‘Twin Deficits’ Risk the American Way of Life

Politics

The ‘Twin Deficits’ Risk the American Way of Life

Bidenomics hasn’t yanked at the fundamental double-root cause of our economic dysfunction.

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The American economy seems to be on a tear. In February, it added 275,000 jobs, another unexpectedly high count even as unemployment inched up to 3.9 percent. Fourth-quarter 2023 GDP growth clocked in at 3.2 percent, after a 4.9 percent expansion in the third quarter. Also last month, the Dow Jones Average hit 39,000. The White House touts these developments as proof Bidenomics is working.

Nothing is really new here—the political class beams over upbeat economic indicators with some regularity. Previous administrations have done the same. But boasting about the latest data distracts Americans from the serious damage being caused by the “twin deficits”: the massive federal budget and merchandise trade shortfalls, each hitting trillion-dollar records in the last few years, per the chart below. These deficits used to be scrutinized and written about regularly but no longer in our spend-now, don’t-worry economy. 

Federal expenditures of trillions of dollars that the country doesn’t have—the national debt has soared to an astonishing $34 trillion from $5 trillion in 2000—may create the impression of good times. But it’s an illusion. We are clearly living far beyond our means—and stealing growth from future generations while saddling them with repayment obligations. The unprecedented, and unsustainable, trajectory of the twin deficits threatens our superpower status, the dollar as the reserve currency, our living standards, and the viability of most federal programs, particularly the two most relied on by Americans: Social Security and Medicare. 

More than a few Republicans seem eager to gore Social Security by reducing benefits and raising the retirement age; others are calling to “save” the program by allowing all workers to invest in the federal Thrift Savings Plan. Whatever their intention, these conservatives argue that Social Security benefits are unearned, too generous, and will soon bankrupt the system. But far more angst should be directed at the red ink that runs upstream from federal budget shortfalls: merchandise trade deficits.

Many economists mistakenly believe trade deficits don’t matter, free-trade theory holding that markets correct these imbalances. But the cumulative, in-goods deficit of $17.9 trillion since 2000 belies theory and cries for corrective action. Others deceptively cheer increased foreign investment in the United States. But each year we must sell assets—businesses, land, stocks, bonds, and Treasuries—to pay foreigners for their goods and to balance the national account. Foreign-capital inflows therefore don’t necessarily represent new money but are mostly a recycling of already-spent dollars. 

Our parasitic relationship with China illustrates the problem. Because we allowed too much of our industrial prowess to be transferred to our adversary, we turbocharged China’s ability to out-produce and undersell us in home and world markets. With the resulting profit stream, Beijing became an enormous purchaser of Treasuries, lending us back the very dollars we sent overseas through our massive trade deficits—and in the process enabled Washington to both finance and supersize federal deficits.

Decades-long trade imbalances—not only with China but also with most of the world, including friends and allies—signal a fundamentally broken political economy: the governing policy consensus that should steer our economic ship to ensure U.S. wealth and strength. Because we have much less wealth-creating industrial capacity due to our trade profligacy, we have less money to pay for critical programs and balance the federal budget—or invest in infrastructure gamechangers and cutting-edge R&D projects, many defense-related, that historically have delivered American exceptionalism. 

Our broken system also explains why stimulus plans or tax cuts don’t work as advertised, as much of the money leaves the country for foreign goods or foreign investment, boosting the economies of other countries rather than our own. Nothing therefore quantifies the hemorrhaging of American strength, wealth, and productivity quite like out-of-control trade deficits, particularly in high-value, advanced-technology products, everything from biotech to aerospace.

The real-life consequences have been devastating: the disappearance of factories and industries, the loss of millions of good-wage jobs for average Americans, the collapse of cities large and small—along with broken families, drug abuse, crime, shortened life spans, and a burgeoning welfare state. The twin deficits are proof positive of the epic failure of the American political class. 

If current globalist policies are not reversed, our trajectory foreshadows an economic collapse of greater magnitude than the Great Depression. The Biden administration deserves credit for limiting critical-technology exports to our adversaries while trying to build-up onshore two important industries, semiconductors and electric-vehicle technologies (although its full-court press pushing consumers to buy EVs is misguided). And for its recent decision to invest billions in the domestic manufacturing of cargo cranes, a first in 30 years, to enhance port security. Trump likewise deserves kudos for calling for 10-percent tariffs on all imports, although the presumptive GOP nominee should roll his tariffs into a border-adjustable tax that would also inversely credit U.S. manufacturers for exports.

But more industry-specific programs are necessary. Only a combined all-of-government and all-of-industry campaign to re-industrialize and halt the trade (and thus budget) hemorrhaging is the way out of the current morass. Without an effort on the scale of our mobilization of industry to win World War II, we won’t have to worry about Social Security: It will inevitably implode along with the rest of the economy, and the American way of life.

The post The ‘Twin Deficits’ Risk the American Way of Life appeared first on The American Conservative.

Stung by Defeat, Irish Elites Double Down

Foreign Affairs

Stung by Defeat, Irish Elites Double Down

Like their counterparts in America, Ireland’s grandees are failing to come to terms with the revolt of the public.

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Dublin Castle was remarkably quiet on March 9, as the results of Ireland’s latest highly publicized referendum campaign became clear. The courtyard stage was empty, and only a smattering of “opposition” campaigners showed themselves. Both proposed constitutional amendments—one targeting motherhood, the other, marriage—failed in a landslide. 

The referenda were scheduled symbolically on International Women’s Day, and the celebration at the Castle was intended as a victory lap for “inclusion” and anti-sexism. An American onlooker might have recalled Hillary Clinton’s Election Night party beneath a glass ceiling in 2016. 

The Irish result mirrored Clinton’s loss in the degree of shock it inflicted on the political class. Ireland’s government ministers, establishment journalists, and bloated NGO ecosystem had seemed invincible. “It was our responsibility to convince the majority of people to vote ‘Yes,’ and we clearly failed to do so,” said Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar.

Maria Steen, a lawyer and “No” campaigner, delighted in “a great victory for common sense” and a “rejection of a government that seems more concerned with social-media plaudits than actually getting on with the business of governing the country.”

Nearly 68 percent of voters rejected the 39th Amendment, which would have redefined families to include “durable relationships” outside marriage; the wealthy Dún Laoghaire in suburban Dublin was the only constituency to vote in favor. Nearly 74 percent rejected the 40th Amendment, which would have nixed references to motherhood; all constituencies voted “No.” Polls consistently showed both proposals would pass.

By contrast, the successful referenda to legalize same-sex marriage (62 percent for, in 2015) and abortion (66 percent for, in 2018) reflected the establishment forces’ untrammeled power. Those celebrations, naturally, took place at the Castle. 

This year’s referenda featured the same cast. The National Women’s Council of Ireland, which receives 80 percent of its funding from taxpayers, was arguably the central “nonstate” player; its NGO coreligionists included pro-abortion, pro-migration, and LGBT activist groups, as well as a host of nominally apolitical outfits. In the political sphere, Minister of Equality Roderic O’Gorman asserted that “any organisation that sees itself as progressive and as wanting to advance progressive change” would have to explain a decision not to support the “Yes” campaign. The Irish Examiner published this particularly hubristic headline: Why the upcoming referenda are important for the climate. In all, the government spent €23 million on the referendum campaigns.

Irish societal resistance was minimal until last November, when riots occurred in Dublin after an Algerian migrant stabbed three children and one adult outside a primary school. The event precipitated a belated debate over the government’s largely unchecked open-border and migrant-entitlement policies. Antagonism has proliferated since then. In one demonstration that the ruling class has been slow to adapt to opposition, Varadkar and two other cabinet ministers walked out of a press conference after a journalist from independent outlet Gript posed an unwelcome question. 

When the results were announced, some government figures saw the writing on the wall. Fianna Fáil parliamentarian Willie O’Dea, for example, asserted his party should “get back to basics.” He implored, “Start listening to the people, stop talking down to them and stop listening to the out-of-touch Greens & NGOs.” O’Dea’s approach has not been representative.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said her party would “return to” the subject of “sexist language” in the constitution if her party enters government after the next elections. She had previously insisted wording of the motherhood amendment did not go far enough and that her party would seek to re-run the referendum if it failed. 

The prevailing narrative from politicians and media pundits has been that the public did not understand the wording of the referenda. (These claims, of course, never materialized after the same-sex and abortion referenda, which exhibited smaller result margins.) This Irish Examiner cartoon neatly captures elite sentiments. “The yes side botched the campaign, leaving voters confused, uncertain and uninspired,” explained the Guardian. “The amendments were difficult to explain and understand.” The journalist and “Yes” campaigner Alison O’Connor decried the machinations of “far-right elements”—a common refrain from Dublin’s halls of power.

One might expect government figures, for all their defiant talk, to internalize this humiliating defeat. Early indications suggest the opposite. Finance Minister Michael McGrath declared the government would proceed with its controversial “hate-speech” legislation, which stalled in the Senate last year. It would entail prison sentences for those merely possessing “hate” material (a meme saved to a phone, for example). Intent to distribute would carry a heavier penalty, and for this the burden of proof would fall on the accused. “We shouldn’t ignore the reality that there is a problem in parts of society, particularly on social media, and we don’t want to be a country that is tolerant of people inciting hate,” protested McGrath.

At least two Fianna Fáil parliamentarians are urging the government not to pursue this course. Yet, such voices have doubtful abilities to rein in policy, and no major party on the Irish political scene is likely to tack significantly to the right. Aontú and the Irish Freedom Party offer some much-needed visibility on the Irish right, but both are in their fledgling stages, and their opponents are many.

Though the fruits of its labor have only recently become obvious to the outside world, Ireland’s globalist Left began accumulating power decades ago, when the country was outwardly still traditionalist and Catholic. 

“From the late 1960s…a derivative establishment—counter-revolutionary and increasingly anti-Catholic—worked to eradicate any vestige of stirring of autonomous Irish thinking, action or behaviour,” wrote Irish philosopher Desmond Fennell. “And the recommended [policy direction] was always some kind of conformity with the current New York-London mores, or further subjection to dictates from Brussels. It was like Bulgaria, say, during the years of Soviet domination – except that there wasn’t a Communist Party dictatorship to rationalise the herd-like behaviour and the trampling on the people’s humanity and autonomy.”

John O’Sullivan observed that “an Irish identity built on the Catholic Church had collapsed, and the nation—or, rather, its cultural elite—was looking for a new identity in which Catholicism was treated as something between an embarrassment and a threat.” 

This new identity has suffered its first notable setback. How will Irish society—now altered demographically, socially, and politically—respond?

At least 11 Irish government ministers, including the Taoiseach, are scheduled to travel to the United States for St. Patrick’s Day this weekend. They will wear green, hobnob with the diaspora, and celebrate an Ireland that exists mostly in memory. Perhaps, though, after the festivities subside and the Guinness wears off, they will find yet another version of the country upon their return.

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Among the Young ‘Postliberals’

Politics

Among the Young ‘Postliberals’

State of the Union: The desire for “regime change” was evident at the Catholic University of America.

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On March 7, Patrick Deneen gave a talk entitled “Our Postliberal Future” to a sizable crowd gathered at the Catholic University of America. The event was organized by the American Postliberal with the help of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College. 

Deneen, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and contributing editor of The American Conservative, has gained notoriety in political circles for his ideas challenging modern-day liberalism and the consequences it has wrought on society. He has written about “postliberalism” in his books, Why Liberalism Failed and, most recently, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future

Questioning liberalism and its typical tenets (liberty, equality, individuality) can cause quite the stir—Deneen opened up his talk by recalling how his lecture was supposed to be given at Washington College, but, due to his “cancellation” by the student body there, the presentation moved to CUA instead. (Officials, including the director of the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture, from Washington College wrote to The American Conservative to clarify that the event was never on the books, and so had not been cancelled by the school.)

Deneen spoke to how liberalism has instilled in modern people a destructive level of individuality, causing them to place more stock in material gain than in out-of-style institutions like marriage, religion, and communities. Deneen said, “So, if there’s going to be a regime change, or, rather, a regime reversal, we have to actively think about a governing philosophy that will seek to repair, especially on behalf of the people least well-off, the conditions of attachment.”

While Deneen’s discussion was indeed an enlightening crash course on postliberalism, what was arguably more interesting was how young the crowd gathered in CUA’s O’Connell Hall was. Students and young adults from all over D.C., not just CUA, came to hear what Deneen had to say about America’s postliberal future. It seemed that every person in the room had their hands raised to ask a question by the lecture’s end, and Deneen was mobbed like a pop star afterwards. 

But how popular is postliberalism really on the American right? Some conservatives are actively seeking to give the postliberal cause its own niche within the conservative movement in order to affect change. William Benson, a CUA student and editor-in-chief of the American Postliberal, told The American Conservative, “We started the American Postliberal to do just that. While we are still a young publication, we are in this fight for the long haul, and will continue to connect students across the country who will take these principles out of the classroom and into the halls of government.”

Another CUA student, Joey Shagoury, spoke directly about postliberalism’s appeal to younger Americans: “Youth in general are dissatisfied with the political consensus. Ideas that are non-traditional have quickly become fashionable, both on the left and right…. There is something of great interest going on with this movement and other new intellectual movements across the country.”

In their review of Regime Change last year, the Jacobin called “conservative postliberalism” “little more than reactionary nonsense dressed up in populist rhetoric.” But is postliberalism a movement exclusively for the “fringe” political right?

That did not seem to be the case at CUA, where “classical liberals” and even self-proclaimed “leftists” were in attendance. One audience member asked Deneen about the place anti-capitalism has within the postliberal framework; Deneen welcomed the question and decried the capitalistic greed of our current elites. 

The postliberals in attendance at Deneen’s talk remain optimistic about a postliberal American future and its slow shift into the mainstream. Benson said, “Postliberalism is the preeminent ‘philosophy’ among conservative youth because we recognize that the liberal order is coming to an end, whether anyone likes it or not.” He continued, “We need a public philosophy that is definitively conservative and presents a positive vision of the future, one built on the common good and human flourishing.”

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Do Large Families Hold the Key to Reversing Birth Rates?

Culture

Do Large Families Hold the Key to Reversing Birth Rates?

In her new book Hannah’s Children, economist Catherine Pakaluk says yes.

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We are no longer a nation that thinks much about posterity. Which is why the words of “Hannah,” the pseudonym for a Jewish mother of seven whose story animates Catherine Pakaluk’s new book Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth, are so striking: “Children are this key to infinity,” she says. The decision to have a child is not about personal fulfillment, nor is it a sacrifice that comes with a lot of pity points. It is a choice to participate in the eternal story of one’s family line.

This is not the modern American approach to childbearing. But with birth rates plummeting well below the 2.1 required to replace our native population, Pakaluk, an economics professor at the Catholic University of America and a mother of eight children herself, wants to know if we can learn something by looking at the women who do still choose to have children, and lots of them. 

The reasons for the “birth dearth” are extensive as they are well known, and Pakaluk is not shy to name them. A combination of the marketization of the household economy, in which women now compete with men in public for jobs and prestige rather than collaborating with them in private, as well as the birth control Pill and it’s attendant new normal of fertility “switched off,” make women who choose to have two or more children an anomaly. Pakaluk explains the birth dearth in economic terms as “a decrease in the demand for children, followed by an increase in the opportunity cost of having children.” Social Security and Medicare mean the benefits of children in later life are largely unnecessary; public funds will pay someone to do every job your son or grandson might have once done. Meanwhile, the status costs to women make having children much more expensive than previously. 

Most agree that the factors pulling women away from childbearing are strong. But there is much disagreement over how, and indeed whether, these incentives may be reversed. Pakaluk argues the answer may be found in studying the cohort at the opposite end of the spectrum: mothers of five or more children, particularly those who chose that large number, rather than arriving there by accident. Hannah’s Children is a synthesis of Pakaluk’s study of exactly that cohort. Interviewing 55 women from diverse regions of the United States, income levels, and career paths, she attempts to understand qualitatively the drive which leads some mothers to have large families despite numerous economic and social incentives otherwise. 

What she finds is exactly what you might expect. While they are unusual, Pakaluk’s women are not irrational. Each describes making her choice to have subsequent children by weighing costs and benefits, just like any other woman. What is different about these women is that their view of costs and benefits is far broader than the average American female of childbearing age. Where most women considering children weigh loss of prestige and salary against sleepless nights and spit up, the large-family mothers weigh the same losses against a child’s eternal value, the priceless joy of watching each new person develop, the opportunity for the mother to grow in spiritual maturity, and a sense that identity is found not in preserving the self, but in laying it down for others. The calculus for having children is entirely different for these women.

For most, this difference is due to religion, mostly Christianity, Judaism, and Mormonism. But Pakaluk is keen to note the difference between irrational choices and super-rational ones: To be motivated by religion is not to reject reason, but to account for purposes outside its scope.

These super-rational motivations make high fertility rates impossible to replicate through government subsidies, in Pakaluk’s estimation. As her own study shows, the grit and determination required to overcome the social and economic pressures against high fertility can only come from a determination which far outweighs budgeting spreadsheets, five-year plans, and even, Pakaluk acknowledges, the entire trajectory of female education as it currently exists in the United States. (“Can we incentivize moving away from careers and interests we’ve prepared women to fulfill from their earliest school days?”) Pakaluk describes motherhood of large families as a “path of profound self-denial lasting at least two decades,” and concludes, reasonably, “That such a costly choice could be induced directly though any external benefit seems fantastical.” You cannot turn a one-child mom into a seven-child mom through simple subsidies, as China is quickly discovering

The state cannot save the American family, she concludes, and instead should give religion a freer reign to try: “Without religious formation that fosters biblical values, low birth rate trends will not be reversed.” True. But why not both religion and subsidy?

It is here that the argument from women with five or more children becomes less useful. The women defying the birth dearth are women of extraordinary determination, almost all motivated by their deeply held religious beliefs. They are remarkable outliers, and no less so even to a reader like me, who has known several of the same in my personal life. This makes their stories captivating to behold, as Pakaluk masterfully weaves together narrative, analysis, and policy prescriptions from that analysis. But it also makes them something very different from the majority of mothers in the United States today. 

The best selling personal finance book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki attempted a similar feat to Pakaluk’s. Kiyosaki contrasted the lives and choices of the upper crust of earners, the “Rich Dad,” with those of the typical middle-class or lower income earner, or “Poor Dad.” Kiyosaki argues that to become a Rich Dad, men need to mimic certain Rich Dad behaviors. The idea is enticing—Kiyosaki’s book is a bestseller in numerous languages—but how many Americans have become wealthy by the same measures is another question. It seems probable that those who do are the same who would have succeeded regardless. The same question may be posed for the birth dearth: The women with whom Pakaluk’s book resonates are likely also predisposed to have large families. 

At the statistical level, it doesn’t much matter what the outliers do. As demographer Lyman Stone has pointed out, the number of these women having large families is so small that even were it to double, the total fertility rate of the United States would hardly budge. A much more effective needle to move would be from two children to three children. This is a sizable cohort: When doubled, it would put the United States total fertility just under replacement rates, a massive improvement from our current 1.64 total fertility rate. Notably, for several of Pakaluk’s interview subjects, the jump from two children to three children was the hardest; somewhere after three, the fixed opportunity costs for having children seemed to give way to smaller, more variable costs. This is because a variation on one’s former lifestyle may be maintained with two kids in a way it cannot with three or four; once the illusions of retaining status and editorial control have been stripped away, another child is no great change. It would stand to reason, then, that getting two child mothers to become three child mothers, a goal much more within the reach of a subsidy, would go much further for national birth rates. It might even spur some three-child parents into four-child parents in the process. 

Despite her pessimism toward pronatalist policy measures, however, Pakaluk herself hints at a different, insightful solution to low birth rates in her discussion of why children are no longer economically valuable. “Modern old-age programs that do not tie benefits to childbearing suppress the economic value of children to the household,” Pakaluk writes. Here is a solution within a problem, and Pakaluk sees it. Though she does not elaborate, one can imagine Social Security payments stair stepped according to family size, with married parents to large families at the top, as just one possibility. To use the arm of the state to reinforce the natural connection between children and security in old age, rather than severing natural family relations as our policy has for decades, would strike a blow not just to low birth rates, but to the politicized household and atomization, too.

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‘Activism’ Is Not an Educational Goal

Education

‘Activism’ Is Not an Educational Goal

The debacle in Long Beach schools shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what students are there to do.

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Recently, an organization known as Call For Justice (CFJ) has come under scrutiny for its work in Long Beach Unified School District. According to a recent report by Francesca Block, CFJ “has paid nearly 100 public high schoolers $1,400 each to learn how to fight for racial and social justice….  In addition to the student stipends, the contracts also allocated a total of $20,200 to 13 parents for participating in the group’s programs.” CFJ also runs “after-school programming in four of California’s largest school districts, including Fresno, Oakland, and San José.” All of this is paid for by Californian taxpayers. 

According to Block, students at these training sessions “are encouraged to school their own teachers on topics like implicit bias, ‘student voice,’ and antiblack racism.” In practice, they are supplied with scripts to read off at various public events. Besides railing against systemic injustices of their own country, CFJ students also stand in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, causing Jewish residents to complain about the group’s “antisemitic messaging.”

From any angle, the problems with CFJ are legion. It’s a predatory scheme that literally pays poor kids to be brainwashed and recruited as activists. Moreover it espouses an ideology devoted to sowing chaos and resentment in the community and repudiating the American way of life. 

However, ideology isn’t even the biggest problem with CFJ’s “educational programming.” If CFJ were instead paying kids to protest Hamas, Marxism, and DEI, it would still be a harmful organization that should be defunded and dissolved. The real issue with CFJ and any group like it is that it encourages young people to become activists in the first place and uses public money to do so.

Ever since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, activism has become wrongly associated with education, leadership, and civic duty. Obama always told young people to follow his example by disrupting the status quo, spreading awareness, and protesting. In many ways, his presidency was simply a continuation of his work as a community organizer in Chicago. It didn’t matter so much what he accomplished (which was little), but more what he was and what he believed.

Except, of course, in the end it does matter. Obama’s commitment to activism resulted in two mediocre terms in office that left the country more divided, less economically dynamic, and more beholden to plutocrats and demagogues. Similarly, most activists have little to show for their “action.” They produce nothing, change nothing, and often leave the world worse off than before. 

This is due to the obvious fact that activism is counterproductive and ultimately useless. If a person is concerned with poverty, bigotry, or some other problem in their community, they should remedy this problem through actual work that produces something of value. The business owner who provides employment opportunities along with goods and services does far more for his community than angry protesters who block traffic, deface statues, or “scream helplessly at the sky.”

Booker T. Washington made this very point to his fellow emancipated slaves over a century ago during the American Reconstruction. In his famous speech at the Atlanta Exposition, he specifically discouraged activism and encouraged industry instead: “Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the production of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life.” This philosophy made Washington one of the greatest benefactors to black Americans, both in what he produced and in the example he set. 

By contrast, his counterpart W.E.B. Dubois espoused the opposite view, organizing Marxist-inspired movements and pushing grievances at the forefront. While enormously influential, his arguments did little to help the black community. Rather, he inspired others (like BLM, Ibram X. Kendi, or Nikole Hannah-Jones) to use the same playbook, becoming personally rich off of activism while doing nothing to fix the social injustice they loudly decried.

Additionally, the life of an activist is a parasitic one, and the host on which it feeds is often the government. Over the past four years, CFJ collected nearly $2 million from Long Beach USD. That money could have been paid to teachers, better facilities, or educational programs to remediate students who were negatively impacted by California’s ridiculous Covid lockdowns. Better yet, the district could have joined other school districts in fixing their students’ screen addiction by purchasing Yondrs. Instead, the money is going to useless grifters who are teaching students to also become useless grifters. 

That said, there is a silver lining to this story. The fact that groups like CFJ are resorting to these tactics and depending on poor kids to mindlessly read scripts to politicians and administrators indicates how desperate they are. Nothing about their movement is persuasive or serious; it’s exploitative, wasteful, and stupid. If there were any true believers who really bought into this nonsense before, they should take a good look at the clueless teenager telling his friends, “You get paid good. You can have a fun time, events, all of that.”

More importantly, the abuses of CFJ should drive home the essential truth that activism has no place in schools. Contrary to the leftist conceit that inclusive education involves mouthing woke platitudes and engaging in anti-social, unproductive behavior, real education is just the opposite. It truly includes young people by making them competent, informed, and independent individuals in the world. Once again, Booker T. Washington, himself an educator, put it best: “No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of the privileges.”

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Does the Yemen Conflict Show the Future of the Marine Corps?

Foreign Affairs

Does the Yemen Conflict Show the Future of the Marine Corps?

The Marines are being transformed to look a lot more like the Houthis.

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(Shutterstock)

In the five months since the beginning of the Israeli-Gaza war, the Houthi group in Yemen has undertaken strikes against ships transiting the Red Sea; in response, the United States and allies have conducted retaliatory air strikes. While the episode marks the latest American use of force in the Middle East, the military exchanges will resonate in the Indo-Pacific. The Marine Corps has wholly reshaped itself for conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, but the outcome in the Red Sea will determine whether this was wise.

Last September, the Houthi movement marked the ninth anniversary of its seizure of power with a parade showcasing its military in the capital city of Sanaa. Like other non-state forces, the Houthis are an irregular force that relies on asymmetric methods—especially missiles and uncrewed aerial vehicles. The arsenal on the parade grounds that day, however, evinced an unexpected level of sophistication.

The procession featured a combination of known and newly unveiled cruise and ballistic systems capable of carrying warheads weighing between 100 and 500 kilograms for both ground and maritime strikes. The fleet of uncrewed combat aerial vehicles possessed explosive, fragmentation, and penetrating warheads.

According to a 2024 Defense Intelligence Agency report, the missile and uncrewed vehicles provide the Houthis with the ability to strike targets at ranges of 2,000 and 2,500 kilometers, respectively. At the time, observers feared Houthi military improvements would complicate regional diplomacy.

The next month, the Houthi leadership declared its solidarity with besieged Palestinians in Gaza and began targeting Israeli ships in the Red Sea. By December, Houthis expanded the target list to include all international commercial shipping bound for Israel.

On January 26, the Houthis launched its first attack on a U.S. Navy warship. On February 19, the Houthis shot down an American uncrewed aerial vehicle. On March 6, a Houthi missile strike on a commercial ship resulted in three fatalities, the first since the attacks began. According to the Red Sea Attacks Dashboard, the Houthis have undertaken approximately 50 attacks since October 19.

Initially, the United States responded by intercepting missiles and UAVs, and organizing a multi-national coalition to patrol the waterway. Then, on January 11, the United States led partners in undertaking its first retaliatory air strikes by bombing sixty targets at sixteen different locations. Since then, the United States has launched more than forty strikes against Houthi targets.

Nonetheless, retaliatory strikes have not deterred the Houthis. After a decade of a punishing war with Saudi Arabia and coalition partners, the Houthis are a battle-hardened and resilient fighting force.

Mentored and armed by Iran, the Houthis have developed indigenous arms manufacturing, robust logistics and smuggling networks, and deception tactics, including the use of decoy targets, false electronic emitters, and physical concealment. Similar to Hamas, the Houthis rely on underground hideouts to store weapons and survive air attacks. 

In general, the Houthis simply provide few targets for retaliation. The Houthis do not maintain large arms caches and their weapons are hidden in urban areas. The group launches its missiles and UAVs from trucks that fighters immediately drive away. 

Where the lethality and resilience of elusive irregular fighters on an austere landscape wreaking havoc on a globally critical waterway has aggravated the West, the United States Marine Corps has found inspiration.

In March 2020, the Marine Corps declared its future force would similarly be small, mobile, lethal, and undetectable light infantry teams on remote islands engaging hostile navies with anti-ship missiles and UAVs—for all intents and purposes, a Title 10 Houthi force.

The transformation initiativesForce Design 2030—is designed to return the service to its naval expeditionary origins, an imperative demanded by the proliferation of precision-strike and persistent sensor capabilities in general and the ascent of the PRC in particular.

To inform its transformation, the Corps has formulated the concept of a Stand-In Force to confront the enemy below the threshold of war and ensure friendly ingress to contested areas. In essence, a Stand-In Force will turn the anti-access/area denial strategy on its head.

To this end, the Corps has begun redesignating ground regiments as Littoral Regiments. The converted units comprise 1,800 to 2,000 Marines in three main elements: a combat team organized around a long-range anti-ship missile battery; an anti-air battalion with air defense, surveillance, and early warning; and a logistics battalion. 

The Corps has concurrently reduced the number of infantry and artillery units. Most controversially, the service has eliminated significant elements of its force structure and equipment, particularly its armored battalions and tanks and aviation squadrons and aircraft.

A robust intellectual debate has been underway in defense media since its announcement, but the current clash in the Red Sea introduces the following, more urgent questions: If the U.S. deters and severely diminishes the Houthis as a regional threat, would the outcome invalidate the Marine Corps’ transformation goals? Alternatively, if the Houthis persist and outlast American air strikes, would that outcome validate the service’s goals?

Fortunately, the answer to the former has already been provided by the Commander-in-Chief. When asked whether the airstrikes were working, President Biden bluntly responded, “Are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes.” 

The president’s rare honesty may have unmasked the futility of American foreign policy, but it did not certify the Marine Corps’ redesign. What works for the Houthis against the U.S. in the Red Sea will fail the Marines against the PRC in the western Pacific.

Most obviously Yemen is not an island and, as such, provides a rear area to which the Houthis can retreat; in the Pacific, the Marines will have no rear to which they can retreat. Even if one considers the 58,000 square miles of Yemen under Houthi control an “island” surrounded by equally sea and desert, the mountainous topography sustained the group amid the 24,000 air raids launched by Saudi Arabia between 2015 and 2022.

In contrast, the Solomon Islands, an archipelago whose alignment the U.S. deemed worthy of diplomatic competition vis-à-vis the PRC, is just over 11,000 square miles—across 1,000 islands. Stand-In Forces is an apt moniker since Pacific islands will only provide Marines room to stand in place and little room to maneuver.

Furthermore, the Red Sea may be critical to global trade, but it is only incidental to America’s national security. The U.S. can only dispatch so many forces before it risks becoming vulnerable to a second crisis. In contrast, the PRC deems the western Pacific integral to its national security and would likely employ a “Powell Doctrine with Chinese characteristics.”

The PRC has not waged war since 1979 and whatever circumstances have finally prompted it to use its military for the first time in decades will probably be deemed existential. So, if the PRC discovered Marines in a given atoll potentially impeding its movements, it will probably not hesitate to expend an overwhelming number of its advanced missile arsenal to ensure their elimination.

To its credit, the Marine Corps critically examined the precepts of the National Defense Strategy and the challenges posed by the proliferation of advanced technologies and rise of the PRC and conceived of a transformation in line with the tradition of adaptability and innovation that have been the service’s hallmark. Nevertheless, the engagement in the Red Sea will illuminate the way forward to a course correction for America’s indispensable crisis-response force.

The post Does the Yemen Conflict Show the Future of the Marine Corps? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Trump and Orban Are Both Weaker Than They Seem

Politics

Trump and Orban Are Both Weaker Than They Seem

The outsized influence each politician has had on his respective nation’s politics is not the same as political strength, let alone invulnerability.

President Donald Trump Welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban To The White House

Donald Trump and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who met at the former American president’s Mar-a-Lago headquarters last week, make for an odd pairing. Leave aside the obvious biographical and temperamental differences (a quick scan of Orban’s Wikipedia entry illuminates the profound gulf between the anti-communist rebel turned conservative populist and the former real estate mogul, tabloid celebrity, and reality TV star). Orban’s recent visit to Mar-a-Lago highlights the oddity of a former American president courting the leader of a small and relatively insignificant Eastern European country. The only precedent that comes to mind is American liberals’ abiding fascination with the Swedish welfare state. Yet no Swedish politician has attained anything like Orban’s level of celebrity on the American right. 

Left-wingers would surely respond that Orban and Trump are natural partners because of their shared authoritarian sympathies. This misreads both figures’ circumstances. Like Trump, Orban is weaker than he appears to his most excitable critics. 

Trump’s flaws are familiar to anyone who lived through his first administration. His poll numbers rise when he is out of the news and decline every time he re-emerges to say something outrageous or offensive. He never misses an opportunity to bring up old grievances, even when they remind voters of the worst features of his previous stint in office. His share of Republican primary voters compares unfavorably to every previous incumbent. 

Orban is a more practiced political operator. He is adept at fencing with journalists in both English and Hungarian. Trump is only called a dictator by his most unhinged opponents, but Orban is routinely described in the mainstream Western press as an “autocrat” or a “strongman,” terms meant to suggest equivalency with the likes of Vladimir Putin. Left-wingers call Hungary a one-party state.

The truth is more complicated. Orban’s government has just been rocked by a scandal that forced a political ally, the former Hungarian President Katalin Novák, to resign from office. Novák was pushed out over a pardon she issued to a man jailed for covering up child sex abuse at a state orphanage. The pardon scandal implicated several other high-ranking members of Fidesz, Hungary’s populist conservative ruling party, and has prompted widespread street protests.

The street protests neatly highlight Orban’s political strengths and weaknesses. The demonstrations took place in Budapest, an opposition stronghold that dominates Hungarian economic, political, and cultural life. They were mostly attended by younger Hungarians, often educated and upwardly mobile, who tend to dislike Orban and vote for the opposition. One reason international press coverage of Orban is unfavorable is because reporters spend a lot of time in Budapest, where the youthful, English-speaking voters they talk to dislike Fidesz’s conservative policies or have tired of Orban’s decade-plus tenure in office. An underrated challenge facing Orban and Fidesz is voter fatigue—many young Hungarians are simply tired of seeing the same faces in the news.  

On the other hand, the nature of these demonstrations reflect the weak and fragmented state of the Hungarian opposition. The protests attracted young people because they were organized by ostensibly apolitical social media personalities, and not a left-wing politician or party apparatus. One major rally was headlined by a famous Hungarian rapper. These demonstrations were partly inspired by an ambient sense of discontent with the direction of Hungarian society, but that hasn’t translated into a cohesive political coalition capable of unseating a sitting prime minister.

The protests also serve as a useful reminder that Hungary is not actually a police state. Orban is no civil libertarian, and he has a history of pushing the envelope to win elections and consolidate control over key academic, media, and cultural institutions. However, Fidesz opponents are still able to organize marches and contest elections. The mayoralty of Budapest, arguably the second most important office in a country dominated by its capital, is held by the opposition. 

Trump and Orban have something else in common beyond their political vulnerabilities. Both belong to the rare category of politicians who have changed the debate around key issues. Many politicians are more popular than Trump or Orban. Few have had a comparable impact on the political landscape.  

If Trump wins again in November, his second administration will probably face the same problems that hamstrung his first term: staffing issues, internal squabbling, a lack of policy focus, and Trump’s own well-documented foibles.  

Yet Trump has already reshaped the conversation on several key political issues. The pro-open borders wing of the Republican Party has been effectively vanquished. Both parties are increasingly hawkish on China policy. At least rhetorically, Trump has pushed the GOP to adapt its economic message to an increasingly downscale voting base 

Orban has accomplished something similar in Europe. In 2014, he was a lonely voice against mass immigration, a spokesman for cranks, hard-right provocateurs, and others on the political fringe. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s optimistic rallying cry of “Wir schaffen das!”—“We can do this!”—became the default response among policymakers and the EU intelligentsia to an unprecedented wave of migration from North Africa and the Middle East. 

A decade later, Orban’s arguments have carried the day. France’s President Emmanuel Macron, a reliable weathervane for centrist technocrats, recently shepherded restrictive new immigration measures into law. Alternative für Deutschland, now the second most popular party in Germany, has risen to prominence thanks in part to its hard line on immigration. The newly elected Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a hero to Europhiles and Atlanticists for defeating the Orban-friendly Law and Justice Party, has called mass migration a “civilizational threat.

Pro-immigrant sentiment persists in the corridors of European power, and restrictionists still have to contend with falling native birthrates, policy difficulties posed by border enforcement, and the fecklessness of their own political leaders. But the conversation around the issue has fundamentally changed since 2014. This is at least partly thanks to Orban, who became an international conservative celebrity because of his uncompromising position on immigration.   

Orban is not invincible. His dovish stance on Ukraine, while understandable for the leader of a small Eastern European country that depends on imported Russian fossil fuels, has made him even more of a pariah within NATO and the EU. The pedophile pardon scandal may not resonate outside of Budapest, but the wobbly state of the Hungarian economy surely does. Last fall, Eurostat reported that Hungary’s GDP per capita had been exceeded by Romania’s. The reaction in many quarters was what you might expect from Americans if the World Bank suddenly announced that our economy had been overtaken by Canada’s. 

As the next round of parliamentary elections looms in 2026, Orban faces economic headwinds and a vague but persistent sense among younger Hungarians that he has overstayed his welcome. This is an ironic predicament for a politician who made his reputation as a youthful anti-Soviet firebrand; Fidesz began as a party for people only under the age of 30. But when Orban eventually departs office, he will leave knowing that he helped shift European opinion on one of the most consequential issues of the 21st century. 

The post Trump and Orban Are Both Weaker Than They Seem appeared first on The American Conservative.

Vance’s Weapon in the Cold Civil War

Par : Jude Russo
Politics

Vance’s Weapon in the Cold Civil War

The Ukraine Aid Transparency Act will clarify who is on the side of an unelected technocracy and who is not.

Kyiv,,Ukraine,February,20,,2023,U.s.,President,Joe,Biden,And

The American Conservative reported earlier this week on a bill proposed by Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio that would compel the fullest accounting to date of American aid rendered to Ukraine, including via third-party nations. The proposal would address the ongoing problem of mystery spending on our proxy war with Russia: the president’s broad discretionary powers, which, when used as they have been, defy ordinary accounting and undercut the congressional power of the purse. Hence, the Vance legislation cuts to the core of the Ukraine dispute, which isn’t about the prudence of arming Kiev or the nature of American interests in Europe or the size of the American deficit (which is still a concern in some quarters). It has become a conflict over our form of government.

It’s difficult to tell at this late date, but the American constitutional order is built around a robust form of legislative supremacy. The composition of the Senate is the only unamendable section of the Constitution; the Senate is also, via the impeachment mechanism, the nation’s highest court. (“Supreme Court” is in some sense a bit of a misnomer.) We have no office of dictator, no constitutionally recognized states of exception; we have no notion of “the Crown in Parliament.” The powers of ordering peace and war ultimately and without reservation reside in Congress and are devolved at its sufferance. 

The Claremont Institute’s Chairman Tom Klingenstein has written and spoken about the American “cold civil war”—how our public life is no longer merely a deliberative back-and-forth over particular policies but a dispute over the actual form of government and, particularly, the grades of the franchise and its consequences. One group is, broadly, un- or anti-American, thinks that the structures of the American state are corrupt from inception or that the American people are too stupid, racist, or otherwise venal to be trusted with self-government, and consequently supports rule by enlightened technocrats, who by nature reside in the executive branch. The other group is, broadly, committed to the occasionally ugly hurly-burly of American representative democracy. 

U.S. involvement in the Ukraine conflict has become one of the defining flashpoints of this cold civil war. There are good-faith arguments—arguments I happen to agree with—for limiting aid to Ukraine. There are also good-faith arguments for continuing or expanding it, even if I find them unpersuasive. Yet, rather than relying on the strength of those arguments, the Ukraine hawks have made it about whether there should be a debate at all. The Ukrainian cause has been subsumed into the technocratic cause.

“Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina in February. Michael Brendan Dougherty, our brother in journalism at National Review, rightly points out that this sort of rhetoric is rooted in the premise that the voters are stupid. It is true that we are a republic, not a pure democracy; there is, floating around, the vague residual sense that our politicos ought to have the practical wisdom to be the pilots of the ship of state rather than mere errand boys. Yet the main part of the Ukraine party wants to short-circuit the entire deliberative process. They are insisting on less accountability from the executive and less power for themselves—see the resistance to establishing a special inspector general for Ukraine support. In short, they are passing the buck to the technocrats. 

This state of affairs is not the exception; the valorization of the executive at the cost of the legislature has become the norm. Rule by camarilla and administrative cabal is our lot. The Department of Homeland Security has single-handedly suspended the southern border, even as it continues to chew away at the rights of citizens. (This is why the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is important—it is a reassertion of congressional supremacy.) The Department of Justice looks more and more like a political police. The Pentagon, so far as anyone can tell, does whatever it wants.

Nevertheless, in certain respects, the picture is brighter than it has been for some time. Last May, Congress repealed the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force in Iraq. Legislators of both parties have expressed concern about the unauthorized use of military force in Yemen. There is a real appetite—particularly concentrated in the right flank of the House Republican party, but in some way shared by members of both parties in both chambers—to restore some muscle to the central organ of American national government. It is not efficient, and it is often not very pretty, but tooth-and-nail fights about budgets are the system working as designed; extensive debate about just how much we want to get involved in other countries’ wars is the system working as designed. These powers reside in Congress because it is “inefficient”; it is an organ that discourages rashness.

Vance’s bill not only gives the legislature and the American people a needed tool for deliberating our involvement in this war. In the opposition it draws, it will smoke out the members of the technocratic party—and, in a civil war, cold or not, it’s always helpful to know who is on which side.

The post Vance’s Weapon in the Cold Civil War appeared first on The American Conservative.

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