Some more interesting comments on Scruton

DANIEL HANNAN

I asked him what he saw as the role of a conservative thinker in the modern world.

His answer was an almost perfect encapsulation of his approach to politics. “The role of a conservative thinker,” he replied, in his charmingly hesitant manner, “is to reassure the people that their prejudices are true”.

That brilliant Burkeian adage animated the whole of my subsequent career in politics, up to and through the Brexit referendum. These days, of course, “prejudice” has come to mean something like “being nasty to minorities”. But Roger was using the word in its literal sense, to mean prejudging new events on the basis of past experience. He understood that life would be impossible if we approached each new situation from first principles, ignoring what Burke had called “the wisdom of our ancestors”.

Roger was a conservative in the truest sense. He put is faith in the natural, the evolved, the organic. He preferred the tried to the abstract. He understood that we are curators of a vast and growing work, far more complex than any single generation could create on its own. As he was to put it many years later:

“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means singlehandedly to obtain it. In respect of such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull.”

In truth, though, Scruton’s conservatism had no place for hatred. He was, as he would often say, motivated, not by indignation, but by love: love for our institutions, our laws, our nation.

Conservatism, as he saw it, was attitudinal rather than doctrinal. It resided in a series of instincts and manners, not in documents.

SOURCE 

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The Coming Fall of the Meritocracy

By economic historian, Martin Hutchinson

The last five years have been marked in most Western societies by a populist revolt against the values of a leftist university-educated elite. That elite had appeared invulnerable, and increasingly separated from the rest of us, as Charles Murray described in his 2012 study “Coming Apart.” There are thus two questions to be answered: how did the elite become so cut-off and misguided, and will its rule survive the populist revolt?

The problems of a society dominated, not by inherited status or money, but by an academically-selected intellectual elite were first explored in the British sociologist Michael Young’s 1958 classic “The Rise of the Meritocracy.” Young’s satire accurately forecast many features of today’s intellectual elite-dominated society. He foresaw that children from disadvantaged backgrounds would generally fail the academic tests in their schooldays, and therefore be barred from the meritocratic elite, which would become largely closed and hereditary, though remaining convinced it had achieved its position through superior merit and hard work, not by accident of birth. Murray’s “Coming Apart” confirms the inbred, self-satisfied and self-perpetuating nature of the elite, as Young had predicted.

Young’s book was intended as a biting attack on the society-closing tendencies which he already saw emerging in the Britain of 1958, which he believed quite contrary to the open egalitarianism for which he had fought when writing the election manifesto for Clement Attlee’s 1945-51 Labour government. In later life, Young, by then Lord Young of Dartington, expressed shock that Tony Blair’s Labour government of 1997-2007, which he supported, appeared to welcome the meritocratic society that had arisen, rather than condemning its socially closed and intellectually rigid nature.

Young’s satire took the form of an imaginary PhD thesis written in 2033; we have not yet reached that date, but the last five years are indicating that the reaction to Young’s Meritocracy has already begun. There are several intellectual tenets that the Meritocracy devoutly believes, but which tend to its perpetuation and the enrichment of its members, rather than to the good of society as a whole. These fallacies are increasingly being questioned by electorates, and their overthrow may well result in the demise of the Meritocracy itself.

One devoutly believed fallacy central to the Meritocracy is the importance of university education. This is an essential prop to the Meritocracy’s survival: if university education, and in particular elite university education, ceased to be overwhelmingly important, barriers to entry into the Meritocracy would collapse and their earnings, wealth and social position would be devastated. The Meritocracy’s belief in university education has resulted in a relentless increase in the percentage of young people who attempt four-year college degrees, a relentless increase in the costs of those college degrees (because their perceived importance is increasing, allowing their providers to gold-plate facilities and bloat staffing) and a relentless increase in the pressure on university students to conform to Meritocracy beliefs and values.

The rising cost of college and the increasing diversity of the workforce may be changing this, however. Recent data suggests that there is no longer any wealth premium for college graduation for people born in the 1980s, though earlier cohorts still enjoy such a premium. That is largely a result of the increasing cost of college; the 1980s cohort incurred hugely more college debt than earlier cohorts, and so its progress to financial stability has been correspondingly hampered. As college becomes a less economically rational decision, young people are looking more closely at alternatives, such as vocational training for jobs that often pay considerably better than standard college-graduate jobs, while employers are looking more closely at applicants who acquired their skills outside the college arena.

Technology affects this further. For a diligent, self-motivated student, it is now possible to obtain the knowledge that previously required a college degree through online courses, at far lower cost than a college degree, and without the obnoxious political indoctrination. Conversely, the political indoctrination and “dumbing down” of college courses has now gone so far that a college graduate in many humanities subjects is far less educated and far less ready to contribute usefully to the world than was his grandparent graduating from the same college. The revolt against college education is only just beginning; it has much further to go and there is an enormous shakeout of the college sector to come, devastating existing institutions and further devaluing their economically worthless degrees. The Meritocracy does not know it yet, but college education, the central bastion of its power, is due for serious erosion.

A second core Meritocracy belief is in the superiority of Meritocracy-oriented careers. This results in legislation being passed to ensure that such activities remain highly paid, and that the vulgarities of the free market do not apply to them. For example, whereas any foreign graduate in computer science (not generally a Meritocracy-favored profession) can get a programming job in the United States via an H1B visa, foreign lawyers are much more strictly regulated; they must graduate from a U.S. law school and pass a local bar examination, and there are no H1B visas held open for them. Hence the starting salary of a U.S. graduate lawyer is about three times that of the equivalent computer science graduate.

This belief has also manifested itself in the discussion of how Britain should go about negotiating a trade deal with the EU once the initial Brexit has been achieved – a task that must be completed in a mere 11 months. The “quality” media, dominated and consumed by Meritocrats, are unanimous that the key need is to obtain access to the EU market for British banks, while the “old-fashioned” industry of fishing can easily be sacrificed. Yet politically and economically, such an approach would be madness. The best British banks, the merchant banks, were slaughtered by the Financial Services Act of 1986, and none of the remaining “clearing” banks have shown themselves capable of making decent money in EU domestic markets, in over 30 years of trying. Furthermore, banking income merely makes the overstuffed salons of London even more overstuffed, and its property market even more unaffordable, neither of them significant benefits for Britons as a whole.

Conversely, fishing is a very important British activity, naturally so for an island surrounded by an immense quantity of shallow fish-friendly water. A sensible trade deal would therefore hold rock-solid against any encroachment of foreign fishing boats into British territorial waters, thus enabling the British fishing industry to manage this immensely valuable and sustainable resource in an optimal fashion. It is not insignificant that the most important British fishing centers are in Northern cities like Great Grimsby, captured by the Conservatives in 2019 with a magnificent “swing” of 14.7%. The inhabitants of Great Grimsby are natural Conservatives, but for Boris Johnson’s government they must be nurtured so their new-found Conservative voting becomes a habit. London bankers, on the other hand, Meritocrats and EU Remainers to a man, are often foreign and even if not, vote Liberal Democrat or Labour – the fine old crusted Tories of the merchant banks (Lord Bicester, where are you now that we need you!) having been forced into extinction.

A third area of devout Meritocrat belief is in the desirability of high levels of immigration and the joys of a “diverse” society. The Meritocracy gets all the benefits of immigration — it provides cheap baby-sitters, maids and landscapers – while suffering none of the costs, since most Meritocrat jobs are protected from foreign competition. Diversity is also a positive; Meritocrats get to interact with other well-educated Meritocrats from different cultures, and the restaurant choices available have expanded immeasurably since their childhood. For non-Meritocrats, on the other hand, immigration means more competition for low-wage jobs, higher costs for housing, less availability of schools and medical facilities and a more unpleasant, crime-ridden environment, since the homogenous trusting society of a well-defined local culture breaks down when outsiders enter.

Finally, while Meritocrats often believe in theory in a free market, they find its openness to non-Meritocrats highly unpleasant, and therefore seek ways to control it through regulation. An overriding anxiety such as global warming is ideal for this purpose; it allows the Meritocrats to design regulations for the entire economy and ensure that activity is steered into areas where Meritocrats, being expert in their new regulations, have an excellent chance of success. If a Gosplan central planning system worked at all, they would support it, but a heavily regulated economy with agreed “ESG” societal goals on climate change, corporate governance and social engineering is an excellent second-best for them.

The European Union, therefore, was and is a quintessential Meritocrat project; it adds complex Meritocrat-designed regulations, provides innumerable well-paid jobs requiring advanced degrees, involves mixing with numerous different cultures, and quells the free market in an uncountable number of ways.

Technological change is undermining the Meritocracy’s elite university educations. Democracy is undermining the Meritocracy’s belief in promoting Meritocrat economic activities and in flooding their countries with immigrants. The lack of noticeable global warming will eventually undermine their belief in regulation to prevent climate change (though they may well find another environmentalist shibboleth to replace it). The sheer economic dysfunction of the EU will eventually cause its miserable inhabitants to rebel, as many are already doing. For all these reasons, Meritocracy is therefore doomed.

We should rejoice; Young’s 2033 was a very unattractive dystopia, and the collapse of Meritocracy will lead to greater freedom for all of us, even those lucky enough to be good at passing examinations.

SOURCE 

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Good News: President Trump to Take on Birth Tourism and Anchor Baby Crisis in America

There are some 33,000 births in the US to foreign nationals each year. Another 39,000 babies are born to foreign students, guest workers and other long-term temporary visa holders. And, an additional 300,000 babies are born to illegal aliens each year in the United States.

According to Axios — President Trump is going to focus on this crisis in the coming weeks. And Democrats will no doubt fight him on this too:

The Trump administration has a new target on the immigration front — pregnant women visiting from other countries — with plans as early as this week to roll out a new rule cracking down on “birth tourism,” three administration officials told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump has threatened to end birthright citizenship and railed against immigrant “anchor babies.” The new rule would be one of the first tangible steps to test how much legal authority the administration has to prevent foreigners from taking advantage of the 14th Amendment’s protection of citizenship for anyone born in the U.S.

“This change is intended to address the national security and law enforcement risks associated with birth tourism, including criminal activity associated with the birth tourism industry,” a State Department official told Axios.
The regulation is also part of the administration’s broader efforts to intensify the vetting process for visas, according to another senior administration official.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Trump Signs China Trade Deal, Pausing Sticky Economic Conflict

Note: Trump did NOT start a trade war.  He simply started fighting back

Pact Is a Turning Point in U.S. Trade Policy

President Trump signed an initial trade deal with China on Wednesday, bringing the first chapter of a protracted and economically damaging fight with one of the world’s largest economies to a close.

The pact is intended to open Chinese markets to more American companies, increase farm and energy exports and provide greater protection for American technology and trade secrets. China has committed to buying an additional $200 billion worth of American goods and services by 2021 and is expected to ease some of the tariffs it has placed on American products.

But the agreement preserves the bulk of the tariffs that Mr. Trump has placed on $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, and it maintains the threat of additional punishment if Beijing does not live up to the terms of the deal. “Today we take a momentous step, one that has never been taken before with China toward a future of fair and reciprocal trade with China,” Mr. Trump said at a ceremony at the White House. “Together we are righting the wrongs of the past.”

The deal caps more than two years of tense negotiations and escalating threats that at times seemed destined to plunge the United States and China into a permanent economic war. Mr. Trump, who campaigned for president in 2016 on a promise to get tough on China, pushed his negotiators to rewrite trade terms that he said had destroyed American industry and jobs, and he imposed record tariffs on Chinese goods in a gamble to get Beijing to accede to his demands.

“As a candidate for president, I vowed strong action,” Mr. Trump said. “Unlike those who came before me, I kept my promise.” The agreement is a significant turning point in American trade policy and the types of free-trade agreements that the United States has typically supported. Rather than lowering tariffs to allow for the flow of goods and services to meet market demand, this deal leaves a record level of tariffs in place and forces China to buy $200 billion worth of specific products within two years.

To Mr. Trump and other supporters, the approach corrects for past trade deals that enabled corporate outsourcing and led to lost jobs and industries. To critics, it is the type of managed trade approach that the United States has long criticized, especially with regard to China and its control over its economy.

While other presidents have tried to change China’s economic approach, Mr. Trump has leaned into it. The agreement stipulates that “China shall ensure” that its purchases meet the $200 billion figure by 2021, all but guaranteeing an export boom as Mr. Trump heads into the 2020 election.

“Although the administration claims it wants to enhance market forces in China, the purchase commitments hailed by the president will only strengthen the role of the state in the economy,” said Daniel Price, a former George W. Bush administration official and the managing director of Rock Creek Global Advisors.

The president’s approach may pay off politically. He will head into a re-election campaign with a commitment from China to strengthen its intellectual-property protections, make large purchases of American products and pursue other economic changes that will benefit American business.

At a lavish White House ceremony crowded with cabinet members, lawmakers and executives from America’s biggest companies, Mr. Trump seized on the signing as a counterweight to impeachment proceedings that were taking place across town, where lawmakers were about to vote to approve House prosecutors for a Senate trial.

“They have a hoax going on over there — let’s take care of it,” he said.

But the agreement has plenty of critics in both parties, who say that Mr. Trump’s tactics have been economically damaging and that the deal leaves many important economic issues unresolved.

Those include cybersecurity and China’s tight controls over how companies handle data and cloud computing. China rejected demands that the text include promises to refrain from hacking American companies, insisting it was not a trade issue.

And the deal does little to resolve more pernicious structural issues surrounding China’s approach, particularly its pattern of subsidizing and supporting crucial industries that compete with American companies, like solar energy and steel. American businesses blame those economic practices for allowing cheap Chinese goods to flood the United States.

“A ceremony at the White House can’t hide the stark truth about the ‘Phase 1’ China trade deal: The deal does absolutely nothing to curtail China’s subsidies to its manufacturers,” Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, which includes manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union, said in a tweet. “All those ‘forgotten men and women’ in U.S. factories have, once again, been forgotten.” The administration has said it will address some of these changes in Phase 2 of the negotiations and is keeping tariffs in place in part to maintain leverage for the next round of talks. Mr. Trump said he would remove all tariffs if the two sides reach agreement on the next phase.

“I will agree to take those tariffs off if we’re able to do Phase 2,” he said.

But Mr. Trump has already kicked the deadline for another agreement past the November election, and there is deep skepticism that the two countries will reach another deal anytime soon.

As part of the deal, Mr. Trump agreed to reduce the rate on tariffs imposed in September and forgo additional import taxes in the future.

But the United States will continue to maintain tariffs covering 65 percent of American imports from China, according to tracking by Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. That leaves the United States with an overall tariff rate higher than that of any other advanced nation, as well as China, India and Turkey.

China will still tax 57 percent of imports from the United States in retaliation, according to Mr. Bown, though it’s possible some of those levies may be waived in the weeks to come.

The two sides did not immediately distribute copies of the agreement in Chinese, raising the question of whether translation issues had been fully resolved and whether the final text would be as demanding of the Beijing government in the Chinese version as in the English version.

“We also need to be sure that the wording of the agreement is the same in both the Chinese and English versions — history has shown that mismatches become easily exploited loopholes,” said Ker Gibbs, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

While updates about the trade war transfixed investors for much of the last two years, the official signing of the deal was greeted with something of a shrug. The S&P 500 rose roughly 0.2 percent.

A gauge of semiconductor companies, which have been particularly sensitive to the trade war, fell more than 1 percent.

The deal came under fire from top Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who criticized the agreement for failing to address China’s stateowned enterprises and industrial subsidies. He suggested that President Xi Jinping of China was privately laughing at the United States and that China has “taken President Trump to the cleaners.” “This Phase 1 deal is an extreme disappointment to me and to millions and millions of Americans who want to see us make China play fair,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor.

Wendy Cutler, a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute who negotiated trade pacts for the Obama administration, called the gains “meaningful, but modest.” “Because the United States was willing to compromise with China and not press them on the most difficult issues, they were able to reach positive ground,” she said.

The trade deal contains a variety of victories for American industry, including opening up markets for biotechnology, beef and poultry.

Banks, insurers, drug companies and the energy industry are also big beneficiaries.

China has also agreed not to force American companies to hand over their technology as a condition of doing business there, under penalty of further tariffs.

And it will refrain from directing its companies to obtain sensitive foreign technology through acquisitions.

The agreement also includes a pledge by both countries not to devalue their currencies to gain an advantage in export markets.

The president trumpeted many of China’s concessions during the signing ceremony, singling out audience members who will benefit.

He called out a litany of Wall Street executives, many of whom have been pressing for greater access to China’s financial services market, including Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group and Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel. He also mentioned the chiefs of Boeing, Citibank, Visa and the American International Group, and the chip makers Micron and Qualcomm.

Referring to the energy purchases in the agreement, Mr. Trump told Senator Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican, who was in attendance: “You got ethanol, so you can’t be complaining.” But those victories have come at a heavy price. The uncertainty created by Mr. Trump’s tariff threats and approach to trade has weighed on the economy, raising prices for businesses and consumers, delaying corporate investments and slowing growth around the globe. Businesses with exposure to China, like Deere & Company and Caterpillar, have laid off some workers and lowered revenue expectations, in part citing the trade war.

And other sources of tension remain in the United States-China relationship. The Trump administration has taken a tougher approach to scrutinizing Chinese investments and technology purchases for national security threats, including blacklisting Chinese companies like Huawei, the telecom firm.

“I think it’s maybe a useful pause in the downward spiral of U.S.-China relations,” Susan Shirk, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, said of the trade deal.

SOURCE 

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Bernie Supporters Plan to Boycott Election if Biden Is Nominee

What a great idea!

Bernie Sanders supporters are known for their steadfast loyalty to the socialist Vermont Senator, and some are promising to sit at home on Election Day if Joe Biden becomes the party’s nominee. These supporters warn that nominating another establishment candidate will ensure Trump’s reelection because they’ll sit it out.

Sanders’ supporters feel he “isn't getting his due though he's proven to have staying power in public opinion and fundraising, even after suffering a heart attack last October,” reports the Washington Examiner. “As of last week, he leads a tight four-horse race in Iowa ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses on Feb. 3, raising a record figure of $34.5 million in the final financial quarter of 2019 for a total of $96 million.” Despite his strengths in the primary, they feel he’s being ignored and underestimated, and the possibility of nominating a socialist-lite candidate, they say, will dampen the enthusiasm of the grassroots.

More HERE 

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Even without Jeremy Corbyn, The British Labour party are doomed – for this very simple reason

Crazy Leftists in Britain too

Soon enough, Jeremy Corbyn will be Labour leader no more. But this doesn’t automatically mean the party’s prospects will improve. Because, for all his many faults, Labour’s biggest problem isn’t Mr Corbyn.

It’s his supporters.

The supporters who put him there, and kept him there, and will choose his replacement. They’re the problem. In Tim Shipman’s book All Out War, published in 2016, there’s a quote from a despairing Labour MP who wisely requested to remain anonymous. “There are always going to be 500,000 people in this country who are off-the-page nuts,” the MP sighed. “The problem we’ve got is that they have all joined the Labour party to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.”

Thanks to that mass pro-Corbyn influx in the summer of 2015, Labour has a bigger membership than any other party in Europe. But that isn’t a strength. It’s a weakness. Because those pro-Corbyn members have so little in common with the wider electorate. Which means it’s become near-impossible for Labour to appeal to both. Try to win over the one, and immediately alienate the other.

So the party’s stuck. Stuck in the clutches of people who seem to spend more time attacking the last Labour government than attacking the current Conservative one. Increasingly it’s not even clear that they want Labour to form a government at all. Many of them instead obsess about forming “a mass movement”, whatever that means. If they actually wanted to achieve anything, there’s only one mass movement they’d care about. The mass movement of voters from Labour to the Tories, as seen on December 12.

Even though their idol is stepping down, the Corbynistas are unlikely to become any less fanatical. This week Momentum, the official Corbyn fan club, asked its members which leadership candidate they wished to endorse. Well, I say “asked”. The online ballot form featured only one name: that of Mr Corbyn’s close ally, Rebecca Long-Bailey.

Many of Mr Corbyn’s supporters probably don’t even think he should go. Before the election I covered a Labour rally in Northampton. A journalist from the Guardian asked Mr Corbyn, “If you lose the election, will you resign?”

The response from his supporters was immediate. “Why should he?” they blurted, in scandalised bewilderment. “Why should he?”

Obviously none of the leadership contenders can afford to say it, but Labour won’t get anywhere near office again until it rids itself of the Corbynistas. The quickest way to achieve this would be to make Jess Phillips leader. Most Corbynistas hate her so much that they would quit the party on the spot in disgust.

But, of course, she hasn’t a hope of becoming leader. Because the Corbynistas are still there to stop her.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Americans More Conservative as Democrats Turn Hard Left

The latest edition of Gallup’s annual survey of ideological and political leanings of the American people provides some interesting insights as we approach the 2020 elections.

According to the poll’s summary, “As Americans continued to lean more Democratic than Republican in their party preferences in 2019, the ideological balance of the country remained center-right, with 37% of Americans, on average, identifying as conservative during the year, 35% as moderate and 24% as liberal.”

This represents a 2% increase since 2018 of self-described conservatives and a 2% decrease in the number of self-described liberals. The number of moderates stayed the same.

That may seem a small fluctuation, but it’s a notable one. Nearly three-quarters of Americans identify as conservative or moderate, while less than one-quarter call themselves liberal at a time when half the Democrat Party identifies as liberal.

The Wall Street Journal notes that a major political trend of the past generation is the increasing number of Americans who identify as liberal (17% in 1992, rising to a peak of 26% in 2017, dropping to 24% in 2019). This led to predictions of an “emerging Democratic majority” made up of minority, young, and affluent white liberal voters. In fact, when Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Democrat strategist and Bill Clinton ally James Carville declared Democrats would rule for the next 40 years.

Two years later Republicans enjoyed a historic wave election, winning back the House, and taking control of the Senate four years later.

One increasingly important factor in the political landscape is that while there has been a small decrease in the number of Americans who identify as liberal, the Democrat Party has, with remarkable speed, transitioned from a liberal party to a hard-left party.

No longer content to be a party of a Big Government “safety net,” the modern Democrat Party now embraces full-blown socialism, in principle if not always in name. Its leading voices demand nationalized healthcare under Medicare for All, “free” college tuition and other giveaways, and then ever-more-burdensome taxes on the productive classes to pay for it. This includes repeal of the 2017 Republican tax cuts that ignited the economy and spurred on historic lows in unemployment.

No longer a party that subscribes to the principle that “I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it,” the Democrat Party today seeks to silence opposing viewpoints through public shaming, doxxing, mob demonstrations, and even violence.

Where just eight years ago the Democrat Party claimed to want “tolerance” when it came to things like same-sex marriage, today it demands people of faith to abandon their religious beliefs and principles and bow before the altar of political correctness. All who refuse to submit to the demands of the Rainbow Mafia find themselves publicly attacked and the subject of lawsuits that destroy the businesses they have spent decades building.

Today’s Democrat Party seeks the complete destruction of traditional values. Leftists deny biological reality, embracing the lunacy of transgenderism (Gender Identity Disorder). They ridiculously claim that sexual behavior (i.e., hetero-, homo-, and bisexuality, etc.) is genetically determined but sexual identity (male, female) is based on personal feelings.

The Democrat Party also seems to reflexively side with the worst of humanity. That runs the gamut from creating “sanctuary cities” for illegal-alien criminals to siding with the leadership of the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, and condemning President Donald Trump for killing Qasem Soleimani, the terrorist mastermind responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American military personnel overseas.

Despite three years of almost universally negative coverage by the media, endless accusations that Donald Trump is “literally Hitler” and a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the successful completion of a circus sideshow impeachment effort (that will be exposed in the Senate for the fraud that it is), Democrats are utterly distraught that major election models predict a Trump reelection in November.

Unemployment is at historic lows, we have a new stock market record high seemingly every week, and median income is up $4,000 in three years. We also now have a president who kills our enemies rather than sending them planeloads of cash in the middle of the night. And yet the leading Democrat candidates for president range from solid progressive to radical left wing.

Democrats have no one but themselves to blame when they lose. They completely misjudged the American people. They thought we would embrace their anti-American, anti-business, anti-religion, anti-biology, pro-criminal, pro-terrorist agenda.

They were wrong.

SOURCE 

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‘Never Trump’ Revisited

A pundit examines his predictions in retrospect

David Harsanyi

One of the most irritating things about being a professional pundit is having random strangers hold you accountable for every column, tweet, and post you’ve ever written. Needless to say, I’ve accumulated plenty of bad takes over the past 20 years. An industrious critic with lots of time on his hands could, no doubt, rifle through millions of my words and unearth a number of contradictions.

These days, a popular way that Trump critics try to embarrass former “Never Trumpers” such as I is to point out that we’ve failed to embrace an appropriately adversarial attitude toward the presidency of Donald Trump. There’s an expectation—often, a demand—that “movement conservatives” be all in or all out on the Donald Trump presidency. Why aren’t we “against Trump” anymore, they wonder?

With the 2020 election season approaching, I figured it was time to revisit the numerous critical pieces I penned about Trump during his first campaign and take inventory of my alleged moral failings. As it turns out, I’ve remained consistent in my basic political beliefs. I wish I could say the same of my critics.

At the time, I harbored three major trepidations about a Trump presidency: The first concerned Trump’s political malleability—perhaps a better way to put it would be that I feared he lacked political convictions. I was convinced that Trump wouldn’t govern like a conservative, either ideologically or temperamentally. I was skeptical that he would uphold his promises to appoint originalist judges, exit the Iran deal, cut regulations, defend religious liberty, and overturn his predecessor’s unconstitu tional executive decisions—and that he would do much of anything I regarded as useful.

I was convinced that the billionaire would govern like a latter-day FDR, which, let’s face it, might well be what many Republican voters were really looking for all along.

On this question, I was largely, although not completely, wrong. Trump, certainly a big spender, has failed conservatism in much the same way that Republican presidents typically fail conservatism, with a complete disregard for debt. Though in some surprising ways—his steadfast support of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh even in the face of massive media pressure, or his insistence on moving the American embassy to Jerusalem in the face of foreign-policy groupthink—Trump’s obstinacy seems to have made him less susceptible to the pressures that traditionally induce GOP presidents to capitulate.

Through much chaos and incompetence and numerous self-inflicted wounds, Trump’s policy record is turning out to be a mixed bag: more moderate than his opponents contend, less effectual than his supporters imagine, and definitely more traditionally conservative than I predicted. I’m happy to have been wrong.

Granted, for me, a less energetic Washington is a blessing. Contemporary American political life features a series of unbridgeable divisions. Gridlock on a national level is a reflection of our intractable political differences. Frustrating as it may be, the system is working as it should. The nation is too big, too diverse, and too divided for the kind of centralized and efficient federal governance that many seek.

Whether we like to admit it or not, many of the most significant political victories of modern conservatism have been achieved by simply getting in the way. Trump, certainly, has been an obnoxiously effective impediment to an increasingly radicalized Democratic party. In the meantime, he has also taken a cultural rearguard action by helping fill the courts with constitutionalists.

Trump antagonists will dismiss this as a “but Gorsuch” argument. But ensuring that the judicial branch serves its purpose as a bulwark against government overreach—rather than being an unaccountable enabler of it—is nothing to sneer at. It’s a strategy that conservatives have long supported, and I don’t see why Trump should lead them to abandon that position.

“Aha!” critics will also say, “you’re willing to overlook all of Trump’s behavior in exchange for long-term ideological victory.” Absolutely! There are limits to everything, of course, but if the choice, as many voters rightly see it, is between a group that wants a nationalized health-care system to pay for abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy and one that doesn’t, it’s not a difficult one to make.

My second concern about Trump revolved around fears that his administration would mainstream protectionist trade policy and anti-market populism, already a staple of the progressive Left.

This change, sadly, has happened.

Perhaps Trump’s rhetoric on trade is merely a reflection of the growing grievances of many voters. Either way, trade wars are still raging, and highprofile conservatives such as Marco Rubio and Tucker Carlson feel perfectly comfortable railing against the market economy. The debate over capitalism within the conservative movement has only just started.

My third big fear was that Trump’s boorish and impulsive behavior would undermine his presidency. On this, the president hasn’t failed me, acting with all the grace, civility, and humility I expected.

While civility is an imperative in a decent society, we can’t ignore that Trump’s coarseness has also helped reveal the liberal establishment’s incivility and disdain for anyone who refuses to adopt its cultural mores. I’m sorry, I have a hard time taking etiquette lessons from people who can’t raise any ire over the Virginia governor’s casual description of euthanizing infants but act as if every Trump tweet should trigger his removal from office through the 25th Amendment.

So while I don’t like Trump any better today than I did when writing those critical pieces, I do live in the world that exists, not the one I wish existed. And that world has changed. What I didn’t foresee when writing about Trump’s candidacy was the American Left’s extraordinary four-year descent into insanity.

My own political disposition during the past four years has hardened into something approaching universal contempt. When I defend the president—as far as I do—it is typically in reaction to some toxic hysteria or the attacks on constitutional order that Democrats now regularly make in their efforts to supposedly save the nation from Donald Trump—whether they’re calling for the end of the Electoral College or for packing the Supreme Court, or they’re embracing shifting “norms” that are wholly tethered to a single overriding principle: get Trump.

Recently, for example, New Yorker editor David Remnick, the kind of high-minded, sane person we’re expected to take seriously, argued that removing President Trump from office was not merely a political imperative but a necessity for the “future of the Earth.” Four years ago, we might have found such a panicstricken warning absurd. Today, such apocalyptic rhetoric is the norm in media and academia.

As the Democrats’ allies in the media stumble from one frenzy to the next, it has become increasingly difficult to believe any of it is really precipitated by genuine concern over Russian interference or improper calls with a Ukrainian president or dishonesty or rudeness. The president has become a convenient straw man for all the political anxieties on the left, which have manifested in an unhealthy obsession and antagonism toward the constitutional system that allowed Trump to win.

Many of us would prefer a more articulate and chaste classical liberal as our president. I don’t have any special fondness for Trump, either, but I also don’t hold any special antagonism for him. Political support is a transactional arrangement, not a religious oath, and Trump has done much to like. I support policies, not people. If Trump protects the constitutional order, he deserves to be praised for it. If not, he doesn’t. But the notion of some Trump critics that conservatives have a moral duty to uniformly oppose the president for the sake of principle or patriotism—or because they once opposed him during a GOP primary—is plainly silly.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Conservatism = patriotism?

The late great English political philosopher Roger Scruton seems to have thought that patriotism is in fact the origin of conservatism.  There are many passages in his writings where he might as well be talking about patriotism when he is trying to define conservatism. 

I think the close alliance between conservatism and patriotism is an important insight.  Leftists often seem to be unpatriotic and if Scruton is right they HAVE to be unpatriotic.  The relationship between conservatism and patriotism is organic.  They are not two branches of the same tree.  They are one single tree.

I won't try to do a scour through his writings in order to demonstrate that but I do give below some passages from an article in the WSJ that he wrote in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks


It is a tautology to say that a conservative is a person who wants to conserve things; the question is what things? To this I think we can give a simple one-word answer, namely: us. At the heart of every conservative endeavor is the effort to conserve a historically given community. In any conflict the conservative is the one who sides with "us" against "them"--not knowing, but trusting. He is the one who looks for the good in the institutions, customs and habits that he has inherited. He is the one who seeks to defend and perpetuate an instinctive sense of loyalty, and who is therefore suspicious of experiments and innovations that put loyalty at risk.

Sept. 11 raised the question: Who are we, that they should attack us, and what justifies our existence as a "we"? American conservatism is an answer to that question. "We the people," it says, constitute a nation, settled in a common territory under a common rule of law, bound by a single Constitution and a common language and culture. Our primary loyalty is to this nation, and to the secular and territorially based jurisdiction that makes it possible for our nation to endure. Our national loyalty is inclusive, and can be extended to newcomers, but only if they assume the duties and responsibilities, as well as the rights, of citizenship. And it is reinforced by customs and habits that have their origin in the Judeo-Christian inheritance, and which must be constantly refreshed from that source if they are to endure.

In the modern context, the American conservative is an opponent of "multiculturalism," and of the liberal attempt to sever the Constitution from the religious and cultural inheritance that first created it.

For the conservative temperament the future is the past. Hence, like the past, it is knowable and lovable. It follows that by studying the past of America--its traditions of enterprise, risk-taking, fortitude, piety and responsible citizenship--you can derive the best case for its future: a future in which the national loyalty will endure, holding things together, and providing all of us, liberals included, with our required sources of hope.

Sept. 11 was a wake-up call through which liberals have managed to go on dreaming. American conservatives ought to seize the opportunity to utter those difficult truths which have been censored out of recent debate: truths about national loyalty, about common culture and about the duties of citizenship. You never know, Middle America might actually recognize itself at last, when addressed in this way.

More HERE

Scruton was also spot-on here

"The Left is united by hatred, but we are united by love: love of our country, love of institutions, love of the law, love of family, and so on... what makes us conservatives is the desire to protect those things, and we're up against people who want to destroy them."

There are also some good quotes from here in which we see his conception of a close interrelationship between patriotism and conservatism

So do I agree with Scruton?  I think I do. I have long seen hate and anger as the wellspring of Leftism and that seems inimical to love of country.

My previous comments on Scruton are here and here

I must stress in closing that we are talking here about the wellsprings of conservatism rather than day to day political issues.  Patriots can and do have different opinions about current issues.  There are even some gullible conservatives who think anthropogenic global warming is a thing

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NAFTA no more as President Trump wins USMCA passage in Senate, keeps signature campaign promise to put America first on trade

A little more than a year after President Donald Trump promised to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if Congress did not adopt the USMCA — on Dec. 1, 2018, he said, “I’ll be terminating it within a relatively short period of time.  We get rid of NAFTA.  It’s been a disaster for the United States… And so Congress will have a choice of the USMCA or pre-NAFTA, which worked very well…” — on Jan. 16, the Senate has overwhelmingly adopted the USMCA 89 to 10.

Senate passage came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) finally relented and allowed the trade deal to come up on the House floor, followed shortly thereafter by easy House passage 385 to 41 on Dec. 19, 2019.

Pending Canadian ratification of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal, NAFTA is all but a memory.

None of this is surprising. President Trump won the Republican nomination and then ultimately the election in 2016 in the Rust Belt particularly on the political strength of his trade agenda, uniting conservative and union households and savaging Hillary Clinton as pro-NAFTA.

Now, Trump’s success in reshaping American politics around trade has now been confirmed by the massive bipartisan support for the USMCA.

Key bellwethers on the Democratic side came with pro-union Democrats including U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) all supporting passage. Both Democratic Michigan Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters voted for it. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) stands out as an exception as voting no, but then again, he’s running for President. But so is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and she supported it.

That tells you everything you need to know right there.

The blue-collar Democrat voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2016 and put him over the top ended up supporting the Trump trade agenda, making passage of the USMCA a political certainty even as Democrats in Congress were itching to impeach Trump and get the Senate trial underway. For those Democrats, there was greater political risk in going against Trump on trade than anything else.

To get the trade agreement done, Trump effectively threatened tariffs on Mexico plus withdrawal from NAFTA to bring all parties to the table, hammered out a deal and got it safely across the finish line — all in time for 2020.

And, as President Trump promised, the deal moves the ball in the America first direction.

Country of origin requirements are being increased to 75 percent, up from 62.5 percent, requiring automobiles will have at least three-quarters of their parts made in North America.

Mexico will recognize the right of collective bargaining and all parties agreed that “40-45 percent of auto content be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour,” according to the U.S. Trade Representative. In 2016, average pay in Mexico for manufacturing was $3.91 an hour. In 2017, the Associated Press ran a report entitled “In Mexico, $2 per hour workers make $40,000 SUVs.” This is a tremendous concession, and most certainly an improvement on NAFTA from a U.S. producer perspective.

On agriculture, Canada is allowing in greater access for U.S. dairy products.

On currency, the USMCA “address[es] unfair currency practices by requiring high-standard commitments to refrain from competitive devaluations and targeting exchange rates, while significantly increasing transparency and providing mechanisms for accountability,” according to the U.S. Trade Representative.

Since 2008, the Mexican peso has depreciated against the U.S. dollar by 50 percent, from $0.10 per $1 USD to $0.05 per $1 USD. The new provision will give aggrieved parties an opportunity to target currency devaluation as an unfair trade practices, something that could set a new gold standard for trade agreements. This mirrors provisions in the newly signed executive, phase one trade deal with China, as gaining these provisions in USMCA is what enabled U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to extract them from Beijing as well.

On intellectual property, cross-border copyrights, trademarks and patents will be enforceable to cut back on knock-offs, plus additional protections for pharmaceutical and agricultural producers.

On financial services, U.S. financial services will be allowed to compete with local financial services in Canada and Mexico, getting most-favored nation treatment.

On textiles, the agreement will “[p]romote greater use of Made-in-the-USA fibers, yarns, and fabrics by: [l]imiting rules that allow for some use of non-NAFTA inputs in textile and apparel trade… [and by] [r]equiring that sewing thread, pocketing fabric, narrow elastic bands, and coated fabric, when incorporated in most apparel and other finished products, be made in the region for those finished products to qualify for trade benefits,” according to the U.S. Trade Representative.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning welcomed news of USMCA’s passage, declaring, “President Donald Trump kept his promise and ended the giant sucking sound that was NAFTA. The overwhelming Senate passage of Trump’s signature trade deal is an affirmation that a President who is determined to put America’s interests first can rewrite the rules for international trade.”

And all the so-called experts, the same ones who predicted Trump couldn’t win in 2016, said that such agreements with Mexico, Canada, China, Japan and South Korea were impossible to negotiate because Trump was threatening to use tariffs, that instead we’d have trade wars and recessions or depressions.

Boy, was that wrong. Instead, Trump levied the tariffs, the trade in goods deficit with China was cut by 13 percent in 2019 and everyone came to the table. It’s the year of the trade deal.

Now all the agreements are in the bag, unemployment is at a 50-year low and U.S. labor participation among working age adults is on the rise. The economy is humming, and USMCA will only help it grow even more as it boosts U.S. exports.

Meaning, President Trump was right all along on trade. His art of the deal to use U.S. leverage in the trade negotiations paid off big time and now the victories are mounting with USMCA and the China deal — all in time for 2020. Watch for trade to continue to dominate the landscape this election year as it reshapes American politics yet again and tells us whether 2016 and President Trump was a fluke — or the future.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

HARDLY IMPARTIAL: Nearly all of Pelosi's impeachment managers supported impeachment before whistleblower complaint was filed (The Daily Caller)

BUREAUCRATIC BATTLE: Federal watchdog finds OMB violated law by withholding Ukraine aid — conveniently timed for the beginning of the Senate impeachment trial today. (Axios)

JUDICIAL OBSTRUCTION: Judge blocks Trump order that lets states, cities reject refugees (United Press International)

AND YET LIFE CONTINUES: The last decade was the warmest on record, NASA and NOAA find (NBC News)

"CREDIBLE THREATS," OR CONSTITUTIONAL END-RUN? Northam declares state of emergency, Capitol weapon ban ahead of gun-rights rally (Associated Press)

STRENGTHENING HIS IRON FIST: All senior Russian officials resign as Putin announces reforms that would weaken his successor (National Review)

POLICY: Today is Religious Freedom Day: Why America must recommit to religious freedom (The Daily Signal)

POLICY: Counter Iran with an independent Kurdistan (Washington Examiner)

TRUMP DEFENSE: Trump impeachment defense team will include Clinton prosecutor Ken Starr and Democrat constitutional law professor Alan Dershowitz (CNBC)

AND YET THE TIMES SUGGESTS THE TIMING IS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED: Justice Department investigating years-old leaks and appears focused on James Comey (The New York Times)

FOR THE RECORD: No evidence ties Trump to troubling surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch (Washington Examiner)

MARITAL FRAUD: Investigators with ICE, FBI reviewing criminal allegations against Ilhan Omar (The Daily Wire)

NOT COMPLETELY UNSCATHED: Eleven U.S. troops were injured in January 8 Iran missile strike (Defense One)

RECIPROCATION: Army may send missile-defense systems to Middle East to counter future Iran strikes (Military.com)

AN ASSAULT ON COMMON SENSE: Thirteen states, DC, and New York City sue Trump administration over food-stamp work requirements (National Review)

RAINBOW MAFIA: Media label Tennessee religious liberty bill as "anti-gay" (Washington Examiner)

POLICY: Why it's not simple to just raise the corporate income tax (American Enterprise Institute)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here

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Donald Trump signs 'phase one' of trade deal with China which ends escalation of his trade war

Donald Trump took a victory lap on Wednesday as he signed a trade deal with China at the White House as his impeachment sped towards the Senate on Capitol Hill.

He boasted to an audience of dignitaries that a new trade deal with China will bring 'a future of fair and reciprocal trade,' then complained about the 'impeachment hoax,' and praised a string of Republican senators who he needs to vote for his acquittal.

The president has long complained about a massive trade deficit between Washington and Beijing. He pledged during the 2016 campaign to come down hard on China.

'We are righting the wrongs of the past,' he said Wednesday, observing that 'our negotiations were tough, honest, open and respectful.'

'This is the biggest deal anyone's ever seen,' he said, because 'China has 1.5 billion people.'

The president spent nearly a half-hour acknowledging business leaders and lawmakers who crowded into the East Room to watch. And he noted that some House members might have to leave early in order to vote on a motion to send articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate.

Some of the congressmen may have a vote—it's on the impeachment hoax—so if you want, you go out and vote. ... It's not going to matter because it's gone very well. But I'd rather have you voting than sitting here listening to me introduce you, okay?' he said with a grin. 'They have a hoax going on over there. Let's take care of it.' 

Trump was not accompanied by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who sent Vice Premier Liu He in his place. Xi's absence left some with the impression that Washington wants the deal more than Beijing does.

The president announced that he will 'be going back to China in the not-too-distant future to reciprocate,' but it's unclear what he would be reciprocating for.

Vice President Mike Pence said the deal would guarantee $40-50 billion in Chinese purchases of American agriculture products.

And Trump said China will stop forcing American companies to share proprietary technologies with Chinese partners. 'You don't have to give up anything anymore. Just be strong,' he said to business leaders in the room.

The White House's guests included top executives from UPS, Boeing, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Mastercard, VISA, Citibank, Honeywell, Dow Chemical, eBay and Ford Motor Company; casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who aims to see markets opened to him in China; television commentator Lou Dobbs; and Trump's ambassador in Beijing, Terry Branstad.

Branstad, a longtime Iowa governor before coming to Washington, got the job because of his deep ties to global agriculture.

While Wall Street will carefully examine the fine print, the trade deal will allow businesses around the globe to breathe a sigh of relief.

After a nearly two-year battle, the signing could give Trump an election-year boost as well. Still, tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in imports remain in place, leaving many Americans to foot the bill.

Reporters covering the East Room event on Wednesday wore White House credentials with no date printed on them. That unusual feature suggests Trump's trade negotiators weren't certain whether the event would happen as scheduled.

The 'phase one' agreement—which includes pledges from China to beef up purchases of American crops and other exports—also comes just as Trump faces an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, giving him a victory to trumpet at least in the short term.

The easing of US-China trade frictions has boosted stock markets worldwide in recent weeks, as it takes the threat of new tariffs off the table for now.

And Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Trump's negotiating stance led to a 'fully enforceable deal' which could bring additional tariffs.

If China fails to abide by the agreement, 'the president has the ability to put on additional tariffs,' Mnuchin said on CNBC Wednesday as part of a media blitz promoting the new pact.

However, the most difficult issues remain to be dealt with in 'phase two' negotiations, including massive subsidies for state industry and forced technology transfer.

But Mnuchin said the deal puts pressure on Beijing to stay at the negotiating table and make further commitments, including on cyber-security and other services to win relief from the tariffs that remain in place.

'In phase two there will be additional roll backs,' Mnuchin said. 'This gives China a big incentive to get back to the table and agree to the additional issues that are still unresolved.'

Still, elements of the deal the administration has touted as achievements effectively take the relationship between the two powers back to where it was before Trump took office.

'The US-China phase-one deal is essentially a trade truce, with large state-directed purchases attached,' economist Mary Lovely said in an analysis. Even so, 'The truce is good news for the U.S. and the world economy.'

Still, the trade expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics, cautioned that 'we will continue to see the impact of this in slower investment and higher business costs.'

After announcing the deal December 13, the U.S. canceled a damaging round of new tariffs that were due to kick in two days later and promised to slash in half the 15 percent tariffs on $120 billion imposed September 1 on consumer goods like clothing.

Mnuchin dismissed a Bloomberg report that the initial agreement could include provisions to roll back more tariffs on China after the election.

'The tariffs will stay in place until there is a phase two. If the president gets phase two quickly, he will consider releasing tariffs. If not, there won't be any tariff relief,' Mnuchin said Tuesday on Bloomberg TV. 'It has nothing to do with the election or anything else.'

Washington said Beijing agreed to import, over two years, $200 billion of U.S. products above the levels in 2017, before Trump launched his offensive.

Trump has repeatedly touted the trade pact as a boon for American farmers, saying China will buy $40 to $50 billion in agricultural goods.

U.S. farmers were hit hard by the tariff war—notably on soybeans which saw exports to China plunge to just $3 billion from more than $12 billion in 2017. The Trump administration paid out $28 billion in aid to farmers in the last two years.

But many economists question whether they have the capacity to meet that demand.

And Lovely raised a question about the wisdom on relying so heavily on the Chinese market.

'It also means Chinese retaliation could be reinstated, dampening farmers' willingness to invest to meet the very hard export targets in the deal.'

U.S. and Chinese officials say the agreement includes protections for intellectual property and addresses financial services and foreign exchange while including a provision for dispute resolution, which Mnuchin said will be binding for the first time.

SOURCE 

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Sally Pipes: Bernie's 'Medicare-for-all' misinformation — learn these facts before this week's debate

"The plan is nuts, it's absolutely mind-boggling," says Charles Payne discussing Bernie's proposal to raise taxes on anyone earning $29,000 plus a year

Sen. Bernie Sanders has launched a new misinformation campaign on "Medicare-for-all" in advance of this week's Democratic presidential debate.

Last week, advisers to his campaign released a study trumpeting the supposed savings "Medicare-for-all" would bring. Days prior, Sanders refused to say how much his "Medicare-for-all" plan would cost. "I don't give a number and I'll tell you why," he told the Washington Post. "It's such a huge number and it's so complicated that if I gave a number you and 50 other people would go through it and say, 'Oh . . ."

That number is huge all right — as much as $40 trillion over its first decade, as Sanders himself has admitted. The human costs would be even higher, in the form of lengthy waits for critical care.

Paying for "Medicare-for-all" would require a host of new taxes. Before he "forgot" how much it would cost, Sanders proposed funding his plan with everything from a new 4 percent tax on every American household to a new 7.5 percent payroll tax. He claims Americans would pay less for health care, even with these new taxes.

That's unlikely. An analysis from Emory University professor Kenneth E. Thorpe found that 70 percent of working, privately insured households would pay more for health insurance under "Medicare-for-all" than they currently do.

To get a sense of the crippling tax burden "Medicare-for-all" would impose on Americans, look to other countries with health care systems where the government is the dominant or sole provider of health coverage. In 2019, the average Canadian family of four paid over $13,000 in taxes just for their health care, according to research from the Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based think tank.

That health care tax bill has risen more than 65 percent since 1997. For childless couples, the cost of publicly funded health coverage has risen nearly 75 percent in the same period.

"Medicare-for-all" would require an even bigger tax burden than does Canada's system. Sanders envisions taxpayer-funded coverage of prescription drugs, long-term care, dental and vision care — none of which is covered by our northern neighbor's single-payer system.

Some 4.5 million people in the United Kingdom were waiting for specialist treatment as of March 2019 — an increase of 40 percent over the last five years.

The average household in the United Kingdom pays over 5,000 pounds a year to fund the National Health System — a 75 percent increase from two decades ago. A pair of British think tanks estimate that every British household will have to shell out an additional 2,000 pounds per year to keep the NHS running as the country ages.

Despite the massive tax increases it would require, advocates say "Medicare-for-all" would lower overall health care costs. A recent study co-authored by advisers to Sanders' campaign argues that single-payer systems save money by eliminating the administrative costs associated with private insurers. The authors claim the United States would have saved over $600 billion in 2017 alone if it had cut administrative spending to Canadian levels.

But the study doesn't consider the administrative costs associated with collecting taxes. Under "Medicare-for-all," those costs would almost certainly increase for government, employers and individual citizens alike.

The study also glosses over the fact that most of the administrative savings generated by "Medicare-for-all" would come from putting hundreds of thousands of people currently employed in the health sector out of work.

And then there's the disruption "Medicare-for-all" would foist upon patients. Government-dominated systems the world over do not provide unfettered access to free, high-quality health care. They respond to the impossible task of treating an unlimited number of patients with limited resources by rationing care. That results in long wait times.

Some 4.5 million people in the United Kingdom were waiting for specialist treatment as of March 2019 — an increase of 40 percent over the last five years. More than 11 million Britons waited more than three weeks for an appointment with a general practitioner, according to the most recent government data. Nearly 3 percent of the Canadian population was on a wait list for treatment last year.

These wait times add to the cost of "free" health care. Absence and reduced productivity of sick workers cost the United Kingdom around 23 billion pounds each year.

The truth about "Medicare-for-all" is ugly. Americans watching the debate this week must not fall prey to the falsehoods on health care that will no doubt be flowing from the candidates' mouths.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

WITH LAWMAKERS LIKE THESE, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES? Democrats block a vote to support Iran protesters (The Daily Caller)

THE ART OF THE DEAL: Britain, France, Germany suddenly harden toward Iran after killing of Soleimani (The Daily Wire)

SO ABOUT THOSE BERNIE GULAGS... Federal judge upholds Trump family-separation policy (Hot Air)

OBSTRUCTION: House Democrats launch investigation into Trump's "Remain in Mexico" program (The Daily Caller)

IRONY: The 2020 Census has no citizenship question — but offers assistance in 58 foreign languages (Bongino.com)

NEW BUDGET BUSTER: Warren promises to cancel student-loan debt using executive powers (Politico)

POLICY: Why the European Union just admitted the Iran deal is dead (Washington Examiner)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Trump to Transfer $7.2 Billion for Border Wall

President Donald Trump will transfer another $7.2 billion from Pentagon accounts in 2020 to build the promised border wall, according to the Washington Post.

The paper reported January 13 that the president would use his national emergency powers to: divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budget, according to internal planning figures obtained by The Washington Post.

The Pentagon funds would be extracted, for the second year in a row, from military construction projects and counternarcotics funding. According to the plans, the funding would give the government enough money to complete [a total of] approximately 885 miles of new fencing by spring 2022, far more than the 509 miles the administration has slated for the U.S. border with Mexico.

The pending transfer, if not blocked by Congress or the courts, would bump up his border wall spending to $18.4 billion.

So far, Trump’s deputies have built a little over 100 miles of upgraded “wall system” and are in the process of planning and building another 350 miles.

Chad Wolf, the acting chief of the Department of Homeland Security, admitted last week that the agency will not meet the president’s target of 450 miles by election day. “I can tell you right now that we remain confident that we are on track to [reach] 400, 450 miles that are either completed or under construction by the end of 2020,” Wolf told attendees at a January 10 press conference in Yuma, Arizona.

Pro-migration groups, including advocates for cheap labor, are funding lawsuits to block Trump’s border policies. But a federal appeals court released $3.6 billion in border wall funding on January 8 that had been blocked by a lawsuit. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted the curbs while the Department of Justice prepares to appeal a lower judge’s decision to block the spending because of the lawsuit.

Officials say the border wall helps agents reduce illegal migration and shrink the transfer of drugs into Americans’ communities and young people.

The drug problem is especially bad in the towns that were damaged by the federal government’s support for free trade and the cheap labor stimulus for Wall Street. Breitbart News reported December 30:

The study by acclaimed researchers, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, notes that American communities that experienced an auto plant closure within the last five years saw a much greater rate of opioid deaths than communities whose auto plants have remained open — confirming that towns and small cities that have been hit by job-killing free trade have suffered more in the opioid crisis.

The researchers note:

“US manufacturing counties that experienced an automotive assembly plant closure were compared with counties in which automotive plants remained open from 1999 to 2016. Automotive assembly plant closures were associated with a statistically significant increase in county-level opioid overdose mortality rates among adults aged 18 to 65 years.”

Trump has also used diplomacy to build a series of legal agreements with Mexico and Central American countries that may allow border officials to return nearly all migrants to Central America, without allowing them to file for asylum, even if they traveled from Africa or India. The legal agreements will help bump up wages for blue-collar Americans — but will do little to raise white-collar salaries.

SOURCE 

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Crenshaw Answers Warren's 'Disingenuous' Question About Soleimani

At a campaign rally last week in Dover, New Hampshire, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) told her audience that she couldn't think of a good reason why President Trump ordered the recent deadly airstrike on Iranian terror leader Qasem Soleimani.

"Why not a month ago?" she asked. "Why not a month from now?" She ventured a guess and concluded that it was pure politics.

"One of the questions I raised just right after this came out, does this have anything to do with the fact that Donald Trump is right on the eve of an impeachment hearing?" she asked.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) had a better answer: "Okay Elizabeth Warren, I've got an answer for you," Crenshaw said on Fox News. "The reason why now is that Soleimani just orchestrated an attack on our embassy, killed an American citizen, and we had very good intel from the CIA, from the DNI, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. They said it was the best intel they've ever seen. That there was an imminent attack coming within days." "So Elizabeth Warren, that is why," he added for emphasis.

We know Warren didn't miss the news about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Iran-backed militia members and supporters tried to force their way in to the compound last month, and it wasn't until President Trump sent in reinforcements that the mob retreated.

But Warren isn't the only Democrat pointing fingers at the president for Iran's aggression. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) claimed that the president's "saber-rattling" is to blame for the downing of a Ukrainian airliner that had just taken off from Tehran last week. All 176 people onboard perished. Iran admitted it had shot down the Ukrainian plane, albeit "unintentionally."

“If what is being projected is true, this is yet another example of collateral damage from the actions that have been taken in a provocative way by the president of the United States," Speier charged. "That's such a disgusting and deplorable accusation," Crenshaw said on Fox.

Soleimani is responsible not only for helping to plot the attack on the U.S. embassy, but other strikes on coalition bases in Iraq, some of which have killed U.S. contractors.

Still, Sen. Warren has had a heck of a time even calling Soleimani a terrorist. She got halfway there on "The View," but felt the need to some more context to her answer and left us even more confused.

At Warren's recent campaign rally in Dover, an angry attendee accused her of "siding with terrorists."

SOURCE 

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The liberal media likes to focus on how many House Republicans are retiring. Somehow this is supposed to make Republicans feel defeated and hopeless

In this context, I was startled recently to hear Congresswoman Elise Stefanik say 2020 was going to be the year of the House Republican woman. She went on to assert that there was a historic record being set for Republican women filing to run for the House.

I checked in with Chairman Tom Emmer at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and found that, if anything, Stefanik had understated the momentum of new recruits.

With House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and the leadership team going all out, the House Republicans are setting a remarkably encouraging series of records.

Consider these numbers: The total number of Republicans filed for House seats so far is 928, according to Federal Elections Commission (FEC) figures – or 188 more than the total at the same time in 2010 (740). The year 2010 matters because it was the last time Nancy Pelosi was kicked out of the majority and Speaker John Boehner led the House GOP to its biggest gain in modern times – with his “where are the jobs” slogan. In fact, in 2010 the House GOP gained 63 seats for a majority of 242 Republicans.

The House Republican recruiting surge is also tremendously widespread. So far, I am told that Republican candidates are running in 380 congressional districts (compared with 341 districts at this point in 2010).

Importantly, women and minority candidates have surged. This is an area which has historically been a Republican weakness. In Texas alone, there are at least 30 Republican women candidates. So far, 186 women are seeking to become House Republicans in total. The previous record was 133 women running for the House as Republicans. And filing is still open in a number of states, so the number will almost certainly increase.

I am told by the NRCC there are also 146 Republican candidates from minority communities. Furthermore, 188 veterans are running for the House as Republicans.

Fundraising

I will write more details about women and minority candidates in future columns. However, I think it is important to note a profound change underway in financing Republican campaigns.

The Democrats had an enormous advantage in the 2018 election because they had built an online donation system called ActBlue. ActBlue had been founded in 2004 to enable small-dollar donors to easily and efficiently help Democratic candidates all over the country.

When the online system was powered by the intensity of anti-Trump emotions, there was a flood of targetable money for Democratic candidates. Activists from all over the country could conveniently go online, identify the campaigns they wanted to help, and quickly send the money.

In the 2018 cycle, this system raised $1.8 billion over the two-year period. When this scale of small-donor involvement was combined with massive donors like Michael Bloomberg (who spent $5 million on ads in the last two weeks in some elections) the Democrats’ money advantage was enormous. This helps explain the Republican House defeats.

The threat posed by the ActBlue system was reinforced in 2019 when it raised more than $1 billion for the Democrats.

Republican leaders realized they had to match or exceed the small-dollar system the Democrats had invented. They developed a competitive model called WinRed.

The intensity of support for President Trump – combined with growing anger over the Democrats’ investigation and impeachment strategy – has made WinRed a success much faster than anyone expected.

In its first two quarters, WinRed raised $101 million. Its effectiveness is growing rapidly.  It raised $31 million in its first quarter of existence and more than doubled that in the second quarter with $70 million (fourth quarter of 2019). In fact, WinRed raised more in its first 190 days than ActBlue raised in its first five years.

The impact of the Democrats’ overreach on impeachment has been amazing. WinRed pages that mentioned “impeach” or “impeachment” raised 300 percent more than any other page.

In fact, the growing impact of WinRed can be seen in Stefanik’s experience. After her remarkable defense of President Trump on the House Intelligence Committee, she mentioned people could donate at WinRed on Fox News. In two hours, $500,000 was donated from across the country.

The combination of great recruiting, the development of WinRed as a system for engaging grassroots Republicans in races across the country, the intensity of Trump’s support, and the self-destruction of the Democrats are combining to create a new, dynamic, aggressive House Republican Party.

If retirements are the story of the past, then recruitment is the story of the future. This is the story on which Leader McCarthy and his team are focused.

I suspect it’s the story that will make him Speaker McCarthy in January 2021.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

AT LONG LAST: House prepares to vote Wednesday to transmit Trump impeachment articles to the Senate, where it will be disposed of (CNBC)

BROKERING: U.S. drops designation of China as currency manipulator ahead of trade agreement (National Review)

THE TRUTH ABOUT POVERTY: Child poverty in the U.S. is at an all-time low, and saying otherwise does not help American families (Institute for Family Studies)

DRAMATIC IMPROVEMENT: Stocks are up 495% in the past decade — here's why you probably aren't (MarketWatch)

TERRORISM IN THE HOMELAND: NAS Pensacola shooting was an "act of terrorism," Attorney General William Barr says; U.S. to expel 21 Saudi nationals in training program (Fox News)

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: According to Fox News, "Barr says DOJ was consulted before Soleimani strike as Trump goes on defensive." The Leftmedia spin regarding Trump's comments is a distinction without a difference, and it's meant to make it look like this was a conspiracy to kill some innocent Iranian without justification.

PREEMPTION: Here's a setup story from The New York Times to undermine anything about the Bidens and Burisma so that if something emerges on Joe, it can be written off as "Russian meddling": "Russians Hacked Ukrainian Gas Company at Center of Impeachment."

DEZINFORMATSIYA: TV's Trump news: three-fourths impeachment and 93% negative (NewsBusters)

FOR THE RECORD: Hillary Clinton vindicated on corruption charges? Hardly. (Issues & Insights)

POLICY: Obama's midnight regulations, lawsuits still hamper the U.S. economy (Issues & Insights)

POLICY: The why and how of market-driven medical care (RealClearPolicy)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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Democrats Always Choose America’s Enemies Over America

Here’s an idea that our Democrat politician friends might want to try if they want to stop being back-stabbing garbage people. It’s kind of a radical notion and a little outside the box, but here goes: How about, just once, you stop sucking-up to the foreign bastards who are attacking our country and take America’s side?

Maybe you should not back and excuse the gay-hanging, women-stoning, airline-downing, Obama check-cashing, Israel-threatening, American-murdering cultists ruling Iran. Just a thought.

It’s kind of crazy, but it just might work.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking what your man-bunned grad student TA taught you, that “Hey, America sucks and these foreigners have a good point about America’s history of imperialism and general badness.” Well, this is a stupid thing to think and you Democrats should stop thinking it. Instead, you should stand with your own country all the time, no matter what.

I know siding with America will infuriate a huge part of your base, since America-hating leftist pieces of Schiff are a key Democrat constituency, but you should try courageously standing up to the trash that forms the foundation of your reeking party instead of collaborating with those fifth columnist communists.  It’s called “character.” Get some.

Yes, I know it’s a proud Democrat tradition stemming back to when your party started, and then ensured the communists won, the Vietnam War. During the last decades of the Cold War, which the Republicans won, you sided with the Russians – for you younger Democrats, Russians only became bad to Democrats sometime in 2016. Still today, if there is a Third World USA-hating potentate or terrorist leader, that dirtbag can count on you. Say, does your vintage Che tee still fit?

But this act is getting old, like your leading presidential candidates.

Perhaps in your blue city/faculty lounge circles, concepts like “patriotism,” “loyalty” and “not allying yourself with communist and Islamist butchers” are character defects that, if you drones had the capacity to breed, you would attempt to breed out of the pack. But here in America, we like them. And we prefer Americans who side with America.

I know you don’t like Donald Trump. You have a right not to like Donald Trump. And if you feel it necessary, because you want to fix the skyrocketing stock market and rock-bottom unemployment problems he caused, you can campaign against Donald Trump and support his opponents, whether it be the senile pappy of the promiscuous crack connoisseur, or the fake Indian, or the crusty communist, or that insufferable little weasel who is mayor of the Indiana equivalent of Barstow. That is your right as an American. But you are total garbage if you choose to side with our enemies because you don’t like the guy who the American people elected over your objection.

Donald Trump is your president. Let me say that again. Donald Trump is your president.

He is the President of the United States of America. You don’t have to like that. You don’t have to like him. Feel free to run around the country shouting about how “He’s not my president!” But don’t ever side with our enemies because you are mad at him for crushing the Venezuela 2: The Quickening dreams of your idol Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit.

You spent the last three years babbling like idiots about “traitors” and “treachery.” Well, head docs call that “projection.” You are siding with the enemy in a war against the United States. And yeah, Iran has been at war with the United States for 40 years, ever since your peanut-farming, half-wit fellow Dem handed over the keys to the country to a bunch of Seventh Century Pennywises. The least you could do is show a little respect to the people trying to clean up your party’s mess.

Your party’s latest triumph is blaming Donald Trump because these drooling morons shot down a passenger airliner the night they launched missiles at our American soldiers. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you sick? Are you stupid? Are you huffing that funny powder you found in Hunter Biden’s medicine cabinet? What would ever have possessed you to start making excuses for people trying to kill Americans?

There’s a term in the military for people like you: “Blue Falcons.” It derives from the initials “BF.” The initial “B” is for “Buddy.” I’m not going to spell out what the “F’ is for. But you’re Blue Falcons if you sided with Iran’s mullahs against your own country because you got the sadz that mean old Trump is president and not Stumbles McMyturn.

You know, this Soleimani guy, before Donald Trump turned him into a wet bag of disarticulated chunks, murdered over 600 Americans and who knows how many more foreigners. It’s okay to say that he’s bad, and that smearing him across a Baghdad boulevard was pretty damn awesome. Hell, it’s mandatory. You should break out the champagne to celebrate his close encounter of the Hellfire kind. But you won’t. You can’t.

I understand this when it comes to that ridiculous AOC and her brother-curious grifter pal Illin’ Omar. I expect nothing from them except treachery. But a lot of Democrats have spent time in positions of power in Washington or otherwise have some credentials that might lead one to expect that they might resist the radical #resist nitwits. Some of them even served in uniform – Audie Buttigieg never shuts up about his adventures in the Squid Force. They should know better, and they should tell the morons in the Squad and the rest of their America-hating pals to shut their collaboration holes.

But that won’t happen. And it’s a disgrace.

Among the Democrat voters, there are patriots, including those who have served our country with honor and who continue serving today. Those Dem voters are disgusted with you and, if I was cynical, and I am totally cynical, I would issue them a heartfelt invitation to join the Republican Party, where people who love America are welcome. Walk away, Democrat patriots. Welcome to the GOP.

Regardless, you don’t take our disagreements outside of the country. You don’t fight in front of foreigners. And you don’t ever take the enemy’s side. These are just basic, threshold requirements to call yourself a “patriot.” Unless you don’t want to be a patriot. You Democrats who don’t, at least be honest and just come right out and admit that you hate America. And the rest of you should admit that you are just too weak to stand up for it.

SOURCE 

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Conservatives should stop blindly defending law enforcement, the clergy, and Big Business and examine the moral order of institutions

By Richard McCarty

It is time for fine-brush conservatism. For too long, broad-brush conservatism has defended certain institutions — including law enforcement, the clergy, and Big Business — to the hilt without demanding too many facts. To be clear, these are institutions worthy of vigorous defense, but it is not enough to just signal support. To defend society, bad actors must be rooted out. There is a moral order of institutions serving the nation that cannot be ignored and must be vigorously enforced in order for there to be prosperity.

Rather than defend people based on who they purport to represent, we should choose whom we defend based on their individual character and actions. By doing this, Republicans and conservatives should gain more respect in their communities and should find more support for their policies and politicians who are doing it right.

For starters, Republicans can no longer afford to reflexively defend every law enforcement officer assuming that they must have had a good reason for their actions. Yes, we want officers to go home safely at the end of their shift, and, yes, we want them to solve crimes; but we also want them to only use deadly force as a last resort, and we want them to respect our Constitutional rights. By blindly defending law enforcement, Republicans appear hopelessly out-of-touch. Whenever there is an officer-involved shooting, Republicans should demand a full, independent investigation. Law enforcement officers have tough and important jobs, but the bad apples and the incompetent officers must be weeded out — for our protection and the good of the other officers.

In addition, Republicans should stop blindly defending the clergy. In the past, the faithful — many of whom are conservative — have defended corrupt religious leaders or failed to hold them accountable as they have abused their positions. Most likely this was done out of fear that bad press would harm their faith or cause people to lose their faith in God. In the short-term, membership at a particular house of worship might fall after a scandal. But what is far worse is when the public finally finds out that religious leaders have committed serious crimes and that precious little was done to make it stop even after the crimes were discovered. That is far more likely to shake people’s faith rather than the crimes of a single individual. Fortunately, in recent years, we have largely seen a reversal of this view, and now more people of faith are demanding answers as well as personnel and policy changes.

Republicans should also stop automatically defending Big Business. These days, Big Business is incredibly powerful, is not opposed to selling the country out for a fast buck, and is only too happy to fund the abortion lobby, radical environmentalists, and socialists. Here are few examples of indefensible corporate behavior:

A profitable Fortune 500 company closes a factory in Wisconsin and ships the jobs to China;

A failed corporate CEO is handsomely rewarded on his way out the door;

A multibillion-dollar company lays off hundreds of American employees and requires them to train their foreign replacements who just arrived in the country on their H-1B visas; and

A gigantic corporation intentionally overworks its employees and gives them too little time to eat or take bathroom breaks.

Not only should we not defend these actions, we should blast these companies for their lack of patriotism and decency. At the end of the day, we need to remember that greed at the expense of the nation is not good, and it should be discouraged.

Some currently defending the disgraceful actions of Big Business probably do so, not because they agree with the behavior, but, rather, because they believe that they must defend this behavior or socialism will advance.

These people have it exactly backward. By defending outrageous behavior, these conservatives push people toward the socialists; instead of halting socialism, they are fueling it. On the other hand, by refusing to defend corporate America’s bad behavior, conservatives just might be able to help rein in some of the most egregious behavior; and when there are fewer instances of corporations taking advantage of customers or workers, there should be less interest in the left’s “solutions” — like 90 percent tax rates, maximum wages, and more unions.

In recent years, Republicans have overextended themselves blindly defending institutions without assessing the value they bring to improving and extending traditions. Without examining the moral order of our society, we fail to offer firm prescriptions to the issues we face. This situation is untenable, and it is time pull back the defensive lines and let the bad actors we have foolishly been sheltering finally face the consequences of their actions.

When you think about it, it is rather odd that a party that values the individual and deemphasizes group membership would defend people based on their institutional line of work. In other words, our criteria for choosing whom to defend is not consistent with our values. This must change.

SOURCE 

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IN BRIEF

"THE SUPREME LEADER IS A MURDERER": Iran opens fire on demonstrators. Protesters chant: "Our enemy is right here; they lie to us that it's America." (The Daily Wire)

DESPICABLE: No Senate Democrats support measure praising military for killing Soleimani. All GOP senators supported same resolution about Bin Laden during Obama years. (The Daily Wire)

NO HIDING IT: Iran admits it "unintentionally" shot down Ukrainian jetliner (The Washington Times)

BOOKER OUT: Cory Booker drops out of the presidential race (NBC News)

NO CAPITULATING: Taiwan's president reelected as voters back tough China stance (CNBC)

POLITICAL THEATER: House Democrats block hazardous-substance measure to protect unborn children (The Washington Free Beacon)

TAKING ON UNIONS: Trump administration rolls back Obama-era "joint employer" rule (Washington Examiner)

SORRY NOT SORRY: FBI director apologizes to FISA court — not Carter Page — for warrant application abuses (The Daily Wire)

RECIPROCITY UNDER FIRE: Virginia gun proposal puts concealed-carry agreements with other states in jeopardy (Washington Examiner)

BRAINWASHED: Shocking number of young Americans say other countries are better than the U.S. (The Daily Wire)

POLICY: The FISA court is complicit in the FBI abuses it's raising Cain over (The Federalist)

SATIRE: "The View" audience applauds Hitler after revelation he never voted for Trump (The Babylon Bee)

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here  (Personal).  My annual picture page is here 

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