Articles
Who Would Win a War Over Taiwan?
Some readers may conclude the answer to all this is to let Taiwan fall, but that would end America’s status as a credible global power. U.S. allies would recalibrate their alliances, and rogues would take more risks. All the more reason to spend the money and energy on demonstrating to China that it will lose a Taiwan war. CSIS has done a service in putting out an unclassified document that can educate the public on what is required.
Liberal Arts, Free Expression, and the Demosthenes-Feynman Trap
University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer delivers remarks upon accepting the 2017 Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education. He spoke of how the “openness of universities to divergent and clashing ideas, to analytic debate, to rigor, and to questioning, is a critical ingredient in illuminating societal, scientific, and humanistic issues.” President Zimmer stressed that because “universities are virtually unique in making this long-term contribution only highlights their importance to society.” The award was presented on October 20, 2017.
Continue Reading Liberal Arts, Free Expression, and the Demosthenes-Feynman Trap
Elon Musk’s Twitter Files Revelations Are Instructive but Not Surprising
You are doing something much more important, which compels compliance and tolerates no alternatives: promulgating the One True Faith, a set of orthodoxies from which there is no legitimate dissent.
Here is the asymmetry: Most conservatives, or intellectually curious people, don’t think like this. They don’t think that someone with differing opinions on say, immigration restrictions, the right level of taxation, or the case for affirmative action is voicing a provably false and intrinsically illegitimate view that amounts to misinformation. They think their opponents’ beliefs are wrong and reflect flawed analysis or erroneous evidence. But they don’t think there is only one acceptable belief and that dissent from it is analytically impossible, intellectually dishonest and morally contemptible.
But this is the left’s mindset. It is why they don’t need instructions from government officials or public censors to determine access to information. They are themselves the controlling authority. They act in ways that are reminiscent of the pre-Enlightenment certitudes of the clerisy. They have a moral and normative view of knowledge that seeks to disfavor, suppress and ultimately extirpate heresy.
Continue Reading Elon Musk’s Twitter Files Revelations Are Instructive but Not Surprising
Joe Biden’s Nuclear Weapons Misfire
It is U.S. credibility and power—not our moral example—that prevents proliferation. Since it came into effect in 1970, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has assumed almost sacred status in the liberal firmament. But can it survive Joe Biden’s presidency? Liberals and the arms-control establishment have always loved the NPT for its vision of a world free of…
The GOP’s Lost Vote Harvest
The GOP did plenty wrong in this midterm, and any honest autopsy would reckon with its decisions to saddle itself again with subpar Senate candidates (remember 2010?) and to tie its fortunes again to Donald Trump (remember 2020?). But the other big takeaway: Republicans got whupped by Democrats’ early-voting game and may be years behind in a major shift in turnout tactics. The party spent more time grousing over Democrats’ 2020 voting changes than it did asking itself why its opponents were so laser-focused on making mail-in and early voting easier.
Harvesting the 2020 Election
Pelosi’s top priority was remaking the electoral system. The virus gave her a boost.
H.R. 1 would make states register voters automatically from government databases, including federal welfare recipients. …. require “no fault” absentee ballots, allowing anyone to vote by mail, for any reason. …. It would cripple most state voter-ID laws. It left in place the “ballot harvesting” rules that let paid activists canvass neighborhoods to hoover up absentee votes.
Mrs. Pelosi’s bill didn’t become law, … But … Using the virus as an excuse, Democratic and liberal groups brought scores of lawsuits to force states to adopt its provisions. Many … courts happily agreed. States mailed out ballots to everyone. Judges disregarded statutory deadlines for receipt of votes. They scrapped absentee-ballot witness requirements. States …signed off on ballot harvesting.
…the beauty of ballot harvesting is that it is nearly impossible to prove fraud. … mail-in voting is the “single worst form of election possible” because “it moves the entire election beyond the oversight of election officials.”
Disparity Doesn’t Necessarily Imply Racism
“We find,” they wrote in the abstract of their paper, “that this one test score explains all of the black-white wage gap for young women and much of the gap for young men.” With their approach, antiblack bias played no role in the divergent wages among women; a black woman with the same qualifications as a white woman made slightly more money. And it accounted for at most 29% of the racial difference among men, with 71% traceable to disparate performance on the AFQT. The AFQT itself was evaluated by the Pentagon, which found that black and white military recruits with similar AFQT scores performed similarly on the job—indicating no racial bias.
A Plan to Save America’s Finances
U.S. fiscal policy is on a collision course with monetary policy. The economic devastation resulting from a debt and currency crisis could inflict enormous—possibly irreparable—damage. Predicting precisely when a huge debt and high deficits will unleash economic disaster is difficult. The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency gives the U.S. unique advantages, but no country can defy the laws of economic gravity forever. The U.S. has run up large budget deficits and debts before, but those moments of national emergency, such as world wars or global financial crises, were usually—at least until recently—followed by periods of fiscal repair.
Republicans Need to Embrace Early Voting
But the GOP’s real problem wasn’t its message or the messengers. It was a more basic failure: not understanding or accepting how Americans today participate in elections. Early voting and mail-in balloting have irrevocably changed things. Election Day no longer counts as it once did. Yet Republicans continue to rely on a massive Election Day turnout to prevail, while conceding the rest of the electoral terrain to Democrats. When Democrats win, some Republicans blame election fraud or unfair practices instead of their own failure to adjust their ground game.
Black Mayors in the Four Biggest Cities. Is That a ‘Big Deal’?
Anyone familiar with the experience of other ethnic groups, such as the Irish, won’t be surprised that black political influence—including the election of a black president—hasn’t translated into more black socioeconomic advancement.
Continue Reading Black Mayors in the Four Biggest Cities. Is That a ‘Big Deal’?
The U.S. Isn’t Ready to Face China on the Battlefield
These challenges highlight an even more serious concern: The U.S. defense industrial base is inadequately prepared for the wartime environment that now exists. It is operating in a peacetime environment. In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait—U.S. munitions needs likely would exceed Pentagon plans and stockpiles.
In nearly two dozen iterations of a Center for Strategic and International Studies war game that examined a U.S.-China war in the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. expended all its joint air-to-surface standoff missiles and long-range precision-guided antiship missiles within the first week of the conflict. These missiles are critical because of their ability to strike Chinese naval forces from outside Chinese defenses.
Continue Reading The U.S. Isn’t Ready to Face China on the Battlefield
America Needs a New Civil Rights Act
The 1964 law targeted racial discrimination. Today’s problem is the suppression of dissent.
It is time for a new civil-rights act that addresses the dangers of our time, not merely those of the 1960s.
The threat again comes from discrimination, but now by the federal government as well as states and private organizations. Most worrisome is federal and state encouragement for private entities to discriminate against Americans with dissenting views. Also significant is discrimination that bars Americans from participating in services ordinarily open to the public.
The New Woke Discrimination Demands a New Law
Republican politicians often ask what they can do in office to combat “wokeness.” The best approach is to amend state and federal civil-rights laws to protect employees from discrimination on the basis of political beliefs. Corporate viewpoint discrimination is unfair and widespread, a driver of polarization, and a direct consequence of the way existing civil-rights laws have been interpreted—a legal mistake that demands a legal solution.
Continue Reading The New Woke Discrimination Demands a New Law
America’s Right Confronts the 21st Century
Christopher DeMuth’s near perfect aspirational agenda to conserve the American nation.
***
Re-establish national borders, reduce our million plus annual illegal entries to zero, and calibrate lawful immigration to the needs of cultural assimilation, social harmony and economic growth
Abolish all official racial and other group preferences, quotas and gerrymanders
Liberate the energy sector
Return to a balanced federal budget outside of wars and other emergencies
Redirect federal spending from personal entitlements and income transfers to public goods such as national defense, basic research and infrastructure
Withdraw the collective-bargaining privileges of public-employee unions
Institute stable currency—not today’s official goal of 2% that quintuples prices in a lifetime, but zero.
Universal school choice
Initiatives to mobilize science and enterprise to dominate China in advanced computation, communication and weaponry and to repatriate production of national essentials
***
The 2022 Midterm Election Endangers Democrats, Not Democracy
…This isn’t complacency. We’re all familiar with the role eternal vigilance plays in the defense of liberty. But it is central to understanding how dishonest and hypocritical the closing Democratic argument in these midterm elections is. It is, after all, the Democrats themselves who have become the most insistent evangelists for the idea that the very system that has protected American democracy for two centuries is not fit for its purpose.
It is the progressive left—with the ready endorsement of the top figures in the Democratic Party—that wants to dismantle many of the most important constitutional institutions and principles that protect American democracy: states’ rights, the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, due process and the enforcement of the rule of law.
This isn’t some fringe view or even merely a cynical attempt to remake the system for political advantage. The party is in the grip of an ideology that believes the entire American constitutional construct is illegitimate; that the Constitution itself was founded to preserve a hideous racial tyranny, and therefore that all those quaint ideas enumerated in it that have become synonymous with America’s republican democracy—equal rights and protection, freedom of speech—are all merely instruments of repression….
Continue Reading The 2022 Midterm Election Endangers Democrats, Not Democracy
Rising Crime Rates Are a Policy Choice
Progressives can’t solve the problem because they won’t abandon the practices that cause it.
The violent crime surge was preventable. It was caused by progressive politicians reverting to the same reckless revolving-door policies that during the 1960s and ’70s produced the greatest tsunami of violent crime in American history. We reversed that earlier crime wave with the tough anticrime measures adopted during the Reagan-Bush era. We can stop this one as well.
Studies have repeatedly shown that most predatory crime is committed by a small, hard-core group of habitual offenders. They are a tiny fraction of the population…
The ‘Anti-Navy’ the U.S. Needs Against the Chinese Military
Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted that Mr. Xi is moving on a “much faster timeline” to take Taiwan, and Chief of Naval Operations Michael Gilday said he couldn’t rule out an invasion in 2022 or 2023. Domestically, Mr. Xi’s problems—a structural economic slowdown, skyrocketing household debt, and the demographic buzzsaw of the largest group of retirees in human history—will all get worse in the 2030s.
At the same time, Mr. Xi faces an American military that is growing weaker within the decade. As the Heritage Foundation’s recently released 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength makes clear, because of inadequate budgets, truncated modernization and degraded readiness, the U.S. military is set to be weakest when the People’s Liberation Army aims to be strongest. The report, which for the first time rated the overall state of the U.S. military as “weak,” rated the Navy and Air Force—the two priority forces in the Indo-Pacific—as “weak” and “very weak,” respectively.
Continue Reading The ‘Anti-Navy’ the U.S. Needs Against the Chinese Military
How to Beat China in the New Space Race
Today we are in a new space race, this time with China. And our economic and national security both are at serious risk…
If China becomes the dominant space power in the next two decades, that will put in Beijing’s hands the future of global telecommunications, space exploration and human settlement as well as the application of space satellites and technology for strategic and military use.
Democrats ‘Charity’ Voter-Registration Scheme
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit isn’t supposed to engage in partisan activity…
A New York Times article this week confirmed a political reality that Republicans have been slow to publicize: Democrats are openly abusing charities to stack voter rolls in their favor. … Read closely and you notice the story is entirely about Democrats, confirming a longstanding scheme by which foundations and private donors funnel tax-exempt dollars into “charities” that microtarget and register Democratic voters.
Continue Reading Democrats ‘Charity’ Voter-Registration Scheme
Biden and Powell Are at Odds on Inflation
Welcome to the era of good-cop, bad-cop tactics from major government institutions. Fiscal and monetary policy are now working at odds to fight inflation. The Fed could crush demand by raising interest rates to stratospheric levels only to have a spendthrift White House and complicit Congress pump up consumer prices through fiscal measures that expand spending power—cash payments, subsidies, rebates, student loan forgiveness.
Student-Loan Forgiveness and the National Debt
… I wish he had been around to put a label on the federal student-loan program. In the sad catalog of its failures, the federal government has set a new standard. President Biden’s debt-cancellation announcement represents the final confession of failure for a venture flawed in concept, botched in execution, and draped with duplicity.
… It’s grossly unfair to those who repaid what they borrowed or never went to college. It’s grotesquely expensive, adding hundreds of billions to a federal debt that already threatens our safety-net programs and national security. Like so much of what government does, it’s iatrogenic, inflating college costs as schools continue to pocket the subsidies Uncle Sam showers on them. And it’s profanely contemptuous of the Constitution, which authorizes only Congress to spend money.
Continue Reading Student-Loan Forgiveness and the National Debt
The U.S. Military’s Growing Weakness
A new Heritage Foundation report warns about declining U.S. naval and air power.
Americans like to think their military is unbeatable if politicians wouldn’t get in the way. The truth is that U.S. hard power isn’t what it used to be. That’s the message of the Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength, which is reported here for the first time and describes a worrisome trend.
Heritage rates the U.S. military as “weak” and “at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.” The weak rating, down from “marginal” a year earlier, is the first in the index’s nine-year history.
A More Diverse America Turns Against Racial Preferences
…But as the public attempted to slam the door shut on racial preferences, the universities were busy trying to open it wide. The stealthy end-runs around the law gave way to support for “equity”: the desire for racial proportionality in all things…
… increasingly powerful diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies arose to achieve these aims. Consider The University of California, Berkeley, which now has a Division of Equity and Inclusion,…. Similar offices abound on campuses across the country, where they are major actors in promoting all manner of progressive causes, from social justice to critical race theory and anticapitalism.
The most visible sign of DEI’s clout is its gradually seizing control of faculty appointments. …Not only is this practice an illegal political test for faculty employment, it’s also a stunning reversal of the policy that once made our universities great.
Continue Reading A More Diverse America Turns Against Racial Preferences
America’s ‘Window of Maximum Danger’
Russia has invaded Ukraine and threatens nuclear war, China is eyeing Taiwan, Iran holds regular military exercises with China and Russia, and North Korea just launched a missile over Japan. If that doesn’t sound ominous enough, Mike Gallagher has worse news: The U.S. is increasingly vulnerable to losing a war, “either by sitting the conflict out or through defeat in combat.”
Taiwan is a particular preoccupation. What interest do Americans have in protecting this distant island? If the Chinese subdued it, it would heighten their threat to Japan and the Philippines, which the U.S. is bound by treaty to defend. America’s friends would hedge their bets by cozying up to Beijing. More important, by seizing Taiwan’s semiconductor-manufacturing capability, Xi Jinping would “hold the rest of the world economically hostage,” Mr. Gallagher says. “All this stuff that drives people in the Midwest crazy, when Hollywood or Wall Street bows down” to the Chinese Communist Party, “you can 10-X that if Xi takes Taiwan.”
100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead
The Bolshevik plague that began in Russia was the greatest catastrophe in human history.
Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd—now St. Petersburg—100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization.
Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist-Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. This was totally incompatible with Western civilization, which presumes the existence of a higher power over and above society and the state.
The Bolshevik coup had two consequences. In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.
But the Bolsheviks’ influence was not limited to these countries. In the West, communism inverted society’s understanding of the source of its values, creating political confusion that persists to this day.
Continue Reading 100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead
What the Child Poverty Rate Is Missing
The Census Bureau fails to count two-thirds of all government transfer payments to households in the income numbers it uses to calculate not only poverty levels but also income inequality and income growth. In addition to not counting refundable tax credits, which are paid by checks from the U.S. Treasury, the official Census Bureau measure doesn’t count food stamps, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, rent subsidies, energy subsidies and health-insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. In total, benefits provided in more than 100 other federal, state and local transfer payments aren’t counted by the Census Bureau as income to the recipients.
If the Census Bureau had included the missing $1.9 trillion in transfer payments, child poverty would have been only 3.2% in 2017, compared with the official rate of 17.5%. Government transfer payments that were distributed in 2017 had already cut child poverty by 82%.
From Migrant Busing to Climate Change, Fake Virtue Abounds
It’s easy to portray compassion for a refugee or a welcoming hand for the economically disadvantaged as a signifier of moral values. But the scales of virtue must balance, and it isn’t simply a case of administrative incompetence but an act of abject moral failure by a government to fail to secure its borders.
There is no higher obligation for a sovereign power to its own people. The reckless toleration of the entry of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of illegal immigrants threatens a nation’s security, undermines its cohesion, interferes with its orderly economic and social functions. It places undue burdens on law-enforcement officers (against whom the president then issues casual calumnies) and actively undermines respect for the rule of law.
Continue Reading From Migrant Busing to Climate Change, Fake Virtue Abounds
The Countercultural Queen Elizabeth
Her personal virtues are an antidote to our era’s self-promotion and social-virtue signaling.
Within the hour of her death, Queen Elizabeth II was praised by commentators from left to right for representing so many traditional values. Reserve, self-containment, duty, responsibility, modesty of demeanor, graciousness, civility, prudence, fortitude.
Delayed Repairs Shrink the U.S Navy Submarine Fleet
The U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet, America’s essential war-fighting instrument in the Indo-Pacific, is about three-fifths the size it should be, chiefly because of maintenance and production delays. This comes amid stepped-up threats to Taiwan by China.
Contesting such an assault would require a submarine force at maximum strength. Congress and the White House should act swiftly to integrate private shipyards that repair submarines into the Navy’s maintenance plans.
Continue Reading Delayed Repairs Shrink the U.S Navy Submarine Fleet
The Left Gets Fascism Backward
If there are fascists in America these days, they are apt to be found among the tribes of the left. … The evolution of their overprivileged emotions…has led them, in 2022, to embrace Mussolini’s formula: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Or against the party. (People forget, if they ever knew it, that both Hitler and Mussolini began as socialists). The state and the Democratic Party must speak and act as one, suppressing all dissent. America must conform to the orthodoxy—to the Chinese finger-traps of diversity-or-else and open borders… Meantime, their man in the White House invokes emergency powers to forgive student debt and their thinkers wonder whether the Constitution and the separation of powers are all they’re cracked up to be.
Mr. Trump and his followers, believe it or not, are essentially antifascists: They want the state to stand aside, to impose the least possible interference and allow market forces and entrepreneurial energies to work. Freedom isn’t fascism. Mr. Biden and his vast tribe are essentially enemies of freedom, although most of them haven’t thought the matter through. …. They desire maximum—that is, total—state or party control of all aspects of American life, including what people say and think. Seventy-four years after George Orwell wrote “1984,” such control (by way of surveillance cameras, social-media companies and the Internal Revenue Service, now to be shockingly augmented by 87,000 new employees) is entirely feasible. The left yearns for power and authoritarian order. It is Faust’s bargain; freedom is forfeit.
Restore Reagan’s Military ‘Margin of Safety’
While foreign policy ‘realists’ urge detente with China and Russia, only strength ensures peace. The U.S. faces the most daunting security landscape in 45 years. That’s no coincidence. Earlier this year Russia launched the bloodiest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, and this summer China publicly displayed plans to strangle or swallow the…
Continue Reading Restore Reagan’s Military ‘Margin of Safety’
A Homeric Age of Statesmanship
Standing in contrast to these misdeeds are the records of three great Republican secretaries of state who shepherded American diplomacy during the middle and late phases of the Cold War: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker III. Their successes were inextricable from their understanding of America as a nation-state, a worldview that put the needs of the U.S. above all else.
The Anatomy of a Diversity Equity and Inclusion Takeover
We find in these plans nothing short of a blueprint for an institutional overhaul—the anatomy of a diversity, equity, and inclusion takeover. Such a takeover will have obvious implications for education at the University of Tennessee. True education will erode. Indoctrination will flourish. These plans, moreover, reveal in extensive detail what an exhaustive diversity, equity, and inclusion program looks like. Thus, our report provides a case study in the rolling revolution under way in academia.
Continue Reading The Anatomy of a Diversity Equity and Inclusion Takeover
Break Up the ESG Investing Giants
BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street effectively control each other—and their market competitors. The Clayton Act was made for situations like this.
Three of the largest investment shops in the U.S.—BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street—have long used their dominance in passive-investment funds to force corporations to comply with their preferred set of environmental, social and governance policies.
Income Equality, Not Inequality, Is the Problem
Real government transfer payments to the bottom 20% of household earners surged by 269% between 1967 and 2017, while middle-income households saw their real earnings after taxes rise by only 154% during the same period. That has largely equalized the income of the bottom 60% of Americans. This government-created equality has caused the labor-force participation rate to collapse among working-age people in low-income households and unleashed a populist realignment that is unraveling the coalition that has dominated American politics since the 1930s.
Continue Reading Income Equality, Not Inequality, Is the Problem
Is Lincoln Speaking to us?
By and large, we do not believe that there are individuals with great ruling talent who “thirst and burn” to shatter the existing order for the sake of dominating others — individuals who have desires that make them a fundamentally different type of human being: animals of prey, a profoundly different human type from the rest of us. …Is Lincoln’s warning grounded in a timeless truth? Is it a truth alive today?
…The world has faced such a threat several times in the past 100 years but misunderstood it, underestimated it, and let it grow horribly out of control. We need only think of Stalin, Mao, and, of course, Hitler. Can we learn from this terrible history?
Specifically, are Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping just such individuals? They sit atop oligarchies. However, they now largely control the levers of power and use that power in a brutal and unified manner. Most of all, in word and deed, they seek to shatter the existing order and bring the world around them under their domination….
But little national-security analysis focuses on deterring an adversary’s most important power — its leader and leadership. Why not focus on the tyrant and the immediate circle around him? Isolate him and use some of the unique information and cyber power of our time to create suspicion, division, and contempt (the great acid that dissolves authority). In short, analyze the tyrant’s sources of power narrowly — money, respect, fear, key subordinates — and systematically strip them away.
The Coming War Over Taiwan
The U.S. is running out of time to prevent a cataclysmic war in the Western Pacific. While the world has been focused on Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, Xi Jinping appears to be preparing for an even more consequential onslaught against Taiwan. Mr. Xi’s China is fueled by a dangerous mix of strength and weakness: Faced with profound economic, demographic and strategic problems, it will be tempted to use its burgeoning military power to transform the existing order while it still has the opportunity.
Lessons From the Great Inflation of 1973-81
Then as now, what drove higher prices was excess demand owing to runaway government spending. Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker understood.
History withholds its wisdom from those who ignore its lessons. Forty years ago this month, the fiscal policy of President Ronald Reagan and the monetary policy of Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker broke the back of the 20th century’s most destructive inflation, ushered in an economic expansion that effectively lasted a quarter of a century, and banished inflation—until now.
Continue Reading Lessons From the Great Inflation of 1973-81
The Trouble Isn’t Liberals. It’s Progressives.
…progressive intellectuals were passionate advocates of rule by disinterested experts led by a strong unifying leader. They were in favor of using the state to mold social institutions in the interests of the collective. They thought that individualism and the Constitution were both outmoded.
…we should start using “liberal” to designate the good guys on the left, reserving “progressive” for those who are enthusiastic about an unrestrained regulatory state, who think it’s just fine to subordinate the interests of individuals to large social projects, who cheer the president’s abuse of executive power and who have no problem rationalizing the stifling of dissent.
Continue Reading The Trouble Isn’t Liberals. It’s Progressives.
Outdated Nuclear Treaties Heighten the Risk of Nuclear War
U.S. policy makers have lost sight of the crucial link between arms control and deterrence.
U.S. nuclear deterrence policy and U.S. nuclear arms-control policy have become dangerously disconnected.
Longstanding deterrence policy requires that the U.S. have sufficient capacity to target what potential enemy leaders value most. Arms control is supposed to augment deterrence by limiting, and if possible reducing, the threats while allowing the U.S. to deploy a force that deters an attack on America or our allies. The policies were tightly linked throughout the closing decades of the Cold War, providing the U.S. and its allies with a credible deterrent …
Continue Reading Outdated Nuclear Treaties Heighten the Risk of Nuclear War
How Income Equality Helped Trump
Working Americans sense that taxes and transfers now leave them little better off than those who work less.
An article on…the most comprehensive accounting to date of how taxes and government payments affect income distribution in the U.S. …The most surprising finding is the astonishing degree of equality among the bottom 60% of American earners, generated in part by the explosion of social-welfare spending…
America’s Got Talent, but Not Nearly Enough
If innovation is the primary driver of growth, and the most productive workers are the primary drivers of innovation, doubling the number of workers who currently represent the top 5% of America’s talent could double the U.S. growth rate. America has 125 million full-time workers, so the top 5% is just over six million. The U.S. currently issues a million green cards a year. By targeting the most talented would-be immigrants, the U.S. could double its high-productivity pool in short order.
Continue Reading America’s Got Talent, but Not Nearly Enough
Putin’s Deterrence Succeeds as the West Holds Back in Ukraine
The risks of American hesitancy are growing every day—and aren’t confined to Europe. The Biden administration’s reluctance to provide Ukraine with more sophisticated weapons critical to its defense comes at a high cost. Russia now controls a quarter of Ukraine and is gradually pushing westward. If the U.S. fails to change its policy, Russia will…
Continue Reading Putin’s Deterrence Succeeds as the West Holds Back in Ukraine
What It Will Take to Supply Ukraine for the Long Haul
Support for Ukraine can dovetail with these priorities, however. Investing in defense production capacity and weapons stockpiles can help shore up U.S. deterrence in Taiwan and elsewhere—convincing states looking for a quick win that the U.S. is willing and prepared to sustain support for the long-term. That message will be especially important as the U.S. balances both a rising China and a revisionist Russia. Moreover, the U.S. can draw on its history, as it has successfully surged its economy to support wartime weapons production in the past: The U.S. “arsenal of democracy” was a key factor in the Allies’ victory in World War II.
The U.S. can support Ukraine through its war of attrition with Russia. But to do so, it will need to make significant reforms to its defense acquisition and production policies. Those changes will have to happen fast, because Ukraine might not have “as long as it takes” to survive.
Continue Reading What It Will Take to Supply Ukraine for the Long Haul
The bravest man in education reform
Students’ personal choices matter. And so do the choices made by the education reform movement, which was steadfastly unwilling to address or even acknowledge the role that family structure and stability plays in students’ life outcomes. If a child in poverty graduates from high school, finds full-time employment, gets married, and has children, in that order, Rowe tirelessly pointed out—citing a pattern well-established in social science that’s often referred to as the “Success Sequence”—the chance they will remain in poverty as an adult drops to a mere 2 percent. “There is no public policy that comes even close to those kinds of results,” ….
The High Cost of Free Money
Researchers gave cash to low-income people. It led them to spend more and work less.
Did pandemic stimulus payments harm lower-income Americans? That’s the implication of a new study by social scientists at Harvard and the University of Exeter.
Liberals argue that no-strings-attached handouts encourage better financial decisions and healthier lifestyles. The theory is that low-income folks become more future-oriented if they’re less stressed about making ends meet. The Harvard study put this hypothesis to the test and found the opposite.
Rising Interest Rates Will Crush the Federal Budget
The Federal Reserve’s policies of increasing interest rates and quantitative tightening—reducing its $8.9 trillion balance sheet—will increase the volume and cost of federal government borrowing, slamming the federal budget and exposing the consequences of decades of deficit spending.
Total federal gross interest cost over the 12 months ending on May 31 was $666 billion. If we include the impending extra interest on Treasury bills and the maturing notes, that figure rises to $863 billion. This is a staggering cost. National military spending was $746 billion over the past 12 months; Medicare spending was $700 billion.
Continue Reading Rising Interest Rates Will Crush the Federal Budget
Irving Kristol’s Reality Principles
A great mind exposes ideological illusions, while thinking through better alternatives.
The following are excerpts from essays that appeared in The Wall Street Journal by Irving Kristol, who died yesterday at age 89. An editorial on his legacy appears nearby.
A Feckless American Foreign Policy’s Legacy
At the beginning of the 21st century, the world seemed more peaceful and American power more solidly entrenched than ever before. Twenty-two years into the new century, Americans face the most threatening international environment since the darkest days of the Cold War. The war in Ukraine threatens the post-Cold War order in Europe. Iran is well on its way to a nuclear bomb, and China’s shadow looms larger than ever over Taiwan.
Continue Reading A Feckless American Foreign Policy’s Legacy
An Age of Agency Awaits Us
There is a third way: a view of human opportunity simultaneously more practical and more optimistic than our current alternatives. I call it agency.
For me, the essence of agency goes beyond one’s capacity simply to do or achieve (how we often think of it). Agency is not free will alone. Rather, agency is the force of your free will, guided by moral discernment.
Agency is the character-based strength that young people can tap into as a source of morally directed power, and our children do not achieve this by themselves. Young people do not typically find success or meaning in isolation; they need social support from vibrant, well-functioning, mediating structures: families, schools, houses of worship, nonprofit organizations, and community groups.
Higher Education’s Deeper Sickness
Colleges need to be accredited; state universities answer to governing boards. Accrediting agencies and governing boards are created through a political process. What if voters were to insist that those agencies demand answers to some elementary questions? For example: How can a department of political science that excludes half the spectrum of viable political ideas be competent to offer degrees in the field? How can a history curriculum be taught competently when only one extremist attitude to social and political questions is present in a department? How can a campus humanities faculty with the same limitation teach competently? How can these extraordinary deficiencies deserve either accreditation, or support by state and federal funds?
Semiconductor Dependency Imperils American Security
TSMC manufactures 92% of the advanced semiconductors necessary for every smartphone, laptop and ballistic missile. U.S. firms such as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Apple outsource almost all their manufacturing to Taiwan. If Taiwan’s chip manufacturing capacity went offline or fell into China’s hands, America’s technology sector would be devastated.
Continue Reading Semiconductor Dependency Imperils American Security
A Report to Our Readers
Since the majority of these articles are from the Wall Street Journal, especially the editorial page, it seems appropriate to include on the site these reports to readers.
How Government Spending Fuels Inflation
John Cochrane interview When debt grows so much that people don’t believe the Treasury will pay it, they sell their bonds and buy other things, sending prices through the roof. Annual inflation in the U.S. rose to 7.5% in January, the highest it’s been since February 1982, when it was 7.6% and declining. This current…
Awakening From Nihilism: The Templeton Prize Address
Longer article
This essay is adapted from an address presented by Mr. Novak at Westminster Abbey on May 5, 1994. He is the twenty-fourth recipient of The Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
As we draw near the close of the twentieth century, we owe ourselves a reckoning.
This century was history’s bloodiest. From this revered and mortally threatened Abbey some fifty years ago, one could hear the screech of falling bombs. At a time they didn’t choose, and in a way they didn’t foresee, more than a hundred million persons in Europe found their lives brutally taken from them. An earlier Templeton laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, has agreed that, beyond the war dead, 66 million prisoners perished in the Soviet labor camps. Add the scores of millions dead in Asia, Africa, and the other continents since 1900.
Nor is there any guarantee that the twenty-first century will not be bloodier.
And yet the world has drawn four painful lessons from the ashes of our century. First, even under conditions of nihilism, better than cowardice is fidelity to truth. From fidelity to truth, inner liberty is wrested.
Continue Reading Awakening From Nihilism: The Templeton Prize Address
The U.S. Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War
Washington might study Cold War-era practices that had a major effect on Soviet policy making. Russia conducted its first test of the Sarmat, an intercontinental ballistic missile that carries a heavy nuclear payload, on April 20. Vladimir Putin and his advisers have issued nuclear warnings throughout the war in Ukraine, threatening the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization…
Continue Reading The U.S. Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War
The Stakes in the Battle for the Donbas
A Russian general lifts the veil on Putin’s plans to grab Ukraine’s south. As Russia consolidates its forces for an offensive in Ukraine’s east, the temptation is to think the stakes have shrunk for NATO and the West after Russia lost the battle of Kyiv. But Vladimir Putin can still win a major victory that would leave…
Handing Putin the Nuclear Advantage
Biden wants to kill a cruise missile needed to deter Russia and others. Vladimir Putin has made veiled threats about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and the Biden Administration says it is worried. This makes it all the more puzzling that President Biden is canceling a new weapon that would be a nuclear deterrent. The latest…
Needed: A Military Strategy for China
By Seth Cropsey – Nov. 2, 2021
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
‘Strategic ambiguity” is the longstanding U.S. policy toward Taiwan, but President Biden’s approach has been more ambiguous than strategic. Asked at an Oct. 21 town hall whether he would defend the island nation against a Chinese attack, Mr. Biden replied, “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.” The White House then “clarified” his answer by reasserting its commitment to ambiguity.
All this begs the question: What should the U.S. do in defense of Taiwan? And it raises a broader one: What should the U.S. do to counter China’s military challenge?
Russia’s Failure Is China’s Gain
By Seth Cropsey – March 9, 2022
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has inaugurated a new era of political competition but not a new cold war. The American people and their leaders need to prepare for a new kind of geopolitical competition—more intense, more dangerous and more aggressive than anything since World War II. Bismarck, Metternich and Louis XIV’s world of unrestrained power to achieve national objectives is back. And while the immediate threat is Russia, the more formidable one is China.
A Rogue Russia Tries to Reset the World Order
If the U.S. response to the invasion of Ukraine is purposeful, creative and wise, Putin’s campaign will ultimately fail. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has claimed his place in history. Not since Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 has a European leader committed an act of aggression as brutal or as nakedly cynical as Mr. Putin’s…
Continue Reading A Rogue Russia Tries to Reset the World Order
Putin’s New World Disorder
The U.S. and Europe should target his political control at home in Russia. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine early Thursday marks the failure of Western deterrence and a return to the age of authoritarian conquest. Now we’ll see if Europe and the U.S. awaken from their illusions of eternal post-Cold War peace and security to…
Learning for Self-Government – K–12 Civics Report Card
Longer article
This report, intended primarily for civics reformers considering how best to defend and improve traditional American civics education, surveys a selection of different civics offerings, both the traditional and the radical. Surveyed providers include organizations such as the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, We the People, and Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum. The report assesses both how they approach civics education and their ideological content. The report will also judge each organization’s effectiveness—although no one knows exactly what is being taught in each classroom in America, much less precisely what students take from their education. Finally, it will provide recommendations about how civics reformers should build upon this existing array of civics curriculum resources to work most effectively to reclaim America’s civics education.
The subject of this report is K–12 civics education, but the organizations it inventories include several devoted to undergraduate education and national politics. These organizations, and their tactics, form the regulations and the personnel of the educational establishment. They act with great effect on K–12 civics education, even when they do not provide textbooks and lesson plans.
The report includes summary judgments of the true academic level of several K–12 civics resources. Most resources that claim to be for high-school students are at best at a ninth-grade level, often a middle-school one. The simplest way to substantiate this judgment is to say that Hillsdale College’s 1776 Curriculum provides lesson plans aimed for intelligent, curious twelfth-grade students, and that no other institution provides curriculum anywhere near Hillsdale’s level.
Continue Reading Learning for Self-Government – K–12 Civics Report Card
Inside the Woke Indoctrination Machine
After watching 100 hours of leaked video, we now fully grasp the danger of this ideology in schools. Last spring we exposed how two elite independent schools in New York had become corrupted by a divisive obsession with race, helping start the national movement against critical race theory. Schools apply this theory under the guise of diversity, equity and…
Long Live Ukraine, Taiwan and the Nation-State
A critical achievement of modern civilization may rest on the fate of these two small countries, in danger of being swallowed by imperial neighbors. Russia wants to absorb Ukraine and rule its people. China wants to absorb Taiwan and rule its people. The two powers isolate and degrade their much smaller neighbors at every turn…
Continue Reading Long Live Ukraine, Taiwan and the Nation-State
NATO must reinforce its Eastern flank right now
Copyright @ 2022 The Hill Russian mechanized forces now rolling into Belarus directly threaten NATO, not just Ukraine. The U.S. and its allies are rightly focused on obvious Russian preparations to invade Ukraine and on trying to deter Moscow. Russian troops moving into positions in southeastern Belarus could be preparing to invade, and the West…
Continue Reading NATO must reinforce its Eastern flank right now
Why I Am No Longer A Tenured Professor at the University of Toronto
Longer article
This is one of many issues of appalling ideology currently demolishing the universities and, downstream, the general culture. …. This has been common knowledge among any remotely truthful academic who has served on a hiring committee for the last three decades. This means we’re out to produce a generation of researchers utterly unqualified for the job. And we’ve seen what that means already in the horrible grievance studies “disciplines.” That, combined with the death of objective testing, has compromised the universities so badly that it can hardly be overstated. And what happens in the universities eventually colours everything. As we have discovered.
Continue Reading Why I Am No Longer A Tenured Professor at the University of Toronto
The Fight For Ukraine and Taiwan
These aren’t mere regional hot spots, as Russia and China work together to upend world order. A crisis may be imminent in Ukraine as Vladimir Putin gathers troops on the Russian border for a possible invasion. American policy makers have also begun focusing on a potential conflict in Taiwan, one that is coming to a boil…
Entitlements Always Grow and Grow
The ‘equally worthy claim’ inexorably prompts further expansion, regardless of lawmakers’ initial limits. Sen. Joe Manchin’s emphatic “no” to the current version of Build Back Better put the bill on life support. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, having promised a Senate vote, now must try to maintain the bill’s progressive priorities—including a raft of new and…
A Politicized Fed Endangers the Economy
The central bank can’t deliver price stability if it’s distracted by climate change and social justice. During Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s reconfirmation hearing last week, there was an understandable focus on inflation. Led by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, several senators expressed concerns that politicization of the Fed is hampering its effectiveness in dealing with inflation and…
Don’t Bail Out Putin
His Ukraine gambit is ultimately about enlisting the West in a scheme to prop up his rule. Good things come to strong, successful nations. Neighbors crave closer ties. Allies don’t object to being part of a “sphere of influence.” Vladimir Putin has given his neighboring peoples only reasons to run away from him. They wouldn’t clamor…
Can Politics Get Better When Higher Education Keeps Getting Worse?
Voters have the sense to resist notions like critical race theory. A generation from now, they may not. Only a few years ago, several well-established features of the current political landscape were too absurd to be taken seriously. Defunding the police was a ridiculous idea; critical race theory would be a giant step backward in…
Continue Reading Can Politics Get Better When Higher Education Keeps Getting Worse?
Srewtape Proposes a Toast
Longer article
What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones.
It’s Time for the Fed to Go Old School
No fancy stuff. Raise rates via open-market operations that reduce the size of the balance sheet. The good news is that the Federal Reserve now recognizes that persistent high inflation threatens to overshadow the prospects for real economic growth. The bad news is that the Fed plans to continue buying Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities…
Breaking Up Tech Is a Gift to China`
Populist proposals would punish the companies competing with Beijing on AI and quantum. Few issues unite both sides of the political divide more than anger at U.S. tech companies, whether for censorship of conservative viewpoints or for failing to counter misinformation online. In response to these concerns, legislation introduced in Congress would weaken the U.S.…
Containment Can Work Against China, Too
In the defining geopolitical contest of this century, the U.S. is a superpower without a plan. The last two presidents have declared that our country is engaged in a historic competition with China—one that will shape the world order and the fate of human freedom. But neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden has publicly explained…
Reforming the US Immigration System to Promote Growth
While illegal immigration dominates the discussion of immigration reform in Washington, it is only part of the larger challenge of reforming America’s system of legal entry and immigration. The US immigration system is poorly designed to meet the needs of a 21st century economy. In particular, the current system fails to provide adequate opportunities for well-educated and highly skilled immigrants to join the US workforce to spur innovation, output, and job creation.
Continue Reading Reforming the US Immigration System to Promote Growth
An Asymmetric Defense of Taiwan
Editor’s Note: Writing in The National Interest, Michael O’Hanlon warns that “a promise by America to defend Taiwan does not mean that it could defend it…The most promising strategy would center on all-out economic warfare against China. The United States should cut off all trade with China at the outset of any such war, and pressure U.S.…
How to Deter China From Invading Taiwan
To change Beijing’s calculus, arm Taipei with missiles and turn the island into a ‘porcupine.’ The fall of Afghanistan and the chaotic American withdrawal have been a propaganda windfall for autocrats across the world. Nowhere has the perception of American weakness been more trumpeted than in China, where state media outlets run predictions of American…
How to Stop Politicians From Cooking the Books
How can we stop politicians from so casually lying to their stockholders (you and me) for their own short-term political benefit and to the country’s long-term financial detriment? What’s needed is the equivalent of the reforms forced on corporations 140 years ago.
One justification for the Federal Reserve is to keep the power to print money out of the hands of politicians. A Federal Accounting Board would keep the power to cook the books out of their hands as well. Like the Fed, it would be run by a board of seven members, all professional accountants of long experience, serving 14-year terms. They could be removed only for cause. One member would be appointed chairman, serving a four-year term.
The board would take over the duties of the Congressional Budget Office, and the White House Office of Management and Budget would be reduced to formulating the annual budget. The board would estimate future revenue and the costs of all legislation. It would also set the rules for how the federal books must be kept (no calling borrowed money “income”), and would determine if they are accurate and complete, as a CPA does for corporate books.
Continue Reading How to Stop Politicians From Cooking the Books
It’s the House Bill or Nothing on Immigration
America is a nation of immigrants, but we’re also a nation of laws, and the U.S. immigration system should respect both traditions. Unfortunately, the Senate immigration bill undermines the rule of law without solving the country’s illegal-immigration problem, and it will harm American workers. The House of Representatives will reject any proposal with the Senate bill’s irreparably flawed structure, which is best described as: legalization first, enforcement later . . . maybe.
This basic design flaw repeats the mistake of the 1986 amnesty law, which, according to former Attorney General Edwin Meese, President Reagan considered the biggest mistake of his presidency. The Senate bill ensures, as did the 1986 law, that we’ll have full legalization but little-to-no enforcement.
Continue Reading It’s the House Bill or Nothing on Immigration
China’s Alarming Nuclear Breakout
Beijing is adding warheads, missiles and subs at an alarming rate. The goal is global dominance. The military threat from Beijing is accelerating at a pace few anticipated. Recently released satellite imagery shows that China is rapidly constructing nearly 300 hardened underground silos in its western desert to house intercontinental ballistic missiles. Also unexpected was…
Xi’s Dictatorship Threatens the Chinese State
In his quest for personal power, he’s rejected Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform path and turned the Communist Party into an assemblage of yes-men. Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, suffers from several internal inconsistencies which greatly reduce the cohesion and effectiveness of his leadership. There is a conflict between his beliefs and his actions…
Continue Reading Xi’s Dictatorship Threatens the Chinese State
The U.S. Won Afghanistan Before Losing It
Victory came quickly to the CIA and special forces in October 2001. Then the mission changed to a self-defeating invasion. The tragedy of the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan is that days after 9/11, President George W. Bush had settled on a plan based on principles that could have ensured enduring success. Remarkably, the Pentagon had…
You’re Already Paying for That $4.5 Trillion
Taxes haven’t gone up yet, but inflation and lost productivity amount to financial repression. It’s a $4.5 trillion week in Washington. Between the infrastructure and reconciliation bills in various stages of debate, it’s worth discussing in some depth how all this will be paid for. Government spending is conventionally understood as a matter of increased…
Continue Reading You’re Already Paying for That $4.5 Trillion
The Danger of Shrinking American Naval Power
China may invade Taiwan within six years, admirals warn. Is the U.S. ready? The Chinese military will likely attack Taiwan within six years, Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in March, just before retiring from the Navy. More generally, he said, Beijing’s long-term objective—supplanting the U.S. and remaking the global order…
Continue Reading The Danger of Shrinking American Naval Power
Congress Needs to Rein In a Too-Powerful Federal Reserve
Our nation’s central bank has become too prominent, too political and too powerful.
The Fed’s ability to purchase massive quantities of U.S. Treasury securities is the dominant factor influencing interest rates across the board and thus the valuation of financial assets. The entire term structure of bond yields reflecting the relationship between short-term and long-term rates is keyed to the 10-year Treasury note rate. What would that benchmark yield reveal if Fed purchases weren’t distorting the market?
The Fed’s prominence not only undermines supply-and-demand interactions for accurately pricing the cost of investment capital; it also compromises the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy. The Fed’s accommodation of deficit spending by lawmakers poses a conflict of interest with political implications. Besides ensuring that the government’s interest expense for servicing debt is reduced, the Fed remits back to Treasury the earnings on its own holdings.
Continue Reading Congress Needs to Rein In a Too-Powerful Federal Reserve
Russia and China Eye a Retreating U.S.
Beijing will push for more sway in Pakistan; Moscow will try in Central Asia’s former Soviet republics. America’s retreat from Afghanistan is ending tragically—and that has sweeping strategic implications. One major misjudgment underlying the “ending endless wars” mantra was that withdrawing affected only Afghanistan. To the contrary, the departure constitutes a major, and deeply regrettable,…
What Children Should Be Learning
Parents are appalled by the reduction of American history to an endless exercise in identity politics and moral accusation. They fear that the study of the American past — rather than providing the young with a sense of something larger than themselves — has become something deeply negative: a way of separating us from our past and a weapon used to sow shame and resentment, and even hatred and despair, in the hearts of tomorrow’s citizens.
This is a recipe for disaster. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Good, honest curriculum is not only possible; it’s come to pass.
The Facts About H.R. 1: The “For the People Act of 2021”
SUMMARY H.R. 1 would federalize and micromanage the election process administered by the states, imposing unnecessary, unwise, and unconstitutional mandates on the states and reversing the decentralization of the American election process—which is essential to the protection of our liberty and freedom. It would (among other things) implement nationwide the worst changes in election rules…
Continue Reading The Facts About H.R. 1: The “For the People Act of 2021”
Chips Are U.S. Achilles Heel
Yet both the economic vulnerability and geopolitical risk are more acute than that picture makes it appear. A single company in Taiwan, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. , makes almost all of the world’s most sophisticated chips. It is the world’s most important semiconductor company, and its 11th most valuable one.
And what if that Taiwanese company becomes a Chinese company? Chinese President Xi Jinping this month repeated his intention to complete “reunification” with Taiwan, and the head of U.S. forces in the Pacific recently warned China could invade Taiwan by 2027 to do exactly that. While other military leaders don’t think the Chinese timetable for action is that aggressive, a takeover of Taiwan would put China in an overwhelmingly dominant position in the semiconductor business, at a time when computer chips are becoming a strategic commodity just as important as oil became in the 1970s and 1980s.
In short, the specter of semiconductor dominance could provide China an added incentive to move on Taiwan, and the U.S. an added incentive to stop China from doing so. It’s no exaggeration to say that semiconductors have the potential to cause international tension and turmoil—and even, in an extreme scenario, war.
Congress Can’t Enact a Chicken
A short lesson in basic economics
China ‘Dream’ Is Global Hegemony
China’s large-scale military buildup, regional coercion, and economic aggression are part of plan for global domination, experts told Congress on Thursday.
The nuclear and conventional weapons buildup, militarization of islets in the South China Sea and global infrastructure investments aimed at controlling nations are signs Beijing has emerged as America’s most significant national security challenge, a panel of specialists told a hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“The Chinese Communist Party is engaged in a total, protracted struggle for regional and global supremacy,” retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence chief told the committee.
Opening Our Borders Would Overwhelm America
Why can’t we just let people in? It’s a reasonable question. Anyone who has never lived in a corrupt country with no rule of law, unsafe drinking water, foul air and few opportunities to escape poverty may find it hard to fathom the desperation that drives millions to strike out for the United States.
Understanding how attractive life in America is to the 1.5 million legal and illegal aliens who arrive on these shores every year is vital to understanding why strict immigration enforcement is a necessary evil. How many might come if we loosened or even removed visa restrictions?
The annual lottery received more than 40 million applications from around the world from 2013-15, including more than a million each from Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. More than 1.7 million Ghanaians played the lottery last year.
Continue Reading Opening Our Borders Would Overwhelm America
How Adherents See ‘Critical Race Theory’
…But one thing is clear: Because the Declaration of Independence—the founding document of the American liberal order—is a product of Enlightenment rationalism, a doctrine that rejects the Enlightenment tacitly requires deconstructing the American order and rebuilding it on an entirely different foundation.
Biden’s Plan for an Entitlement Society
The federal government’s system of entitlements is the largest money-shuffling machine in human history, and President Biden intends to make it a lot bigger. His American Families Plan—which he recently attempted to tie to a bipartisan infrastructure deal—proposes to extend the reach of federal entitlements to 21 million additional Americans, the largest expansion since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.
For the first time in U.S. history…more than half of working-age households would be on the entitlement rolls if the plan were enacted in its current form. Contrary to Mr. Biden’s assertion that his plan “doesn’t add a single penny to our deficits,” his plan would add more than $1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
It’s the Entitlements, Stupid
Sen. Joe Manchin’s public support Sunday for at least $2 trillion in new spending in a partisan budget bill is a huge win for the political left. This means a giant tax-and-spend bill this year is likely, and the biggest expansion of the entitlement state since the 1960s is now possible.
The entitlements are by far the biggest long-term economic threat from the Biden agenda. Tax increases can be repealed by a future Congress. Spending on infrastructure will slow as funding falls. The courts may block his racial preferences. But entitlements that spend automatically based on eligibility are nearly impossible to repeal, or even reform, and they represent a huge tax-and-spend wedge far into the future.
The media won’t talk about this, and Republicans are so far missing in action. But Americans need to understand the stakes.
Battle Over Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory is the latest battleground in the culture war. Since the murder of George Floyd last year, critical race theory’s key concepts, including “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility,” have become ubiquitous in America’s elite institutions. Progressive politicians have sought to implement “antiracist” policies to reduce racial disparities, such as minorities-only income…
Can Vivek Ramaswamy Put Wokeism Out of Business?
Interview with Vivek Ramaswamy
How and why corporate America discovered and embraced “Wokeism” and suggested remedies – selected passages, underlines added
Continue Reading Can Vivek Ramaswamy Put Wokeism Out of Business?
The Fed’s Risky Fill-the-Punch-Bowl Strategy
The Fed should change its policy regime. It should stop buying mortgage securities immediately. Soon after, it should slow its purchases of Treasury debt. It should not tolerate Fed-financed fiscal expansion. It should unlock the handcuffs imposed by its novel doctrine and render an informed and humble judgment on the state of the economy and the attendant risks to the outlook.
Continue Reading The Fed’s Risky Fill-the-Punch-Bowl Strategy
Book Summaries
I Citizen
Two phenomena corroding self-governance and liberty are the unchecked and metastasizing agencies of the executive branch, and the shameful abdication of responsibility by our elected representatives.
The only alternative to Imperial rule from DC is self-governance within the Federalist system.
American Marxism
American Marxists call themselves progressives, democratic socialists, social activists, community activists, etc….They claim to promote economic justice, environmental justice, racial equity, gender equity…They claim the dominant culture and capitalist system are unjust, inequitable, racist and sexist…The aim is to undermine the citizenry’s confidence in the nation’s institutions and traditions, weakening the nation from within, and destroying American republicanism and capitalism.
They occupy our colleges and universities, newsrooms and social media, entertainment and boardrooms, and their ideas are increasingly influential within the Democratic Party. Their influence pervades teacher training and classroom curriculum throughout America’s public school system. They use propaganda and indoctrination, and demand conformity through cancel culture, etc. to destroy reputations and careers. They censor and ban patriotic and contrary viewpoints on social media. They attack academic freedom and intellectual diversity in higher education.
The Plot To Change America
Introduction The political purpose of identity politics is to divide the country into groups as a strategy to change America completely. Identity politics sees people’s beliefs and interests as determined by their membership in specific groups, particularly sex, race, sexual orientation, and disability status. It is an enemy of reason and Enlightenment values. Identity politics…
Suicide of the West
Humans have an innate moral sense. How we use it depends on the environment we grow up in and how we define morality. The desire for unity and distrust of strangers are universal human tendencies. Of all systems ever created that actually increases trust and cooperation among strangers none has been as successful as the market. The market lowers the level of distrust by letting very different peoples and cultures find common interest. Him… Ideology flows from human nature… and refining the definition of evil is the very essence of what civilizations do
Restore the Future
Laws are fundamental to the concept of society, and the principal differences among all societies are in the laws by which they function. By the 18th century, concepts of individual rights and laws to protect them were being developed. David Hume wrote A Treatise Of Human Nature in 1739, and John Locke in his Second Treatise On Government said that all men are endowed by a supreme being with natural rights which include life, liberty, and property and that governments are instituted for the purpose of protecting and advancing those rights
Why Government Fails So Often
Among liberal democracies, Americans are by far the most patriotic people and America has the most robust and creative civil society. …A majority now believes that big government is the biggest future threat to the country. In the 1950’s, the vast majority of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing in most instances, today only a tiny minority do. Today the public views the federal government as a chronically clumsy, ineffectual and bloated giant that can’t be counted on to the do the right thing much less do it well
The Smart Society
America’s success is heavily dependent on its bedrock of political, social, and economic institutions – a free market democracy with secure personal freedoms and property rights. The real secret to its extraordinary success is human capital. …Given the indispensable role of government in generating human capital it matters a great deal how, specifically, government executes that role. Education, productivity, and immigration are a country’s human capital tripod and government has a key role to play in each. Government support of education and basic research generates enormous benefits
Balance
Notes on BALANCE by Glenn Hubbard & Tim Kane The book is a review of the experience of great powers in world history and the political and economic lessons to be learned from studying them. Two thousand years ago, Rome was a stable and prosperous civilization. After 3 centuries of decline from the relentless stagnation…
Unintended Consequences
The world of economics is deeply divided and inherently political. Advocates for stronger incentives for risk taking and those for income redistribution each work backward from their conclusions to find a set of indisputable beliefs on which to build their arguments. The economy is so complex that it is impossible to definitively isolate the effect of any one factor. This book attempts to explain how the economy works, why the U.S. has outperformed its high wage rivals, what caused the financial crisis, and what improvements might better protect our economy without damaging its growth
The Breakdown of Higher Education
The preface cites Bloom’s, The Closing Of The American Mind, Kimball’s, Tenured Radicals, D’Souza’s, Illiberal Education, and Ellis’s, Against Deconstruction, all warning about the dangers of a radicalized campus being created by increasingly radical professors. “This book is of a different kind, since now the campus is already radicalized. …its purpose is to explain exactly what happened and what made it possible; to describe the damage done to all levels of education, ..and to our society; …and to suggest what can be done about this educational and societal catastrophe.”
Books
Reading the Right Books
Books contain the ideas, make the arguments, and preserve the history necessary for the maintenance and perpetuation of liberty. Reading the Right Books is a practical list of thoughtful and accessible books — not the “classics” but solidly good books — recommended to provide a general framework around which the reader can build a firmer…
Conservative Colleges and Universities
Hillsdale College
Hillsdale College has highly competent scholars teaching all the main academic subjects with particular emphasis on giving its students an honest understanding of American history and its founding principles and how they have influenced its development. Hillsdale has several initiatives in addition to providing an outstanding well-rounded undergraduate college education. They include very comprehensive selection…
Print resources
Untitled
Foreign Affairs