Monday, March 4, 2013
National Review Mission Statement. By William F. Buckley, Jr.
Our Mission Statement. By William F. Buckley, Jr. National Review, November 19, 1955.
Do We Need a Pro-Israel Lobby? By Martin Kramer.
Do we need a pro-Israel lobby? By Martin Kramer. Sandbox, March 4, 2013.
Review of James M. Banner, Jr., “Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History.” By Jim Cullen.
Review of James M. Banner, Jr., Being a Historian: An Introduction to the Professional World of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). By Jim Cullen. History News Network, February 24, 2013.
Cullen:
Though he has enjoyed a series of elite perches in his career, which have circled around elite research universities, the core argument of Being a Historian is a strongly ecumenical one: there are many ways to unselfconsciously claim that identity. Yes: being a historian always involves writing – but not necessarily monographs, much less books, in an age of blogs, video and other new media. Yes, historians are always teachers – but not necessarily at colleges, much less classrooms, at a time when “students” of history come in all shapes, sizes, and walks of life. Unfortunately, he notes, far too many people absorb the message that a meaningful career turns around the circumscribed compass of tenured professor. The reasons for that, he explains, are largely historical (and he duly traces the emergence of the profession in the last nineteenth century and its solidification in the first half of the twentieth). But the last few decades in in particular have witnessed a vastly expanded scope and reach for Clio in ways that its practitioners have failed to recognize, much less prepare for.
Among his more provocative observations are those that note the diminished role for style and voice in contemporary historical writing. “When have we read, as we do in literary and art criticism, of the literary influences on a historian, of the other historians from whom a scholar seems to take inspiration for argument, evidence, and style in addition to ideology and research approach of the shaping of traditions of historical writing and form rather than method or subject?” he asks in a footnote. “Historical knowledge is impoverished to the degree that question must be answered with silence.” To put the matter more succinctly: “One often summons great respect for works of history without taking much pleasure in reading them.”
All this said, there is an air of the unreal surrounding Becoming a Historian, because Banner seems to understand the principal problems with the profession in terms of misplaced perceptions and overlooked training opportunities, when its real crisis is grounded not in the preparation of scholars or in longstanding arguments about epistemology, but rather its economic foundations. He does take note of longstanding controversies like unionization efforts among graduate students or the growing – even dominant – role of adjuncts in most history departments. At one point he describes the reduction of institutional reliance on part-time faculty as “an effort broadly under way,” which seems out of touch, because there is little discernible success in this regard among historians or anyone else in higher education.
Banner seems to conceive becoming a historian in terms of talented and ambitious people assessing it as a possible career in the way they might finance or health care. (Until recently, one might have said medicine or law, but these two fields are undergoing the kind of upheaval aspiring professionals might have hoped to avoid – upheaval of the kind workers in other sectors of the global economy have taken for granted for a generation.) Instead, a decision to embark on a career as a historian today is a little closer to that of deciding to become an actor, musician or professional athlete, an ambition likely to instill concern if not terror in a parent's heart. As even the most insulated senior scholar now says as a virtual incantation: “There are no jobs.”
Of course, this is not literally true. Baby Boomers are leaving the profession all the time, and someone will get that tenure-track job -- for a while longer, anyway. And yes, there's probably more of a demand than ever for certain kinds of public history professionals, albeit on a much shakier pecuniary basis. Amid the growing power and appeal of foreign universities (which will increasingly retain their own students), the proliferation of alternative online learning opportunities (whose existential threat to smaller liberal arts colleges is quickening), and the shrinking government role in financing research and subsidizing tuition (which is forcing schools to refocus their priorities, a.k.a. reduce their program), change is coming to the historical profession – academic or civic, public or private – whether scholars want to acknowledge it or not.
To invoke a distinction Banner is careful to cultivate at the outset of this book: history will survive as discipline, as it has for thousands of years. But as a profession? That’s a lot less clear. A more likely scenario would seem to involve history as a disposition or focus for an individual teacher in a larger humanities field, which has shrunk as a locus of student interest amid well-founded anxieties about finding well-paying job (never history’s strong suit in any iteration). I happen to chair the history department of a private high school where roughly half of the teachers I supervise hold doctorates, most, though not all, refugees from the university world. But if I have my way, our department will be evolving in a significantly interdisciplinary way in which history will become one color on a palette from which students will practice the arts of reading, writing and thinking. I’ll always consider myself a historian, even though my own doctorate is in American studies. But that’s a matter of personal loyalty, not livelihood.
Cullen:
Though he has enjoyed a series of elite perches in his career, which have circled around elite research universities, the core argument of Being a Historian is a strongly ecumenical one: there are many ways to unselfconsciously claim that identity. Yes: being a historian always involves writing – but not necessarily monographs, much less books, in an age of blogs, video and other new media. Yes, historians are always teachers – but not necessarily at colleges, much less classrooms, at a time when “students” of history come in all shapes, sizes, and walks of life. Unfortunately, he notes, far too many people absorb the message that a meaningful career turns around the circumscribed compass of tenured professor. The reasons for that, he explains, are largely historical (and he duly traces the emergence of the profession in the last nineteenth century and its solidification in the first half of the twentieth). But the last few decades in in particular have witnessed a vastly expanded scope and reach for Clio in ways that its practitioners have failed to recognize, much less prepare for.
Among his more provocative observations are those that note the diminished role for style and voice in contemporary historical writing. “When have we read, as we do in literary and art criticism, of the literary influences on a historian, of the other historians from whom a scholar seems to take inspiration for argument, evidence, and style in addition to ideology and research approach of the shaping of traditions of historical writing and form rather than method or subject?” he asks in a footnote. “Historical knowledge is impoverished to the degree that question must be answered with silence.” To put the matter more succinctly: “One often summons great respect for works of history without taking much pleasure in reading them.”
All this said, there is an air of the unreal surrounding Becoming a Historian, because Banner seems to understand the principal problems with the profession in terms of misplaced perceptions and overlooked training opportunities, when its real crisis is grounded not in the preparation of scholars or in longstanding arguments about epistemology, but rather its economic foundations. He does take note of longstanding controversies like unionization efforts among graduate students or the growing – even dominant – role of adjuncts in most history departments. At one point he describes the reduction of institutional reliance on part-time faculty as “an effort broadly under way,” which seems out of touch, because there is little discernible success in this regard among historians or anyone else in higher education.
Banner seems to conceive becoming a historian in terms of talented and ambitious people assessing it as a possible career in the way they might finance or health care. (Until recently, one might have said medicine or law, but these two fields are undergoing the kind of upheaval aspiring professionals might have hoped to avoid – upheaval of the kind workers in other sectors of the global economy have taken for granted for a generation.) Instead, a decision to embark on a career as a historian today is a little closer to that of deciding to become an actor, musician or professional athlete, an ambition likely to instill concern if not terror in a parent's heart. As even the most insulated senior scholar now says as a virtual incantation: “There are no jobs.”
Of course, this is not literally true. Baby Boomers are leaving the profession all the time, and someone will get that tenure-track job -- for a while longer, anyway. And yes, there's probably more of a demand than ever for certain kinds of public history professionals, albeit on a much shakier pecuniary basis. Amid the growing power and appeal of foreign universities (which will increasingly retain their own students), the proliferation of alternative online learning opportunities (whose existential threat to smaller liberal arts colleges is quickening), and the shrinking government role in financing research and subsidizing tuition (which is forcing schools to refocus their priorities, a.k.a. reduce their program), change is coming to the historical profession – academic or civic, public or private – whether scholars want to acknowledge it or not.
To invoke a distinction Banner is careful to cultivate at the outset of this book: history will survive as discipline, as it has for thousands of years. But as a profession? That’s a lot less clear. A more likely scenario would seem to involve history as a disposition or focus for an individual teacher in a larger humanities field, which has shrunk as a locus of student interest amid well-founded anxieties about finding well-paying job (never history’s strong suit in any iteration). I happen to chair the history department of a private high school where roughly half of the teachers I supervise hold doctorates, most, though not all, refugees from the university world. But if I have my way, our department will be evolving in a significantly interdisciplinary way in which history will become one color on a palette from which students will practice the arts of reading, writing and thinking. I’ll always consider myself a historian, even though my own doctorate is in American studies. But that’s a matter of personal loyalty, not livelihood.
The American Dream: A Cultural History. Review by Jim Cullen.
Review of Lawrence R. Samuel, The American Dream: A Cultural History(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012). By Jim Cullen. Reviews in History, February 21, 2013. Also find it here.
The Sequester and the Arab Spring. By Andrew C. McCarthy.
The Sequester and the Arab Spring. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, March 2, 2013.
McCarthy:
Like the sequester molesters, “Arab Spring” devotees have their own fantasy vocabulary. The whoppers are “freedom” and “democracy,” the ideals, we’re told, that have swept the Middle East, even as it sinks into repression, social unrest, and the persecution of religious minorities. Islam and the West use the same words, but we are not conveying the same concepts — just as a “cut” in your budget means something very different from a “cut” in Washington’s.
Freedom? “Let it be known to you that the real meaning of freedom lies in the perfection of slavery,” explained al-Qushayri, a celebrated eleventh-century scholar of Islam.
I offer this bit of Islamist wisdom as an explanation, not a put-down. Not that the distinction matters much. As Spring Fever makes clear, the culture of Middle Eastern Islam is convinced of nothing so much as its own superiority. It does not judge itself by non-Islamic standards, particularly the standards of Western civilization, with which it sees itself in a conflict that will end only when one side prevails.
The dynamic, classical, supremacist Islam of the Middle East teaches that Allah has given mankind, His creation, the gift of sharia: the “path,” the all-purpose societal framework — covering all aspects of life, not just spirituality — for living in dignity through obedience. “Freedom,” in this context, is to make the “free” choice to surrender oneself entirely to this path.
That is the antithesis of a freedom to chart one’s own course, the freedom of the West. Here, Allah is not the sovereign. Our faiths may guide us, but the people are sovereign, with a right to govern civil society as they see fit — including in contradiction of sharia’s provisions, which deny what the West sees as basic civil rights.
Thus the folly of Arab Spring apologists, who envision a new generation of Muslim rulers, popularly elected and thus — the fable goes — responsive to the needs of their “constituents.” Responsive government, however, is the hallmark of societies in which freedom means self-determinism. In the Muslim Middle East, it is foolish to speak of “constituents.” The ruler’s fidelity is not to the people but to Allah. It is for the people not to dream but to obey, as long as the ruler is faithful to sharia. They don’t enjoy the prerogative of deviating from the path.
“Accommodation,” like “constituents,” is a term that echoes through the Arab Spring. Sharia must be accommodated — given pride of place in the Middle East and growing deference in the West. “Accommodation” turns out to be Arab-Spring for “balanced approach,” the oh-so-reasonable packaging of an idea that is actually perverse.
Almost never do we hear that federal law must accommodate, say, the law of Tennessee. When people’s principles are the same, their legal systems — a reflection of their notions about right and wrong — will mesh easily. When there is a conflict, it is not because of a lack of accommodation; it is because either the federal government or the state government is in error. We don’t accommodate error; we correct it, either in the legislature or in the courts.
Calling for “accommodations” is a polite way of saying that cultural values and the legal systems they create are incompatible. When a culture cedes ground to a different culture’s antithetical principle — when, for example, we are told free speech must “accommodate” sharia blasphemy laws that proscribe negative criticism of Islam — that is not a reasonable compromise. It is a corruption of the good. That is how a culturally confident society sees it.
There is a reason why the Islamic supremacists who run the Organization of Islamic Cooperation insisted in 1990 on having their own “Declaration of Human Rights In Islam.” The purportedly Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written by non-Muslim diplomats after the Second World War, does not work for them. Islamist leaders understood that Western concepts of civil rights and human rights do not jibe with sharia. They wanted their own declaration, reflecting their own very different aspirations.
Neither does “democracy” work for the Islamists on the rise across the Middle East — at least, not as we understand it in the West. For us, democracy is not a process but a way of life, a worldview implying basic assumptions about liberty and equality. To the Islamic supremacist, “Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination,” as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now Turkey’s prime minister, put it in 1998 when he was the mayor — or, as he referred to himself, the imam — of Istanbul.
The destination Erdogan had in mind is power. Not the empowerment of free people that is the genuine augur of spring. The power of the “Arab Spring” is the imposition of perfect slavery.
McCarthy:
Like the sequester molesters, “Arab Spring” devotees have their own fantasy vocabulary. The whoppers are “freedom” and “democracy,” the ideals, we’re told, that have swept the Middle East, even as it sinks into repression, social unrest, and the persecution of religious minorities. Islam and the West use the same words, but we are not conveying the same concepts — just as a “cut” in your budget means something very different from a “cut” in Washington’s.
Freedom? “Let it be known to you that the real meaning of freedom lies in the perfection of slavery,” explained al-Qushayri, a celebrated eleventh-century scholar of Islam.
I offer this bit of Islamist wisdom as an explanation, not a put-down. Not that the distinction matters much. As Spring Fever makes clear, the culture of Middle Eastern Islam is convinced of nothing so much as its own superiority. It does not judge itself by non-Islamic standards, particularly the standards of Western civilization, with which it sees itself in a conflict that will end only when one side prevails.
The dynamic, classical, supremacist Islam of the Middle East teaches that Allah has given mankind, His creation, the gift of sharia: the “path,” the all-purpose societal framework — covering all aspects of life, not just spirituality — for living in dignity through obedience. “Freedom,” in this context, is to make the “free” choice to surrender oneself entirely to this path.
That is the antithesis of a freedom to chart one’s own course, the freedom of the West. Here, Allah is not the sovereign. Our faiths may guide us, but the people are sovereign, with a right to govern civil society as they see fit — including in contradiction of sharia’s provisions, which deny what the West sees as basic civil rights.
Thus the folly of Arab Spring apologists, who envision a new generation of Muslim rulers, popularly elected and thus — the fable goes — responsive to the needs of their “constituents.” Responsive government, however, is the hallmark of societies in which freedom means self-determinism. In the Muslim Middle East, it is foolish to speak of “constituents.” The ruler’s fidelity is not to the people but to Allah. It is for the people not to dream but to obey, as long as the ruler is faithful to sharia. They don’t enjoy the prerogative of deviating from the path.
“Accommodation,” like “constituents,” is a term that echoes through the Arab Spring. Sharia must be accommodated — given pride of place in the Middle East and growing deference in the West. “Accommodation” turns out to be Arab-Spring for “balanced approach,” the oh-so-reasonable packaging of an idea that is actually perverse.
Almost never do we hear that federal law must accommodate, say, the law of Tennessee. When people’s principles are the same, their legal systems — a reflection of their notions about right and wrong — will mesh easily. When there is a conflict, it is not because of a lack of accommodation; it is because either the federal government or the state government is in error. We don’t accommodate error; we correct it, either in the legislature or in the courts.
Calling for “accommodations” is a polite way of saying that cultural values and the legal systems they create are incompatible. When a culture cedes ground to a different culture’s antithetical principle — when, for example, we are told free speech must “accommodate” sharia blasphemy laws that proscribe negative criticism of Islam — that is not a reasonable compromise. It is a corruption of the good. That is how a culturally confident society sees it.
There is a reason why the Islamic supremacists who run the Organization of Islamic Cooperation insisted in 1990 on having their own “Declaration of Human Rights In Islam.” The purportedly Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written by non-Muslim diplomats after the Second World War, does not work for them. Islamist leaders understood that Western concepts of civil rights and human rights do not jibe with sharia. They wanted their own declaration, reflecting their own very different aspirations.
Neither does “democracy” work for the Islamists on the rise across the Middle East — at least, not as we understand it in the West. For us, democracy is not a process but a way of life, a worldview implying basic assumptions about liberty and equality. To the Islamic supremacist, “Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination,” as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now Turkey’s prime minister, put it in 1998 when he was the mayor — or, as he referred to himself, the imam — of Istanbul.
The destination Erdogan had in mind is power. Not the empowerment of free people that is the genuine augur of spring. The power of the “Arab Spring” is the imposition of perfect slavery.
The Arab Spring and the Scary Hidden Stressor. By Thomas L. Friedman.
The Scary Hidden Stressor. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, March 2, 2013.
The Arab Spring and Climate Change: A Climate and Security Correlations Series. Edited by Caitlin E. Werrell, Francesco Femia. Preface by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Center for American Progress, February 28, 2013. PDF.
The Arab Spring and Climate Change: A Climate and Security Correlations Series. Edited by Caitlin E. Werrell, Francesco Femia. Preface by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Center for American Progress, February 28, 2013. PDF.
Zhang Xin: China’s Real Estate Mogul. By Lesley Stahl
Zhang Xin: China’s Real Estate Mogul. By Lesley Stahl. Video. 60 Minutes, March 3, 2013. Transcript. YouTube. Complete 60 Minutes episode for March 3, 2013 here.
Fareed Zakaria Talks to Chinese Developer Zhang Xin. Video. Fareed Zakaria GPS, June 20, 2010. YouTube. Transcript.
More interviews with Zhang Xin, here, here, and here.
Stahl:
No one symbolizes China’s rapid 30-year rise – from the backwaters of communism to the second largest economy in the world – better than real estate developer Zhang Xin.
What’s interesting about her is that while we think of China as being uncreative, repressive and as far as you can get from the American dream, she breaks every one of those stereotypes.
She’s a mogul who got her start not in China, but on Wall Street. But she missed the Great Wall, so she went back home, and made it big!
The mogul, Zhang Xin, is the fifth richest self-made billionaire woman in the world.
[Zhang Xin: This is us. The one outside is us.]
She’s pointing out her buildings. With her partner husband, she has built more of Beijing than almost any emperor in China’s history.
. . . . . . . . . .
Zhang Xin: China is the place that produced more self-made billionaires than any other country in the world.
Lesley Stahl: Do you know what the American dream is?
Zhang Xin: Uh-huh.
Lesley Stahl: It sounds like the American dream – doesn’t it?
Zhang Xin: Uh-huh. Very much so.
. . . . . . . . . .
Lesley Stahl: She believes open market tools like public auctions and transparent accounting will lessen the corruption and the cronyism. The woman who once slept on a dictionary, and now has about $3 billion in her bank account, may tout China as the new land of opportunity, but she knows it’s still not the land of the free.
Zhang Xin: You know, I hear a lot in the U.S., people praise Wall Street, people praise state capitalism in China, “Look at how efficient things get done. Decisions get made so quick and so effective. It can roll over a policy overnight nationwide. And here in the U.S., we need to go through Congress, Senate, and debate.” And you know, I have to say, for a Chinese living in China, Chinese—if you ask one thing, everyone craves for is what? It’s not food. It’s not homes. Everyone crave for democracy. I know there’s a lot of negativities in the U.S. about the political system, but don’t forget, you know, 8,000 miles away, people in China are looking at it, longing for it.
Lesley Stahl: Do you think there will be democracy here? Let’s say, I’ll put a time frame on it, in 20 years?
Zhang Xin: Sooner.
Lesley Stahl: You’re an optimist.
Zhang Xin: I am.
Lesley Stahl: A bold statement in a country with heavy government censorship and limited freedom of speech.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
The Republican Path Ahead. By Peter Wehner.
The Republican Path Ahead. By Peter Wehner. Commentary, March 1, 2013.
Party, Heal Thyself. By Pete Wehner. Time, March 11, 2013. Also find it here.
How to Save the Republican Party. By Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner. Commentary, March 2013.
Wehner, Party Heal Thyself:
There are, we’re told, five stages of grief. A political party, in the wake of a devastating loss, goes through something similar. Shock gives way to a (short) season of self-reflection—but what emerges on the other side varies. Sometimes people draw opposing conclusions. Such is the state of the Republican Party right now.
Republicans seem to have broken into three camps. One is composed of those who believe that concerns about the party are vastly overstated. The argument goes something like this: America remains a center-right country. Barack Obama had a once-in-a-generation appeal to the Democratic base that can't be replicated. All the GOP needs is an attractive torchbearer, better messaging, a tweak or two, and all will be right with the world once more.
A second camp argues that the problem with the GOP is insufficient purity. Those who hold this outlook believe that by nominating moderates like John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, the Republican Party didn't offer enough of a contrast with Obama. Victory depends on dusting off the old Ronald Reagan playbook. It worked in 1980 and 1984, and it would work for the GOP today. In the process, the party needs to expel heretics from the temple—which in this case means attacking RINOs (Republicans in name only) and members of the loathsome Establishment.
A third camp, in which I place myself, believes the party is in a precarious position because it faces systemic problems and alarming demographic trends. Which means a significant recalibration is in order. This doesn’t mean jettisoning the GOP’s core commitments to limited government, economic growth and protecting unborn children. Nor does it mean the Republican Party should become more moderate. What it does mean is that the GOP has to become more modern, more reform-minded and more aggressive in repositioning itself through a series of policy innovations. This involves identifying areas of weakness and designing a set of proposals to address them. Some examples: To combat the impression that the GOP is beholden to the top 1%, Republicans should champion ending corporate welfare as we know it, breaking up the megabanks, increasing the child tax credit and encouraging upward mobility through education reform. On immigration, we should support better border security and a path to legal status and eventually citizenship for undocumented workers. The GOP, perceived as hyperindividualistic, should demonstrate its commitment to the common good by supporting civil-society groups working to expand adoption, the next stages of welfare reform, overhauling our prison system and the cultural assimilation of immigrants. Republicans also have to accept that in large parts of America, opposition to same-sex marriage is a losing battle—but that cannot keep the GOP from being consistent about the importance of marriage itself and taking steps to fortify it.
But creative policy proposals, while essential, are insufficient. Something deeper needs to occur. The party must shake off an intellectual rigidity that has set in. Some examples of this include declaring that not raising taxes is an inviolable principle rather than a reasonable policy judgment and insisting that global warming is a hoax. And a self-confident conservative movement would not bar the gay group GOProud or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie from its events, as the Conservative Political Action Conference has done. The theory of addition through subtraction doesn't work in mathematics or politics.
There is an alternative conservative tradition to draw on that seeks to accommodate timeless principles to shifting circumstances, that rejects unyielding orthodoxy and believes prudence, not purity, is the cardinal political virtue. And while it believes in limited government, it is not carelessly antigovernment. The 19th century economist Alfred Marshall elegantly described government as “the most precious of human institutions, and no care can be too great to be spent on enabling it to do its work in the best way. A chief condition to that end is that it should not be set to work for which it is not specifically qualified, under the conditions of time and place.”
Now for the good news: There is an unmistakable, if far from complete, movement in this direction since the 2012 defeat. An intellectual unfreezing is taking place. It’s actually a pretty interesting time to be a Republican. The Democratic Party found itself in a similar moment in the early 1990s. The party was open to a New Democrat—and out of this emerged William Jefferson Clinton. The GOP awaits its version of the man from Hope.
Wehner, Path Ahead:
I’d add to this several other suggestions.
First, Republicans should make front-and-center their plans to reform public institutions that were designed for the needs of the mid-20th century. Our health-care and entitlement system, tax code, schools, immigration policies and regulatory regime are outdated, breaking down, and creating substantial wreckage. If I had to boil it down to a single sentence, I’d urge the GOP to develop its reputation as the party of reform and modernization.
Second, Republican leaders at every level need to conduct themselves in a manner that not just reassures voters but appeals to them. As former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has put it, “as we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit.” This is not just a matter of style; it’s a disposition that reflects an approach to the world. And it matters.
Third, Republicans must resist the temptation of defeatism, enervation, and turning against the country. It is entirely within the power of the GOP to both remain principled and appeal to a majority of Americans. An intellectually self-confident party would, in fact, be energized by a challenge of this scale.
But it seems to me that the main reason for Republicans to be confident, and the main reason they should act quickly to revive their party, is that reactionary liberalism is exhausted. It has nothing to offer when it comes to the greatest domestic threats facing America: our massive fiscal imbalance, the impending collapse of our entitlement programs, our insanely complicated and inefficient tax code, and anemic economic growth. By the end of President Obama’s second term, the Affordable Care Act will be viewed as a monumental failure. Liberals will have had nothing useful to say about combating poverty, improving education, energy independence or stabilizing a disordered and dangerous world. The propositions of progressivism will have been tried and found wanting in almost every respect. The public will again turn to the Republican Party.
For the GOP to fully reposition itself will require the right presidential nominee to emerge. But the groundwork needs to begin–has begun–with governors, members of Congress, public intellectuals and policy entrepreneurs.
In 1980, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan admitted, “Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas.” As it was, so shall it be again.
Party, Heal Thyself. By Pete Wehner. Time, March 11, 2013. Also find it here.
How to Save the Republican Party. By Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner. Commentary, March 2013.
Wehner, Party Heal Thyself:
There are, we’re told, five stages of grief. A political party, in the wake of a devastating loss, goes through something similar. Shock gives way to a (short) season of self-reflection—but what emerges on the other side varies. Sometimes people draw opposing conclusions. Such is the state of the Republican Party right now.
Republicans seem to have broken into three camps. One is composed of those who believe that concerns about the party are vastly overstated. The argument goes something like this: America remains a center-right country. Barack Obama had a once-in-a-generation appeal to the Democratic base that can't be replicated. All the GOP needs is an attractive torchbearer, better messaging, a tweak or two, and all will be right with the world once more.
A second camp argues that the problem with the GOP is insufficient purity. Those who hold this outlook believe that by nominating moderates like John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012, the Republican Party didn't offer enough of a contrast with Obama. Victory depends on dusting off the old Ronald Reagan playbook. It worked in 1980 and 1984, and it would work for the GOP today. In the process, the party needs to expel heretics from the temple—which in this case means attacking RINOs (Republicans in name only) and members of the loathsome Establishment.
A third camp, in which I place myself, believes the party is in a precarious position because it faces systemic problems and alarming demographic trends. Which means a significant recalibration is in order. This doesn’t mean jettisoning the GOP’s core commitments to limited government, economic growth and protecting unborn children. Nor does it mean the Republican Party should become more moderate. What it does mean is that the GOP has to become more modern, more reform-minded and more aggressive in repositioning itself through a series of policy innovations. This involves identifying areas of weakness and designing a set of proposals to address them. Some examples: To combat the impression that the GOP is beholden to the top 1%, Republicans should champion ending corporate welfare as we know it, breaking up the megabanks, increasing the child tax credit and encouraging upward mobility through education reform. On immigration, we should support better border security and a path to legal status and eventually citizenship for undocumented workers. The GOP, perceived as hyperindividualistic, should demonstrate its commitment to the common good by supporting civil-society groups working to expand adoption, the next stages of welfare reform, overhauling our prison system and the cultural assimilation of immigrants. Republicans also have to accept that in large parts of America, opposition to same-sex marriage is a losing battle—but that cannot keep the GOP from being consistent about the importance of marriage itself and taking steps to fortify it.
But creative policy proposals, while essential, are insufficient. Something deeper needs to occur. The party must shake off an intellectual rigidity that has set in. Some examples of this include declaring that not raising taxes is an inviolable principle rather than a reasonable policy judgment and insisting that global warming is a hoax. And a self-confident conservative movement would not bar the gay group GOProud or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie from its events, as the Conservative Political Action Conference has done. The theory of addition through subtraction doesn't work in mathematics or politics.
There is an alternative conservative tradition to draw on that seeks to accommodate timeless principles to shifting circumstances, that rejects unyielding orthodoxy and believes prudence, not purity, is the cardinal political virtue. And while it believes in limited government, it is not carelessly antigovernment. The 19th century economist Alfred Marshall elegantly described government as “the most precious of human institutions, and no care can be too great to be spent on enabling it to do its work in the best way. A chief condition to that end is that it should not be set to work for which it is not specifically qualified, under the conditions of time and place.”
Now for the good news: There is an unmistakable, if far from complete, movement in this direction since the 2012 defeat. An intellectual unfreezing is taking place. It’s actually a pretty interesting time to be a Republican. The Democratic Party found itself in a similar moment in the early 1990s. The party was open to a New Democrat—and out of this emerged William Jefferson Clinton. The GOP awaits its version of the man from Hope.
Wehner, Path Ahead:
I’d add to this several other suggestions.
First, Republicans should make front-and-center their plans to reform public institutions that were designed for the needs of the mid-20th century. Our health-care and entitlement system, tax code, schools, immigration policies and regulatory regime are outdated, breaking down, and creating substantial wreckage. If I had to boil it down to a single sentence, I’d urge the GOP to develop its reputation as the party of reform and modernization.
Second, Republican leaders at every level need to conduct themselves in a manner that not just reassures voters but appeals to them. As former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has put it, “as we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit.” This is not just a matter of style; it’s a disposition that reflects an approach to the world. And it matters.
Third, Republicans must resist the temptation of defeatism, enervation, and turning against the country. It is entirely within the power of the GOP to both remain principled and appeal to a majority of Americans. An intellectually self-confident party would, in fact, be energized by a challenge of this scale.
But it seems to me that the main reason for Republicans to be confident, and the main reason they should act quickly to revive their party, is that reactionary liberalism is exhausted. It has nothing to offer when it comes to the greatest domestic threats facing America: our massive fiscal imbalance, the impending collapse of our entitlement programs, our insanely complicated and inefficient tax code, and anemic economic growth. By the end of President Obama’s second term, the Affordable Care Act will be viewed as a monumental failure. Liberals will have had nothing useful to say about combating poverty, improving education, energy independence or stabilizing a disordered and dangerous world. The propositions of progressivism will have been tried and found wanting in almost every respect. The public will again turn to the Republican Party.
For the GOP to fully reposition itself will require the right presidential nominee to emerge. But the groundwork needs to begin–has begun–with governors, members of Congress, public intellectuals and policy entrepreneurs.
In 1980, Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan admitted, “Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas.” As it was, so shall it be again.
Republicans and Their Faulty Moral Arithmetic. By Arthur Brooks.
Republicans and Their Faulty Moral Arithmetic. By Arthur Brooks. Wall Street Journal, March 3, 2013.
Brooks:
In the waning days of the 1992 presidential campaign, President George H.W. Bush trailed Bill Clinton in the polls. The conventional wisdom was that Mr. Bush seemed too aloof from voters struggling economically. At a rally in New Hampshire, the exhausted president started what was probably the fourth campaign speech of the day by reading aloud what may have been handed to him as a stage direction: “Message: I care.”
How little things have changed for Republicans in 20 years. There is only one statistic needed to explain the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. An April YouGov.com poll—which mirrored every other poll on the subject—found that only 33% of Americans said that Mitt Romney “cares about people like me.” Only 38% said he cared about the poor.
Conservatives rightly complain that this perception was inflamed by President Obama’s class-warfare campaign theme. But perception is political reality, and over the decades many Americans have become convinced that conservatives care only about the rich and powerful.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. If Republicans and conservatives double down on the promotion of economic growth, job creation and traditional values, Americans might turn away from softheaded concerns about “caring.” Right?
Wrong. As New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown in his research on 132,000 Americans, care for the vulnerable is a universal moral concern in the U.S. In his best-selling 2012 book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Mr. Haidt demonstrated that citizens across the political spectrum place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak. By contrast, moral values such as sexual purity and respect for authority—to which conservative politicians often give greater emphasis—resonate deeply with only a minority of the population. Raw money arguments, e.g., about the dire effects of the country’s growing entitlement spending, don’t register morally at all.
Conservatives are fighting a losing battle of moral arithmetic. They hand an argument with virtually 100% public support—care for the vulnerable—to progressives, and focus instead on materialistic concerns and minority moral viewpoints.
The irony is maddening. America’s poor people have been saddled with generations of disastrous progressive policy results, from welfare-induced dependency to failing schools that continue to trap millions of children.
Meanwhile, the record of free enterprise in improving the lives of the poor both here and abroad is spectacular. According to Columbia University economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin, the percentage of people in the world living on a dollar a day or less—a traditional poverty measure—has fallen by 80% since 1970. This is the greatest antipoverty achievement in world history. That achievement is not the result of philanthropy or foreign aid. It occurred because billions of souls have been able to pull themselves out of poverty thanks to global free trade, property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship.
The left talks a big game about helping the bottom half, but its policies are gradually ruining the economy, which will have catastrophic results once the safety net is no longer affordable. Labyrinthine regulations, punitive taxation and wage distortions destroy the ability to create private-sector jobs. Opportunities for Americans on the bottom to better their station in life are being erased.
Some say the solution for conservatives is either to redouble the attacks on big government per se, or give up and try to build a better welfare state. Neither path is correct. Raging against government debt and tax rates that most Americans don’t pay gets conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an exercise in futility to compete with liberals on government spending and transfers.
Instead, the answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools.
Defending a healthy culture of family, community and work does not mean imposing an alien “bourgeois” morality on others. It is to recognize what people need to be happy and successful—and what is most missing today in the lives of too many poor people.
By making the vulnerable a primary focus, conservatives will be better able to confront some common blind spots. Corporate cronyism should be decried as every bit as noxious as statism, because it unfairly rewards the powerful and well-connected at the expense of ordinary citizens. Entrepreneurship should not to be extolled as a path to accumulating wealth but as a celebration of everyday men and women who want to build their own lives, whether they start a business and make a lot of money or not. And conservatives should instinctively welcome the immigrants who want to earn their success in America.
With this moral touchstone, conservative leaders will be able to stand before Americans who are struggling and feel marginalized and say, “We will fight for you and your family, whether you vote for us or not”—and truly mean it. In the end that approach will win. But more important, it is the right thing to do.
Brooks:
In the waning days of the 1992 presidential campaign, President George H.W. Bush trailed Bill Clinton in the polls. The conventional wisdom was that Mr. Bush seemed too aloof from voters struggling economically. At a rally in New Hampshire, the exhausted president started what was probably the fourth campaign speech of the day by reading aloud what may have been handed to him as a stage direction: “Message: I care.”
How little things have changed for Republicans in 20 years. There is only one statistic needed to explain the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. An April YouGov.com poll—which mirrored every other poll on the subject—found that only 33% of Americans said that Mitt Romney “cares about people like me.” Only 38% said he cared about the poor.
Conservatives rightly complain that this perception was inflamed by President Obama’s class-warfare campaign theme. But perception is political reality, and over the decades many Americans have become convinced that conservatives care only about the rich and powerful.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. If Republicans and conservatives double down on the promotion of economic growth, job creation and traditional values, Americans might turn away from softheaded concerns about “caring.” Right?
Wrong. As New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown in his research on 132,000 Americans, care for the vulnerable is a universal moral concern in the U.S. In his best-selling 2012 book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Mr. Haidt demonstrated that citizens across the political spectrum place a great importance on taking care of those in need and avoiding harm to the weak. By contrast, moral values such as sexual purity and respect for authority—to which conservative politicians often give greater emphasis—resonate deeply with only a minority of the population. Raw money arguments, e.g., about the dire effects of the country’s growing entitlement spending, don’t register morally at all.
Conservatives are fighting a losing battle of moral arithmetic. They hand an argument with virtually 100% public support—care for the vulnerable—to progressives, and focus instead on materialistic concerns and minority moral viewpoints.
The irony is maddening. America’s poor people have been saddled with generations of disastrous progressive policy results, from welfare-induced dependency to failing schools that continue to trap millions of children.
Meanwhile, the record of free enterprise in improving the lives of the poor both here and abroad is spectacular. According to Columbia University economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin, the percentage of people in the world living on a dollar a day or less—a traditional poverty measure—has fallen by 80% since 1970. This is the greatest antipoverty achievement in world history. That achievement is not the result of philanthropy or foreign aid. It occurred because billions of souls have been able to pull themselves out of poverty thanks to global free trade, property rights, the rule of law and entrepreneurship.
The left talks a big game about helping the bottom half, but its policies are gradually ruining the economy, which will have catastrophic results once the safety net is no longer affordable. Labyrinthine regulations, punitive taxation and wage distortions destroy the ability to create private-sector jobs. Opportunities for Americans on the bottom to better their station in life are being erased.
Some say the solution for conservatives is either to redouble the attacks on big government per se, or give up and try to build a better welfare state. Neither path is correct. Raging against government debt and tax rates that most Americans don’t pay gets conservatives nowhere, and it will always be an exercise in futility to compete with liberals on government spending and transfers.
Instead, the answer is to make improving the lives of vulnerable people the primary focus of authentically conservative policies. For example, the core problem with out-of-control entitlements is not that they are costly—it is that the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare imperils the social safety net for the neediest citizens. Education innovation and school choice are not needed to fight rapacious unions and bureaucrats—too often the most prominent focus of conservative education concerns—but because poor children and their parents deserve better schools.
Defending a healthy culture of family, community and work does not mean imposing an alien “bourgeois” morality on others. It is to recognize what people need to be happy and successful—and what is most missing today in the lives of too many poor people.
By making the vulnerable a primary focus, conservatives will be better able to confront some common blind spots. Corporate cronyism should be decried as every bit as noxious as statism, because it unfairly rewards the powerful and well-connected at the expense of ordinary citizens. Entrepreneurship should not to be extolled as a path to accumulating wealth but as a celebration of everyday men and women who want to build their own lives, whether they start a business and make a lot of money or not. And conservatives should instinctively welcome the immigrants who want to earn their success in America.
With this moral touchstone, conservative leaders will be able to stand before Americans who are struggling and feel marginalized and say, “We will fight for you and your family, whether you vote for us or not”—and truly mean it. In the end that approach will win. But more important, it is the right thing to do.
Palestinian-American Comedian Jennifer Jajeh Takes Show on Identity to Beirut. By Antoun Issa.
Jennifer
Jajeh, a Palestinian-American comedian, poses in a T-shirt advertising her “I
Heart Hamas” show. (photo by Mareesa Stertz.)
Palestinian-American Comedian Takes Show on Identity to Beirut. By Antoun Issa. Al-Monitor, December 9, 2012.
I Heart Hamas?! By Rae Abilieah. Tikkun, July 19, 2012.
I Heart Hamas website.
“I Heart Hamas” Promo Video. Jen Jajeh, August 21, 2009. YouTube.
Ask a Palestinian. Excerpt from “I Heart Hamas.” Jen Jajeh, September 8, 2010. YouTube.
Ask a Palestinian. Excerpt from “I Heart Hamas.” Jen Jajeh, September 8, 2010. YouTube.
Israel Looks Inward. By Einat Wilf.
Israel Looks Inward. By Einat Wilf. Al-Monitor, February 27, 2013.
Wilf:
The Israeli elections were not about peace, and had very little to say on the matter. When the world was asking whether Israelis have swung to the right or the left or even the center, Israelis were thinking in very different terms. No longer right or left, but rather inward or outward — and their response was a resounding “inward.” To borrow the American term, Israelis have chosen to focus on “nation building at home.”
Many Israel-watchers were appalled by such a choice. How could Israelis choose to focus inward when the Arab world around them is going up in flames, when they continue to control the increasingly restless West Bank and when Iran shows no signs of giving up its quest for nuclear weapons capability? Some exasperated commentators have interpreted this inward focus as escapism or even callousness.
But Israelis made a rational choice. They were neither escaping reality nor being indifferent to it. Israelis took a look around them — at the Arab world, at the West Bank, at Iran — and realized that they are not likely to face any major policy choices on these fronts anytime soon. Whether analytically or instinctively, they understood that the Arab world will be overwhelmed by its own problems for years to come. The Arabs in the West Bank, while continuing to detest Israel’s control over them and oppose it, are still unable to make the difficult choices that would yield an agreement that would end this control, and the Iranian issue, while critical, depends on a wide range of factors and cannot be decided by a national vote.
The inward-looking Israeli choice explains Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented and unparalleled status as the only person that Israel is willing to accept as prime minister at this time. Having delivered four years of rare calm and stability, as revolutions were sweeping the Arab world, Israelis have chosen to “subcontract” all foreign and defense policy to Netanyahu, so as to focus on domestic issues. They realized that while Netanyahu might not deliver peace, he is also unlikely to entangle them in war. At a time of deep uncertainty, they found this prospect comforting.
Israelis were also taking a page from their own history. They reminded themselves that while the conflict with the Arab world has been raging for more than a century, it has never stopped them in the past from building their society, culture and economy. They realized that the fact that there might be no immediate solution to the conflict with the Arab world does not mean that they have to put their lives as a people and a country on hold. This is not to say that achieving peace is no longer the highest priority for Israelis, but in the absence of a realistic chance of achieving it, the rational course for a productive and dynamic people is to turn their energies elsewhere.
Wilf:
The Israeli elections were not about peace, and had very little to say on the matter. When the world was asking whether Israelis have swung to the right or the left or even the center, Israelis were thinking in very different terms. No longer right or left, but rather inward or outward — and their response was a resounding “inward.” To borrow the American term, Israelis have chosen to focus on “nation building at home.”
Many Israel-watchers were appalled by such a choice. How could Israelis choose to focus inward when the Arab world around them is going up in flames, when they continue to control the increasingly restless West Bank and when Iran shows no signs of giving up its quest for nuclear weapons capability? Some exasperated commentators have interpreted this inward focus as escapism or even callousness.
But Israelis made a rational choice. They were neither escaping reality nor being indifferent to it. Israelis took a look around them — at the Arab world, at the West Bank, at Iran — and realized that they are not likely to face any major policy choices on these fronts anytime soon. Whether analytically or instinctively, they understood that the Arab world will be overwhelmed by its own problems for years to come. The Arabs in the West Bank, while continuing to detest Israel’s control over them and oppose it, are still unable to make the difficult choices that would yield an agreement that would end this control, and the Iranian issue, while critical, depends on a wide range of factors and cannot be decided by a national vote.
The inward-looking Israeli choice explains Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented and unparalleled status as the only person that Israel is willing to accept as prime minister at this time. Having delivered four years of rare calm and stability, as revolutions were sweeping the Arab world, Israelis have chosen to “subcontract” all foreign and defense policy to Netanyahu, so as to focus on domestic issues. They realized that while Netanyahu might not deliver peace, he is also unlikely to entangle them in war. At a time of deep uncertainty, they found this prospect comforting.
Israelis were also taking a page from their own history. They reminded themselves that while the conflict with the Arab world has been raging for more than a century, it has never stopped them in the past from building their society, culture and economy. They realized that the fact that there might be no immediate solution to the conflict with the Arab world does not mean that they have to put their lives as a people and a country on hold. This is not to say that achieving peace is no longer the highest priority for Israelis, but in the absence of a realistic chance of achieving it, the rational course for a productive and dynamic people is to turn their energies elsewhere.
Morsi and the General. By Daniel Nisman.
Morsi and the General. By Daniel Nisman. Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2013.
The armed forces may be laying groundwork to return Egypt to military rule.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Nisman:
Gen. Sissi has continued to publicly deny any intentions to seize power unless he is “called upon by the people” to do so—a hazy notion which has sparked fears of a coup within the Brotherhood leadership. On Feb. 20, the Egyptian press reported that the SCAF had been holding meetings behind closed doors in the president’s absence on matters relating to security and stability. Since then, Egyptian media has been awash with rumors over a possible scheme by the president to sack Gen. Sissi as he did Field Marshal Tantawi.
While both sides strongly denied those rumors, my sources in Egypt believe they were circulated by senior Brotherhood members to test the public's reaction to idea of such a move against Gen. Sissi.
Currently, neither President Morsi nor Gen. Sissi looks to be in a position to overpower the other. But the Machiavellian discipline displayed by the general may just be enough to outlast the Islamist politician. Egypt's secular opposition remains in disarray, unable to prove its worth as a viable alternative to President Morsi’s floundering leadership. That leaves Gen. Sissi’s increasingly trusted military as the only entity with the influence and organization needed to bring Egypt back from the brink of collapse.
The armed forces may be laying groundwork to return Egypt to military rule.
More on Morsi and Egypt here.
Nisman:
Gen. Sissi has continued to publicly deny any intentions to seize power unless he is “called upon by the people” to do so—a hazy notion which has sparked fears of a coup within the Brotherhood leadership. On Feb. 20, the Egyptian press reported that the SCAF had been holding meetings behind closed doors in the president’s absence on matters relating to security and stability. Since then, Egyptian media has been awash with rumors over a possible scheme by the president to sack Gen. Sissi as he did Field Marshal Tantawi.
While both sides strongly denied those rumors, my sources in Egypt believe they were circulated by senior Brotherhood members to test the public's reaction to idea of such a move against Gen. Sissi.
Currently, neither President Morsi nor Gen. Sissi looks to be in a position to overpower the other. But the Machiavellian discipline displayed by the general may just be enough to outlast the Islamist politician. Egypt's secular opposition remains in disarray, unable to prove its worth as a viable alternative to President Morsi’s floundering leadership. That leaves Gen. Sissi’s increasingly trusted military as the only entity with the influence and organization needed to bring Egypt back from the brink of collapse.
ObamaCare and the Sequester Ideologues. By Jonathan S. Tobin.
ObamaCare and the Sequester Ideologues. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, March 1, 2013.
How James K. Polk Created a Continental America. By Dick Morris.
How James K. Polk Created a Continental America. By Dick Morris. Video. DickMorris.com, March 2, 2013.
Syrian war is everybody’s problem. By Frida Ghitis.
Syrian war is everybody’s problem. By Frida Ghitis. CNN, March 3, 2013.
Confronting Taboos in the Egyptian Public Square. By Sara Salem.
Confronting Taboos in the Egyptian Public Square. By Sara Salem. Muftah, February 20, 2013.
Who Decides?: Western Knowledge and Arab Revolutions. By Magid Shihade.
Who Decides?: Western Knowledge and Arab Revolutions. By Magid Shihade. Muftah, February 19, 2013.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
In Russia, Women Can Be Beaten with Impunity. By Oleg Boldyrev.
The silent nightmare of domestic violence in Russia. By Oleg Boldyrev. BBC News, February 28, 2013.
The Muslim Brothers Crave Legitimization More Than Aid. By Issandr El Amrani.
The Brothers crave legitimization more than aid. By Issandr El Amrani. Your Middle East, March 2, 2013.
What the U.S. can do for Egypt. By Tamara Cofman Wittes. Foreign Policy, March 1, 2013.
The brave citizen journalists of Egypt. By Said Hamideh. Your Middle East, March 2, 2013.
More on Egypt and Morsi here.
What the U.S. can do for Egypt. By Tamara Cofman Wittes. Foreign Policy, March 1, 2013.
The brave citizen journalists of Egypt. By Said Hamideh. Your Middle East, March 2, 2013.
More on Egypt and Morsi here.
Take Off the Mask – Israelis and Arabs. By David Ha’ivri.
Take Off the Mask – Israelis and Arabs. By David Ha’ivri. Your Middle East, March 1, 2013.
Time to remove Israel’s mask. By Avi Zimmerman. The Times of Israel, February 24, 2013.
Know Your Israeli Enemy. By Amal Al-Hazzani. Asharq Al-Awsat, February 7, 2013.
The Israel We Do Not Know. By Amal Al-Hazzani. Asharq Al-Awsat, January 31, 2013.
Time to remove Israel’s mask. By Avi Zimmerman. The Times of Israel, February 24, 2013.
Know Your Israeli Enemy. By Amal Al-Hazzani. Asharq Al-Awsat, February 7, 2013.
The Israel We Do Not Know. By Amal Al-Hazzani. Asharq Al-Awsat, January 31, 2013.
A Simmering Arab Sexual Revolution. By Doug Saunders.
The Harlem shake and a simmering Arab sexual revolution. By Doug Saunders. The Globe and Mail, March 2, 2013.
Meet a famous Arab sex therapist. By Shereen El Feki. The Globe and Mail, March 1, 2013.
The fight against sexual assault on Tahrir Square. Editorial. Your Middle East, February 21, 2013.
Syrians find love in time of war. AFP. Your Middle East, September 1, 2012.
More on Egypt and Morsi here.
Saunders:
There was something enthralling in the sight, on Thursday night, of young Egyptians, some clad in underwear, making rhythmic pelvic thrusts in front of the Cairo headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Harlem Shake is an unlikely medium of revolution, but the dance craze this week became the latest front in the showdown between Islamic politics and the drive toward individualism and independence.
Which is winning? At first glance, things look pretty dark: Two years after anti-authoritarian revolutions ruptured the Middle East and North Africa, the forces of Islamic conservatism generally have the upper hand. Their restrictive views, especially around matters of women, sexuality and personal life, are beginning to manifest on the street.
Beneath the surface, something more complex appears to be taking place – perhaps not a whole country embracing the libertine abandon of those dancers, but an Arab world that is making the break, however slowly and awkwardly, from the restrictions of traditional family life.
“In broad strokes,” the Egyptian-Canadian writer Shereen El Feki writes in Sex and the Citadel, her fascinating new survey of the intimate lives of women in the Arab world and especially in Cairo, “this sexual climate looks a lot like the West on the brink of the sexual revolution.”
That is a fairly startling statement, especially given how atrocious life is for a majority of women in Egypt. This is a country where more than 90 per cent of married women have had genital-mutilating operations between the ages of 9 and 12, and where a third of them believe that these clitorectomies prevent sexual promiscuity (even though most prostitutes have undergone the procedure). It is a place where 60 per cent of highly educated women (and three-quarters of less-educated women) believe that women who dress “provocatively” are at fault if they are raped – and where domestic abuse and sex assaults are measured at levels many times higher than the worst places in the West.
Worse, there is a highly popular belief, across the Arab world and especially strong in Egypt, that women are fragile things in need of protection. As the Salafist TV-star imam Mahmoud al-Masry tells Ms. El Feki, “I believe that the woman is like a diamond, to be preserved. We do not suppress or oppress the woman – I want to protect her.” That, of course, is the ultimate form of denigration; it is accompanied by an equally widespread and often grotesque fetishization of virginity.
With those ingredients, how could anyone be hopeful? For one thing, because none of it is timeless or inevitable: Much of the sexual conservatism, and extreme restriction of women’s liberties (including the covering of heads) is a development of the colonial years and their aftermath, an angry generation’s reaction to isolation and deprivation.
But also because Arab family life is changing very fast – especially in two crucial ways. The first is female literacy, which has risen from less than a quarter in 1980 to about 65 per cent today. The second is family size: In 1960, the average Egyptian woman had almost seven children; today it is 2.7, and falling fast. This isn’t as dramatic a change as in Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates, which now have European-sized families, but it is a crucial indicator: Everywhere in the world (including every Western country), the moment when sexual and gender relations began to transform dramatically followed the moment when female literacy passed above 50 per cent and family sizes began to fall sharply.
And wherever this change has occurred, it has been accompanied by social tension and often political turmoil. It is, in the words of the demographer Youssef Courbage, who has chronicled this dramatic “secularization of family life” in the Arab world, “not at all necessary to speculate about some particular essence of Islam in order to explain the violence now stirring the Muslim world. That world is disoriented because it is undergoing the shock of the revolution in modes of thought associated with increased literacy and widespread birth control.”
This is what Ms. El Feki has seen beneath the head scarves of Cairo: “struggles toward democracy and personal rights; the rapid growth of cities and a growing strain on family structures; loosening community controls on private behaviour; a huge population of young people whose influences and attitudes diverge from those of their parents.” It is, she says, a sexual revolution “in embryo” – visible, sometimes, only in the odd burst of Harlem Shake.
Meet a famous Arab sex therapist. By Shereen El Feki. The Globe and Mail, March 1, 2013.
The fight against sexual assault on Tahrir Square. Editorial. Your Middle East, February 21, 2013.
Syrians find love in time of war. AFP. Your Middle East, September 1, 2012.
More on Egypt and Morsi here.
Saunders:
There was something enthralling in the sight, on Thursday night, of young Egyptians, some clad in underwear, making rhythmic pelvic thrusts in front of the Cairo headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Harlem Shake is an unlikely medium of revolution, but the dance craze this week became the latest front in the showdown between Islamic politics and the drive toward individualism and independence.
Which is winning? At first glance, things look pretty dark: Two years after anti-authoritarian revolutions ruptured the Middle East and North Africa, the forces of Islamic conservatism generally have the upper hand. Their restrictive views, especially around matters of women, sexuality and personal life, are beginning to manifest on the street.
Beneath the surface, something more complex appears to be taking place – perhaps not a whole country embracing the libertine abandon of those dancers, but an Arab world that is making the break, however slowly and awkwardly, from the restrictions of traditional family life.
“In broad strokes,” the Egyptian-Canadian writer Shereen El Feki writes in Sex and the Citadel, her fascinating new survey of the intimate lives of women in the Arab world and especially in Cairo, “this sexual climate looks a lot like the West on the brink of the sexual revolution.”
That is a fairly startling statement, especially given how atrocious life is for a majority of women in Egypt. This is a country where more than 90 per cent of married women have had genital-mutilating operations between the ages of 9 and 12, and where a third of them believe that these clitorectomies prevent sexual promiscuity (even though most prostitutes have undergone the procedure). It is a place where 60 per cent of highly educated women (and three-quarters of less-educated women) believe that women who dress “provocatively” are at fault if they are raped – and where domestic abuse and sex assaults are measured at levels many times higher than the worst places in the West.
Worse, there is a highly popular belief, across the Arab world and especially strong in Egypt, that women are fragile things in need of protection. As the Salafist TV-star imam Mahmoud al-Masry tells Ms. El Feki, “I believe that the woman is like a diamond, to be preserved. We do not suppress or oppress the woman – I want to protect her.” That, of course, is the ultimate form of denigration; it is accompanied by an equally widespread and often grotesque fetishization of virginity.
With those ingredients, how could anyone be hopeful? For one thing, because none of it is timeless or inevitable: Much of the sexual conservatism, and extreme restriction of women’s liberties (including the covering of heads) is a development of the colonial years and their aftermath, an angry generation’s reaction to isolation and deprivation.
But also because Arab family life is changing very fast – especially in two crucial ways. The first is female literacy, which has risen from less than a quarter in 1980 to about 65 per cent today. The second is family size: In 1960, the average Egyptian woman had almost seven children; today it is 2.7, and falling fast. This isn’t as dramatic a change as in Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates, which now have European-sized families, but it is a crucial indicator: Everywhere in the world (including every Western country), the moment when sexual and gender relations began to transform dramatically followed the moment when female literacy passed above 50 per cent and family sizes began to fall sharply.
And wherever this change has occurred, it has been accompanied by social tension and often political turmoil. It is, in the words of the demographer Youssef Courbage, who has chronicled this dramatic “secularization of family life” in the Arab world, “not at all necessary to speculate about some particular essence of Islam in order to explain the violence now stirring the Muslim world. That world is disoriented because it is undergoing the shock of the revolution in modes of thought associated with increased literacy and widespread birth control.”
This is what Ms. El Feki has seen beneath the head scarves of Cairo: “struggles toward democracy and personal rights; the rapid growth of cities and a growing strain on family structures; loosening community controls on private behaviour; a huge population of young people whose influences and attitudes diverge from those of their parents.” It is, she says, a sexual revolution “in embryo” – visible, sometimes, only in the odd burst of Harlem Shake.
Hayek on the Moral Ambiguity of Free Market Meritocracy.
Hayek on the moral ambiguity of free market meritocracy. From Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 74.
The Fable of Market Meritocracy. By Shikha Dalmia. Forbes, February 10, 2010.
The Reality of Meritocracy. By Bryan Caplan. Library of Economics and Liberty, February 11, 2010.
Merit and the Market: A Reply from Shikha Dalmia. By Bryan Caplan. Library of Economics and Liberty, February 16, 2010.
More on Merit: A Reply to Dalmia. By Bryan Caplan. Library of Economics and Liberty, February 17, 2010.
Hayek:
It is unquestionably true that, particularly among those who were very successful in the market order, a belief in a much stronger moral justification of individual success developed, and that, long after the basic principles of such an order had been fully elaborated and approved by catholic moral philosophers, it had in the Anglo-Saxon world received strong support from Calvinist teaching. It certainly is important in the market order (or free enterprise society, misleadingly called “capitalism”) that the individuals believe that their well-being depends primarily on their own efforts and decisions. Indeed, few circumstances will do more to make a person energetic and efficient than the belief that it depends chiefly on him whether he will reach the goals he has set for himself. For this reason this belief is often encouraged by education and governing opinion—it seems to me, generally much to the benefit of most of the members of the society in which it prevails, who will owe many important material and moral improvements to persons guided by it. But it leads no doubt also to an exaggerated confidence in the truth of this generalization which to those who regard themselves (and perhaps are) equally able but have failed must appear as a bitter irony and severe provocation.
It is probably a misfortune that, especially in the USA, popular writers like Samuel Smiles and Horatio Alger, and later the sociologist W. G. Sumner, have defended free enterprise on the ground that it regularly rewards the deserving, and it bodes ill for the future of the market order that this seems to have become the only defense of it which is understood by the general public. That it has largely become the basis of the self-esteem of the businessman often gives him an air of self-righteousness which does not make him more popular.
It is therefore a real dilemma to what extent we ought to encourage in the young the belief that when they really try they will succeed, or should rather emphasize that inevitably some unworthy will succeed and some worthy fail—whether we ought to allow the views of those groups to prevail with whom the over-confidence in the appropriate reward of the able and industrious is strong and who in consequence will do much that benefits the rest, and whether without such partly erroneous beliefs the large numbers will tolerate actual differences in rewards which will be based only partly on achievement and partly on mere chance.
The Fable of Market Meritocracy. By Shikha Dalmia. Forbes, February 10, 2010.
The Reality of Meritocracy. By Bryan Caplan. Library of Economics and Liberty, February 11, 2010.
Merit and the Market: A Reply from Shikha Dalmia. By Bryan Caplan. Library of Economics and Liberty, February 16, 2010.
More on Merit: A Reply to Dalmia. By Bryan Caplan. Library of Economics and Liberty, February 17, 2010.
Hayek:
It is unquestionably true that, particularly among those who were very successful in the market order, a belief in a much stronger moral justification of individual success developed, and that, long after the basic principles of such an order had been fully elaborated and approved by catholic moral philosophers, it had in the Anglo-Saxon world received strong support from Calvinist teaching. It certainly is important in the market order (or free enterprise society, misleadingly called “capitalism”) that the individuals believe that their well-being depends primarily on their own efforts and decisions. Indeed, few circumstances will do more to make a person energetic and efficient than the belief that it depends chiefly on him whether he will reach the goals he has set for himself. For this reason this belief is often encouraged by education and governing opinion—it seems to me, generally much to the benefit of most of the members of the society in which it prevails, who will owe many important material and moral improvements to persons guided by it. But it leads no doubt also to an exaggerated confidence in the truth of this generalization which to those who regard themselves (and perhaps are) equally able but have failed must appear as a bitter irony and severe provocation.
It is probably a misfortune that, especially in the USA, popular writers like Samuel Smiles and Horatio Alger, and later the sociologist W. G. Sumner, have defended free enterprise on the ground that it regularly rewards the deserving, and it bodes ill for the future of the market order that this seems to have become the only defense of it which is understood by the general public. That it has largely become the basis of the self-esteem of the businessman often gives him an air of self-righteousness which does not make him more popular.
It is therefore a real dilemma to what extent we ought to encourage in the young the belief that when they really try they will succeed, or should rather emphasize that inevitably some unworthy will succeed and some worthy fail—whether we ought to allow the views of those groups to prevail with whom the over-confidence in the appropriate reward of the able and industrious is strong and who in consequence will do much that benefits the rest, and whether without such partly erroneous beliefs the large numbers will tolerate actual differences in rewards which will be based only partly on achievement and partly on mere chance.
Europe According to Hayek. By Alberto Mingardi.
Europe According to Hayek. By Alberto Mingardi. Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2012.
Mingardi:
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi told The Wall Street Journal last month that the “European social model has already gone.” If his fellow Europeans have read Friedrich Hayek, they would also understand why.
Friedrich August Hayek, who passed away 20 years ago today, was one of foremost social scientists of the last century. A Nobel laureate in economics, Hayek is often associated with a crucial intuition that informs his critique of socialist systems. There is, in society, a “knowledge problem”: Economic life requires the coordination of individual planning. The relevant knowledge for economic planning is dispersed rather than concentrated in society. If this makes coordination challenging enough in a market system, it also makes coordination a virtual impossibility under central planning: The planner can never secure and process all the necessary information to provide detailed guidance to any given development in society.
Even though this argument was originally deployed against hard-core socialism, it works pretty well against the soft-core version widely adopted by European democracies. Centralized welfare systems are necessarily run by a bureaucratic leadership. Pace Max Weber, the “technical superiority” of such an organization is simply not enough to master the nuances of a complex society. Centralized government allocates resources badly—regardless of its intentions. The very nature of centralization makes impossible for it to collect and compute all the information that is needed. This is as true for any grand scheme of industrial planning as it is for the government-led welfare systems that characterize Europe’s “social model.”
To be sure, Hayek was not deaf to the needs of the poor or the sick, and he even advocated some form of safety net. But he was well aware that Western democracies were at risk of developing, as he wrote in 1960, a “household state in which a paternalistic power controls most of the income of the community and allocates it to individuals in the forms and quantities which it thinks they need or deserve.” Regardless of the intentions of its makers, such a system was bound to produce inefficiency and waste.
These inefficiencies and this waste, of course, become rents for those that live of them and return the favor with their political support.
States that control most of the income of the community and allocate it according to the wishes of their bureaucracy are now on the brink of bankruptcy. However, Hayek’s solution—a limited government state that allowed the free market economy to flourish—it is not getting more popular, at least not in Europe. One of the reasons for this is that many people believe a market system is inherently unjust, whereas the European social model attempts to combine wealth generation with extensive redistribution to the ostensible benefit of the needy, to guarantee a measure of “social justice.”
And Hayek himself didn't argue that free-market competition would always reward the deserving. We do not cooperate, he wrote, because we sense the need to properly reward the merits of others. Rather, “so long as we think in terms of our relations to particular people, we are generally quite aware that the mark of the free man is to be dependent for his livelihood not on other people's views of his merit but solely on what he has to offer to them.” Rewards in society depend on the game of supply and demand and, ultimately, on consumers’ wants and needs.
Hayek pointed out that theories centered on the notion of “social justice” try to resemble, at the level of the “great society,” the nature of smaller groups. In the smaller groups in which human beings lived for most of our history, people were compensated and advance in society due to some shared vision of merit and worthiness. This also happens within larger societies: There are organizations—think of a corporation or an army or the church—in which people are rewarded because they score well in a particular metric.
It is thus not the case that the market system justly rewards the better and the wiser. Hayek’s point is different. Small, self-organized, voluntary aggregates of human beings should be free to pursue their idea of “merit” as they wish provided that they take full responsibility for their efforts. However, a big society—one based on cooperation with strangers on a large scale such as a state—should not attempt to play the game of the “just retribution” because it is not fit to it.
The European social model that trade unions and political parties still defend with such passion was ill-conceived from the start. A market system cannot work properly if a society aims to dole out rewards and punishments like a teacher in a classroom. Market institutions are anonymous, and blind. Imposing upon them any pre-ordained scheme of merit and reward will just make coordination between individuals—and, thus, wealth creation—more difficult.
The European social model has now reached its inevitable breaking point. And Friedrich Hayek, 20 years after his passing, still offers the most compelling explanation of why it was bound to do so.
Mingardi:
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi told The Wall Street Journal last month that the “European social model has already gone.” If his fellow Europeans have read Friedrich Hayek, they would also understand why.
Friedrich August Hayek, who passed away 20 years ago today, was one of foremost social scientists of the last century. A Nobel laureate in economics, Hayek is often associated with a crucial intuition that informs his critique of socialist systems. There is, in society, a “knowledge problem”: Economic life requires the coordination of individual planning. The relevant knowledge for economic planning is dispersed rather than concentrated in society. If this makes coordination challenging enough in a market system, it also makes coordination a virtual impossibility under central planning: The planner can never secure and process all the necessary information to provide detailed guidance to any given development in society.
Even though this argument was originally deployed against hard-core socialism, it works pretty well against the soft-core version widely adopted by European democracies. Centralized welfare systems are necessarily run by a bureaucratic leadership. Pace Max Weber, the “technical superiority” of such an organization is simply not enough to master the nuances of a complex society. Centralized government allocates resources badly—regardless of its intentions. The very nature of centralization makes impossible for it to collect and compute all the information that is needed. This is as true for any grand scheme of industrial planning as it is for the government-led welfare systems that characterize Europe’s “social model.”
To be sure, Hayek was not deaf to the needs of the poor or the sick, and he even advocated some form of safety net. But he was well aware that Western democracies were at risk of developing, as he wrote in 1960, a “household state in which a paternalistic power controls most of the income of the community and allocates it to individuals in the forms and quantities which it thinks they need or deserve.” Regardless of the intentions of its makers, such a system was bound to produce inefficiency and waste.
These inefficiencies and this waste, of course, become rents for those that live of them and return the favor with their political support.
States that control most of the income of the community and allocate it according to the wishes of their bureaucracy are now on the brink of bankruptcy. However, Hayek’s solution—a limited government state that allowed the free market economy to flourish—it is not getting more popular, at least not in Europe. One of the reasons for this is that many people believe a market system is inherently unjust, whereas the European social model attempts to combine wealth generation with extensive redistribution to the ostensible benefit of the needy, to guarantee a measure of “social justice.”
And Hayek himself didn't argue that free-market competition would always reward the deserving. We do not cooperate, he wrote, because we sense the need to properly reward the merits of others. Rather, “so long as we think in terms of our relations to particular people, we are generally quite aware that the mark of the free man is to be dependent for his livelihood not on other people's views of his merit but solely on what he has to offer to them.” Rewards in society depend on the game of supply and demand and, ultimately, on consumers’ wants and needs.
Hayek pointed out that theories centered on the notion of “social justice” try to resemble, at the level of the “great society,” the nature of smaller groups. In the smaller groups in which human beings lived for most of our history, people were compensated and advance in society due to some shared vision of merit and worthiness. This also happens within larger societies: There are organizations—think of a corporation or an army or the church—in which people are rewarded because they score well in a particular metric.
It is thus not the case that the market system justly rewards the better and the wiser. Hayek’s point is different. Small, self-organized, voluntary aggregates of human beings should be free to pursue their idea of “merit” as they wish provided that they take full responsibility for their efforts. However, a big society—one based on cooperation with strangers on a large scale such as a state—should not attempt to play the game of the “just retribution” because it is not fit to it.
The European social model that trade unions and political parties still defend with such passion was ill-conceived from the start. A market system cannot work properly if a society aims to dole out rewards and punishments like a teacher in a classroom. Market institutions are anonymous, and blind. Imposing upon them any pre-ordained scheme of merit and reward will just make coordination between individuals—and, thus, wealth creation—more difficult.
The European social model has now reached its inevitable breaking point. And Friedrich Hayek, 20 years after his passing, still offers the most compelling explanation of why it was bound to do so.
Why Bob Woodward’s Fight With The White House Matters to You. By Ron Fournier.
Why Bob Woodward’s Fight With The White House Matters to You. By Ron Fournier. National Journal, February 28, 2013.
Fournier:
I changed the rules of our relationship, first, because it was a waste of my time (and the official’s government-funded salary) to engage in abusive conversations. Second, I didn’t want to condone behavior that might intimidate less-experienced reporters, a reaction I personally witnessed in journalists covering the Obama administration.
That gets to why this matters beyond the incestuous Washington culture. One of this country’s most important traditions is “a free press that isn’t afraid to ask questions, to examine and to criticize,” Obama said at the 2012 White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner.
Because of tech-fueled changes in the market, there are fewer reporters doing more work with less experience than when I came to Washington with Clinton in 1993. Also, the standard relationship between reporters and their sources is more combative, a reflection of polarization in Washington and within the media industry.
Personally, I had a great relationship with Clinton’s communications team, less so with President Bush's press shop, and now – for the first time in my career – I told a public servant to essentially buzz off.
This can’t be what Obama wants. He must not know how thin-skinned and close-minded his staff can be to criticism. “I have the greatest respect and admiration for what you do,” Obama told reporters a year ago. “I know sometimes you like to give me a hard time, and I certainly like to return the favor, but I never forget that our country depends on you.”
Fournier’s cri de coeur reminds me of the old Russian peasant proverb: “if only the tsar knew!” If only the tsar knew of the crimes his evil ministers were committing in his name, he would punish them, set things right, and bring justice to the people. Of course the tsar knew all about how his government oppressed and exploited the peasants; the Russian imperial system was based on extraction of wealth from its beasts of burden. And so Obama also knows, and approves, of how his staff exploits and abuses journalists.
Fournier:
I changed the rules of our relationship, first, because it was a waste of my time (and the official’s government-funded salary) to engage in abusive conversations. Second, I didn’t want to condone behavior that might intimidate less-experienced reporters, a reaction I personally witnessed in journalists covering the Obama administration.
That gets to why this matters beyond the incestuous Washington culture. One of this country’s most important traditions is “a free press that isn’t afraid to ask questions, to examine and to criticize,” Obama said at the 2012 White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner.
Because of tech-fueled changes in the market, there are fewer reporters doing more work with less experience than when I came to Washington with Clinton in 1993. Also, the standard relationship between reporters and their sources is more combative, a reflection of polarization in Washington and within the media industry.
Personally, I had a great relationship with Clinton’s communications team, less so with President Bush's press shop, and now – for the first time in my career – I told a public servant to essentially buzz off.
This can’t be what Obama wants. He must not know how thin-skinned and close-minded his staff can be to criticism. “I have the greatest respect and admiration for what you do,” Obama told reporters a year ago. “I know sometimes you like to give me a hard time, and I certainly like to return the favor, but I never forget that our country depends on you.”
Fournier’s cri de coeur reminds me of the old Russian peasant proverb: “if only the tsar knew!” If only the tsar knew of the crimes his evil ministers were committing in his name, he would punish them, set things right, and bring justice to the people. Of course the tsar knew all about how his government oppressed and exploited the peasants; the Russian imperial system was based on extraction of wealth from its beasts of burden. And so Obama also knows, and approves, of how his staff exploits and abuses journalists.
Obama, the Demonization of Conservatives, and the Crisis of the Middle Class. List of Relevant NJBR Posts.
Obama: Republicans’ Refusal to Raise Taxes on the Wealthy Is What “Binds Their Party Together.” February 22, 2013. Includes audio of interview with Sharpton.
Weekly Address: Congress Must Act Now to Stop the Sequester. By Barack Obama. February 23, 2013.
Marco Rubio’s State of the Union Response. February 23, 2013.
As Country Club Republicans Link Up With the Democratic Ruling Class, Millions of Voters Are Orphaned. By Angelo Codevilla. February 21, 2013.
Saving the American Idea. By Paul Ryan. February 19, 2013.
Life After Blue: The Middle Class Will Beat The Seven Trolls. By Walter Russell Mead. January 31, 2013.
Another Road: The Blue Elites Are Wrong. By Walter Russell Mead. January 29, 2013.
Futuristic Blues. By Walter Russell Mead. January 24, 2013.
The New Power Class Who Will Profit From Obama’s Second Term. By Joel Kotkin. January 20, 2013.
The Unseen Class War That Could Decide the Presidential Election. By Joel Kotkin. January 5, 2013.
The Rise of Tory America. By Joel Kotkin. March 25, 2013.
America Hates Crony Capitalism. By Joshua M. Brown. February 14, 2013.
Beware of the New Elites. By Scott Rasmussen. March 20, 2013. With “America’s New Mandarins,” by Megan McArdle.
The Rise of the New Global Plutocratic Elite and the Crisis of the Middle Class. February 14, 2013. Chrystia Freeland, 6 articles; WRM, “American Dreams, American Resentments”; and many assorted pieces by various authors on this topic.
Jeremy Lin, Superstar Economics, and the Culture of Aspiration. February 19, 2013. Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats, p. 140; many assorted pieces by various authors on this topic.
China, Technology and the U.S. Middle Class. By Chrystia Freeland. February 15, 2013.
Technology, the Economy and Pool Cleaning. By Chrystia Freeland. February 26, 2013.
America’s Middle Class Goes Global. By Chrystia Freeland. February 27, 2013.
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent. By Chrystia Freeland. February 27, 2013.
The Political Clout of the Superrich. By Chrystia Freeland. March 1, 2013.
A Republican Message for Wall Street. By Peggy Noonan. March 1, 2013.
Republicans and Their Faulty Moral Arithmetic. By Arthur Brooks. March 3, 2013.
The Republican Path Ahead. By Peter Wehner. March 3, 2013.
Obama’s Pelosi II Strategy. March 5, 2013.
Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address: An Uncompromising Defense of Liberalism. January 21, 2013.
Lessons Conservatives Need to Learn. By Peggy Noonan. January 25, 2013.
How Conservatives See Liberals. By Michael Lind. March 22, 2013.
Private Sector Parasites. By Michael Lind. March 22, 2013.
Elites Close Ranks Around Ivy League Intermarriage. By Walter Russell Mead. April 7, 2013
Articles by various authors on the meaning of Obama’s Second Inaugural Address and its conflict with Republican visions. All posted on January 26, 2013.
Weekly Address: Congress Must Act Now to Stop the Sequester. By Barack Obama. February 23, 2013.
Marco Rubio’s State of the Union Response. February 23, 2013.
As Country Club Republicans Link Up With the Democratic Ruling Class, Millions of Voters Are Orphaned. By Angelo Codevilla. February 21, 2013.
Saving the American Idea. By Paul Ryan. February 19, 2013.
Life After Blue: The Middle Class Will Beat The Seven Trolls. By Walter Russell Mead. January 31, 2013.
Another Road: The Blue Elites Are Wrong. By Walter Russell Mead. January 29, 2013.
Futuristic Blues. By Walter Russell Mead. January 24, 2013.
The New Power Class Who Will Profit From Obama’s Second Term. By Joel Kotkin. January 20, 2013.
The Unseen Class War That Could Decide the Presidential Election. By Joel Kotkin. January 5, 2013.
The Rise of Tory America. By Joel Kotkin. March 25, 2013.
America Hates Crony Capitalism. By Joshua M. Brown. February 14, 2013.
Beware of the New Elites. By Scott Rasmussen. March 20, 2013. With “America’s New Mandarins,” by Megan McArdle.
The Rise of the New Global Plutocratic Elite and the Crisis of the Middle Class. February 14, 2013. Chrystia Freeland, 6 articles; WRM, “American Dreams, American Resentments”; and many assorted pieces by various authors on this topic.
Jeremy Lin, Superstar Economics, and the Culture of Aspiration. February 19, 2013. Chrystia Freeland, Plutocrats, p. 140; many assorted pieces by various authors on this topic.
China, Technology and the U.S. Middle Class. By Chrystia Freeland. February 15, 2013.
Technology, the Economy and Pool Cleaning. By Chrystia Freeland. February 26, 2013.
America’s Middle Class Goes Global. By Chrystia Freeland. February 27, 2013.
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent. By Chrystia Freeland. February 27, 2013.
The Political Clout of the Superrich. By Chrystia Freeland. March 1, 2013.
A Republican Message for Wall Street. By Peggy Noonan. March 1, 2013.
Republicans and Their Faulty Moral Arithmetic. By Arthur Brooks. March 3, 2013.
The Republican Path Ahead. By Peter Wehner. March 3, 2013.
Obama’s Pelosi II Strategy. March 5, 2013.
Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address: An Uncompromising Defense of Liberalism. January 21, 2013.
Lessons Conservatives Need to Learn. By Peggy Noonan. January 25, 2013.
How Conservatives See Liberals. By Michael Lind. March 22, 2013.
Private Sector Parasites. By Michael Lind. March 22, 2013.
Elites Close Ranks Around Ivy League Intermarriage. By Walter Russell Mead. April 7, 2013
Articles by various authors on the meaning of Obama’s Second Inaugural Address and its conflict with Republican visions. All posted on January 26, 2013.
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