Bill Maher and Asra Nomani: Liberals Are Afraid to Tell the Truth About Radical Islam.

Maher, Asra Nomani: Liberals Are Afraid to Tell the Truth About Radical Islam. By Ian Hanchett. Breitbart, November 13, 2015.

“It was probably not the Amish”: Bill Maher urges liberals to wake up about Islam after Paris attacks. By Sarah Burris. Salon, November 14, 2015.

Real Time with Bill Maher: Asra Nomani Interview (HBO). Video. Real Time with Bill Maher, November 13, 2015. YouTube.





Hanchett:

HBO host Bill Maher and author Asra Nomani criticized liberals for their position on radical Islam on Friday’s “Real Time.”

Nomani told Maher, “you have honestly taken a position of moral courage. I’m a feminist, liberal Muslim. I know, a lot of contradiction in terms there, head-spinning, but you have dared to challenge liberals to stand by their values.”

Both stated that while it isn’t 100% certain who’s behind the terror attacks in France, it probably was carried out by Islamic terrorists. Nomani continued, “so President Obama says that he’s going to go after the terrorists, and he’s going to go after the terrorist networks, but we don’t mention what kind of terrorist networks.” Maher then said, “It’s crazy. That — I don’t understand that. And I also don’t understand liberals who don’t understand, this man who says the moderates are in jail. How could liberals who stood for black people getting to go to college in the 60’s and then when I was in college they were protesting apartheid in South Africa. How can they not stand up against sharia law, which is the law in so many Muslim countries, which is a law of oppression?”

Nomani added, “I don’t understand it either, but what I have figured out is that they run scared. They’re afraid of the name-calling that you’re — get targeted with, the name-calling that I get targeted with. They don’t want to look bad. They don’t want to act like they are intolerant of a minority community, but at the end day, they are on the side of the aggressive Muslims, the people who believe in sexism and bigotry.”

Later Maher wondered, “How did we get to this place where just describing something is demonizing? And I’m not so sure it’s a very small percentage, maybe a small percentage who carry out terrorist acts, but it’s not a small percentage, right, who believe in some of the illiberal ideas that support terrorists?”

Nomani also criticized the “honor brigade,” which includes groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and people in high places of academia who “smear somebody like you, somebody like me, for being witness to truth, because ultimately, the truth frightens them, the liberals get on board.”

Both also argued that true liberal values should be fought for, and what it means to be a liberal should be questioned. Nomani added that human rights are ultimately validated by Islam, because “while the — many of the principles that are being practiced today are unequal and sexist, the religion came as a progressive faith in the 7th century. We just stayed stuck in the 7th century.”

Nomani concluded, “We have to be honest about the fact that there is an ideology of Islam, that is our war, of our generation, and this is an ideology that we have to address, and we have to address it with moral courage.”

Maher added that both of them would be called bigots and Islamophobes the next day.

The War That Hasn’t Ended. By Andrew C. McCarthy

The War That Hasn’t Ended. By Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review Online, November 13, 2015.

McCarthy:

There is always the chance that the next attack will knock the scales from our eyes. Always the chance that we will realize the enemy is at war with us, even as we foolishly believe we can end the war by not fighting it, by surrendering.

As this is written, the death count in Paris is 158. That number will grow higher, and very many more will be counted among the wounded and terrorized.

“Allahu Akbar!” cried the jihadists as they killed innocent after French innocent. The commentators told us it means “God is great.” But it doesn’t. It means “Allah is greater!” It is a comparative, a cry of combative aggression: “Our God is mightier than yours.” It is central to a construction of Islam, mainstream in the Middle East, that sees itself at war with the West.

It is what animates our enemies.

Barack Obama tells us — harangues us — that he is the president who came to end wars. Is that noble? Reflective of an America that honors “our values”? No, it is juvenile.

In the real world, the world of aggression — not “micro-aggression” — you don’t get to end wars by pronouncing them over, or mistaken, or contrary to “our values.”

You end them by winning them . . . or losing them.

If you demonstrate that you are willing to lose, then you lose. If you sympathize with the enemy’s critique of the West on the lunatic theory that this will appease the enemy, you invite more attacks, more mass murder.

France is hoping the night’s bloodshed is done as it counts its dead. And perhaps it is for now. But the atrocities are not over, not even close.

In Paris, it has been but the blink of an eye since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, after which Western nations joined together in supposed solidarity, supporting the fundamental right to free expression.

That lasted about five minutes.

Intelligentsia on both sides of the Atlantic rationalized that, while we of course (ahem) champion free expression — “Je suis Charlie!” and all that — columnists and cartoonists who dare lampoon a totalitarian ideology are bringing the jihad on themselves.

It was a familiar story. In 2012, jihadists attacked an American compound in Benghazi, killing our ambassador and three other officials. The president responded by . . . condemning an anti-Muslim video that had nothing to do with the attack, and by proclaiming that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Islamic supremacism killed Americans, and America’s president validated Islamic supremacism.

How did the French and the rest of the West react when jihadists attacked Charlie Hebdo in Paris?

After a fleeting pro-Western pose, they condemned . . . themselves.

What happened when American commentators who had spent years studying Islamic-supremacist ideology warned that mainstream Muslim doctrine was fueling jihad against the West?

The Obama administration — the president and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton — reacted by targeting the messengers, not the aggressors.

Jihadist terror would be obfuscated by euphemisms like “violent extremism” and “workplace violence.” The critics of jihadist terror would be smeared as racist “Islamophobes.” Mrs. Clinton led the administration’s effort to portray examination of Islamic doctrine as hate speech, to brand commentary about radical Islam as illegal incitement.

Wouldn’t that be a betrayal of First Amendment free expression? If so, Mrs. Clinton declared, the government had other ways to suppress it. The administration, she said, would resort to extra-legal extortion: “old fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming.”

American government intimidation, not against the jihad but against opponents of the jihad. Could we tell the enemy any more clearly that we don’t think we are worth defending? Could we tell the enemy any more clearly that we are ripe for the taking?

Hard experience has taught us that when jihadists have safe haven, they attack the United States and our Western allies. But as ISIS and al Qaeda expand their safe haven in Syria and Iraq, we tell the world it is everyone else’s problem — the Kurds have to do the fighting, or the Yazidis, the Iraqis, the “rebels,” anyone but us.

As hundreds of thousands of refugees flee the region — many of them young, fighting-fit men whose potential terrorist ties cannot possibly be vetted — we encourage Europe to open its arms and borders to them, promising to open our own as well.

After all, to do otherwise would be to concede that the war is against us — and Obama is the president who “ends” war.

The enemy is not impressed. What Obama calls “ending” war the enemy sees as surrender, as the lack of a will to fight, much less to prevail.

So, as night follows day, the enemy attacked Paris tonight, yet again. Jihadists brazenly proclaimed that they were from Syria, spreading their jihad to France.

Obama responded by soft-peddling the atrocity as a “tragedy,” the acts of war as a “crime.”

A “crime” that tonight killed 158 people (and counting). A “crime” by “criminals” who vow more jihadist acts of war against Paris, Rome, London, Tel Aviv, and New York.

We did not ask for a war with jihadists. Years ago, they commenced a war of aggression against us. Pace Obama, you can’t end such a war by withdrawing, or by pretending it is just a crime. You end it by winning it or losing it.

The enemy senses that we are willing to lose it. Tonight, they pressed their advantage. It won’t be the last time.

Alan Dershowitz on College Protests: “The Fog of Fascism Is Descending."

Alan Dershowitz on College Protests: “Fog of Fascism Is Descending," “These Students Are Book-Burners.” Video. Real Clear Politics, November 13, 2015. Also at Fox News Insider. YouTube.

Selective Outrage on Campus. By Alan M. Dershowitz. Gatestone Institute, November 12, 2015.

The Campus Purges Are Only Going to Get a Lot Worse. By Michael Ledeen. PJ Media, November 12, 2015.

The Cultural Revolution Comes to America’s Campuses. By Roger L. Simon. PJ Media, November 13, 2015.

Students for Justice in Palestine hijacks #MillionStudentMarch, blames Zionists for tuition problems. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, November 13. 2015.

Shocked at Yale and Mizzou? Pro-Israel students have lived with intimidation for years. By William A. Jacobson. Legal Insurrection, November 10, 2015.

Dershowitz (Real Clear Politics):

These are the same people who claim they are seeking diversity. The last thing these students want is real diversity, diversity of ideas. They may want superficial diversity, diversity of gender, diversity of color, but they do not want diversity of ideas.

We are seeing a curtain of McCarthyism descend over many college campuses I don’t want to make analogies to the 1930s, but it was the college students who first started burning books during the Nazi regime. These students are book burners...

By expressing my opinion, I am “harassing students.” This is becoming a very serious problem not only in American universities, but around the world. It is having a terrible impact on the education of students...

It is the worst kind of hypocrisy. They want complete control over their personal lives, over their sex lives, over the use of drugs, but they want mommy and daddy dean to please give them a safe place, to protect them from ideas that maybe are insensitive, maybe will make them think...

When I spoke at Johns Hopkins University, the same students who were talking about a “safe space,” painted a Hitler mustache on my posters, it is an absolute double standard.

It is free speech for me, but not for thee. Universities should not tolerate this kind of hypocrisy, double standard…

If you’re going to be a college administrator or a professor, if you have tenure, you have to speak back to the students, you have to call these things what they are: double standards, hypocrisy, bigotry, McCarthyism, and the fog of fascism is descending quickly over many American universities.

Dershowitz (Gatestone Institute):

Following the forced resignations of the President and Provost of the University of Missouri, demonstrations against campus administrators has spread across the country. Students – many of whom are Black, gay, transgender and Muslim – claim that they feel “unsafe” as the result of what they call “white privilege” or sometimes simply privilege. “Check your privilege” has become the put-down du jour. Students insist on being protected by campus administrators from “micro-aggressions,” meaning unintended statements inside and outside the classroom that demonstrate subtle insensitivities towards minority students. They insist on being safe from hostile or politically incorrect ideas. They demand “trigger warnings” before sensitive issues are discussed or assigned. They want to own the narrative and keep other points of view from upsetting them or making them feel unsafe.

These current manifestations of a widespread culture of victimization and grievance are only the most recent iterations of a dangerous long-term trend on campuses both in the United States and in Europe. The ultimate victims are freedom of expression, academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Many faculty members, administrators and students are fearful of the consequences if they express politically incorrect or dissident views that may upset some students. So they engage in self-censorship. They have seen what had happened to those who have expressed unpopular views, and it is not a pretty picture.

I know, because I repeatedly experienced this backlash when I speak on campuses. Most recently, I was invited to deliver the Milton Eisenhower lecture at Johns Hopkins University. As soon as the lecture was announced, several student groups demanded that the invitation must be rescinded. The petition objected to my mere “presence” on campus, stating that my views on certain issues “are not matters of opinion, and cannot be debated” and that they are “not issues that are open to debate of any kind.” These non-debatable issues include some of the most controversial concerns that are roiling campus today: sexual assault, academic integrity and the Israel-Palestine conflict. The protesting students simply didn’t want my view on these and other issues expressed on their campus, because my lecture would make them feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

The groups demanding censorship of my lecture included Hopkins Feminists, Black Student Union, Diverse Sexuality and General Alliance, Sexual Assault Resource Unit and Voice for Choice. I have been told that two faculty members urged these students, who had never heard of me, to organize the protests, but the cowardly faculty members would not themselves sign the petition. The petition contained blatant lies about me and my views, but that is beside the point. I responded to the lies in my lecture and invited the protesting students to engage me during the Q and A. But instead, they walked out in the middle of my presentation, while I was discussing the prospects for peace in the Middle East.

According to the Johns Hopkins News-Letter, another petition claimed that “by denying Israel’s alleged war crimes against Palestinians,” I violated the university’s “anti-harassment policy” and its “statement of ethical standards.” In other words, by expressing my reasonable views on a controversial subject, I harassed students.

Some of the posters advertising my lecture were defaced with Hitler mustaches drawn on my face. Imagine the outcry if comparably insensitive images had been drawn on the faces of invited minority lecturers.

I must add that the Johns Hopkins administration and the student group that invited me responded admirably to the protests, fully defending my right to express my views and the right of the student group to invite me. The lecture went off without any hitches and I answered all the questions – some quite critical, but all polite – for the large audience that came to hear the presentation.

The same cannot be said of several other lectures I have given on other campuses, which were disrupted by efforts to shout me down, especially by anti-Israel groups that are committed to preventing pro-Israel speakers from expressing their views.

The point is not only that some students care less about freedom of expression in general than about protecting all students from “micro-aggressions.” It is that many of these same students are perfectly willing to make other students with whom they disagree with feel unsafe and offended by their own micro- and macro-aggressions. Consider, for example, a recent protest at the City University of New York by Students for Justice in Palestine that blamed high tuition on “the Zionist Administration [of the University that] invests in Israeli companies, companies that support the Israeli occupation, hosts birthright programs and study abroad programs in occupied Palestine [meaning Israel proper] and reproduces settler-colonial ideology throughout CUNY though Zionist content of education.”

Let’s be clear what they mean by “Zionist”: they mean “Jew.” There are many Jewish administrators at City University. Some are probably Zionists. Others are probably not. Blaming Zionists for high tuition is out and out anti-Semitism. It is not micro-aggression. It is in-your-face macro-aggression against City University Jews.

Yet those who protest micro-aggressions against other minorities are silent when it comes to Jews. This is not to engage in comparative victimization, but rather to expose the double standard, the selective outrage and the overt hypocrisy of many of those who would sacrifice free speech on the altar of political correctness, whose content they seek to dictate.

Palestinian State of Denial. By Bret Stephens.

Palestinian State of Denial. By Bret Stephens. Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2015.

Stephens:

You do not make peace with enemies. You make peace with former enemies.

In the history of political clichés, has there ever been one quite so misjudged as the line—some version of which is attributed either to Israel’s martyred Prime Minister  Yitzhak Rabin or fabled Defense Minister  Moshe Dayan—that “you make peace with your enemies, not with your friends”?

OK, “give peace a chance” and “nation building at home” are worse. But the Rabin-Dayan line is an expression of the higher mindlessness that passes for wisdom among people who think they are smart. After Monday’s make-nice session between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s time for a reconsideration.

To wit: You do not make peace with enemies. You make peace with former enemies—either because you have defeated them, as we defeated the Axis Powers in World War II; or because they collapse, as the Soviet Union did after the fall of the Berlin Wall; or because they have defeated you and you’re able to come to terms with the outcome from a safe distance. Witness Vietnam.

On rare precious occasions, both sides realize their interests are best served through a negotiated settlement they’re prepared to honor. That was the miracle of 1977, when Egypt’s  Anwar Sadat flew to Israel to show he sincerely accepted the Jewish state’s right to exist. He paid for the gesture with his life.

Enemies, however, do not make peace. They may desist from open combat, as Pakistan and India have, even as Islamabad continues to support anti-Indian terrorist proxies. They may arrange a long-term armistice of the kind South Korea has with the North. But that’s a peace preserved by 700,000 active-duty South Korean and U.S. troops, plus a million land mines in the DMZ.

For the past 22 years—ever since Rabin signed the Oslo Accord with the PLO’s  Yasser Arafat—Israel has been trying to achieve something historically unprecedented: To make peace with an enemy that shows no interest in becoming an ex-enemy.

Daniel Polisar, an Israeli political scientist, recently published a fascinating study in Mosaic magazine of Palestinian public opinion based on 330 polls conducted over many years. It makes for some bracing reading.

“When asked hypothetically if Israel’s use of chemical or biological weapons against Palestinians would constitute terror, 93 percent said yes,” notes Mr. Polisar. “But when the identical question was posed regarding the use of such weapons of mass destruction by Palestinians against Israelis, only 25 percent responded affirmatively.”

Other details: A 2011 poll found that 61% of Palestinians thought it was morally right to name Palestinian streets after suicide bombers. In December 2014, 78% of Palestinians expressed support for “attempts to stab or run over Israelis” in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Only 20% were opposed. Palestinians have also consistently supported terrorist attacks against Israelis within Israel’s original borders, “often by as much as six to one.”

Palestinians routinely blame Israel for problems over which it has no control, such as the bloody 2007 coup through which Hamas wrested power from Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Ninety-four percent of Palestinians report a “very unfavorable” opinion of Jews. A majority of Palestinians believe Israel will “destroy the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques and build a synagogue in their place.”

As for the idea of sharing the land, only 12% of Palestinians agreed that “both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land.” More than 80% felt “this is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it.” Most Palestinians also think Israel won’t be around in 30 or 40 years, either “because Arab or Muslim resistance will destroy it” or on account of its “internal contradictions.”

Where is the sense in agreeing to relinquish through negotiations what is yours by right today and will be yours in deed tomorrow?

None of this is helped by Palestinian leaders who, when not inciting violence or alleging Israeli conspiracies, are peddling the lie that Israel is creating an apartheid state. The only person standing in the way of Palestinian democracy is Palestinian President  Mahmoud Abbas, who hasn’t held an election in a decade. The only force standing in the way of a Palestinian state are the Palestinian people, who think they can gain their rights by stabbing their neighbors.

Which brings us back to Monday’s Oval Office meeting. Along with the forced bonhomie, the administration has been sounding the usual two-minutes-to-midnight warnings about the supposed end of the two-state solution. “For Israel, the more there is settlement construction, the more it undermines the ability to achieve peace,” says  Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, in an interview with Haaretz.

How sweet it would be if all Israel had to do to make peace was dismantle its settlements. How much sweeter if the American president would find less to fault with an Israeli government’s housing policies than a Palestinian political culture still so intent on killing Jews. If Mr. Obama wants to know why he’s so disliked by Israelis, there’s the reason.

Naftali Bennett: “We Are Surrounded by the Craziest People in the World.”

Naftali Bennett: “We are surrounded by the craziest people in the world.” Interviewed by Tim Sebastian. Video. Conflict Zone. DW, November 4, 2015. Also here. YouTube.

Naftali Bennett’s “most anti-Israel interview ever.” By Ari Soffer. Arutz Sheva 7, November 8, 2015. Also at Israellycool.

Bennett vs. Sebastian. Fighting for Israel in hostile interview. Video. Naftali Bennett, November 8, 2015. YouTube.





Soffer:

Jewish Home leader crosses swords with interviewer in what he later says was “the most anti-Israel interview I ever went through.” Was it?

Israel’s Education Minister and Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett has been through plenty of interviews with international media outlets, many of them overtly hostile.

But none as hostile as one published Sunday with DW’s Conflict Zone host Tim Sebastian, he said.

The 25-minute interview includes a relentless grilling of the Minister, who maintains his composure despite some provocative questions.

Among other points, Bennett insisted that the conflict will continue indefinitely until “the Muslim world accepts Israel’s right to exist – we were here way before Islam ever started.”

He also repeated his strong opposition to the formation of a 23rd Arab “Palestinian” state in Judea and Samaria.

“I vehemently oppose the notion of forming another failed Arab state in the heart of Israel. That’s crazy,” he said. “All the rest are disintegrating and falling apart into tribal structures, so here we’re going to try another artificial one? Why? Do I want to commit suicide?

“We tried this. In 2005 we did this big experiment in Gaza. We did all three things the international community wanted: we pulled back to the ’67 lines, we pulled out all our soldiers, and we expelled out 8,000 Jews from their houses – and what did we get in return...?

“What do you do when every single centimeter you give, the radical Islamists turn into a base for radical Islam and for Iran?”

As for his interviewer’s questions regarding the “occupation” of Judea and Samaria, he retorted: “Jews have been living in Jerusalem way before British people were living in London.”

The Mysterious Olga Fonda. By Diana Falzone.

The Mysterious Olga Fonda. By Diana Falzone. Video. FoxNews.com, November 6, 2015. YouTube.






Transcript:

Tough as nails, mysterious, and a potential threat to Sharon Stone? That’s actress Olga Fonda’s latest starring role in TNT’s Agent X premiering on November 8. Fonda spoke to FOX411 about the advice co-star Sharon Stone gave her, doing her own stunts, and why she won't talk about how she got her famous last name.

FOX411: You play opposite Sharon Stone. What has it been like working with her?

Olga Fonda: It’s fantastic. I’m so honored to be a part of the show and so honored to be working with her. It’s just such a great experience. Just to watch her perform in front of you, it’s just a dream come true. She’s amazing. She’s beautiful. She’s very supportive of her fellow actors and I cannot be happier to be working with Sharon Stone.

FOX411:  Has she offered you any life advice?

Fonda:  Life advice? Ah, I don’t think so. No. She did give me advice. She said, “You’re great. You should work on your accent a little more.” So, I’ve been doing that. I’ve been working on my American accent.

FOX411:  Oh, ok. I guess that’s a constructive criticism, right?  Helpful.

Fonda:  It’s a very good one.  Yes.

FOX411:  Why do you think TV has become hot amongst the Hollywood A-list?

Fonda:  I think that TV has such great writing right now nowadays. There are great storylines and you know you can tell a story in a better way, you know. You have 10-23 episodes to tell the story and all these writers and directors are going into TV and it’s just more opportunities.

FOX411:  You also have a background in martial arts which is really cool.  Do you do your own stunts on Agent X or will insurance policies not allow it?

Fonda: I get to do my own stunts.

FOX411: Awesome!

Fonda: I try to do as many as I can or they allow me to do.  I have a great stunt girl.  She’s actually Russian.  Her name is Elaina and sometimes her and I playfully fight over who is going to do the scene but we both love it and I grew up with older brother and male cousins and they tend to practice their martial arts on me when I was younger so that’s where my love came to it.  And I did ballroom dancing when I was growing up and I think that helped me do stunts and remembering the routine but I love doing it, it’s a lot of fun.  A girl can kick somebody’s butt.

FOX411: Yeah, without actually getting hurt in the process. That’s the great thing about it being a TV show.

Fonda: You know, Jeff and I were talking the other day and he told me, you know, “When I just met you and we were doing this elevator scene I was kind of worried about you. You looked a little fragile or on the smaller side.” And he goes, “The minute you walk onto the elevator,” he said, “I realized looks can be deceiving.” Then, I kicked his butt.

FOX411: See, girls kick butt!  Your stage name is Fonda. Why did you decide on such an iconic Hollywood legend’s last name? Did it help open doors for you although there’s no relation?

Fonda: No, there is no relation to it. I didn’t particularly change my name to Fonda because I knew who Fondas were. It’s still going to remain a mystery. I keep it as a mystery. So, maybe one day I’ll tell the story of how I changed my last name.

A Radical Left, Postcolonialist Critique of American Empire. By Mnar Muhawesh and Abby Martin.

Rise of a U.S. Corporate Empire and the Global Resistance Bringing It to Its Knees. By Mnar Muhawesh and Abby Martin. Video. MintPress News, October 28, 2015. YouTube.

Muhawesh:

The U.S. empire gives all its predecessors a run for their money, especially in terms of human and resource exploitation. But is resistance building that could bring the U.S. empire to its knees, MintPress Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh asks Abby Martin, host of “The Empire Files.”

MINNEAPOLIS — Throughout history, some of the world’s most influential empires have also been the most brutal. In turn, their legacy has turned “empire” into a very dirty word, indeed.

The Roman, British, Ottoman, Spanish and Soviet empires come to mind readily. And in school, we learn about the glories of these civilizations, their cultural triumphs and their contributions to the world we live in today. But what’s often left out is the devastating truth that empires are built on the atrocious foundations of sex and migrant slavery, military expansion, land and resource theft, genocide and overall intimidation.

And while history is littered with the atrocities of empires built and toppled, “empire” is certainly not a thing of the past. In fact, today, not only is the United States an empire in every sense of the word, it’s the biggest empire the world has ever seen.

While the look of empire may have changed, empire remains fundamentally the same.  Here to talk to me more about how the U.S. empire operates is Abby Martin, the host of the new show that’s taking on the horrific policies of the empire at home and abroad.

The Rise of History’s Biggest Empire: Empire File 001. By Abby Martin. Video. The Empire Files. teleSur, September 4, 2015. YouTube.

Of Death and Pensions and the Blue Model Blues. By the Via Meadia Staff.

Blue Model Blues: Of Death and Pensions. By the Via Meadia Staff. The American Interest, November 6, 2015.

Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. By Anne Case and Angus Deaton. PNAS, published online November 2, 2015.

Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds. By Gina Kolata. New York Times, November 2, 2015.

Middle-Aged White Americans Are Dying of Despair. By Olga Khazan. The Atlantic, November 4, 2015.

The Crisis of the American Working Class. By Ben Domenech. The Federalist, November 4, 2015.

Now White People Are Dying From Our Terrible Economic Policies, Too. By Michelle Chen. The Nation, November 6, 2015.

The Dying of the Whites. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, November 7, 2015.

Study: Deaths rates rising in middle-aged whites. By Mike Stobbe. AP. AOL, November 3, 2015.

Bill Maher and Anthony Weiner Suggest Reagan Economic Policies and Conservatives Are to Blame for Increase in Suicides. By Ian Hanchett. Breitbart, November 6, 2015. YouTube.

Beyond Blue: The Twenty-first Century Retirement Model Is Coming into Focus. By Walter Russell Mead. The American Interest, October 16, 2015.


Via Meadia Staff:

The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton—authors of a groundbreaking new study showing that middle aged whites without college degrees are dying at far faster rates in America than in other developed countries—were generally cautious about attributing causality to their widely discussed findings. However, as the Atlantic’s write-up highlights, they did speculate about whether America’s ongoing shift from defined-benefit pensions to a defined-contribution retirement model has something to do with the apparent agony of the white working class:

The United States has moved primarily to defined-contribution pension plans with associated stock market risk, whereas, in Europe, defined-benefit pensions are still the norm. Future financial insecurity may weigh more heavily on US workers, if they perceive stock market risk harder to manage than earnings risk, or if they have contributed inadequately to defined-contribution plans.

We don’t claim to know what did or didn’t cause the shocking uptick in mortality that Case and Deaton demonstrate, but we think it would be a grave mistake to read the paper and conclude that a return to the defined-benefit pension model is the answer to America’s social ills. This system was sustainable in midcentury “blue model” America, but it is not suited to the realities of the American economy today, for two reasons that Walter Russell Mead articulated in an essay last month.

First, defined-benefit pension programs strongly favor long-term workers. In the heyday of this retirement model, a worker’s pension size was determined by the number of years he spent at a company, and he needed to stay for a certain number of years to be eligible for any retirement benefits at all. The reality of the 21st-century American economy, where even the most established companies are under intense pressure from globalization and technological innovation, is that workers need to have the flexibility to move from one job to another. This is much more difficult under a defined-benefit system.

Second, defined-benefit pension plans are only as strong as the companies that guarantee them. This might have been tolerable in blue model America, where a handful of giant, stable companies dominated each industry, and it might still be tolerable in European countries, which a gigantic regulatory state blocks or slows American-style creative destruction. But in a post-blue American economy at the forefront of global innovation where companies rise and fall at the blink of an eye, a defined-benefit pension system is a risky bet, and could cause many people to lose everything.

None of this means that the shift away from defined-benefit pensions has not been painful for many workers—it has. And as the post-blue economy takes shape, companies and policymakers must think about ways to make the transition easier. Among the changes that should be considered: auto-enroll programs, where companies automatically deduct from employees’ paychecks and place money in 401(k)s; an increased focus on financial education in public education, so that workers can invest retirement plans more effectively; and more intelligent regulation of the part of the financial service industry that deals with 401(k) plans.

The decline of the post-blue economy has created its share of challenges, including greater financial insecurity among less-skilled workers. But the right answer is not to double down on a system that is on its way out, but to develop new institutions and policies that will allow Americans to thrive in the twenty-first century.


Chen:

The rising mortality rate, according to the study, paralleled “self-reported declines in health, mental health, and ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work.” But the trends differed by education level, as those with a high school–level education or less experienced worse outcomes than the college-educated.

This twist in America’s demography of death speaks to a societal malaise: The economic decline began well before the latest recession, but coincides with the economic dislocation that accompanied corporate globalization and “free trade” policies. Then the late 1990s brought a withering of the welfare system, leaving many older Americans facing an economic cliff after the financial collapse and debt crisis.

Nonetheless, the narrative of rising death rates among middle-aged whites should be viewed in a context of racial differences across many health measures; blacks in general still suffer higher mortality rates and poorer health outcomes than whites, for example. So this is racial inequality emerging in the negative direction. “The narrowing of the black white mortality gap could be thought of as leveling down,” says researcher Angus Deaton via e-mail. The study isn’t meant to suggest “tension or competition,” he stresses, but to show a more nuanced view of how economic insecurity and social distress interact.

These socioeconomic factors converge against the backdrop of a shattered American Dream: In their analysis of the results, Deaton and co-author Anne Case write that since economic growth has sputtered since the 1970s, “with widening income inequality, many of the baby-boom generation are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents.”

How does this figure into the public discourse on race and health? Rising white midlife death isn’t so much a counterpoint to the narrative of racial segregation as it is a revelation about the long-term costs of structural inequality. As the “middle class” hollows out, whites who started life under more promising circumstances—when a high-school graduate could land a job for life on the assembly line—are finally seeing the floor fall out under them too. Arguably, they may have had a harder landing than the groups always stuck at the bottom; could drugs be a distressed response to that collective class trauma? Many have dropped out of the workforce. Displaced middle-aged manufacturing workers have watched old factories shutter and neighborhoods subsequently deteriorate in the aftermath of mass foreclosures.

Economic hardship among whites is most acutely reflected in rural regions where joblessness and social distress run rampant, youth flee to seek better prospects elsewhere, and poverty has risen faster than in cities.

. . . .

But heroin overdoses may be a symptom of another social pathology. The 15-year death spike among middle-aged whites tracks the slow bleed of neoliberalism: the massive offshoring of manufacturing jobs, financial booms and busts, corporate deregulation. All these statistics suggest  the need for government-sponsored social supports is growing just as the government is rolling back welfare (Bill Clinton’s neoliberal welfare reform agenda was imposed shortly before the white midlife death patterns appeared), healthcare, and education resources (including workforce investment programs that were designed to aid dislocated older workers). The same generation has suffered from the collapse of institutions that once helped anchor the working class: active unions or just common workplaces in factory towns.

This aspect of public health may get lost in the statistics: the community cohesion that gives life meaning. Before these people lost their health or succumbed to despair, many may have lost something more vital: a sense of connection to the wider world. The downward leveling of society, with health crises penetrating a relatively privileged group, reveals a different kind of connection: the interwoven hardships in the fraying social fabric—a shared fate we only see when the seams come undone.

Khazan:

The reasons for the increased death rate are not the usual things that kill Americans, like diabetes and heart disease. Rather, it’s suicide, alcohol and drug poisonings, and alcohol-related liver disease.

The least-educated are worst off: All-cause mortality among middle-aged Americans with a high-school degree or less increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people between 1999 and 2013, but there was little change in mortality for people with some college. The death rate for the college-educated fell slightly.

. . . .

Obviously, no one can be blamed for his own addiction or depression. But the causes of death this study highlights are the kinds of things—drinking, doping, suicide—that people who feel good about their lives don’t tend to do.

So, what’s eating less-educated Boomers?

One persuasive explanation, and one the researchers put forth, is financial strain. Jobs in fields like manufacturing and construction, which were historically filled by people without college degrees, have been evaporating quickly over the past 15 years. As I’ve written previously, less-educated people are more likely to be unemployed and to make less, so they struggle to afford things like therapy, gym memberships, and recreation that isn’t drugs. Without jobs, they may lack the social networks and sense of purpose that have shown to reduce mortality.

Nearly half of Americans in their 40s and 50s don’t have enough money saved for retirement to live as they’re accustomed to, even if they work until they’re 65. All of this is crashing down on Boomers, who were raised on the promise of the American Dream.

As Deaton and his co-author, his wife and fellow Princeton economist Anne Case, put it, “After the productivity slowdown in the early 1970s, and with widening income inequality, many of the baby-boom generation are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents.”

Deaton and Case note that middle-aged people in other countries also faced dire financial straits, especially during the 2009 recession. Yet they’re not dying like American 50-somethings are. One difference is that in those countries, comfortable pensions for retirees are guaranteed, so the prospect of an impoverished retirement might not loom as large in Europe as it does here.

“The U.S. has moved primarily to defined-contribution pension plans with associated stock market risk, whereas, in Europe, defined-benefit pensions are still the norm,” Deaton and Case write. “Future financial insecurity may weigh more heavily on U.S. workers.”

Tragically, that weight seems to be crushing these Americans before they can even retire.