Daily Archives: December 29, 2019

On New Years Day, 2000, Nobel laureate James Buchanan challenged his fellow classical liberals to save the soul of liberalism. People need something to yearn and struggle for, he wrote. If the liberal ideal is not there, there will be a vacuum and other ideas will supplant it.

Twenty years later, Buchanans fears seem prescient. Contempt for liberalism is growing at both ends of the ideological spectrumfrom the nationalist right and progressive left. Illiberal ideas and attitudes have seeped into the American mainstream, dismissing not only market liberalism but even more basic principles, like respect for the autonomy and dignity of the individual. At one extreme we see the resurgence of white nationalism; at the other, the renunciation of First Amendment principles.

Now is the time for any liberals left to answer Buchanans challengeto save the soul of liberalism by reclaiming the liberal ideal.

The first step is to name it. The liberal ideal is the good society: a pluralistic and tolerant society in which intellectual and economic progress are the norm, and where individuals and communities flourish in a context of openness, peaceful and voluntary cooperation, and mutual respect.

It was this liberal ideal that animated the American Founding, arguably the first great liberal experiment. This is why in his book The Conservative Sensibility, George Will writes that American conservatives are the custodians of that tradition. They are seeking, Will reminds us, to conserve the Founding principles, the self-evidentiary truth that all men are created equal, and that the role of government is to secure the rights that follow from that truth. Wills conservatism, in other words, is a liberal conservatism that invites the openness and whirl and fluidity of modern life people, ideas, and capital flowing hither and yon.

The second step is to remind ourselves and others that liberalism is the modern worlds greatest achievement. As Deirdre McCloskey argues in her Bourgeois Virtues trilogy and her recently released Why Liberalism Works, since 1776 liberalism produced increasingly free people, wave after wave, including, slaves, lower-class voters, non-Conformists, women, Catholics, Jews, Irish, trade unionists, colonial people, African-Americans, immigrants, socialists, pacifists, women again, gays, people with disabilities, and above all the poor from whom most of us descended

Liberalism, McCloskey argues, is the mother of the Great Enrichmentthe 3,000 percent increase in material abundance over the last 250 years. Far more than pragmatic materialism, the Great Enrichment is a story about liberalisms highest values. Dignity and respect for the common personthe person who offered other common people his wares at a reasonable pricewere the catalyst that tapped humanitys creativity, ingenuity, and productive capacity.

Bundled with other liberal principles such as the rule of law, private property rights, and broad enjoyment of civil liberties, the liberal sensibilities of equality and dignity left dramatically improved conditions, longer lifespans, and more space for economic, scientific, and cultural experimentation in its wake.

But reclaiming the liberal ideal also requires that we take its critics seriously. Contemporary critics on the left and right will point out that liberalisms professed commitment to equality before the law tends to privilege those who already have power. Material abundance, they argue, creates new forms of oppression. Patrick Deneen, for example, argues that far from liberating women, the global marketplace has subjected us to a far more encompassing bondage, leaving a degraded culture in its path.

Liberal social scientists and commentators are no doubt forming their counterarguments in their head. No, we admit, we havent yet achieved the liberal ideal, but with every step forwardthe abolition of slavery, the Civil Rights, Womens Rights, and Gay Rights Movements the liberal ideal has guided our steps. And though the marketplace presents challenges, it also creates viable exit options for those seeking to escape the grip of traditional expectations.

But if we liberals leave this mental conversation there, we will not succeed in addressing Buchanans challenge. The critics of liberalism are casting a vision a vision of a society that is stable, controlled, fair, and certain. What is our response?

Liberals whether we identify as left-of-center, classical liberal, or conservative must recapture the animating spirit of liberalism. We can do this, in part, through practice: by valuing discourse over echo-chamber snark, truth-seeking over tribalism, scholarship over partisanship. Along the way, we must also draw attention to the marvels of liberalism the human flourishing that is made possible whenever and wherever liberal principles have taken hold.

Most importantly, we must acknowledge that the liberal project is incomplete. Working toward the liberal idealtoward a world that embraces openness and individual freedom and rejects nativism and strong-man authoritarianismis the most important work we can be doing. To paraphrase another Nobel laureate, F.A. Hayek, we must once again make the building of a liberal society an intellectual adventure; a deed of courage.

Emily Chamlee-Wright is president of the Institute for Humane Studies.

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Naming and reclaiming the liberal ideal - OCRegister

How miserable are you feeling as you contemplate 2020? Putting aside our individual circumstances, the answer is often closely linked with how we are minded politically. A series of body blows to centrist thinking since the honeymoon period after the cold war gave way to a financial crisis and bitter backwash, followed by the arrival of Donald Trump and a gaggle of nationalist-populists around the globe. Add a resounding Boris Johnson majority at home, midwifing a Brexit on untrammelled terms and liberal grumpiness has its reasons.

But it feels like the right moment to ask whether the gloom-deploying strategy has been so smart. A far-left Labour party served up a recipe of predictions of disaster to dim the fairy lights of the holiday season and suffered calamity at the polls. More broadly, liberals (and not just the Lib Dem kind) need to think about how unattractively miserable they have become and what they might do about it.

One key reason Johnson has prevailed is his ambition and direction. This is being linked with a less attractive character trait, namely recklessness. But here is a politician who has carefully exploited Barnumesque moments to emphasise that he is different from the dreary run of his peers. Some people deem that innately hilarious; others find the antics and confection of his speeches wearing a man-child in leaders clothing.

Still, it would require a political tin ear not to heed his appeal to parts of the country that rejected his partys forebears with such gusto.

North-west Durham, where I grew up, and nearby Bishop Auckland (which has acquired Agincourt significance for victorious Conservatives) are two such fiefs. They switched political course in large part because they were fed up waiting for the Brexit moment to come and because of the not unreasonable view that if you feel left behind in an area where for decades the only language has been Labour, it makes sense to change the language.

A stalwart Labour-voting friend in a Durham constituency told me a couple of weeks before the election that he kept encountering people who were considering switching intentions because Johnson was someone you could sit down for a beer and have a laugh with.

Back in the enclosed political drawing room of Remainy central London, the denunciations of his moral turpitude were a repeated theme. I wish he would just go away, snapped one acquaintance (pointlessly, it turned out).

Reality check it was Anna Soubrys Independent Group for Change that shut up shop at the end of 2019. When I email a prominent Tory defector to the Lib Dems to ask what comes next, he replies simply: Time to do something else. Sands today shift extremely fast and perceptions can differ widely, even before we reach the extremes of politics. Where Johnsons critics saw egregious moral weakness, an on-off relationship with the truth and a threadbare promise to deliver more spending while dealing with the economic and logistical challenges of leaving the EU, a lot of other people disagree. As one of his cabinet puts it: Boris is a personal Rorschach test, in which the inkblot takes on multiple meanings.

Enthusiasm, even if misdirected, is more alluring than bearing a grudge about someone elses vision. Yet the tentacles of pessimism have spread much more broadly among liberals, who traditionally believed in harnessing the best of human endeavour. Liberalism acknowledges the continuing fight of individuals and society against overweening power or obscurantism, but it also needs determination and flexibility.

Does the language of centrist progressives still say this with any gusto? Or is it locked into predicting disasters? The overuse of catastrophic to describe a range of Brexit outcomes is followed by a new contender in the cliche charts deeply troubling (in which the deeply bit means something happened that one had not predicted and is thus confused about).

If the BBC gets unfairly into hot water on charges of skewed impartiality, I might suggest to commissioners, including my beloved bosses at Radio 4, that the tone and range of ideas can tip too easily into woe is us. As much as we relish the Greta Thunberg blasts on climate warnings and lawyers giving stern takes on how democracies might perish, it does reflect a mindset captured by the Pet Shop Boys satirical Miserabilism: Make sure youre always frowning/ It shows the world that youve got substance and depth.

Somehow, the Conservatives have acquired a key liberal trait and vice versa. Tories have long been aligned to a view of mankind with roots in stoicism and gradual change. Yet the leap to leave the EU was also a moment when headstrong instinct prevailed over caution.

Liberals (in the British tradition) flourished politically as the Whig party, embracing institutional and social reform. Even when they miscalculated or sometimes failed (as in the liberal interventions of the early 2000s), the guiding desire was to engage with an evolving world. This did not always make them right, but it did make them a force to be reckoned with in democracies and on the international stage.

These days, the general mode of communication is a miffed sense of being rejected, while telling everyone they were right all along and you will one day realise this. I keep thinking back to Jo Swinsons election night speech, which wanted to tell us that she stood by an open, welcoming, inclusive society (so far, so good), but ended blaming nationalism for eviscerating her party, rather than a poorly thought through Brexit strategy. After a rollicking SNP defeat, we can forgive a bad note or two, but that sourness needs to be dealt with by her successors or anyone with an intention to revive a third force between the far poles of British politics.

Just telling voters that they are the dupes of some vague but regrettable force does not feel open about why the progressive project is struggling in Britain and beyond. Battered centrists, who exist across the parties and beyond them, will need to respond to a new political settlement. They may have to bite their tongues as the prime minister, seeing a changed Conservative landscape before him, boosts investment in the north of England and entrenches in political territories that the centre-left deemed, in the fond but patrician language of Blairism, our people.

The projected reopening of the Newcastle-Ashington-Blyth railway line to boost deprived towns isolated by poor infrastructure will serve as a symbolic moment for the Johnson re-engagement with northern lands (and a useful fillip for more devolution, since the idea was hatched locally, before the election).

Such prospects also offer openings for local people, since they demand attention to the kind of detail and practical decision-making that centrists have long cared about how projects work in practice, the consequences and opportunities for communities and environmental protections. Decentralising will encourage fresh thinking about how to reboot sagging projects such as the city academies for areas outside the metropolis and strategies for public sector revival that go beyond raising spending levels. That is the kind of progress liberals should hold the government to delivering, when the honeymoon is over.

To recover relevance, liberalism needs to change the way it sounds and how it thinks about itself, to make the arguments that matter on how societies heal and flourish, the balance of state and market, and the need to engage voters fully on climate change without alienating them by preachiness. Too many of these arguments will go unheard if the overall tone is self-pity and Bregret. A Greek chorus telling us how awfully the national drama is going will not sell tickets to the great progressive revival.

Lesson one: cheer up a bit. Then figure out how to take on the battle of ideas that still counts.

Anne McElvoy is senior editor at the Economist and presents Across the Red Lines on Radio 4

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Theres a lesson in Boris Johnsons jolliness. Liberal miserabilism is a turn-off - The Guardian

An allegedly regretful Trump voter in Pennsylvania, highlighted in videos by a Democratic political action committee and by The New York Times, never actually voted in 2016.

News organization JET 24, an ABC affiliate, found after checking county voting records that Mark Graham of Erie County, Pennsylvania, did not vote in the presidential election three years ago.

Mr. Graham is featured in videos funded by America Bridge, a Democratic PAC, as part of a $5 million advertising campaign in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

In an ad, Mr. Graham states, I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because I thought he would make a change. But he laments the change was not for the good, and complains that the president plays favorites for people like himself he doesnt understand life around here.

He was also featured in two New York Times articles about dissatisfied Trump voters and swing voters. The Times has since issued corrections and verified that Mr. Graham did not vote in 2016.

After it was learned that he didnt vote in 2016, Mr. Graham told Erie News Now that hes a registered Republican and that the ad nevertheless represents his views about the president. He said he participated in a focus group involving Republicans who supported Democrat Ron DiNicola in his failed bid for a U.S. House seat in 2018.

But the Trump campaign noted Friday that American Bridge has yet to take down its ad or apologize.

Well, well, tweeted Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. Guy who says he voted for Trump and now regrets it didnt actually vote for Trump. In fact, didnt vote at all in 2016. Its cool, though. Democrats at American Bridge (liberal PAC) still put him in an ad and wont take it down.

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania also has called for the PAC to take down the ad and apologize.

The ad is false, its premise is false and its messenger has been discredited, said state Republican Chairman Lawrence Tabas in a statement. The organization could easily have determined that Graham had not voted in 2016 by checking the publicly available records at the Erie County elections office.

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GOP wants apology from liberal PAC over 'regretful' Trump voter who didn't vote in 2016 - The Washington TImes

It is a basic Christian teaching that good works are insufficient for spiritual salvation. We should also remember they are unlikely to suffice for cultural and political salvation either.

Chick-fil-As abandonment of The Salvation Army is yesterdays news, but its lessons should be remembered, for they explain our cultural and political trajectory. That the chicken chain capitulated even though everyone was eating mor chikin is instructive regarding the power of the LBGT lobby and its allies. That they directed this power against a Christian organization dedicated to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless including those who identify as LGBT is even more instructive.

It exemplifies how hard-liners are driving the cultural left. It is not clear that a majority even of those who identity as LGBT hate The Salvation Army. For example, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg volunteered for the organization (albeit for a photo op) a couple of years back. Now he is facing criticism from LGBT activists, as those running the movement want total victory, not coexistence. And they are winning.

The campaign included government officials from Buffalo, New York, to San Antonio, Texas, retaliating against Chick-fil-A for its support of The Salvation Army. Even without full control over the government, the left has been aggressive in its use of government power against Christians who believe traditional teachings on human sexuality. The left seems to target particularly those engaged in charitable work, rather than protecting them on account of their good works.

The lefts legal wing is trying to compel Christian hospitals to perform abortions and sex-change surgeries, Christian schools to affirm same-sex relationships, and Christian charities such as womens shelters to pretend men can be women. A purportedly serious Democratic presidential candidate wanted to tax dissenting Christian organizations, including churches, into oblivion.

The left wont even spare elderly nuns. When the Trump administration ended Barack Obamas legal campaign against the Little Sisters of the Poor, various Democratic attorneys general made a point of continuing that unholy effort.

This should not surprise us. Jesus promised that the powers of this world would hate his followers, not that they would love us if we were virtuous. While we Christians should always strive to be more like Christ, we should not succumb to a quasi-Pelagianism that presumes our winsomeness determines how others receive the gospel. Christ himself was crucified, and the grace and charity many martyrs exemplified did not save them from persecution unto death.

But that we should expect trouble in this world does not mean we should be disinterested regarding politics, nor does it excuse governments that oppose the church and oppress its people. That our nation seems to be starting down this path has intensified Christian reconsiderations of liberal political theory. Although our government ostensibly protects the freedoms of religion, association, and speech, procedural liberalism increasingly appears insufficient to protect our rights or to ensure a culture of tolerance and pluralism that includes Christians who maintain the traditional teachings of our faith.

The supposedly neutral principles of the legal left consistently restrict the rights and opportunities of orthodox Christians, and the left always pushes the envelope. Christian litigators should, of course, do their best to defend our rights, and thank God for their efforts, but it should be no surprise that more and more Christians are intrigued by varieties of post-liberal thinking, including previously marginalized ideas such as Catholic integralism. It is understandable that Christians are turning against the system of liberal democratic capitalism as it turns against them.

Post-liberal Christians are unlikely to find their minority status daunting, for they see that minorities can win if they are determined and the institutions they face are weak and full of cowards. After all, a minority of hard-line leftists control cultural, economic, and political pressure points that grant them power far beyond their numbers.

For example, the 2020 Democratic field is so radically pro-abortion that even The New York Times has noticed. The Democratic Party stands for abortion today, abortion tomorrow, and abortion forever, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren illustrated in promising that at her inauguration angels and ministers of grace defend us! she will wear swag to rep the nations largest abortion chain.

Christian post-liberals on the right have seen how readily the liberal center-left and the Chamber-of-Commerce right surrender to the extreme and illiberal left and wonder: Why not us? A decadent and despairing culture with weak institutions and degraded elites is precisely the sort that a determined minority might govern.

Thus, they see an opportunity as our culture disintegrates despite its wealth and technological prowess. Liberal individualism seems to be devouring itself: Fertility is down, loneliness and depression have increased, and deaths of despair from suicide, drugs, and alcohol are way up.

Perhaps it is time to be bold and reorder society toward the highest good, rather than accepting liberalisms dishonest promises of live and let live neutrality. As some post-liberal thinkers note, we increasingly live in a non-Christian integralist society that mandates belief in sectarian dogmas, such as the mystical belief that a man may become indeed, may already be a woman. Therefore, they see the alternative to post-liberal Christian politics not as liberalism, but as some sort of post-Christian illiberal politics.

I am sympathetic to some of the post-liberal thought developing on the right. I see the appeal, especially as liberalisms promise of legal neutrality is exposed as so much fiction. I share many of the critiques of liberal political theory and find its discourse far more interesting than the stale talking points of neoliberals and neoconservatives.

But I am neither Catholic nor Calvinist enough to be much of an integralist, and I remain more skeptical of the likelihood of governmental efficacy and rectitude than many post-liberals seem to be. I also remain attached to many liberal practices, such as the right to trial by jury.

I am, in short, still thinking over these matters and am not entirely in either camp. From this in-between, I would recommend post-liberal thinkers reflect on the frailty and fallibility of human institutions. I also suggest that the defenders of liberal democratic capitalism take the critiques of post-liberals seriously. A liberal order that seeks to shut down Christian charities for nonconformist views on human sexuality does not deserve to survive.

Nathanael Blake is a Senior Contributor at The Federalist. He has a PhD in political theory. He lives in Missouri.

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An Order That Shuts Down Christian Charities Doesn't Deserve To Live - The Federalist

J.K. Rowling caused quite a stir last week by tweeting out a defense of a British researcher who was fired for having the wrong opinion on transgenderism.

My colleague Madeline Fry wrote about the substance of the controversy, but one thing that has struck me about the tone of the criticism has been the sheer level of sorrow from liberals that an author they liked could take a position they found so problematic. The New York Times ran an op-ed headlined, "Harry Potter Helped Me Come Out as Trans, But J.K. Rowling Disappointed Me.'" An author at Vox declared that Rowling had "ruined Harry Potter."

As conservatives, we're used to disagreeing politically with artists and entertainers who we like. Sure, we may take potshots at Hollywood celebrities or authors, but those of us who consume art, literature, or popular entertainment more or less expect that the producers of such media are going to have political views that we find noxious. It's not as if conservatives just sit around reading C.S. Lewis over and over and watching Clint Eastwood movies. And we aren't shocked if some author, actor, or musician says something we find objectionable. It's our expectation that they will.

But for liberals, there's a broad assumption that artists are going to be more or less on the same page as they are. So that's why it's especially jarring to them if an icon such as Rowling displays insufficient wokeness. And it's why the cultural Left is so quick to jump over any statement by any popular artist or entertainer that deviates from liberal orthodoxy.

In a way, it's similar to why liberals get so irrationally angry about Bari Weiss writing for the New York Times or at conservatives being given a platform at universities. They believe that they should have control over all such institutions.

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Liberals are piling on JK Rowling because they aren't used to disagreeing with artists they like - Washington Examiner

On Christmas Eve the Trump campaign launched a website to guide its supporters in holiday political debates with their liberal, snowflake relatives. To assist any snowflakes on the receiving end of the campaigns falsehoods and blatant distortions of fact, a point-by-point takedown follows:

The Trump Economy: In demonstrating how strong the Trump economy supposedly is, the campaigns holiday debate guide highlights job growth since Trump assumed office. But job creation has slowed significantly since January 2017. Despite Trumps relentless self-aggrandizing and bragging, a whopping 1 million fewer jobswere created during Trumps first 34 months in office compared to Obamas last 34. Period.

The Trump campaign also points to record low unemployment. In response, snowflakes should show their Trump-supporting friends and relatives a graph of the unemployment rate over the last decade and challenge them to point out where exactly things magically changed when Trump took over. Unsurprisingly, Trump supporters have no response. Unemployment has declined at a consistent rate since early 2010, meaning that nothing changed after Trump became president. Trump is loudly taking credit for the Obama administrations aggressive economic recovery measures which, according to the experts, saved the American economy.

Moreover, Trump promised to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. But the truth is that manufacturing now accounts for the smallest shareof the American economy in 72 years.

Thanks to Trumps tariffs, which amounted to the largest tax increase on Americans in decades, farm bankruptcies and farmer suicides have spiked.

Meanwhile, median household income, an important economic measure, has remained largely stagnant over Trumps first three years in office. Trump administration spin aside, increases in household income trail those under Obama, which grew steadilytoward the end of his administration.

Despite Trumps overblown boasts about the economy, his campaign is suspiciously silent on the most important economic measure of them all: Annual economic growth. With Trumps promises of 4 percent, 5 percent, even 6 percent economic growth, his campaigns silence is not surprising. Growth will slow significantly this year, demolishing Trumps absurd predictions of 6 percent growth. Indeed, Trump will end his first term with a high of 2.9 percent growth (in 2018), tying Obamas economic record.

Moreover, stock market gains under Trump lag significantly compared to those under Obama and President Clinton.

When it comes to the economy, Trumps schoolyard boasting is just louder and more relentless than his more-humble predecessors.

Immigration: Deportations are far lower at this point in the Trump administration than they were during the Obama administration.

The Trump campaigns holiday debate guide also attempts to link immigration detention cages to the Obama administration. To be clear, separating migrant families was a Trump administration policy. There was no blanket policy separating children from their parents under previous administrations.

Military Spending by Allies: Trump often takes credit for persuading countries in the NATO alliance to spend more on defense. But our NATO allies have been steadily increasing defense spending since 2014, when Russia invaded eastern Ukraine.

America is now the laughingstockof the world. And, with Trump siding with authoritariansand dictators around the world, American credibility and popularity on the international stage have plummeted to historic lows.

Trade Deals: Without relentless insistence by Democrats on labor and environmental protections, Trumps U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement would have been nearly identical to NAFTA. This is not a win for Trump.

Health care: Trump (and GOP) efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act resulted in 1.1 million Americanslosing health coverage in 2018. This breaks a 10-year streakof rising numbers of insured Americans.

Two-thirds of Americans filing for bankruptcydo so because they cannot afford to pay medical bills often despite having health insurance. Perhaps worse, America is seeing an alarming increasein deaths of despair, particularly among the white, working-class citizens who came out in droves to vote Trump into office. Perhaps their votes for the angry, scapegoating candidate were grounded in a dramatic decline in their health, economic fortunes and overall quality of life.

The Trump Tax Cuts: The Trump campaign claims that Trumps massive tax cuts his only legislative accomplishment are driving economic growth. But a devastating analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that the Trump tax cuts had virtually no effect on the economy. Moreover, the Trump tax cuts did not boost workers wages. Instead, they went to corporate stock buybacks, which benefit the ultra-wealthy.

This stunning lack of economic growth begs the question: Why are we racking up trillions of dollars in debt (much of it bought up by China) thanks to the massive Trump tax cuts for the rich?

Indeed, as a direct result of Trumps tax cuts,2018 was the first year ever that tax revenues actuallydeclined in a relatively strong economy. This paved the way for the Trump administration to post the largest monthly deficit in U.S. history, exploding the federal debt. Where is the Tea Party outrage on this?

While many commentators blame Obama for skyrocketing debt during his administration, they conveniently ignore that those increases according to the U.S. Treasury were overwhelmingly due to the long-term effects of the George W. Bush tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. This graph makes it quite clear.

Beyond Trumps astronomical debt increases, the only other discernible effect of the Trump tax cuts appears to be an explosion in wealth and income inequality. Indeed, inequality in America is now at levelsnot seen since 1929, when Wall Street greed caused the Great Depression.

For his part, Trump told his ultra-rich friends that You all just got a lot richer immediately after his tax cuts were passed.

Impeachment and Quid Pro Quo: Given the facts, there is zero doubt that Trump withheld crucial military assistance to an ally at war for personal political gain. That is the definition of corruption.

Trumps own political appointees (including his acting chief of staff and budget director), widely-respected diplomats, a Purple Heart recipient,foreign policy professionals, career budget officials (rightly concerned with obeying federal law) and a leading Fox News analyst have all made the presidents corrupt intent an indisputable fact. Indeed, why was critical military aid to Ukraine halted just 91 minutes after Trumps (not-so-perfect) call with the Ukrainian president?

More importantly, if Trump did nothing wrong and has nothing to hide, why is the White House refusing to let four key officials testify? Do innocent people go out of their way to bury the facts?

Why are Republicans supposedly impartial jurors in an impeachment trial engaging in total coordination with the accused? In any other American court the judge would immediately order such jurors removed and replaced before going to trial.

It should hardly be surprising that 55 percent of Americans support Trumps impeachment and removal from office. That number will only grow as more details of Trumps corrupt actions emerge.

Bonus fact: Trump wasagainstproviding lethal military aid to Ukraine, blowing up a favorite Republicantalking point.

Joe BidenJoe BidenWarren: 'If there's a lawful order for a subpoena, I assume' Biden would comply Former Democratic senator on McConnell impeachment strategy: 'Unfathomable' Biden clarifies previous statements about not testifying in Senate impeachment trial MORE and Ukraine: Americas NATO allies, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists all publicly called for the removal of a corrupt and ineffective Ukrainian prosecutor. To the relief of Americas allies and patriotic Ukrainians, Biden managed to get him fired.

Importantly, the Ukrainian company that hired Bidens son was not under investigation when Biden intervened. Moreover, there is zero evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden. On the contrary, the removal of an ineffective prosecutor represented an enormous victory in the fight against endemic corruption in Ukraine. Biden should be commended for his efforts.

Trump, on the other hand, undercut and sidelined the most effective voices against corruption in Ukraine for personal political gain.

The Trump Economy, the Environment, and Oil Production: The Trump campaigns holiday guide claims that Trump has taken important steps to restore, preserve, and protect our land, air, and waters.

Could the campaign be referring to Trump green-lighting toxic emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants? Or perhaps the litany of ways the Trump administration has dismantled laws and regulations protecting healthy, safe and clean drinking water? Could the campaign be referring to Trump exposing American workers to toxic particulates and dust? The list goes on and on, and its not pretty.

As detailed above, the rollback of these critical health and environmental regulations did not result in a spike in economic growth, making their repeal utterly unnecessary not to mention dangerous for all Americans.

Lastly, the Trump campaign takes credit for the United States becoming the worlds largest oil producer. But this trend began in 2011. Trump had nothing to do with it.

More importantly, with a staggering 120,000 weather records broken in the U.S. this year alone and the worlds top companies projecting at least $1 trillion in costs due to climate change, Trump has very little to crow about.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of States Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.

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Demolishing the Trump campaign's holiday guide to debating liberal 'snowflakes' | TheHill - The Hill

People take part in a pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong on Sept. 29. Adryel Talamantes/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Its become fashionable to wonder whether the liberal international order can survive the malign forces that have been lining up against it during the 2010swhat the Wall Street Journal called the Decade of Disruption.But based on recent trends, its a fair bet that democracy, globalism, and open trade will endure handily into the third decade of the 21st century.

Start with the state of democracy. Nothing has been more alarming to internationalists than the one-two punch of U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who have taken power in two of the worlds oldest and most important democracies by awakening the old demons of nationalism. With Trump focusing his ire on NATO and the World Trade Organization, and Johnson stalking out of the European Union, the two leaders have transformed the once-hallowed special relationship from a bulwark of global stability (sullied though it was by the Iraq War) into what looks more like a wrecking ball. Elsewhere, illiberalism has overtaken young democracies, such as Hungary and Poland, and even threatened mature ones with the rapid rise of nationalist parties such as the Alternative for Germany and Norbert Hofers anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Austria. In the worlds largest democracy, India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party appear to be sending the same message. And there are considerable doubts about whether the democratic body politic possesses an immune system strong enough to fight off a plague of cyber-generated misinformation and disinformation, and systemic hacking by such autocrats as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But democracy just wont give up, and in 2019which could justly be called the year of global protestit kept reinventing itself at the grassroots. This has been happening in the most unlikely of places around the globe, in countries such as Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Chile, and above all in Hong Kong, where thousands of determined protesters have braved bullets and tear gas, embarrassing Chinese President Xi Jinping even as he brutally consolidates his autocratic rule on the mainland. Perhaps the U.S. and British democracies are becoming decadentand 2020 will tell us a lot about that question come Novemberbut the idea of democracy remains a powerful, ever-replenishing urge that, as sociologists and political scientists have long told us, only gets stronger the more that income and educational levels increase around the world.

The international economy is also undergoing some severe stress testsand surviving remarkably intact. The year 2019 began with deep-seated fears that Trumps trade wars would help trigger a global recessionand among the most concerned was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who midway through the year suggested he and other central bank chiefs simply didnt know how bad things could get. The thing is, Powell said, there isnt a lot of experience in responding to global trade tensions. Growth and investment are still slowing due in large part to the uncertainty Trump has created, but fears of a recession have receded. It turns out the U.S. president cannot single-handedly return the United States to the days of Smoot-Hawleyeven his fellow neonationalist Boris Johnson believes in free tradeand the domino effect of retaliatory tariffs that followed in the 1930s, setting the stage for world war. (In June 1930, under the Smoot-Hawley Act, the United States raised tariffs to an average of 59 percent on more than 25,000 imports; just about every other nation reacted in tit-for-tat protectionist fashion, severely depressing the global economy.)

Today, the complexities of a deeply integrated global economy and its supply chains may prove too much to undoeven for the most powerful person on the planet.

And what of the institutions of the international system? The United States has always had an uneasy relationship with its post-World War II progeny, principally the United Nations, the WTO, and NATOdespite helping create themand Trump only gave expression to an American id that was long seething under the surface. True, Trump is demeaning these institutions to an unprecedented degree and demanding far more of them. But hes only saying more stridently what was said by, say, President Barack Obama, who also criticized the NATO allies for being free-riders, and former President George W. Bush, whose administration privately mocked the alliance and sneered at the U.N. (Another little-remembered precursor to Trump was President Bill Clintons feisty first-term trade representative, Mickey Kantor, who once said he wasnt interested in free-trade theology and preferred that Americans behave like mercantilists.)

Trump is making a serious run at denuding the WTO by taking down its appellate court, but even that institution is likely to outlast a 73-year-old president who, at most, has only four more years in office to wreak havoc on the global system. This is especially likely because he is now mostly alone in his anti-globalist passion with the departure of his deeply ideological national security advisor, the militant John Bolton.

Lets not forget either that the advent of Trump and Johnson represents a legitimate backlash to major policy errors made by the elites who have dominated the international system. George W. Bush led the Republican Party badly astray with his strategically disastrous Iraq War and fecklessness over the deregulation of Wall Street, which set the stage for the biggest financial crash since 1929 and the Great Recession. That turned voters off to traditional Republican thinking and opened the door to Trumps unlikely takeover of the party. Something similar happened in Britain, when Bushs partner in these neoliberal economic delusions and his ally in an unnecessary war, the once-popular Labour leader Tony Blair, set the stage for Labours eventual handoff to the socialist Jeremy Corbyn. (A shift that was, in turn, analogous to the ascent of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and the left inside the U.S. Democratic Party in response to the rise of Trumps 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton, who was seen as pro-war and too friendly to Wall Street.)

But the larger point is that Trump and Johnson are only the latest stresses to a system that, since the end of the Cold War, has suffered some pretty major ones and yet endured. In the quarter-century since then, financial markets collapsed several times, and the global economy has remained intact. Islamist terrorists have struck at major capitals around the world, and a clash of civilizations hasnt ensued. The worlds two largest economies, the United States and China, incessantly bicker, but theyre still doing business. Ivory tower realists continue to be dead wrong in their predictions that the international system will fall back into anarchy, even when politicians like Trump are doing their best to make that happen. On the realist view, the so-called West and its institutions should have disintegrated after the Cold War with the disappearance of the Soviet Union; as Owen Harries wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1993, The political West is not a natural construct but a highly artificial one. It took the presence of a life-threatening, overtly hostile East to bring it into existence and to maintain its unity. It is extremely doubtful whether it can now survive the disappearance of that enemy.

Instead, these international constructs only expandedso rapidly and intensively that they generated a backlash. And that expansion is plainly still outpacing the efforts to block or destroy it, especially as we see other nations forging free trade deals behind Trumps back. Above all, while plainly Americas stature as stabilizer of the international system has been seriously set backfirst by Bush, most recently by Trumpthere is some positive news even in the impeachment drama now underway. Although Trump is all but certain to be acquitted in the Senate, the impeachment vote in the House, following weeks of testimony by career U.S. diplomats, was a dramatic reaffirmation of traditional American values for fair dealing not just with Ukraine, but with all nations.

Perhaps, for now, that will be enough to keep things intact.

Continued here:

Why the Liberal International OrderFree Trade, Democracy, and GlobalismWill Survive the 2020s and Donald Trump - Foreign Policy