Category Archives: Liberal

The federal ethics and lobbying commissioners are being asked to investigate whether a lobby firm for high-tech companies that is led by a former Liberal aide broke the rules by offering access to decision makers in exchange for a $10,000 yearly fee.

NDP MP Nathan Cullen has asked the federal Ethics Commissioner to investigate, while advocacy group Democracy Watch has written to both the Ethics Commissioner and the Lobbying Commissioner.

Canadians will certainly be suspicious that this organization was created soon after the Liberals were elected, that it is made up of many well-connected Liberal insiders and donors, and that it offers exclusive and preferential access to Liberal government agencies and senior staff of at least one cabinet minister, Mr. Cullen wrote in his letter to the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on Wednesday. This relationship undoubtedly warrants further investigation.

Related: Lobby group asked to stop offering access to Ottawa in exchange for $10,000

The complaints focus on a membership pitch circulated by the Council of Canadian Innovators, an industry group that was created in late 2015 to lobby on behalf of Canadian high-tech firms. Three of the councils four full-time staff are former Liberal aides, either federally or in Ontario.

The council sent a letter to clean-tech firms stating that among the things their chief executives would receive in exchange for a $10,000-a-year membership fee was participation in monthly meetings with Environment Minister Catherine McKennas chief of staff. The pitch also promised access to internal planning discussions regarding the federal governments $950-million Innovation Clusters program.

A spokesperson for Ms. McKenna said on Tuesday that the groups pitch was neither accurate nor appropriate and added that the chief of staff, Marlo Raynolds, had met the group only three times since October. The council said this week that it changed the wording of the document last month so that it promises regular rather than monthly meetings with Ms. McKennas chief of staff.

On Wednesday, the minister's office said Mr. Raynolds has written to the lobbying commissioner as well to ask for a review of the matter. Mr. Raynolds has also written to the ethics commissioner to "clarify the record."

The council says its request for an annual membership fee in exchange for government relations work is no different than those of other industry groups that meet regularly with public servants and political staff.

The council is led by Benjamin Bergen, who was an executive assistant to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland when she was in opposition. Mr. Bergen described himself as Ms. Freelands 2015 campaign manager in a 2016 version of his rsum. However, this week he said he was not the official campaign manager and was more of a co-campaign manager. He said the official campaign manager was Dana OBorn, who is now the councils director of policy.

The Council of Canadian Innovators always has and always will abide by all federal and provincial accountability and transparency legislation when engaging in its advocacy work, Mr. Bergen said in a statement on Wednesday.

In just over one year, the CEOs, who are proud Canadians, have engaged with government officials and politicians from across the political spectrum to make meaningful contributions to Canadas economic development, health, public safety, environmental and other important areas of public policy.

Since its formation, the council has had broad access to top public servants and political aides across the federal government.

The federal lobbyist registry shows the council has had 203 meetings with federal officials since it was formed, including 13 meetings with Global Affairs Canada, where Ms. Freeland first served as trade minister and then Foreign Affairs Minister. None of those meetings involved Ms. Freeland directly or her political staff.

The Democracy Watch letter asks the lobbying commissioner to investigate whether the interactions with Ms. Freelands department constitute a breach of the Lobbyist Code of Conduct. The code states that a lobbyist shall not lobby a public-office holder with whom they have a relationship that could reasonably be seen to create a sense of obligation. The code also states that lobbyists must refrain for five years from lobbying people for whom they have engaged in political activities that could create a sense of obligation.

Neither Mr. Bergen nor Ms. OBorn were registered lobbyists when they worked on Ms. Freelands 2015 campaign, but the council said they will not lobby the minister for five years. Democracy Watch says the five-year ban should also apply to Ms. Freelands department, but is asking the commissioner to make a determination on that point.

Elections Canada records show Ms. Freeland paid Mr. Bergen $1,176.26 in 2015 campaign expenses for ground transportation. The candidate also paid Ms. OBorn $79.10 for personal grooming and $33.90 for clothing.

Follow Bill Curry on Twitter: @curryb

Read more here:

Federal commissioners asked to probe Liberal-connected firm's cash-for-access pitch - The Globe and Mail

When I saw the email in my inbox with the header Tucker Carlson Tonight Request on Monday, I immediatelyhad a strong feeling what itwas about. Earlier that day,Rush Limbaugh had been rantingon his show aboutmy Salonpiece lambastingconservatives for playing dumb about the unsubtle white nationalism of President Donald Trumpsspeech last week in Poland.

Sureenough, the producer was asking me to speak about the Presidents speech in Poland last week, and his trip abroad overall, which she [meaning me] has shared some thoughts on.

Oh god, I thought, Carlson wants me on his show to play the part of the liberal ditz,to be dished up as a hate object foran elderly audience ready to believe my brain has been addled by my gender and my liberal arts education. Worse, he wanted me to do so in service of mainstreamingan argument that was once the province ofwhite supremacist websites, but hasridden the Trump train straight into more respectable discourse: The idea that Western people and their civilization should be, by rights, treated as superior to all other people on earth.

That Trump was engaging in white nationalist rhetoric is an observation that hardly needs to be relitigated here, as writers likeJamelle Bouie of SlateandPeter Beinartof the Atlantichave laid out the case.Suffice it to say that the idea that Western civilization isunder threat from dark-skinned people from former coloniesis a popular obsession on white nationalist blogs and withTrumps close adviser Steve Bannon. Plus theresthe unpleasantness that erupted less than a century ago when Germans got it in their head that Aryan people and European culture faced a similar threat.

These associations make it difficult for Trumps supporters in the media to make a direct case for his argumentswithout sounding like a bunch of ignorant racists.Instead, pro-Trump pundits use the bank shot strategy: Rather than defending Trumpsideas directly, theyfocus on demonizinghis critics by invokingright-wing caricatures of liberals.

The message to the audience is simple: You hate those smug liberals, and those liberals disagreewith Trumps message so you must agree with Trump!

As Tobin Smith, who was a Fox News pundit for 14 years,recently wroteabout the channel, Just like pro-wrestling, the panel opinion programs are carefully staged and choreographed by Fox producers so the viewers home team (in WWE language the Baby Face) always wins over the Heel aka the poor pathetic libtard.

So I understood right away that on Carlsons show I would be slotted forthe libtard role, a hate object presentedto Fox viewers so they dont even realize that theyre nodding along to argumentsthat used to be the province of neo-Nazis and other hate groups.

The pre-existing stereotype I was likely to be slotted into wasnt hard to guess at, either: The liberal bimbo. Fox viewerslovethe idea that the main result of feminism was that a bunch of dumbgirls were awarded educations and jobs that they simply arent smart enough to handle, being female, and that liberal politics induces in women anunfortunate navet.

If that seems like an exaggeration, I welcome readers to look intoCarlsons obsession with Teen Vogue columnist Lauren Duca, whose sharp political writing he routinely tries to dismiss by arguing that she should stick towriting about clothes and makeup. Also, Limbaughs earlier segment about me was all about painting me as a liberal bimbo, by claiming Im younger than I actually am and insisting that kids these days dont get a proper education.

It is tempting, of course, to believe that Im savvy enough to somehow break through all this cultural baggage and communicate my message effectively to Fox viewers. But Im not actually dumb, no matter how much conservative pundits portray me that way. I know thatIm no match for the Fox News machine and anyone who thinks they are is deluded.

TV is a visual medium and Fox openly encourages its viewers to make snap judgments about the liberal guests before theyve even had a chance to open their mouths. Even if I did cover up my tattoos and wear conservative makeup, I would read, onscreen, more as Brooklyn hipster than as the beauty queen-turned-housewife that is the Fox News ideal. Even if I was an unparalleled genius at verbal communication, my message has no way of cracking through that hardened shell of hate built up against women who look and act like me.

All of which means the only purpose that could be served by my appearance on Carlsons show was to become a conduit for a truly repulsive mission, that being the mainstreaming of white nationalist politics with the message, The best way to put this bitch in her place is to uncritically accept everything Trump says.

I dont want to be party to that. Carlson, unsurprisingly,ran with the segment anyway hey, its not like he was going to cover the revelations about Donald Trump Jr.s apparent collusion with a Russian agents but without a disobedient woman for his audience to hate, the segment was less effective than it could have been.

I would also encourage other liberal pundits to boycott Fox News in just this way. Yes, appearing in that arena of hate can help raise your brand profile, and of course that matters in this competitive media environment. But youre not getting your message out. Youre just being used as a convenient mechanism to deliver ever more extreme right-wing messages. Depriving Fox News of its punching bags is a small step toward restoring some sanity to our deranged media landscape, but one that could reduce the networks propagandistic power.

Excerpt from:

Why I Declined To Be Tucker Carlson's Liberal Feminist Punching Bag - The National Memo (blog)

"I wish no one cared what celebrities think about the situation in Israel," actress Mayim Bialik wrote in 2014.

Bialik, who plays Amy Farrah Fowler on the hit sitcom "The Big Bang Theory," may be out of luck. She's a big celebrity, and the Israel-Palestine issue is a contentious one.

And the self-proclaimed chatterbox, who actually can't speak right now a doctor-ordered voice break due to long-term strain on her vocal cords didn't hold back when HuffPost Canada asked her opinions via email.

The observant Jew calls herself both a proud Zionist, which means that she supports the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and a proud liberal.

She told HuffPost Canada that her family lives in the Israeli settlements, which are civilian communities in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The United Nations Security Council has called the settlements illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, but Bialik tells HuffPost she'll leave the last word to the people who live there.

"I do not get to decide unless I choose to move to Israel where I think people should and shouldn't live," she said.

"I know there is complexity to the situation with settlements and I don't always understand or ever understand [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu, but I respectfully insist that Israel has a right to exist and that peace and coexistence is a main goal of mine as a liberal Zionist Jew."

The mom of two spoke out a few months ago on her website, GrokNation, in response to an interview with Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, in which Sarsour disagreed with the idea that Zionism and feminism could co-exist.

"You either stand up for the rights of all women, including Palestinians, or none," Sarsour said.

Bialik wrote that she was both a Zionist and a feminist, and that the former movement encompasses a wide variety of perspectives on both the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and the settlements.

"Accusing Zionism of being incompatible with feminism is exceptionally short-sighted," she wrote. It smarts of a broad-stroke bias against the entire Jewish people for the violations that occur in a state that was founded on the principles of Zionism."

She also doesn't like the use of the word "occupation" to describe Israel's control over the Palestinian territories, which include the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, and calling it "inflammatory."

"[It] paints a not entirely accurate picture especially for people who don't know anything about Israel or the matzav [situation] much like calling Israel an apartheid state," she told HuffPost.

The UN Security Council, General Assembly and the International Court of Justice consider Israel to be the occupying power in the territories.

Story continues below video

Bialik courted controversy in 2014 when she donated money to send bulletproof vests to Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

Before her imposed talking break, Bialik also recently filmed a funny commercial for Israeli company SodaStream.

The company was targeted by a boycott campaign because one of its factories was in a West Bank settlement. The factory has since been moved.

But while Bialik may seem an unabashed champion of Israel, she has reflected in the past on her own conclusions.

In the same 2014 piece for Kveller, she wrote that watching the Mel Gibson movie "Braveheart" led her to ask some pointed questions, including whether the people who hate her for being Jewish because she supports Israel's right to exist are anti-Semitic.

"Is the freedom that William Wallace fought and died for 1,000 years ago in Scotland the same freedom that the Palestinian people fight for?" she wrote. "And is that freedom the same as the freedom for Israeli citizens to live without rockets falling on you and without your neighbors rallying actively for you to be pushed into the sea simply because you exist as a Jew?"

Follow this link:

Mayim Bialik Calls Herself A Proud Zionist And A Proud Liberal - Huffington Post Canada

By Jason Willick By Jason Willick July 12 at 12:21 PM

Jason Willick is a staff writer at The American Interest.

Its anyones guess whether the latest round of Russia revelations will flame out or bring the administration toppling to the ground. But either way, the drama is only one act in an ongoing cycle of outrages involving Trump and Russia that will, one way or another, come to an end. That is not true of the controversy over the Presidents remarks in Warsaw last week, which exposed a crucial contest over ideas that will continue to influence our politics until long after this administration has left office. And the responses from Trumps liberal critics were revealing and dangerous.

The speech a call to arms for a Western civilization ostensibly menaced by decadence and bloat from within and hostile powers from without was received across the center-left as a thinly veiled apologia for white nationalism.Trump did everything but cite Pepe the Frog,tweeted the Atlantics Peter Beinart.Trumps speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto,read a Vox headline. According the New Republics Jeet Heer, Trumps alt-right speechredefined the West in nativist terms.

Thus, the intelligentsia is now flirting with an intellectually indefensible linguistic coup: Characterizing any appeal to the coherence or distinctiveness of Western civilization as evidence of white nationalist sympathies. Such a shift, if accepted, would so expand the scope of the term alt-right that it would lose its meaning. Its genuinely ugly ideas would continue to fester, but we would lose the rhetorical tools to identify and repudiate themas distinct from legitimate admiration for the Western tradition. To use a favorite term of the resistance, the alt-right would become normalized.

[Trumps visit to Poland was a study in breaking norms]

There is no shortage of fair criticism of Trumps speech: For example, that he shouldnt have delivered it in Poland because of Warsaws recent authoritarian tilt; that his criticism of Russia should have been more pointed; or that he would have better served Americas interests by sounding a more Wilsonian tone when it came to promoting democracy around the world. And, yes, Trump has proven himself a clever manipulator of white identity politics during his short political career, so it is understandable that critics would scrutinize his remarks for any hint of bigotry.But by identifying Western civilization itself with white nationalism, the center-left is unwittingly empowering its enemies and imperiling its values.

How did progressive intellectuals get themselves into this mess? The confusion comes in part from loose language: in particular, a conflation of liberalism and the West.Liberalismis an ideology defined by, among other things, freedom of religion, the rule of law, private property, popular sovereignty and equal dignity of all people.The Westis the geographically delimited area where those values were first realized on a large scale during and after the European Enlightenment.

So to appeal to the West in highlighting the importance of liberal values, as Trump did, is not to suggest that those values are the exclusive property of whites or Christians. Rather, it is to accurately recognize that the seeds of these values were forged in the context of the Wests wars, religions and classical inheritances hundreds of years ago. Since then, they have spread far beyond their geographic place of birth and have won tremendous prestige across the world.

What is at stake now is whether Americans will surrender the idea of the West to liberalisms enemies on the alt-right that is, whether we will allow people who deny the equal citizenship of women and minorities and Jews to lay claim to the legacy of Western civilization. This would amount to a major and potentially suicidal concession, because the alt-right not in the opportunistically watered-down sense of immigration skeptic, or social conservative, but in the sense of genuine white male political supremacism is anti-Western. It is hostile to the once-radical ideals of pluralism and self-governance and individual rights that were developed during the Western Enlightenment and its offshoots. It represents an attack on, not a defense of, of the Wests greatest achievements.

[On his trip abroad, Trump left American values behind]

As any alt-rightist will be quick to point out, many Enlightenment philosophers were racist by current standards. (Have you evenreadwhat Voltaire said about the Jews?) But this is a non-sequitur: The Enlightenment is today remembered and celebrated not for the flaws of its principals but for laying the intellectual foundations that have allowed todays conception of liberalism to develop and prosper.

AsDimitri Halikiaspointed out on Twitter, there is a strange convergence between the extreme left and the extreme right when it comes to understanding the West. The campus left (hey, hey, ho, ho,Western Civ has got to go)rejects Western Civilizationbecauseit is racist. The alt-right, meanwhile, accepts Western civilizationonly insofaras it is racist they fashion themselves defenders of the West, but reject the ideas of equality and human dignity that are the Wests principal achievements. But both, crucially, deny the connection between the West and the liberal tradition.

To critics, one of the most offending lines in Trumps speech was his remark that the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Trump clearly intended this to refer to the threat from Islamic extremism and, presumably, the politically correct liberals who he believes are enabling it. But there is another threat to the Wests survival in the form of a far-right politics that would replace liberalism and the rule of law with tribalism and white ethnic patronage.

The best defense we have against this threat is the Western liberal tradition. But by trying to turn the West into a slur, Trumps critics are disarming. Perhaps the presidents dire warning wasnt so exaggerated, after all.

More here:

The alt-right is an attack on Western values. Liberals shouldn't ... - Washington Post

Jill Filipovic is a feminist, writer, and attorney.

On Wednesday, we learned that Filipovic is also a eugenicist.

It's a quite remarkable tweet. For a start, consider Filipovic's utter, unrestrained belief in her cause. That tweet isn't just a suggestion, it's an order: at the margins, having children makes you a bad person.

But sidelining the moral argument for a second, Filipovic's claim is also remarkable for its idiocy.

After all, the premise of Filipovic's argument that Earth cannot co-exist with a growing human population rests on the Guardian article that her tweet links to. That article references researchers who have listed all the things that produce carbon emissions.

But here's the thing. The correlation between planetary health and human population is not nearly as simple as Filipovic presents. New technologies have expanded access to food, housing, medicine, and energy supplies. On the energy front, the dual rise of solar power and fracking-based extraction offers sustainability for global energy needs. And the use of less-polluting, less-resource-intensive technologies defines the digital age.

Yes, we need to protect the environment, but we humans and the Earth can co-exist.

There's another logical issue here: growing populations in the developing world will inevitably, and vastly, offset any reduction in birth rates in the United States.

For the sake of argument, however, let us assume that Americans did listen to Filipovic and stopped having as many kids. In turn, let us assume that our population growth declined and from its already record low rate of 0.7 percent to a negative figure that caused the population to shrink.

We would have a big problem.

With an aging population and shrinking pool of younger citizens, we would face increasingly intractable problems in providing for our elders. It's not a terribly controversial notion to admit that younger, productive workers are needed to pay for the tax system that sustains our elders.

At best, Filipovic's proposal would lead to massive tax hikes on workers and declining standards of care. This would inevitably reduce private sector investment and productivity, growing debt, and a restraining influence on the economy. Put simply, we would live less-wealthy, less-happy lives.

Nevertheless, Filipovic's contention reaches far deeper than that of simple planetary concerns. It seems clear that the writer also has some pathological dislike for the process of producing children. We can assess this by scrolling down Filipovic's Twitter feed.

On Tuesday, linking to an article on the same theme, Filipovic tweeted out, "there's nothing more obnoxious than a gender reveal party." The author of that piece explains why she resents gender reveal parties. It's because those parties imprison female identity to producing offspring. And because "... gender-reveal parties don't actually reveal gender - they reveal anatomy. Gender is a wholly different thing, inextricably tied to the social constructs around it."

Sure it is.

Science aside, it's clear that Filipovic and her movement believe that having children is, to some degree, immoral. Filipovic does not tell us the number of children that can be morally justified, but she may well support a one-child policy. But more than that, in Filipovic world, the choice to become pregnant is an immoral offense against both female identity and the planet.

Filipovic's order against pregnancy might not be backed up for coercive threat, but it's still very unpleasant.

See the article here:

Liberal columnist Jill Filipovic says having lots of kids is immoral - Washington Examiner

Malcolm Turnbulls speech reminded his Liberal colleagues that he has not stolen the party and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

It is a sign of how serious the divisions have become in the Liberal Party that speaking the truth about Robert Menzies is now depicted as making a provocative attack on the Liberal right.

Yet that is the situation in which Malcolm Turnbull found himself after giving his Disraeli Prize speech in London. As Turnbull pointed out in that speech, Menzies intentionally avoided calling the new party conservative in case that gave rise to misconceptions. Rather, Turnbull cites Menzies statement that they:

took the name Liberal because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

As the leading academic expert on Robert Menzies, Judith Brett, has pointed out, Menzies recognised when the party was founded in 1944 that there was a strong public sentiment in favour of building a progressive, new post-war society that was far better than the old.

In other words, it was a party that pledged to reject socialism, but wouldnt necessarily stand in the path of social progress.

In short, Turnbull is attempting to reclaim both Menzies and the Liberal Party he played a key role in founding, for a centrist rather than reactionary position. He is gently taking issue with Tony Abbott and those conservatives in the party who have focused on undermining, rather than working with him, regardless of the damage this might do to the partys electoral prospects.

I say gently because, as even the arch-conservative Eric Abetz acknowledges, Turnbull also cites Tony Abbotts earlier phrase that the sensible centre is the place to be. Nonetheless, Turnbull is reminding such conservatives that he has not stolen the party, and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

There is a long tradition of attempting to appeal to the centre in Australian politics, not least in the hope that centrist politicians will be able to harvest votes from both major parties. Turnbull can legitimately argue that many of the small-l liberal positions he is associated with (despite his more recent concessions to the right) are in line with popular opinion. Same-sex marriage is an obvious case in point.

There was also a vibrant small-l liberal tradition on issues such as homosexuality in the party in the 1970s, prior to John Howards conservative ascendancy.

Nonetheless, there were some elephants in the room in London when Turnbull gave his speech.

It is open to debate what a modern Menzian position would be in regard to issues such as same-sex marriage or racial equality. After all, Menzies, like Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley before him, continued to support the White Australia Policy. Male homosexuality was illegal under state law for all of Menzies prime ministership.

Turnbull refers to Menzies forgotten people. However, the famous speech in which Menzies articulated that concept assumed (as Curtin and Chifley also did) that employees would continue to be predominantly male, and women would largely be in the home.

Turnbull clearly assumes that a modern sensible centre position would have kept pace with changing social attitudes. But at least on some issues, other Liberals will disagree.

The bigger elephant in the room is the issue of Menzies economic beliefs at the time the Liberal Party was founded, and what a modern day centrist position on economic policy would be. After all, contemporary Australian voters seem to be concerned about their economic futures, the power of big business, and cuts to social services.

Turnbull does briefly acknowledge in his speech that, by modern standards, Menzies:

was hardly an economic liberal. He believed in a highly regulated economy with high tariffs, a fixed exchange rate, centralised wage fixing and generally much more Government involvement in the economy than we would be comfortable with.

Indeed, Menzies was more of a Keynesian economically, not a market liberal like Turnbull.

Furthermore, Menzies characterised the middle class as the forgotten people partly because he believed that unskilled workers were not forgotten but were already well-protected by unions and had their wages and conditions safeguarded by popular law. Meanwhile, the rich were able to protect themselves.

While strongly supporting individual endeavour, he argued that the new politics should not return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. Rather, our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.

Menzies was strongly anti-communist and anti-socialist, but he was not a neoliberal.

Voters could be forgiven for thinking that at least some of Menzies words sound more like those of the contemporary Labor Party than the modern-day Liberal Party. The Liberal Party itself acknowledges that a belief in social equality was one of the principles on which the party was founded.

However, despite some concessions in this years budget, Turnbull may have his work cut out trying to convince centrist voters that his economic liberalism can adequately address todays scourge of rising inequality. Keynesian-influenced solutions are on the rise again in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Turnbull argued in his speech that the terms left and right had begun to lose all meaning. However, there is another, more unpalatable truth that he may need to face. It may be more that left and right are moving conceptually, because the centre has shifted too.

More here:

Turnbull is right to link the Liberals with the centre but is the centre where it used to be? - The Conversation AU

The most telling feature of Daniel Fosters response to my article on Donald Trumps Warsaw speech is that, while he dislikes my definition of the West, he never offers one of his own. I argued that, in the United States today, the best predictor of whether a country is considered Western is whether it is primarily white and primarily Christian. (With Protestant and Catholic countries considered more Western than Orthodox ones, and Israel tossed in to buttress the Judeo part of Judeo-Christian.) I noted that non-white or non-Christian countries arent generally considered Western even when they are further west geographically than Christian, white ones (Morocco v. Poland, Haiti v. France, Egypt v. Australia). And that non-white, non-Christian countries arent generally considered Western even when they are economically developed (Japan) or robustly democratic (India).

Foster responds that Morocco was jostled about by Spanish and French empires for a few hundred years and that Western ideals were kind of a big thing in the Haiti of Toussaint Louverture and that Japan enjoys the sponsorship of a demure American empire and that Indias in the frigging British Commonwealth. Sure. Countries that Americans today consider Western and countries that they consider non-Western have interacted for a long time, and shaped each other in profound ways. So have white and black Americans. Yet Americans still distinguish between the two.

Foster is trying to have it both ways. He says that India, Morocco, Japan, Haiti, Egypt, and many other non-white, non-Christian places are right well tangled up in the West. Notice the slippery language. Are they Western or not? Saying no would require Foster to explain what excludes them from the club. Saying yes would render the term meaningless. Yes, India is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. (Its not called the British Commonwealth anymore.) So are frigging Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. If being influenced by (and influencing) the West makes you part of the West, then the West is everything.

Like other critics of my piece, Foster wants to associate the West with principles like democracy, freedom, tolerance, and equality. Thus, he says the Haitian revolution was fought for Western ideals. But if the real test of a countrys Westernness is its governments fidelity to liberal democratic ideals, then Japan, Botswana, and India are three of the most Western countries on Earth, Spain didnt become Western until it embraced democracy in 1975, and Hungarys slide towards authoritarianism means it is significantly less Western than it was a few years ago. Almost no one, including Foster, uses the term that way. And for good reason. If Western is synonymous with democratic or free, then you dont need the term at all.

What Foster is actually doing is linking these ideals to a particular religious (Judeo-Christian) identity. (Other conservativesPat Buchanan and Ann Coulter, for instanceexplicitly link them to a racial identity as well. And in America today, Muslim virtually functions as a racial category anyway. The Tsarnaev brothers, of Boston bombing fame, literally hailed from the Caucuses yet were not described as white.) Foster gives it away with this line: The West is the only civilization that blushes. Really? Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arabian, and African civilizations have no traditions of self-criticism or shame? Its telling that Foster sees the Haitian revolution simply as a struggle for Western ideals. Of course, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and American revolutionaries turned the ideals of their oppressors against them. But they also drew on non-Western, pre-colonial traditions. During the struggle against apartheid, Bishop Desmond Tutu popularized the term Ubuntu, a Bantu word meaning common humanity. In his 2005 book, The Argumentative Indian, Nobel Prize Winner Amartya Sen argues that Indian liberal democracy owes its robustness in part to the legacies of a Buddhist emperor of India, Ashoka, who, in the third century BCE laid down what are perhaps the oldest rules for conducting debates and disputations and to a Muslim Indian emperor, Akbar, who in the 16th century, when the Inquisition was in full swing, outlined principles of religious toleration.

Near the heart of the immigration debate in America and Europe today is the question of whether non-white, non-Christian immigrants will embrace values like tolerance, reason, and womens rights. Conservatives tend to be more pessimistic. Liberalsremembering that, in many countries, such principles were once considered alien to Catholics and Jewsare more optimistic. Thats fine.

The problem is when conservatives ask not whether immigrants will embrace democratic or liberal values, but rather Western values. In so doing, theyre conflating the universal and the particular. Theyre implying that being Muslim itself is incompatible with good citizenship. Foster himself may not believe that. But if he thinks its a marginal viewdivorced from mainstream conservatism in America todayhes nuts. According to a 2015 Public Religion Research Institute poll, three-quarters of Republicans say Islam is incompatible with American values.

Donald Trump is not a to-be-sure paragraph. On the subject of Islam and the West, he reflects what most American conservatives believe. And defending his speech without acknowledging its context, as Fosters magazine, National Review, did is willfully nave. When Trump talked in Poland about defending our civilization from threats from the south and east, he was not talking entirely, or even mostly, about defending liberal democracy. How could he have been? He fawns over authoritarian leaders. He attacks judges for their ethnicity and tweets images of himself physically attacking a man with CNNs logo superimposed on his face. No president in modern American history has cherished liberal democracy less.

Trump arrived in Poland as the man who, during the campaign, said, Islam hates us, and called for banning Muslim immigration. And he gave his speech about the survival of the West in a country whose government is itself undermining liberal democracy (without the gentlest chiding from Trump), and will not admit a single Muslim refugee.

In contemporary political discourse, defending liberal democracy and defending the West are very different things. In fact, from Trump to Marine Le Pen to the leaders of Poland and Hungary, many of the people most loudly defending the latter represent the greatest threat to the former. Its reminiscent of Gandhis famous line: Asked What do you think of western civilization? he answered, I think it would be a good idea.

Read more:

Defending Liberal Democracy is Not the Same as Defending 'the ... - The Atlantic

The Left is impossible to keep up with.

Last week, after President Trump spoke in Poland, he reached out to the European nations he has been so attacked for alienating, and he sang an ode to Western civilization. This, a Washington Post opinion writer told us, was "white nationalist" "dog whistles."

A Vox.com writer Voxplained to her readers that Trump's speech was "an alt-right manifesto."

Extolling Western civilization, our elites tell us, now makes one part of the alt-right.

This is the way you argue if you want to increase the ranks of the alt-right. It's also the way Democrats and the left-leaning media have been fighting for almost a year: take something widely supported on the Right and lump it in with something rare and repulsive.

This "lumping" aims to toxify the whole Republican Party and every conservative idea. The effect, though, is often to make extremism more palatable to more people.

The clearest example of liberal lumping gone awry happened last year. Back in summer 2016, just after Trump took the GOP nomination, Democrats had a different strategy: drive a wedge between Trump and the Right.

"Look, we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there's nothing wrong with that; it's precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward," President Obama said at the Democratic National Convention. "But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn't particularly Republican and it sure wasn't conservative."

This was an eminently sensible tactic, given how un-conservative Trump is and that at 37 percent of the countrythe largest groupin an early 2016 poll identified as "conservative."

But then something changed. Maybe Democrats saw Trump as dead in the water, the White House was in the bag, and so they wanted to go for the kill and take back the House and Senate. Maybe it was less tactical and more visceralObama always hated Republicans, and his base was probably irked by his game of footsie with "reasonable conservatives."

In October, a few weeks before the election, Obama switched from the wedge strategy to the lumping strategy. Obama said Trump was merely the logical nominee for the Republican Party.

"There's sort of a spectrum," Obama said in an Ohio speech, which labeled the GOP one big "swamp of crazy a whole kind of ecosystem." A few months after arguing that Trump was this drastic deviation from the norms of the GOP, Obama argued that Trump was simply moving into the house the GOP had built. "He didn't build the building himself," Obama said in his witty climax, "but he just slapped his name on it and took credit for it."

At the moment, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman had withdrawn his support for Trump. Obama decided that this moment of party vulnerability was the moment to lump Portman in with Trump, declaring Portman's stance invalid. They're together, Obama argued. Trump and Portman. Portman and Trump.

Portman's agenda in the Senate had been "crazy," Obama argued, "based on lies." And so riffing on Trump's birtherism, dalliance with the alt-right, lying, bragging of sexual assault, Obama said "don't act like this started with Donald Trump. And that's why we've got to win this election at every level."

If you know anything about Rob Portman, a painfully boring moderate Republican, this is absurd. But you can see the logic behind the tactics lumping Trump with Portman could bring down Portman. Thing is, the opposite happened. It picked Trump up. Look at the Huffington Post's poll tracker or Real Clear Politics' average. Trump had consistently trailed in Ohio since the GOP convention. In the days after Obama's Portman equals Trump speech, Trump pulled ahead, and stayed there for good.

Ohio voters knew Portman. They supported him. And maybe Obama's argumentTrump's just a more vulgar version of Portmansunk into the brains of moderate Republicans.

Surely some people thought: oh, when Hillary said "deplorable" she just meant "right of center." When she said "homophobic" she just meant "opposes gay marriage."

Now the Left is up to it again. They think they're cleverly tying Trump's defense of the West to the alt-right, thus defanging any conservative defense of the West. Instead they may be dumbing down the meaning of alt-right, or making it seem more innocuous.

Oh, "alt-right" and "White Nationalist," just means that you love and care about Western civilization? I thought it was something bad.

Liberal lumping half-worked last year. The result may have been President Trump. The lumping they're trying these days is far more pernicious, lumping something far worse than Trump (white nationalism) in with something more crucial than the GOP (the West).

All good people should hope that this time the Left fails completely.

Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's commentary editor, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Tuesday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.

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Liberal lumpers try to make the alt-right's tent bigger - Washington Examiner

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is heading toward a new economic crisis which could raise popular support for anti-Brexit parties, the former business minister and likely next leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats said on Tuesday.

Vince Cable, currently the only candidate in a contest to lead the Liberal Democrats, said that historically low interest rates had left the British economy too reliant on cheap money and many people would be hit by rising rates.

Britain's two main parties - the governing Conservatives and main opposition Labour Party - have thrown their support behind the 2016 referendum vote to exit the European Union, promising to negotiate a good deal with Brussels. The Liberal Democrats have instead argued that Britain may yet change its mind.

"There is something here which is not sustainable and it is going to hit us very hard," Cable, who holds a doctorate in economics, told reporters at a lunch in parliament.

He said an economic shock would spread doubt about whether the Brexit vote, which Prime Minister Theresa May has taken to mean a withdrawal from all key EU structures including its single market and customs union, was a sensible decision.

"We are getting into an environment where economics comes back to center stage...People didn't vote to be poorer and when they find that that's the environment in which they are in, I think the whole political chemistry around this subject will radically change," he said.

Cable, who last week said he thought Brexit might never transpire because the main political parties are too divided over terms for quitting the EU, said his party would be in a strong position to break through when that happens.

"We are not going to advance by small incremental steps - that is not my objective, it is actually to make a breakthrough," he said.

"The electorate is very volatile, they have been offered two alternatives neither of which I think are convincing and plausible and I think if we get the messaging right..., we have an opportunity to break through the (political) middle."

Cable served as business minister from 2010 to 2015 when the Liberal Democrats were the junior partners in a coalition government led by then-Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives. Cameron resigned after a narrow majority rejected his "Remain" campaign in the referendum.

The Liberal Democrats' influence has since waned and they now hold just 12 out of 650 seats in parliament. Ahead of last month's election they campaigned to give Britons a second referendum on Brexit once the final deal has been agreed.

Cable - credited as predicting the 2008 banking crisis - said he did not think the economic impact of Brexit would be comparable to the global financial crisis as banks were stronger now.

"It's different, it's a more longstanding, agonizing problem," he said, highlighting low levels of productivity as the central underlying problem in the British economy.

"It's declining. We are weak relative to other countries ... The underpinnings are weak. All this boastful talk about 'Britain has a terribly strong economy' - I'm sorry it's just not true. There are some fundamental weaknesses."

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Warning of economic crisis, top UK Liberal Democrat predicts anti-Brexit backlash - Reuters

Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinManchin defends voting record in interview with liberal The Young Turks Graham working on own healthcare plan Senate confirms Trump's 'regulatory czar' MORE (D-W.Va.) defended his record during an at times contentious interview with a progressive news outlet as he looks to shore up his left flank ahead of a tough Senate reelection bid.

Manchin sat down with The Young Turks' Cenk UygurTuesdaymorning on the site's subscription-only streaming service, where Manchin defended his voting record that's been ranked asthe most conservative for a Democrat in the Senate.

"We are a product of the West Virginia environment through some challenging times ...I 'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate," Manchin said.

Progressives have chafed at Manchin's moderate voting recordfor a while, but have become emboldened ever since the election of President Trump. Many believe the only answer to Trump's agenda is total obstruction and have been frustrated by Manchin's willingness to vote for certain nominees and arecent arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

FiveThirtyEight has found that Manchinvotes with Trump's priorities58 percent of the time. But since Trump won his state by a 42-point margin in November, Manchin and his supporters have argued that he's trying to toe the line and represent his constituents.

That's caused progressive groups to protest his position on leadership and call for a primary challenge. Manchin faces a primary rival inPaula Jean Swearengin, the daughter of a coal miner and an outspoken Manchin critic who has accused himof not being a good steward ofthe state's environment.

The Young Turks has a strong following among the progressive left. Manchin faces a difficult path to reelection thanks to Trump's favorability in the state, and two strong Republican challengers have already jumped into the race to replace him.

The conversation also comes months after reports that Manchin sat down for an off-the-record session with conservative outlet Breitbart,a move that further frustrated progressives.

During the interview, Manchin defended himself from questions overhis environmental record, arguing that he thinks there is a "balance between the environment and the economy" and disputingclaims that every stream in the state is contaminated by noting that he regularly eats fish from astream.

And while Manchinwouldn't label himself a progressive, noting that it depends on his definition, he pitched himself as compassionate.

"On issues, progressive means are you are supportive of things that helps peoples' lives," he said.

"A Republican goes to the bottom line every time. When it comes down to weighing as a human being, they are going to go to the bottom line. A true Democrat will go to the bottom of your heart."

Manchin toedthe progressive line on the issue of campaign financing, arguing that money is "destroying politics as we know it." He backed the move to end political spending fromsuper PACs and dark-money groups while also calling fora move to cut down the time politicians spend on campaigning.

That push came as Uygur confronted him on his top campaign donors, which include energy companies and Mylan, the pharmaceuticals company run by his daughter that has been dogged by concerns overthe prices of its Epi-Pen.

Manchin claimed that while he knows that Mylan has been "very much involved," he's never seen a list of his top donors and doesn't get into specifics with his fundraising team.

"I have no idea who gives me money ... quid pro quo, that's never been me," Manchin said.

Uygur circled back to theprogressive criticism of Manchintoward the end of the interview, asking him why progressives should turn out for him even when he didn't back Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersOPINION: Democrats, look to the other Clinton playbook to win again in 2018 Manchin defends voting record in interview with liberal The Young Turks Dems aim to take out longtime GOP incumbent in Texas MORE in his state's presidential primary, which Sanders won easily.

Manchin responded by arguing that his record as governor and in office will help him in 2018.

"When you talk about progressives, you're talking about the liberal wing who thinks I should be more liberal, if you will. I want to think Im responsible and compassionate," he said.

We might not always agree, but I owe everybody an explanation of how I vote and where Im coming from.

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Manchin defends voting record in interview with liberal The Young Turks - The Hill