A Libertarian Leaning Blog
Progressives like to brag about being pro choice. They are anything but. For progressives the word “choice” is simply code for abortion on demand. It has nothing to do with expanding consumer choice. And when it comes to school choice they display remarkable disdain–unless it’s for themselves and their families.
The video below, from Reason Magazine, highlights Senator Elizabeth Warren’s animus, hypocrisy and lies with respect to school choice.
JFB
Click on this link to see the video.
Thousands, probably tens of thousands, came from all over the country to bear witness to the continuing atrocity of the U.S. abortion regime. They were mostly young and mostly female. Their presence and the message they carried spoke truth to the lie that is routinely propagated by the abortion industry. Which is to pretend that abortion is something other than what it really is: the deliberate killing of defenseless human beings.
Early on the marchers began to assemble on the national mall near the Washington Monument carrying placards identifying where they came from and their message. One sign read “I’m from the Pro-Life Generation”. Another read “It’s a Child, not a Choice”. Other signs had slogans like “Women Deserve better than Abortion” and “Pro-Women, Pro-Health, Pro-Life”, and “I Vote Pro-Life First”. They were slogans, but they were slogans that spoke truth. They are truths that bear repeating over and over because language matters in framing the debate.
The abortion industry rarely talks about abortion, at least in public, preferring to rely on euphemisms that mischaracterize what is really going on. They like to refer to “reproductive health” as if aborting an unborn child has anything at all to do with a woman’s health. The truth of the matter is that when it comes to abortion, what is at issue is the meaning of the term “medically indicated”. The term “medically indicated” has been used to refer to situations in which the unborn child has Down’s Syndrome, which is hardly a threat to a mother’s life or health. But there may be cases in which an unborn child is threatened by a medical treatment given to the mother, for instance, some cancer treatments. But the point is to treat the mother, not to kill the child, which could happen as a result of the treatment. And in any case it is an unborn child, not a mere clump of cells as the abortion industry would have it.
Partly because of the work of Pro-Life groups, rates of abortion in the United States have been falling rapidly. According to the Guttmacher Institute 862,329 abortions were performed in 2017, down 7% from the 926,190 abortions performed in 2014. The abortion rate for women aged 15-44 in 2017 was 13.5%, the lowest rate observed in the United States since abortion was legalized in 1973 by Roe v. Wade. In that year the rate was 16.3%.
But while overall abortion rates have declined, abortion has become increasingly concentrated among poor women. According to the Guttmacher Institute poor women had an abortion rate of 36.6 per 1,000 women of reproductive age, and accounted 49% of patients in 2014. (See this link). It is hard to look at those statistics without thinking of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who in 1980 let the veil slip on this particular subject when she said:
“Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding of abortion.” (See this link to the Ethics and Public Policy Center).
All of which points to the underlying problem, which is that the current culture regards some people as not being fully human and therefore worthy of legal protections. Which is why unborn babies are routinely referred to with clinical terminology. They are fetuses, not people. Unborn children with Down’s Syndrome are terminated, not killed. After all, they are imperfect and inconvenient. As if we all are not imperfect and flawed.
The Pro-Life movement has been extraordinarily successful in changing the terms of the debate so as to focus it on the fact that the these are children, as yet to be born, but children nonetheless. In so doing the Pro-Life movement has accepted the long hard work of changing the culture so that over time it will embrace life and dignity each and every individual person as a unique and uniquely valuable human being. Let this work continue.
JFB
The latest CNN poll, released today, has Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders statistically tied in the race for the Democratic nomination. (The CNN story is at this link). While not all that surprising, it seems to reflect the alienation of large swaths of the public from mainstream society—or what we used to think of as mainstream society. The leftward lurch of the Democratic Party is a reflection of this.
The growing enthusiasm for Senator Sanders is similar to the groundswell that catapulted Donald Trump into the White House. In each case the respective party establishments were appalled at how the candidate attacked elites and their policy prescriptions. Nevertheless in each case disaffected voters flocked to the outsider candidate, largely because of a sense of aggrieved populism. In each case those disaffected voters found a candidate who would speak to those grievances, real and imagined.
There is, however, an important difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump’s campaign and Presidency is one that thrives on symbolic politics. It checks the cultural boxes of Trump supporters (e.g., build the wall) but, with the exception of trade, most of the policy is standard Republican fare seasoned by Trump’s personal boorishness. Which is to say that the key to understanding the Trump White House is to separate policy and personality. Not an easy thing to do.
But Bernie Sanders is different. He is a man with a weltanschauung. And he gives every indication that he actually believes the preposterous things he says, which are an integral part of that world view. The problem is that a large swath, and perhaps a majority of Democratic primary voters, does not understand what it is that Bernie Sanders is trying to sell. That is because he occasionally–actually more than occasionally– obfuscates. Whether Sanders muddies up the waters because of ignorance or just plain tactics remains to be seen. For instance, he can pretend all he wants that his policy preferences are similar to the ones adopted by the Nordic countries, but they are not. While Bernie Sanders remains a committed socialist, the Nordic countries are among the most capitalist, market-centered ones on earth. Arguably more so than the United States in many respects, especially with respect to public finance.
Bernie Sanders is a hard line socialist who wishes to remake society just like every other socialist. And he has been singing the same tune (with occasional politically convenient adjustments) for at least 40 years. The problem is that a lot of people, and perhaps a plurality, have no idea how catastrophic the result would be if Sanders and his left wing allies (like the Squad) were able to seize the levers of power.
So think of the 15 minute video below, put together by Reason magazine, as a public service message. It summarizes Sanders’ policy and political activities since the 1980s. That’s pretty much all you need to see. Anyone who would even consider voting for Sanders ought to watch this film. If, after watching this, anyone still insists on voting for Sanders, that person will have succeeded in achieving the improbable goal of making Trump supporters look like comparative geniuses.
JFB
John Stossel video on the food police.
JFB
The Iowa primary is only 3 weeks away and there is a real possibility that Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed Socialist, will win and put himself in position for a serious shot at the Democratic nomination. This is a guy who went to Moscow for his honeymoon about a year before the Berlin Wall came down.
But believe it or not that’s not the strange part. Or strangest part. When he was Mayor of Burlington Bernie Sanders actually recorded an album of folk songs. Now, there is nothing intrinsically remarkable about a politician recording an album, provided said politician has an ounce of talent. For example, Sonny of Sonny and Cher was a major recording artist before he was elected to Congress as a Republican.
Well, here is a sample of Bernie Sanders the recording artist. Please note. This is not made up. He actually did this. Five tracks of Bernie singing folk songs are below. A local independent Vermont newspaper has the story at this link.
JFB
In this short video that bete noire of the left, Psychologist Jordan Peterson, discusses an occasion on which he met a serial killer and the self-reflection it inspired. For those with open minds it is worth considering, especially for what it says about the human condition.
JFB
When listening to politicians speak it is always entertaining to observe the high opinion they have of themselves. The latest entry in the comic book hero series comes from none other than Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House. Toward the close of her presser today Pelosi noted that she will have to miss the San Francisco 49s playoff game because, she said, “I have, unfortunately, responsibilities to save our country from peril.”
Speaker Pelosi is very busy saving us from ourselves these days. Why just recently, on December 5, in the matter of President Trump’s impeachment she said: “If we don’t act now, we would be derelict in out duty.” By December 18 she had decided that “It is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections, the basis of our democracy.”
On December 19, the House voted to impeach Trump along strict party lines. But soon after the urgency for action seems to have faded. As of January 8, Pelosi had still not sent the impeachment articles to the Senate; nor had she appointed impeachment managers to make the case before the Senate. Pelosi, with the support of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, instead insisted that she needed to be assured that the Senate would conduct a “fair trial” before she sending the 2 impeachment articles to the Senate for trial.
Included in Pelosi’s particulars for a fair trial is a demand that the Senate call witnesses that she declined to call when the impeachment inquiry was underway and she had the power to do so. And the Senate rules that Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer find so onerous were the ones used in the impeachment trial of then President Bill Clinton. Those rules were approved at the time by all 100 Senators. Which means that Chuck Schumer voted for them the last go around.
In the meantime, most of the Democrats in Washington, and all the senior ones, have signaled their disagreement with Trump’s decision to order the killing of Iranian General Soleimani. The latest argument is that Soleimani wasn’t an imminent threat to U.S. interests, thus the killing was illegal. That is quite an interesting argument because it implies that the U.S. President can only take action if an enemy combatant poses an imminent threat. Unless of course they are prepared to argue that Soleimani was not an enemy combatant despite the fact that he has spent decades supervising terror campaigns against the U.S. and its allies, not to mention killing American soldiers and civilians.
The argument is especially hard to swallow when you consider that previously they had no objection to President Obama’s order to kill (without trial) Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemini-American Imam (born in Denver) who planned terrorist operations for al-Qaeda. His 16-year old son was also killed in that drone attack. Nor did Democrats object when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton successfully convinced Obama to start a war in Libya without Congressional approval. Obama said he ordered U.S. military intervention in Libya’s civil war in order to protect Libyans and enforce “the writ” of the international community.
So judging from their behavior it would seem that what matters is who is taking action rather than what the action is. Which is why serious people do not take them seriously.
JFB
In the aftermath of the strike ordered by President Trump that killed Iranian Quds Force Major General Soleimani there has been a furious reaction by progressives who are always furious about something. But complaints have also been registered by the populist right, most notably by Tucker Carlson. But the objections coming from Carlson and the objections coming from progressives are very different.
Let’s take Carlson’s argument first before heading to the progressives. Carlson asserts that “Washington has wanted war with Iran for decades”. As evidence for his proposition Carson has produced…nothing. But there is the obvious question. If “Washington” wanted war with Iran for “decades” why is it that President’s Bush and Obama declined the opportunity? In the tin foil hat land where Carlson resides, “they”, wanted war and this was their opportunity, so “they” prevailed upon the least interventionist President in modern history to unilaterally commit an act of war without provocation. This doesn’t even have a veneer of plausibility. As the late Christopher Hitchens once remarked, assertions without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Interestingly enough, the argument coming from the left is, in some ways the polar opposite of Carlson’s. To the surprise of no one, progressives argue there is a “rush” to war—but this is in spite of, rather than because of, the bureaucracy AKA the intelligence community. We are now being informed, courtesy of leaks to the New York Times, that “…while Trump’s top military advisors offered the option to kill Maj. General Qassim Suleimani, they assumed it would be rejected as too extreme.” Trump, however, made his decision “despite disputes in the administration about the intelligence that warned of imminent threats.”
Let’s unpack this. When an action memo is sent to an executive decision maker in government, it typically includes a number of policy options with estimates of possible costs and benefits. And typically the options are phrased in such a way that one option stands out as the most favorable. So as a matter of course one of the options given to President Trump would have been to knock off General Soleimani. But why would anyone believe that Trump, of all people, would shrink from an action because it was “too extreme”. Nuance is not the first word that comes to mind when it comes to Trump.
The next argument now being test marketed is that, among the intelligence community, there is mounting skepticism of evidence that a threat was imminent. This one has been dusted off from the George W. Bush years and sent onto the field of play once again. And from the standpoint of the bureaucracy it has a major advantage. It provides bureaucratic cover no matter which way things turn out.
Leaving aside (for now) the question of where decision making authority resides, let’s examine the quality of some the intelligence community’s analysis. To start off with, there is what is politely called a credibility problem. To put it more bluntly, it is indisputably the case that James Clapper (NSA), John Brennan (CIA), James Comey (FBI) and Andrew McCabe (FBI) are liars. It remains to be seen if they managed to fulfill the requirements necessary to sustain a perjury indictment and prosecution.
But let’s not dwell on individuals; instead let’s recount the long history of spectacularly bad calls. It is hard to forget that George Tenent insisted that Iraq had nuclear weapons. It was, he said, “a slam dunk”. Note also that the Inspector General found that Tenet bore “ultimate responsibility” for the intelligence community’s “failure to develop a plan to control Al-Qaeda in the lead-up to 9/11”. And how was he held accountable? President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
If that was an isolated incident, it would be one thing. But it wasn’t. The intelligence community was convinced that Yuri Andropov was a sophisticate with whom the West could deal. After all, he liked scotch. That was before Andropov ordered the assassination of the Pope. Likewise, the CIA was caught flat-footed when the Berlin Wall came crashing down. Just as they were stunned when the Shaw of Iran was deposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini. That was the Shaw whose rise to power was engineered by the same CIA. And let’s not forget the Keystone Cops efforts of the CIA in Cuba—including the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion, numerous attempts to assassinate Castro at the behest of the Kennedy brothers, all while the CIA was working in conjunction with the Mafia.
So given this well-documented history it is reasonable to wonder why it is that we should accept what the CIA says as if it is coming straight from Mount Olympus.
But leave all that aside. There is one key fact that dominates (or should dominate) the discussion. Like it or not (and I don’t) Trump is President. He has the authority as Commander-in-Chief to make the call. The proper question is a prudential one: Should he have ordered the killing of General Soleimani?
Unfortunately, a great deal, if not most of the analysis is based on faulty assumptions about the nature of the Iranian regime. The underlying assumption is that traditional tools of diplomacy should be used in dealing with the Iranian government. This in turn rests on the widely shared assumption that the West can wait Iran out until it comes to its senses. That mistake was made by a number of U.S. Presidents including President Reagan who got himself ensnared in Iran Contra and the the arms-for-hostages scandal.
The argument that Iran can be contained and dealt with by using conventional diplomatic tools is faulty because it rests on the assumption that the Iranian government is conventional and legitimate. It is not. Iran is a revolutionary regime. And it has been since the Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution seized power in 1979.
Revolutionary regimes are different from conventional, even tyrannical and authoritarian governments in that they do not merely seek to rule. They seek to create a new man molded (by them of course) to create perfection here on earth. Resisters will be ruthlessly dealt with and the streets will run red with their blood. It has been true throughout history, especially, but not only, the bloody history of the 20th century. Robespierre, the radical Jacobin and leader of the Insurrectionary Paris Commune, ran the terror during the French Revolution from his perch on the Committee of Public Safety. Historians estimate that he had thousands sent to the guillotine in his quest for the perfect republic.
In the 20th century we had the Nazis and the extermination camps, Stalin and his forced starvations and show trials with mass executions. Which is not to leave out Castro, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pot Pol, and the Kim family in North Korea. To name a few.
And then there is Iran which, since 1979, has been run by the Supreme Leader and backed by the Revolutionary Guards. Note the nomenclature. The operating theory of the Iranian Islamic State as propagated by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution is that the State is a Theocracy governed according to the Absolute Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist. (See Wikipedia). That theory of state now forms the basis of the Iranian Constitution. The Islamic Jurist is the Supreme Ruler. Which is to say that the Supreme Leader governs a total state. Just like, Stalin, Hitler, Kim Jong-un (another Supreme Leader).
The brutality of these regimes, although bad enough, is not the only feature they have in common. Unlike conventional dictators, revolutionary states and their leaders have imperial ambitions. As does Iran. So, pace President Obama, they are not going to be gently talked out of their habit of spreading terror and mayhem around the world. Because Iran is a revolutionary state with imperial ambitions led by revolutionary theocratic fanatics.
The prudential question is not whether the U.S. should act to protect itself and the Liberal order. The question is how the U.S. should act, especially in the wake of the latest Iranian provocations. The Iranian regime has been at this game since 1979, over 40 years. They have had plenty of time to age out. There are no signs that this is going to happen anytime soon. Moreover with every passing day they come closer to acquiring a deliverable nuclear weapon. The clock is ticking in favor of the regime.
By ordering the assassination of General Soleimani, President Trump achieved a number of important goals. First, he erased the fiction that there is a difference between the Iranian regime and its terrorist operations. They are one and the same. Second, by changing the rules of the game he served notice on the regime that the era of touch football wars with the U.S. is over. Actions taken by the regime and its terrorist proxies will be dealt with swiftly and severely. The Iranian leadership is now vulnerable, a development that will surely grab their attention.
There is also an additional qualitative change in the incentive structure. It is that the U.S. merely seeks to contain Iran’s behavior; it does not seek to acquire or occupy territory or engage in nation building, the great mistake of previous efforts in Vietnam and Iraq. The U.S. has served notice that it is in a position to impose tremendous costs on the Iranian leadership and that it will do so if need be. Finally, the U.S. has also delivered a message to Kim Jong-un in North Korea. He is personally vulnerable, a message he has undoubtedly heard loud and clear.
In the end Trump had little choice, especially with the nuclear clock ticking both in Iran and North Korea. The strategy is not without substantial risk. Even now Iraq is threatening to toss the U.S. out of the country. That would achieve for Iran a long sought objective. But Iranian control over Iraq would just create a bigger economic mess for Iran, and would be a hollow victory in the long term. In the end, directly attacking Iran’s terror master and changing the rules of the game works in favor of the U.S. and the West. The potential benefits exceed the costs, and the action is justified from both a moral and legal perspective.
JFB