Daily Archives: June 28, 2017

Some Progress against the Evils of Civil Asset Forfeiture – National Review

Posted: June 28, 2017 at 6:07 am

Kevin Williamson nailed the truth in his recent essay civil asset-forfeiture laws are indeed the death of due process. Justice Thomas sees that clearly and perhaps a majority will be persuaded the next time a case involving those laws reaches the Supreme Court.

However, the widespread opposition to allowing police to seize an innocent persons property simply on suspicion that it was somehow involved in or resulted from a crime is having an impact at the state level. In Colorado, Connecticut, and Illinois, bills have either been signed or have reached the governors desk that make their laws less amenable to abuse by police who want to engage in some legal plunder. And in Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court has ruled in an ugly case (a 72-year-old woman was going to lose her house because her son sold some drugs in it) that the Eighth Amendments prohibition against excessive fines applies to such forfeitures. That decision will cut into the profitability of civil asset forfeiture.

I discuss those advances in my latest Forbes article.

Sadly, Congress is sitting on its hands. A bill that would defang this viper as practiced by the federal government, the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act, is stuck in its respective Senate and House committees. Yes, Congress is busy, but in the past there has been heavy support from Democrats and Republicans for the legislation. Getting the FAIR Act passed shouldnt be terribly hard. Months ago, President Trump (after meeting with some sheriffs in Texas) indicated his opposition to reforming civil asset forfeiture, but it might be possible to get him to see that signing a reform bill into law would be most popular in lower-income and minority communities. If he wants to increase his support there, that would be a good move. In any case, repairing the damage civil asset forfeiture does to due process of law should need no political calculus.

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Some Progress against the Evils of Civil Asset Forfeiture - National Review

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Progress on 5800-acre Manzanita fire south of Beaumont breeds optimism – Press-Enterprise

Posted: at 6:07 am

A DC-10 air tanker makes a drop on the Manzanita fire just south of Beaumont Tuesday, June 27, 2017. FRANK BELLINO, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Hand crews make their way up a hill to put out hot spots during the Manzanita fire just south of Beaumont Tuesday, June 27, 2017. FRANK BELLINO, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Firefighters work to put out hot spots during the Manzanita fire just south of Beaumont Tuesday, June 27, 2017. FRANK BELLINO, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Cal Fire and Riverside County Fire Department crews make their way to battle the Manzanita fire just south of Beaumont Tuesday, June 27, 2017. FRANK BELLINO, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

A helicopter makes a water drop on the Manzanita fire just south of Beaumont Tuesday, June 27, 2017. FRANK BELLINO, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Air tankers make drops as they battle the Manzanita fire just south of Beaumont Tuesday, June 27, 2017. FRANK BELLINO, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Fire crews make their way to battle the Manzanita fire just south of Beaumont Tuesday, June 27, 2017. FRANK BELLINO, THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE/SCNG

Flames from the Manzanita fire in Lamb Canyon south of Beaumont are seen all the way from Cal Fires headquarters in Perris on Monday, June 26, 2017. (Photo courtesy of Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department)

Flames burn on a hill just off Highway 79 through Lamb Canyon between Beaumont and San Jacinto. The Manzanita fire broke out Monday afternoon, June 26, and closed down the highway. (Photo courtesy of Caltrans)

Thick smoke from the Manzanita fire rises from the hills south of Beaumont on Monday, June 26, 2017. (Photo by Micah Escamilla, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

An air tanker flies out of a smoke plume put up by the Manzanita fire in the hills south of Beaumont on Monday, June 26, 2017. (Photo by Micah Escamilla, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

An air tanker flies overhead during the Manzanita fire south of Beaumont on Monday, June 26, 2017. (Photo by Micah Escamilla, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Thick smoke from the Manzanita fire rises from the hills south of Beaumont on Monday, June 26, 2017, as a firefighting air tanker flies overhead. (Photo by Micah Escamilla, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

The Manzanita fire burns in the hills south of Beaumont at dusk Monday, June 26, 2017. (Photo by Micah Escamilla, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG)

Firefighters on the front lines of the 5,800-acre Manzanita fire south of Beaumont and Banning hope to capitalize Wednesday, June 28, on what was described as a pretty quiet day Tuesday.

Firefighters have been able to put in a lot of good work without any hiccups,Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department spokesmanCraig Doppmann said Tuesday evening.

It was still a critical time with a red flag warningin effect through 1 a.m. because of winds that were gusting up to 40 mph. But overall, The fires looking real good, not a whole lot of smoke, Doppmann said.

His cautious optimism was echoed by several residents of the areas that remained under an evacuation warning Tuesday. With the flames still a couple of miles away and barely any smoke visible, people said they were staying alert but their fears had mostly subsided.

About 1,300 firefighters and other personnel were battling the fire from the ground and air Tuesday.Doppmann said they made good progress on containment lines breaks created in the vegetation meant to stop the fire from spreading but officials want to make sure the lines hold before saying that containment has increased from the 20 percent reported Tuesday.

Were hoping by (Wednesday) morning that we will have a good strong line constructed,Cal Fire Capt. Lucas Spelman said.

Firefighters will be working in cooler weather. The forecast for Beaumont on Wednesday is for a high of 89 degrees, down from 97 on Tuesday. But that helps only so much, Spelman said.

The problem is we already have dry brush and grass, so that portion of the flammability is not going to change. So thats where the concern is, he said.

The evacuation warning which is a recommendation to leave voluntarily or be prepared if the evacuation becomes mandatory remained in place for homes between Highland Home Road south of Beaumont and Highway 243 south of Banning. That includes the mountain communities of Poppet Flats, Twin Pines, Silent Valley and Mount Edna,sheriffs officials said.

The warning will be re-evaluated in the next day or two, Spelman said.

A care and reception center was set up at Hemet High School, 41701 Stetson Ave., for anyone who chose to evacuate. Doppmann said a few people stopped by Tuesday.

Cindy Gray, who has lived in the Poppet Flat area for 16 years, said the large amount of smoke Monday worried her and her husband. The couple packed up their car in case they would be evacuated, like they were during the Silver fire in 2013.

As the smoke largely died down Tuesday, Gray and her husband became less worried and unpacked the car. Still, they were on alert.

A fires a fire its so unpredictable, Gray said. But were good, and we adore and pray for our firefighters.

Gray said local authorities have been doing a great job of keeping them informed of whether they are in danger.

Jake Sibole, who lives across the street from Gray, said he was still on edge Tuesday afternoon. He kept his car packed up, just in case.

This is Siboles first time living near a wildfire, and hes been watching local media closely for updates.

He said he was really worried Monday night when he received an alert on his cellphone telling him to evacuate now.

The Riverside County Sheriffs Department, intending to notify people affected by the evacuation warning via the Wireless Emergency Alerts system, accidentally sent a much more dire warning to a much broader group of people than intended, officials said.

After speaking with a fire official, Sibole said, he felt more at ease.

He told us to be prepared, and we took that to heart, he said.

At the base of the foothills on Highland Home Road, the western boundary of the evacuation warning, the Pipinger family owns a property with 15 horses, 20 cattle, dogs, cats and other critters.

Several family members came over Monday night to help them evacuate, Brandon Pipinger said.

When it became clear that wasnt necessary, they ordered pizza, put out some lawn chairs and watched as the air tankers flew overhead. The neighbors all kept in touch, just in case.

Several firefighters staged at the bottom of their driveway gave the kids a tour of their engines.

Since moving into the house about four years ago, the Pipingers have prepared in case they would ever need to be evacuated.

Living out here, we always keep documents, photos, everything packed just in case, Brandon Pipinger said.

A car crash on Highway 79 near the Lamb Canyon Landfill sparked the fire about 3:10 p.m. Monday. As the flames raced through the foothills, they charred 1,200 acres in the first three hours.

Highway 79 was shut down between the 10 Freeway in Beaumont and Gilman Springs Road in San Jacinto. All but one southbound lane reopened late Monday; the final lane opened up about 6 p.m. Tuesday.

A map displayed at the firefighters command post showed that as of Tuesday morning, the fire had spread about 5 1/2 miles east from its origin; the burned area measured about 1 1/2 miles from north to south. It was burning through the uninhabited northwest end of the San Jacinto Mountains.

The eastern edge of the fire remained about 2 1/2 miles away from Highway 243, the main route through the mountains populated areas, according to the map.

It showed that the portion of the fire that was officially contained was on the far western end.

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Progress on 5800-acre Manzanita fire south of Beaumont breeds optimism - Press-Enterprise

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A brave new world none of us can see – The Hutchinson News

Posted: at 6:03 am

By Michael Gerson

WASHINGTON -- Much analysis of Yuval Harari's brilliant new book "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" focuses on the harrowing dystopia he anticipates. In this vision, a small, geeky elite gains the ability to use biological and cyborg engineering to become something beyond human. It may "upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process, until our descendants will look back and realize that they are no longer the kind of animal that wrote the Bible [or] built the Great Wall of China." This would necessarily involve the concentration of data, wealth and power, creating "unprecedented social inequality.

"In the early 21st century," argues Harari, "the train of progress is again pulling out of the station -- and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called Homo sapiens.

Few of us Homo sapiens are anxious to take such a trip, apart from some "dataists" who pant for the apocalypse. But, as Harari repeatedly insists, the prophet's job is really an impossible one. Someone living in the 12th century would know most of what the 13th century might have to offer. Given the pace of change in our time, the 22nd century is almost unimaginable.

Yet the predictions are not the most interesting bits of the book. It is important primarily for what it says about the present. For the last few hundred years, in Harari's telling, there has been a successful alliance between scientific thought and humanism -- a philosophy placing human feelings, happiness and choice at the center of the ethical universe. With the death of God and the denial of transcendent rules, some predicted social chaos and collapse. Instead, science and humanism (with an assist from capitalism) delivered unprecedented health and comfort. And now they promise immortality and bliss.

This progress has involved an implicit agreement, "In exchange for power," says Harari, "the modern deal expects us to give up meaning." Many (at least in the West) have been willing to choose antibiotics and flat-screen TVs over the mysticism and morality behind door No. 2.

It is Harari's thesis, however, that the alliance of science and humanism is breaking down, with the former consuming the latter. The reason is reductionism in various forms. Science, argues Harari, revealed humans as animals on the mental spectrum, then as biochemical processes, and now as outdated organic algorithms. We have "opened up the Sapiens black box" and "discovered there neither soul, nor free will, nor 'self' -- but only genes, hormones and neurons."

This rather depressing argument is well presented, with a few caveats. Harari's breezy style is sometimes in tension with his utter nihilism. Here is a moral rule: You can either be cheery or you can describe the universe as an empty, echoing void where human beings have no inherent value. But you can't do both.

And Harari's treatment of religion is, charitably put, superficial. He seems to think that the absence of an immortal soul can be proved by dissection. Scientists have "looked into every nook in our hearts and every cranny in our brains. But they have so far discovered no magic spark." For future reference, religious believers don't generally view the liver or the pineal gland as the seat of the soul. And when Harari claims that religion is "no longer a source of creativity" and "makes little difference," it is tempting to shout "Martin Luther King Jr." at your Kindle.

But Harari has one great virtue: intellectual honesty. Unlike some of the new atheists, he recognizes that science is incapable of providing values, including the humanistic values of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson. "Even Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and the other champions of the new scientific worldview refuse to abandon liberalism," Harari observes. "After dedicating hundreds of erudite pages to deconstructing the self and the freedom of will, they perform breathtaking intellectual somersaults that miraculously land them back in the 18th century."

Harari relentlessly follows the logic of reductionism as it sweeps away individualism, equality, justice, democracy and human rights -- even human imagination. "Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is the product of biochemical algorithms."

This is the paradox and trial of modernity. As humans reach for godhood, they are devaluing what is human. "Omnipotence is in front of us, almost within our reach," Harari says, "but below us yawns the abyss of complete nothingness." A humane future will require someone to offer a bridge across the chasm.

Michael Gerson's email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.

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A brave new world none of us can see - The Hutchinson News

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5 Democratic Reps: The US Can Turn Putinism Into An Opportunity – TIME

Posted: at 6:03 am

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech during the state awards ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace on June 12, 2017 in Moscow, Russia.Mikhail SvetlovGetty Images

Smith, Moulton, Murphy, Gallego and Courtney are, respectively, representatives for Washington, Massachusetts, Florida, Arizona and Connecticut in the United States Congress.

Our country faces a new crisis, one which endangers the underpinnings of representative democracy and freedom worldwide. The threat emanates from Putinism, a philosophy of dictatorship fused with kleptocratic economics. It views popular participation in government, a free and open capitalist economic system, and transparency in governance as ideological challenges that must be extinguished in order to make the world safe for autocracy . Its proponents have been acting aggressively against the United States and others to achieve this objective, and those actions pose a clear and growing threat to our way of life.

We desperately need a forceful and coherent strategy combined with willpower and perseverance to overcome this assault on our system of government and adapt to the changing global security environment. Given how increasingly interconnected the world is, it has never been more important to shore up our countrys existing alliances and attempt to expand them in response. We will not be able to turn back this tide of autocratic ideology on our own. We will need partners and new institutions capable of rising to the task.

This is our attempt to lay the groundwork for an updated U.S. national security and foreign policy strategy that can meet the needs of this dire moment.

Our country was established on the principles of representative democracy, individual freedom and promotion of the common good. In the post-World War II era, we upheld, strengthened and promoted those values throughout the world by establishing a system of alliances, partnerships and international organizations that prevented the recurrence of conditions which led to two catastrophic global wars. Despite shortcomings, this system has rendered a 75-year period of stability and growth, in which more people became more free and more prosperous than at any other time in human history. By providing societies with a framework for a better future and enabling widely shared prosperity, these values continue to be the best hope for the future of the United States and the world. But the system upholding those values must adapt.

Following the postCold War peace , time and transformative events have worn on the international system that we and our allies built to uphold our values. We face new threats and new questions about how to protect global stability in a changing world. A new authoritarian ideology has taken root, akin to fascism and autocracy in its assemblage of plutocrats, kleptocrats, right-wing nationalists, professional opportunists, state police and other clandestine services at the focal point of state power and international influence.

This plutocratic-kleptocratic authoritarian system seeks to bore into, and disassemble, democratic institutions from the inside out. It is powered by corruption and networks of illegitimate influence and clandestine personal enrichment, and it seeks to subvert the integrity of democratic institutions and their ability to perform public functions. Like many authoritarian ideologies, it acts to crush individual rights, weaken and corrode the structures supporting public and private transparency and accountability, and jettison the idea that state officials must, on behalf of the res publica , maintain a distinction between the public good and the private interests of national leaders. This militancy against democracy and individual freedom also makes it easier for similar ideologies to thrive, from the nihilistic cult of subjugation that ISIS propounds, to the totalitarianism of North Korea , to the more circumspect plutocratic governments of China and Iran .

Putinism is especially threatening because of its expansionist nature. The Russian state has overtly annexed Crimea and parts of the Republic of Georgia , the first such events since the end of World War II. Whats more, the ideology of Putinism is being systematically exported, most notably by the Russian state security services, which constantly probe and exploit discontented facets of democratic polities worldwide in order to diminish their standing and thereby render the world safe for autocracy. Although many of these efforts date back further, the financial crash of 2008 strained representative governments, creating widespread opportunities for Putinism to seep into the cracks in the democratic consensus opened by the Great Recession. As the head of the Russian militarys General Staff, a major theorist of this approach, put it , Indirect and asymmetric actions allow you to deprive the opposing side of de facto sovereignty without seizing any territory. With Moscows influential intervention in the 2016 U.S. election and in other elections worldwide, it has become clear that if allowed to continue unchecked, this effort has the power to degrade representative democracy and fracture institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the community that has become the European Union (E.U.), which have kept us free and secure for more than half a century.

Because this Putinist onslaught has demonstrated a capacity to erode our institutions and those of other democratic countries, it deserves a prominent place in our thinking about global security. We are sleepwalking if we do not recognize this danger, or if we purposely avoid it and turn to other matters. We must recognize that we find ourselves in a serious contest between our values of representative democracy, individual freedom, transparency, accountability and promotion of the common good, and the Putinist values of oppression, nihilism and kleptocracy. We must not ignore the Putinist challenge, lest we lose the game entirely.

The good news is that this will happen only if we let it happen. There is still time for us to adapt so that we can fight back, and, in the process, renew our commitment to our values and reshape the global order so that it can squarely address the needs of the 21st century.

We must respond by developing methods that strengthen support for the values of our countries and by updating our institutions so that the spread of Putinism is contained. Our societies and institutions must be strong, united and vital enough to present a superior and enduring alternative to autocratic movements. We must continue to prove the value of our system of government and economic organization, and encourage it to flourish wherever people see its appeal. We must be able and willing to defend our values with overpowering military force. And we must accomplish these tasks at the same time as we continue to act resolutely and unrelentingly to ensure the security of the United States and our allies from terrorists, ballistic missiles and many other dangers that threaten us.

Happily, while the threat we have described poses a fundamental danger to our values, it is not insurmountable. The strengths of Putinism, when confronted appropriately, can be countered. Battered as it may seem from recent shocks and trials, our system of government and economic organization will endure. It will endure because it is both morally superior to the dark vision offered by Putinism and more effective than any other system in providing individual freedom, widely shared prosperity and hope for a better future. So, while we must proactively confront Putinism, renew our societies commitment to our values and refresh our institutions, in the long run as it was in the Cold War it will be confidence and patience that allow us to succeed.

So how do we combat this challenge?

First, we must be clear that our values are the bedrock of our policy. Our actions must always be guided by our belief in representative democracy, individual freedom, transparency, accountability and promotion of the common good.

That does not mean we cannot be pragmatic and work with partners and allies who do not share all of our values, nor does it mean that we should try to impose our values by force. The world is a complicated place, and compromises are essential to any effort to engage effectively with global politics. We must clearly express our principles, but we must also openly acknowledge when we decide to make pragmatic compromises to achieve essential national security objectives.

Second, it is absolutely crucial that we accomplish our goals by relying on alliances and partnerships and ensuring that our institutions will help sustain freedom and democracy in the 21st century. These institutions have, for the most part, served us very well. But as the world continues to change with the rise of new global powers, and shocks such as the Great Recession create new sources of discontent and contestation, we must recognize that the global order has fundamentally changed and no longer resembles the postWorld War II power structure of the 1950s and 60s.

While the United States is far stronger today in absolute terms, it no longer possesses the overwhelming preponderance of relative economic and military power that allowed us to impose our foreign policy aims effectively on the world. We are, in many ways, a victim of our own success. The rest of the world is catching up, thanks to the order we put in place in the past century. We must recognize that we now contend with an array of powerful actors, possessing new interests and forming new alignments. It is unrealistic, and unnecessary, for us to continue to act as if we can accomplish our goals alone. Rather than deny a multi-polar world exists, we must embrace it and use it to our advantage.

For that reason, it must be a priority to build, strengthen and act via partnerships and alliances. We have an enormous new opportunity to build international solidarity regarding the maintenance of global stability and to strengthen international support for democratic values. We will have to be steadfast in our commitment to our existing albeit updated alliances and partnerships, using them as an essential tool through which we must work to achieve our security goals. We must also look for opportunities to rapidly adapt existing global institutions to this global shift and seek to construct new arrangements designed to help us strengthen democracy and withstand the challenge of Putinism.

While reinforcing NATO and the E.U., for example, we must now take stock of the threats that Putinist influence campaigns pose to those communities and integrate methods of resistance into their collective toolbox. The NATO alliance can be renovated to help its members track and expose Russian influence networks. Strengthening institutions, elevating transparency and prioritizing anti-corruption could become priority measures for the E.U. New agreements between NATO and the E.U. on issues such as cyber warfare could be established to combat Russian influence.

Meanwhile, we should build new partnerships and alliances that can help us meet our objectives in this new era. Crucially, many of these institutions will not look precisely like the institutions that got us through the Cold War because, as analysts of Putinism emphasize, corruption is the lubricant on which this [Putinist] system operates and [u]ltimately it is because of the lack of rigorous oversight and transparency of democratic institutions that they are readily available for exploitation. Our efforts must be designed to cope with that reality.

As we survey the conditions worldwide, it may be time to consider establishing new alliances regional and global to promote the vibrancy of representative democracy, resist cyber and propaganda methods of undermining democratic values, fight corruption, elevate the need for transparency, strengthen free economies, and share knowledge about ways to combat the new dangers afflicting our societies.

Third, as we stare down the ideological threat of Putinism, we must ensure the safety and security of the American people and those of our allies and partners. That is an enormous challenge in itself, encompassing our continued fight against terrorist groups and their ideologies, our efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and our deterrence of North Korea and other actors who may wish to do us harm. We must be relentless and strategic in our efforts with partners to destroy terrorist groups, eliminate their leaders, dismantle their networks and drain them of their popular appeal. And we must make it absolutely clear that those who dare attack us or our allies do so at great peril.

As we confront the spread of Putinism, we need to invest in global security, ensuring that our NATO allies and other partners are able and ready to defend against conventional Russian military aggression. That will require a comprehensive strategy to deter Russia militarily, including more forward positioning of conventional military assets, deeper strategic relationships and more training side-by-side with our European partners, as well as systematic planning to counter Russias military cyber, propaganda and hybrid warfare advances. We must be smart about this response, so that our investments strengthen our national security position to deter Russia while continuing to uphold our interest in nuclear stability and bolstering the institutions that undergird global security. For example, it would only weaken our position if we were to withdraw from our global commitments and engage in a fruitless nuclear arms race as a response to Russian provocation.

Fourth, diplomacy and development are a crucial part of this equation. Just as we cannot function without partners, we cannot rely on military force while neglecting diplomacy and development. It is essential to recognize that Putinism will not be overcome by military force alone, and we must design our response accordingly to involve the whole of government. Economic development and the strengthening of civil society will be crucial in this fight, and we will also need to consider ways that our diplomatic and developmental efforts can be designed to counter Putinist tactics.

Through the work of the State Department and other federal agencies, we need to develop new mechanisms to strengthen freedom of the press, disseminate accurate information quickly and support effective ways to combat Putinist propaganda. We must educate the global public about the danger of Russian influence campaigns and how to respond to them, as well as support institution-building and anti-corruption efforts now that they are urgent security issues. Efforts to get money out of politics, secure electoral systems and police opaque financial flows will be important. In addition to supporting robust State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budgets for governance and democracy, initiatives such as potentially expanding the number of countries in the Millennium Challenge Corporations candidate country pool which by its mandate invests in poverty reduction for those countries that score sufficiently high enough on indicators like rule of law and anti-corruption may assist these efforts.

Fifth, if we wish to prevent Putinism from succeeding in its efforts to portray representative democracy as a failed governmental system and to prey upon social discontents, one of the first orders of business is to ensure our countries have healthy economies that support broad-based opportunities. Statist crony capitalism is an inherently weak economic model, but if we do not keep the social compact strong and deliver equitable growth in our own countries, as analysts of Putinism note, it offers an opening for Putinism to achieve its goal of strengthening the perception of the dysfunction of the Western democratic and economic system and weaken[ing] the European Union and the Wests desirability, credibility, and moral authority.

Indeed, the imperative to prove that American society had to deliver on its promises played a major role in our Cold Warera strategy to contain and outlast the Soviet Union. As George Kennan, the architect of that containment strategy, explained, the competition with the Soviets was a question of the degree to which the United States can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants , which is coping successfully with the problem of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among major ideological currents of the time. The ultimate lesson, he wrote, was that [t]o avoid destruction the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions. Making government and society work for the people is always critical, but in this contest it is even more imperative.

Finally, in addition to economics, we must also recognize that a program to counter Putinism will require new modes of domestic resistance. We must strengthen our societies against Putinist tactics that use the openness of our systems and our commitment to rules and procedural norms against us. Gray zone Putinist tactics, by operating below the threshold of open conflict and concrete response, strain our conceptual capacity to recognize and mitigate them before it is too late. Because most representative democracies are not habituated to these methods, and because many of these threats are deliberately ambiguous, we have not yet developed robust norms, concepts and institutions that would help us meet this challenge.

In hindsight, it is clear that the threat of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election merited a more robust response than U.S. officials adopted at the time. We must strive to ensure that the new insights we develop about such threats are translated into new ideas and new policies that provide effective responsive capabilities. As we do this, we must welcome the wealth of experience that our allies and partners are also developing as they confront similar threats worldwide.

For example, even though Russian actors funded multiple candidates vying for the 2017 French presidential election and apparently launched a massive hacking effort to hurt President Emmanuel Macron on the eve of the voting period, French voters understood the threat and they were not caught off-guard by the intervention. There is much to be learned by these and similar experiences in highlighting, naming, shaming and inculcating the populace and the press to the gravity of the threat. Potential approaches run the gamut of activity from sanctions to cyber efforts to public education to coordination with private organizations such as Facebook, Twitter and traditional news organizations. Developing and spreading these antibodies will be one of our most pressing tasks as we seek to combat this new danger.

Over the long run, if we can formulate these policy approaches, we stand a good chance of countering the advantages of our Putinist opponents and winning the ideological competition. As we did in the previous century, we can best this new challenge while renewing our values, and build a better world in the process.

5 Democratic Reps: The US Can Turn Putinism Into An Opportunity - TIME

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Plato Would Have Laughed at Our Era’s Faith In Rationalism – Big Think

Posted: at 6:02 am

1. History will puzzle over our eras ruling faith in rationalism. Behavioral economics is shaking that faith but as Nick Romeonotes, Plato described cognitive biases ~24 centuries ago.

2. And Plato is far from alone. Hasnt every realistic writer described humanitys everywhere-evident cognitive foibles? Except some math-obsessedeconomists?

3. Doesnt history, and the arts, and daily experience, testify against those hyper-rational individualists of econo-models?

4. For instance, here's Shakespeare on confirmation bias: Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs...

5. The gist of many cognitive biases shouldnt surprise non-economists (a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush = loss aversion).

6. Daniel Kahnemans cognitive-bias-cataloging Nobel involved studying grandmotherly wisdom (every psychologist knows were neither fully rational, nor completely selfish).

7. Beyond the fun of footnoting philosophy-founding dialogues with cognitive biases, Plato would have laughed at econo-rationalism.

8. And Plato saw money-lust as enslavement to irrational impulses (now driving mindless market priorities).

9. He knew were irrationally persuadable. He hated sophists for teaching how to sell seductive surfaces over substance (marketing over product). Marketing, obviously, has always used cognitive biases (under-theorized).

10. Even as many economists declare that were rational optimizers, businesses operate on the profitable principle that theres an easily manipulable fool born every minute.

11. But Plato abetted modern rationalisms rise by popularizing math-lust. 2,000 years later falling in love with geometry was an Enlightenment occupational hazard. And today similar math-worship (for algebra + stats) drives economists to irrational math-oholic fantasies.

12. Largely unnoticed is how Platos dialogues dramatize the shortcomings of cognitive individualism.

13. Social cognition research shows that individual knowledge is always remarkably shallow>we never think alone.

14. Isnt it self-evident that we evolved to reason socially? Thinking, like every other significant aspect of human nature, evolved collectively and tribally (not econo-individualistically).

15. Intriguingly, while confirmation bias worsens solo thinking, it can improve group reasoning (other cognitive perspectives countering your biases>dont think alone, or with cognitive clones).

16. Countering cognitive individualism is how science succeeds (bias-balancing processes).

17. That famed-science-institution motto "take no man's word for it," also applies to your own word. Feeling sure that youre right often isnt a reliable intuition. We fall in love with ideas and methods and become blind to our beloveds faults.

18. Math-method-loving economists strengthen faith in rationalism by routinely excluding "obvious empirical facts if theyre not equation friendly. This equation filtering begets theory-induced blindness (field-wide method-level bias).

19. This math-fashioned folly must misrepresent us for its beloved math model-making to work. Arguing that models, like maps, must exclude details, fails because here were ignoring known roadblocks. Theres no efficient-allocation market nirvana without rationally optimizing masses.

20. Beyond the matho-pathology of unbehavioral economics, misplaced faith in rationalism enabled Donald Trumps presidency. He grasps empirical psychology better than many rationalists. Every salesperson knows persuasion isnt factual or logical, but unavoidably emotional, and trust-dependent (see Aristotle on ethos, pathos, logos).

21. Ways of life that deny our deeply limited, deeply flawed, deeply social nature are doomed to historys dustbin.

IllustrationbyJulia Suits,The New Yorkercartoonist & author ofThe Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions

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Plato Would Have Laughed at Our Era's Faith In Rationalism - Big Think

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Why You Can Expect Increased Violence When The Left Is Out Of Power – The Federalist

Posted: at 6:02 am

As Jon Ossoff left the stage in defeat for the sixth congressional district runoff race last Tuesday, he said, Darkness has crept across this planet. Call it metaphor or call it spiritual, its not the scientific secularism the Left claims to represent. In fact, it represents a resurgent spiritual posture with distinct articles of theology. One of the loci theologici of this theology is its initiation sacrament, its baptism of blood if you will: political violence.

It begins, as we see in Ossoffs words, with the view that world as it exists in its totality is under the rule of dark powers. This is classic Gnosticism. The esoteric language of the historic Gnostic myth sounds arcane to the modern ear, but the psycho-spiritual mechanisms going on are resurgent, and until we grasp Gnosticisms various traits and characteristics (which you can get a fuller reading of here), we will not fully understand our era.

Note, for instance, the Manichaeism (an ancient Gnostic variant) of the leftist imagination. The world of the past is a realm of darkness and ignorance, generating systems and institutions like marriage, gender constructs, bordered nations, rationalism, individualism, federalism, capitalism, language, and so on. Stooges of this dark world order are the un-woke.

Meantime, for the woke (a truly Gnostic term) they envision a place of purity and light, where borders, gender distinctions, marriage definitions, distinctions between personal property, and rational meanings in language all dissolve. (The discerning will note its the darkness that blurs distinctions and the light which exposes them.)

When they win, the Left becomes Hermetical. Hermeticism, which was popular in the Renaissance after a Neoplatonism revival, was optimistic Gnosticism, proposing man can take the reins of the worlds dark overlord and run the world for good. This is the long march through the institutions approach, and with the actual success of this approach since the 1960s. the Left was content to sit back while History did its thing.

Now that the Left has lost, and keeps losing, another dynamic is taking over. Its not one of surfing History into the future, but of lashing out at phantom threats under the delusion that its self-defense. Its logical within the Gnostic framework: I do violence to defend myself against the oppression of the current system and its supporters. The obvious example of this is the recent shooting in Alexandria, Virginia. But consider some other high-profile examples and pay attention to the language.

After the University of California-Berkeley erupted in leftist violence, the Daily Californian ran five editorials under the banner of Violence as self-defense. Nisa Dang wrote, To people with platforms who decide when a protest should and should not be violent: You speak from a place of immense privilege. As I recently wrote in a tirade against this brand of idiocy, asking people to maintain peaceful dialogue with those who legitimately do not think their lives matter is a violent act.

Then theres Kathy Griffin and her odd justification for mock-beheading President Trump: Ive dealt with older white guys trying to keep me down my whole life, my whole career.

Now we hear from Huffposts La Sha on the death of Otto Warmbier at the hands of North Korean torturers: The hopeless fear Warmbier is now experiencing is my daily reality living in a country where white men like him are willfully oblivious to my suffering even as they are complicit in maintaining the power structures which ensure their supremacy at my expense.

Or consider the mocking reaction you get from leftists on the rising suicide rate among middle-aged white males. Bill Maher is typical: Its hard out there for a wimp, and thats why tonight Id like to remind white people of something very important they may have forgotten, youre white, cheer the f-ck up.

In each of these examples, the author or speaker has lost touch with basic human decency, caught up in a psycho-spiritual drama where the world is imprisoned by dark forces operating through entities, including people, deserving of destruction. Why? Because the salvation of humanity requires it.

This all reminded me of my favorite quote I discovered while researching for my book, Gnostic America, where Donna Minkowitz claims she had sadistic lesbian sex (even calling such sex a gnosis) as a rebellion against marriage norms. On these terms we get insight into the Lefts regard of abortion as a sacred act: its a bloody political revolution against traditional systems of oppression created by reproductive biology in cahoots with traditional culture.

The fact that Minkowitz made her reflections on rough sex after attending a religious right charismatic eventand seeing a similar spirit there as she saw in the gay rights movementonly underscores the total permeation of a certain, iconoclastic spirit in the American soul. And that spirit is Gnostic.

Gnosticisms iconoclastic streak throughout history is apropos. Iconoclasm literally means to break images. Images, in their original Greek progeny, are phantasmic, as in, they are something mentally or psychologically induced taking projected form. Of course, for the Gnostic, what is mentally or psychologically induced is the only sort of reality that matters.

Heres the kicker. As I become woke to my imprisonment in the external, dark world order, reality transfers from the outside to the inside. My engagement with reality evolves from a posture of reception to a posture of projection. Where before I might see a particular human being as a unique, independent entity sharing a humanity with meChristians call that my neighbornow I project onto him my newly woke imaging. Everything outside of me now becomes a projection of internal phantasms, characters, and symbols in my own psycho-drama.

The bottom line is that, once woke, you see the world in symbolic, iconic idioms, icons deserving destruction. Thus iconoclasm. A simple shop in an inner city becomes a symbol of the system of capitalistic oppression, deserving of riotous destruction. A police officer becomes a symbol of white privilege, justly murdered in an effort to break free from oppression.

A soldier becomes a symbol of American colonialism, rightly spit upon. Donald Trump symbolizes the patriarchy keeping women down. Republicans become symbols of all that is evil, the archons ruling the world, who will keep us all in chains unless destroyed. Language must be deconstructed, by violent legal fiat if need be. As icons of a hopelessly corrupt world oppressing me, it all must be iconoclastically broken. Violence is salvific.

So long as we are a media-saturated culture, its not likely things are going to get better. Media by its very nature works in the realm of the phantasmic, manipulating archetypes and narratives. Every story has to have a hero and a villain, and in the gnostic psycho-drama, representatives of traditions and long-standing systems or institutionslike capitalism, republicanism, federalism, the rule of law, individualism, marriage, family, and faithare the villains keeping the hero from his journey of authentic self-realization.

The Left is no longer dealing with passive Christians, but with a new, irreligious rightist element that will fight back.

Exhibit A: just about every movie ever made. Exhibit B: the mainstream medias framing of news and events. Its the gnostic psycho-drama that haunts the American soul, a truly American religion.

Until we pass through this gnostic moment, and begin seeing each other as our flesh and blood neighbors with names and not through the phantasmic and archetypical lenses of Facebook, the mainstream media, pop music, and any number of other media, the violence will only heighten. This is true on the Left as well as on the Right. The Left should know that theyre no longer dealing with right-wing, passive Christians, but with a new, irreligious rightist element that will fight back. Have fun with that.

Over the last several decades our society has made the wager that we can disconnect from a religion whose central message is that God traversed the gulf between spirit and flesh, becoming our flesh-and-blood neighbor, making our neighbor an object of love, and miraculously creating a community of human beings transcending race and nationality.

But as that same religion has warned us, madness lies the way of that disconnect. Madness, and also violence.

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Why You Can Expect Increased Violence When The Left Is Out Of Power - The Federalist

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A world where the truth matters not – Mathrubhumi English

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Populists pandering to parochial identities, polarising multi-ethnic societies, posing extravagant claims but backtracking without any blushes after securing their objective (while the public doesn't seem to care), reversing rationalism, demonising dissent and blaming the other/outsiders for all ills. Welcome to the "Post-Truth" world where the truth is no longer an obstacle - and its very concept is contested.

But Donald Trump, the Brexiters, the climate change deniers, the anti-vaccination or anti-immigration crowd, even our own infallible leaders, and the like proliferating all around are consequences, not causes of the "Post-Truth" phenomenon.

And it is not only rooted to these people or issues, contends British political journalist Matthew D'Ancona, noting that even Trump's eventual departure from office will not mean its end since the phenomenon is not only a mere contest between two competing ideologies of the political spectrum.

Therefore it is necessary to know why it this different from politics so far, how did we get to such a state of affairs, and why should we care.

It is a new strain of politics, shows D'Ancona in this book, one which goes beyond the usual tactics of less than the full truth, exaggeration and hyperbole or spin seen so far but is far more worrying because of its unwholesome underpinnings, response of particularly credulous public and reach and impact of digital technology and social media which facilitate it.

"We have entered a new phase of political and intellectual combat, in which democratic orthodoxies and institutions are being shaken to their foundations by a wave of ugly populism. Rationality is threatened by emotion, diversity by nativism, liberty by a drift towards autocracy. More than ever, the practice of politics is perceived as a zero-sum game, rather than a contest between ideas. Science is treated with suspicion, and sometimes, open contempt."

And "at the heart of this global trend is a crash in the value of truth", with honesty and accuracy no longer prized in such politics.

D'Ancona notes Trump figures quite a bit but clarifies his book is not about him or the the far right or any other ideology, but seeks to explore truth's "declining value" for society and its implications.

"If indeed we live in a Post-Truth era, where do its roots lie? What are its principal symptoms? And what can we do about it?" he asks and seeks to go to some quite unexpected areas to find the answers.

For its roots, he, tracing warnings from George Orwell in the age of totalitarianism, seeks to lay some culpability on Dr Sigmund Freud and his system of therapy giving primacy to emotions to the post-modernists and their attack on the notion of any objective reality.

But D'Ancona also shows how blame also lay in eroding trust in institutions spanning the governments, parliaments, big business (especially banks in 2008), media and experts of all stripes, which led to to "an uprising against the established order and a demand for ill-defined change".

And there was no shortage of politicians, to use this trust deficit- not only out of unscrupulousness but also of zealotry (sometimes closely linked to bigotry too) and the conviction they are right.

The symptoms of this phenomenon are too well known for anyone who follow the revolt against the status quo, seen most in the Brexit campaign and Trump's rise. D'Ancona is particularly scathing on the latter, terming him "a soiled Gatsby" or an entertainer with a talent for emotional narrative who has successfully "recast the presidency as the most desirable role in show business" and pointing how erroneous his statements are.

D'Ancona not only describes this "pernicious trend" of Post-Truth and its dangers but also calls on anyone who is worried about it not to sit passively for it to dispel but fight to defend respect for the truth, and rational, scientific thinking against its practitioners' "plutocratic, political and algorithmic firepower". He also offers a selection of strategies, ranging from vigilance to verification, and even satire, to confront it.

Ultimately it is up to us to determine if we want to think independently or allow someone's prejudices to determine our choices and future. IANS

Title: Post-Truth - The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back; Author: Matthew D'Ancona; Publisher: Ebury Press/Penguin Random House UK; Pages: 164; Price: Rs 399

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A world where the truth matters not - Mathrubhumi English

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‘What Would You Do?’ Author Wants To Stop Sensationalizing The Donner Party – NPR

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Author Michael Wallis says there are modern lessons to learn from the Donner Party primarily about the fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance. Above, an undated drawing of the pioneers, looking to make their way West. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Tales from the American West are marked by heroism, romance and plenty of cruelty. Among those stories, the saga of the Donner Party stands alone a band of pioneers set out in covered wagons for California, and eventually, stranded, snowbound and starving, resorted to cannibalism.

Author Michael Wallis says the story of Donner Party has been sensationalized over the years. His new book chronicles the journey from its beginning, illuminating the challenges the families faced and the fatal error that set them on a tragic course accepting bad advice that an uncharted shortcut would ease their passage to California. About half of the party survived.

Without the cannibalism, Wallis suspects the ill-fated pioneers would have become a "footnote" in history. Instead, "the focus continues to be on the cannibalism itself," he says, "when in fact there's so much more. That's why I wanted to tell the back story."

His new book is called The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny.

On the Donner-Reed Party

The three principle leaders of what came to be commonly called the Donner-Reed Party were the two Donner brothers, George and Jacob Donner, and James Reed, an Irish immigrant who struck it rich in the lead mines of Illinois. Reed became friends, at least good strong acquaintances of the Donner brothers, and those were the three that forged this plan to take their families, to take their livestock, to take their belongings and to move West to follow the California trail to the so-called "land of milk and honey."

On what they packed for their journey

Both the Donner brothers and James Reed did their research, and they were actually quite well-prepared when they embarked on this long journey across the rest of the continent. They knew that ... as many as four to six oxen were necessary to pull those wagons loaded with all of their belongings that they wanted to bring with them to start these new lives. They brought with them cattle and spare horses, saddle horses.

They brought essentials that they thought that they would need along the way and once they got to California, including items that they could use to trade and win the good graces of people they might encounter along the way. ... They brought books, they brought bottles of fine wine.

In James Reed's case, he brought such a fine wagon that years later it came to be called "the prairie palace." He equipped it with a big feather bed for his infirm mother-in-law to rest in on the journey. He put a cook stove in it. ... It was quite a sight on the road. And most of this material, of course, never made it to the Sierras. It eventually had to be discarded along the way.

On the ill-fated Hastings Cutoff, an alternate route proposed by Lansford Hastings

[Explorer James Clyman, a friend of James Reed, made] a visit to Illinois ... and sat down over beverages that evening around a fire with members of the Donner-Reed Party and focused on James Reed and said, "Don't take this shortcut! Lansford Hastings doesn't know what he's talking about. He, in fact, has never taken this cutoff himself. I advise you strongly, don't take it. Stick to the known California trail. Don't take this shortcut that's going to save you time, because it won't." And unfortunately James Reed didn't heed his old friend's advice.

On crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert

They needed to trim down the physical size of their caravan, and that meant leaving behind any nonessentials like big feather beds and iron cook stoves, and sadly some of the animals that couldn't make the journey. Some things were cached, buried in the desert sands, always hopeful that they'd come back and get them. Alas, that never really happened.

But they pressed on, facing this horrific heat and agony of the salt desert, and at night, the freezing temperatures. It just took toll after toll after toll on these people and on their animals. They begin to break up a little bit physically. People move ahead and so forth. This happened throughout the whole journey.

On the group starting to break up

There were some deaths. There was the death of a young infant. There was a death of a sick man they had picked up along the way. They lost a lot of their animals. They had to leave behind certain wagons belonging to the different families and groups. They had to consolidate. They had to ... learn to work together, something that proved to be very difficult.

There was already a force at work undermining what should've been a cohesive group. Part of that is, I think, just human nature. It was starting to be survival of the fittest and families pulling themselves into themselves and being concerned mostly with their immediate family as opposed to the whole group.

On the atrocities the pioneers committed against Native Americans

I don't think people realize that California, what became the state of California, was particularly brutal. [For] many California tribes, it was total genocide. There are stories of Anglos going out and literally having target practice by shooting Indians. That was part of that whole Manifest Destiny thing "we" could possess the continent because there were no people out there. There were Mexicans, yes, a lot of it belonged to Mexico and there were all these Plains Indians, but they in fact weren't people, they weren't human beings, so it's "ours" for the taking.

On the winter coming earlier than expected

By October, it became evident that winter was setting much earlier than expected, and in fact, it did. That, of course, was another big problem, another big reason for this tragedy. They made it up to what's called Truckee Meadows, right around where Reno now is, and were looking towards the Sierras. ... They got to these meadows. ... They rested a bit too long. They ended up literally stopped by these winter storms. They could go no further, so they set up camp ... and there they stayed from October throughout the winter of 1846-1847, just trying to survive.

On their failed attempts to get over the Sierra mountains

They didn't get into these camps and just give up and sit down, there were forays out. ... They'd get up as far as they could go and then they'd be repelled by this incredibly deep snow we're talking about snow 20- and 25-feet deep, just impossible to get through. They would even fashion snowshoes, and they tried all kinds of ways to get through the snow and couldn't.

Wallis has written several books about the American West. He is also a voice actor who plays the sheriff in the animated Cars films. Shellee Graham/Liveright hide caption

Wallis has written several books about the American West. He is also a voice actor who plays the sheriff in the animated Cars films.

On turning to cannibalism to survive

They ate literally everything before they had to turn to human flesh. They of course killed the great oxen, the horses, everything, and ate that meat. They boiled the hides, they picked out the bone marrow, they made this gelatinous, awful goo from the hides, and it had very little, if any, nutritional value.

They ate field mice they caught in their cabins and camps. They finally got to the point where they had to kill all of their beloved dogs, very sadly, and ate all of them. Then they were chewing on pine cones and ponderosa pine bark. They're starving and they're freezing to death, they're becoming delirious, they had to chew on something, so they chewed on anything they could find.

But ultimately, they turned to the protein that was the human the dead companions, friends, family that they had storehoused that had already died from starvation and from hypothermia in the snow banks. They did that totally to survive, but it was very much the last resort. ...

They tried their best not to consume flesh of family members, they were so careful.

On putting himself in their situation

When people say to me, "This cannibalism, how awful!" I always just turn it right around on them and say, "What would you do? What would you do if you were starving to death, freezing to death, and your children were around you, and you saw them, and they were dying, and you knew that this store of protein was there? What would you do?" I know what I would do. ...

Out of all those parties that did [survive], two entire families survived, two large families [including the Reed family.] ... But it was just the Reed family alone that never partook of a piece of human flesh, they were somehow able to avoid that due to the diligence and the care of the mother, Margaret Reed.

On members of the Donner Party murdering two Native Americans who came to their aid

These two Miwoks were with [a segment of the Donner Party,] the Forlorn Hope Party, and after cannibalism in the Forlorn Party began, the two Indians refused to eat human flesh. They were growing weaker and weaker and ultimately the rationalism was, once again, "Well, these are Indians, so they're fair game." So they were shot, field dressed, and eaten. ... Ironically, a few days later there were Miwok Indians who came to the aid of the Forlorn Hope and made sure they got down to safety.

On what can be learned from the Donner Party today

I think it tells us not only about the American West but really about the whole nation. ... So many people find that really the idea of Manifest Destiny still exists in this country, this whole idea of American exceptionalism. ...

Those of us who do not learn our history are doomed to repeat it the sins of the past and that's certainly the case with the Donner Party. The words that ring out to me continually are two words that combined can be very fatal, then as now, and those words are: ignorance and arrogance.

On a sentence from a letter Patty Reed wrote to a cousin after she was rescued

I think [this] serves as ... a fitting benediction to this whole story this is what she wrote: "We have left everything, but I don't care for that. We have got through with our lives. Don't let this letter dishearten anybody. Remember: Never take no cut-offs, and hurry along as fast as you can."

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.

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David French: The Threat To Free Speech | commentary – Commentary Magazine

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From the July/August COMMENTARY symposium.

The following is an excerpt from COMMENTARYs symposium on the threat to free speech:

Were living in the midst of a troubling paradox. At the exact same time that First Amendment jurisprudence has arguably never been stronger and more protective of free expression, millions of Americans feel they simply cant speak freely. Indeed, talk to Americans living and working in the deep-blue confines of the academy, Hollywood, and the tech sector, and youll get a sense of palpable fear. Theyll explain that they cant say what they think and keep their jobs, their friends, and sometimes even their families.

The government isnt cracking down or censoring; instead, Americans are using free speech to destroy free speech. For example, a social-media shaming campaign is an act of free speech. So is an economic boycott. So is turning ones back on a public speaker. So is a private corporation firing a dissenting employee for purely political reasons. Each of these actions is largely protected from government interference, and each one represents an expression of the speakers ideas and values.

The problem, however, is obvious. The goal of each of these kinds of actions isnt to persuade; its to intimidate. The goal isnt to foster dialogue but to coerce conformity. The result is a marketplace of ideas that has been emptied of all but the approved ideological vendorsat least in those communities that are dominated by online thugs and corporate bullies. Indeed, this mindset has become so prevalent that in places such as Portland, Berkeley, Middlebury, and elsewhere, the bullies and thugs have crossed the line from protectedalbeit abusivespeech into outright shout-downs and mob violence.

But theres something else going on, something thats insidious in its own way. While politically correct shaming still has great power in deep-blue America, its effect in the rest of the country is to trigger a furious backlash, one characterized less by a desire for dialogue and discourse than by its own rage and scorn. So were moving toward two Americasone that ruthlessly (and occasionally illegally) suppresses dissenting speech and the other that is dangerously close to believing that the opposite of political correctness isnt a fearless expression of truth but rather the fearless expression of ideas best calculated to enrage your opponents.

The result is a partisan feedback loop where right-wing rage spurs left-wing censorship, which spurs even more right-wing rage. For one side, a true free-speech culture is a threat to feelings, sensitivities, and social justice. The other side waves high the banner of free speech to sometimes elevate the worst voices to the highest platformsnot so much to protect the First Amendment as to infuriate the hated snowflakes and trigger the most hysterical overreactions.

The culturally sustainable argument for free speech is something else entirely. It reminds the cultural left of its own debt to free speech while reminding the political right that a movement allegedly centered around constitutional values cant abandon the concept of ordered liberty. The culture of free speech thrives when all sides remember their moral responsibilitiesto both protect the right of dissent and to engage in ideological combat with a measure of grace and humility.

Read the entire symposium on the threat to free speech in the July/August issue of COMMENTARY here.

The War of the Poses.

Recently, the White House has adopted a habit that seems designed to maximize the frustration of the reporters who cover it. Occasionally, the administration flirts with doing away with the daily press briefing altogether or forcing reporters to submit written questions in advance. When reporters complain, the press briefing returns, but with no cameras allowed.

If the administration is feeling kind, it will allow the audio of the briefing to be recorded. Occasionally, reporters are permitted a still picture or two. This gesture is, however, only offered so as to not be so withholding that the targets of their psychological abuse lose interest in the game. Only when they truly want to hammer home a message will the White House appear to relent to journalists complaints and revert to the standard briefing format. Even then, its often only to castigate the reporters in attendance.

At Tuesdays on-camera briefing, there was only one truly pressing subject. No, not the health care reform bill that is stalled in the Senate and could scuttle the presidents legislative agenda if it fails. Media bias was the topic du jour, as it is almost every jour.

Last week, CNN reported that Trump campaign advisor Anthony Scaramucci had ties to a state-run investment fund in Moscow. That story was based on false information and was retracted in its entirety. In a moment of rare professional penance, CNN accepted the resignations of three high-profile reporters and editors.

This display of loose journalistic ethics has become typical of reporting on Trump-Russian connections. The subjects of this smear, both those libeled directly and tangentially, have every right to be frustrated. CNN behaved admirably in facing its failure head-on. Both the president and his spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, took the opportunity to be graceless.

Donald Trump responded to the reporters dismissal by seeking to maximize his political advantage and declaring all stories related to his campaigns interactions with Russian officials fake news! When she was asked why CNNs response to their employees unprofessional conduct wasnt good enough for the president, Huckabee Sanders attacked CNN for its serial inaccuracy. She then advised the American public to avail themselves of a video circulating now from James OKeefes Project Veritas that purports to show a CNN producer objecting to his networks ratings-driven obsession with the investigations into Russia and Trump. Whether its accurate or not, I dont know, Huckabee Sanders added.

At this point, Sentinel Newspapers Brian Karemhad had enough. What you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, see, once again, the presidents right and everybody else out here is fake media, Karem averred, and everybody in this room is only trying to do their job. The video of his remarks went viral, reporters and conservative pundits flew to their respective corners, and the familiar ritual of public posturing had begun.

Rarely has a perfectly symbiotic relationship been so antagonistic. Or, at least, rarely has that contrivance been so irritating.

Members of this administration might feel legitimately transgressed against when they are accused of conspiring to undermine American sovereigntyparticularly if they believe those allegations to be false. And after spending the last 150 plus days being lectured about their corrupt and dishonest employers, friends, and colleagues, members of the press might sometimes put aside professional courtesies and become a little passionate. Those traits are honest and forgivable. Less defensible is the affectation of grievance.

Does this feel like America? barked the increasingly hysterical CNN reporter Jim Acosta. Where the White House takes [questions] from conservatives, then openly trashes the news media in the briefing room? Adopting the language of the over-caffeinated partisans who make up The Resistance has become a feature of Acostas rhetoric since the White House began to draw the curtain over the daily press briefing.

In fact, this is what a traditionally adversarial relationship between reporter and political institution looks like. It is a testament to how compromising the Obama years were for both the press and political professionals that this dynamic is so alien neither side appears to recognize it.

A doctrine is taking shape.

With all of Washington consumed by the effort to craft and pass health-care legislation, the Trump White House appeared to catch the countrys political establishment off guard when it announced that the crisis in Syria was again reaching a crescendo.

In a prepared statement, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer revealed that the Bashar al-Assad regime was engaged in potential preparations to execute another chemical attack on civilians. [If] Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price, the statement read.

Hours later, the Pentagon expounded upon the nature of the threat. We have seen activity at Shayrat Airfield, said Captain Jeff Davis, associated with chemical weapons. The Shayrat Air Base outside the city of Homs is the same airfield that was targeted in April with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

For all the frustration over the Trump administrations failure to craft a coherent strategy to guide American engagement in the Syrian theater, the White House has communicated to the Assad regime a set of clear parameters in which it is expected to operate. That is a marked improvement over the approach taken by Barack Obamas administration.

When American forces in Syria or those under the American defense umbrella are threatened by the Assad regime or its proxies, American forces will take action. On several occasions, U.S. forces have made kinetic defensive strikes on pro-government militias, and that policy recently expanded to include Syrian regular forces. On June 18, a Syrian Su-22 fighter-bomber was destroyed when it struck American-backed fighters laying siege to the ISIS-held city of Raqqa.

The Trump administration has also telegraphed to Damascus the limited conditions that would lead to offensive operations against regime targets. At the risk of contradicting his campaign-trail promise to scale back American commitments abroad, President Trump was convinced at the urging of his closest advisors and family members following the April 4 chemical attacks to execute strikes on the Assad regime. His administration was quick to communicate that this was a one-time punitive measure, not a campaign. There would be no follow-on action.

That directive may no longer be operative. With the release of this latest statement warning Damascus against renewed chemical strikes on rebel targets, the triggers that led to strikes on regime targets in April are hardening into a doctrine. The United States will act aggressively to maintain a global prohibition on the use of weapons of mass destruction. There is enough consistency and clarity to Trumps approach that it might amount to deterrence. Even if the Assad regime is not deterred, onlookers may yet be.

This is a doctrine that Barack Obama flirted with, but declined only at the last minute to adopt. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas, and using them, Obama explained to the nation in a primetime address on September 10, 2013. Over time, our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield. And it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons, and to use them to attack civilians.

This was and remains a prophetic warning. ISIS militants have already deployed chemical munitions against Iraqi troops and their American and Australian advisors. An inauspicious future typified by despots unafraid to unleash indiscriminate and unconventional weapons on the battlefield would surely have come to fruition had the West not eventually made good on Obamas threats.

Obama framed his about-face as an odd species of consistency. He deferred to Congress in a way he hadnt before and wouldnt after while simultaneously empowering Moscow to mediate the conflict. This laid the groundwork for Russian armed intervention in Syria just two years later. In contrast, Donald Trump eschewed the rote dance of coalition-building and public diplomacy. Instead, he ordered the unilateral, punitive strike on a rogue for behaving roguishly. And hes willing to do it again if need be.

That approach will prove refreshing to Americas Sunni allies who, by the end of the last administration, were entirely disillusioned with the Obama presidency. Obamas waltz back from his red line undermined the Gulf States and shattered hopes in Syria that the West was prepared to enforce the proscription on mass civilian slaughter. In the week of war drums leading up to the anti-climax of September 10, 2013, a wave of defections from the Syrian Army suggested that a post-Assad future was possible. Today, few think such a prospect is conceivable. And because the insurgency against Assads regime will not end with Assad in power, an equal number cannot foresee a stop to the Syrian civil war anytime soon.

These circumstances have led some to criticize the Trump administration. Perhaps the behaviors theyve resolved to punish are too narrowly defined. Maybe the White House should rethink regime change? It is, after all, not so much a civil war anymore but a great power conflict. American troopsto say nothing of Russian, Turkish, British, French, and a host of othersare already on the ground in Syria in numbers and at cross purposes. Still others contend that even this level of engagement in the Levant is irresponsible. They argue the Syrian quagmire is to be avoided at all costs.

These are all legitimate criticisms, but only now can there be a rational debate over a concrete Syria policy.

For more than three years, Barack Obama tried to have his cake and eat it, too. He presented himself as sagaciously unmoved by the political pressuring of Washingtons pro-war establishment, which salivates over the prospect of lucrative strikes on an alien nation. At the same time, the Obama White House cast itself as a reluctant defender of civilization in the Middle East and elsewhereperhaps even too quick to deploy men and ordnance. This was only nonsense retrofitted onto Barack Obamas pursuit of a face-saving way to retreat from his self-set red line.

The Trump administrations policy in Syria is an improvement over Obamas if only because it deserves to be called a policy. Love it or dont, at least Americans are no longer being gaslighted into debating the merits of phantasms invented by political strategists in Washington talk shops.

This isn't about politics.

On June 23, the Washington Post ran a comprehensive article reviewing the Russian interference in last years presidential election, which involved stealing emails from Democratic Party accounts and releasing them via Wikileaks. The outstanding work of reporters Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Adam Entous shows that there was a bipartisan, cascading failure to respond adequately to this attack on our democracy. That attack began under President Obama and is continuing under President Trump.

The Post revealed that the CIA had sourcing deep inside the Russian government showing that Vladimir Putin had personally tasked his intelligence agencies with audacious objectivesdefeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.

Obama was informed of this while the election was underway, but he did little.

the Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, the release of CIA-gathered material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could crater the Russian economy.

But in the end, in late December,Obama approveda modest package combining measures that had been drawn up to punish Russia for other issues expulsions of 35 diplomats and the closure of two Russian compounds with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic.

The article went on to quote a former senior Obama administration official involved in White House deliberations on Russia who said: It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend. I feel like we sort of choked.

In fairness to Obama, he tried to seek bipartisan support to expose Russias machinations and found no interest among the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, who were plainly more worried about losing an election than about this Russian attack on our democracy. Obama knew that if he had spoken out more forcefully, Trump and his Republican supporters would have hammered him for allegedly trying to rig the election for Crooked Hillary.

That doesnt excuse Obamas failure of leadership. He was the commander-in-chief; it was his responsibility. It does make clear, however, that he was worried not just about the possibility of worsening relations with Russia but also about being charged with a partisan interference in the election.

The failure to react more strongly to the Russian hack extends now into the Trump administration. Trumps reaction to the Post story is indicative of his troubling mindset. The day before the Post story came out, Trump claimed on Twitter that reports of Russian interferenceas unanimously attested to by his own intelligence agenciesare all a big Dem HOAX! Following the publication of the Posts story, he tweeted: Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?

Given that the Obama administration had publicly called out Russian interference in October, its hard to imagine why this would be news to Trump now.

The benefit of the doubt ends there. Trumps next reaction was purely cynical. Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T! So when Trump is accused of collusion with the Russians or other wrong-doing, he claims that the entire Russian operation is a hoax. But when he wants to accuse Obama of wrongdoing, then he stipulates that the hacking was real.

For Trump, this is a purely partisan issue. The Democrats are out to get to him, to de-legitimize his election victory, and he will say or do anything to stop themeven if that means denying the reality of the Russian operation one moment and admitting it the next. There is no indication that he has treated this attack with the gravity it deserves, which makes it more likely that the Russians will be up to their old tricks in future elections, just as they have been doing recently in Europe.

Trump is right to castigate Obama for not doing more, but the same criticism now applies to him.

How the West was dug.

Next Tuesday marks the beginning of the 242nd year of the independence of the United States, and the day will be justly celebrated with parades,picnics, and fireworks from Hawaii to Maine.

But next Tuesday will also mark another anniversary of surpassing historicalimportance to this country. For it was on July 4th, 1817, 200 years ago,that the first shovelful of dirt was dug and the construction of the ErieCanal began. Finished eight years later (ahead of schedule and under budget)it united the east coast with the fast-growing trans-Appalachian west.

It was a monumental undertaking. At 363 miles, the canal was more than twiceas long as any earlier canal. (The Canal du Midi in southern France was 140miles in length.) Thomas Jefferson thought the project little short ofmadness. But Governor Dewitt Clinton saw the possibilities and went ahead,artfully handling the very considerable political opposition and arrangedthe financing (much of the money was raised in London).

Clinton was quickly proved right and the Erie Canal can claim to be the most consequential public works project in American history. Before the canal,bulk goods such as grain could reach the east coast population centers onlyby going down the Mississippi River and out through the port of New Orleans.With the canal, it could travel via the Great Lakes and the canal to theport of New York. Before the canal, it had taken six weeks to move a barrelof flour from Buffalo to New York City, at the cost of $100. With the canal,it took six days and cost $6.00. The result was an economic revolution.

Within a few years, New York City had become, in the words of Oliver WendellHolmes (the doctor and poet, not his son the Supreme Court justice), thattongue that is licking up the cream of commerce of a continent. The cityexploded in size, expanding northwards at the rate of about two blocks ayear. That may not seem like much, but Manhattan is about two miles wide,and thus the city was adding about ten miles of street front every year, apace that continued for decades.

The cost of the canal was paid off in only eight years and thereafter becamea cash cow for the state. This allowed it to weather the crash of 1837 andthe following depression, which bankrupted the state of Pennsylvania andcrippled Philadelphias banks. New York quickly became the countrysundisputed financial center, which it has been ever since.

And while goods were moving eastwards, people were moving westward throughthe canal as farmers deserted the thin, stony soils of New England for therich, deep loams of Ohio and Indiana. This New England diaspora moved thepolitical center of the country westwards.

The canal era in this country was a brief one as railroads, beginning in the1830s, began to spread. But the Erie Canal continued to function as anartery of commerce until the 1970s and is still used today for things that,usually for reasons of size, cannot be moved by highway or railroad. And itremains a popular avenue for recreational boating.

So Americans should remember Dewitt Clinton next week just as we rememberWashington, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin. For New Yorkers, that goesdouble. For it was the Erie Canal that put the empire in the Empire State.

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David French: The Threat To Free Speech | commentary - Commentary Magazine

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Why Can’t ‘Free Speech’ Advocates Ever Defend Adjunct Professors and People of Color? – Pacific Standard

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Why Can't 'Free Speech' Advocates Ever Defend Adjunct Professors and People of Color?
Pacific Standard
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Why Can't 'Free Speech' Advocates Ever Defend Adjunct Professors and People of Color? - Pacific Standard

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Daily Archives: June 28, 2017

Some Progress against the Evils of Civil Asset Forfeiture – National Review

Progress on 5800-acre Manzanita fire south of Beaumont breeds optimism – Press-Enterprise

A brave new world none of us can see – The Hutchinson News

5 Democratic Reps: The US Can Turn Putinism Into An Opportunity – TIME

Plato Would Have Laughed at Our Era’s Faith In Rationalism – Big Think

Why You Can Expect Increased Violence When The Left Is Out Of Power – The Federalist

A world where the truth matters not – Mathrubhumi English

‘What Would You Do?’ Author Wants To Stop Sensationalizing The Donner Party – NPR

David French: The Threat To Free Speech | commentary – Commentary Magazine

Why Can’t ‘Free Speech’ Advocates Ever Defend Adjunct Professors and People of Color? – Pacific Standard

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