Daily Archives: December 6, 2019

On December 4, Moscows Kuntsevsky District Court continued hearing the case against 21-year-old Higher School of Economics (HSE) student and libertarian YouTube personality Egor Zhukov. Zhukov stands accused of issuing public calls for extremism: Prosecutors have argued that his videos on nonviolent resistance were motivated by political hatred and enmity to the constitutional structure extant in the Russian Federation as well as a desire to destabilize the countrys social and political order.

Zhukovs case, one of many that were brought forward during this summers wave of election protests in Moscow, has attracted widespread attention throughout the Russian opposition. Many of the videobloggers fellow HSE students as well as veteran journalists have openly supported him, calling the states reaction to his videos dangerously unfounded and expressing fear at the precedent his case may set. The editors-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta and Ekho Moskvy even submitted documents in court expressing their willingness to employ Zhukov as a journalist.

However, a smaller group of prominent activists involved in a longstanding fight to curb violence against women in Russia have expressed mixed feelings about their colleagues unequivocal support for Zhukov as a political figure, not only as a political prisoner. They note that the YouTuber has used his online platform to propagate anti-feminist views that, on a global scale, are typically considered to fall in the far right of the political spectrum. Those activists have focused in particular on a video in which Zhukov misrepresents the theory of intersectionality to argue that feminism is dangerous and the patriarchy doesnt exist while using a Make America Great Again hat as a desktop prop. Regardless of their disagreements, activists on all sides of the Russian opposition have found Zhukovs persecution to be illegitimate on its face.

Judge Svetlana Ukhnaleva will announce the sentence in Egor Zhukovs case on Friday, December 6. Prosecutors have asked for the student to be placed in a prison colony for four years. The following is a complete translation of the closing statement Zhukov read at the end of his 10-hour hearing on December 4.

The judicial proceedings taking place right now are dedicated primarily to words and their meaning. We have discussed specific phrases, nuances of diction, and interpretive possibilities, and I hope we have been able to prove to the honorable judge that I am not an extremist, both in terms of linguistics and in terms of common sense.

Now, I would like to touch on a few things that are more fundamental than the meaning of words. I would like to speak to the motives behind my actions, seeing as has addressed them as well. I would like to tell you about motives that are genuine and deeply felt. Motives that force me to be active in politics. Motives that drove, among other things, the videos I recorded for the YouTube channel Zhukovs Blog.

And heres where I want to start. The Russian government today positions itself as the last remaining defender of traditional values. As we have been told, it allocates much of its attention to the institution of the family and to patriotism. The key traditional value named in all this is Christian faith. Your Honor, it seems to me that this may even be a good thing. Christian ethics include two values that are truly close to my heart. The first is responsibility. At the foundation of Christianity lies a story about an individual who decided to take the weight of the entire worlds suffering onto his own shoulders. Its a story about a person who took responsibility in the maximal possible sense of the word. At its core, the central idea of the entire Christian religion is the idea of individual responsibility.

Secondly, theres love. Love thy neighbor as thyself thats the most important phrase in the Christian religion. Love is trust, compassion, humanism, mutual aid, and caring. A society built on that kind of love is a strong society it is, if you please, the strongest society that could possibly exist.

But in order to understand the motives behind what I do, it is enough to look at how the current Russian government which proudly presents itself as a defender of Christianity and, therefore, these values actually defends them. Before we talk about responsibility, we must first answer the question of what a responsible persons ethics are, what words they speak to themselves over the course of their life. I believe those words go like this: Remember that your entire path will be full of hardships, sometimes unbearable ones. All of your loved ones will die. All of your plans will be destroyed. People will cheat you and abandon you. And you will have nowhere to run from death. Life is suffering. Make peace with that fact. But once you make peace with it, once you make peace with the inevitability of suffering, take your cross up onto your shoulders anyway and follow your dreams because otherwise, everything will only get worse. Become a role model; become somebody people can count on. Dont bow down to despots; fight for the freedom of your body and soul, and fight for a social order in your country in which your children can grow up happy.

Isnt that what they teach us? Arent those the ethics that children learn in school? Arent those the kinds of heroes we honor? No. The current situation in this country destroys all possibilities for human flourishing. Ten percent of the richest Russians hold 90 percent of the countrys wealth in their hands. Some of them, of course, are extremely respectable citizens, but most of that wealth was gained through blatant corruption, not honest work for the good of humanity.

Our society is divided into two levels by an impermeable barrier. All the money is concentrated at the top, and nobody there is about to give it away. Meanwhile, on the bottom, all thats left is desperation, and that is not an overstatement. Because they understand that they cant hope for anything, and they understand that no matter how hard they try, they cant bring happiness to themselves or their families, Russian men take out all their fury on their wives or drink themselves to death or hang themselves. Russia has the highest rate of male suicides in the world for every 100,000 people. As a result, a third of all the families in Russia are single mothers with children. Is that how, Id like to ask, we defend the traditional institution of the family?

Miron Fyodorov [the star rapper Oxxxymiron], who has attended a number of my hearings, has noted very justly and accurately that alcohol is cheaper here than textbooks. The government creates all the conditions necessary for a Russian who must choose between responsibility and irresponsibility to choose the latter every time.

Now, lets talk about love. Love is impossible without trust. Real trust is born out of collective action. First of all, collective action is rare in a country where responsibility has not been developed. Second of all, if collective action does appear somewhere, security forces immediately perceive it as a threat. It doesnt matter what you do whether you help prisoners, whether you defend human rights, whether you protect nature sooner or later, either the foreign agent status catches up to you or they lock you up for no reason. The government makes its message very clear: Folks, just go off your separate ways and dont work together. Assembling publicly in groups of more than two is banned well lock you up for protesting. Working together for a social mission is banned well label you a foreign agent. In that environment, where can trust, and ultimately love, have room to grow? Not romantic love the humanitarian love that connects one person to another.

The only social policy the Russian government consistently employs is disconnection. Thats how the government dehumanizes us in one anothers eyes. In the eyes of the state, we have already been dehumanized for a long time. How else can you explain its barbaric treatment of its people? Treatment that is accentuated every day by the beating of police batons, by torture in prison colonies, by the choice to ignore the HIV epidemic, by schools and hospitals closing, and so on.

Lets look at ourselves in the mirror. Who have we become if we have let this be done to us? Weve become a nation that has forgotten how to take responsibility. Weve become a nation that has forgotten how to love. More than 200 years ago, [social critic] Alexander Radishchev wrote the following on his way from St. Petersburg to Moscow: I looked around me, and my soul was wounded with the suffering of men. I turned my gaze upon that which is inside me and beheld that the woes of man originate in man himself. Where are those people today? People whose souls feel such sharp pain at what is happening in their homeland? Why are there almost none of them left?

All of this leads us to the fact that, if you just take a look, it becomes apparent that the only traditional institution the current Russian government genuinely venerates and strengthens is autocracy. An autocracy that goes out of its way to destroy the life of anybody who genuinely wishes their homeland well, who is unafraid to love and to take responsibility. As a result, the citizens of our long-suffering country have had to learn that taking initiative draws punishment, that the bosses are always right just because theyre the bosses, and that happiness may be possible here just not for them. And having learned those lessons, they gradually began to disappear. According to [official] Rosstat statistics, Russia is gradually disappearing at the average rate of negative 400,000 people per year. You cant see the people behind the statistics. So see them! Youre looking at people drinking themselves to death out of exhaustion, people freezing to death in unheated hospitals, people who have been murdered, people who have killed themselves People. Just like us.

By this point, the motives behind what I do have probably become clear. I truly wish to see these two qualities responsibility and love in our citizens. Responsibility for ourselves, for those around us, for the entire country. Love for the weak, for those we hold close, for humanity. That is my desire just one more reason, Your Honor, that I cannot call for violence. Violence ties our hands; it leads to impunity and therefore to irresponsibility. For those same exact reasons, violence also does not lead to love. But nonetheless, despite all the obstacles, I dont doubt for a second that this wish of mine will come true. I look forward, over the horizon of years to come, and I see Russia full of responsible, loving people. It will be a truly happy place. Let each one of us imagine that Russia. And may that image guide you and your work just as it guides me.

In conclusion, I will say the following: If, today, the court rules despite it all that these are the words of a truly dangerous criminal, then the next few years of my life will be filled with scarcity and adversity. But I look at the guys the Moscow case has brought together with me at Kostya [Konstantin] Kotov, at Samarddin Radzhabov and I see smiles on their faces. In the minute we had to speak briefly in the pretrial detention center, Lyosha [Alexei] Minyailo and Danya [Daniil] Konon never allowed themselves to complain about life. I will try to follow their example. I will try to be glad of the fact that Ive gotten this chance to undergo this trial, this suffering, in the name of the values close to my heart. Ultimately, Your Honor, the more frightening my future is, the more broadly I will smile in its direction. Thank you.

Read the original post:

Lets look in the mirror - Meduza

Former Saline Mayor Gretchen Driskell announced her candidacy Wednesday for the United States House of Representatives, seeking to represent Michigans 7th Congressional District.

It's the third time Driskell has run against incumbant Republican Congressman Tim Walberg, now in his sixth term of office in the U.S. House.

In 2016, Walberg won 55.1% to Driskell's 40% (with Libertarian Ken Proctor garnering 4.9% of the votes. )

In 2018, Walberg's margin of victory over Driskell was narrower, 53.8% to 46.2%.

Driskell issued a press release explaining why she is running:

Im running for Congress because Michiganders know that Washington is broken and we need someone who will work for us. Here in Michigan we have been sending the same representatives to Congress and things are getting worse for most people in our community. After 27 years in office, Congressman Walberg is part of the problem. He spends his time playing political games and bickering, not working to solve our problems. As a nonpartisan mayor, I had to balance the budget, make tough decisions, and deliver results for people in our community. I didnt know peoples political party, nor did I care. We just got things done together. If elected to Congress I will bring that same leadership to Washington and start getting things done for all of us, here in Michigan.

Driskell's statement says if elected, she would focus on creating higher-wage jobs, affordable and accessible health care, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and ensuring a secure and dignified retirement.

Driskell was the first female mayor of Saline and the longest-serving mayor of Saline before representing the 52nd District in the Michigan State House.

Prior to his time in public office, Walberg served as a pastor in Michigan and Indiana, as president of the Warren Reuther Center for Education and Community Impact, and as a division manager for Moody Bible Institute.

He also served in the Michigan House of Representatives from 1983 to 1999.

Walberg spokesman Dan Kotman issued this statement:

"It appears perennial candidate Gretchen Driskell is not satisfied with wasting millions and losing big twice, but first she must defend her failed record in the Democratic primary. While Driskell's party continues their political impeachment hearings, Congressman Walberg is focused on bipartisan solutions to grow good-paying jobs, protect the Great Lakes, and bring down the cost of prescription drugs."

Michigans 7th District encompasses Branch, Eaton, Hillsdale, Jackson, Lenawee, and Monroe Counties, along with parts of Washtenaw County.

Want to support reporting like this? Consider making a gift to Michigan Radio today.

See original here:

Democrat Gretchen Driskell to try a third time to unseat Tim Walberg in 7th Congressional District - Michigan Radio

Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., April 10, 2019(Erin Scott/Reuters)Conservatives should be able to find it

In his speech to the Republican convention in 1988, George H. W. Bush said, I want a kinder and gentler nation. Nancy Reagan, the wife of the man he was trying to succeed, reportedly had an acerbic reaction: Kinder and gentler than whom? When Bushs son ran for president in 2000 as a compassionate conservative, others on the right were similarly unimpressed. Were plain old conservatives to be considered uncompassionate?

Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) should have known what to expect, then, when in early November he spoke at Catholic University of America in favor of what he called common-good capitalism. Free markets have been serving the common good just fine, thank you, came the retort from many conservative and libertarian critics of the senator. If they look past a few mostly rhetorical points, however, the critics and Rubio may see that they can find common ground.

The goal of his speech was to contribute to our countrys holding together rather than to identify a third way forward between the two prevalent schools of thought in our politics or to define a post-Trump conservatism for the Republican party, Rubio insisted. But these alternatives are not incompatible with one another, and surely one of Rubios purposes was indeed to chart a course for conservatism after Trump.

That purpose presupposes, correctly, that conservatisms definition is up for grabs: that Trumps election exploded one definition but that Trump has not replaced it, at least in any detail. Even though Rubio mentioned the presidents name only once, while disavowing the goal of looking past him, Trump was in the background the entire time.

As the examples of the Presidents Bush suggest, though, there is by now a long history of Republicans attempting to create a governing majority for conservatism, or just to win elections, by softening its devotion to limited government and markets. Running in 1980, Ronald Reagan took care not to present himself as Barry Goldwater redux: He was not a threat to Social Security or Medicare, and his tax cuts would generate enough growth to avoid a painful retrenchment of the welfare state.

Later came Pat Buchanans conservatism of the heart complete with frequent invocations of Franklin Roosevelts line about the occasional faults of a benevolent government paling beside the constant ones of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference and Bushs compassionate conservatism.

As unusual as he is in many respects, as much of a jolt as he has given to the political system, Trump fits this pattern. He did not change a comma of Republican orthodoxy on social issues. But he ran as a Republican who would protect the elderly from entitlement cuts and manufacturing workers from imports.

In each case, politicians have thought, or intuited, that the great stumbling block between conservatism and voters was the fervor of conservative opposition to government activism. But the changes that these politicians attempted to make to conservatisms approach to markets have varied, as have the justifications they used and the results they got. So the nature of the pushback that each attempt received has also varied.

In the debate over Rubios speech, nine questions have divided conservatives. He has the better of the argument on some of these questions, but not all of them.

First: Should government intervene in markets to advance the common good? Here the debate has been inefficient in just the way a light bulb can be: The ratio of heat to light is higher than need be.

A common good is simply a good that individuals, families, and other subgroups within a society cannot obtain on their own. Assuming, for example, that a government must superintend the building of roads in order for a nation to flourish, it is advancing the common good by doing so. In moments of rhetorical abandon, some of Rubios critics might say that government exists only to protect individual rights. But none of them seriously denies that there is such a thing as a common good or that government should seek it.

The common good includes such prerequisites for functioning markets as the rule of law. And while Rubio did not emphasize these points, perhaps taking them for granted, the Catholic social thought on which he drew respects private property, contracts, and subsidiarity (the notion that it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do, to quote the 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo anno). That government should pursue the common good does not entail collectivism or a denial of the intrinsic importance of individuals, families, businesses, or churches. It does not imply the subordination of these things to the state any more than the rule of law does.

Second: How badly has our economy been performing? At Catholic University, Rubio was as grim as any of the Democrats running for president. The economy, he said, has stopped providing dignified work for millions of people. As a result, families splinter and children fall into poverty. We have witnessed an economic implosion. Our economic order, regardless of where we happen to be in the business cycle, is bad for America. While Rubio himself did not broach the topic, conservatives sympathetic to his argument have also asserted that wages have barely risen in 40 years.

The senator and his fans are, as the critics say, scanting our economys real achievements. Wages and benefits, when accurately adjusted for inflation, have risen, and not just for the highest earners. The child-poverty rate, with the same adjustment for inflation and including government benefits, is probably at an all-time low.

This question isnt decisive: Even if the economy has enabled many blessings, it might be possible to undertake reforms that would yield more of them; and even if our performance has been as bad as Rubio suggests, it does not mean he is on the right track in fixing it. But an accurate assessment of the economy is necessary to get a sense of the scale and nature of our problems, and Rubios is too pessimistic.

Third: How important is economic growth anyway? Rubio repeatedly points out that it is not enough. It wont by itself lead to dignified work, and it must be harnessed and channeled to the benefit of our country. In this speech, his emphasis was entirely on the channeling and harnessing of growth and not on the fostering of it. He may have chosen to focus on what he believes conservatives need to be persuaded to see rather than on what they already apprehend. But it was a mistake on his part. A healthy labor market that lets people find dignified work is surely correlated with economic growth, so encouraging it has to be an important element of the pursuit of the common good. (Saying that the economy should provide this work, as Rubio does, is not the most dignifying way of looking at it.)

The critics go too far in the other direction. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn suggests that families would be better off with higher economic growth than with tailored tax credits tailored, that is, to benefit parents. Every pro-growth tax reform of the past 35 years has included this kind of pro-family policy, though, so the alternative that McGurn posits may not actually exist. It is also difficult to imagine a pro-growth tax reform that would benefit a family budget as much as an extra $1,000 in tax relief per child each year.

Fourth: To the extent the economy has been unsatisfactory, how many of our dissatisfactions are the result of trusting free markets too much? Listening to Senator Rubios speech, you would think we lived in a laissez-faire country. Looking at Senator Rubios legislative record, on the other hand, you would know better: He has again and again proposed reforms to existing government policies in the hope of improving American life. But if, as Rubio the legislator believes, our higher-education policies are an important obstacle to opportunity for all, then perhaps Rubio the speaker is giving us a misleading picture of our countrys problems when he dwells exclusively on the need for markets to be guided.

Fifth: Should companies be run for their shareholders? Rubio argues that we have taken the concept of shareholder primacy too far. Earlier this year, the Business Roundtable, a nonprofit group composed of nearly 200 top corporate executives, issued a new statement on the purpose of the corporation that abandoned any reference to that concept and instead said that companies should serve customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders, listing them in that order. The Wall Street Journal ran several editorials calling the statement a craven abandonment of free-market principles, and Rubio has been critiqued in similar terms.

The statement was, however, an accurate description of how business leaders see their role: They see companies as having multiple purposes, and they judge their success accordingly. Rubio speaks a bit more stringently of companies obligations to people other than their shareholders. Presumably he believes that government policies and our shared cultural understanding should encourage corporations to fulfill these obligations. If he means more than that if he wants to change the fiduciary responsibilities of corporate managers, for example he should say so.

Sixth: How should economic policies change to promote the common good better than they currently do? The critics so far have largely not argued that the principles Rubio has outlined, such as that government should pursue the common good, are wrong. Instead, they suggest that in practice a government run on these principles would be overbearing and destructive. But the specific policies that Rubio himself has advocated as parts of a politics of common good are not especially radical from a free-market point of view.

In his speech, Rubio mentioned a few of these policies: the child credit; an option to take Social Security benefits early to finance costs associated with the birth of a new child; an immediate write-off for the costs of business investment; a revamping of the Small Business Administration to support innovation; and the nurturing of a domestic rare-earths industry for national-security reasons. Most of these policies are defensible, if not quite natural, within a libertarian framework; all of them have ample and recent Republican precedents.

Seventh: Assuming that in principle the federal government has a broad role in pursuing the common good, is it prudent to grant it that role? Kevin Williamson, my libertarian-minded colleague at National Review, scorches Rubio for advocating quotas and price supports for sugar producers in his home state and especially for claiming a national-security justification for these policies. It would be too facile to move from the fallibility and corruptibility of government to the conclusion that governments should content themselves with being night watchmen. But notably absent from Rubios speech is the notion that what we know about government should make us cautious and restrained with respect to government power.

Eighth: How many of our problems are economic to begin with? Our falling life expectancy and birth rate are surely an indictment of something about our society, and it would be foolish not to look at economic trends and policies for part of the explanation. Even causes that on their face are non-economic are probably related to economics: A decline in manufacturing jobs in a community may well contribute to rising opioid abuse and falling marriage rates. Rubio, though, speaks as though economics were everything, which is a particularly glaring defect in a speech that attempts to articulate a view of government that breaks free from materialism.

Ninth: Is this really the future of the Republican party? Republican voters have never been the dogmatic free-market fundamentalists of caricature which is why all those previous attempts to redefine the party were conceivable and sometimes partially successful. The Republican coalition is changing, with a smaller proportion of its members having college degrees than in the past. As a result, it is becoming more open to policies that aim to protect the economically insecure.

But todays Republicans are still recognizably descended from yesterdays. Most of the people who voted for Trump in 2016 voted for Mitt Romney four years earlier. The party still favors tax cuts, which helps explain why Trump signed them. It still responds favorably to Reagans joke about the nine most terrifying words in the English language: Im from the government, and Im here to help.

In his Washington Free Beacon column, Matthew Continetti examines survey data on Republicans and finds that market skeptics are a minority, albeit an important minority. The part should not be mistaken for the whole. Thats true of the Republican coalition and true as well of the fragments of political philosophy that Senator Rubio has boldly sought to recover.

View post:

Common Ground on the Common Good - National Review