SO I SPOKE AT AN EVENT TONIGHT, TALKING ABOUT CIVILIAN DISASTER RELIEF AND SOCIAL COHESION, and a guy came up to me afterward saying that since Robert Putnam found that diversity is associated with decreased social trust, how did I feel about a bunch of white people going off to start their own country. (My response: Unenthused).
But you see this sort of thing on the Internet enough that some people believe it, and while Putnam’s point is supported by research, I don’t think it actually supports the solution. “Diversity,” I suspect, is one of those things that actually is a social construct. If you make people hyperaware of their differences — as is done on college campuses today — you can make things much worse than they otherwise would be. (See also Tito’s Yugoslavia).
If you encourage people to think about what they have in common, you can make things much better. And where it suits their interests, politicians will create ethnic cleavages. (Hutus and Tutsis are both “black” in American conception, but politicians were still able to inflame passions that led to genocide.) My prediction is that if you created some sort of racially segregated society, politicians would soon be at work finding other differences to inflame, differences that nobody’s even aware of now. The only real answer is a strong social norm that supports, for example, our common humanity and, in this country, our common Americanness.
This seems to be what ordinary Americans believe, and act upon, but politicians will do whatever it takes to gain power. Keeping politicians in check is the key to getting along. Can we do more of that?
Last month the New York Post reported that Attorney General Sessions was reviewing a highly developed form of corruption of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice. The Post report followed up on Ian Mason’s exclusive for Breitbart. Mason’s account made clear that Attorney General Sessions has already ordered a halt to the practice going forward — Mason posted the Attorney General’s June 5 memo on Scribd.
The Post report emphasized the seeds planted by Obama’s DoJ and the questionable legality of the practice: “Attorney General Jeff Sessions is investigating up to $6 billion in legal settlement money that the Obama administration steered toward progressive causes and allies in left-wing advocacy groups….Former Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch regularly arranged for major corporations to make large ‘donations’ to left-leaning groups like UnidosUS — formerly the National Council of La Raza — and NeighborWorks America during settlement negotiations to end banking, environmental, civil-rights, and other federal lawsuits.”
The Post also noted the questionable legality of the payouts insofar as the “groups getting the money were not victims in the cases or parties to the lawsuits, and Republicans say they had no proper claim to the cash.”
Paul Sperry followed up this past Sunday in the New York Post column “How Obama is funding the anti-Trump resistance.” Sperry’s column makes a valuable contribution to understanding the forces against which the Trump administration is now contending.
While poorly educated athletes, egged on by leftist commentators, indulge in Black Lives Matter based protests against their country, evidence pours in that black-on-black crime is the real threat to black lives and that attacks on policing are causing an increase in such crime. Heather Mac Donald has the details.
She points out that nearly 900 additional blacks were killed in 2016 compared with 2015, bringing the black homicide-victim total to 7,881. That’s 1,305 more than the number of white victims (which in this case includes most Hispanics) for the same period, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the nation’s population. The increase in black homicide deaths last year comes on top of a previous 900-victim increase between 2014 and 2015.
Who is killing these blacks? Not whites. According to Mac Donald, among all homicide suspects whose race was known, white killers of blacks numbered only 243.
Not the police. Mac Donald writes:
In 2016, the police fatally shot 233 blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous, according to the Washington Post. The Post categorized only 16 black male victims of police shootings as “unarmed.” That classification masks assaults against officers and violent resistance to arrest.
Contrary to the Black Lives Matter narrative, the police have much more to fear from black males than black males have to fear from the police. In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer. Black males have made up 42 percent of all cop-killers over the last decade, though they are only 6 percent of the population. That 18.5 ratio undoubtedly worsened in 2016, in light of the 53 percent increase in gun murders of officers—committed vastly and disproportionately by black males.
What accounts for the pronounced increase in the killing of blacks? Mac Donald cites the Ferguson effect:
Cops are backing off of proactive policing in high-crime minority neighborhoods, and criminals are becoming emboldened. Having been told incessantly by politicians, the media, and Black Lives Matter activists that they are bigoted for getting out of their cars and questioning someone loitering on a known drug corner at 2 AM, many officers are instead just driving by.
Such stops are discretionary; cops don’t have to make them. And when political elites demonize the police for just such proactive policing, we shouldn’t be surprised when cops get the message and do less of it.
Seventy-two percent of the nation’s officers say that they and their colleagues are now less willing to stop and question suspicious persons, according to a Pew Research poll released in January. The reason is the persistent anti-cop climate.
We discussed the Ferguson effect here and here, for example. FiveThirtyEight, hardly a conservative outfit, has found support for the existence of this phenomenon.
These truths are inconvenient for black activists and their mindless followers. Too inconvenient to be spoken.
Earlier this year, Mac Donald’s ability to speak them on campus was restricted. And earlier this month, a speech at Howard University by James Comey, who acknowledged the Ferguson effect when he was President Obama’s FBI Director, was disrupted throughout by student protesters.
NFL players have the right to ignore, or be ignorant of, the facts, and I don’t believe they should be punished for taking a knee or otherwise disrespecting America when the National Anthem is played. But it is fair to observe that, in addition to disrespecting the country that has been so good to them, they are boosting the Ferguson effect and thus likely adding to the toll on thousands of law-abiding people in the inner cities who need more police protection.
NFL viewership is plummeting. Although I’ve heard the league and others put forth any number of reasons from concussions to the games being blowouts (which other than the game in London was entirely disproved this weekend,) but anyone with a functioning brain knows it’s because the NFL used to be an oasis where you could relax and get away from the turmoil of the day. Now, for better or worse (and I don’t know many arguing for the better) it’s all about how some are kneeling during the National Anthem.
I looked around my Facebook this morning and it seemed like darn near 100 percent of people are boycotting the league, even people who I know are lifelong fans of a certain 5 time Super Bowl Champion team. They're tired of seeing people making millions of dollars taking a knee during our national anthem when we still have men and women fighting overseas. I’ll admit I still watch Football, but I won’t watch ESPN anymore because on the rare occasion they discuss sports they usually have hot takes that make no sense and seem to have been made for just drawing attention.
Let me start with one thing that I keep reading which is inarguably false. The protest of the National Anthem has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law….abridging the Freedom of Speech.” People kneeling has nothing to do with that, as Congress has taken no position on it. If anything it is employer/employee law. “Free Speech” seems to be a catchall nowadays, but that really isn’t what this is. The players kneeling are doing it to draw attention to an issue that they think is underappreciated. You turning the TV off is your right. And it’s a right that hundreds and thousands are engaging in.
While the NFL attributes the decline in ratings to the presidential race, a study conducted by Rasmussen Reports shows otherwise. Approximately 1,000 American adults participated in a telephone questionnaire on Oct. 2-3 that revealed nearly one-third (32 percent) are “less likely to watch an NFL game” due to players taking a stand and protesting the national anthem. Thirteen percent want to watch a game because of the protests. Fifty-two percent do not base their viewing choice on the protests at all. But the league executives disagree.
“There is no evidence that concern over player protests during the national anthem is having any material impact on our ratings. In fact, our own data shows that perception of the NFL and its players is actually up in 2016,” the executives wrote in the memo.
Well, now that the election is over, I assume the NFL has rebounded and is as strong a brand as ever, right? Well, no.
Multibillion-dollar media and entertainment conglomerate, the National Football League, has a new problem on its hands: lowered ratings. Week 1 of the new 2017-2018 season has found the popular U.S. professional sport losing its ranking as the number one spot in households across the country. According to Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser, viewership for the NFL was down 14% on a year-over-year basis.
That’s the lowest level of same-week viewing since 2009.
Against this backdrop, President Trump advised people upset to start boycotting the NFL. In turn, the NFL players in numbers which dwarf any previous demonstrations took to their knees in discontent.
Safe to say it was a debacle. I actually watched as Patriots faithful, those of us who went through the lean years where winning 6 games was a Herculean feat, actually BOOED the players who took a knee. (See below for a former Patriots great who deemed taking a knee as shameful.)
To be honest, it wasn’t so much the protest yesterday that bothered me, it was the fact that it happened on Gold Star Mothers Day.
Each year I visit the grave of a young man from Lovettsville, Virginia named Stephan. Here’s a video that talks about the last minutes of his life. It’s long, but stick with it, and hear about Stephan Mace. (Fast forward to 6 minutes 10 seconds if you are short on time.)
Mace’s Mom is a Facebook friend of mine. Alas, I’ve never actually met her, but she always comments on pictures of my young family, and I always feel joy when she does. I know she lost her son, and I can’t even begin to imagine the pain that must cause. And so when she goes out of her way to comment on my sons or daughter, it just makes me well up with tears. Every single time. That someone who gave so much would be interested in my family is humbling.
Imagine getting that visit to your door, or seeing those press releases. Like this one:
The Department of Defense announced today the death of nine soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died of wounds suffered when their outpost was attacked by small arms fire and rocket propelled grenades from enemy forces in Wanat, Afghanistan, on July 13, 2008. They were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 503d Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, Vicenza, Italy.
Killed were: […]
Private First Class Sergio S. Abad, 21, of Morganfield, Kentucky
I never met Sergio, but I know some guys who did, including two Medal of Honor recipients. He was raised by his Aunt Sol, a beautiful woman who is also a Facebook friend of mine. Any every now and again when Sol has a tough day, she Facebooks me and asks me to post a video of my daughter just to bring her some measure of happiness. She may not be a relative, but Sergio was my brother, and if she asks for a video of my daughter, she will get one, even if I have to wake her up, tickle her feet or ply her with sugar, we’re getting that video. Momma Sol could ask for my jeep and I’d hand her the keys. Our nation owes her and Stephan’s Mom more than I could ever give.
And so it was really sad for me yesterday. I don’t begrudge the players doing what they think is right, while I may (and vehemently do) disagree with the way they are doing it. But to do it on (of all days) Gold Star Mothers Day made me sad right to my core.
But not everyone takes a knee. You know, we value teamwork but at the same time we also must laud those who do the hard right over the easy wrong, even (or perhaps more so) when they do so alone. And so, rather than focus on the players who kneeled, I want to single out one who didn’t.
Mike Tomlin, coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, said ahead of the team's game against the Chicago Bears on Sunday afternoon that his players would not come onto the field during the national anthem to avoid "playing politics" in divisive times.
That seems like a decent idea to be honest. Having half your team standing and half kneeling doesn’t bring the country any closer together. And I’m not a huge fan of not following a coach’s decision, or acting differently from the rest of the team. Or, I should say I wasn’t, until this:
That is Offensive Tackle Alejandro Villanueva, and before he was a football player, he was an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, and a graduate of the USMA at West Point. And once again, much like their motto, a Ranger Led the Way. He walked out of the tunnel and sang the National Anthem as he has always done.
"I don't know if the most effective way is to sit down during the national anthem with a country that's providing you freedom, providing you $16 million a year ... when there are black minorities that are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan for less than $20,000 a year."
"I will be the first one to hold hands with Colin Kaepernick and do something about the way minorities are being treated in the United States, the injustice that is happening with police brutality, the justice system, inequalities in pay," Villanueva said. "You can't do it by looking away from the people that are trying to protect our freedom and our country."
Light said he sat with a 91-year old veteran and the wife of a slain SEAL Team 6 member who was at her first NFL game.
“His wife had to sit at her first NFL game and watch what these men chose to do. Her husband died, gave his life up so that they could do that,” Light said. “That’s the reality that these so-called men don’t understand. Is it about their cause or is it about them? If it was about their cause, I could come up with a million different ways for them to really truly change things. If it’s about them, well … you see what happens. The collateral damage is widespread.
“They obviously didn’t think about anybody other than themselves.”
For my part, I will continue to watch the NFL and root for my team, because it’s the one distraction from life I can (usually) count on. (Other than UMASS basketball which I love beyond all love, but whose losing ways are taking years off my life.)
And while I know that those who kneel don’t do so to disrespect Stephan Mace or Sergio Abad, it’s hard to remember that, especially on a day set aside for mothers who can never hold their sons or daughters again.
Updated: A buddy of mine served with Alejandro, and said he was huge and one of the nicest guys around.
One quick addendum: Vanessa Adelson, the mom of Stephan Mace had a post up about the entire thing yesterday that I wanted to share here as well:
So today we have had a lot of negativity about the NFL. Who cares? These people are insignificant in our lives. They don't teach our children how they should behave. That is your job. They don't make you less of a patriot. That is your job to show America what being a patriot means. Most players do nothing to make this country better. INSIGNIFICANT. Not worthy of my attention.... This is what is worthy. Today is Gold Star Mother's Day. I have had people tag me today, telling me they are thinking of me. This is what I have to say...... GOD PROVIDES! Everyday is "mothers" day for me. I was given the gift of many new people in my life. Many that call me "mom". That is what is SIGNIFICANT in my life.
By now it’s hardly a surprise that so many national Democrats have nothing but contempt for Roman Catholics. But what is surprising is that they no longer even bother to hide their distaste for devout Christians.
Last week, at a Senate confirmation hearing for a Roman Catholic woman up for an federal appellate court judgeship in Indiana, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told the Catholic nominee this: “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country.”
Three words: abortion, abortion, abortion.
Is it even remotely possible that Feinstein would have asked, say, a Muslim, if he believed any of the more militant, shall we say, passages in the Koran?
Of course not. Any Democrat who questions the Religion of Peace would be drummed out of the party and forever shunned in polite society. But Catholics — hey, anything goes.
But Democrats have always had an obsession about Catholics. They were the party of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow and separate but equal. As late as 2010, a former exalted cyclops of the Klan was a ranking Democratic member of the Senate. Hillary Clinton proudly described Catholic-hating bigot Robert Byrd as her “mentor.”
But go back further. FDR, the Democratic president who presided over sending tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans to internment camps during World War II, put Hugo Black on the Supreme Court.
Black, an Alabama Democrat, had been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1926 after delivering a series of 146 rabidly anti-Catholic speeches to his fellow Klansmen across the state.
The more things change ...
As appalling as Feinstein’s bigotry was, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) may have been even worse, if only because he claims to be a Catholic. Durbin asked this question of his fellow Catholic, Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame law professor: “Do you consider yourself an ‘orthodox Catholic’?”
Sounds like something out of the early 1950s: “Are you now, or have you ever been … ?”
Durbin, a shameless machine hack, is the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate. The only group he despises more than Catholics is the American military, whom in 2005 he compared on the floor of the Senate to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings.”
Speaking of Pol Pot, at this same Senate hearing last week another Democrat brain surgeon named Al Franken decided to get in on the cross burning. He mentioned a speech Barrett made to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that defends religious liberty for Christians. Naturally, Franken called it a “hate group” and compared those Christians to ... Pol Pot.
This hate speech at Professor Barrett’s confirmation hearing is probably the greatest outburst of anti-Catholicism among Democrats since ... October 2016. Just 11 months ago, WikiLeaks released a batch of emails among Hillary’s top campaign aides.
In them, they sneered that devout Catholics are “severely backwards.” They ridiculed media executives who had converted, and mocked parents who sent their children to Catholic schools. As for Catholic Hispanics — the Clintons described them as “needy Latinos.”
Shortly afterward, both Hillary and Donald Trump appeared together at the New York Archdiocese’s annual Al Smith dinner, named after the first Catholic nominee for president, against whom millions of pre-Feinstein Democrats voted because he was a ... well, you know.
Those emails showcased such appalling bigotry that Trump mentioned how incongruous it was for Hillary to appear before people she sneeringly called “deplorables” and “irredeemables.”
“Here she is tonight, in public,” Trump said, “pretending not to hate Catholics.”
Pretending is right. Same with the rest of them. But much to the chagrin of the modern Democratic party, Catholics are protected by the Constitution.
In September 1960, then-U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy spoke to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston.
“Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you,” he said. “While this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist.”
Sadly, today’s national Democrats don’t care how prescient JFK was. He was, after all, an orthodox Catholic.
Buy Howie’s new book, “Kennedy Babylon,” at howiecarrshow.com.
Newly available data is casting doubt on the integrity of the presidential election in New Hampshire in 2016, which Hillary Clinton won by just over 2,700 votes.
Over 6,000 voters in New Hampshire had used same-day voter registration procedures to register and vote simultaneously for president. The current New Hampshire speaker of the House, Shawn Jasper, sought and obtained data about what happened to these 6,000 "new" New Hampshire voters who showed up on Election Day.
It seems the overwhelming majority of them can no longer be found in New Hampshire.
Of those 6,000, only 1,014 have ever obtained New Hampshire driver's licenses. Of the 5,526 voters who never obtained a New Hampshire driver's license, a mere three percent have registered a vehicle in New Hampshire.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation received information that 70 percent of the same-day registrants used out-of-state photo ID to vote in the 2016 presidential election in New Hampshire and to utilize same-day registration.
Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, also defeated incumbent U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte by only 1,017 votes.
These new data illustrate the problem with same-day registration laws: they prevent the ability to verify residency prior to the election -- and in a close election, that can make a difference.
As John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky pointed out in their book Who's Counting, same-day registration fraud won Al Franken his Senate seat, and that extra Democratic seat then gave the country Obamacare.
When he takes questions, one “clearly agitated man” asks him about sharia law. El-Sayed replies by saying that he supports separation of church and state and that he wouldn’t take away anyone else’s right to pray and wouldn’t want that right to be taken from him either. (He has made it clear that he prays several times a day.) For this, the audience gives him “an enormous round of applause” – even though El-Sayed’s answer is a total dodge.
Repeatedly, El-Sayed has described himself as a devout Muslim: he prays several times a day; he has said that “his Islamic values are at the center of his work as a civil servant;” his father is an imam. If he’s a devout Muslim, that means he firmly supports sharia law. But how does he square this with his purported approval of secular government? Is he a devout Muslim or a devout believer in the separation of religion and state? You can’t be both.
The subtext of this article implies that Obama was a crypto-Muslim while in office – which of course, based on his worldview, how he dealt with terrorism in America and with Iran, Iraq, and ISIS, is crazy talk. No, really…
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang speaks during the World Economic Forum in Dalian World Economic Forum, Dalian, China, June 27, 2017 (Rex Features via AP Images)
A few years ago, the American Establishment dismissed China's economic challenge. A sclerotic, dictatorial system couldn't innovate, only copy, the jingle went, so we really didn't have to worry about them. Gordon Chang, the neocons' favorite China expert, released a new edition of his book The Coming Collapse of China every couple of years.
Now, the attitude of the Establishment has shifted from contempt to panic, rather like the British facing a Japanese army advancing on Singapore in 1942. The Establishment is now defeatist. It is one thing to concede more power to China in the South China Sea, for example, and quite another to accept Chinese dominance in high-tech trade. That would be a disaster.
Unfortunately, we are now headed for such a disaster.
Except in Africa and South Asia, the world’s population is aging rapidly. Between 2010 and 2050 the proportion of Americans over 65 will nearly double assuming constant fertility and immigration. By 2034 the Social Security Trust Funds will be depleted. By that time there will be two Americans over 65 for every five Americans of working age; if the government taxes earnings on a pay-as-you-go model, the burden on working Americans will be insupportable. The average American family has saved only $96,000 for retirement; more pertinent, the median family has saved just $5,000.
There is another side to America’s inadequate savings rate, and that is a chronic current account deficit. Countries save by exporting more than they import and saving the balance. The economics literature documents the close relationship between rates of aging, savings, and current account balances. Older people lend to younger people to fund retirement, and younger people borrow from older people to start families and build enterprises. Countries with a higher proportion of aging people have a greater need for savings, and typically run a current account surplus with countries that have a younger population. ... Without exports, we cannot save; with a chronic trade deficit, we cannot help but dissave at exactly the point when we require an increase in savings. Thus America is headed towards a catastrophe. Can it be averted?
Yes, it can, but time is getting short.
China's economy is already roughly the size of America's. At its current growth rate it will be twice the size of America's some time in the 2020s. Here is what we need to do, from the conclusion of the same essay:
The good news is that the prospects are good for a quantum jump in productivity in the developing world. The bad news is that China is acting aggressively to position itself as the dominant equipment supplier, investor, joint venture partner and technology provider in this revolution. By contrast, the United States is drifting towards the export profile of Brazil, with strength in agricultural commodities and energy but overall weakness in high-technology manufacturing and exports.
America’s problems are so grave that trade protection will do little to solve them. American innovations gave us the high-tech manufacturing industries that China now dominates, and the ultimate solution is to create new industries that make the existing investment opportunity set obsolete. Some ambitious steps are a prerequisite for overtaking China.
First, the government cannot sit on the sidelines while China massively subsidizes its own industries. I do not propose that we copy China’s policy of directly subsidizing industries we think desirable; this leads to enormous waste and inefficiency, as well as corruption. But the U.S. government should fund basic research into new physical processes and technologies under the aegis of the Defense Department and NASA, as it did when John F. Kennedy promised a moon landing and when Ronald Reagan promised to build a missile defense system. I elaborated such a policy in my essay “The Digital Age Produces Binary Outcomes,” in this journal (Vol. I, No. 1).
Second, the United States must refocus education subsidies on STEM training, as it did after the 1957 Sputnik launch. Only 8 percent of American undergraduates choose engineering as a major, compared to more than 30 percent in China (which now graduates four times as many engineers as the United States).
Third, the United States should use a range of measures to force parts of the high-tech supply chain back to the United States. A first step would be to require 100 percent American content for semiconductors, flat panels, sensors, and other key components of defense equipment. That will raise the cost of defense goods considerably, but it is a measure justifiable on national security grounds alone, and will repatriate key elements of high-tech production. Other measures to prevent American innovations from migrating to production lines elsewhere will be required. It won’t quite be Ricardian comparative advantage, but that’s the way the cards lie.
Fourth, the United States should compete head to head with China for predominance in the communications and information revolution now underway in the developing world, especially with countries that look with dismay at the growth of Chinese power -- for example, India, now the world’s most populous country. China’s One Belt, One Road program does not guarantee its success in high-tech trade. There are some sectors in which it may be in our interest to cooperate with China, but many others in which competing institutions, for example the Asian Development Bank, can offer effective competition to Chinese influence. The United States and Japan are natural partners for this kind of enterprise. With a rapidly aging population and net foreign assets of $3.12 trillion as of the end of 2016, Japan needs high-return investment opportunities.
The essay reflects analysis and recommendations I prepared for Steve Bannon when he was still chief strategist at the White House.
An autobiographical note: in 2013 I became a managing director at a Hong Kong investment banking boutique, Reorient Group (now Yunfeng Financial, whose main investor is Jack Ma of Alibaba). We took Chinese high-tech companies public that were founded by top U.S. university graduates. China has some brilliant innovators. Read the whole essay at Journal of American Affairs. And be very afraid.
