THIS IS WHAT, THE FOURTH MAJOR SHOOTING WHERE THE AUTHORITIES WERE WARNED IN ADVANCE?
Kevin Williamson: Fire The FBI Chief.
“The FBI has a budget of $3.5 billion, almost all of which goes to salaries, benefits, and other personnel costs. Do you know how many employees the FBI field office in South Florida has? It has more than 1,000. Do you know how many employees the FBI has in total? It has 35,158 employees. It has 13,084 agents and 3,100 intelligence analysts. And not one of them could pick up the phone to forward vital intelligence gathered by the grueling investigative work of picking up the phone and taking a tip from a tipster. . . . For now, the FBI is in the stocks. Governor Rick Scott wants FBI director Chris Wray to resign. A self-respecting society would have him whipped.”
Monday, February 19, 2018
Friday, February 16, 2018
Impeach the Democratic Party - VDH
O
n February 7th, the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, the epitome of a San Francisco liberal, treated America to an 8-hour lecture on why young illegal immigrants who benefited from President Obama’s (unconstitutional) DACA program should be allowed to stay in this country. Her speech marked the culmination of the Democratic Party’s bizarre pivot from its historical role of representing its constituents and (progressively-minded) U.S. citizens to representing illegal aliens instead. Pelosi reached a rhetorical crescendo when she recalled that her grandson had once declared that he wished he “had brown skin and brown eyes.” Seldom has the House of Representatives witnessed so touching an homage to the beauty and nobility (as liberals see it) of reverse racism.
The Honorable Congresswoman is entitled to her warped progressivism and her fashionable racism, however. This is still a free country, after all. What she is not entitled to, and what no Democrat is entitled to, is the active and purposeful subversion of U.S. laws. Democrats, lest we forget, are itching to impeach President Trump for allegedly obstructing justice in the course of the Mueller investigation into Russian election meddling. Trump’s “obstruction,” however, consists of criticism directed at an inquiry that is demonstrably flawed and biased, whereas his administration has complied with all of its legal obligations and fully cooperated with the special counsel’s office. Democrats, though, should begin to ask themselves: now that hurling charges of “obstruction of justice” is politically en vogue, could they be targeted too? The answer is yes, and the opportunity is close at hand.
The Democratic Party is pathologically obsessed with making excuses for illegal immigrants. Moreover, its reverse racism leads it increasingly to reject even the possibility that a single illegal immigrant could be criminally-minded or in any way “undesirable.” To make this suggestion even as a hypothetical is to invite derision and/or ostracism in liberal circles.
Since illegal immigrants are now officially beyond reproach, Democratic politicians have taken the logical next step: they have implemented “sanctuary city” policies in jurisdictions nationwide in order to frustrate the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Just recently, it was reported that the NYPD, acting under orders from Democratic politicians, has refused to comply with federal requests to hand over 1,500 illegal alien criminals for deportation. This is but the tip of the iceberg. “Blue” cities, counties, and states have implemented policies that explicitly discourage cooperation with ICE and the Border Patrol, and which in fact punish such cooperation; they have funded legal aid and other forms of assistance for illegal immigrants attempting to evade deportation; and they have given every encouragement to present and future illegal immigrants, promising them sanctuary from federal authorities.
The purpose of all this policy-making and posturing on the part of Democrats is obvious: it is to obstruct the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws! By contrast, President Trump has never suggested that laws against electoral interference, espionage, or treason should not be enforced—he has simply stated that he is innocent of all of these crimes. Democrats, on the other hand, brazenly admit their contempt for the law, and they flaunt their efforts to stymie its enforcement.
It is important to clarify the fact that harboring and giving assistance to illegal immigrants is already a crime in itself(see U.S. Code, Title 8, Section 1324), but systematic Democratic efforts to subvert, even nullify, our country’s borders and immigration laws seem to me like another form of criminality: they represent a conspiracy to obstruct justice much more shocking and elaborate than anything of which Republicans stand accused.
Long ago, I argued that the Department of Justice should prosecute Democratic politicians who openly violate Title 8 of the U.S. Code. The law specifies a penalty of up to 5 years’ imprisonment. If these penalties were applied, presumably the Democratic penchant for obstructing justice when it comes to immigration laws would evaporate overnight. That would be good for America, and it would be great for the Democratic Party, the legitimacy of which might thereby be restored.
Until the Justice Department acts, however, the House of Representatives should consider pursuing the political remedy of impeachment against those who undermine our laws. Judges, federal officials, and members of Congress who seek to obstruct the implementation of U.S. immigration laws should be subject to investigation, impeachment, trial in the Senate, and removal from office (or, depending on the circumstances, expulsion from Congress might be more appropriate).
After all, surely the actual crimes of Democrats deserve as much attention as the imaginary crimes of Republicans. That is not asking for much, is it?
The Democratic Party sorely needs a dose of reality, and the only thing that is preventing Republicans from administering it is the fear of a public backlash. The maintenance of our constitutional system of government demands that we act to preserve respect for the law, however. And let’s be clear: the law is, and always has been, on our side.
Friday, February 9, 2018
Counterfeit Elitism - VDH
Counterfeit Elitism
hose damn dairy farmers. Why do they insist on trying to govern? Or, put another way:
Why are Republicans trusting Devin Nunes to be their oracle of truth!? A former dairy farmer who House intel staffers refer to as Secret Agent Man because he has no idea what’s going on.
Thus spoke MSNBC panelist, Yale graduate, former Republican “strategist,” and Bush administration speechwriter Elise Jordan.
Jordan likely knows little about San Joaquin Valley family dairy farmers and little notion of the sort of skills, savvy, and work ethic necessary to survive in an increasingly corporate-dominated industry. Whereas dairy farmer Nunes has excelled in politics, it would be hard to imagine Jordan running a family dairy farm, at least given the evidence of her televised skill sets and sobriety.
Republicans “trust” Devin Nunes, because without his dogged efforts it is unlikely that we would know about the Fusion GPS dossier or the questionable premises on which FISA court surveillance was ordered. Neither would we have known about the machinations of an array of Obama Administration, Justice Department and FBI officials who, in addition to having possibly violated the law in monitoring a political campaign and unmasking and leaking names of Americans to the press, may have colluded with people in the Clinton campaign who funded the Steele dossier.
“Elite” is now an overused smear. But it is a fair pejorative when denoting a cadre that is not a natural or truly meritocratic top echelon, but is instead a group distinguished merely by schooling, associations, residence, connections and open disdain. If this is supposed to translate into some sort of received wisdom and acknowledged excellence, ordinary Americans may be pardoned for missing it.
The frustration with chronic elite incompetence was a theme in the 2016 election. “Expert” pollsters assured us of a Clinton landslide. The media could not follow undergraduate rules of decorum and truthfulness. “Brilliant” Ivy League trained pundits preached that the Trump administration’s first year would be disastrous and without accomplishment. Televised legal eagles insisted that Robert Mueller by now would have indicted Team Trump on charges of Russian collusion.
Half the country no longer believes these self-appointed authorities, largely because there is no visible connection between what the self-congratulatory say and do and any commensurate discernable accomplishment.
After a half-century of “whiz kids,” “the best and the brightest,” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” Americans finally yawned and are moving on.
Deplorables, Clingers, and Those Not Worthy of WorryOne symptom of such a played-out elite is its blanket condemnation of the supposed blinkered middle-class—usually evident in their virtue-signaling outrage and in their inclination to contrast their own supposed enlightenment to the supposed ignorance of everyone else.
You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic—Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that… Now, some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.
So said Yale law graduate Hillary Clinton, in an incoherent, factually unsubstantiated, and politically disastrous rant that may have lost her the 2016 election.
Clinton all but wrote off 25 percent of America as “not America”—this from the 2008 primary challenger to Barack Obama who was blasted by progressives for pandering to just such a white gun-owning consistency.
Or as Barack Obama once said, Hillary Clinton is “talking like she’s Annie Oakley . . . Hillary Clinton is out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday. She’s packing a six-shooter. Come on, she knows better.”
Or as Clinton herself once put it, “[I’ve] found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me . . . There’s a pattern emerging here.”
It is hard to image the Yalie feminist Clinton having any sort of political career without attachment to president emeritus and spouse Bill Clinton, whose serial sexual harassment and assault she not only contextualized over four decades, but by serial defense fueled.
Yale law graduates are not dairy farmers. But those who milk cows know enough not to peddle lies that one can invest $1,000 in cattle futures, beat the one in a trillion odds, and pocket a speculative profit of $100,000, all through autodidactic study of “the Wall Street Journal”—about as a believable yarn as claiming 30,000 deleted emails on an illegal home-brewed server under government request concerned a wedding and yoga.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Thus spoke candidate Barack Obama about another “they.” Obama apparently did not grasp that the so-called white population voted for him in greater numbers in the general election than it did for Al Gore or John Kerry, including the very constituency he wrote off as near Neanderthal.
On what criteria of excellence did Obama in 2008 justify separating himself from the objects of his stereotyped condemnations?
His stellar Columbia undergraduate transcript? His landmark editorship of the Harvard Law Review? His dynamic career as a state legislator and U.S. senator? The ethical manner in which he conducted his Illinois senate campaign? His savvy business deals with Tony Rezko? His limitless knowledge of geography?
All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement . . . my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.
So said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign, in a similar fashion to the condescension that lost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election and nearly cost Barack Obama the 2008 nomination.
Romney’s rhetorical sins were somewhat comparable to those of Clinton and Obama and similarly reflected an out-of-touch sense of superior wisdom and insight not always warranted. Did the multimillionaire Romney not know that many citizens of the 47 percent who work nobly as minimum-wage peach pickers or clerks understandably need assistance through health or education subsidies?
Romney was, of course, correct that someone like himself could never convince those culpable of unduly receiving entitlements to take responsibilities for their lives. But could someone else have done it through a general invigoration of the industrial and manufacturing sectors? Perhaps someone who used the pronoun “our” rather than “I,” and sought to jaw bone and persuade outsourcers and off-shorers to again create jobs in American in anticipation of a more favorable business, regulatory and energy climate, and as a way of helping “our miners,” “our farmers,” “our vets,” and “our workers”?
When a presidential candidate gives up on 47 percent of the country, or a quarter of the electorate or on an entire state, it is difficult to see any evidence of deep political insight. Elise Jordan no doubt found Romney a more fitting candidate than the raucous Trump. Yet neither a dairy farmer nor Trump so far has written off tens of millions of American as culturally hopeless.
Failure as SuccessMuch of 21st century elitism comes from the peculiar benefactions of what postmodern riches bring—a divorce from muscular labor and those who do it, an apartheid distance from the very objects of one’s affection and romance, and, above all, general worldly ignorance beneath the veneer of degrees, titles, awards, and memberships.
One thing middle America could do is to realize that no educated person wants to live in a shithole with stupid people. Especially violent, racist, and/or misogynistic ones.Corporations do not want to locate “call centers, factories, development centers, etc.” because they must also deal with the fact that small towns “have nothing going for them. No infrastructure, just a few bars and a terrible school system.
Thus spoke Melinda Byerley, an obscure founder of the Silicon Valley company Timeshare CMO. She became infamous for five minutes for this Facebook posting that served as a sort of credo of why coastal elites hated those unlike them
Of course, Silicon Valley’s vaunted infrastructure is a mess of congestion, decrepit roads, and corroding bridges. Google workers sleep in Winnebagoes. A muscular class from Mexico and Central America lives in sometimes deplorable conditions in places like Redwood City, juxtaposed to Atherton or Woodside. The tech elite have often fled the apparently “terrible” public schools. Bay area private academies have grown exponentially, in the fashion of Southern academies following court-mandated desegregation orders during the 1970s.
Saintly Illegal ImmigrationOne strange manifestation of elite contempt is a romance with illegal immigration—usually by needs conflated with legal immigration to caricature its opponents. Illegal immigration is often idealized in the abstract but rarely lived with in the concrete, and also is useful as a surrogate club with which to beat down the proverbial white working class.
These rural places are often 95 percent white…Are these counties marked by high social cohesion, economic dynamism, surging wages and healthy family values? No. Quite the opposite. They are often marked by economic stagnation, social isolation, family breakdown and high opioid addiction. …It is a blunt fact of life that, these days, immigrants show more of these virtues than the native-born.
So wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Few in the supposedly white sinkholes oppose measured, meritocratic, diverse and legal immigration. What they “resent” is the antithesis: influxes of those who arrive, in illegal fashion, and often in need of expensive social services, who are used cynically by Democratic Party elites as future constituents. In other words, like Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama prior to 2012, the white middle and lower classes want secure borders, some protections for entry-level U.S. workers from cheaper imported labor, conditions that facilitate the melting pot, and a return to obeying the law.
Brooks seems disingenuous in his references to “immigrants” without distinguishing legal from illegal. In Arizona, illegal aliens commit crimes at a much higher rate than do the native-born. Immigrant households from Central America and Mexico have the highest welfare costs ($8,251)—some 86 percent higher than the costs of comparable native-born households. Of the so-called “Dreamers,” about 5 percent graduated from college; about 20 percent dropped out of high school, and about one in a thousand served in the military. Such figures are not cited to demonize illegal aliens, only to remind Brooks that his unsympathetic white working class has genuine concerns about illegal aliens and no demonstrable opposition to measured, legal, and meritocratic immigration.
Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in? …You can make a case that America has been great because every—I think John Adams said this—basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work, everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled—whatever.
Thus spoke Weekly Standard editor-at-large Bill Kristol, who likewise does not differentiate illegal from legal immigration, but who does seem intrigued with the idea not of just supplementing but replacing a supposedly played-out white working class beyond redemption.
But surely if there is decadent, lazy, spoiled white class it is not in places like Bakersfield or Dayton, but more likely on tony college campuses. There a new generation of “spoiled” elites is increasingly poorly educated but strident in its indoctrination. They are zealous about their claims on behalf of wisdom, but ignorant of any broad knowledge that might substantiate that zealotry.
Entry into the nation’s elite universities for mostly qualified applicants is enhanced by two avenues: minority status and elite white networking. The white working class lacks both, though caricaturing its imagined illiberality is a useful trope for elite whites to showcase their empathy to fellow minority elites and the gatekeepers who demand orthodoxy on these questions.
Our best and brightest, with the most impressive resumes and degrees, not the “decadent, lazy, spoiled, whatever” of Middle America ran up $20 trillion in national debt. Our best failed over a decade to achieve 3 percent economic growth. The supposedly smartest warped the health care system. The brightest could not translate overseas interventions into a strategic or cost-to-benefit advantage. The anointed eroded the border. The most knowledgeable gave us state nullification of federal law. The purportedly most ethical weaponized the IRS, the FISA courts, the DOJ, and the FBI, undermined the idea of free-speech in the university, and politicized everything from the eroding NFL to the increasingly irrelevant Oscars.
Our so-called elite, not the middle classes, has made a desert and called it success.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
FBI lovers' latest text messages: Obama 'wants to know everything'
FBI lovers' latest text messages: Obama 'wants to know everything'
New questions over Peter Strzok's role in Clinton probe
Report: FBI agent helped James Comey craft letter reopening Clinton email investigation.
Newly revealed text messages between FBI paramours Peter Strzok and Lisa Page include an exchange about preparing talking points for then-FBI Director James Comey to give to President Obama, who wanted “to know everything we’re doing."
The message, from Page to Strzok, was among thousands of texts between the lovers reviewed by Fox News. The pair both worked at one point for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Page wrote to Strzok on Sept. 2, 2016, about prepping Comey because "potus wants to know everything we're doing." According to a newly released Senate report, this text raises questions about Obama's personal involvement in the Clinton email investigation.
In texts previously revealed, Strzok and Page have shown their disdain for Republicans in general, as well as Trump, calling him a "f---ing idiot," among other insults.
Among the newly disclosed texts, Strzok also calls Virginians who voted against then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's wife for a state Senate seat "ignorant hillbillys." (sic)
That text came from Strzok to Page on Nov. 4, 2015, the day after Jill McCabe lost a hotly contested Virginia state Senate election. Strzok said of the result, "Disappointing, but look at the district map. Loudon is being gentrified, but it's still largely ignorant hillbillys. Good for her for running, but curious if she's energized or never again."
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., along with majority staff from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is releasing the texts, along with a report titled, “The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI's Investigation of it.”
The newly uncovered texts reveal a bit more about the timing of the discovery of "hundreds of thousands" of emails on former Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop, ultimately leading to Comey's infamous letter to Congress just days before the 2016 presidential election.
On Sept. 28, 2016, Strzok wrote to Page, "Got called up to Andy's [McCabe] earlier.. hundreds of thousands of emails turned over by Weiner's atty to sdny [Southern District of New York], includes a ton of material from spouse [Huma Abedin]. Sending team up tomorrow to review... this will never end." According to the Senate report, this text message raises questions about when FBI officials learned of emails relevant to the Hillary Clinton email investigation on the laptop belonging to Weiner, the husband to Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
It was a full month later, on Oct. 28, 2016, when Comey informed Congress that, "Due to recent developments," the FBI was re-opening its Clinton email investigation.
"In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday..." Comey said at the time.
The question becomes why Comey was only informed by his investigative team on Oct. 27, if the Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop were discovered by Sept. 28, at the latest.
Other texts show more examples of the officials' opposition to Trump.
On Election Day 2016, Page wrote, "OMG THIS IS F***ING TERRIFYING." Strzok replied, "Omg, I am so depressed." Later that month, on Nov. 13, 2016, Page wrote, "I bought all the president's men. Figure I need to brush up on watergate."
The next day, Nov. 14, 2016, Page wrote, “God, being here makes me angry. Lots of high fallutin’ national security talk. Meanwhile we have OUR task ahead of us.”
Page’s meaning here is unclear, but according to the Senate report, coupled with Strzok’s Aug. 15 text about an “insurance policy,” further investigation is warranted to find out what actions the two may have taken.
The last text is from Page to Strzok, and comes on June 23, 2017, when she wrote, "Please don't ever text me again."
It's unclear whether she was mad at her friend, or if she suddenly became aware that they, and their thousands of texts, had been discovered.
Monday, February 5, 2018
Rethinking the Geography of Power
Rethinking the Geography of Power
by VICTOR DAVIS HANSON February 1, 2018
In America and abroad, governing institutions should be dispersed more widely. Where the seats of power are located matters. Given the populist revolt in the United States and Europe against the so-called global elite, it is time to refigure the geography of governmental and transnational power. Take the United Nations. Much of the international body’s perceived negatives derive from being in the world’s richest and most visible city, New York. But what if U.N. elites did not have easy access to instant television exposure, tony Manhattan digs, and who’s-who networking? Most of the world is non-Western. Many Western elites are apologetic over past sins of imperialism and colonialism. So why not move the United Nations to Haiti, Libya, or Uganda? The transference would do wonders for any underdeveloped country, financially, culturally, or psychologically.
U.N. officials without easy access to Westernized media and the high life might instead have more time to concentrate on global problems such as hunger, disease, and violence — and be personally enmeshed in the dangers they address. Given the controversy over President Trump’s supposed disparagement of such countries as “sh**holes,” having an underdeveloped nation host the United Nations could refute such stereotyping. Relocating the U.N. to a capital such as Port-au-Prince, Tripoli, or Kampala would prove that such places are unduly underappreciated and surprisingly wonderful cities from which to conduct international governance.
Liberals treasure the United Nations. Conservatives don’t trust its often anti-democratic and anti-American tenor. So why not split the difference by staying in the United Nations but, after 66 years of a New York headquarters, finally allowing another country a chance at hosting the U.N.? Washington, D.C., is often considered out of touch, both politically and geographically, with the rest of America. Given Washington’s huge number of federal workers, why not disperse at least some of its agencies westward to ensure demographic diversity?
Transferring the Department of Agriculture to, say, Topeka or Fresno would allow bureaucrats far more intimacy with the farmers they regulate. Putting the Department of the Interior in Salt Lake City would make practical sense, given that the federal government owns about half the land of eleven coterminous Western states, including Utah. Given Washington’s huge number of federal workers, why not disperse at least some of its agencies westward to ensure demographic diversity? Either Houston or Bismarck would be a seemingly ideal spot for the Department of Energy. Texas and North Dakota will be at the cutting edge of new gas and oil development for generations. Youngstown and Flint seem like perfect locales for the Department of Labor and the Department of Commerce. These Rust Belt cities played historic roles in America’s industrialization and are in dire need of outside investment and attention.
Such moves would also reduce Washington’s congestion and the soaring cost of living in the nation’s capital. Moving the centers of federal power would defuse the populist rebellion by bringing the administrative state closer to those it administers — and by dousing bureaucratic fantasies with pragmatic realities. Breaking up Washington’s monopoly on power would also diminish the leapfrogging careerism of professional Washington bureaucrats and politicians. Often, they spend their lives crisscrossing capital boulevards between jobs at bureaucracies and nearby lobbying firms. Government certainly needs fresh faces and diversity. Europe also could benefit from the same sort of decentralization.
The NATO alliance is based in Brussels, Belgium. The institutional seats of the European Union are located in Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg. In a geographic and demographic sense, all of these cities are fossilized relics of a bygone post-war age in which such organizations reflected their near-exclusive Northern European membership. But today, European integration extends from the Arctic Circle to Mediterranean Crete, and from the Iberian Peninsula to the Russian border. Why not relocate the European Parliament to Warsaw or Prague to reflect current concerns with European–Russian relations and the need to solidify Eastern and Western Europe?
The Council of the European Union could be transferred to Naples, especially considering the worries over migration influxes into Southern Europe and the north–south financial controversies. Tiny and tony Luxembourg is hardly representative of the now-diverse EU. Why not at least transfer the European Court of Justice from Luxembourg to Athens, the historic birthplace of democratic government and a city in dire need of financial help?
NATO needs the same sort of shake-up. The transatlantic alliance’s worries are now as much about radical Islam as Russia. Moving its headquarters to Chania, Crete, would give NATO officers a perch at the crossroads of three continents and offer its bureaucracy a better chance to monitor transcontinental crises. If the purpose of the alliance is to protect Europe, it would be smart to defend the continent preemptively from its frontiers rather than reactively from its interior.
The elite of the Western world faces renewed political charges of hypocrisy and illegitimacy. Administrators often wax eloquently in the abstract. But rarely in the concrete do they live with those they purport to care about. Transferring seats of power to hoi polloi is not just practically smart but morally long overdue.
by VICTOR DAVIS HANSON February 1, 2018
In America and abroad, governing institutions should be dispersed more widely. Where the seats of power are located matters. Given the populist revolt in the United States and Europe against the so-called global elite, it is time to refigure the geography of governmental and transnational power. Take the United Nations. Much of the international body’s perceived negatives derive from being in the world’s richest and most visible city, New York. But what if U.N. elites did not have easy access to instant television exposure, tony Manhattan digs, and who’s-who networking? Most of the world is non-Western. Many Western elites are apologetic over past sins of imperialism and colonialism. So why not move the United Nations to Haiti, Libya, or Uganda? The transference would do wonders for any underdeveloped country, financially, culturally, or psychologically.
U.N. officials without easy access to Westernized media and the high life might instead have more time to concentrate on global problems such as hunger, disease, and violence — and be personally enmeshed in the dangers they address. Given the controversy over President Trump’s supposed disparagement of such countries as “sh**holes,” having an underdeveloped nation host the United Nations could refute such stereotyping. Relocating the U.N. to a capital such as Port-au-Prince, Tripoli, or Kampala would prove that such places are unduly underappreciated and surprisingly wonderful cities from which to conduct international governance.
Liberals treasure the United Nations. Conservatives don’t trust its often anti-democratic and anti-American tenor. So why not split the difference by staying in the United Nations but, after 66 years of a New York headquarters, finally allowing another country a chance at hosting the U.N.? Washington, D.C., is often considered out of touch, both politically and geographically, with the rest of America. Given Washington’s huge number of federal workers, why not disperse at least some of its agencies westward to ensure demographic diversity?
Transferring the Department of Agriculture to, say, Topeka or Fresno would allow bureaucrats far more intimacy with the farmers they regulate. Putting the Department of the Interior in Salt Lake City would make practical sense, given that the federal government owns about half the land of eleven coterminous Western states, including Utah. Given Washington’s huge number of federal workers, why not disperse at least some of its agencies westward to ensure demographic diversity? Either Houston or Bismarck would be a seemingly ideal spot for the Department of Energy. Texas and North Dakota will be at the cutting edge of new gas and oil development for generations. Youngstown and Flint seem like perfect locales for the Department of Labor and the Department of Commerce. These Rust Belt cities played historic roles in America’s industrialization and are in dire need of outside investment and attention.
Such moves would also reduce Washington’s congestion and the soaring cost of living in the nation’s capital. Moving the centers of federal power would defuse the populist rebellion by bringing the administrative state closer to those it administers — and by dousing bureaucratic fantasies with pragmatic realities. Breaking up Washington’s monopoly on power would also diminish the leapfrogging careerism of professional Washington bureaucrats and politicians. Often, they spend their lives crisscrossing capital boulevards between jobs at bureaucracies and nearby lobbying firms. Government certainly needs fresh faces and diversity. Europe also could benefit from the same sort of decentralization.
The NATO alliance is based in Brussels, Belgium. The institutional seats of the European Union are located in Brussels, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, and Strasbourg. In a geographic and demographic sense, all of these cities are fossilized relics of a bygone post-war age in which such organizations reflected their near-exclusive Northern European membership. But today, European integration extends from the Arctic Circle to Mediterranean Crete, and from the Iberian Peninsula to the Russian border. Why not relocate the European Parliament to Warsaw or Prague to reflect current concerns with European–Russian relations and the need to solidify Eastern and Western Europe?
The Council of the European Union could be transferred to Naples, especially considering the worries over migration influxes into Southern Europe and the north–south financial controversies. Tiny and tony Luxembourg is hardly representative of the now-diverse EU. Why not at least transfer the European Court of Justice from Luxembourg to Athens, the historic birthplace of democratic government and a city in dire need of financial help?
NATO needs the same sort of shake-up. The transatlantic alliance’s worries are now as much about radical Islam as Russia. Moving its headquarters to Chania, Crete, would give NATO officers a perch at the crossroads of three continents and offer its bureaucracy a better chance to monitor transcontinental crises. If the purpose of the alliance is to protect Europe, it would be smart to defend the continent preemptively from its frontiers rather than reactively from its interior.
The elite of the Western world faces renewed political charges of hypocrisy and illegitimacy. Administrators often wax eloquently in the abstract. But rarely in the concrete do they live with those they purport to care about. Transferring seats of power to hoi polloi is not just practically smart but morally long overdue.
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