Category: reason

After annoying some progressive activists years ago over a column I wrote about a property dispute between a predominantly Latino school district and one of its neighbors, I had to sit through a meeting where I was questioned about my ethnic sensitivity. It was a weird feeling given that my column covered land-use matters and not race or nationality. Fortunately, my critics were polite and the editors had my back. Life went on.

Nevertheless, the incident provided a “note to self” moment. Imagine what can happen to those who say or write something that’s too close to—or slightly over—the (ill-defined) line. I’ve published 200,000 words In recent years, canceling has become quite the phenomenon. It’s the result of our overly politicized culture where many people like to shame and destroy their enemies. Since it seems that we’re all now members of warring political tribes, there are plenty of enemies to go around. Social media platforms make that shaming process fast, fun, and easy.

Did you read about the 30-year-old executive who, before boarding a 2013 flight from New York to South Africa in 2013, sent out snarky tweets from the airport? She joked about a German with body odor, Brits with bad teeth, and then—to her regret—let loose an offensive tweet about AIDS and Africa. Despite having only 170 followers, the tweet went viral. Her career and reputation were ruined by the time the flight landed in Cape Town.

Last week, we learned that The New York Times ousted a top reporter, 45-year veteran Donald McNeil Jr., after 150 fellow employees demanded his firing. They learned that he had used the N-word while representing the newspaper during a 2019 trip to Peru. In his apology, McNeil explained that he was “asked at dinner by a student whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur.”

McNeil said he “asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself.” The Times took an unyielding approach. “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent,” the newspaper’s top editors said in explanation. No wonder so many normal, non-racist Americans are concerned about canceling.

Intent should always be a factor. Not that these incidents usually are judicial matters, but our legal system provides a guide. There are much stiffer penalties for those who plot an elaborate murder and for those who accidentally kill someone through recklessness or even by accident. If intent doesn’t matter and due process is denied, then we all better clam up, keep our heads down, and not look at anyone the wrong way.

Certainly, private companies are free to set their own standards. I’m legally allowed to spend my weekends speaking at neo-Nazi rallies, publicly praying for an Islamic state, or organizing the local chapter of the Communist Party, but my employer has every right to dismiss my “at will” contract after learning about any of those activities. (Note: Do not call the editor or “cancel” your subscription. That was only a joke.)

Many of us, however, feel frustrated by the inconsistent standards. The Times embraced “zero tolerance” with McNeil, but took a different approach in 2018 when it hired Sarah Jeong, who had used the hashtag #CancelWhitePeople. Among her many odd tweets: “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins?” I ponder the intent of that question.

What do we do? There are no simple answers, but we can embrace general guidelines. Canceling was designed to attack public figures. How about cutting non-public figures slack? Let’s recognize a statute of limitations. Saturday Night Live featured a hilarious skit about cancel warriors who doxed 5-year-olds for their insensitive words. It should make us think twice before ruining someone’s life because of a stupid teen-aged post.

Despite the Times‘ editors’ arguments, I think intentions matter. So do apologies. And how about recognizing that punishments ought to fit the transgression? People who incite online mobs ride a moral high horse. Let’s view them for what they really are: the online version of Mean Girls, who take perverse pleasure in humiliating others.

I’m not calling for policy or legal changes, but for Americans to do some soul-searching as they navigate a brave new social-media world where small mistakes can be telegraphed to millions. The bottom line: Let’s be more forgiving and embrace a broader culture of open dialogue.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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2/19/1942: President Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066. The Supreme Court would consider the constitutionality of this Executive Order in Korematsu v. U.S. (1944).

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After the rush, brace yourself for the hangover. That’s the warning from experts with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, who caution that plans for massive “stimulus” spending by the Biden administration will administer only a brief boost to the country followed by a nasty and prolonged comedown.

The White House objects to the forecast, but it squares with earlier predictions from the Congressional Budget Office that accumulated debt, worsened by heavy pandemic-related spending, will hobble the economy for years to come.

President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion relief package would increase economic growth by 0.6 percent in 2021, according to analyses by the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM). After that, though, it would start to slow the economy, decreasing GDP by 0.2 percent in 2022 and by 0.3 percent as late as 2040, showing lingering negative effects after the initial spending.

The big problem for the longer-term outlook is “the large amount of additional money that we’re adding to our already very large debt,” according to Efraim Berkovich, PWBM’s director of computational analysis. “The existence of the debt saps the rest of the economy. When the government is running budget deficits, the money that could have gone to productive investment is redirected.”

U.S. government debt is already sky-high, having increased by $7 trillion dollars in the last four years alone to reach 100 percent of GDP at the end of 2020. That burden threatens to act as a dead weight on economic growth.

Unsurprisingly, the Biden White House takes exception to Wharton’s gloomy forecast. Press Secretary Jen Psaki insists the prediction is “way out of step with the majority of studies on this plan.” In particular, she complains “the analysis concludes that our economy is near capacity, which would be news to the millions of Americans who are out of work or facing reduced hours and reduced paychecks.”

In response, the Wharton analysts point to ongoing recovery in many sectors. They also point out that continuing lockdowns prevent some production and employment that would otherwise occur.

“[R]ecovery in the affected sectors is limited by pandemic-related shutdowns and individual behavior,” they wrote. “There is no mechanism by which additional household spending will stimulate those sectors until pandemic-related restrictions ease.”

Unemployment claims unexpectedly increased last week to 861,000. The official unemployment rate of 6.3 percent remains above its pre-pandemic/pre-lockdown rate of 3.5 percent (just one year ago!). But that’s a steep drop from the April peak of 14.8 percent.

Industrial production, too, at 75.6 percent of capacity in January, remains about 4 percent lower than it was a year ago. But it’s higher than it was just a few years ago and steadily rising. “At 107.2 percent of its 2012 average, total industrial production in January was 1.8 percent lower than its year-earlier level,” according to a February 17 Federal Reserve update. So, while the economy isn’t entirely back, it’s moving in the right direction—a process that could be interrupted by massive government spending.

“[E]ffectively, what we’re doing is taking money from [some] people and giving it to other people for consumption purposes,” notes Berkovich of stimulus schemes. “That has value for social safety nets and redistributive benefits, but longer-term, you’re taking away from the capital that we need to grow our economy in the future.”

Stimulus spending also has the potential to delay the inevitable shakeout as businesses and workers scramble to adapt to a changing environment. Both the McKinsey Global Institute and the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently published studies predicting that remote work is here to stay for many people.

“In the moderate impact scenario, increased telework is the primary force of economic change and has both direct and spillover effects,” notes the BLS report. “With more employees teleworking, the need for office space will decline, and so will nonresidential construction.”

That’s going to necessitate a lot of adjustment in sectors including restaurants, travel, and commercial real estate; government checks just delay the day of reckoning. That is already a problem in Europe, where economists and business owners worry that subsidies prop up “zombie” companies that would otherwise disappear and clear the way for healthier enterprises.

“These zombie companies…run their business for a couple of months below costs,” Alexander Alban, managing partner at German mechanical parts manufacturer Walter Schimmel GmbH told the Wall Street Journal. “They ruin the market. Afterwards, it’s very hard to get this business back. Usually it’s good if the market is cleaned.”

The result is a poorer and less-productive economy than would have existed in the absence of government spending sprees. That’s in addition to the depressing effects of deficits and debt.

In analyses predating the latest stimulus proposals, the Congressional Budget Office voiced concerns similar to those of the Wharton Business School about debt-fueled spending.

“CBO estimates that the legislation will boost the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by 4.7 percent in 2020 and 3.1 percent in 2021,” according to a September 2020 report forecasting the impact of pandemic-related federal spending. “From fiscal year 2020 through 2023, for every dollar that it adds to the deficit, the legislation is projected to increase GDP by about 58 cents. In the longer term, the legislation will reduce the level of real GDP, CBO estimates.”

That is, the CBO predicted two years of benefit, followed by each dollar spent producing far less than its value in return. The ultimate result is a smaller economy than would have existed without the addition of trillions to the national debt.

“The legislation will increase federal debt as a percentage of GDP, and in the longer term, CBO expects that increase to raise borrowing costs, lower economic output, and reduce the income of U.S. households and businesses,” adds the CBO.

With the House of Representatives poised to consider the stimulus package as early as next week, we may soon have an opportunity to find out just how bad the hangover will be.

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The Netflix adaptation of Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel The Queen’s Gambit has punched above its weight since it started streaming in October. The sets and costume are gorgeous and the acting is good, but the stakes are nonexistent: We know from the first episode that child chess prodigy Beth Harmon (played by 24-year-old Anya Taylor-Joy) is going to win a lot of matches, even with a tranquilizer habit clinging to her back.

But there is more to this story than a phenom making the most of her gifts. Set in the 1950s and ’60s, The Queen’s Gambit has more to say about geopolitics and culture than it does about opening moves. Episode by episode, we learn that America’s best players were largely anonymous, duking it out in drabby hotels and high school cafeterias, while in other countries—particularly Mexico, France, and the Soviet Union—chess was a celebrated and even glamorous sport.

It’s fascinating to watch Taylor-Joy as the only woman climbing the American ranks, but her speedy evolution into an anti–Cold Warrior is the better subplot. Upon qualifying to play in Moscow against the USSR’s top talent, Harmon is recruited first by a Christian nonprofit hellbent on fighting the evils of atheism and then by a State Department apparatchik who cares only that Harmon can beat the Soviets “at their own game.”

She rebuffs both parties by refusing the former’s funding and the latter’s instructions to bash the Soviet Union. For Harmon, chess no more “belongs” to any nation or gender than does the moon. When she wins, it’s for her, not the jingoists.

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It has been much remarked that Hollywood, whose denizens fall generally to the left of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, often produces movies with conservative themes. That is certainly true of Ron Howard’s adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy, the moral of which is that hard work and self-discipline can overcome the snares of poverty.

In depicting Vance’s true-life journey from the Appalachian hill country to Yale Law School, the film studiously avoids explicit discussion of what caused his family’s plight or what his escape implies. Unlike the book, it is not a political story. Yet it has been met with all-but-universally negative reviews in the mainstream press, and it’s hard not to think that has something to do with Vance’s well-known nationalist conservative politics.

When a movie’s audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is more than three times its critic score, something may be at work beyond mere differences in artistic preference. Hillbilly pulls back the curtain on a slice of America that many elites would prefer not to think about, especially in a post-Trump era.

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