The “Youth Health Protection Act” – which will become law on Oct. 1, seeks to enhance the protection of minors from “any form of pressure to receive harmful, experimental puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and to undergo irreversible, life-altering surgical procedures” prior to becoming a legal adult.
According to Gianforte’s office, the governor is “committed to protecting Montana children from invasive medical treatments that can permanently alter their healthy, developing bodies.”
Gianforte signaled his willingness to sign the bill on April 17 when he offered several amendments that make it clear that public funds could not be used to pay for hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries.
The Republican governor said he had met with transgender youth and adults and sympathized with their struggles. At the same time, he wrote in a letter to legislative leaders that any surgeries or treatments with hormones should wait until they’re adults as the science around the impact of various gender transition procedures remains unsettled and continues to evolve. –Epoch Times
The bill’s co-sponsor, State Sen. John Fuller (R) applauded the governor for “supporting the health and safety of Montana’s children.”
Opponents vow to sue
The ACLU and other opponents such as Lambda Legal have vowed to sue.
“Gender-affirming care is a critical part of helping transgender adolescents succeed in school, establish healthy relationships with their friends and family, live authentically as themselves, and dream about their futures,” the organizations said in a statement.
“If this bill is signed into law, we will defend the rights of transgender youth in court, just as we have done in other states engaging in this anti-science and discriminatory fear-mongering,” they added.
Doctors who opposed the bill are speaking up as well.
“My bottom line to families is that this care remains legal,” said Dr. Kathryn Lowe, a Bozeman pediatrician and member of the Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement to the Montana Free Press. “To all the families who are panicking, who are moving, who are listing their houses to sell … we have great hope that [SB 99] will never take effect.”
Earlier in the week, Montana lawmakers voted to bar state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a transgender Democrat, from voting on the House floor after he broke decorum by telling legislators they would have “blood on [their] hands” if they backed the law.
Since the Sudan civil war broke out last week, all major powers have been publicly signaling for peace and stability in the region. As one cease-fire after another collapses, Sudan has caught the world’s attention as the next nation that has the capacity to fall into chaos similar to the civil wars that overtook Libya and Yemen. As the US, Russia, China, France, and other global powers increase their foreign involvement, regional conflicts become global affairs and fall into larger battles for international power and influence. Particularly, Africa has become a primary front for a new Cold War. The present instability of Sudan creates a window of opportunity for foreign alliances as they compete for credibility, natural resources, and regional influence.
In US media, there is an orchestra of voices talking about a growing influence of Russian paramilitary organization Wagner in the Sudanese conflict, and the “destabilizing” role that Russian influence is playing in Africa at large. CNN’s recent “How Putin’s ‘cat’s paw’ sunk into Sudan” article or the Washington Post’s “Russian mercenaries closely linked with Sudan’s warring generals” show the focus on Russian influence in the region, perhaps signaling for an increasing US presence.
Is Wagner Arming the Sudanese Rebels?
Over a week ago, CNN reported that Wagner has been supplying Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) with surface-to-air missiles (SAM) through the Libyan border. The alleged support would be to aid the head of the RSF, general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Sudan’s de facto President, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. If true, it would solidify Russia’s support for one side of the conflict while most outsiders have remained neutral.
Hemedti, eager about working with the US, has denied claims that Wagner has taken the side of the RSF or is directly involved in the conflict at all:
I used to have a good relationship with them, but once they were sanctioned, I have personally told Burhan to deal only with the Russian Federation.
Similarly head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin has also denied claims of this alliance, stating on telegram:
Due to the large number of inquiries from various foreign media about Sudan, most of which are provocative, we consider it necessary to inform everyone that Wagner staff have not been in Sudan for more than two years.
These denials would seem to be corroborated by the Sudanese Ambassador to Russia, who reaffirmed Russia’s close relationship with Sudan:
Russia is a friendly country to us so we have been in direct contact with [the] Russian Foreign Ministry since the very beginning of those events last Saturday.
The comment is notable because the ambassador is representing the officially recognized government of Sudan led by Burhan. Apparently, even the official government of Sudan doesn’t recognize CNN’s investigation claiming that Wagner is arming the opposition. This could be because they want to maintain their good long-standing relations with Russia. More likely, it could be that these claims of Wagner arming the RSF are completely untrue, used by the US to further its own goals of subverting Russian influence in the region.
Washington Concerned About Fading US Influence
If claims about Wagner arming the RSF are untrue or mostly speculation, why might US media outlets be pushing this narrative? The most obvious reason is to discredit Wagner and Russian influence as destabilizing. Wagner’s success on the battlefield in Ukraine as well as a recruiting tool for the Russian war effort has led to Western efforts to depict them as an international criminal organization of ruthless mercenaries. While Prigozhin is offering himself as mediator between warring parties in Sudan for peace negotiations, the allegation of arming and allying with the more colorful, chaotic, general with a checkered past is the most unfavorable light that Western media can plausibly depict the group. If Russian influence could be synonymous with destabilization, the US could push African leaders away from strengthening ties with the Kremlin and leave more opportunity for US influence.
It appears US intel suffers from ideologically-distorted interpretive lenses. Wagner is not a main driver of African instability. Its presence is driven by local domestic politics, and its ability to control those politics is limited. 1/ https://t.co/IQOW0AeiJM
Another reason could be the pretext for more direct engagement from Washington. Before this breakout, the US hadn’t had much of a dog in the fight. The US supported the ousting of long-time foe of the US, former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and supported the efforts of Generals Burhan and Hemedti, but unlike Russia, had no strong economic ties to the nation. However, The Washington Post reported on the leaked pentagon documents revealing the extent of the US State Department’s concern about Wagner’s growing influence in Africa. Perhaps they see Sudan as a Russian investment and are trying to use the political turmoil as an excuse to grow their own presence. The pretext for a troop presence could be the evacuation of US citizens from Sudan. There have been reports that the US is assembling troops in Djibouti for such a scenario, and it could coincide with thwarting Russia’s plans with Sudan to establish a naval base in the Red Sea.
One way Washington officials may seek to to accomplish growing US influence and weakening Russia influence could be hedging their bets on the more established and internationally recognized government of Burhan. Placing the Russians on the side of his enemy could make him distrustful of the Kremlin and force him to take more aggressive measures to oust Hemedti before he grows more powerful from Russian support. Or perhaps Burhan is seen as the more reliable one; Hemedti expressing a “good relationship” with Wagner may have drawn a line in the sand for US officials. Whatever the reason, if they are trying to provoke a reaction by stoking up fears of Russian influence, they could be responsible for a creating a larger humanitarian crisis that they themselves will attempt to mop up.
Russian Influence in Africa: Not Over Or Underestimating
Russian influence in Africa has been growing in recent years, but not to the extent that US intel and media claim as a driving factor behind regional conflict. The recent deal brokered between the Sudanese government and Russia in February was permission to put a naval base on the coast in exchange for military equipment and weaponry. The deal was set for 25 years with the option to extend every ten years, indicating Russia’s desire to create long-term investments in the region. In 2020, a leaked German Foreign Ministry report said that Russians are planning to build military bases in 6 African countries: Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Sudan.
But there is more than just military cooperation. It is safe to assume that Russia’s interest in Africa is similar to China’s and the US. On one hand, they seek to counter Western influence in the region by offering partnerships with African countries that are willing to reduce their dependence on Western aid. Some are forced by an unfavorable US policy — decades of sanctions on Sudan by the US have forced the Sudanese to align themselves with Moscow. The increasing influence from Moscow is motivated by the rich amount of natural recourses and growing economies in the region. Wagner’s presence in Sudan has been described by Samuel Ramadi, author of the book Russia in Africa as “primarily aimed at guarding mineral resources, particularly gold mining resources, and acting as a support force for the Bashir government in terms of protecting it from international opposition”.
Russia’s involvement in Africa can be seen as opportunistic, capitalizing on western failures. Often the West has backed unstable or illegitimate governments that have fed narratives undermining their credibility on the world stage. One notable example was Putin’s mention of Libya in his Feb 24th 2022 speech that coincided with the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. Putin referenced the illegal use of military power against Libya that destroyed the state and pushed the country towards a humanitarian crisis, as well as failed US-led interventions in the middle east. Since the Libyan civil war in 2011, Russia, including Wagner, have expended their presence in Libya through creating a deeper relationship with the Libyan President Khalifa Belqasim Haftar.
Overall, while Russia’s influence in Africa is not yet on par with that of the US, China, or some European countries, it is growing, and Moscow is likely to continue to seek ways to expand its presence in the region in the coming years. However, they are far from a driving force of instability, and one should not feed into narratives that they are somehow behind every conflict or the destabilization of every country. Claims by such Cold Warriors could only further undermine credibility and detract from the true extent of Russian influence in Africa. But to those who insist on seeing Russian influence around every corner: is Wagner in the room with you right now?
Fitch Downgrades France To AA-, Cites Civil Unrest As Risk For Macron’s Reform Agenda
Macron’s not-so-secret ambitions for France to supplant AAA-rated Germany as Europe’s superpower took a nosedive on Friday when rating agency Fitch downgraded the eurozone’s second-largest economy one notch to AA- (with a stable outlook) late on Friday night over concerns that social unrest and political paralysis following the pensions fight will limit government efforts to improve public finances.
“Political deadlock and (sometimes violent) social movements pose a risk to Macron’s reform agenda and could create pressures for a more expansionary fiscal policy or a reversal of previous reforms,” Fitch wrote.
Fitch had rated France AAA until July 2013, when it downgraded it to AA+, and then to AA in Dec 2014.
The move is another blow to Macron only weeks after his government enacted a long-promised and much-hated pension reform to raise the retirement age by two years to 64, despite months of street protests, stiff resistance in parliament and ongoing strikes.
The president’s party does not have a parliamentary majority and may struggle to deliver on other priorities such as boosting employment and cutting fiscal deficits while improving public services such as schools.
According to the FT, Fitch also echoed our own assessment when it said the government’s use of a constitutional tactic known as Article 49.3 to pass the unpopular pension reform without a parliamentary vote could “further strengthen radical and anti-establishment forces” in French politics.
Similar to the US downgrade by S&P in 2011 over the debt ceiling fight, which sparked a witch hunt of the rating agency by minions of the then Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the French government was also terribly vexed by this particular case of truthiness about France’s economic outlook, and Finance minister Bruno Le Maire, who recently presented the government plan to bring deficits back in line with EU targets by 2027, said France remained committed to structural reforms while explaining why Fitch was wrong.
“This decision is the result of a pessimistic assessment by Fitch regarding France’s growth prospects and its debt trajectory,” Le Maire said in a statement.
“It underestimates the consequences of the structural reforms adopted in the last few months by the French government, [notably] the reforms on unemployment insurance, pensions and production taxes.”
Fitch expects France to have a fiscal deficit of 5% of GDP this year due to weaker growth and higher expenditure linked to inflation, up from 4.7% in 2022. It forecasts that it will then fall back again next year as measures to help households with bills during the energy crisis are phased out; in reality this was a concession by the rating agency, and what will really happen is that deficits will keep ballooning higher.
While France’s economy barely grew by 0.2% in the first three months of the year despite the strikes, inflation also rose in April to 5.9% year on year.
France’s “fiscal metrics are weaker than peers”, Fitch wrote, warning that its government debt when measured as a proportion of economic output would “remain on a modest upward trend, reflecting relatively large fiscal deficits and only modest progress with fiscal consolidation”.
The credit rating agency expects pressures on spending to remain high in the short term as a third of all spending – largely on social benefits and pensions – is indexed to inflation. However it said that the savings generated by the pension reform, expected to total €17.7bn by 2030, will be “moderately helpful” over the longer term.
It also forecast inflation in France will ease in the second half of this year, averaging 5.5% for the year before dropping to 2.9% in 2024.
Le Maire has repeatedly underlined the need to cut public debt because interest rate rises have caused annual debt servicing costs to balloon.
As reported previously, France has been rocked by months of protests and strikes against the pension reform since January. Many smaller scale protests continue and labor unions plan to hold a large protest march on May 1.
A Taiwanese national security official said this week that the island now has a “real time” intelligence-sharing link with the Five Eyes, the Western intelligence alliance that includes the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Britain.
Tsai Ming-yen, the director-general of Taiwan’s National Security Bureau, made the comments during a legislative hearing. Tsai confirmed that Taiwan had been upgrading its computer systems to be able to share information with the Five Eyes nations.
“We can connect with the ‘Five Eyes’ alliance through a confidential system,” Tsai said, according to Reuters.
The comments are the latest example of Taiwan’s growing relationship with the US and its allies. The cooperation angers Beijing, which has responded to the increased US support for Taiwan by putting more military pressure on the island.
Also on Wednesday, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said its upcoming military exercises will focus on breaking a blockade. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) simulated a blockade around Taiwan in August 2022 in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visiting the island.
China conducted similar drills after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen recently met with the current House speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), in California, although they weren’t as extensive as the Pelosi exercises.
Taiwan’s Han Kuang exercises will include tabletop drills from May 15 to 19 and live-fire exercises from July 24 to 28.
4/30/1789: President Washington’s inauguration. He would appoint eleven members to the Supreme Court: Chief Justices Jay, Rutledge, and Ellsworth, and Justices Wilson, Blair, Cushing, Rutledge, Iredell, Johnson, Paterson, and Chase.
Vera Liddell, former director of food services at Harvey School District 152 in Illinois, has been charged with financial crimes and theft for embezzling some $1.5 million in chicken wings from the school system. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office said Liddell placed orders for the food from July 2020 to February 2022 through the school’s food vendor and picked it up in a school van. But the orders weren’t authorized. The district doesn’t even serve wings. Authorities said upon her arrest they weren’t sure what she did with the wings.
The Indian government has declared the BBC documentary on deadly 2002 riots in the state of Gujarat to be propaganda and used emergency powers to ban India: The Modi Question from YouTube and other social media. Students at Jawaharlal Nehru University gathered for a screening of the documentary, but someone cut the power. Students at Delhi University say they were assaulted by police when they attempted to screen the documentary. Current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat back in 2002, and many Muslims accused him of condoning violence against them. The riots left more than 1,000 dead.
Hialeah, Florida, police officers Rafael Quinones Otano and Lorenzo Rafael Orfila have been fired and charged with armed kidnapping and battery. Prosecutors said that after a shopkeeper called police to complain about a homeless man bothering people, the two drove the victim to a wooded area almost seven miles away, then knocked him out and left him there. They later sent a private eye to find the man and give him $1,350 in exchange for signing an affidavit saying he wasn’t beaten and that he did not want the officers punished.
A group of students and chaperones from a Catholic school in South Carolina were kicked out of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., in January because they were wearing hats that said “pro-life.” The group had just attended a pro-life rally. When a South Carolina TV station asked about the incident, a museum spokesperson said the ejection was not keeping with its policies: “We provided immediate training to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of incident, and have determined steps to ensure this does not happen again.”
New York City prosecutors had some 550 convictions in cases investigated by police officer Joseph Franco thrown out, most involving low-level drug offenses. Franco was charged with perjury and misconduct after investigators in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office found video they said showed several drug buys Franco claimed to have witnessed did not happen—or, if they did, he was not in a position to see them. Now a judge has dismissed the charges against Franco after finding prosecutors failed to turn over evidence to Franco’s lawyers as required on at least three occasions.
Even as the National Health Service struggles with a shortage of doctors, the British government has ordered medical schools to admit no more than 7,500 students next year. The cap was put in place to limit the cost of educating medical students. It costs the government £160,000 (about $190,000) to educate each new physician. Medical schools face financial penalties if they admit too many students.
Small is beautiful. That, in a nutshell, is the case against the European Union. If you want to make the same point in more grandiose language, you can quote Aristotle: “To the size of a state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and instruments, none of which can retain their natural facility when too large.”
Here’s one practical test of his thesis. Which states or territories have the highest gross domestic product (GDP) per head? Depending on whose measure we use, the top five are Qatar, Macao, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Brunei (according to Worldometer); Monaco, Liechtenstein, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands (according to the International Monetary Fund); or the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, the Faroe Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam (according to the United Nations). Notice what they all have in common?
Europhiles might object that the E.U. is not a state, and that the very presence of Luxembourg in one of those tables suggests that it can’t be doing too badly. But look at the direction of travel. At first, the European Economic Community (EEC)—the clue was in the name—could reasonably be described as an international association, focused on eliminating trade barriers among its members. True, it did so at the expense of trade with nonmembers. Unlike NAFTA or the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the EEC was not a free trade area but a customs union, controlling all commerce on behalf of its members and artificially redirecting trade away from the rest of the world. Still, it was a club of nations rather than a superstate.
That changed when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993. Suddenly, Brussels had a hand in almost every field of government activity: foreign policy, criminal justice, the environment, culture, immigration, defense. It was now that, in recognition of its vastly expanded ambitions, it stopped being the EEC and became the European Union.
A big polity can prosper, but only if it behaves like a confederation of statelets. The supreme exemplar is the U.S., the only large nation that gets anywhere near the top of those GDP rankings (coming in, respectively, at 7, 7, and 10 in the three lists cited above). American states and counties have powers that exceed those of any local authorities in Europe—except in Switzerland, which, largely because it wants to retain its devolved political system, has declined to join the European Union. Delaware, unlike Denmark, can set its own sales taxes. Pennsylvania, unlike Poland, can decide whether to allow capital punishment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wild about the direction the U.S. has been taking either. Power is shifting from the states to Washington, D.C., from the legislature to the executive, and, indeed, from the citizen to the government. But the U.S. is starting from a much better place. It was designed according to Jeffersonian principles. Power was dispersed, decentralized, and democratized.
The E.U., by contrast, was designed to weld nations into a supranational bloc. The first article of its founding charter, the Treaty of Rome, commits its members to an “ever-closer union.” The European Court of Justice has repeatedly cited that clause to justify power grabs that go beyond anything foreseen by the treaties.
The U.S. Constitution is an imperfect document, but, as P.J. O’Rourke said, it’s better than what you’ve got now. The E.U. treaties, by contrast, don’t even pretend to restrict state power. Where the Declaration of Independence promises life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, its European equivalent, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, entitles people to “strike action,” “affordable housing,” and “free healthcare.”
True, nation-states can be as intrusive and dirigiste as the European Union. But the aggregate picture is clear. The cheapest and most accountable administrations are those closest to the people. Local government is (not always, but on average) more efficient than national government, national government more efficient than supranational government.
In theory, one could imagine an E.U. that did not concern itself with behind-border issues—an E.U., in short, more like EFTA or NAFTA. But that is not what we have. The real E.U. has policies on every aspect of life, from permissible noise levels to the status of disabled people, from the rights of asylum seekers to space exploration. No wonder most British libertarians voted to leave it.
The E.U. Is Better Than the Realistic Alternatives
Negative: Dalibor Rohac
Many valid criticisms can be addressed at the European Union. The Brussels machinery is bureaucratic and largely insulated from accountability. When it comes to new markets and new technologies, European institutions regulate first and ask questions later. The E.U. controls a sizable budget, part of it wasteful—including generous agricultural subsidies and transfer programs that have entrenched aspiring autocrats in countries such as Hungary.
Yet the E.U.’s existence is infinitely preferable to its absence. It is a prime example of the “nirvana fallacy” to compare the E.U. and its flaws to a libertarian ideal of free trade and unregulated markets. The relevant comparison is between the E.U. and the politically plausible alternatives.
Those alternatives almost certainly involve protectionism, heavy-handed industrial policy and planning, or state aid to politically connected companies—and they could involve ethnic conflict and war. If it weren’t for the pressure of the European Commission in the late 1980s, it is fanciful to think that Italy or France would have just given up state ownership of utilities, banks, or their industrial giants.
Conversely, the United Kingdom has not become a free market paradise after leaving the European Union. Quite the opposite. The U.K. economy, already constrained by self-imposed “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) regulations, is being burdened by new barriers to cross-border commerce with continental Europe—hence the dismal growth record three years into leaving the bloc.
Again, the E.U.’s “single market” is far from perfect. It is effectively nonexistent in the area of services, for example. And in areas where it does work, it often goes hand in hand with harmonized European rules rather than with simple mutual recognition of national standards.
Yet the single market is a singular achievement. It is one thing to prescribe the free movement of goods, capital, and people within the continental United States under the auspices of a powerful federal government. It is quite another to arrive at such an outcome through the largely voluntary efforts of E.U. member states.
Could we imagine an alternative that would be superior, from a libertarian standpoint? Sure: Eliminate tariffs and embrace mutual recognition of national rules. But that’s never going to happen. The experience with existing mutual recognition arrangements from around the world shows that under wide differences between regulatory regimes, mutual recognition is politically unsustainable.
In other words, the layer of E.U. rules is a price to pay for the absence of nontariff barriers. This is arguably not a very hefty price to pay, given that some E.U. countries (the Nordics, Baltics, the Netherlands) are among the most competitive economies around the world, and given that nonmembers have voluntarily embraced those rules (Norway) or are very keen to do so (Ukraine).
It is misleading to compare the E.U.’s single market with 19th century Europe, and not just because 19th century Europe did not have a modern regulatory state. The “first age of globalization” was driven more by improvements in transportation than by wise trade policy. If anything, the free trade system started gradually eroding in the 1870s before completely collapsing in World War I.
Contrary to conservative-nationalist folklore, the E.U. is not a nefarious top-down plot to subvert national sovereignty and self-governance. It is an imperfect compromise resulting from decadeslong efforts by democratically elected leaders, and it enjoys broad, consistent popular support. (Two-thirds of Europeans back it, according to a recent Eurobarometer poll.)
One can understand why Americans or Brits might look with suspicion at the E.U.’s convoluted decision making processes. Yet the E.U.’s odd architecture reflects something distinctly European—the uneasy tension between common cultural references and the sheer diversity of the continent. It is not a coincidence that for almost two millennia Europe saw a succession of weird, multilayered, quasi-federal structures of governance, from the Holy Roman Empire through leagues of city states to multinational “republics” such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
England aside, the “sovereign” nation-state is a late–19th century addition to Europe’s political realities. And needless to say, the founding generation of the modern libertarian movement had a keen understanding of the fact that this period was not exactly friendly to freedom, markets, and peace.
Has the E.U. lived up fully to the ideals of Hayekian international federalism? Of course not. But it is blindingly obvious that it has performed better than the relevant alternatives.
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Over the last few years, the rallying cry of “woke” activists has become “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (often abbreviated to DEI). There is little reason to object to such principles on the surface. After all, America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal. Unfortunately, the meaning of words can change over time.
Rather than the Founders’ vision of equal opportunity for all, the use of the word “equity” today denotes equal outcomes for all. The implementation of this “equity agenda,” however well-intentioned, will lead to terrible consequences.
One of the prophets who warned us about the dangers of this understanding of equity was the great twentieth-century novelist Kurt Vonnegut. In his 1961 short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” Vonnegut imagined a society with perfect equity. “Nobody was smarter than anybody else,” the narrator says. “Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.”
As Vonnegut shows, a society looking to equalize outcomes for all citizens is no utopia – it is instead a nightmarish horror. The only way to guarantee equal results is to handicap everyone so that they perform at the lowest common level. In the terrifying world of “Harrison Bergeron,” for instance, the government burdens ballerinas “with sashweights and bags of birdshot” so they cannot move more beautifully than anyone else.
The push for “equity” in American society today resembles Vonnegut’s dystopia – but nowhere more dangerously than in the education system.
At the university level, DEI bureaucracies have grown to absurd sizes, and they dominate much of campus life. A 2021 Heritage Foundation report found 163 DEI personnel at the University of Michigan, 94 at the University of Virginia and 94 at Ohio State, 86 at the University of California Berkeley, 83 at Virginia Tech, and 80 at Stanford (where Associate Dean for DEI Tirien Steinbach was recently put on leave for galvanizing an unruly protest by confronting a U.S. circuit judge who was trying to deliver a campus lecture).
In a growing number of K-12 schools across the country, such as at Culver City High School in the Los Angeles area, honors classes are being eliminated so as not to “perpetuate inequality.” Proponents of this idea say that some students can still obtain an honors “label” by doing extra work.
But more often than not, teachers are simply slowing down instruction for everyone. Students are increasingly taught at the lowest common denominator rather than being challenged to do their best. As one student recently told the Wall Street Journal, “There are some people who slow down the pace because they don’t really do anything and aren’t looking to try harder.”
Current DEI regulations at the federal and state level, as well-intentioned as these regulations may be, are fostering this approach and handicapping our education system. For example, the Department of Education’s 2022 Equity Agency Plan goes so far as to connect DEI policies directly to federal funding for local schools. In their pursuit of “ensuring equity,” ideologues are killing opportunity for America’s students.
The American Dream is that all citizens will have an equal opportunity to achieve their goals based on their individual talents and hard work. The Declaration of Independence does not guarantee happiness to every citizen – it only guarantees the pursuit of happiness.
But the pursuit of the modern idea of “equity” rather than true equality is simply a race to the bottom. Socialist regimes in Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and so many other places show that radical egalitarianism simply does not work. America is more successful than these failed experiments because we cling to the principle of equality rightly understood. We cannot let that slip away.
The good news is that many parents are mobilizing against far-left excesses. At the ballot box, school board meetings, and even at the dinner table, parents are standing up and saying enough is enough. They do not want to sacrifice academic excellence for grand social experiments. They want their kids to become educated and ambitious, not indoctrinated and complacent.
Most Americans believe in equality. We want to make sure that everyone has, to the greatest extent possible, an equal place at the starting line. From there, each individual has the freedom to achieve what their desires, ability, and hard work make possible.
Achieving that kind of equality is the American dream, the engine that enables people from any walk of life to realize their dreams. Equity, as activists preach it, trades away this American heritage for abstractions and fantasies. Americans should instead hold fast to the political principles that have guided us to marvelous success and prosperity for nearly 250 years.
The Texas state senatepassed legislation this week banning the purchase of farmland by citizens and entities linked to hostile foreign nations, a move which the author of the bill says will provide “sweeping state and national security protections.”
“This bill protects Texas farmland, oil and gas, rare earth materials and timber from being owned by foreign entities classified as hostile by the Director of U.S. National Intelligence for three consecutive reports. These nations currently include China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran,” wrote Sen . Lois Kolkhorst (R) following the passage of her legislation by a vote of 19-12 in the state Senate on April 26.
According to a 2022 threat assessment report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), China, Russia, Iran and North Korea pose the biggest threats to US national security. The report says that the CCP presents “the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to the U.S. Government and private sector networks.”
The Texas bill, SB 147, was introduced last November by Kolkhorst, and has the support of Gov. Greg Abbott (R). That said, the language of the original bill was toned down following criticism from some Democrats and locals over the bill banning property purchases of any individual who is “a citizen of China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia.”
In the final draft, the ban does not apply to lawful permanent residents, US citizens or dual citizens.
The property which the bill applies to includes agricultural land, improvements, mines and quarries, mineral deposits, and standing timber.
It also grants the Texas attorney general the authority to investigate potential violations if “reasonable suspicion” exists that an individual or entity making a property purchase is associated with one of the designated countries.
“Texas is rich in its natural resources and is home to invaluable strategic military bases and installations. With SB 147, we can protect our Texas food supply and energy resources as well,” wrote Kolkhorst – who built this legislation to dovetail with SB 2116 – the state’s “Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act,” which makes it illegal for Texas governments and businesses to make critical infrastructure deals with entities from the banned list.
Texas Democrats are upset.
“Even with the amendments offered, this legislation still takes away the rights of an entire class of people without due process and solely on the basis of their national origin,” wrote Rep. Gene Wu, an outspoken critic of Kolkhorst’s legislation, adding that he’s “frustrated by the Senate’s passage of SB 147 in its current form.”
“National security is a serious issue, but if we are concerned about the actions of foreign governments, then legislation should only affect foreign governments and their agents,” Wu continued. “Our community will continue to work, in the Texas House, to eliminate the unnecessarily discriminatory aspects of this bill.”
Not all Texas Democrats…
State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a co-author of SB 147, is the lone Democrat who voted in favor of the bill on Wednesday.
“We’re not trying to target people. We’re trying to target nations that pose a security risk to this great nation of ours,” he said. “It’s incorrect to say that this bill is discriminatory.”
“We should not overlook the point that many of these nations are a threat to our security,” Hinojosa continued, adding that these countries “have made it very clear that they want to destroy our country, destroy our democracy, destroy our way of life.”
Robert Kennedy, Jr. is running for president. I could not possibly be more excited. So, I’m going to give Bobby some unsolicited advice, which, if he knows what’s good for him, he will not take.
I feel OK about doing this because, even if Bobby, in the wee hours of the night, when the mind is vulnerable to dangerous ideas, were to seriously consider taking my advice, I am sure he has people — i.e., PR people, campaign strategists, pollsters, and so on — that would not hesitate to take him aside and disabuse him of any inclination to do that.
OK, before I give Bobby this terrible advice, I have to do the “full disclosure” thing. I’m a pretty big fan of RFK, Jr. I don’t generally get involved in electoral politics, but, if I were a Democrat, I would definitely vote for him. Also, he was kind enough to blurb my book (which isn’t going to make his PR people happy) and invite me onto his podcast, RFK, Jr. The Defender, to talk about “New Normal” totalitarianism. So, I am fairly biased in favor of Bobby Kennedy. I think he is an admirable, honorable human being. I would love to see him in the Oval Office.
That isn’t going to happen, of course. The global-capitalist ruling classes are never going to let him near the Oval Office. They learned their lesson back in 2016. There are not going to be any more unauthorized presidents. The folks at GloboCap are done playing grab-ass, and they want us to know that they are done playing grab-ass. That’s what the last six years have been about.
“… This, basically, is what we’ve just experienced. The global capitalist ruling classes have just reminded us who is really in charge, who the US military answers to, and how quickly they can strip away the facade of democracy and the rule of law. They have reminded us of this for the last ten months, by putting us under house arrest, beating and arresting us for not following orders, for not wearing masks, for taking walks without permission, for having the audacity to protest their decrees, for challenging their official propaganda, about the virus, the election results, etc. They are reminding us currently by censoring dissent, and deplatforming anyone they deem a threat to their official narratives and ideology … GloboCap is teaching us a lesson. I don’t know how much clearer they could make it. They just installed a new puppet president, who can’t even simulate mental acuity, in a locked-down, military-guarded ceremony which no one was allowed to attend, except a few members of the ruling classes. They got some epigone of Albert Speer to convert the Mall (where the public normally gathers) into a ‘field of flags‘ symbolizing ‘unity.’ They even did the Nazi ‘Lichtdom‘ thing. To hammer the point home, they got Lady Gaga to dress up as a Hunger Games character with a ‘Mockingjay’ brooch and sing the National Anthem. They broadcast this spectacle to the entire world.”
Does that sound like the behavior of an unaccountable, supranational power apparatus that is prepared to stand by and let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., or Donald Trump, or any other unauthorized person, become the next president of the United States?
So, here’s my bad advice for Bobby.
Fuck them. They’re not going to let you win, anyway. They are going to smear you, slime you, demonize you, distort every other thing you say, and just generally lie about who you are and what you believe in and what you stand for. They are going to paint you as a bull-goose-loony, formerly smack-addled, conspiracy-theorizing, anti-vax fanatic no matter what you do. If you tone down your act and try to “heal the divide” and “end the division,” they are going to have you for lunch, and then sit around picking their teeth with your bones. You know, and I know, and the American people know, that the things you say you want to do as president — which I know you sincerely want to do as president and are crazy enough to actually try to do, i.e., “to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country” — are things … well, as Michael Corleone once put it, that they would “use all their power to keep from happening.”
So, fuck it, and fuck them. Tell the truth.
Not the ready-for-prime-time truth. Not the toned-down-for-mainstream-consumption truth.
The truth. The ugly, unvarnished truth. The scary, crazy-sounding truth.
The angry, divisive, uncensored truth.
Yes, there is a “divide.” A great divide. A chasm. A schism. A gulf. An abyss. A gaping, yawning, unbridgeable fissure. A Grand Canyon-sized fault in the foundation of society. A rupture in the very fabric of reality.
As I noted in another 2021 column, the global-capitalist ruling classes have decommissioned one “reality” and are replacing it with another “reality” … corporate feudalism, pathologized totalitarianism, global corporatism, or whatever anybody wants to call it. Whatever we call it, everyone feels it. OK, I’m going to be obnoxious and quote myself again …
“During the changeover from the old ‘reality’ to the new ‘reality,’ the society is torn apart. The old ‘reality’ is being disassembled and the new one has not yet taken its place. It feels like madness, and, in a way, it is. For a time, the society is split in two, as the two ‘realities’ battle it out for dominance. ‘Reality’ being what it is (i.e., monolithic), this is a fight to the death. In the end, only one ‘reality’ can prevail.”
The folks at GloboCap are right on the verge of permanently implementing their new “reality.” In that “reality,” an apocalyptic virus (with a survival rate of roughly 99.7%) nearly wiped out the entire planet, and would have, if not for the Emergency Health Measures (i.e., mass house arrest, forced conformity rituals, cancellation of constitutional rights, censorship of dissent, official propaganda on a scale that even Goebbels could never have dreamed of, fomenting of mass hysteria and hatred, segregation and persecution of a designated scapegoat underclass) imposed on society by our admittedly imperfect but well-intentioned government and global health authorities. In that “reality,” the “vaccines” they forced on billions of people (who did not need them) are “safe and effective” (despite the fact, which even they now acknowledge, that they have seriously injured or killed millions of people). In that “reality,” a few hundred unarmed Trump supporters horsing around in the Capitol Building was an “insurrection,” or “attempted coup,” or … well, you get the picture. There are no neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. The Russians blew up their own pipelines. And so on.
What I am trying to get at, Bobby, is that those of us who have refused to convert to the new “reality” — which I am guessing is approximately 25-30% of the global population — are not looking for a leader who can “heal the divide.” We are in a fight. We are fighting for reality. We’re fighting for what’s left of reality.
And, at the moment, we are getting our asses kicked.
So, fuck it. What have you got to lose? Throw out the playbook. Fire your PR people. Go for broke. Tell the truth. Tell folks what we’re up against. That it isn’t something an election is going to fix. That it isn’t something a new president can fix. That it isn’t fixable. That it is a fucking fight. And not one according to the Queensberry Rules. A ball-kicking, eye-gouging, chair-swinging, bar fight. And that sometimes, like now, when there is nowhere to run to … well, you have to stand and fight, even if you know you’re going to lose.
That’s it. That’s my bad advice for Bobby. Hopefully, one of his staff will spot it and delete it before he reads his email.
Otherwise, I’m afraid he might be tempted to take it. He’s already leaning in that direction.
And … well, you know how those Irish love a good fight.
