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Ruth King

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California Dems Protect Child Rapists and Fight Trump The #Resistance Dems are at it again. Daniel Greenfield

By on September 19th, 2017

The Paris Commune, the Bavarian Soviet Republic and the California legislative supermajority of Dems are shining examples of what happens when insane leftists take over a formerly prosperous place.

“The issue of resistance is beyond the symbolism,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon declared. “A lot of other municipalities, as well as other states, are looking towards California … to be the leader of this resistance.”

The “resistance” is to President Trump, democracy and sanity. California has the best student government in the world. And like every student government, it’s eager to serve every leftist cause.

Forget good government. California is leading the “resistance.”

California lawmakers don’t waste time on trivialities like the pension bomb. Instead they tackle the serious issues. That’s why the California Assembly passed a bill mandating that Trump publish his taxes. The bill is unconstitutional. U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton settled that back in the 90s. If California wants to revisit that, it’ll have to rely on a dissent from Clarence Thomas. Not to mention Scalia.

The bill would be signed by Governor Brown who hasn’t released his own tax returns.

But following the law is for Republicans and little people.

And California legislators compulsively generate bills that are immune to math, laws, precedent or legality. And that can only produce a complete and utter disaster if they are implemented.

And they wouldn’t have it any other way.

In addition to the multiple gratuitous legislative attacks on President Trump, which are as bizarre as they are unprecedented, there was a bill, introduced by Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco, to remove sex offenders from the sex offender registry. Wiener claimed that the sex offender registry was homophobic. The bill, which passed, will allow child rapists to be removed after 20 years, and gives child pornography distributors a pass after 10 years.

A spokesman for Governor Brown, whose former pal Jim Jones would have been thrilled by the legislation, spoke glowingly of the bill. But this is a state in which a statue of another Jim Jones ally, Harvey Milk, the Democrat pedophile who lured runaway teens, decorates San Francisco City Hall.

Move over undocumented immigrants. Here come the undocumented sex offenders.

Sadly, the “supervised heroin” bill which would have allowed heroin addicts to shoot up under the supervision of “qualified medical professionals” failed. But Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman claims that her bill got lots of “momentum” and will be back. Eggman is a member of both the LGBT Caucus and the Latino Legislative Caucus. And those are the only qualifications in California politics now.

Worse news still, it’s now illegal to ingest “any marijuana product while driving”. But employers are not allowed to ask about your criminal history.

California did manage to pass the “Gender Recognition Act” inventing “non-binary” as a new gender and a bill sealing the juvenile records of teenagers who commit murder and other horrifying crimes.

The sanctuary state bill that bars law enforcement from asking illegal alien criminals if they’re illegal aliens went through to media applause. Landlords are also prohibited from reporting illegal aliens to the authorities. Businesses would be forced to demand a warrant from ICE: whether they want to or not.

“An employer… shall not provide voluntary consent to an immigration enforcement agent to enter any nonpublic areas of a place of labor,” the latter bill mandates.

The bill actually punishes Californians for cooperating with Federal law enforcement. Where do they think they live anyway? America?

There are extensive fines for landlords and businesses that choose to follow United States law and actually cooperate with immigration authorities.

Before long, everyone in California will be banned from reporting illegal aliens.

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The Injustice of the ‘Rape-Culture’ Theory For those in the grips of hysteria, proof is the enemy Cathy Young

By on September 19th, 2017

“If rape culture in America is real, why does the case for it rest on so much fabulism?”

I n July, a case that had become a rallying cry for campus activism against sexual assault came to a conclusion of sorts—with a victory for the accused man. Columbia University settled a lawsuit brought by 2015 graduate Paul Nungesser. It stemmed from an accusation of rape hurled at Nungesser by fellow Columbia undergraduate Emma Sulkowicz, who famously carried a mattress around campus to protest the school’s alleged mishandling of her complaint.

The lawsuit charged that Sulkowicz’s activism amounted to gender-based harassment of Nungesser and was condoned by the university, which had allowed her to make a senior art thesis of her mattress-toting. The settlement included a public statement from Columbia that not only reaffirmed that Nungesser had been exonerated in an investigation conducted by the school, but also acknowledged that his final year on campus following his exposure as an accused rapist was “not what Columbia would want any of its students to experience.” He found himself shunned by most of his classmates, harassed by activists, and depicted naked in two revenge-porn drawings by Sulkowicz, exhibited in a campus gallery as another part of her art project.

The acknowledgment was as close as the university could bring itself to repudiating Sulkowicz’s crusade, which had been hailed on the cover of New York magazine three years ago as the harbinger of a new “sexual revolution on campus.”

While other activists have continued to support “Mattress Girl,” her revolutionary halo has been tarnished considerably in those three years. New information provided by Nungesser (first disclosed by this author in The Daily Beast in early 2015) showed that in the weeks following the alleged rape, the two had had banter-filled Facebook chats in which Sulkowicz discussed coming to his parties, talked about having a “Paul/Emma chill sesh,” and gushed, “I love you Paul!” in response to his birthday wishes.

Sulkowicz’s defenders have argued that victims of sexual violence often act in ways that seem irrational to outsiders, particularly when the assailant is someone close to them. (Sulkowicz and Nungesser had been close friends and had been sexually intimate on two prior occasions.) While this is no doubt true, the totality of the circumstances makes Sulkowicz’s account highly improbable—particularly since her rape claim did not involve an ambiguous incident that a victim could initially excuse as a misunderstanding, but a sudden physical assault in which she was choked, hit in the face, and anally raped so violently that she screamed in pain.

But even as Nungesser finally got a measure of satisfaction, progressive opinion was exploding in outrage on a related matter—the fact that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was suggesting that fairness to the accused should be a high priority in campus sexual-assault proceedings under Title IX, the federal gender-equity law. DeVos has invited advocates for accused students to her “listening meetings” on the issue, along with activists championing victims. In response, psychologist Peggy Drexler, a Web columnist for CNN, decried her initiative as “a huge step back for women’s safety, and equality in general.” Drexler had even harsher words for Acting Assistant Secretary Candice E. Jackson, who had spoken sympathetically of meeting with a mother who said her son had become suicidal after being falsely accused. “Jackson’s words,” Drexler wrote, “specifically serve to perpetuate rape culture.”
N ot long ago, the concept of “rape culture”—at least as applied to contemporary liberal societies in North America and Western Europe—existed only on the fringes of radical feminist activism and academic rhetoric. Yet in the past several years, this term has become ubiquitous in mainstream left-of-center discourse; indeed, in many bien-pensant quarters, the very denial of its existence is nothing less than heresy. When some musicians tried to organize a boycott of a Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra benefit concert because conservative author and radio host Dennis Prager was guest-conducting, the offenses imputed to Prager included the assertion that “there’s no culture of rape at our universities.”

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University Stands Behind ‘Pro-Colonialism’ Professor By Tom Knighton

By on September 19th, 2017

Bruce Gilley isn’t very popular in academic circles these days. Many of his fellow scholars aren’t particularly fond of a paper he wrote arguing that colonialism wasn’t the net negative thing that social justice crusaders believe it is. However, Gilley is getting support from where it matters most.

The university that pays his salary is standing behind him in the face of adversity.

From The College Fix:

A public university that evaluates job applicants with 44 questions about “cultural competencies” is standing behind a professor facing a professional blacklist for making “the case for colonialism.”

Scholars and students around the world are calling for peer-reviewed Third World Quarterly, which is published by the multinational academic publisher Routledge, to retract the September article by Bruce Gilley, associate professor of political science at Portland State University, and replace the journal’s editors.

…

Gilley did not respond to a request for comment. Margaret Everett, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs at PSU, sent The College Fix a statement through a representative:

Academic freedom is critical to the open debate and free exchange of knowledge and argument. Because of Portland State University’s commitment to academic freedom, we acknowledge the right of all our faculty to explore scholarship and to speak, write and publish a variety of viewpoints and conclusions. The university also respects the rights of others to express counterviews and to engage in vigorous and constructive debate about the faculty’s work.

‘He brings up the other side of a debate that has always been off-limits’

Individual faculty in Gilley’s department declined to be interviewed on the record, but a philosophy professor at PSU who has previously courted controversy says their silence is emblematic of fear.

“They’re afraid of reprisals from their leftist colleagues,” Peter Boghossian told The Fix.“Gilley has my unwavering support. He’s a professor. His job, literally, is to publish in peer-reviewed journals. If professors are afraid of publishing anything that’s morally unfashionable, our entire engine of knowledge production would be compromised.”

Boghossian touches on the real problem here. Gilley wrote something that may or may not be factually accurate — I leave it to actual scholars to determine that. But what he’s being blasted for was daring to actually argue a contrary point of view. Many of the criticisms leveled at Gilley don’t actually take issue with the scholarship itself, but rather with the fact that its findings simply aren’t popular.

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Violent Rioters Attack Cops, Torch Police Car at Georgia Tech By Debra Heine

By on September 19th, 2017

Rioters torched a police car at the Georgia Tech Police Department headquarters and fought with police Monday night in protest of a campus police shooting of a mentally ill student over the weekend.

About 50 agitators marched to the police station and rioted after a vigil earlier in the night to remember Scout Schultz, who was killed by officers after calling the Georgia Tech campus police on himself Saturday night.

Schultz, who had a history of mental illness, reported that a suspicious person was loose on campus, describing the suspect as “a white male with long blond hair, white T-shirt & blue jeans who is possibly intoxicated, holding a knife and possibly armed with a gun on his hip,” according to a statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

When police arrived on the scene, Schultz was walking around in a disoriented and unpredictable manner. Police shouted at him repeatedly to drop his knife.

“No one wants to hurt you, man,” said one of the officers.

But Shultz kept walking toward them and the police opened fire. A multi-tool with a knife was recovered from the scene. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Schultz left three suicide notes behind in a dormitory room. The 21-year-old Schultz identified as neither male or female and led the university’s Pride Alliance.

Atlanta Police were called in to help Georgia Tech police take control of the situation.

Via AJC.com:

Chad Miller, a Tech alumnus taking part in the march, said he thought tear gas had been deployed. He said he was right behind the police car when it erupted into flames.

“All I heard was metal hitting metal,” Miller said. “I’m guessing it was fireworks, there were some pretty powerful ones.”

“I was marching with them until they got in front of the police station and then all hell broke loose.”

Miller said he saw one man who may have been a police officer throwing up and coughing.

A lawyer for the family said Schultz had a utility tool and the blade wasn’t out. They have questioned why police didn’t use non-lethal force.

Schultz was the head of the Georgia Pride Alliance, which had helped organize Monday night’s vigil. The group advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual individuals.

Rioters violently clashed with police as they tried to restore order. Antifa was present and probably behind much of the violence.

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Trump’s Immigration Deal at the Brink of Disaster By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 19th, 2017

If Donald Trump wished to make a mega deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, or even put an end to illegal immigration as he promised, he certainly had viable choices.https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/18/trumps-immigration-deal-brink-disaster/

The only way to blow that opportunity would be to cross the one and only political red line that could destroy his political coalition and career by insulting the intelligence of his base and reneging on his past immigration promises.

No Amnesty, Some Deportations, and Lots of Green-Cards?
Trump could give fence-sitting congressional Republicans an opening. They could institutionalize, clean up, and legalize aspects of the plainly unconstitutional Obama DACA program, but offer only the opportunity of legal residence (not amnesty with a “path to citizenship”). In exchange, Republicans could demand clear requisites for the issuing of a green card:

1) No past criminal convictions;
2) Verifiable proof of U.S. residence for, say, over a year (to preclude those who would flood across the border at the scent of amnesty);
3) Evidence that the applicant was either in school or gainfully employed and not on public assistance.

Liberals would object—given that they privately concede there are thousands among the 1-2 million “Dreamers” who are not, as they like to infer in their rhetoric, vital to the defense industry, Google techies, or Ivy League engineers, but instead have been convicted of crimes, are not working, or are living on public assistance.

More conservative Republicans would sign on to that filtered green-card concession—if in exchange Trump obtained E-Verify, an end to sanctuary cities and chain migration, deportation of non-qualifiers, newly defined rules for legal immigration, and completion of the border wall.

Open Borders Were No Accident
A compromise like that might have made it through the Republican-controlled House and Senate, but it would never have won Democratic support. The idea of any buy-in from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) or Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for more stringent immigration controls is absurd.

Why? Because whereas most Republicans do not believe in deporting every illegal alien, most Democrats do not believe in deporting any illegal alien. They cannot, given that the party long ago mortgaged its soul to its own identity politics radical base—and to the idea that progressives could obtain political power by waiting for demographics to favor them when they could not otherwise persuade voters politically.

Democrats know well that the qualifications to be included in DACA and be named a “Dreamer” are rhetorical constructs that have never been defined and never would be audited.

Deportables may be a small minority of the 1-2 million DACA cohort, but that translates nonetheless into tens of thousands of young people who came with their parents as illegal alien minors and subsequently either did not continue in school, did commit a crime, or did not get a job.

Sending thousands of these non-qualifiers back home would translate in nightly CNN portraits of noble youth unfairly deported for an “accidental,” “not really serious,” “not my fault” drunk-driving convictions or “petty,” “insignificant,” “who cares?” petty-theft guilty pleas.

More importantly, progressives prefer citizenship amnesties, not green-cards, given the entire point of open borders was always bloc voting. The more they cried “racism,” the more they trafficked in racialism, by preferring immigration that was not to be diverse and would give little consideration to skill sets or education, or to those who followed the law.

The Vast Majority of Illegal Aliens Are Not Dreamers
Liberals never understood fully their own logic that, if within a pool of 10-15 million illegal aliens, some are judged deserving of amnesty, then that fact is an argument that others are more likely not to be deserving of amnesty.

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A Confederacy of Dunces Mayor Bill de Blasio goes hunting for ‘hate’ on New York City property.

By on September 19th, 2017

Spare a thought for poor Bill de Blasio. As cities across the South are shedding their Confederate memorials faster than you can say Stonewall Jackson, what New York’s mayor wouldn’t give for a larger-than-life Robert E. Lee bronze in full “Gone With the Wind” glory that he could order taken down.

Instead, he had to content himself with the announcement, days after last month’s deadly protest in Charlottesville, that the violence there had led him to order a 90-day review of “all symbols of hate on city property.”

Alas for the mayor, the Confederate pickings in his Yankee city are slim. The president of Bronx Community College found busts of Jackson and Lee and removed them. The Episcopalians took down two plaques commemorating a maple tree that Lee planted outside a now-closed church when he was stationed at Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton in the 1840s. The tree itself lives, despite its Confederate roots.

But it was left to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to embrace the full absurdity of the moment when it declared that a mosaic at a Times Square subway stop is not in fact meant to be a Confederate flag—but will be altered anyway because it too closely resembles one.

Polls show most Americans oppose the removal of Confederate memorials, at least by mobs or politicians winking at them. Even so, the vandals are ascendant. In recent days Francis Scott Key joined a list of statuesque notables, from Joan of Arc to Wall Street’s Charging Bull, that have been toppled or otherwise despoiled.

Mr. de Blasio is hardly the only pol to grandstand here. But as mayor of the nation’s largest city—and America’s self-styled progressive-in- chief—his eagerness helps illuminate why these hunts for hate hold such an attraction for the Democratic left.

One big reason is that the left’s identity politics is not about healing old wounds. It’s about picking at them. Is there anyone in New York who believes a de Blasio panel rummaging through the city’s monuments for evidence of “hate” will contribute to either greater reconciliation or a deeper appreciation for the complexities of the Civil War?

Second, even where the charge of hate is outrageous, the accusation puts political opponents on the moral defensive. Look at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Most of Washington understands the SPLC’s hate designations are arbitrary and political. But in a confirmation hearing earlier this month for Amy Barrett, an eminently qualified nominee for the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Al Franken berated her for having appeared before an SPLC-designated “hate group.”

The “hate group”? The Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious-liberty outfit whose “hate” turns out to be holding traditional Christian views on marriage and sexuality. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Trump Takes Agenda of Change to the United Nations President softens criticism, but urges world body to ‘focus more on people and less on bureaucracy’By Farnaz Fassihi and Eli Stokols

By on September 19th, 2017

UNITED NATIONS—President Donald Trump called on the United Nations to “focus more on people and less on bureaucracy,” in comments during a meeting of international officials as the annual General Assembly gathering got under way.

Mr. Trump reiterated his campaign criticism that the U.N. wasn’t living up to its potential, but did so in softer terms than he previously has used, sticking with his prepared remarks about the need to reduce bureaucracy and curb mismanagement.

The “ways of the past,” he said, are “not working.”
The president thanked U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who sat beside him, for his openness to changes in U.N. structure and operations. And he said the cost burdens of supporting the institution, which Mr. Trump has argued fall too heavily on the U.S., must be more equally distributed.

“We must ensure that no one and no member state shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden, and that’s militarily and financially,” Mr. Trump said.

The U.S.-hosted event lasted less than an hour and attendees, senior officials from over 100 countries, didn’t interact much with Mr. Trump or offer input on the agenda. Messrs. Trump and Guterres and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley each delivered short remarks.

The United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York this week will be dominated by international concern about North Korea after the country fired a missile over Japan again last week. WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib tells us what to watch out for during the meetings. Photo: Getty

The president’s comments came a day before his highly anticipated official speech at the General Assembly, where Mr.Trump is expected to address broader policy themes including terrorism, the standoff with North Korea and the future of the Iran nuclear deal.

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Higher Ed’s Latest Taboo Is ‘Bourgeois Norms’ An op-ed praising 1950s values provokes another campus meltdown— from the deans on down.By Heather Mac Donald

By on September 19th, 2017

To the list of forbidden ideas on American college campuses, add “bourgeois norms”—hard work, self-discipline, marriage and respect for authority. Last month, two law professors published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for a revival of the “cultural script” that prevailed in the 1950s and still does among affluent Americans: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime.” The weakening of these traditional norms has contributed to today’s low rates of workforce participation, lagging educational levels and widespread opioid abuse, the professors argued.

The op-ed triggered an immediate uproar at the University of Pennsylvania, where one of its authors, Amy Wax, teaches. The dean of the Penn law school, Ted Ruger, published an op-ed in the student newspaper noting the “contemporaneous occurrence” of the op-ed and a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and suggesting that Ms. Wax’s views were “divisive, even noxious.” Half of Ms. Wax’s law-faculty colleagues signed an open letter denouncing her piece and calling on students to report any “bias or stereotype” they encounter “at Penn Law ” (e.g., in Ms. Wax’s classroom). Student and alumni petitions poured forth accusing Ms. Wax of white supremacy, misogyny and homophobia and demanding that she be banned from teaching first-year law classes.

Ms. Wax’s co-author, Larry Alexander, teaches at the University of San Diego, a Catholic institution. USD seemed to be taking the piece in stride—until last week. The dean of USD’s law school, Stephen Ferruolo, issued a schoolwide memo repudiating Mr. Alexander’s article and pledging new measures to compensate “vulnerable, marginalized” students for the “racial discrimination and cultural subordination” they experience.

USD’s response is more significant than Penn’s, because it is more surprising. While USD has embraced a “social justice” mission in recent decades, the law school itself has been less politicized. It has one of the highest proportions of nonleftist professors in the country—about a quarter of the faculty. Mr. Ferruolo, a corporate lawyer with strong ties to the biotech industry, presented himself until recently as mildly conservative. If USD is willing to match Penn’s hysterical response to the Wax-Alexander op-ed, is there any educational institution remaining that will defend its faculty members against false accusations of racism should they dissent from orthodoxy?

Two aspects of the op-ed have generated the most outrage. Ms. Wax and Mr. Alexander observed that cultures are not all “equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy.” Their critics pounced on this statement as a bigoted, hate-filled violation of the multicultural ethic. In his response, Penn’s Dean Ruger proclaimed that “as a scholar and educator I reject emphatically any claim that a single cultural tradition is better than all others.” But that wasn’t the claim the authors were making. Rather, they argued that bourgeois culture is better than underclass culture—specifically, “the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks.” The authors’ criticism of white underclass behavior has been universally suppressed in the stampede to accuse them of “white supremacy.”

The op-ed’s other offense was extolling the 1950s for that decade’s embrace of bourgeois virtues. “Nostalgia for the 1950s breezes over the truth of inequality and exclusion,” five Penn faculty assert in yet another op-ed for the student newspaper. In fact, Mr. Alexander and Ms. Wax expressly acknowledged that era’s “racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism.”

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DEFICITS AND DEBT LIMIT OPTIONS: SYDNEY WILLIAMS

By on September 19th, 2017

“The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety

and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

A recent front-page article in The New York Times dealt with the fate of yellow-cab drivers in New York. The reporter, Winnie Hu, provided a heart-breaking look at those (mostly immigrants) who bought medallions at high prices before Uber and others entered the market, and who are now suffering from fewer riders and lower prices for medallions. She did not write of the role government played, in limiting the number of medallions, which artificially inflated their price and which helped cause the upsurge in unconventional competition. She did not write of creative destruction, where new technology drives out the old, and without which our economy and productivity would stagnate. And, she did not point out the options consumers now have – more competition and greater flexibility.

Governments are facing financial crises. Debt is high, and growing. Deficits are expanding. Yet, our infrastructure needs repair and/or replacement, and our defense needs are not being met. Eleemosynary institutions that rely on government support are facing hard times. There are many reasons for this situation, but the gist is that unionized government workers, entitlements, and the bureaucracies to support them, limit options. Mandatory spending on welfare programs has risen inexorably. Union demands, especially at the state and local levels are untenable. Revenues have not kept pace. The solution lies not in more taxes, but in more robust economic growth.

Demographics add to the problem. As a nation, we are aging. In 2015, 15% of the population was 65 and older, up about three percentage points from 2000. In 2030, that number, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is expected to be 21%. At the same time, the working-age population (18 to 64) is expected to decline from 62% to 58%. In other words, demands on government for retirement and health benefits will increase, while the number of working taxpayers decreases.

We can persist along the current path: borrowing more heavily, increasing taxes, and cutting “discretionary” spending, while increasing deficits and debt. Or we can try to extricate ourselves by changing direction: We can rein in mandatory spending (i.e. entitlements), temper union demands and employ tax and regulatory reform to let the economy grow more quickly.

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Western contempt for China turns to panic : David Goldman

By on September 19th, 2017

Economic boom continues with electronics industry domination and infrastructure growth through trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative

Not since the British garrison at Singapore surrendered to Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita in 1942 has Western opinion of an Asian power changed so fast. When China’s 2015 stock market bubble popped, prevailing Western opinion held that China’s economic boom would flame out in a debt crisis comparable to America’s subprime disaster of 2008 or the near collapse of Europe’s southern tier in 2013.

Now that China’s tradeable stock market has risen by 43% during 2017 in US dollar terms (with the MSCI-based ETF as a benchmark), Western opinion is melting up. Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, is raising money for a China investment vehicle. Bank of Americanow predicts Asian stocks will double in the present bull run. “Hedge Funds Used to Love Shorting China. Now, Not So Much,” declared a Bloomberg headline Sept. 12.

Bottom of Form

The same applies to Western evaluation of China’s standing as a world power. Graham Allison’s The Thucydides Trap, a plea not to oppose China’s strategic challenge to the United States, now sits on the desk of every senior staffer at the National Security Council courtesy of President Trump’s national security adviser, Gen. H.R. McMasters.

Allison puts America in the position of the “established power,” like Sparta on the eve of the Peloponnesian war of 431-404 B.C.E., and China in the position of the “emerging power,” like Athens, arguing that the rise of China is inevitable. Allison’s book has many flaws, as I try to show in the forthcoming issue of Claremont Review of Books, but it depicts a vibrant, technologically-driven Chinese economy.

It will shock Americans who have been told for years that China merely copies Western technology by stealing trade secrets, and for that reason alone Prof. Allison’s book fairly might be called the most influential book of the year.

Allison warns:

In the three and a half decades since Ronald Reagan became president, by the best measurement of economic performance, China has soared from 10 percent the size of the US to 60 percent in 2007, 100 percent in 2014, and 115 percent today. If the current trend continues, China’s economy will be a full 50 percent larger than that of the US by 2023. By 2040 it could be nearly three times as large. That would mean a China with triple America’s resources to use in influencing outcomes in international relations. Such gross economic, political, and military advantages would create a globe beyond anything American policymakers can now imagine.

A sense of resignation, if not outright defeatism, pervades the Trump White House where China is concerned. Washington is dependent on Beijing in the matter of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions; it has no military option as matters stand, and no appetite to undertake the formidable investments in ballistic missile defense that would be required to contain the North Korean threat.

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