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June 2019

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Colleges Committed to Ideological Diversity “10 colleges where you won’t have to walk on eggshells.” Walter Williams

By on June 11th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273923/colleges-committed-ideological-diversity-walter-williams

EXCERPTS

The University of Chicago has set the gold standard on free speech and open inquiry. In 2014, it created its “Statement on Principles of Free Expression” (aka the Chicago Principles). Those principles provide the framework for thinking about the importance of dissent as well as the role of the university for establishing the platform for debate. University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer says, “We have an obligation to see that the greatest variety of perspectives is brought to bear on issues before us as scholars and citizens.” The Chicago Principles, or substantially similar ones, have been adopted by 55 schools across the nation. In June 2018, the University of Chicago received Heterodox Academy’s Institutional Excellence Award in recognition of its stellar culture and support for open inquiry.

Other colleges listed in the Mashek and Haidt article, where students won’t have to walk on eggshells include Arizona State University, Claremont McKenna College, Kansas State University, Kenyon College, Linn-Benton Community College, St. John’s College, University of Richmond and Purdue University. It’s worth noting that Mitch Daniels is president of Purdue University and former two-term governor of the state of Indiana. Daniels and his interim provost Jay Akridge wrote this message to the Purdue community: “At Purdue, we protect and promote the right to free and open inquiry in all matters and guarantee all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen challenge and learn.”

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

George Will Demands Open Borders: ‘I’m For As Much Immigration As The Economy Can Take’ By Michael van der Galien see note

By on June 11th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/george-will-demands-open-borders-im-for-as-much-immigration-as-the-economy-can-take/

The sesquipedalian (using long words, long-winded) Will was once a great journalist, but he has clearly lost his footing but retained his pomposity …..rsk

Establishment Conservative columnist and author George Will told Hill.TV yesterday morning that he supports as much immigration “as the economy can take.” According to Will, America needs mass immigration because of an aging workforce and millions of “unfilled jobs.”

Will was on the show because he has written a new book, The Conservative Sensibility. In this book, he argues that conservatives “made a wrong turn,” and he advocates a “return” to the principles of “small government.”

However, with “small government” Will doesn’t actually mean small government. What he does mean is cheap labor for Big Business. You see, according to Will, the entire system of entitlements is “here to stay.” The problem is “how to pay for them.” To do so, America needs a “dynamic” economic system, by which he means the capitalist free market system… and mass immigration.

“I believe immigration is an inherently entrepreneurial act,” Will said (much to the surprise of European watchers who see many ‘entrepreneurial immigrants’ from Syria come to Europa, after which they prefer to cash in welfare checks rather than get to work). “It’s people uprooting themselves, taking a risk for themselves and their families.”

“I think in a country in which baby boomers are retiring, where we have an aging workforce, where we have seven million unfilled jobs at the moment, and we have people clamoring to get into our country, to get to work, I’m for as much immigration as the economy can handle. The economy needs immigration just as much as the immigrants need the American economy.”

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

A Win at the Border

By on June 11th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/a-win-at-the-border/

“The New York Times had a report over the weekend throwing cold water on the deal, saying its component parts had already been agreed to months ago. It’s no secret that the U.S. has been pushing Mexico in this direction for a while (indeed, prior talks that the Times calls “secret” were publicly announced). It’s still an accomplishment to get Mexico to commit openly to fuller, more urgent cooperation with the U.S.”

President Trump evidently knows something about the art of the tariff threat. His unorthodox Twitter diplomacy has gotten Mexico to make potentially important public commitments on immigration enforcement.

Trump said he was going to slap steadily escalating tariffs on Mexico unless it did more to help with the border crisis, a threat with huge downside risks. If implemented, the tariffs would have been disruptive at a time when U.S. growth is perhaps slowing, been an economic gut-punch to an allied country whose stability is important to us, and probably precipitated a congressional revolt against the policy. Instead, Trump has a win that is likely more than a mere PR victory.

Mexico is devoting 6,000 troops to attempting to better police its own border with Guatemala. It’s unclear what this will produce, although it can’t hurt. More important is the extension of the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), or the “remain in Mexico” policy. Under this arrangement, we can return asylum-seekers to Mexico while their claims — almost always ultimately rejected — are adjudicated. This avoids one of the biggest problems of our current policy, which allows asylum-seekers into the country, never to be removed, even if their claims are rejected and they are ordered deported.

Mexico wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about MPP and limited the number of asylum-seekers it would accept to a trickle. Now it is saying it will accept them with no restrictions. That’s a big deal, although our capacity to process the migrants for return is limited, and it remains to be seen how much Mexico will do to follow through on its commitment. The deal at least makes it possible, though, for us to prevent Central American family units from automatically gaining entry into the country, and thus it significantly reduces the incentive for a future flow of migrants.  

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Americans Aren’t Ready for Cold War II To prevail against China, the U.S. must better understand its rival—and itself. By Walter Russell Mead

By on June 11th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-arent-ready-for-cold-war-ii-11560207604

A series of conversations with Trump administration officials at every level as well as leading Democrats points to two clear and disturbing conclusions. First, the U.S. is increasingly committed to a historic turn in its relations with China as opinion hardens on both sides of the aisle. Second, we aren’t ready for what is coming.

In some ways the situation is comparable to the mid-1940s, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union moved quickly from wartime alliance to Cold War. President Truman and a handful of State Department and War Department officials saw the clash coming early, but public opinion was slower to move. Winston Churchill’s now-famous “Iron Curtain” speech in March 1946 was widely criticized as too hawkish; Truman, who sat through the speech and applauded it, had to distance himself from Churchill’s hard line. It took the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the start of the Berlin Airlift in June, and the reinstitution of the draft in July to bring the reality of the Cold War home to the American public.

Today both Washington and Beijing are maneuvering themselves for some kind of long-term competition—but just as few observers in 1946 could imagine a four-decade global standoff, neither we nor the Chinese can predict the scale, scope or consequences of the emerging rivalry. It is likely both to echo the Cold War in some ways and to diverge radically from it in others.

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