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October 2023

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The U.S. Needs a Defense Buildup The House leadership fight anticipates a chaotic redirecting of the fiscal ship. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

By on October 12th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-needs-a-defense-buildup-and-fiscal-redirection-debt-military-house-speaker-47d6207c?mod=opinion_featst_pos3

America’s fiscal habits will be changing. In two of the three theaters of World War II, war has reappeared, in Europe and the Middle East. If Russia and Iran have not yet coalesced into a full military partnership, give them time.

In the Pacific, China threatens Taiwan with a large military buildup and near-daily provocations. To the extent China is supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine with more than words, the two are already cooperating more closely than Germany and Japan did in World War II.

In its economy of effort, this column has mostly sat out the inflation discussion, except to emphasize how the current puzzle differs from the 1970s. Then it was poorly conceived regulatory and tax systems, which Carter-Reagan reforms addressed with more suavity than was apparent at the time. Today’s vulnerability is different: the government’s gross overreliance on debt financing to give voters stuff without taxes to pay for it. Distorted, in ways many of us don’t recognize anymore, is our every choice of whether to work, how much to save, how much of our incomes to allocate to healthcare or homeownership or a college degree of questionable value in the marketplace.

All this will be changing in ways that will likely sneak up on us. When Jimmy Carter was president during the last big inflation, government debt was 34% of GDP. Now it’s 122% not counting $78 trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations. In two years, the average interest rate on the U.S. debt has almost doubled, to 2.97%. Interest payments have more than doubled, to $985 billion, exceeding the defense budget.

This is just the beginning, short of a growth miracle. The truncated duration of our outstanding debt plus 10-year rates over 4.5% mean interest expense will soon outstrip $1.4 trillion in annual Social Security spending. So large is the wave of expected borrowing that Wall Street this week is signaling doubts about the global public’s willingness to fund it.

On top of this comes a need for a big investment in American rearmament.

Now you know why, between his drunken threats of nuclear war, Putin understudy Dmitry Medvedev sprinkles his social-media posts with sardonic comments about Western fiscal management. Phillips O’Brien, the military historian and Ukraine war student from the University of St. Andrews, puts it aptly in his Substack: “The return of conventional war is perhaps the single most important strategic development of this era, and it’s one that we must try to understand, prepare for (and ultimately try and prevent).”

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

If We Had to Be Governed by the Harvard Faculty… Here’s a list of possible candidates. James Freeman

By on October 12th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-we-had-to-be-governed-by-the-harvard-faculty-6e5426ed?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Observing unhinged campus reactions to Saturday’s murderous barbarity, some commenters on social media have been recalling William F. Buckley, Jr.’s opinion that he would rather be governed by the first series of names in a telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard. Certainly one must be extremely wary of consenting to be governed by Harvard students. But not all of their instructors would necessarily oppress us.

On Tuesday afternoon the Journal published this disturbing report from Harvard doctoral student J.J. Kimche:

The university’s “Palestine Solidarity Groups,” a collection of some 30 student groups, issued a statement exculpating the terrorists for their acts of murder, rape, kidnapping and mayhem. “We, the undersigned student organizations,” it began, “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The signatories—groups such as the Harvard Islamic Society and Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine—made clear that they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with this “resistance,” fashionable doublespeak for those feverishly working to wipe Jews off the face of the earth. Harvard isn’t alone: Some 50 student organizations at the University of California, Berkeley declared their “unwavering support for the resistance in Gaza.”
Most Jewish students have harbored mixed feelings toward pro-Palestinian groups on our campuses. Some sympathize with their cause; others see them as hostile; most ignore them. By and large, we have been happy to regard members of such groups as fellow travelers on the journey of learning and discovery, with whom we share spaces and engage in respectful classroom discussion. But during a moment of stunning moral clarity—such as the live-streaming of masked terrorists gleefully machine-gunning Jewish families—one would expect fellow students of all political persuasions to unite in horror and condemnation. The deepest political differences can be tolerated if we all abide by a basic framework of decency.
Not only have our fellow students failed to condemn this proto-genocide; they have justified and celebrated it.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Blaming Israel for Hamas Attacks Sparks Backlash Across U.S., Exposing Deep Rifts As debates span colleges, politics and workplaces, critics of the nation dodge reputational and professional damage

By on October 12th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/israel-hamas-attack-us-backlash-ff5f25e8

Across U.S. universities, workplaces and halls of power, a swift backlash is meeting those who denounce Israel in the wake of Hamas’s deadly attack on Saturday.

On social media and beyond, some groups and individuals sympathetic to the Palestinian cause effectively placed blame for the attack on Israel, alleging that the nation’s policies have left Palestinians little choice but to lash out with violence. Some of that commentary came over the weekend, as reports of atrocities committed by Hamas were beginning to emerge.

Many of those statements have since been met with fierce resistance from a variety of voices, including Jewish groups and university heads. Some corporate leaders have also entered the fray, with some threatening not to hire students who blamed Israel for the attack.

That pushback has prompted some progressive politicians and left-leaning student organizations to walk back statements blaming the Jewish state for the violence that began over the weekend or remove their names from petitions condemning Israel.

The tension has ensnared the likes of Harvard President Claudine Gay, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and college students who faulted Israel for creating the conditions that they said led to the attacks. 

On Tuesday, the law firm Winston & Strawn rescinded a job offer to a summer associate studying at the New York University School of Law after the student wrote in a newsletter that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”

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