Hillary Clinton told an audience in Chicago this week that the “great unfinished business of this century” is the creation of more opportunities for women. One can almost hear the gears turning in her head as she eyes the presidency in 2016.

What greater opportunity for a woman than to be president of the United States, and what greater chance for Americans to be redeemed from a sexist past than to elect the first female president?

To a crowd of adoring fans at the Clinton Global conference, Hillary chose her words purposely, planting seeds in the minds of the American public that what our country needs is a woman to lead the way into a fuller, brighter, and safer future:

When women participate in peacemaking and peacekeeping, we are safer and more secure, and when women participate in politics, the effects ripple throughout society.

The focus on gender politics is obvious, but notice that Clinton doesn’t veer into the typical war-on-women talking points. She doesn’t highlight wage disparity or reproductive rights; instead, she broadens her scope with the lofty and timely language of peace.

Her message, however, isn’t one of peace through strength or individual responsibility, but of security and, above all, safety. These are the “effects” of a feminized culture that have rippled throughout society, and these are the values Democrats will exploit in 2014 and 2016.

This is particularly true in light of current scandals that have exposed how a bloated and unaccountable government can violate the rights and liberties of American citizens. The Democrats momentarily found themselves on the defensive, but no longer.

They’ve turned the tide by changing the focus of the controversy, twisting it back on the right. The problem is no longer the threat of big government to American privacy and freedom, but libertarian and conservative “paranoid extremists” who don’t trust government to keep us safe and secure.

Clinton has gotten the message, and she’s going to run with it: we live in dangerous times and our enemies hide in shadows, so we need to trust our government to do anything it can to keep us safe and secure.

And who better to protect us, to make our country safe, to gather us up like chicks under her wing than a woman? Isn’t that what women do best? Nurture, promote peace, soothe the savage beast of man? Who better to guide us into an era of peace and security than the softer sex? Who better than Hillary Clinton?

The race for the presidency in 2016 has already begun. What strategy should conservatives employ in this climate of fear and gender politics? What is the conservative answer to Americans who are willing to sacrifice their liberty for security and to elect a woman as president simply because they believe they owe it to her?

Apparently, the democraczar occasionally indulges in feats of derring-do slighly more pedestrian than firing crossbows at whales or recovering priceless antiquities on Black Sea diving expeditions. From CBS Sports:

Back in 2005 [New England] Patriots owner Robert Kraft was in Russia when a funny thing happened: Russian president Vladimir Putin stole his $25,000 Super Bowl XXXIX ring. Actually for the past eight years, Kraft had let everyone believe he gave the ring to Putin as a gift, but the truth came out this week: Putin stole it -- or took it without asking if 'stole' is too strong of a word for you.

"I took out the ring and showed it to [Putin], and he put it on and he goes, 'I can kill someone with this ring,'" Kraft said at an event this week, via the New York Post. "I put my hand out and he put it in his pocket, and three KGB guys got around him and walked out."

Kraft might have helped America dodge World War III because instead of going after the ring, Kraft let Putin keep it -- at the insistence of the White House. Yes, someone at the White House called Kraft and insisted he let Putin keep the ring.

"It would really be in the best interest of US-Soviet relations if you meant to give the ring as a present," Kraft said he was told on the White House call.

Congratulations to readers who've surmised that the White House response was a metaphor for everything that's been wrong with our policy towards Russia for the last decade.

Jeb Bush can sometimes show that he too has inherited his family’s, er, way with words (the Washington Post reports him as saying this):

 “Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans,” Bush said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority conference. “Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.”

 That, I think, could have been put rather better.

 The Post continues:

Bush said immigrants are an advantage that the United States has over China, Europe and Japan, which don’t have the same immigrant tradition and are struggling to find young laborers.

Really? They are struggling. Struggling?

Japan has its demographic issues (much less of a problem than is often thought, in my view), but let’s look at its supposed shortage of “young laborers”

 The Economist has the details:

Japan’s youth joblessness, which surged after its financial crisis in the early 1990s, has stayed high despite a fast fall in the overall workforce. A large class of hikikomori live with their parents, rarely leaving home and withdrawn from the workforce.

Oh.

China too is going to have to confront the reality of an aging population, but there’s no structural labor shortage there. And as for its alleged lack of “young laborers”, the New York Times has some information here:

Jobs go begging in factories while many educated young workers are unemployed or underemployed. A national survey of urban residents, released this winter by a Chinese university, showed that among people in their early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education….China’s swift expansion in education over the last decade, including a quadrupling of the number of college graduates each year, has created millions of engineers and scientists. The best can have their pick of jobs at Chinese companies that are aiming to become even more competitive globally. But China is also churning out millions of graduates with few marketable skills, coupled with a conviction that they are entitled to office jobs with respectable salaries.

That last thing could never happen here of course.

Europe, Governor Bush, they could do with more “young laborers” over there, could they?  Really?

 Over to the Atlantic:

Europe's job market is a historic disaster. The EU unemployment rate set a new all-time high of 12.2 percent, according to today's estimates. But it's the youth unemployment crisis that's truly terrifying. In Spain, unemployment surged past 56 percent, and Greece now leads the rich world with an astonishing 62.5 percent of its youth workforce out of a job….Since April 2012, Greek youth unemployment has grown by about one percentage point a month. At that rate, it would pass 70 percent in early 2014. It is suddenly not insane to imagine a youth unemployment rate of 70 percent in the developed world. And that is insane. It should be noted that some people consider youth unemployment figures a bit hyperbolic. They prefer measures like "youth unemployment ratio, which takes the share of young people who are looking for work but can't find it and divides it by the entire population. Last year, the EU's youth unemployment ratio was 9.7 percent , less than half the youth unemployment rate of 23 percent.

But even the ratio fails to account for the millions of young people who have all but given up in their awful economies. There are 26 million young people in rich countries who are as "NEETS" (Not Employed, or in Education, or Training), according to the OECD.  Youth unemployment is bad for all the obvious reasons, including the big loss to future productivity and earnings. But Europe's youth unemployment is strange, because we've never seen a generation *this educated* also be this unemployed. Nearly 40 percent of Spain's 20-and early-30-somethings are college educated. In Greece, it's 30 percent.

Jeb Bush is not a stupid man, but it does  look (at least on this occasion)  as if his grasp of economic data was even less assured than his command of language.

The underlying problem, of course, is that Bush is stuck in a mid-twentieth century mindset dominated by a model of labor-intensive production that is now in rapid decline. Yes, of course there are skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants (and few of those opposed to Marco Rubio’s squalid legislative initiative are unreceptive to a degree of skills-based immigration), but the combined effect of automation and globalization is such that the assumption that more people must mean more, widely available and better-paid jobs is hopelessly dated, and hopelessly naïve.

To suggest that it still reflects reality is profoundly misleading.

First the British government goes all coy about who started the Great War, and now this.

 The Daily Mail reports:

It is often regarded as the British Army’s greatest military victory. Led into battle by the Duke of Wellington, UK troops routed Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, a triumph ushering in almost a century of peace and stability in Europe. But the Government is refusing to mark the battle’s 200th anniversary in 2015 amid suspicions it does not want to offend France. That decision is in stark contrast to Belgium - where the clash took place. The government in Brussels is spending at least £ 20 million on commemorative events, including restoring the battlefield.  Instead, there will only be ‘initiatives’ at military museums and ‘some commemorative activity’ at the Duke’s former homes.

Times are hard and the (enjoyable) suspicion that the government is worried about offending France does not seem to be based on very firm evidence (although that will not be enough to stop me sharing in it), but, even if this decision is not the latest outbreak of EU PC, it does appear to be yet another failure of imagination by a government that so often loses its way when it comes to anything to do with Europe.  

Worse than that, it is a missed opportunity. There is (officially, at least) a lot of worrying about how the UK lacks a national ‘story’ sufficiently attractive to foster patriotism in its younger, more multicultural/multiethnic generations. Despite the best efforts of Danny Boyle, the National Health Service is not, it seems, enough. Commemorating a hard-fought, heroic victory over a tyrant might, one would think, be a helpful  (and rather sound) addition to the narrative – and a useful history lesson too.

But it is not to be. 

Come to think about it, I'm not hearing a lot about the six-hundredth anniversary of Agincourt (also due in 2015) either. That was against the French too.

Hmmm...

In the aftermath of 9-11, US citizens were told that we needed a well-funded domestic security apparatus, capable of gathering intelligence and acting to thwart further terrorist attacks on our country. And so we created a Department of Homeland Security, staffed by professionals dedicated to preventing another jihadist attack.

 But we were simultaneously and relentlessly schooled in the need to employ only the most politically correct counter-terrorist techniques. We learned, for example, that singling out young Middle Eastern men for scrutiny at airport security checkpoints was an unacceptable manifestation of Islamophobia. Official attention was therefore directed on a random basis, with grandmothers in wheelchairs and toddlers in strollers treated no differently from anyone else. Over time, our Prime Directive became so ingrained that federal authorities could not focus on a radicalized Chechen immigrant family—despite warnings from Russian intelligence officials—until after the Tsarnaev brothers exploded their pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon. And even then, the immediate official response was to stress the even-handedness of the manhunt—with a search for hitherto unknown tax-protesting terrorists high on the list of possibilities.

In 2009, strict observance of the Prime Directive prevented action against a US Army officer known to be a pen pal of Al Qaeda bigwig Anwar al-Awlaki until after Major Hasan shot dead 13 fellow soldiers and wounded another 30 while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” in what is officially categorized as an unfortunate episode of “workplace violence.” In a moment of rare candor, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey, Jr. pinpointed our national security priority in the wake of Major Hasan’s bad day at the office:  “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” So in order to be fair to all, we are now being asked to shred each citizen’s Second Amendment rights as the only way to reduce “gun violence.” 

President Obama likes to say that “If even one child’s life can be saved, then we need to act”, but the actions contemplated are always in full compliance with the Prime Directive of politically correct diversity. 

Meanwhile, in a further display of fairness, our Department of Homeland Security warns law enforcement of the threat posed by the recently discharged veteran next door, while bulking up on armored vehicles and ammunition—1.6 billion rounds worth.  You can never be too careful when dealing with an imaginary, non-diverse terrorist threat.

But actual threats are tougher to address. After all, it is racist to put a fence on our southern border; keep track of foreigners entering and leaving the United States; question immigrants about their legal status when stopped by police for another reason; or even think about enforcing US immigration laws, except against those clueless souls dumb enough to apply and enter via the legal route. For them, we have a process that would do Kafka proud. 

Given this background, is it really surprising that our anti-terrorism professionals default to treating all of us exactly the same, vacuuming everyone’s personal data into one big fair-and-equitable database? The analysts at NSA know that there are would-be terrorists that mean to enter the United States and cause mayhem. But they also know that the Prime Directive prevents us stopping potential threats at the border or placing them under targeted surveillance once they get here. Therefore, the only politically correct thing to do with a very substantial budget is to monitor everyone, all the time, thereby preventing the tragedy of reducing diversity through a malignant focus on actual terrorist suspects. 

To boil this down to the essentials, just think of the NSA as the Internet equivalent of the TSA, conducting your own personal enhanced digital pat-down, 24 x 7 x 365.

Curious about something I read this morning, I just scrolled through the past week's worth of posts on the Main Feed. That's at least 50-60 posts. And unless I'm blind as a bat (which, at my age, I can't entirely rule out), there were exactly zero posts directly on the subject of immigration reform, and only one -- from Red Feline three days ago -- that sort of touched on it.

And yet what current issue -- other than Obamacare, which may or may not be in play -- is as likely to have as much long-term impact on the country as this one?  I find the lack of spirited discussion -- or even plain old outrage -- curious. Is it because it is just assumed that everyone here agrees?  That hasn't precluded hosts of posts on IRS targeting, Obamacare, and many other topics on which the majority of members here are even more likely to agree than on immigration. Or is it because people are somehow uncomfortable with the subject, sensing that there is no obvious alternative to either acquiescing, however reluctantly, in a significant re-engineering of the electorate or coming across as vaguely anti-Hispanic? But that doesn't sound like the Ricochet community at all.

Herewith, then, a contribution.

Byron York reports in the Washington Examiner this morning that in a radio interview yesterday Senator Rubio offered up two reasons why "legalization" must precede "security." First, noting that it would take at least four years to secure the border, “We cannot wait another four years with 11 million people living in this country illegally without knowing who they are or why they’re here.”

Huh? Why not? A lot of these people have been here a lot longer than four years.  What is going to be so traumatically worse about the next four? And what on earth is that bit about "without knowing who they are or why they are here?" When did this become the amnesty-for-amnesiacs bill? They know perfectly well who they are, and why they are here.

But his second justification is, if possible, even sillier. "We’re going to require them to pay a fine, and that’s the money that we are going to use to pay for the border security,” Rubio explained. “If we don’t get that fine money from the people that have violated our immigration laws, then the American taxpayer is going to have to pay for border security.”

Again, huh? Border security is one of the few things probably 80-90% of taxpayers are perfectly willing to pay for. Cowboy poetry festivals? Not so much. Border security? Fine, sign me up; I'll send the check tomorrow.

What is this nonsense?  If this is the best one of the lead sponsors of "comprehensive immigration reform" can come up with, can someone please help me understand why this whole thing is not already DOA outside of the Democratic Party?  Democratic support I wholly understand -- as Bill Maher admitted a week or so ago, the proposal simply mints "a lot of new Democrats."  But if you're not a Democratic Party apparatchik, what on earth is the rationale for supporting this?

Earlier this week, Yuval Levin, Hertog Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and editor of National Affairs, accepted the Bradley Prize, an honor that I noted a few months ago when it was announced. In his acceptance speech, he presented the following formulation:

To my mind, conservatism is gratitude. Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it, while liberals tend to begin from outrage at what is bad and broken and seek to uproot it.

You need both, because some of what is good about our world is irreplaceable and has to be guarded, while some of what is bad is unacceptable and has to be changed. We should never forget that the people who oppose our various endeavors and argue for another way are well intentioned too, even when they’re wrong, and that they’re not always wrong.

...

Conservatives often begin from gratitude because we start from modest expectations of human affairs—we know that people are imperfect, and fallen, and weak; that human knowledge and power are not all they’re cracked up to be; and we’re enormously impressed by the institutions that have managed to make something great of this imperfect raw material. So we want to build on them because we don’t imagine we could do better starting from scratch.

Liberals often begin from outrage because they have much higher expectations—maybe even utopian expectations—about the perfectibility of human things and the potential of human knowledge and power. They’re often willing to ignore tradition and to push aside institutions that channel generations of wisdom because they think we can do better on our own.

This can sometimes leave conservatives feeling like we are the brakes on American life, while people on the left hold the steering wheel. Like they push for their idea of progress and we just want to go a little more slowly. But that’s a serious mistake.

The American idea of progressisthe tradition that we’re defending. It is made possible precisely by sustaining our deep ties to the ideals of liberty, and equality, and human dignity expressed in our founding and our institutions. The great moral advances in our history have involved the vindication of those principles—have involved America becoming more like itself.

Beautifully rendered. Yuval gracefully articulates what I've always thought is the major temperamental division between left and right: they're always outraged that things aren't perfect; we're always shocked that things aren't much worse.

We think we're possessed of a healthy skepticism, while they think we're pessimists with a slightly misanthropic streak. They think that they're optimists fueled by compassion, while we think they're often cockeyed pollyanas blind to the law of unintended consequences.

What do you think of conservatism as gratitude? What other word(s) might you use to describe conservatism's essence? Is there some (albeit limited) value to be taken from liberalism's propensity for outrage?

Am I mentioning Rick Santorum only because I know how many of you hate him? Possibly! But seriously, he said something yesterday that needs to be heard by political types on the right:

“One after another, they talked about the business they had built. But not a single—not a single —factory worker went out there,” Santorum told a few hundred conservative activists at an “after-hours session” of the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington. “Not a single janitor, waitress or person who worked in that company! We didn’t care about them. You know what? They built that company too! And we should have had them on that stage.”

“When all you do is talk to people who are owners, talk to folks who are ‘Type As’ who want to succeed economically, we’re talking to a very small group of people,” he said. “No wonder they don’t think we care about them. No wonder they don’t think we understand them. Folks, if we’re going to win, you just need to think about who you talk to in your life.”

Trying to carve out a role as a leading populist in the 2016 field, Santorum insisted that Republicans must “talk to the folks who are worried about the next paycheck,” not the CEOs.

This makes so much sense to me that I am confused as to how the GOP and Romney messed it up so badly last year.

And whatever policy differences I have with Rick Santorum, I might note that there is absolutely no conflict -- the opposite, in fact -- between free market entrepreneurship and praising labor and individual contributions of employees.

There have been a number of developments regarding the civil war in Syria. For one thing, the Obama Administration has come to the conclusion that the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against Syrian rebels, and now believes that it must arm the rebels against the regime.  It ought to go without saying that the use of chemical weapons is A Bad Thing, but everyone ought to understand that the arming of Syrian rebels may not represent the end of American involvement in Syria. Rather, it may only represent the beginnings of that involvement, and we may not like what comes next.

For the moment, as the New York Times story indicates, the Obama Administration has ruled out the implementation of a no-fly zone in Syria, which itself would constitute a military action; a no-fly zone is maintained through denying the enemy the ability to fly aircraft in the zone, of course, but it is also maintained by taking out enemy anti-aircraft batteries and missiles, and enemy radar that might undermine the maintenance of a no-fly zone by aircraft flown to enforce the no-fly rule.

The problem with arming the rebels, however, is that we may be arming elements we don't particularly like. I referenced this danger in the past. Forgive the fact that I am quoting myself immediately below, but I think it might be called for in this case:

There are calls for the administration to send arms to the Syrian opposition, but aiding the Free Syrian Army comes with a significant set of risks. There are allegations that armed opposition groups in Syria have engaged in significant human rights abuses, and offering aid to those groups might inadvertently benefit Islamists who are hostile to the United States and to American interests. Indeed, at least one UN official believes that anti-regime forces have used chemical weapons. The United States should not be eager to jump into bed with the Syrian opposition by giving arms and aid to religious fanatics and egregious violators of the laws of warfare.

I am sorry to report that my concerns on this score may have been justified: 

When a 14-year-old boy from the Syrian city of Aleppo named Mohammad Qatta was asked to bring one of his customers some coffee, he reportedly refused, saying, “Even if [Prophet] Mohammed comes back to life, I won’t.”

According to a story reported by two grassroots Syrian opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center, Qatta’s words got him killed. A group of Islamist rebels, driving by in a black car, reportedly heard the exchange. They stopped the car, grabbed the boy and took him away.

Qatta, in refusing to serve a customer coffee – it’s not clear why – had used a phrase that the Islamist rebels took as an insult toward the Prophet Mohammed, the most important figure in Islam. That offhand comment, made by a boy, was apparently enough for these rebels to warrant a grisly execution and public warning.

The rebels, according to ABC News’ reconstruction of the Syrian groups’ reports, appear to have whipped Qatta. When they brought him back to where they’d taken him, his head was wrapped by a shirt.

The rebels waited for a crowd to gather; Qatta’s parents were among them. Speaking in classical Arabic, they announced that Qatta had committed blasphemy and that anyone else who dared insult the Prophet Mohammed would share his fate. Then, the shirt still wrapped around the boy’s head, the rebels shot him in the mouth and neck.

And more:

A Syrian rebel group's pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda's replacement for Osama bin Laden suggests that the terrorist group's influence is not waning and that it may take a greater role in the Western-backed fight to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The pledge of allegiance by Syrian Jabhat al Nusra Front chief Abou Mohamad al-Joulani to al-Qaeda leader Sheik Ayman al-Zawahri was coupled with an announcement by the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq, that it would work with al Nusra as well.

Lebanese Sheik Omar Bakri, a Salafist who says states must be governed by Muslim religious law, says al-Qaeda has assisted al Nusra for some time.

"They provided them early on with technical, military and financial support , especially when it came to setting up networks of foreign jihadis who were brought into Syria," Bakri says. "There will certainly be greater coordination between the two groups."

The United States, which supports the overthrow of Assad, designated al Nusra a terrorist entity in December. The Obama administration has said it wants to support only those insurgent groups that are not terrorist organizations.

As though it will be easy to ensure that money goes only to those rebel segments that the Obama Administration happens to like. More:

When the group Jabhat al Nusra first claimed responsibility for car and suicide bombings in Damascus that killed dozens last January, many of Syria’s revolutionaries claimed that the organization was a creation of the Syrian government, designed to discredit those who opposed the regime of President Bashar Assad and to hide the regime’s own brutal tactics.

Nearly a year later, however, Jabhat al Nusra, which U.S. officials believe has links to al Qaida, has become essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad.

Not only does the group still conduct suicide bombings that have killed hundreds, but they’ve proved to be critical to the rebels’ military advance. In battle after battle across the country, Nusra and similar groups do the heaviest frontline fighting. Groups who call themselves the Free Syrian Army and report to military councils led by defected Syrian army officers move into the captured territory afterward.

The prominence of Nusra in the rebel cause worries U.S. and other Western officials, who say its operations rely on the same people and tactics that fueled al Qaida in Iraq – an assertion that is borne out by interviews with Nusra members in Syria.

Why are we giving arms to rebel elements when there is no guarantee whatsoever that those arms won't end up in the hands of terrorists who have professed hostility towards the United States and towards American interests, and who have actually carried out terrorist operations against the United States?

Policymaking is not made any easier by the fact that former president Bill Clinton is double-dog daring the Obama administration to be tough in Syria, lest President Obama look like "a fool" or "a wuss."  

I don't even pretend to understand the logic here. Surely, Bill Clinton knows that many of the Syrian rebel groups are non-fans of the United States and don't profess our moral values. Surely, he understands that our willingness to dip our toes into the waters of war in Syria might lead us to wade in those waters further in the future. Surely he realizes that there are no American national security interests at stake here--indeed, from an exceedingly cold realpolitik standpoint, if the United States really wanted to see its interests served, it would do everything within its power to ensure that the civil war in Syria goes on for as long as possible (the better to bleed Iran dry as it seeks to prop up the Assad regime and throws good money after bad in the process). And surely the former president realizes that while the human carnage in Syria is nothing short of horrific, there may be very little that the United States can do about that short of engaging in a full-scale war which would involve boots on the ground--a proposition for which there is no support whatsoever in the United States. Maybe the plan is that Hillary Clinton will eventually embrace all this tough, anti-fool/anti-wuss rhetoric in any run for the presidency, thus making her appear to be strong and resolute in the view of American voters. That may make for great politics, but it would make for a terrible foreign/military policy.

David Brooks's op-ed this week represents much of what is wrong with liberal "communitarians." They seem to think that strong communities mean strong central government bureaucracies, when, of course, it's the bureaucracy and centralized power that contribute to the demise of more local, trusted institutions. Brooks says:

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.

As a friend summarized the argument to me: "Brooks's thesis, if I can try to gather myself to transcribe it, is that the loss of community in America is bad because it produces leakers who wish to expose Panopticon and are thus morally shallow." Brooks, in effect, says instead to  trust your executive agencies, er -- I mean,  your institutions! 

Then, over at Commentary, Peter Wehner somehow praises Brooks for "articulat[ing] a deeply conservative vision of society, social arrangements, authority and the (invisible) bonds that hold us together." But Wehner neglects to address what caused the disintegration of such mores.  

To Wehner's point, a strain of libertarianism is a cause; a libertine, egoistic mentality does little to encourage culture, norms, a reliance on (gasp) the advice of priests or rabbis, a kinship with neighbors, and so on. Furthermore --- and I think few libertarians acknowledge this point out of Tocqueville --- the individualization of Americans makes it easier for the government to intrude, as each person views his insecurity and isolation with fear and a subsequent willingness to give up some liberties in exchange for that government's protection and aid.

It is obvious, however, that the fundamental problem is not libertarians. Centralized federal government --- and the apparent comfort that comes with it --- makes community an unnecessary inconvenience. This phenomenon is perhaps exemplified by the painful anxiety to avoid one's nosy neighbors (yet the relative ease when the Man in Gray reads your e-mails).

Indeed, in our current (dire) situation, one actually needs a strain of libertarianism --- the kind that opposes centralizing everything and that welcomes a certain risk and discomfort in localizing services --- to create the preconditions for a revivification of community. Weaving a "social fabric" (Brooks's term) from millions of threads already hanging on a mild, faraway federal government is difficult, if not impossible. Once these threads with the Leviathan are cut (a kind of freedom), they can and must seek ties elsewhere --- in churches, towns, local clubs, etc.

But if Brooks's "conservative" plan to weaken the Leviathan is to place our trust in it, the results will disappoint both him and conservatives. Such a proposition suggests that Brooks does not even know how the Leviathan or communities come to exist.

In any dispute between Jon Kyl and Rand Paul, my sympathies lie with Kyl. I hope that's not a surprise. Thus, I note with interest this story in the Washington Free Beacon :

Former Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) criticized what he described as a resurgent isolationist streak in Congress during a breakfast discussion at the Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday.

...

Kyl took issue in particular with the views of Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a prospective 2016 presidential candidate and a new member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“People like Sen. Rand Paul say ‘what the United States needs now is a foreign policy that is reluctant,’” said Kyl. “No. It does not need a reluctant foreign policy. You may decide at one point or another that you’re not going to engage in a particular situation either economically, or diplomatically, or potentially militarily. But you shouldn’t be reluctant about what your goals are, what your objectives are, and your willingness to commit whatever power, soft or hard, that you have at any given time, against the problem.”

Kyl added that Paul has “been very clear about his view that the United States, with regard to terrorism, should just have a position of containment, as if somehow you could contain these things.”

“Even containment has a concept behind it of doing something,” he continued. “And what happens when you have to apply force to that concept of containment, if you don’t have the capability?”

I would actually go farther than Kyl. I would suggest that Paul and extreme libertarians like him actually have no coherent foreign policy. They simply have a desire to withdraw to the homeland. But that is an instinct, not a theory or strategy. It has no evaluation of different foreign policy goals or matching of means and ends. In a world where other nations and even terrorist groups can easily project power across the oceans -- and where one third of our economy depends on international trade -- Paul's foreign policy cannot work.

Maybe some of the libertarians on Ricochet have a more intellectually developed approach to foreign policy. Any ideas?

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has earned much conservative praise for her colorful duels with President Obama. Now out-of-state Republicans are shocked to find her transformed into a passionate Obamacare booster.

Earlier today, Brewer challenged the authority of the Republican-led state legislature and rammed through a vast expansion of the Medicaid program through Obamacare. A “Brewer Coalition” of every Democrat and a handful of Republicans engineered a 3:40 a.m. house vote, refusing to answer any questions about the controversial measure. The legislation was rushed through the state senate and is now on the governor’s desk.

Brewer’s unprecedented power play outraged the conservative leadership along with the grassroots.

[Conservatives] complained the process shut out the public and most members of the GOP, which hold majorities in both chambers. They said the bills were not fully vetted in committees and caucuses, and they were forced to make important policy decisions on more than 600 pages of amendments in a matter of hours.

To make matters worse, they said, the coalition members refused to answer questions from the conservatives.

“How are you not embarrassed for yourselves?” said Rep. Javan Mesnard, R-Chandler. “Is anyone going to stand up and give a defense?”

But time after time, in both the House and Senate, no one did.

Much like Pelosi with Obamacare, Brewer effectively told members to pass the bill to find out what's in it. This disappointing turn of events has conservatives from coast to coast asking, “what happened?”

The likely explanation is all-too-familiar: cronyism. Brewer’s right-hand man is lobbyist and political consultant Chuck Coughlin — a man insiders refer to as “the real governor of Arizona.”

Last year, Coughlin created a massive coalition of hospitals, insurance companies and other health care insiders to push for Obamacare-approved Medicaid and the billions of dollars that come with it. By forcing through this vote, the well-connected get a huge payday on the taxpayer’s dime.

Far-left outlets like ThinkProgress have praised the governor’s sweetheart deal as “sticking by her convictions.” Meanwhile, conservative publications like National Review have excoriated Brewer for betraying her party, her state and basic economics.

Arizona conservatives have vowed to launch a referendum effort to stop the Medicaid expansion. But, at least for today, Jan Brewer and her Democrat allies are celebrating an unexpected victory for Obamacare.

Based on the response to member Monty Adams' post this morning, it is evident that the piece I coauthored with Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute has struck a raw chord with many readers on Ricochet, just as it does with most of the members of the Cato Institute. So here is a bit of background to indicate what I think about the situation:

First, there is no categorical libertarian opposition to government programs that are intended to deal with the threat of force against people (both citizens and others) and property within the United States. Indeed, the reason why libertarians are not anarchists is because they accept that this is a legitimate state function, for which taxes can be raised and government protections installed under even the narrowest definition of the police power.

Second, the difficulty in this area does not come so much with the punishment of past acts, but with the commission of future ones. There is some evidentiary uncertainty with the former and massive uncertainty with the latter. The question is how to design a system of remedies that minimizes the sum of two errors: abusive enforcement and lax enforcement. There is no ironclad rule that says how this can be done. But there is a clear sense that only some middle course will work. This is not a case like the minimum wage law, where there is, in my view, no justification for government interference with competitive markets.

Third, when it comes to dealing with uncertainty, track records matter. New programs are fraught with risk. Established programs give more information as to whether the safeguards in place are strong enough to hold.

In this context, it is not sufficient to note that the government has been abusive with both the IRS and reporters. Both those points seem quite true, but they take place within parts of the government that are not organized to control against these risks. One of the great achievements of the military community is that it internalizes the norms against abuse in ways in which other government agencies do not. That is true in connection with the military trials of persons in custody for terrorist activities, and also in the general culture of civilian control. 

The executive branch is more than just the President and his cronies. The set of institutions that preceded them--and which will outlast them--seem to have performed well. Even Edward Snowden makes only the most generalized claims of excessive spying.  He does not show any violations of privacy norms by the military or the CIA. And he should be in a position to know.

Fourth, new evidence will change perceptions. I had more faith in the Obama position on drones before I learned about the signature strikes that targeted large numbers of individuals as opposed to discrete persons. That revelation altered the practice of the program.  If there is some massive misconduct along privacy lines here, someone, somewhere can reveal it--and it will provoke a massive and successful political response. None of use who defend the current program would remain indifferent to evidence of systematic invasions of privacy for private gain if they came to light.

Fifth, I believe that my views here are consistent with those that I have taken on takings generally. I have long been interested in Fourth Amendment law because of its affinity to takings questions. In fact, I just finished teaching it for the first time a few weeks ago. 

The simple point of comparison is this: ordinary zoning and regulation cases do not have a national security or anti-crime component to them, so, in situations like that, the balance should be struck much more in favor of private property rights. In those areas where there are potential torts (like pollution and nuisances) there is little deference to private action. Those are the cases that give the closest comparison here. 

There is nothing in the current body of Supreme Court law that ignores either side of the balance in national security and crime cases. I can critique individual cases, but that criticism bears little resemblance to the one appropriate in takings cases. Quite simply, the progressive defense of big government in economic regulation is not a flash point here. And with all the confusion, I still have not heard a credible claim that the current program (if carried out as described) is unconstitutional.

Sixth, the issue of trust is of course paramount, but it is on both sides of the issue.  If we don’t trust a system of overlapping controls for government surveillance, can we trust all private individuals to refrain from the use of force? Sure, there is doubt as to whether the government has misbehaved, but there is none on the question of whether terrorists misbehaved, which is why the presumption has to be set in favor of the government--even in an Obama Administration, whatever its misdeeds elsewhere.

I begged Rob Long to allow me to post a few words about my new book, Lincoln Unbound, here at Ricochet and he kindly assented. The book argues that Lincoln is the foremost apostle of opportunity in American history, and traces how that played out in his personal rise from nothing, how it undergirded his politics and policies, and what we can learn from it today. Herewith five propositions by way of a conversation starter:

1) Lincoln was neither a tyrant nor a proto-progressive. This means that Lincoln-haters are wrong to damn him and all that he wrought, and that liberals like Barack Obama are wrong when they claim ownership of him. John Yoo has persuasively defended Lincoln on the tyranny charge, but here’s my go at it, too, and my push-back against Obama’s Lincoln bodysnatching.

2) Lincoln is the foremost apostle of opportunity in American history. He had two overarching goals. He wanted to end the backwoods isolation in which he grew up because it was cut off from markets and limited the ability of people to rise. And he wanted to end slavery because it denied an entire class of people any opportunity and blighted the chances of non-slaveholding whites unable to compete with the plantations.

3) He had a positive view of government, but the context is important. His government activism was geared to creating and fostering markets. You couldn’t have a market if there was no easy, cheap way to get goods from Point A to Point B. That meant canals and railroads, and since financial markets were so infantile, big projects needed government assistance. Government in Lincoln’s time was vastly different than it is today. There was no welfare state transferring money from some people to others, and there was no bureaucracy or development-hampering regulation. Lincoln wasn’t a retributionist or class warrior: “I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man’s rights — that each community, as a State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the rights of no other State, and that the general government upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does not concern the whole.”

4) Lincoln exemplified what should always be the conservative project in America—renewal through a return to our Founding principles. He was a modernizer, but he sought change through re-connecting with our original ideals with which we had lost touch. He spoke unashamedly of “those old time men” and “that old Declaration of Independence,” and harkened back to the “fresher days of the Republic.” Back then, we had tolerated slavery, but no one had thought to celebrate it as a positive good, as Southern apologists had begun to do prior to the Civil War. Lincoln exhorted: “Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us re-purify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution.”

5) He would have considered Roman Genn’s drawings in poor taste, but would have enjoyed them anyway. 

Ricochet members are just as divided over NSA surveillance as everyone else (though why is everyone worried about Obama reading all of my business opportunities from Nigeria?). But can we at least agree that we should allow our elected representatives to handle the controversy through traditional oversight, which can maintain important intelligence sources and methods and the separation of powers? That's the case I make over at the USA Today:

Instead of risking the loss of intelligence sources and methods, we should continue to follow the constitutional design. A time-tested system has promoted legislative oversight of classified activities without losing the virtues of speed and secrecy abroad. American intelligence agencies regularly disclose their most sensitive covert operations to congressional leaders, who can exercise their power of the purse to stop bad ideas.

The Framers recognized that our elected representatives would need such secrecy to protect the national security, which is why the Constitution allows for closed congressional proceedings. We should allow the system of representative democracy to decide intelligence policy, rather than sacrifice a critical advantage to satisfy the whims of those who do not understand that we are still a nation at war.

What do you think? Is legislative oversight sufficient to balance out concerns about civil liberties and national security?

The Garden State governor found his groove on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday -- and even managed to meld a Springsteen reference with a wink at his presidential ambitions:

After an extended absence (Richard's been in Europe, John's been filming a rom-com with Katherine Heigl), we'll be reopening the faculty lounge tomorrow for an episode of the "Law Talk" podcast that will largely focus on the controversy over the NSA's data mining activities.

If you've been reading the site, you know that both of our distinguished professors are pretty sanguine about the affair, with neither perceiving a grave threat to civil liberties. Of course, that sentiment isn't exactly universal around here. In order to keep the conversation lively, we thus thought we'd give Ricochet members the opportunity to press their case with the professors. Let us know what questions you'd like them to answer about the NSA controversy in the comments.

Imagine working on the crew of a big movie production—all the glitz, all the glamour, but not the big paycheck. Actually, no paycheck at all. And maybe not so much of the glamour. That’s because you’re an intern, and you don’t get paid a dime—like most interns everywhere. 

You thought you were signing up for an educational experience, but all it turned out to be was grunt work. And now, a Federal District Judge has determined that you should have been paid.

This is exactly what happened for a couple of interns who worked on the movie “Black Swan.”

Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman, production interns on “Black Swan,” sued Fox Searchlight in September 2011. In the suit, Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman said they did basic chores, usually undertaken by paid employees. Like their counterparts in other industries, the interns took lunch orders, answered phones, arranged other employees’ travel plans, tracked purchase orders, took out the trash and assembled office furniture.

A judge ordered Tuesday that Fox Searchlight Pictures had violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying interns for their work. The decision could change the film industry’s use of unpaid internships, and it could affect the practice of other businesses as well.

“I’m absolutely thrilled,” said Mr. Glatt, who has an M.B.A. from Case Western Reserve University. “I hope that this sends a very loud and clear message to employers and to students doing these internships, and to the colleges that are cooperating in creating this large pool of free labor — for most for-profit employers, this is illegal. It shouldn’t be up to the least powerful person in the arrangement to have to bring a lawsuit to stop this.”

The judge ordered that Fox Searchlight should have to pay the two interns because they were essentially regular employees.

The judge noted that these internships did not foster an educational environment and that the studio received the benefits of the work. The case could have broad implications. Young people have flocked to internships, especially against the backdrop of a weak job market.

Undergraduates work more than one million internships a year—half of which are unpaid.

“Employers have already started to take a hard look at their internship programs,” said Rachel Bien, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “I think this decision will go far to discourage private companies from having unpaid internship programs.”

Some say the decision would cause companies to hire fewer interns and thus hamper college graduates from getting helpful experience. Others say it’s a good decision because unpaid internships foster favoritism. Kids who can live off their parents can afford to take an unpaid internship while others have to work for a living.

What do you think? Should interns be paid, or should the “experience of the job” be payment enough?

According to a new Gallup poll, President George W. Bush's approval rating is now at 49% -- a post-presidency high -- versus 46% who still look on him with disfavor. This is the first time in eight years that his approval rating has been higher than his disapproval rating. Bush's approval rating is up across the political spectrum, but most notably among Democrats:

“Currently, 84 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and 24 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of Bush, each up more than 10 points since 2009,” Gallup notes. “However, the more recent improvement in his ratings, a five-point overall uptick since November 2010, has been more apparent among Democrats, whose rating has increased by 10 points since then.”

President Obama's numbers, which came out the same day, are at 47% approval and 44% disapproval. That puts him below Bush on both counts. The Washington Post further notes:

Bush’s support from Democrats still trails that of Republicans by 60 points, but comes no where near President Obama’s 76-point gap in January.

And things may get a lot worse for Obama as the reality of the NSA programs continues to erode his support from the left and his plethora of scandals alienates both Democrats and independents.

There is unmistakable satisfaction among Obama critics at this reversal in approval ratings, in part because Obama used Bush as an excuse for practically every miscue and problem right up through the election. Obama nevertheless was compelled to adopt and expand upon many of Bush’s anti-terrorism tactics, even as he was publicly excoriating Bush for his handling of jihadist terror. And now Obama must resort to exactly the same defenses that Bush used to explain our cyberdefenses. Unlike Bush, however, Obama has suffered from serial revelations of wrongdoing and cannot point to a blemish-free record (e.g. Boston, Fort Hood) on terrorist homeland attacks after Sept. 11.

A bit of this warmth toward Bush is natural post-relationship glow -- a willingness to remember what we loved about someone now that he's firmly in our past -- but some of it is certainly anger at the incumbent. No worries, though. Obama should enjoy a similar rehabilitation somewhere in the middle of President Christie's second term.

And now, we are finding out what is in it: 

Democrats continue to try to dismiss the evidence that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. But on Thursday, the Ohio Department of Insurance announced that, based on the rates submitted by insurers to date, the average individual-market health insurance premium in 2014 will come in around $420, “representing an increase of 88 percent” relative to 2013. “We have warned of these increases,” said Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor in a statement. “Consumers will have fewer choices and pay much higher premiums for their health insurance starting in 2014.”

The rates that Ohio reported are proposed rates; the Department of Insurance still has to formally approve them. “A total of 14 companies proposed rates for 214 plans to the Department. Projected costs from the companies for providing coverage for the required [by Obamacare] essential health benefits ranged from $282.51 to $577.40 for individual health insurance plans.”

It’s called “rate shock,” but it’s not shocking to people who understand the economics of health insurance. In August 2011, Milliman, one of the nation’s leading actuarial firms, predicted that Obamacare would increase individual-market premiums in Ohio by 55 to 85 percent. This past March, the Society of Actuaries projected that the law would increase premiums in that market by 81 percent. Like good players on “The Price is Right,” they both came in just under the Dept. of Insurance’s figure.

I am pretty sure that the actuaries wish that they were wrong. But it would appear that they might have been all too accurate. My question is why we didn't hear more about this when Obamacare was being debated in Congress? I mean, I would hate to think that supporters of the Affordable (ha!) Care Act just decided to ram the bill through without letting the American people hear about the consequences that would fall on the country if the bill passed. That wasn't what all those honorable representatives and senators were aiming to do, was it?

The parent company of Ricochet, as many readers may know, is named "Silent Cal Productions." The love for Calvin Coolidge runs deep around these parts. That's why we're delighted to see our own Ben Domenech, in response to an anti-libertarian piece by Michael Lind at Salon, defending the 30th president from charges of racism over at RealClearPolitics. An excerpt:

Lind has now responded by yelling about racism at the top of his lungs through a cardboard tube contraption of his own devising. The bulk of the piece is not worth reading, but I would draw your attention to the very last portion, in which Lind attacks Calvin Coolidge, about whom many libertarians have very positive feelings, cherrypicking a quote to transform Coolidge into an early stage Pat Buchanan.

This goes beyond the offensively stupid, which is Lind's typical oeuvre, and enters the realm of sheer revisionist fantasy. Considering the world it operated in, the record of the Harding-Coolidge administrations is one of the most racially progressive in the 20th Century. Harding opened his presidency with a clarion call for anti-lynching bills, giving speeches in the Deep South criticizing the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Coolidge continued the practice, again and again raising anti-lynching laws which were repeatedly filibustered by Southern Democrats (in 1922, 1923, and 1924). Both men appointed African Americans to senior positions and ran segregationists left over from the Wilson administration out of power.

Read the whole thing here.