URLs du Jour

2018-11-24

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  • At NR, Jonah Goldberg looks at President Trump’s Odd Definition of ‘America First’. To adapt an old debate quote: "Mr. President, I've studied the America First movement. America Firsters were not friends of mine. But Mr. President, you're no America Firster."

    President Trump’s statement is a mockery of the best sentiments of America First. His argument for why we should turn a blind eye to the Khashoggi murder, even as the Saudi regime plans to execute the men who carried out the crown prince’s orders, is that we are too entangled in our alliance with Saudi Arabia to care. They are a “great ally” because they have “agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States.” He even goes on to list the defense contractors who benefit from Saudi largesse.

    Nowhere in Trump’s statement does he offer any meaningful condemnation of Saudi behavior or suggest that there is a limit to the portion of the American soul Saudi petrodollars can buy.

    I'll readily admit that I'm sort of an ignoramus about foreign policy. Although it seems like a lot of our crises, now and in the past, are due to the folks who are allegedly foreign policy "experts".

    Maybe they're as ignorant as the rest of us? Or—let's be charitable—doing the best they can in an inherently perilous and uncertain field?


  • We mentioned this horrible crime back in May, but now the perpetrator, Richard Ned Lebow, provides his story in Quillette. Warning: Telling a Lame Joke in an Elevator can Endanger Your Career.

    I am a professor of international political theory at King’s College London and bye-fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. I am a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the International Studies Association (ISA). Several years back the ISA voted me the “distinguished scholar of the year.” This year it censured me, not once but twice. I was guilty of saying “ladies lingerie” in a lift, and more disturbingly in their eyes, of writing a conciliatory email to the woman who had overheard me in the lift and filed a complaint. I appealed against this decision, but earlier this month was told my appeal had been rejected.

    During the second week of April 2018, the ISA had its annual meeting in San Francisco. It attracts many thousands of members from multiple disciplines who do research on international relations. The meeting consists mostly of panels at which scholarly papers are presented and discussed. I stayed in the San Francisco Hilton, the venue of the meeting. On the third afternoon, I was going up to my room in a very crowded lift when a male voice asked people to shout out their floors so he could press the relevant buttons. People named floors and I said: “Ladies Lingerie.” I confess it is an old, lame joke; my youngest son later remarked that it was not the worst joke I have ever made. Upon reflection, I think these words came to mind because I was flush up against the back wall of the lift and feeling slightly claustrophobic. It was a way of releasing tension—or so I thought.

    Unfortunately for Prof Lebow, also in the elevator was Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College, just down the road in North Andover, MA. I'll make the same lame joke I made last May: she Was Not Amused, in fact she got her ladies lingerie in a bunch.

    Prof Lebow provides an update to the original story, detailing the Kafkaesque disciplinary procedure of the ISA, with supporting docs. Unsurprising to those who follow these sort of things. ISA is clearly working itself into an academically irrelevant (but well-funded) hotbed of faux-intellectual navel-gazing. Once the last spark of independent thought is snuffed out, will anyone on the outside pay attention any more?


  • I am just going to "excerpt" Don Boudreaux entire Yet Another Open Letter to Trump at Cafe Hayek.

    Two days ago you tweeted “Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!”

    I write not to question your questionable expression of thanks to the Saudis but, instead, to ask some questions:

    – Because you correctly understand that we Americans are more prosperous the lower are the prices we pay on global markets for oil, why do you not understand that we Americans are more prosperous the lower are the prices we pay on global markets for other goods such as steel, aluminum, automobiles, and washing machines?

    – Because you correctly understand that a fall in the prices that we Americans pay for oil is akin to a tax cut – and because you correctly understand that such a tax cut is a boon to us Americans – why do you insist not only on raising the taxes that we pay for the likes of steel, aluminum, automobiles, and washing machines, but also on celebrating these tax hikes as sources of greater American prosperity? Is there something unique about oil – perhaps its odor, its viscosity, the way that it’s spelled – that makes a greater abundance of it beneficial whereas a greater abundance of the likes of steel, aluminum, automobiles, and washing machines is harmful?

    This isn't hard to grasp, Mr. President.


  • At Reason, the always-reasonable Matt Welch suggests: Don't Cry for Kat Timpf, Cry for America Instead.

    Let's be clear: I am not asking you to feel sorry for Kat Timpf.

    Yes, the 30-year-old television commentator and National Review writer was chased out of a Brooklyn bar a few weeks ago by a shouty woman enraged that Timpf works for Fox News Channel. Must have been unpleasant, especially considering it wasn't her first time being physically confronted by angry strangers.

    But you know what else is unpleasant? Being separated from your toddler at the U.S.-Mexico border. Watching your entire community burn to the ground. Living a life less luxe than a New York gal about town whose birthday parties make Page Six.

    So let's not talk about Kat, let's talk about you. You who pivoted before I did to the whataboutism in the paragraph above. You who were already irritated at reading yet again about a non-Democrat being inconvenienced in public. You who are saying to yourself, "Fox News is toxic. It's poisoning my dad's brain. All collaborators are fair game to be shunned."

    Here's the question for you: Do you think this ends well? Because it doesn't.

    Of course it doesn't. Is there any hope we keep the cheap displays of strident political moralism on social media, where they belong?


  • I'm a sucker for Mental Floss quizzes, even though I never do very well. But this one is actually educational: Which of These Things Is Most Dangerous to Humans?. Kind of a misnomer; it's multiple choice and (for example) you get to pick which activity "is responsible for 1600 American deaths every year."

    Playground accidents
    Staircase falls
    Shark attacks
    Elevator accidents

    The true answers are revealed after you pick. Fun, and you may decide never to go to the playground, the beach, or any building that has more than one floor.


Last Modified 2024-01-24 3:16 PM EDT