Somehow, it became necessary that politicians seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination had to wander abroad to various international conferences to pay obeisance to European elites and spout bile at their domestic political enemies. Those various climate summits at whatever posh digs the Euros could situate have attracted Democrat politicians for years. You don’t hear much about them anymore, now that the global warming doom-and-gloom prognostications have all fallen apart. At some point, taking to the stage and echoing Thunbergian stupidities like “the planet will burn up and be uninhabitable in 12 years” if whatever hard-core socialist command-economic policy fetishes aren’t engaged in tends to go out of style after 12 years, and then some go by with none of the forecasted doom coming true. So you don’t generally get the Democrats’ big guns at those events anymore; or if you do, nobody really pays attention. (RELATED: Europe Is Thus Illuminated, Exactly As It Is) Davos is a little different, though, for some strange reason. The annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos has for years been a showplace for Dems seeking international boulevard cred, and it’s anything but surprising that all the stupid and terrible ideas bandied about among the weffers have become standard Democrat cant. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 321: Dumbos at Davos: The WEF’s Dwindling Influence) But Davos isn’t the only place you’ll find the Gavin Newsoms, AOCs, Mark Kellys, Gretchen Whitmers, and others now. Over the weekend, we saw them descending on the Munich Security Conference seeking to bolster their global status. (RELATED: Is Gretchen Whitmer Back In?) It’s not a new thing that politicians would make everything about themselves. That’s what politicians do. But it does rankle a bit to think that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes she belongs at Munich or that she has anything of value to offer as a speaker at that conference. It isn’t like this was a surprise… BREAKING – AOC is being ruthlessly mocked after claiming action can’t be taken against Venezuela because it’s “below the equator.” Leader of the democrat party everyone. pic.twitter.com/G2BFBoZwPe — Right Angle News Network (@Rightanglenews) February 16, 2026 And that wasn’t the worst of it… The sad thing about this is it won’t be her downfall. It should be, but it won’t. At RedState, Brad Slager noted the effort put in by Bloomberg (only one of a large number of news organizations doing this) to rehabilitate AOC when it’s obvious she’s out of her depth when it comes to foreign policy… At my Townhall media column, I have one category I use called Democratic Custodial Services, where the press slides in and offers cleanup when a Democrat politician fouls something up. AOC’s German fiasco was broad enough that Bloomberg acted like a team from Servpro arriving after an F-5 twister. As an introduction, they did not help their own cause by admitting that AOC was basically out of her depth from the start. The reporting duo of Nick Wadhams and María Paula Mijares Torres admit that AOC, “is better known for her strong progressive stances than her foreign policy views.” They go on to further undercut the New York representative by adding that she lacks serious international heft since she is not serving on either the Foreign Affairs or Armed Services Committees. All told, Alex From The Bronx has only shown interest in Latin American affairs (naturally, for the Puerto Rican descendant) and Palestine (like everyone else in her party, save for John Fetterman). To get a taste of what the AOC Doctrine may look like, it would amount to “We suck and want to be like you!” Her ineptitude did not dissuade Wadhams and Mijares from their appointed duties. The pair tells us that AOC’s performance was NOT a crater-inducing affair, but instead it was a display of rationality and lucid leadership. I kid you not. First, they deliver this oblivious nugget from Alex: She demanded a foreign policy approach that counters record inequality and looks to undo a world “dominated by a handful of elites, a handful of oligarchs that sit in pretend democracies and make backdoor deals with one another.” She says this at a conference peopled by world leaders and political elites, and then we hear she sat in with those various leaders and political elites. It may be a tie between AOC and these reporters as to who is more ignorant. They do get around to affirming AOC’s vapor-lock moment when trying to respond to questions from Bloomberg’s own Francine Lacqua: “This is such a, a, you know, I think that, this is a, um, this is of course, a, ah, a very longstanding, um, policy of the United States.” Just…damn. After that dive off the train trestle she may have a better claim than Joe Biden to a stuttering speech impediment. But then the cleanup effort begins. These reporters insist that, eventually, she gave a cogent response. This entailed her giving a decaffeinated proposal that we should avoid conflict, a level of discourse on par with a beauty pageant ditz, suggesting we should strive for world peace. Of course, the next move was to allow a spokesperson to be granted airtime to wave away the fog of her commentary. Ocasio-Cortez hesitated “because she wanted to be careful about what she was saying,” Matt Duss, who advises Ocasio-Cortez on foreign policy, said in an interview. “I wish more politicians would wait to answer instead of rattling off talking points.” It’s irritating, no doubt. This is one example of why it’s a good thing mainstream media’s hold on culture and politics is at its lowest ebb; sanitizing AOC’s nonstop disqualifications is very poor hygiene indeed. But there’s no sanitizing this. Hillary Clinton’s time has undoubtedly come and gone, but that didn’t stop her from going to Munich and acting like she boasted any relevance on the world stage. Except her appearance on a panel discussion went about as badly as it possibly could…

So much for the Constitution. The Fox News headline was blunt: “GOP lawmaker joins Democrat-led effort to limit Trump’s pardon power,” with the subtitle, “Rep. Don Bacon signed onto a bill that would establish a congressional review process for pardons.” Let’s take a look at what the inconvenient document known as the Constitution in fact says about the presidential pardon power. It reads, with bold print for emphasis supplied: Article II, Section 2, Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. Pretty clear. There is not a word from the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution about a “congressional review process for pardons.” And remembering the history of the Founding Fathers who so painstakingly wrote the Constitution, it not only could not be clearer, it amazes that Rep. Bacon — a Republican no less! — has set about trying to undermine the Constitution, justifying his actions this way:  “Across multiple administrations, we’ve seen legitimate questions raised about how this authority has been used at the same time, the ability of Congress to provide oversight has weakened,” Bacon said in a statement. “Frankly, it is clear to me the pardon authority has been abused.” In short, Rep. Bacon wants to make Congress the deciding factor in a president’s constitutionally authorized power to grant pardons. Skipping over the hard fact that the final arbiter, per the Founding Fathers, on whether a presidential pardon is good, bad, or indifferent has belonged to, yes indeed, the American people. Case in point? When President Nixon, ensnared by the Watergate scandal, finally resigned in August of 1974, he was, per the Constitution, succeeded by his vice president, Gerald Ford. Given the raging political waters at the time, with demands from the Left to both prosecute Nixon and send him to prison, Ford made the reluctant decision to end the uproar by pardoning Nixon so the country could move on. He did. And just as Ford anticipated, all hell broke loose. There was a congressional hearing on Ford’s decision, with Ford becoming the first president to testify in front of a congressional committee. This was 1974, which is to say an election year. And, quite expectedly, the Democrats made Ford’s pardon a main issue in the fall campaign. The results were serious political damage to the GOP. Democrats won four Senate seats from Republicans. On the House side, the GOP had a net loss of 49 seats. Wikipedia records: After Ford left the White House in 1977, he privately justified his pardon of Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v. United States, a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision which states that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt. The hard fact of history is that the final verdict on Ford’s pardon of Nixon came from the American people. They didn’t like Ford’s pardon, and they made a point of rejecting Ford’s decision in the fall of 1974 elections. Two years later, Ford himself was on the ballot, and the American people made a point of electing his Democrat opponent, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter. Which shows that in fact the final arbiter of whether a presidential pardon is good, bad, or indifferent rests — as it should — in the hands, the votes, of the American people. What Rep. Bacon is about is removing that pardon power from the American people and giving it to a handful of Capitol Hill politicians. This decision is so badly taken that one can hardly believe that a Republican Congressman of all people would be out there supporting it. Be that as it may, Nebraska’s Rep. Don Bacon is doing just that. The obvious question now is whether the American people will agree with Rep. Bacon that the final verdict on any presidential pardon should be taken out of their hands and given to a relative handful of Capitol Hill’s professional politicians, Washington insiders one and all. Stay tuned. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Three Cheers for Attorney General Pam Bondi Schumer Plays the Race Card Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal Stands Up for Fascism

Nations gripped by antisemitism self-destruct. The eternal law took a pivotal turn when South Africa and Israel sent their diplomats packing President Ramaphosa’s goons are set to lose major cities in the 2026 local government elections. The fateful question is how he and his doomed ANC party reacted. Their department of international relations, securely in Islamist hands, blamed Israel’s diplomat for dabbling in domestic politics. It declared Ariel Seiderman persona non grata and instructed him to quit the country pronto.  In a tit-for-tat, Israel told the ANC’s ambassador to Ramallah, believed by all Israel-haters to be the capital of fictional “Palestine,” to do likewise. Coinciding with the diplomat expulsions, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards participated in naval drills off Simonstown naval base on the Cape coast. South Africa’s crippled, if not inoperative, navy, together with the real warships of China and Russia, completed the flotilla. Close to this time, the Iranian regime unleashed the most violent crackdown ever on protestors. As many as 30,000 freedom-yearning martyrs were gunned down. Body bags ran out, and mass graves were dug. Beholden to Iran for bailing it out, Ramaphosa and his party uttered not a peep. They did call for the U.N. Security Council to meet. To get the head around the blatant Islamist capture of a majority Christian country, the key is Naledi Pandor, a black convert to Islam. From the president’s picked foreign minister, she got deployed to the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Here she rebooted this hallowed body to her dark anti-Jew, anti-Christian outlook. Denigrating Christian Zionism as a “force for genocide,” Pandor promises money to anyone prepared to combat it. She’ll see to it that idiot donors lured by the Mandela name will be financing the African terrorist group Boko Haram (translated as “Western education is a sin”). Notably in Nigeria, but even in Mozambique on the country’s border, the terrorist group abducts schoolgirls, beheads Christians, and drives indigenous tribal people into oblivion. About the expulsion of Israel’s chargé d’affaire, a U.S. State Department spokesman called it, “Poor foreign policy choices. Expelling a diplomat for calling out the ANC’s ties to Hamas and other antisemitic radicals prioritizes grievance politics over the good of South Africa and its citizens.” He meant that Ramaphosa’s crew regard the country and its people as expendable and ransack the country while they can. In short, self-destruction has gone down to the wire. The atrocity of what Pandor has made of the Nelson Mandela name is testimony from the pit of hell. Her Islamist Jew-hatred is equal to that for Christianity, that Conflates biblical prophecy with political support for Israeli settler colonialism and remains a driving force in legitimising occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Deeply rooted in colonial history and amplified by global networks, this ideology has been a barrier to achieving peace and justice for Palestinians. The misuse of religious scripture to justify domination and discrimination is something we know all too well in South Africa. The real-life Mandela made a stark contrast. In his epic struggle against apartheid, he acknowledged his debt to Zionism in his epic memoir. His admiration of Zionist leaders is undeniable. Even Menachem Begin’s book became his guide to guerrilla warfare. Nor was Mandela too big to admit that he learned from Arthur Goldreich, a South African Jew who fought with Israel’s pre-independence militia, the Palmach. What then was the real motive for expelling Israel’s diplomat? What did his gross interference in domestic politics amount to? It amounted to the most basic human need of all. It came down to water. The problem, as President Ramaphosa and his merry bandits saw it, was that Israel’s diplomat had done the unforgivable. Keeping to diplomatic norms, Ariel Seiderman had forsaken four walls and a desk for humanity outreach. As a former Israeli ambassador confirmed, “I spent four years in South Africa, and I never asked permission to go anywhere.” Yet Seiderman sought to help solve a deadly water crisis in the Eastern Cape, among the poorest of provinces, and that led to expulsion by the Jew-mad ANC. Three decades after assuming power, the ruling party still ignored the country’s Human Rights Commission complaint that a third of families had no plumbing; that pit latrines were the rule; that human beings shared water with animals. In perfect sync, the tyrants of Tehran stare down their own self-inflicted water nemesis: Tehran may have to be evacuated because taps have run dry. A copycat of the Eternal Law: in Iran as in its ANC proxy. Depriving the ANC’s own black people never got a second thought. On his trip to the Eastern Cape, Israel’s diplomat met the AbaThembu King, who’d gone to Israel and was more than impressed with what he discovered. Back home, he met 50 other traditional leaders. They visited hospitals and universities and shared the visits on social media. Everything was as transparent as can possibly be. Why shouldn’t they call on Israel, it being the leader in water management throughout Africa? What did the ANC’s fat thieving cadres have to offer? The party’s secretary general, Fikile April Mbalula, gave the brutal answer: the diplomat’s engagements did not support the party’s “Palestine” policy. The ANC could never tolerate optics so destructive to its anti-Jew policies. It had taken Israel to The Hague for genocide. It was beholden to Iran for baling it out of bankruptcy. It had become a diplomatic proxy to complement its terrorist proxies. Expel or be damned. Depriving the ANC’s own black people never got a second thought. The water situation in Nelson Mandela Bay, in the province, is so critical that councils have to issue notices, “Do not drink water.” Coli contamination is rife. Rampant diarrheal disease causes disease and death among the young. Schools have to be closed due to a lack of sanitation. That’s how much President Ramaphosa (the billionaire who never started a business in his life) hates the Jew-state and the Jews. Like the tyrants of Tehran deploying national wealth to wipe Israel off the map, he’s determined to self-destruct. Surely, President Trump will come down on the party like a ton of bricks. Beyond all expectations, however, he’s given the preferential trade agreement ALGOA, worth billions to South Africa in tariff-free entry to America, a year of grace. Yet a legal flashpoint looms. When Ramaphosa, as chairman of cellular operator MTN, embroiled it in a 49 percent stake in Iran’s second-largest mobile network operator, he violated the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act. Damages are being sought on behalf of U.S. military members and civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2017. Iran’s decision to shut down communications during its deadly crackdown on protests, without informing the MTN group, will no doubt exacerbate the fallout. South African Jewish leaders who welcomed Ramaphosa as president, like the knight in shining armor, forgot one point: when vice president, he’d looked over President Zuma’s shoulder year after year as the latter sold government functions, including tax collection and treasury, to Indian mafia brothers, now on the run from arrest warrants. He looked on as Zuma and the Gupta brothers offered the finance minister, Nene, R500 million to give them access to the Treasury. He declined. When he took over, Ramaphosa made Nene his finance minister. In late 2018, the worthy man quit, admitting he’d visited the Gupta gangsters. “We know exactly what to do so Iran can also have plentiful water,” said Netanyahu. “The thirst for water in Iran is only matched by the thirst for freedom.” He could easily have had the Eastern Cape in mind. He recounted to the Iranian people how, “The tyrants of Tehran preferred sending hundreds of billions of dollars not to you, but to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Houthis — instead of funding your hospitals, your schools, and your roads. So much money has been burnt to hell.” “To hell” is right. Ramaphosa and his doomed party may have cause to remember, and to rue, God’s eternal curse. “Him that curses you I will curse.” READ MORE from Steve Apfel: When Fighting Antisemitism Becomes a Spectacle Shepherds Without Swords Trump Puts the Squeeze on Antisemites. Don’t Let S. Africa Slide.  

Canadian authorities have identified 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar as the suspect in one of Canada’s most devastating school attacks in recent memory, confirming that the high school dropout identified as transgender.  Police say the violence began Tuesday at a residence in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, where Van Rootselaar allegedly murdered his mother and 11-year-old stepbrother. According to authorities, the suspect then proceeded to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and opened fire, fatally shooting a 39-year-old teacher and five students between the ages of 12 and 13 years old, as well as critically injuring two others. The suspect then took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  Royal Canadian Mounted Police Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald confirmed Wednesday that the suspect, Jesse Van Rootselarr, was “born a biological male … who approximately six years ago began to transition to female, and identified as female.” McDonald stated it’s “too early to say” whether the suspect’s transgender identity had to do with the shooting.  Referring to himself as “MtF,” Van Rootselaar described concerns about HRT treatments at 15 years old. A frequenter of transgender community forums, Van Rootselaar wrote, “I’m pre-HRT 15yo, I’m super skinny, so that sometimes makes me feel kinda good…[M]y expectations are minimal for chest growth, and I’m 6ft tall! Why can’t I be petit an [sic] smol [small]” in a 2020 forum post. (RELATED: Of Lobotomies, Anorexia, and ‘Gender-Affirming Care’) Van Rootselaar had a history of mental health issues and had been visited by the police at his home several times for mental health checks. He was a Redditor, and he wrote openly about his heavy psychedelic drug use, psychiatric medications, prior mental health hospitalizations, and episodes of losing touch with reality. “I tried shrooms once, it was a small unmeasured dose and it was chill. The second time I tried it I took 3 grams of Blue Meanie ground up into some peanut butter and had a complete break from reality and did a lot of irrational things, I felt like I was dreaming…” he explained on Reddit. He also posted several photos and videos of himself with firearms. (RELATED: The Med-Mal Floodgates Are Open Thanks to the Fox Varian Case, and Thank God for That) One X user claimed to have identified a shooting range the suspect frequently used, which is 3 hours away from Tumbler Ridge. Other X users revealed social media statements from Van Rootselaar’s mother, Jennifer Strang. One post said she “openly backed her son’s transition” in a social media post, where she posted a picture of a pride progress flag and told parents to “get their act together” so her son wouldn’t grow up in a “world full of hatred.” Another post shows Jennifer’s Facebook posts from 2015, where she discussed her son’s apparent behavioral disorders. She wrote that he “has a devious grin when he hurts his siblings.” The BBC reported that police had removed firearms from Van Rootselaar’s home two years ago, but a family member had successfully petitioned to have the firearms returned. Authorities do not yet know how the suspect obtained the long gun and handgun that he used in the attack; he was previously known by police and had been taken into custody due to mental health episodes. (RELATED: Transgender Mass Murderers: The Drugs and Demons That Drive Them) It is also reported that CityNews applied visual filters to an image of Van Rootselaar to make the suspected shooter “look female.” This follows the attempt by mainstream media outlets to refer to the shooter as female. The New York Times described Van Rootselaar as “her,” writing that “Her motive was unclear, but police had visited her home several times for mental health issues.” Several Canadian leaders have responded to the tragedy that unfolded at Tumbler Ridge. Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters, “The nation mourns with you, Canada stands by you.” Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre was interviewed as well, and he said, “As a father, I can’t even imagine the calls that parents might have received. I can’t imagine the heartache & hell that they’re living through at this moment.”  Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka remarked,  “I will know every victim. I’ve been here 19 years, and we’re a small community…I call them family,” when he spoke to CBC. He emphasized that Tumbler Ridge is a small, intimate community where everyone knows everyone. “We don’t lock our doors here. It is an incredibly safe community,” Krakowka said. READ MORE from Dylan Kresak: Minecraft Brings Black Lives Matter Into a Children’s Game Judge Smacks Down California’s ICE Mask Ban Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show Ignites Super Bowl Culture Clash

The famed editor of the New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley, said shortly after the end of the Civil War: “Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.” The Westward Movement was central to the American Experience. Additionally, an important secondary migration occurred in the era between the Civil War and about 1980, as many southerners fled their region for higher-paying factory and other jobs in the Northeast and Midwest. Similarly, the literally tens of millions of immigrants arriving on American shores in the 19th and early 20th centuries avoided the South like the plague, settling in large numbers in Eastern and Midwestern states. This huge inflow from abroad was on top of birth rates among American women in the 18th and early 19th centuries that were three or four times those of today. The American population grew by a third every decade. But new Census Bureau data confirm a demographic revolution of sorts has occurred. First, of course, population growth has slowed dramatically with sharply lower fertility. It is likely that for this decade, the population will rise only about 6 percent, though to be sure, more than in many other nations like China, Japan, and Russia, where the number of inhabitants is actually significantly declining. As people get richer, they seemingly feel less inclined to have kids. Are children what economists call “inferior goods,” for whom demand declines with a rising standard of living? (RELATED: Blue States Losing Out on Foreign Investment) Between 2020 and 2025, nearly three-quarters of our nation’s modest population growth occurred in the South. Moreover, between 2020 and 2025, nearly three-quarters of our nation’s modest population growth occurred in the South, and nearly 90 percent of that was because of in-migration, both of immigrants from other countries and from sizable domestic movement. The leading state for population growth in the middle of the last century was California, largely reflecting the Westward Movement. As late as the 1980s, the population grew by over six million in a decade. But in the five years 2020 to 2025, nearly 1.7 million more Californians left the state than moved in, and the total population actually fell for the first time in history. From the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, to far poorer Californians, on average, 926 persons every day abandoned the Golden State (39 every hour, day and night). The absolute numbers exceeded the number fleeing East Germany at the height of the Cold War around 1960, leading the East Germans to build the Berlin Wall. Will the last one leaving California please turn off the lights! The population of Florida, by contrast, is nearly five times as large today as in 1960, fueled by massive in-migration from other states and countries (most famously, Cuba). However, the hoard of usually moderately affluent migrants going to Florida has actually slowed sharply (but not stopped) recently because housing prices have exploded in the Sunshine State from the influx of Northern migrants. Housing demand has been rising much faster than supply. (RELATED: Blue States’ High Tax State-of-Mind) Of particular interest from a public policy perspective: the evidence is very strong that people were voting with their feet to flee states with relatively large governmental presence to go to ones where government, relatively speaking, left you alone, most obviously manifested in the form of lower taxation. I compared the three largest very liberal states — California, New York, and Illinois — with three large states considered generally conservative, two of which have no state income tax: Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. Every one of the big liberal states had a population decline. By contrast, the three Red states saw a population increase of over 5.2 million from 2020 to 2025, a majority of the nation’s growth. But the trend extends to smaller states too. Compare solidly Democratic New Mexico with its four neighbors, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Utah, all either fairly evenly divided swing states (Colorado and Arizona) or solidly Republican (Utah and Oklahoma). New Mexico’s population rose a paltry 8,006 between 2020 and 2025, while all four of its more conservatively oriented neighbors had at least 20 times that growth, all having solid domestic in-migration, compared with net domestic out-migration in New Mexico. Just as demonstrated in Germany in the Soviet Era and in Korea now, it takes physical barriers (e.g., the Berlin Wall) to keep people from fleeing from the government-dominated area to places where there is more personal freedom. A good indicator of the migration trends can be discerned from rental prices on trucks moving household goods. I compared the price of renting a 26-foot U-Haul truck in Austin, Texas, and taking it to Los Angeles, California, on Feb. 25, with the exact same trip but in the opposite direction, from LA to Austin. The LA to Austin rental price, $4,729, was nearly triple the price of the same trip ($1,693) in the opposite direction. Why? Few people want to move to LA, so the California city has few trucks available, while Austin is awash with them. Hence, U-Haul is forced to have a very low rental price for those going to LA, and a high one for those leaving it. (RELATED: The California Exodus Gets a Gag Order) In a few years, it appears inevitable that the Democratic leaning states will lose several seats in the Electoral College and U.S. House of Representatives through population reapportionment. In an era of sometimes razor-thin legislative majorities, this could prove crucial. The loss of, say, four House seats in California and two in New York to red states like Texas and Florida very well could make the difference between Republican and Democratic control of the House. What it does for the national political aspirations of ambitious blue state leaders like California’s Governor Gavin Newsom or Illinois’ JB Pritzker is uncertain, but clearly not favorable. Still, I would not get too ecstatic about the demographic shifts if I were a Republican. We have seen rather radical and unanticipated changes in the political composition of states in less than a generation. In 1956, the South was considered solidly Democratic, yet a generation or so later, it was almost as solidly Republican. In California itself, Republicans were highly competitive in gubernatorial races throughout the 20th century, but much less so in this one. A little over 50 years ago today, conservative icon Ronald Reagan was governor of the Golden State. One other thing that concerns me after perusing migration and population statistics for well over half a century: America is getting a bit more like Europe. American population growth, once several times that of Europe, is now more similar. Dysfunctional immigration laws and practices are robbing our nation of some of the vitality that comes from new entrepreneurs from overseas, although we still far outshine other parts of the world. Our nation’s economic distinctiveness, its exceptionalism, has evolved because we have historically embraced change rather than resisting it, something that applies to population as well as other economic factors. In the final analysis, the ability in our federal system to “vote with your feet” remains a great positive national attribute. READ MORE from Richard K. Vedder: Administering Colleges: 1960s and Today A Neglected Colonial Era Polymath, Manasseh Cutler America’s Universities: A Multi-Generational Perspective Richard Vedder is a distinguished professor emeritus at Ohio University and senior fellow at both Unleash Prosperity and the Independent Institute.

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