Books Missing the Trees for the Forest in Industrial Policy A new manual for industrial policy, while valuable, makes several glaring omissions. (Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock) Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries, by Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher. 849 pages with index. Cambridge University Press 2024. Although many (including this writer) will reject its conclusions, Fasteau and Fletcher’s compendium, Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries, will serve as the standard reference work on industrial policy in the foreseeable future. Its 800 pages provide a thorough survey of all the major economies’ experience with government planning, including a sober assessment of successes and failures. They rightly emphasize the key role of military R&D. Nonetheless, they miss the trees for the forest, so to speak—namely, the singular contributions of maverick inventors. Innovation can’t be budgeted and scheduled, only fostered and encouraged. And that depends on a delicate balance between government support and private initiative. The authors want the government to remake the economy, with a new corps of federal officials empowered to direct investment to favored industries. In their enthusiasm, they ignore the gross deficiencies of the most ambitious piece of industrial policy in decades, namely the Biden CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. And they naively propose a devaluation of the U.S. dollar to promote exports without considering the ways in which cheapening the currency adversely affects manufacturing.  “In 2021 and 2022, Biden proposed and Congress enacted the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act (BIA), the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS), and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). These ambitious new programs, combined with their explicitly pro-industrial policy rationales, were a big step forward,” the authors write. They worry that the $170 billion CHIPS Act wasn’t big enough: “The Act was a major advance, but the aid it provides, while sizeable, is dwarfed by that provided by Taiwan, Korea, and China.” The CHIPS Act subsidies prompted $450 billion in planned investments, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, but the industry encountered crippling shortages of skilled labor, engineers, and infrastructure. The cost of building new industrial plants jumped by 30 percent in little more than a year, and unfilled construction job openings jumped to an all-time record in 2023. Plant openings by TSMC, Samsung, and other fabricators were delayed by years. Intel took $8.5 billion in subsidies under the CHIPS Act and shortly thereafter laid off 15,000 workers and cut capital expenditures by 20 percent. The CHIPS Act turned out to be a horrible example of how industrial policy can go wrong. Apart from its shoddy implementation, Biden’s venture into industrial policy failed to encourage research into new semiconductor technologies that promise increases of computing speed by orders of magnitude. The authors discuss molecular electronics, which, if successful, will create circuits from individual molecules rather than silicon wafers, but do not mention the absence of support for such technologies in the CHIPS Act. Perhaps the serried ranks of federal officials proposed by the authors would have foreseen these bottlenecks, but Fasteau and Fletcher did not. The term “skilled labor” appears just five times in the book and only once with reference to the United States. American manufacturers invariably cite the lack of skilled personnel as the single biggest constraint on expansion. A worker with a high school diploma and a year’s training can earn $60,000 a year operating a computer-controlled machine, but this work requires proficiency in high-school math (for example, trigonometry). Less than a quarter of American high school students are rated proficient, according to the Department of Education, and they aren’t looking for factory work. The authors mention Germany’s apprenticeship system as an element of that country’s industrial policy, but are silent about the abysmal state of American secondary education. High schools used to teach industrial skills; I still have the draftsman set my father used at a Brooklyn public school before starting as a machinist’s apprentice at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Nor do Fasteau and Fletcher mention that just seven percent of US undergraduates major in engineering, vs. a third in China, which now graduates 1.2 million engineers each year, vs. 200,000 in the United States. They provide detailed reports of university programs in quantum computing and nanotechnology, but ignore the biggest single problem now facing American industry. The role of the military in promoting innovation is a central theme in their account. “The shadow of Mars is long,” they observe. “The Englishman Henry Bessemer,” who invented modern steelmaking, “had been trying to make a cannon strong enough to fire new rifled artillery shells.” They rightly draw attention to the national security imperative in inspiring innovation, but their account has an important lacuna. A set of breakthroughs in the 1970s—optical networks, CMOS manufacturing of integrated circuits, and the Internet, among others—that launched the Digital Age. As former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work explained: In 1973, the Yom Kippur War provided dramatic evidence of advances in surface-to-air missiles, and Israel’s most advanced fighters, flown by the top pilots in the Middle East, if not among the world’s best, lost their superiority for at least three days due to a SAM belt. And Israeli armored forces were savaged by ATGMs, antitank guided munitions. U.S. analysts cranked their little models and extrapolated that [if] the balloon went up in Europe’s central front and we had suffered attrition rates comparable to the Israelis, U.S. tactical air power would be destroyed within 17 days, and NATO would literally run out of tanks. Vietnam fell two years later, and the American military went back to the drawing boards. By 1978, advances in chip manufacturing put into the cockpits of fighter planes computers that could run lookdown radar. By 1982, American avionics helped Israel to destroy the Syrian air force in the Beqaa Valley “turkey shoot.” Their account of the role of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other government agencies in promoting industrial innovation is extensive, although it misses some decisive points. Part of the problem is that federal R&D funding has shrunk as a share of government spending and GDP. “Federally funded R&D—the spending that generates fundamental technological breakthroughs—peaked at 1.9 percent of GDP in 1962, fell to 0.7 percent by 2020, and as of mid-2024 is only at the beginning of a possible turnaround,” they note. DARPA funding made possible Sergei Brin and Larry Page’s Google search algorithm, the voice recognition system later branded as Apple’s Siri, the Internet, the analog-to-digital transformation that enabled the smartphone, as well as GPS, stealth technology, night vision, smart weapons and a vast number of other innovations. When the U.S. military is compelled to innovate as a matter of national security, it funds research at the frontier of physics. This puts technology in the hands of entrepreneurs who want to create new products. The Achilles’ heel of industrial policy is rent-seeking by corporations. When technology changes incrementally, industry easily corrupts the officials responsible for doling out federal money by offering them future employment. But when national security demands breakthroughs at the frontier of physics, entrepreneurs gain access to technology that challenges the existing business structure. That is what happened during the 1980s, when startups like Cisco, Intel, Apple, and Oracle became the new corporate giants. Federal bureaucrats do a poor job of picking winners in the business world, and they don’t do a good job of forecasting technological breakthroughs, either. Although virtually every important innovation of the Digital Age began with DARPA funding, the most important of these inventions had little to do with the initial motivation for the project. An example related by Dr. Henry Kressel, the former head of RCA Labs, is the semiconductor laser: The military wanted to illuminate battlefields for night fighting. Kressel and his team took DARPA’s money and perfected a laser that could transmit vast quantities of information through optical cables, making the Internet possible.  Maverick engineers with a mind of their own rather than federal planners discovered the most important innovations. The great corporate labs at RCA, IBM, GE, and the Bell System formed half of a public-private partnership, in which the government paid for basic research, but private capital took the risk of commercialization.  Fasteau and Fletcher draw attention to America’s declining share of manufacturing in GDP and its widening trade deficit. They propose withdrawing from the World Trade Organization, rejecting any new free trade agreements, and raising tariffs, along with a devaluation of the U.S. dollar. They caution against disruptive, sudden action: Tariff rate quotas and tariffs phased in over time should be used to nurture industries the U.S. is attempting to develop, is in danger of losing, or is trying to regain. For example, the federal government’s current $54 billion effort to rebuild U.S. capability in semiconductors should be supported by a staged tariff and quota policy. Said policy should track along with and protect the development of American production capacity, but not prematurely burden US users of advanced chips that domestic manufacturers are not yet capable of making. Caution is called for indeed, given that we now import most of our capital goods. To reduce dependence on imports, we must invest in new capacity, which means increasing imports of capital goods for some years before replacing them with domestic production in the future.  Less convincing is the authors’ plaidoyer for a cheap dollar. The steepest decline in manufacturing employment in U.S. history occurred during the 2000s while the US dollar’s real effective exchange rate fell sharply. That does not imply that a falling dollar caused the decline in employment, but rather that more important factors were at work. Perhaps the most important price point in capital-intensive investment is the cost of capital itself. Stable currencies generally are associated with a low cost of capital, because currency depreciation promotes inflation, and inflation adds both a surcharge and a risk premium to the cost of capital.  When corporations write investments off taxable income over years, inflation reduces the value of depreciation, and thus increases the effective corporate tax rate. For that matter, Fasteau and Fletcher praise Japan’s use of accelerated depreciation to promote investment, but have nothing to say about the subject as it might apply to the United States. Tax relief for investment might prove a more effective incentive for manufacturing investment than tariffs.  Despite these flaws, Industrial Policy for the United States belongs in the library of every policymaker concerned about the state of U.S. industry.  The post Missing the Trees for the Forest in Industrial Policy appeared first on The American Conservative.

Nowhere close to the real thing. The post The band Alex Van Halen didn’t enjoy watching live: “Why pay for a ticket?” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

Still listening for the new geniuses. The post Taylor Hawkins, Eminem and the skill of songwriting: “One step ahead of everybody” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The greatest leaders of free societies transcended partisanship. Not because they were absent of principle. To the contrary, they were driven by deep conviction in what they did, and they did so in relation to and in coordination with others. Rather, they were aware of the fundamental challenge of living in a polis — how to take a principled stand (whose rightness is not dependent on popular opinion, but because of the truth of the stand itself) united with others (without corrupting or compromising that stand). Those who love our country more than party, and who love truth more than anything do not shy away from critical opinion. It is no easy matter, and consequently, the well-known jibe that politics is the second-oldest profession. All too often, principles for politicians are just lipstick on a pig — a distraction from the slop and the stink. As ever, one must look for the best examples to see what the possibilities are and to avoid cheap cynicism. George Washington has been revered for setting the example of principled leadership in America. He was intensely aware that he was establishing the model for the future of the republic, that he had to show that the power concentrated by the Constitution in the hands of the Chief Executive would not lead necessarily to corruption. He gathered the best and the brightest around him, even though they had very different approaches — Jefferson and Hamilton sat in the first rank in his cabinet and Adams was his vice-president, each of whose approaches to American politics would bring them into sharp conflict with each of the others, whether during Washington’s administration or later on. Arguing for the Constitution, James Madison thought partisanship was inevitable: “The CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS” (Federalist 10). But Washington felt it necessary to strive for a national unity beyond parties. We the people had to choose not to let political differences fracture the republic into parties. Washington warned in his farewell address against all things that serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force — to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. Those interested in real leadership rather than indulgence of their needy ego welcome debate and do not seek yes-men in their inner circle. Lincoln was an example of that. His Cabinet choices were a fairly contentious and voluble group who debated with each other and with Lincoln. Lincoln picked a Democrat for about the most important position during his wartime administration — Secretary of War. Lincoln chose a Democrat for vice-president for his second term as well, intent on showing national unity as his overriding interest as the Civil War was coming to a close. Franklin Roosevelt also had someone from the other party as Secretary of War during World War II, Henry Stimson, who had also been Secretary of War under William Howard Taft and Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover. Stimson had a powerful voice and Roosevelt listened to him and to the army Chief of Staff, George Marshall. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: The Face of Evil Is Masquerading as ‘Joy’) Winston Churchill was most famous as war leader, when he ruled over an all-party government. His cabinet had men from all three major parties, with Laborite Clement Attlee as his Deputy Prime Minister and Ernest Bevin in charge of labor relations. He also had famously argued with his own party, severely criticizing their policy of appeasement. When events proved Churchill right, he first served in their cabinet. But that all-Conservative government could not survive the cascade of defeat of Spring 1940, and Chamberlain asked Churchill to form the new all-party government. Churchill kept Chamberlain in that government in a position of high responsibility. He wanted all the voices that could effectively speak for Britain together. He meant it. He listened. As did all of these leaders. They all faced terrible crises. They sought the spirit of their whole country in their council of power. They did not pretend to have all the answers. They wanted the best there to lend their insight and expertise and dedication. Faced with existential threats — the difficult first days of a unique new nation, a great civil war, a world war of unprecedented ferocity and destruction — they actively joined with those from a different perspective and a different party to face the crisis with the best response of a united nation. Reaching Beyond the Party The events of this last week or so, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy and RFK Jr. joined Trump on stage show the growth of the Trump movement. It does not contradict anything that came before. It is rather the dawning recognition that the country is facing an existential threat from within: a deep state grown so corrupt that it has not hesitated to use the nation’s intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice to initiate political prosecutions at the highest level and to institute censorship in order to forcibly control the national conversation. The only divide that matters at this point is that of opposition or support to deep state thought control and political prosecution. The smaller debates over the proper role of government pale in comparison and can be set aside by all good citizens who still care for what the Constitution calls the “Republican Form of Government.” About 1,700 years ago, there was a remarkable partnership leading the community of Jewish exiles in what is today’s Iraq.  Head of the scholarly leadership was Rabbi Yochanan. His indispensable colleague’s was name Reish Lakish. Reish Lakish had been a gang leader in his youth. Rabbi Yochanan had seen his powerful potential and inspired him to change his ways. Reish Lakish became a superb scholar, brilliant and outspoken. The Talmud records many of the fierce debates between him and Rabbi Yochanan, through which the principles behind the law to which the people were devoted became clear. Though a younger man, Reish Lakish died well before his master. Many of the lesser scholars vied to fill Reish Lakish’s shoes, but lacking both the courage and the insight of the departed man, they wound up just finding various ways to justify and bring scholarly support to Rabbi Yochanan’s opinions. Finally, Rabbi Yochanan had had enough. He said to the aspiring young men, “None of you are equal to Reish Lakish, You all listen to my opinions and then bring me support from biblical verses and from rabbinic traditions that justify my thought. But I already knew those things! That is why I said what I said. But Reish Lakish — when I stated an opinion, he would bring me a dozen sources showing I was wrong! How I miss him!” Those who love our country more than party, and who love truth more than anything do not shy away from critical opinion. They ally themselves with all who seek the good of the land where they live, and find a way to unite them all for the general good. (READ MORE: Churchill Knew the War Must Be Won) We live in a time when that is essential. Trump has never been a party man. He has, rather, transformed the party to his vision. That vision is now resonating with important figures far beyond the Republican Party, whose support of what Trump is fighting for will be a potent factor in shaping a national recovery and a Trump victory. The post Trump’s Vision Transcends the Party appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Pro-life Americans once had a staunch and vocal champion in former President Donald Trump, but his statements on abortion over the past year have given many cause for concern. Most recently, Trump said that Florida’s current six-week abortion ban is “too short” and that there “has to be more time” for a pregnant mother to seek to end her unborn baby’s life, indicating that he would support — and encourage others to support — a pro-abortion amendment on the Sunshine State’s ballot this November. American conservatives were forced to settle for compromise-gurus, political hacks who would talk a big game without ever intending to play. The Trump campaign quickly issued a statement to counter the backlash, saying, “President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short.” The following day, Friday, Trump told reporters that he would, in fact, be voting against the abortion amendment. “The Democrats are radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation where you can do an abortion in the ninth month,” the 45th President said. “Some of the states, like Minnesota and other states, have it where you can actually execute the baby after birth. And all of that stuff is unacceptable.” While Trump’s pivot on the abortion amendment and his clarification that he will be opposing it is commendable, it did not occur in a vacuum. According to Paul Brown, policy director at Abolish Abortion Texas, Trump was responding to pressure from pro-lifers, who launched an impromptu grassroots campaign condemning his tacit endorsement of the abortion amendment. Brown said that Trump’s clear opposition to Florida’s abortion amendment is “a sign that our pressure worked. It’s also a sign we need to keep going. Don’t let up.” He added that Trump “needs to start talking tough about abortion, and he needs to start now. Bottom line, he needs to acknowledge that it’s murder, that all of it is totally wrong and unacceptable, and he needs to reverse his previous statements about opposing a national ban, etc.” Earlier this year, in an apparent bid to present himself as a more appealing choice to independent, moderate, and ex-Democrat voters, Trump announced that he would be leaving the issue of abortion to the states, following the demise of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Since then, Trump’s team led the GOP in removing pro-life commitments from the party’s 2024 platform and recently said that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” One of the reasons Trump soared to the White House in 2016 — and actually increased in popularity in 2020 — is because he gave a voice to the voiceless. For too long, American conservatives were forced to settle for compromise-gurus, political hacks who would talk a big game without ever intending to play. Candidates and politicians would talk of their faith, their morals, and their love of country, and then proceed to ignore every issue except foreign policy, foreign aid, and beefing up corporations. Trump was, in his own words, “built different.” He put three Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade. He signed an executive order protecting unborn children once a heartbeat is detected. He was the first U.S. President to make an appearance at the March for Life, not only acknowledging the campaign’s existence and importance, but encouraging his countrymen to defend unborn life. This strategy — giving voice to the voiceless, standing up for the most vulnerable of Americans when no one else will — has been a winning strategy. Countless Christians are now dismayed and distraught over the former President’s cryptic (and, in some cases, painfully non-cryptic) comments on leaving unborn children to fend for themselves. Trump would be wise to recognize that Americans do not want compromise. Certainly, the ravenous abortion cult will suffer no compromise, rendering Trump’s wheedling on the subject futile: he is only damaging his credibility with his own base. To ensure November 2024 is a MAGA landslide, Trump may want to remember the champion for life that he once was — and can be again. READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Disgracefully, a Catholic Cardinal Fronts for Abortion The Atrocity Known as ‘Catholics for Kamala’ The post Trump Waffles on Florida’s Abortion Amendment appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

WASHINGTON — “My values did not change,” Kamala Harris asserted during her Thursday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. Lucky for Harris, Bash did not press the vice president to give an honest reckoning on her record as a prosecutor and her newfound, election-year positions on border policy and fracking. She could take a position on Skechers, but not ballot measures that addressed sentencing for convicted criminals. Harris’ first sit-down interview with a journalist since President Joe Biden endorsed her for the Democratic Party presidential nomination was embarrassing to watch. Throughout her career in public office, a constant take on Harris has been her reputation for being underprepared for key events. Harris seemed unprepared Thursday night when she couldn’t even give a concise answer to the predictable question as to what she would do on her first day in office, if she is elected. It was political malpractice. Fortunately for Harris, CNN has swallowed whole the ridiculous notion that Harris is not your typical San Francisco progressive. Author Michael Eric Dyson gushed on the network that Harris is “not far-left.” Even Mike Dubke, former Trump White House communications director, asserted, “She was to the right of most citizens in San Francisco but to the left of most senators in the U.S. Senate.” I first met Harris when I was a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She became San Francisco district attorney in 2004, after running on the promise that she would not seek the death penalty for murderers. Not to the right of San Francisco. As she talked to CNN, Harris brought up her history of prosecuting transnational criminal organizations that traffic in guns, drugs, and human beings — which should be on the to-do list of any big-city DA. It’s the job. In 2014, when she was California’s attorney general, Harris refused to endorse or oppose Proposition 47, which downgraded some offenses, including shoplifting property valued at less than $950, from felonies to misdemeanors. The alleged reason for her neutrality was that as AG, Harris wrote titles and summaries for ballot initiatives, making it a conflict of interest to take sides. But her predecessor, Dan Lungren, took positions on ballot measures. As AG in 2015, Harris supported a Department of Corrections policy of not funding transgender surgeries for inmates. But by 2019, she seemed to have changed. As the Washington Blade reported, she declared, “On that issue I will tell you I vehemently disagree and in fact worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed, and deserved.” So it seems the question is: What are Kamala Harris’ values? Bash forgot to ask. Citing Harris’ non-position on Proposition 47, Michael Rushford of the pro-enforcement Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento called Harris “a reluctant ally at her best.” For me, Harris will always be one of those headline-seeking politicians most interested in cases that generate positive press coverage. For example, she was one of a number of state attorneys general in 2012 who went after Skechers for making unfounded claims about the footwear’s role in promoting weight loss. I’m all for AGs going after corporations that sell goods that hurt people or otherwise endanger public health. But this was just a publicity grab. And here’s the worst part: She could take a position on Skechers, but not ballot measures that addressed sentencing for convicted criminals. “It seems like, to me, she was always looking for the next job,” Rushford told me. “Guess what? It worked.” Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE from Debra J. Saunders: Zuckerberg Says Facebook Will Be ‘Neutral.’ Too Little, Too Late. Kamala Harris Misses Her Chance The post CNN’s Softball Interview for a Softball Candidate appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The critics have been unmerciful in their reviews of the movie Reagan which features Dennis Quaid in the titular role. Inspired by The American Spectator editor Paul Kengor’s book  The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,  the film has been widely derided as a “hagiography” that preaches to the choir of supporters of the 40th U.S. president. Even National Review barely mustered a compliment. “And to the extent that Quaid served as a jukebox playing some of Reagan’s greatest hits, there were enjoyable moments — and some that were quite moving.”  The critics have misunderstood the movie just as they probably misunderstood the Reagan presidency. The film also readily admits that Reagan was a B actor although subtle homage is played to Knute Rockne: All American (1940) and  Kings Row (1942). Directed by Sean McNamara, the ensemble film also stars Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan, Jon Voight as fictional KGB agent Viktor Petrovich, Mena Suvari as Reagan’s first wife actress Jane Wyman,  C. Thomas Howell as Casper Weinberger, Xander Berkeley as George Schultz, Amanda Righetti as Reagan’s mother Nell, and Lesley-Anne Down as Margaret Thatcher. (READ MORE from Leonora Cravotta: Hit Man Is Destined To Become a Hit) Reagan opens with the 1981 assassination attempt at the DC Hilton Hotel before flashing back to Reagan’s childhood in Dixon, Illinois. The narrative then jumps back to 1981 with Reagan famously endeavoring to diffuse his brush with death  with the words “I forgot to duck.” The focus on the Hilton Hotel shooting imbues the film with a Twilight Zone-type aura given the recent assassination attempt on former president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump. Critics have widely derided screenplay writer Howard Klausner’s decision to use the fictional KGB agent Viktor Petrovich (Voight) as the story’s present-day narrator. Petrovich discusses his 40-year obsession with Reagan in conversations with another fictional character, a rising young Russian politician Andrei Novikov (Alex Sparrow). Petrovich in these exchanges makes it clear that he identified Reagan as a Western threat to Russia decades before he became President of the United States and that Reagan’s anticommunist leanings started burgeoning when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild. While there are risks with injecting fictional characters into a bio picture,  the tactic worked effectively in Reagan because Jon Voight is such an authentic actor who disseminates a thousand tales with a mere change in facial expression or a pause in speech.  Dennis Quaid does a masterful job of embodying Reagan’s voice and facial expressions while avoiding direct imitation. While his actual physical resemblance to the 40th president even with prosthetics is a stretch, he so exudes Reagan’s spirit from every pore, if you closed your eyes,  you would think it was Reagan speaking. Penelope Ann Miller should also be commended for her nuanced portrayal of Nancy Reagan. Given that the left-leaning media habitually diminished Mrs.Reagan during her lifetime, Miller’s performance endows the former first lady with a refreshing intelligence and warmth. As for the allegations that the film is propaganda that whitewashes history, the critics have mistaken nostalgia for the optimism that Reagan always projected as hero worship. Reagan is presented as a morally imperfect individual. After all, he was the first divorced U.S. president. The film also readily admits that Reagan was a B actor although subtle homage is played to Knute Rockne: All American (1940) and  Kings Row (1942), which are considered to be his best films. While the film has been accused of “glossing over” the negative flashpoints of Reagan’s presidency, including the AIDS epidemic and the “Iran-Contra” scandal, it is important to remember that the film is a biopicture not a documentary. And as an entertainment vehicle, it highlights the former actor’s excellent communication skills and his most memorable lines such as “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  which he famously uttered in his scripted address at the Berlin Wall’s Brandenberg’s Gate on June 12, 1987. (READ MORE: The Fall Guy Honors Stunt People, Traditional Values)  My only complaint about the film is that I would have liked to have heard more about Reagan’s relationship with Jane Wyman and consequently seen more of the very talented Mena Suvari. But again, as the film clocked in at 135 minutes, it would have been difficult to add more to the story. I highly recommend Reagan as an engaging, well-acted portrait of the 40th U.S. president Ronald Wilson Reagan. Moreover, this film is a reminder that while the world was not perfect during his presidency, as the commander-in-chief, Reagan always conveyed optimism. There was always the possibility of another “morning in America.” The post Critics Be Damned: The Reagan Film Is Wonderful appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

For the first time since a ban against face masks became law in New York State’s Nassau Country, a man was arrested for appearing masked in public. Weslin Omar Ramirez Castillo, an illegal migrant from Guatemala, was dressed in all black and was wearing a ski mask in hot August weather. He was not a protestor but he was found to be carrying a 14 inch knife. Support for laws to ban Ku Klux Klan-like face and head coverings have gained support in both New York and California. Various interest groups are already up in arms. They fear that this first-of-a-kind ban will be selectively enforced, mainly against people of color, against illegal migrants, against pro-Palestine activists, and against disabled individuals who are afraid of contracting Covid. Bizarrely, face-masking is also seen as a form of free speech. For such reasons, those in charge of American universities cannot seem to find a way to ban face masks. Such face coverings, which obscure one’s identity, are worn by criminals, burglars, terrorists, kidnappers, and by those students and outside activists who want all the privileges of “free speech,” but only for themselves. Their “speech” often includes property damage, harassment, and civil unrest but they do not want to be held accountable for either their views or their crimes. Thus, they hide behind masks, in cowardly anonymity.  (READ MORE from Phyllis Chesler: The Stakes for Women in This Election Are Enormous) Since 10/7, the most aggressive anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas activists have shut down campuses, vandalized campus property, terrorized Jewish and other students, stopped traffic, and harassed civilians while disguised, wearing keffiyehs around their necks or on their faces. Some young, non-Muslim white women, also wore the a hijab (head covering), and sometimes a niqab (Islamic face coverings), to support Palestine/Hamas. For a long time, I have viewed the burqa (full body covering), niqab, and sometimes even hijab, as a violation of women’s rights as well as a health and security hazard. The burqa is a sensory deprivation isolation chamber, a moveable prison, a garment that removes women from society. The niqab also makes identification difficult and makes it impossible for a woman to dine in public with male colleagues who are non-family members. Moroccan feminist, Fatima Mernissi, and Tunisian feminist, Samia Labidi, both viewed hijab as an incendiary political symbol, denoting oppressive patriarchal control, not as a legal, religious obligation. It is a forced, not a free choice. There is a lively debate among Muslim feminists about this issue in terms of whether the state, especially a non-Muslim state, has the right to tell women how to dress or whether such rights belong to the family, the mosque, or to the woman alone. Some view the hijab and the niqab as a form of “resistance” to Western ways and believe that veiled women are more liberated than those who wear bikinis. Many American student activists seem to agree with this line of reasoning. But here’s something else to consider for all those who view face masking as a Muslim religious right. Historically other countries, including Muslim countries, have not hesitated to ban the hijab, the niqab, the burqa, and the chador (an open cloak). During the 1920s and 1930s, Kings, Shahs, and Presidents unveiled their female citizens and Muslim feminists campaigned for open faces in public. They were successful in Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran to name but a few countries. (READ MORE: Why Are Women in America Cheering for Hamas and Iran?) My favorite tale took place in Afghanistan, when Shah Amanullah Khan (1919-1929) scandalized the populace by permitting his wife to go unveiled. By 1928, he urged Afghan women to uncover their faces and advocated the shooting of interfering husbands. He said that he himself would supply the weapons and promised that no inquiries would be instituted against the women. Once, when he saw a woman wearing a burqa in public, he tore it off and burned it. Alas, poor Amanullah was exiled and the country plunged back into the past — at least until the 1960s when some modernization took place in the cities until the death-eating Taliban arose. In 1926 in Iran, Reza Shah provided police protection for Iranian women who chose to dispense with the traditional scarf. Within a decade, he ordered all teachers and wives of ministers, and high military officials to wear European clothes and hats rather than chadors. Nearly a century later, in 2007 and 2009, the President of Tajikistan, a Muslim-majority country, banned the hijab. Why? According to a Tajikistani-American friend, this was done to stop the Arab Sunni radicalization of the country, to safeguard national cultural values, combat superstition and extremism, and to return the country to Tajikistan’s indigenous culture. The Tajikistani President-for-Life was alarmed by the spread of Arab Sunni Muslim imperialism and the accompanying terrorism. The chattering classes and the legal gliterrati in America say that banning is a very complex issue. What if one wears a face mask for religious reasons? (That custom applies only to women though — why are the male activists dressing like women?) Support for laws to ban Ku Klux Klan-like face and head coverings have gained support in both New York and California. There is a Black-Jewish coalition in favor of banning masks at protests. Hazel Dukes, President of the NAACP New York State Conference, said: “Black communities know all too well that individuals who hide their identities with intent to terrorize, intimidate, or harass are a threat to all our safety and have no place in New York.” The Foundation for Individual Rights views the First Amendment as Protecting the right to speak anonymously, “shielding individuals from retaliation for expressing dissenting or unpopular ideas.” Support for Palestine is not dissent, as this view seems to be popular globally and on campuses. The issue here is not free speech; it is vandalism and intimidation, harassment, and violence against Jewish/Zionist students, professors, and others. It is incitement based on lethal lies that always leads to violence, Brownshirt behavior that should no longer be coddled. Even France and Belgium, two countries often appropriately deemed solicitous of Islamic extremism, banned the burqa and the niqab long ago. Every state in the union should pass religion-neutral bans on face masks. The post Ban Face Masks: Our Safety Requires It appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.