Politics Harris’s Weaknesses Are Complicated The vice president is trying to move the position of minorities backward—which makes campaigning against her difficult. Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images In a campaign that is increasingly turning on who is and isn’t weird, White Dudes for Harris and White Women for Harris are totally having a normal one. These Zoom struggle sessions in support of Vice President Kamala Harris for president contain all the hallmarks of woke nonsense: weird self-abasement, off-putting lectures to put on “listening ears,” a separation of voters by race that looks eerily like the type of racist thinking it purportedly seeks to excise from the body politic—partly earnest and well-meaning while also not that subtly toxic, a form of outsourcing get-out-the-vote operations to your friendly local human resources department. “Throughout American history, when white men organized, it was often with pointy hats on,” the dude rustler Ross Morales Rocketto was quoted as saying. He apparently also noted, with the good humor for which woke liberals are famous, that the White Dudes for Harris trucker caps were not themselves pointy. Just some dudes and dudettes have good, clean fun, one supposes. But however tendentiously, they are making an important, uh, point: Harris’s path to the presidency, like the defenestrated President Joe Biden before her, runs through white voters living in the suburbs in battleground states. That is why Harris is likely to pick a white dude as her own running mate. The Atlantic dubbed it Harris’s “white boy summer,” calling her would-be veep a “diversity hire.” Some of this is just normal political coalition-building, like John F. Kennedy picking a Texan or Barack Obama tapping Biden. But there’s also the veiled assumption that the country is too racist to elect a black and Asian woman president without a pale-complected pol whose pronouns are he/him by her side. Colin Powell, whose wife died this week, could have been elected president in 1996, if not sooner. In 2008, White Dudes for Obama and White Women for Obama were simply known as the Iowa caucuses.  The Resistance is largely a college-educated white phenomenon. That’s not to say that there aren’t minority voters passionately opposed to the former President Donald Trump, as are the entire civil-rights establishment and all the related activist groups. But Trump has actually grown the Republican Party’s minority vote share, which was true in the last election and is one of the reasons the polls look so different in 2024 than they did in 2020. Trump lost a subset of suburban whites faster than he gained black and Hispanic men, which is one of the reasons he lost in 2020 and why he isn’t guaranteed victory this time around. But it was widely predicted that Trump would do to the GOP and the Hispanic vote what Barry Goldwater, who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, did to the party’s share of the black vote.  Instead, even in defeat in 2020, Trump won the biggest percentage of the Hispanic vote of any Republican presidential nominee since George W. Bush, with diametrically opposed immigration policies. Trump also won nearly one in five black men while carrying white women. Harris is going to try to claw back these minority votes. There is already evidence that the black and Asian voters who do intend to cast ballots for her are more enthusiastic than when Biden was still in the race. But if she wins, it will look more like Biden in 2020 than Obama in 2008. Her cultural approach will be both an asset and a liability.  As the Clinton-era scribe Joe Klein put it, “Democrats, led by their arrogant, elitist academic wing, have pursued a disastrous course for decades, emphasizing identity over unity, equity over equality of opportunity, and playing annoying, euphemistic, dilettante word games, using terms like socialism, gender-affirmation, white privilege, people of color, unhoused, intersectionality (whatever that is), Latinx and pronoun-imprecision—all guaranteed, indeed intended, to kick sand in the face of the bourgeoisie.” That is why the “DEI candidate” talk is complicated. The moniker is certainly accurate in terms of what Harris believes: “Some people start out on first base. Some people start out on third base. And if the goal is truly about equality, it has to be about a goal of saying everybody should end up in the same place. And since we didn’t start in the same place, some folks might need more equitable distribution.” (This was said when she was vice president and might still be fair game and not subject to revision.) To suggest, as some Republicans do, that Harris is uniquely unqualified isn’t quite right, even acknowledging the role race and gender played in her selection by Biden and the reason Democrats didn’t try to replace her too with a Rust Belt governor. It’s also worthwhile to compare Biden’s resume with his results as president and question the whole idea of whether politics is as much of a meritocracy as brain surgery ought to be. Getting the precise anti-Harris messaging right is important if Republicans want to build a multiracial working-class coalition to compete with her coalition of cringe. Even if the dudes don’t abide. The post Harris’s Weaknesses Are Complicated appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Will Harris Be Beholden to Her Big Tech Overlords? Corporations are pouring money into the vice president’s campaign coffers. What will they expect in return? Kamala Harris has benefitted from a cozy relationship with Big Tech. Now, that relationship is being tested with a quid pro quo from major Big Tech donors: If you take our money, you must fire FTC Chair Lina Khan. Harris has raked in the campaign cash from Big Tech. Throughout her political career, these companies have doled out millions in contributions. Alphabet has donated $842,212. Microsoft has shelled out $575,043. Amazon, Apple, and Meta have also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaigns.  Recently, the Democratic megadonor and founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman announced he will give $7 million to a super PAC supporting Harris. But the donation reportedly came with strings attached: Harris must terminate Khan, who has been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts.  Almost immediately, a chorus of Big Tech donors made the same demand—and media personalities are now predicting she will make good on it. Another Democratic megadonor, Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC and Expedia, demanded the firing of Khan in an interview with CNBC. Diller has said he plans to max out to Harris and has encouraged his fellow billionaires to do the same. CNBC’s Jim Cramer predicted that if Harris were to win, she’d fire both Khan and Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general with the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Hoffman has a particular interest in seeing Khan fired. He sits on the board of Aurora, a self-driving car company that is partially owned by Amazon. Khan is currently taking action against Amazon for monopolistic practices. He also sits on the board of Microsoft. Khan sued Microsoft to block the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. And it doesn’t end there. Hoffman is also associated with PayPal, a company that faced an antitrust class action lawsuit, and OpenAI, another company investigated by Khan’s FTC. Hoffman thinks that Khan might be hurting his bottom line by enforcing the law, so he wants her gone. All this pressure means something. In countless articles speculating on whether Harris would fire both Kanter and Khan, the Harris campaign has been silent. The most the campaign has provided was a noncommittal answer to CNN: A Harris campaign aide told CNN that there have been “no policy discussions” about replacing Khan at the current time. “She has been the presumptive nominee for three days,” the aide added. All of this raises the question: Is Kamala Harris preparing to go soft on antitrust and instead do the bidding of her Big Tech overlords? The Biden administration has tasked Harris with the role as Artificial Intelligence Czar, overseeing the administration’s policy agenda on AI. What has Harris done in this role? She has championed “fairness” in algorithms, disparities in training data, and countering “harmful” biases. Essentially, Harris has served to just make artificial intelligence more woke; doing nothing to push forward innovation and ensure America’s success in the artificial intelligence race against China. Compare this to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Trump has continued to rail against Big Tech companies for being “too big” and “too powerful.” Both Trump and Vance have supported a crackdown on Big Tech. Vance has voiced his support for Khan’s actions on multiple occasions. During the 2020 election, Google suppressed stories on the Hunter Biden laptop, Twitter restricted pro-Trump PACs from tweeting, and Facebook banned various campaign ads from pro-Trump super PACs. These actions were solely to benefit the Biden-Harris campaign, and were instrumental in getting Biden elected. The former president has pledged that if he were to win, he’d block federal money from going to these tech companies and their anti-disinformation efforts—and fire federal officials who aided and abetted censorship. Trump’s plans include both executive orders and legislation, which he has proposed under his “Free Speech Platform.”  If Harris were to win, what would she do with regard to Big Tech? Say what you will about Joe Biden, but it’s hard to argue his administration has been very friendly to the tech companies. Would Kamala Harris continue that legacy? Or would she push the Democrat Party in a direction more favorable to her Big Tech paymasters? If the past is any predictor of the future, Kamala Harris is likely to become our most pro-Big Tech president ever if she wins. It appears very likely that she would indeed fire Lina Khan at the request of those who have funded her career. And that would be terrible news for the American people who are sick of a few powerful Big Tech companies controlling the free flow of information and thus our elections. The post Will Harris Be Beholden to Her Big Tech Overlords? appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris The former president’s age and the media’s full-court press conspire against him. Credit: Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images Roughly a year ago, I attended a pricey fundraiser for Ron DeSantis in Southampton. Our host, a highly successful Italian-American lawyer,  introduced the governor by saying that his main motivation for getting involved was that he did not want to see Kamala Harris president of the United States. He didn’t have to make it explicit; the premise understood by all there was that Donald Trump, for all his undoubted strengths, would not fare well against a candidate twenty years his junior.   Even then it was becoming clear, surprising as it initially seemed, that DeSantis did not have the political juice to shake Trump’s hold on the MAGA base; Trump remained undisputed king of it, and he had grown that base big enough to hold off comfortably any challenge from the Bush/Cheney/McCain wing of the GOP, attractively represented by Nikki Haley.  If the polls have shown anything consistently since then, it is that a wide swathe of voters and probably wider percentage of elites did not want a Biden-Trump rematch, and that choice between a visibly senescent and rapidly failing 81 year old and 78 year old election-denier with legal problems was not the best choice Americans could have in a perilously troubled time. In a stunning two weeks, the Democratic Party has acted with surprising coherence and ruthlessness to retire forcibly Joe Biden and unite around Kamala Harris. What seemed a very likely Trump victory a fortnight ago—and the former president had been leading significantly in swing state polls for months before Biden’s debate disaster and Trump’s miraculous escape from assassination—now seems anything but certain. Indeed, I would put it as less likely than not.  Harris might be objectively a weak candidate, but the traditional and time-tested ways through which that weakness would be exposed to voters—a press reporting on her positions, rivals probing at her vulnerabilities throughout months and months of competitive primary process—have been effectively short-circuited by the Democratic elite decision to unite behind her. One day we will have reporting on what roadblocks might have impeded this coronation and how they were effectively circumvented. As it was, her path to her party’s nomination seems as seamless as Charles becoming King of England after his mum’s death. Harris is receiving the kind exuberant across-the-board media support that hasn’t existed since LBJ swamped Goldwater. That kind of media is worth what—five points in the polls? Ten?  By comparison with Hillary, on stage in debate and almost every televised media report, Trump seemed more vigorous, humorous, and strong. By comparison with Biden, such differences were startlingly obvious to every Democrat. By comparison with Harris, Trump will seem old and overweight, a contrast which could be mitigated and overcome if he were able to present himself as wiser, more reassuring, and statesmanlike. That is likely to be, for Trump, a difficult ask.  The one factor in Trump’s favor is that Harris is a genuinely radical left candidate—more so than any of her competitors (who had soundly bested her in the polls before the 2020 voting started), more so even than Bernie Sanders, whom the party establishment united against in March of that year. Sanders’s two generations of experience with American voters gave him a fairly realistic sense of how socialist the country could become by democratic means—not very. He had seen the collapse of a Soviet Union he once admired, he had lived through decades of very real debates about socialism (which was intellectually quite popular when he was young) and had undoubtedly learned a lot.  To hear Harris talk again and again of “equity,” as she has in countless speeches, is to hear a fourth-grade version of these debates—why not make all economic outcomes equal? That ignores everything about the actual history of socialism, of economic incentives, and of actual differences between people. The media, thoroughly on her side, proclaims Harris only ran like this to occupy the left lane during the Democratic primaries. But she continued to push her woke viewpoints after her campaign fell apart: months after lack of voter support drove Harris from the 2020 race, she was at it during the George Floyd riots, urging people to support a bail fund for the rioters in June even as the New York Times had noted that the “protests” were growing out of control.  Later in the month she went on national television, had noted the riots were “a movement” which is “not going let up” and “should not.”  Trump ads have already pointed to Harris’s comparison of likening ICE to the KKK and her positions favoring free healthcare for illegal immigrants. These and other examples of Harris’s embrace of radically woke positions are well chronicled in an important Andrew Sullivan column. Sullivan, it should be recalled, is a centrist who has supported the Democratic nominee in (at least) the past four presidential election cycles.  Under normal circumstances, a candidate of Harris’s beliefs would stand no real chance. But of course things are not normal: The enthusiasm for her today has the same energy of the George Floyd riots, and something of a similar psychological basis. The tremendous relief of Democratic and media elites feel from not being under the burden of having to lie about Joe Biden has parallels in the relief millions felt in having a socially permitted reason to escape covid lockdowns.  The media is a political superpower, and so far at least has indicated it will do virtually anything to advance her candidacy. The chance that Trump can actually help himself in a debate with Harris seems, to me, very small. She on the other hand has before her a convention where she will be paired with any one of able and fairly appealing (white male) running mates. I don’t doubt she will be leading in the polls by Labor Day. Trump and J.D. Vance will then have before them the task of conveying the truth about Harris in a very brief period of time with the major communication outlets of the country dedicated to preventing the truth from emerging. It took more than a year for centrists and conservatives to even begin to effectively debunk the myths that had grown up around the police, Black Lives Matter, and the rest of the dishonesty which permeated summer of 2020. Trump, Vance and their allies don’t have anywhere near that amount of time. The post Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris appeared first on The American Conservative.

"I very much take my style from him." The post “He’s still the best”: The greatest bassist of all time, according to Suzi Quatro first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

The announcement that President Joe Biden was quitting the race for the presidency and endorsing Vice-President Kamala Harris for the 2024 Democratic nomination for president had echoes of President Lyndon Johnson’s announcement on March 31, 1968, that he was ending his quest for reelection that year. Johnson, behind the scenes, worked to ensure that Vice-President Hubert Humphrey would get the nomination, while Biden has outwardly favored Vice-President Harris. Johnson coupled his announcement with a bombing pause and increased negotiations with the North Vietnamese to attempt to remove the unpopular war from the political equation. Biden, even before he decided to drop out of the race, proposed immigration reform in an effort to tone down that issue which has been an albatross around his campaign’s and party’s neck. Johnson was praised by many in the media for sacrificing his personal ambitions for the national interest. Biden, too, is praised by the mainstream media for placing the “country’s interests” (i.e., preventing Donald Trump from returning to the White House) ahead of his personal interests. But in reality, the decisions made by Biden and Johnson were based on nothing more than raw politics. The Reality of the Raw Politics Politics, the realists among us know, is fundamentally about the struggle for power. Both Biden today and Johnson in 1968 saw their personal political fortunes and their party’s political fortunes in danger. Both were pressured by senior Democratic leaders to quit the race —Biden even more so than Johnson. Presumably, both retreated in the face of internal polls that said they could not win — otherwise, they would not have dropped out of their respective races. (READ MORE: The Path to Beating Harris) In 1968, Democratic political leaders soon rallied behind Humphrey who emerged as the party’s candidate. Now, Democratic political leaders are rallying to Harris, who will likely be the party’s candidate at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Humphrey in 1968 was unable to overcome his connection to an administration that had turned the Vietnam War into a debacle, and he lost a close race to Richard Nixon, with Alabama Governor George Wallace, a third-party candidate, coming in a distant third. This year, we also have a third-party candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who will also likely finish a distant third. Harris Will Be Plagued by the Biden Record Harris should have to answer questions about why she stood by silently after witnessing Biden’s cognitive decline during the past three years. She will also have difficulty lifting the albatross of the border crisis from the administration’s neck. In 1968, Humphrey could not distance himself from the very administration he served in for the previous four years. Harris will have a similar problem. Biden’s low standing in the polls is based on issues — the border crisis, the economy, high consumer prices, inflation, and a world that grows more dangerous every day. Those same issues will plague Harris — it is after all the Biden-Harris administration that has led the country for the past four years. One thing is certain, the mainstream media’s political goal is to stop Donald Trump from regaining the presidency and it will line up behind whomever can accomplish that. The so-called party of “democracy” and their media accomplices are only too glad to turn their backs on “democracy” (all those voters who supported Joe Biden for president will be ignored) to stop Trump. The media hates Trump even more than they hated Nixon. Expect media analysts to suddenly discover Harris’ gravitas, statesmanship, and star quality. The Hollywood crowd will go wild for Kamala. The donors will pony up tens of millions of dollars. Biden will become just a memory. READ MORE: Kamala’s Useful Idiots Kamala Harris and the Too-Late Solution The post Even More Echoes of 1968 appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Venezuela is the holy Job of modern history. Their mixture of struggle and resignation, of resistance, of enduring unnecessary poverty and dispensable humiliation, is an example for the world. The people have once again voted against the mustachioed walrus. There is talk of an opposition victory by as much as 70 percent of the votes. Maduro says he won with 51.2 percent, but that would be a Bolivarian miracle attributed to the possible excess of rum in blood, or to the fact that some Chavistas voted with both hands and feet. The mustachioed walrus is not going anywhere. It is nothing new. He is a dictator, of course, but he is also a tyrant. Between Saturday and Monday, the regime kidnapped two Spanish compatriots, journalist Cake Minuesa and former congressman Victor Gonzalez. The communist vice-president of the government of Spain congratulated Maduro for his victory; not a word from the government demanding the release of the two Spaniards; no statement from the EU. Nothing. This is how things are. (RELATED: ‘By Hook or By Crook:’ The Venezuelan Election ) The truth is that Maduro’s real fear is not losing power, but that the people will be in a position to hold him accountable for all the damage he has done, the pain he has caused, and the money he has stolen from the Venezuelans. Maduro is beginning to resemble those unwelcome visitors, unexpected friends who stay for dinner, and who are still there watching TV, or talking non-stop when you want to go to bed. In the end, you only have two options: resignation or conflict. To enter into conflict means to get up and demand to know: “But what’s wrong, man, don’t you have a home to go to?” Maduro is the clumsiest dictator of our time, but he is also the heaviest. Dictatorial Regimes Stay In Power Until People Shed Their Blood Dictators believe that they have the army on their side. They forget that they have bought the military commanders, but not the whole army. Those in the military have families, children, parents, and friends, and it is likely that none of them have voted for Maduro, because almost no one has done so in these elections. What was he thinking? A minimal split in the army would likely provoke desertion en masse, a change of sides, and the immediate fall of the communist regime. If it has not happened so far, it is because Venezuelans — starting with the opposition leaders — have had to choose between fighting or waiting for a better opportunity each time they have taken control of the streets and have been brutally repressed, and someone or something always ends up convincing them that it is better to avoid “a bloodbath.” I do not judge them. It is enough for them to survive the mustachioed walrus. But perhaps it is worth remembering that many dictatorial regimes do not give up power until the people shed their blood to free themselves. (READ MORE: Venezuelan Elections Held Hostage) Ideally, however, peaceful mobilization would be sufficient. There is nothing more painful than a civil war. For peaceful resistance to work, all possible international pressure is required. Is there any? No. I dare say that, as of this writing, Venezuelans have done their job bravely, but the West has not done its part. If the Western countries do not firmly support the struggle for freedom of the Venezuelan people, we will have lost the last hope of identity left to us. The West Has Failed to Call for Transparency The EU response has been lukewarm and bureaucratic. It has taken them ages to demand transparency from Maduro when from the beginning they should have condemned the electoral theft and demanded that Maduro step down immediately. Anything else implies support. Nor has the United States been up to the task. Kamala Harris’ statements are like bread without salt, like a slice of cold turkey, like a monument to irrelevance. Asking a bloodthirsty dictator to “respect the will of the Venezuelan people” is like asking the fox to dance with chickens, and not eat them. (READ MORE: Kamala’s Useful Idiots) Elon Musk has done more for Venezuelans from his X account in the last few hours than all the great Western democracies. I feel ashamed to live amid such cowardice, such lukewarmness, such stupid empty talk. Unity, democracy, and struggle have achieved, over the last century, the fall of the most powerful and intelligent dictators in history. And now it turns out that we cannot topple the mustachioed walrus, the most cowardly and the dumbest dictator in the world. Oh, but we can. Of course, we can. His time has passed. Long live free Venezuela! The post Maduro, Get Down From Your Tree and Scram appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“The Watch Checkers“ editorial cartoon by Yogi Love for The American Spectator, July 30, 2024. The post The Watch Checkers appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The much-anticipated Third Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) concluded earlier this month. Historically, the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in 1978 was pivotal in transitioning China from the Mao era to reforms and opening up. This latest session garnered significant interest, especially due to its delay and China’s current economic downturn. Many hoped for new policies to address economic issues, but the results were disappointing, largely because observers misunderstood the CCP’s model. The Rise of the CCP’s China Inc. The CCP operates as “China Inc.,” treating the entire country as a giant corporation with the Party as the owner and manager. All enterprises, whether state-owned or private, are subsidiaries. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are direct subsidiaries, while private enterprises function as joint ventures controlled by the CCP. Foreign investments are akin to franchisees. (RELATED: Reject China, Inc. — Not Trading With It) Under this model, the CCP concentrates resources on developing targeted industries, acquiring foreign technology, and setting up protection mechanisms to prevent foreign competition. This strategy has succeeded in sectors like solar power, high-speed rail, and automotive batteries. China’s electric vehicles, for example, have rapidly gained global market share. The national corporation model has drastically impacted global trade, as competition typically occurs among private enterprises, not state-controlled entities. China Inc. wields immense resources, combining governmental power with corporate flexibility. Furthermore, China’s total output has surpassed the United States (measured by purchasing power parity). This dominance affects any industry China enters, significantly impacting global markets. China’s model features high production capacity and low consumption, necessitating the export of surplus products. The CCP depresses wages and the RMB exchange rate, making Chinese products cheap globally. Despite low wages and overwork, Chinese citizens have no option but to obey, hoping they can gradually increase their incomes. The key to this model is the CCP’s rule above the law and its dictatorial control, with no legally protected property rights. The CCP can confiscate property or enterprises at any time. Challenges Facing the CCP The CCP currently faces numerous domestic and international difficulties. Domestically, China’s economy is in crisis. The primary issue is a lack of confidence among people. Entrepreneurs are hesitant to invest, and citizens are reluctant to consume due to the CCP’s arbitrary actions against private enterprises and individuals. The zero-COVID policy has pushed the population to the brink and nearly bankrupted the economy. Today, passive resistance and “lying flat” are common attitudes among the public and officials. The CCP has not adopted significant economic stimulus policies, hoping the private sector will resolve issues independently. (READ MORE Governance in Gaza and the West Bank: What to Know) Internationally, there is growing distrust and vigilance towards China. Countries are increasingly aware of the dangers posed by the CCP’s model and are taking steps to decouple from it. Many nations are establishing alternative supply chains to reduce dependence on China and counter the CCP’s use of trade as a political tool. China Inc.’s international prospects are grim, especially if Trump returns to power. For the CCP, closing its doors is terrifying because, without international trade profits, it cannot placate the masses economically. This could lead to a zero-sum game between the ruling class and the governed, potentially resulting in internal conflict. The CCP fears decoupling from developed countries like the U.S. and Europe, as this would exacerbate domestic economic decline and public dissatisfaction. Third Plenary Session: Hope or Hype? Faced with these challenges, what measures has the CCP introduced at the Third Plenary Session? The first measure is to strengthen the Party’s leadership and bolster Xi Jinping’s authority. The second measure is to re-emphasize “reform.” Strengthening the Party’s leadership and establishing Xi’s authority offers no economic benefits and may further frighten private enterprises and citizens. The emphasis on reform is ineffective because it does not aim to transform the socialist public ownership and dictatorial system into true private ownership and the rule of law. Instead, the reform aims to save the CCP and ensure its perpetual rule. The party may adopt capitalist measures and introduce Western capital and technology when the economy is on the brink of collapse, but this is merely a tactic to buy time, not a genuine embrace of Western democracy, freedom, and the rule of law. The party will not relax its grip and is willing to use military force to maintain its rule, as demonstrated by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. (READ MORE: Former Trump Defense Official Makes the Case for Prioritizing Asia Over Europe) If there is anything significant in the Third Plenary Session’s communiqué, it is two key phrases. The first is the acknowledgment of the “severe and complex international environment” reflecting the international challenges. The second is to “let firms thrive and control them effectively” (“放得活”又“管得住”) — more specifically, let the market play a role in resource allocation while ensuring the Party’s leadership remains absolute. This phrase is crucial because China Inc. concentrates national resources while encouraging enterprise activities. These show that the party actually recognizes the challenges it faces. A Bleak Outlook Given the global pushback against China’s national corporation model, what options does the CCP have? The best option would be to abandon the model, establish a supreme legal system, place the CCP under the law, and shift the government’s role from an economic player to a referee. This would mean relinquishing dictatorship, something the CCP has explicitly stated it will never do. Therefore, I am not optimistic about China’s future. Without external pressure, the CCP will maintain its one-party rule indefinitely, even at the cost of economic collapse. The phrase “China has entered the garbage time” went viral because it reflects the belief that the CCP will not change its course. Since the beginning of reform and opening up, the party has shown some flexibility in adopting market competition, but without true property rights and an independent legal system, China’s economy cannot break through its current bottleneck. This is why the Third Plenary Session is not worth paying attention to and will not introduce any substantive policies. Shaomin Li is a Professor of International Business at Old Dominion University and the author of The Rise of China, Inc.: How the Chinese Communist Party Transformed China into a Giant Corporation.   The post The Third Plenary Session of the CCP Failed appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

We have a national security risk going nearly unnoticed. It doesn’t draw widespread attention on the evening news or social media. It’s not displayed on an emergency phone alert, debated in the halls of Congress, or one for which the military is training to combat. Most don’t know about it, few choose to acknowledge it, and even fewer seek to address the problem. Yet, it’s a clear and present danger to our constitutional republic. The threat facing America is this: The overwhelming majority of high school graduates do not understand, comprehend, or appreciate civics or U.S. history. The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) shows only 22 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in civics while a measly 13 percent are proficient in U.S. history. The consequences of these data are severe. (READ MORE: Philistines à la Mode) Absent knowledge of the people, places, and papers that shaped our union, how will they prevent and solve complex challenges from foreign and domestic threats as adults? Without a basic knowledge of civics, how will they engage with and contribute to a free society? Diluting Civics Education Betrays the Founding Fathers The Founding Fathers viewed history and civics as key to education. They believed both were critical to individual success and sustainability for the republic. For example, George Washington desired education in the “science of government” for the “future guardians of the liberties of the country.” Further, he asked, “What species of knowledge can be equally important?” America isn’t meeting the expectations set forth by her first president. Unfortunately, as time passed and America moved into the 20th century, history and civics were diluted under the broader umbrella of “social studies” — an amalgamation of disciplines. Academics and social scientists began injecting inquiry-based learning, student-directed history, or action civics into lessons. With these approaches, factual knowledge declined as history and civics were replaced with themes like culture and identity. In an attempt to teach social studies, civics, and history became opportunity costs. Thus, we have a national security risk of alarming proportions. (READ MORE: Oklahoma School Districts Must Teach Scripture. Is That a Good Thing?) Sans a background in U.S. history, students’ awareness of the United States’ role in the world will suffer. For example, an inadequate understanding could lead students to the false conclusion that liberty exists without hardship or sacrifice. Furthermore, with the rise of artificial intelligence and rampant misinformation, citizens must know the history of their country and understand the mechanisms that govern it — or risk falling prey to nefarious actors. The decline leaves citizens vulnerable to adversaries seeking to sow division and undermine our nation’s future. For the safety and security of our country, citizens must know the basic tenets of civics and U.S. history. American students are as capable as any across the globe, but they must be taught effectively. We need a new approach. The Republic Must Endure This unsettling trajectory can and should be flipped at the state level. Louisiana answered the call by establishing a new direction for its students. We developed a Freedom Framework to meet the moment. It consists of rigorous academic standards, teacher preparation through collaboration, and accountability for learning. Paramount to our approach is the utilization of primary source documents, seeking to reduce teacher bias and scaffolding background knowledge. Under Louisiana’s Freedom Framework, the totality of events shaping America into an incomparable nation on a quest for a more perfect union is explored. After their high school experience, students are asked to explain and evaluate the concept of American exceptionalism. The quest for freedom is the hallmark of the American spirit, the American story. From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the journey towards freedom has been one of struggle and sacrifice. We must and we shall teach students the fragility of liberty. We must and we shall teach students the majesty of our country and their obligations as citizens to safeguard the Republic. We must and we shall teach students the triumphs of our nation and the immense magnitude of sacrifices of those who came before us. Through intentional instruction, learners may appreciate the words of Ronald Reagan when he expressed, “Freedom is one of the noblest and deepest aspirations of the human spirit.” (READ MORE: Oklahoma Public Schools to Include the Bible in Curriculum) America is worthy of our best efforts. As a country, let us join together and overcome the national security risk at our door. Let us be resolved to accept the challenge and invest in effectively teaching the rich history of the United States and the civics that underpin its government. The Republic must endure. Dr. Cade Brumley is Louisiana’s State Superintendent of Education. He also serves as a member of Louisiana’s America 250 Commission. The post The National Security Risk at our Door appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.