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On October 7 last year, ordinary civilians in Israel were the victims of extraordinary savagery.  Hamas terrorists killed young people at a music festival, often in gruesome ways.  Families were slaughtered in suburban homes. By any civilized moral standards, there ought to be overwhelming sympathy for a country subjected to such savagery. 

Instead, throughout the Western world, we have witnessed endless anti- Israel protests. Why? Part of the reason is demographics.  In Britain, for example, in 2001 there were one and half million Muslims.  Today, there are almost four million. 
 
That is not to say that every — or even most — British Muslims are anti- Israel. But it does explain the scale and size of some recent protests. So, too, on American university campuses.  There have been frequent anti-Israel student protests, often at so-called elite universities.  It is perhaps not a coincidence that there has also been a rapid rise in the number of students with Middle Eastern backgrounds at such universities. 

Again, not every student from the Middle East is necessarily anti-Israel.  But the reservoir of potential anti-Israel student protesters is certainly larger than before. 
 
The rise in anti-Israel sentiment in the West clearly can’t only be about demographics.  Many, if not most, of those protesting against Israel are not those with a Middle Eastern background, but those on the political Left. 
 
Why then do those on the Left have such animus towards Israel?  Why do they seem to suspend ordinary moral standards whenever Israel is involved? When it comes to Ukraine, for example, those on the political Left – correctly in my view – see Ukraine as a brave country, rightfully taking a stand against a vastly bigger aggressor. 
 
So why don’t they see Israel that way? Israel wasn’t just attacked on October 7.  From the Six Day War to the Yom Kippur War, Israel has been on the receiving end of relentless aggression. Israel, a country smaller than Vermont, is surrounded by larger foes intent on destroying her and eradicating her people, as Hamas showed us a few months ago. 

Progressive opinion in America and Britain is of the view that the government of Ukraine must not try to accommodate Russia or make concessions.  So why do they demand that Israel call a ceasefire? London, Washington and Berlin are full of leaders who want to supply Ukraine with weapons.  Why then do many also demand that America and Europe stop giving Israel the tools to defend herself? 
 
The last time there was unequivocal support for Israel in the West was during the Entebbe raid in Uganda in 1976.  I remember the morning of the Entebbe raid well.  A young child at the time, I happened to be living close by in Kampala. When Israel pulled off a daring rescue mission, freeing the trapped hostages from the hijacked Air France plane at Entebbe — where Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan lost his life — there was rejoicing across the political spectrum. 

Today, when Israel attempts to rescue her hostages in Gaza she is treated by many media outlets with scorn. Look at how posters of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have been torn down in cities throughout Europe and America. 
 
As my friend Douglas Murray has pointed out, when a cat or dog goes missing in London or Paris or New York, people will often put up a poster about the missing pet.  If we saw someone take down a poster about a missing pet, we would be offended.  We’d know it was wrong.  Where is the outrage against those removing posters of the Bibas kids? 
 
One reason Israel is held to a different standard is anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is a famously shape shifting virus.  At one time, Jews were hated for their religion, then for their race.  Today, it seems to me, it is for their nation. Israel is loathed by many progressives because as a country, Israel embodies the notion of national self-determination.  For many centuries, Jewish families toasted each other at Passover with the phrase: “Next year in Jerusalem.” 
 
And then in 1948, almost miraculously, it came true. National self-determination offends elite opinion formers.  They revere supranationalism instead.  They venerate the UN, the ICC and the EU. Progressives prefer laws made by international treaty over those passed by elected national legislatures.  Progressives prefer fealty to rules made by the global community over obligations to an actual community. 
 
Israel’s success offends the Left not only because she is a national state, but because she demonstrates the success of Western society. If all cultures were of equal worth, why then does a small state that could fit inside Vermont produce so much enterprise and innovation? If there is an equivalence between cultures, why has post 1948 Israel seen such success amid a sea of Middle Eastern failure and autocracy? 
 
Those who loathe Israel don’t just hate the Jewish nation state, they despise all nation states – including another phenomenally successful Republic, started not in 1948 but in 1776. If they merely hate Israel, why do they burn the American flag?  America and the Western way of life is their intended target. Whether we like it or not, those of us who love America, who see Western culture as a sublime human achievement, have no choice but to side with and support Israel, against those who seek to destroy us all. 
 
Those who hate Israel hate us too.

Had Donald Trump tilted his head the other way, the bullet that clipped his ear would have killed him.  America was half an inch away from a major civil crisis.

We don’t yet know the full details of this assassination attempt, but it is clear that Donald J Trump has been demonized by his opponents for years.

Of course, in politics you sometimes say negative things about your opponents.  But the rhetoric aimed at Trump has often gone far beyond normal political back-and-forth.  Trump’s opponents have set out to delegitimize him.

After losing to Trump in 2016, Hilary Clinton described him an ‘illegitimate’ president.  Spurious allegations emerged suggesting he was somehow a Russian agent.  Every effort was made to undermine his administration, often from within.

When Trump began to re-emerge as the Republican frontrunner in this election cycle, a number of prosecutors suddenly started to bring cases against him.  Odd, that. 

It seems to me that as in a Banana Republic, he was being persecuted through the courts for political reasons, as much as he was being prosecuted for breaking the law.

Now comes an assassin’s bullet, which narrowly missed Trump but did kill a fifty year old father attending a political rally. 

We don’t yet know what motivated Trump’s would-be assassin, but we do know enough to ask where this growth of political extremism comes from. 

The decline of religion means that politics has become, for many, a substitute belief system. 

“When men choose not to believe in God” my fellow Englishman, GK Chesteron, once observed, “they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

People need a sense of purpose, a framework that explains the world and their place in it.  Without religion, many have adopted a belief system called climate change.  Others a system called intersectionalism.  Their place in the cosmos, they start to imagine, is defined in terms of where they sit in a hierarchy of victimhood. 

Once you think this way, those who share your world view seem virtuous.  Those that don’t become the ‘deplorables’.  Anyone who just happens to have a different point of view is suddenly a moral affront.   Such people must be no platformed. 

Instead of viewing elections a process for deciding who holds office, they are seen as a Manichaen struggle of good against evil.  Once you think this way, the ends begin to justify the means, with calamitous consequences.

Too many Americans are willing to always think the worst of fellow Americans, and it’s not just progressives who look for the worst in conservatives. 

Take what happened in the wake of the attempted assassination.  Many commentators appeared to almost want to find evidence of incompetence, or worse, conspiracy.

An apparent hesitation by Secret Service marksmen in engaging the gunman was somehow sinister, it was suggested.  Commentators without much experience of close personal protection were quick to inform us that the female Secret Service agents could not handle their weapons properly. 

Really?  Why assume the worst?  Why not start from the position that what we witnessed were professionals under intense pressure, making life and death decisions, and doing the best they could? 

I’m an immigrant that looks at America as an outsider.  Born in Britain, and raised in Uganda, I came to America by choice (and good fortune). 

I don’t look about me trying to find fault in my new home.  I see instead an extraordinary country that it is a great privilege to be part of.  I see the most hospitable, friendly, and innovative people on the planet all around me.  I believe so strongly in the things that make America special so much, I even wrote a children’s book about it. 

Each time I meet an American for the first time it never occurs to me to wonder if they vote Republican or Democrat.  To me, they are just American, and all the better for it.

We need to stop looking at each other through the prism of politics.  It’s not good for us, for our politics or for America.

Before I came to Mississippi, I was a Member of the British Parliament for 12 years for Clacton.  Donald Trump's friend, Nigel Farage, has now decided to run for election in Clacton on July 4th.

I'm delighted and I encouraged Nigel to run the moment it was announced that there would be a General Election. (I know, the Brits do politics differently with flexible, rather than fixed, terms)

Back in the old country, the Conservative party faces annihilation.  
 
Having sat in office since 2010, Britain’s Conservatives have failed to govern on conservative principles.  Today, their supporters are abandoning them for Nigel Farage’s new Reform party. 
 
Perhaps this should serve as a stark warning for those who campaign as conservatives, but who govern as progressives.
 
Here in Mississippi, Republicans have been in charge since 2011, about as long as Britain’s Conservatives. 
 
Where are the big strategic changes our state needs?  What reforms are being advanced to elevate Mississippi?
 
There are, I would suggest, three top challenges Mississippi faces:
 

 
Imagine if we were to use the notionally conservative majority in our state to accomplish actual conservative reforms to tackle any of this?  
 
Here is a list of some of the bills that were blocked in the most recent legislative session:
 

 
The one big achievement of the session, Rep. Rob Roberson’s INSPIRE bill which personalizes school funding for students, passed because of Speaker White’s drive and determination.  Eight weeks ago there were still some in the Senate intent on preserving the old Soviet-era funding formula.
 
Morton Blackwell, a great American hero who I happened to meet for tea in Jackson, once said that “In politics, nothing moves unless it’s pushed.”

He’s right.  If we want to see conservative policies implemented in our state, we are going to have to do a lot of pushing! 
 
Nobody likes to be pushed, particularly politicians.  Leaders will not thank you for making them do something they would preferred not to have done, as my experience with Brexit taught me.
 
Here at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy we are 100 percent in the business of pushing for the kind of bold, principled conservative reforms we need. 
 
We need to start using our conservative majority to deliver the kind of changes we are starting to see in Republican-run states throughout the South.

You can tell a lot about someone’s politics given what they might have to say about the conviction of Donald Trump.
 
Anyone telling you that Trump’s conviction is comeuppance for a sordid hush-money scandal, in which he broke the law, probably leans left.
 
Someone explaining that it was all a disgraceful attempt by Joe Biden’s Democrats to stop the 45th President from being re-elected, is likely to be a conservative.
 
In an increasingly post-religious society, politics has become a substitute belief system for many.  The danger is that we view everything through the prism of politics.

Rather than ask what Trump’s conviction means for your side in the Reds versus Blues battle, perhaps what we ought to reflect on what this might all mean for America. 

For most of human history, the law meant whatever the powerful said it meant.  Anyone who has ever tried to do business in Russia or China knows that’s still the way things are in much of the non-Western world.
 
A system in which the law is elevated above the executive – in which the rule of law has supremacy – is historically unusual.  Indeed, it is largely the creation of people who spoke and wrote in the language in which you are reading this.
 
It was English-speaking civilization that invented the notion that the powerful are constrained by rules, and that the rules should apply to everyone equally.  A straight line runs from Magna Carta at Runnymede to the Founders at Philadelphia.  The US Bill of

Rights of 1789 was preceded by an English Bill of Rights of 1689. 

America has become the most successful society on earth precisely because in this Republic, government doesn’t get to change the rules as it likes.

“Exactly!” the anti-Trumpers will say. “Trump’s conviction is true to that tradition!  Even former Presidents are subject to the same rules as everyone else”.

But is that really so?  In what way has Trump been subjected to the same set of rules?  Surely, those on the right will say, he has been singled out, prosecuted over something essentially trivial?
 
Those that brought the charges, it seems to me, were motivated by politics, rather than justice.
 
Prosecuting political rivals is what they do in Russia, Brazil or Malaysia.  It is awful to see political prosecutions in the United States – and it bodes ill for the future of freedom in this country and around the world. 

Twenty years ago, George Bush’s electoral strategist, Karl Rove, hit upon the idea of using ‘wedge-issues’ to galvanize the conservative base.  At the time, Rove seemed to be remarkably successful.  Republicans won.
 
Two decades on, I wonder if it was partly Rove’s ‘wedge-issue’ approach that provoked the left into doing something similar.  Under Obama, the left became increasingly inflammatory.  Perhaps there is a straight line that runs from the politics of ‘wedge-issues’ in the noughties to the culture wars we see today?
 
Some on the left might be tempted to celebrate the use of lawfare to try to take down a political opponent.  They might want to stop and think first.  It is, I worry, only a question of time before we start to see something similar from the right. 
 
If lawfare becomes part of American politics, what chance is there that the United States remains exceptional compare with all those other less happy republics? 

It is not just the legal process that America needs to de-politicize.  We need to stop making everything a question of where you stand in the culture war.  Your views on Disney or money management, Taylor Swift or Chick-Fil-A should not automatically correlate with the way you vote. 

If it is politics alone that gives you a belief system in life, you are going to end up desperately disappointed with both politics and life.
 
The United States was founded by people that believed that to survive, a Republic needs a moral citizenry.  America needs to believe in something above politics and beyond the next election cycle.

This week, it emerged that the newly appointed head of America’s NPR (National   Public Radio) hates the US Constitution.  Speaking in 2021, she described the First Amendment which safeguards free speech as “a challenge.”

How could it be that the head of America’s public broadcasting service, established by an act of Congress, has such contempt for the US Constitution?

In her previous role running Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, Katherine Maher rejected a “free and open internet” as a guiding principle.  Such principles are, in her words, a “white male Westernized construct,” according to reports.

Katherine Maher, reports say, support efforts to censor opinions that do not conform with her leftist world view.  She spoke of the truth as being “a distraction”.

Sadly, Katherine Maher is not a one off.  She is fairly typical of the sort of people now running many of America’s institutions, HR departments, government agencies and universities. 

Ms Maher’s social media posts might read like parody.  There is nothing funny about the way that people with Ms Maher’s outlook and opinions are subverting America’s Founding principles, and replacing them with a grim leftist dogma that risks destroying American and the West.

Conservatives need to push back, but how?

Until now, many conservatives have been better at identifying the problem than at tackling it.

To defeat DEI, we need to pass laws, reform institutions, appoint the right people and set the right incentives.  Most of all, however, we need to counter bad ideas with good ideas.

States can take a lead in the fight back.  Here in Mississippi, for example, there was a successful campaign two years ago for a bill to combat Critical Race Theory.  The new law goes some way to addressing the issue, but not far enough. 

If we are serious about restricting DEI dogma, we need to ensure that your tax dollars cannot be spent promoting this divisive ideology.

Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, has shown that states can take the lead against DEI, signing an Executive Order, restricting the use of public money for DEI programs.  State leaders in Oklahoma, Utah and Texas have also done something similar.  We need to see similar action here in Mississippi.

Did you know that many public universities use your tax dollars to promote Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs?

One of our leading public universities here in Mississippi has an “institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion plan” governing every aspect of campus life.  DEI shapes not only university admissions, administration and faculty hiring, but what young people are taught, with the development of an academic equity scorecard. 

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.  That is why conservatives need to expose how many of your tax dollars are being spent to DEI programs. 

Instead of more DEI hires, the University of Florida recently decided to eliminate all DEI employee positions.  Last month, the University of Texas at Austin fired dozens of employees who used to work in diversity, equity and inclusion programs.  Every state should aim for something similar.

The best way to defeat bad ideas is with good ideas.  Teaching young people the following truths about America will give them immunity against the ‘woke’ mind virus. 

This is a fight that we can win.  One day we will look back and think it absurd that someone with Katherine Maher’s outlook could be put in charge of producing public service broadcasting content.  But there is a great deal that we need to do right now in order to get there!

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

Beware of politicians who want to ban things.

What would you most like to see Mississippi’s elected lawmakers do during the current legislative session? 

Action to eliminate the reams of red tape holding our state back, maybe?  Further tax cuts, perhaps?  With so many other southern states moving ahead with school choice, you might wish that our lawmakers would do something similar.

I doubt that a bill to ban “squatted” trucks is your top priority. Yet, that is precisely what one bill in our state legislature aims to do. 

I’m not about to invest a lot of effort into opposing this bill, but I do think we should be wary of politicians in the business of banning things. 

Typically, politicians resort to banning things when they don’t have any other ideas.  The impulse to ban things is driven by their search for validation and purpose. 


Those in favor of a ban on “squatted” trucks are quick to tell us that action is urgent given how dangerous these trucks are.  I can think of a lot of things that could be deemed dangerous. 
 
Do conservatives really want to get into the business of banning things because they are dangerous?  Once you start, where do you stop?  If trucks are to be banned for being dangerous, wait ‘til you hear what progressives have to say about guns.
 
Under this proposed law, anyone caught driving a vehicle whose front ends are raised more than four inches above the height of the rear fender faces a $100 fine.  Will police officers pull people over to measure their fenders?  Should the guy with a truck raised a mere 3 inches expect to get pulled over every time?  

As the parent of a teenager, I’ve discovered how adding a young person to your insurance policy can make your premiums soar.  This is because the insurance system is good at assessing risk.  Higher risk = higher premiums. 
 
If squatted trucks really were the danger that the detractors claim, surely it would be reflected in raised insurance premiums to the point where they became prohibitively expensive.
 
In a free society, there must be an overwhelmingly good reason to use the state’s monopoly of force to restrict something.  It is not enough to ban something because we disapprove of it.  Or. as I fear, disapprove of the people that drive “squatted” trucks.  

Once politicians form the habit of seeking out things to ban for the benefit of the rest of us, they won’t stop.  Next will come a ban on certain types of vapes.  Or, as in California, certain food additives and Skittles.  If they can ban one type of truck, why not another?
 
If you want to see where relentless banning leads, take a look at my own native Britain.  Despite having had notionally conservative governments, politicians across the pond have relentlessly banned things from certain breeds of dog to plastic drinking straws.  From the ability to use email lists for marketing to self-defense pepper spray.  From disposable cutlery and gas water heaters to the internal combustion engine (from 2035).

On their own, none of these restrictions have proved to be a catastrophe (although the ban on internal combustion cars, once it comes into force, may yet prove to be).  Collectively, however, the blizzard of bans has been devastating by infantilizing British society.  
 
Treated like children, more and more people behave like children.  Denied responsibility, society grows irresponsible.  Britain today feels utterly demoralized as a consequence.  This is what happens when you put politicians in charge of deciding what’s best for everyone else.
 
Banning tilted trucks won’t be the end of the world for Mississippi.  It will be the end of a little bit more liberty.

The impulse to ban things, I believe, comes from what H.L. Mencken called “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time.”  Let’s leave Mississippi truck drivers alone.

Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

The University of Florida just fired all their DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) staff.  The University closed the office of the Chief Diversity Officer, and terminated DEI-focused contracts. 
 
Florida is not alone in taking decisive action against the ‘woke’ mind virus that has been running rampant on US college campuses for years.  In Alabama, a bill (SB 129) to ban DEI programs in all state institutions, including colleges, was recently voted through the state legislature.  The University of Arkansas has decided to eliminate its diversity, equity and inclusion division. 
 
Here in Mississippi, meanwhile, crickets…...  No executive orders.  No legislation.   Why? 
 
Senator Angela Hill presented a bill to eliminate DEI programs in any state-funded institution (SB2402).  So, too, did Representative Becky Currie in the House (HB127).  Yet both bills died in committee.

Saying that the bills “died in committee” makes it sound like they were victims of some freak accident.  Neither bill, of course, was struck by lightning or afflicted by some random misfortune.  The bills failed to come out of committee because those that chaired the relevant committees to which each bill had been referred decided not to allow the bills to proceed. 

In the Senate, the two committees in question were Accountability, Efficiency & Transparency, and Universities, chaired by Sen David Parker and Sen Nicole Boyd respectively.  I doubt that Parker or Boyd would have killed the anti DEI bill without approval from Senate leader, Delbert Hosemann. 

In the House, the committee out of which the bill failed to emerge is chaired by Rep Donnie Scoggin. 

“But is an anti DEI bill actually necessary?”, I hear you ask.  “Is there really that much DEI here in Mississippi in the first place?”   
  
If any member of the legislature spent more than a couple of minutes browsing the University of Mississippi’s website, they would see that it is an institution run by people 100 percent committed to DEI.  Do those lawmakers that killed the anti DEI bill approve? 
 
DEI dogma not only influences the way Ole Miss is run.  DEI seeks to shape what young people are taught there.  Ole Miss’s “Equity in Action” plans, for example, increasingly touch upon almost every aspect of university life.  

Concealed behind innocuous jargon in the university’s “Pathways to Equity” strategic plan, Ole Miss has an active DEI program that impacts everything from teaching practices, course content and student evaluation.  The way I read it, Ole Miss even seems to endorse the hiring of some faculty on the basis of race, rather than merit. 
 
Without any action from the state Senate or the IHL, this is all being done on your tax dollar.  We know this thanks to Shad White, our State Auditor. 
 
Shad White is one of the few leaders to actually show leadership on this issue, and he has tried to calculate how much all this is costing Mississippi taxpayers.
 
White’s recent report showed that Mississippi universities spent over $23 million on DEI from July 2019 to June 2023.  Nearly $11 million of state taxpayer funds went to DEI programs, most of which was spent on salaries for DEI employees.  Without any action from our state leaders, DEI spending soared almost 50 percent since 2019.  

In case anyone needs reminding why DEI needs to be rooted out of our public universities, here’s a quick reminder.
 
The United States is founded on the revolutionary idea that all Americans are created equal.  America might have produced some laws and leaders that failed to live up to that high standard.  But as a principle, it has never been bettered.
 
DEI overturns America’s founding principle, promoting instead the idea that each of us is defined by our immutable characteristics.  This is not just profoundly un-American.  DEI ideology takes us back to a pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment idea that we are defined by what we are born.  It is a profoundly anti-Western ideology.  

It is not a coincidence that the ‘woke’ mobs that appeared on Ivy League college campuses after the Hamas terror attacks last October seemed to side with America’s enemies.  DEI proponents are hostile to America and the West.
 
DEI demoralizes Americans.  It teaches the young to believe that their country is always in the wrong.  It demands that history be rewritten to press the past into a narrative of exploitation. 
 
How regrettable that conservative leaders in this conservative state should do so little about it while leaders in states all around us take action.

Not enough people in Mississippi work.  Out of every 100 working age adults in our state, 46 are not in the labor force. 
 
Nearly half of working age Mississippians are not in formal employment – and they aren’t actively looking for employment either.  
 
At the same time, there are a record number of jobs available.  According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October last year there were 80,000 unfilled jobs across the state. 

Not only are there lots of jobs available in Mississippi, but according to new research a record number of people are now moving to Mississippi to take up those opportunities.  2022 saw a net inflow of 12,000 (often young) people to our state, coming largely from Tennessee, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Florida. 

A combination of labor market deregulation, inward investment and tax cuts seems to be transforming Mississippi for the better.  Our state is no longer a place that people leave, but somewhere people move to in search of new opportunities.  What can we do to ensure that more people in Mississippi take full advantage of those job opportunities?

It is not enough to merely talk about opportunities.  With 80,000 job vacancies right here, right now, there are opportunities to work all around us.  The issue is why some folk aren’t taking the opportunities that are there.  

Some have suggested that we hire more career counsellors in high schools.  I am certain that career counsellors do a wonderful job, but if that is the only policy solution, I suspect labor force participation will remain low.
  
If we are going to increase workforce participation, we need to ask difficult questions about welfare.  Does welfare create disincentives against work?

 
Mississippi has a population of 2.95 million.  Approximately one in five (19 percent) live below the poverty line (calculated as the minimum income needed to get by with the bare essentials.)

The way in which the myriad of assistance programs impacts the half a million plus people below the poverty line matters, and needs to be properly understood if we are to improve workforce participation.
 
Welfare programs can have unintended consequences, and one of them is the creation of so-called ‘benefit cliffs’.  A benefit cliff is what happens when someone loses benefits if their income increases, but the benefits they lose outweigh the additional income gained. 

Given the maximum income thresholds allowed, we know, for example, that if someone’s monthly income went from $400 a month to $410 a month, they would no longer qualify for some Temporary Assistance programs.
 
If your income rose above $1,215 a month, you could lose the right to claim Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  When your income per person goes over $19,392 a year, you may no longer qualify for Medicaid (although the ‘cliff’ cut-off is not always as abrupt as is sometimes supposed). 
 
Take into account the different benefit cliffs, and you could have a powerful range of disincentives.

Even if a person was notionally better off when holding down a 35 hour week job, the time and effort it would take for a relatively modest increase in income might leave some feeling having a job was not worth it.

 
It has been suggested that benefits do not create a problem of ‘cliffs’, but of straight forward dependency.  They point out, for example, that those on food stamps are not those hovering on the edge of the labor market, but full-time welfare dependents.  There may be some truth in that, too. 

So, what is the solution?

The answer to benefit ‘cliffs’ is not to increase welfare payments in order to remove disincentives, but to institute more stringent work requirements for those on welfare programs. 

In Arkansas under Sarah Huckabee Sanders, anyone that fails to accept a suitable job within five days of being offered one, or who fails to show up for job interviews without notice, can now lose their benefits. 

If we are serious about increasing workforce participation, we may well need to implement something similar.

Thirty three years ago, the Soviet Union fell apart.  A Marxist-Leninist system that had stood in competition with the Western way of life for half a century was no more.
 
Unfortunately, in that moment of triumph, Western leaders made a grave error; they started to believe that there had been an inevitability about Western success. 
 
If the Soviet Union had ditched communism in favor of free markets, everyone else would become more Western, too, right?  Wrong – and nowhere more so than with regard to China.  

At the turn of the century, when China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization, all the clever people at the State Department assumed it was only a matter of time before China’s emerging middle class would make the country more like us. 
 
Under Deng Xiaoping and immediately after, China had permitted private enterprise, and the country’s communist rulers had imposed limits on their power.  China’s provinces enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, with Hong Kong even having her own legal system, currency and democracy.
 
Deng’s leadership, we can now see, did not represent a new direction for China, but a brief interlude.  Under Xi, China has reverted to the Ming tradition; authoritarian government, overzealous control, the targeting of anyone independently wealthy. 
 
Rather than becoming part of the international system, China seems to be a threat to it.  Democracy has been crushed in Hong Kong.  Military bases have been built in the south China sea.  Taiwan is at risk of invasion.

If China is behaving like she is in competition with the Western way it is because she is.  We need to recognize this and act accordingly.

Just as there was never anything inevitable about the success of the West, nor is there anything inevitable now about the rise of China. 

In fact, China faces serious demographic decline.  Ruled by an innovation-sapping authoritarian regime, China may not be destined for global hegemony the way we have been told.  But that may not make the Chinese government any easier to deal with. 

At the same time, rather than becoming more Western, many parts of the world besides China – such as Turkey, Pakistan or Egypt - seem less Western than they were. 

The West itself is becoming less Western, with Europe undergoing dramatic demographic change.  Having prevailed against a Marxist-Leninist system in Russia, Western leaders allowed a Marxist-Identitarian system to incubate in our universities.  Many US universities no longer teach Western Classics and have in effect abandoned the European Enlightenment.

The West needs leaders willing to set aside post-Cold War assumptions.  Rather than presume Western success, we need leaders who recognize that it is tough and difficult to stand up for Western interests – but also essential. 
 
Above all, we need leaders that appreciate that Western culture is the product of ideas and insights that did not arise in a vacuum.  The Western way needs safeguarding not just aboard, but on college campuses here in the United States, too.  

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