The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan (private feed for kbockus@gmail.com)

Christopher Rufo On CRT In Schools

Rufo is a key architect of the anti-CRT legislation being passed in state legislatures around the country. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and his Twitter account is tirelessly flagging examples of CRT in the public school system, corporate America, and elsewhere. I’ve no doubt that some of this convo is going to stir up a fuss — but the truth is I’ve become more conflicted about this legislation as time has gone by. I once thought it was a terrible idea. I’m now not so sure, given the scale of the attempt to indoctrinate children in neo-Marxist understandings of race throughout public education.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here. For two clips my conversation with Rufo — on whether anti-CRT state laws go too far, and on whether anti-CRT critics like us are overhyping the threat — head over to our YouTube page.The Federalist’s Nathanael Blake, responding to my column on “Ever-Radicalizing Republicans,” echoes a core point made by Rufo but applies it to the more narrow focus of sexually-charged books in school libraries:[T]here is an incoherence to liberalism’s semi-official relativism, for it relies on smuggling some moral views back into political life as supposedly neutral liberal norms. This is manifest in the tendency to try to forestall democratic debate and decisions by insisting that what the people want is illiberal. When Andrew Sullivan bemoans the “illiberalism” of removing sexually explicit materials from school libraries, he is not actually supporting liberal neutrality, but instead advocating for the inclusion of such material in government schools, even if parents in particular and the community in general object. Declaring that parental and democratic involvement in schools, from curricula to libraries, is illegitimate doesn’t mean that decisions will be neutral, just that they will be made according to the biases of teachers, administrators, librarians and suchlike. And this pattern is repeated on issue after issue, with “conservative” liberals insisting that left-liberals must be allowed to win in the name of “liberal norms.”I don’t believe parental involvement in schools is illegitimate. Au contraire. I think curriculum transparency is vital; and that indoctrination into the core concepts of CRT is not something that should be allowed in a public high school. But books available in a school library? That students would have to seek out? I don’t have an issue. Sure, one of the books I’ve seen has an illustration of a blow-job. Not exactly Mapplethorpe. Below, the great liberal debate over CRT continues among Dish readers. First, a heads up that “Glenn Loury and John McWhorter favorably discussed a recent piece you wrote concerning the classification of people by race using colors, starting at the 43:40 mark”:Another reader points to one of countless examples of the phenomenon that Glenn and John discuss:Should you care to witness an uninhibited orgy of Blackandbrowning, see this job announcement from Pierce Community College — a public institution — in WA state. They are advertising for a new math professor. Besides the initial paragraphs, be sure to read the list of “Responsibilities of the successful candidate” and even the application process itself. The first two “Responsibilities,” for example, include the phrases “Creating race-conscious course assessments” and “in a manner that promotes Black and Brown excellence.”The phrase “Black and Brown,” in fact, occurs nine times in this ad. “Equity” appears five times. “Antiracism” (or “antiracist”) appears three times. Words that never appear in this ad for a community college math professor: “algebra,” “calculus,” “statistics,” “trigonometry,” “geometry” ...Amazing but unsurprising. A missive from the medical world:You keep publishing dissents like this one:My God, Andrew, will you give the “woke” thing a rest?! I’ve always read you because of the variety of issues you covered. Now it’s become a chore to constantly see my inbox full of “woke this and woke that.” You’ve simply lost all sense of proportion.No, your sense of proportion is exactly right. I wish I could somehow give these dissenters a window into what it is like to work in biomedical science right now.  Whether it’s internal memos calling for “decolonising” the molecular biology curriculum or journal editorials declaring “whiteness” to be the great evil permeating all medical science, it’s become a chore to constantly see my inbox full of official wokeness. Maybe I should start keeping a running list, for the sake of all these dissenters who don’t believe in the reality of a woke takeover of elite institutions? Please do. And send us the results. It would make a good column. And wokeness in medicine is especially consequential when it comes to Covid right now. For example: “In Utah, ‘Latinx ethnicity’ counts for more points than ‘congestive heart failure’ in a patient’s ‘COVID-19 risk score’ — the state’s framework for allocating monoclonal antibodies.” ”Equity” — i.e. anti-white, anti-Asian and anti-male discrimination — is the core word for the Biden administration. Another reader flags a recent article from RealClearInvestigations titled “No Critical Race Theory in Schools? Here’s the Abundant Evidence Saying Otherwise.” Another reader points to some hope on the horizon:Next month, San Francisco will vote on the recall of three school board members.   (The first of three crises of the recall effort is “The Equity Crisis: Our school board wasted time renaming schools instead of reopening them. As a result, we were the last big city to reopen.”) I think this local election will be a statement on the midterms and role of parents in the upcoming elections. Here’s one article looking at the recall from the perspective of Asian non-citizens, since non-citizen parents were recently given the right to vote in Board of Education elections. (The non-citizen population of SF is roughly 105,000 — out of about 875,000 residents.) These new voters are angry about the state of schools and are very motivated to vote to recall the board members.Another reader adds more fodder to the scandal over the 1619 Project, which kicked off the curriculum wars:ICYMI, here’s an in-depth essay from Jim Oakes (CUNY Grad Center) critiquing the 1619 Project. (He has throwaway lines critiquing Zionist scholars and condemning capitalism — a reminder that he’s hardly a crypto-right winger.) The essay does a particularly nice job of exposing the foundational lie of the 1619 Project — that until NHJ and her work, historians had basically ignored the centrality of slavery to the American colonial and post-independence experience. Oakes also explains why NHJ’s factual errors were an essential requirement for the ideological project. This next reader neatly conveys the liberal concerns over CRT:I just finished reading Rebecca Solnit’s opinion piece in the NYT, “Why Republicans Keep Falling for Trump’s Lies,” and much of it resonated with me. As a moderate here in San Francisco (which makes me a “far right” person in the eyes of the local DSA tribe), I have no love whatsoever for the damage Trump has wrought on both our country and the GOP. However, too often in the essay, Solnit (another San Franciscan) wades into cliche woke hysteria over issues that do not deserve to be maligned in such a way. The most notable example is when she writes that “the ruckus about critical race theory is wrong that it’s actually being taught in schools but right in that how we think and talk and teach about race has shifted from when whiteness was unquestionably supreme.” After reading your work over the past few years, it is clear to me that teaching our kids that whiteness is not supreme is NOT the issue. Rather, it’s teaching our children that their identity is the most important aspect of their lives. Why can’t progressives figure out that this is our collective concern? We WANT to teach our kids that slavery is a stain on this country; that Jim Crow can never happen again; that we should treat our fellow humans with the respect and love that the deserve. We do NOT want to teach our kids that one group of kids is more worthy of hearing out than another; that one group of kids is perpetually victimized with no ability to mold their lives through their own individual choices. Colorblind is the goal — when did that become controversial?Amen. In contrast:I’ve always enjoyed your perspective, particularly since it’s often different than my own. I’ve thought a lot about your take on the woke culture and the harm it’s doing to Democrats. However, the notion that all can be solved by a return to your classical notion favoring personal liberty and opportunity for each person, no matter who they are, as opposed to fixating on systems of oppressions, seems problematic.While I share some of your frustration with CRT, the theory is useful because it points out ways that inequities are baked into our systems, resulting in generational handicaps for some groups, particularly blacks. This isn’t even controversial, and it can be seen in redlining, the fact that minority communities are much more likely to live in areas next to toxic factories, the shockingly low levels of black wealth compared to white wealth, etc. Human nature being what it is, of course systems built primarily by white people are going to tend to benefit white people more than other groups. Over time, we can look at this handicap as acting as a kind of negative compounding interest for some communities, which explains a good deal of the yawning difference in net worth between white and black people in America.If we could somehow wave a magic wand and create a system where each individual, no matter what they looked like, would have the same opportunities, I would cheer as much as anyone. However, in an equitable society, what do we owe those who have been harmed by past unequal systems? After all, the way economics works, if the world became magically fair overnight, those who came from families that were harmed by slavery, Reconstruction, and other imposed inequities, will never catch up. They are starting too far behind. So my wife’s black Yale students will have good lives if they work hard, but they will be less likely than their white peers to inherit anything, less likely to come from households that own their homes, more likely to have to take care of relatives and elderly parents financially and physically, less likely to have strong systems of family capital and connections outside of their school, etc.So what I would ask you is: If it’s impermissible to set up the kind of rigid worldview of some CRT advocates to impose new unequal systems to favor oppressed groups to remedy past injustices, what, if anything, should be done to make up for centuries of unequal treatment? It’s a little hard to take when Justice Roberts and other powerful white guys voice discomfort with any kind of race-based remedies. Do we just forget that for centuries, powerful white men, including a lot of judges, had no problem approving and defending all sorts of laws that in effect hurt black people and benefited whites? I have no answer, but I feel that in a just society, something should be done.I’d have to ask: what exactly is the statute of limitations on this? It’s remarkable how so many defenses of affirmative action, for example, always assumed it would be temporary, because African-Americans as a group would catch up. Now there is a kind of assumption that African-Americans can never catch up, making it vital to rig the system to discriminate in their favor. Zora Neale Hurston thought the statute of limitations had already been reached in 1928! My view is that many African-Americans are actually doing well; and that others are crippled by terrible family structure, cultural anti-intellectualism, and the violence and crime of their neighbors. Tackle these things first. Instead the left wants to put all these aside and focus on the repercussions of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and rigging systems to favor one race over another.To put it more bluntly: CRT is the answer to the relative failure of African-Americans to succeed. It’s an admission of defeat; and the permanent entrenchment of victimhood as core to the black experience. Getting rid of these Marxian ideas is the beginning of religion reform.But yes, one area of needed reform, still, is policing. Here’s a reader on something I wrote last week:You ask why “BLM” isn’t celebrating. Since I work in the criminal justice reform field, allow me to answer. It’s not because police weren’t defunded/abolished — that’s a goal for only one corner of our broad and truly bipartisan movement. It’s because of other rather basic goals, once viewed as easily attainable, that went shockingly unattained, despite all of the momentum coming out of 2020. Some missed goals include:* Ending qualified immunity, which protects officers from liability for harms caused while violating the law;* Ending the disparity between crack/powder cocaine punishment, which was never evidence-based in the first place;* Reforming the federal clemency process to make it a real part of the federal justice system (a goal that dates to Alexander Hamilton).* Fixing the First Step Act, a sentencing/prison reform bill signed by Trump that still isn’t working nearly as intended. [Update from the reader a few days later: “today the Justice Department finally changed part of the broken implementation of the First Step Act.”]I could go on. The point is that these are all simple, bipartisan goals where Republicans either aren’t negotiating in good faith (#1) or don’t seem to care (#2), or where Biden is — and you’ll like this one — simply not paying attention (#3-4).Qualified immunity was the main sticking point in the Senate that eventually sank the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Read David French in National Review for a good conservative takedown of qualified immunity. I’m on the side of the reformers here.Another dissenter wants a more proactive approach from the Dish:Your endless culture war tirades have become stale. The high from righteous anger about the latest woke outrage is wearing off ever quicker; and deep down I know this was an unhealthy addiction from the start — for both you and your readers.The problem is not that defending liberalism is not important. The problem is that you offer nothing but outrage in response. Where is your solution? Where is your vision? Where is your project?Maybe it is unfair to demand from a conservative sweeping visions for the future, and you might retort that your life’s major project — same-sex marriage — is already accomplished. But without some ideas for the future, what’s left of a conservative is a reactionary.Defending the status quo ante is not enough when — as you are the first to admit — that state is fundamentally broken. The United States is a wreck of a democracy, one close election away from tyranny, and its economy keeps steaming ahead towards turning the planet into a hot house. Half the political country has in effect renounced the democratic process and is intent on grabbing power in 2024, whether they win the election or not. The current political institutions enable and incentivize their project. Clearly, fundamental reform — a rebalancing of the checks and balances — is necessary to save this great democracy, or it will eventually fall victim to some clever hack of its centuries-old, unpatchable code base.So what have you offered recently? A vague idea about nuclear power as a way to sell climate politics to right-wingers; and some noncommittal flirtations with a “Trumpism without Trump” mixed with a good dash of Toryism (it seems in your wet dreams, Dominic Cummings advises Glenn Youngkin to victory in 2024).Here’s the thing: I don’t think the constitution has suddenly broken, and that a liberal society is impossible. I think we have become broken by tribalism, which renders attempts at any reform (see my proposed compromises on trans issues last year and this week) far more difficult. Lastly, a dissent over such dissents:I’m dismayed by the number of people who write to complain about your frequent skewering of wokeness. Many of your critics argue that you shouldn’t discuss the woke peril because the threat from Trump and his cult is greater. That argument is unpersuasive to me because it cuts both ways. If Trump and his cult pose an existential threat to America (and I think they do), then shouldn’t Democrats focus on that threat instead of talking endlessly about police violence and racism? In other words, why should those who oppose wokeness be the only ones asked to avoid talking about problems that aren’t as big as the Trump problem?There is one important point that I think your dissenters miss. Wokeness and Trumpism are not completely separate phenomena. There is some synergy. One of the things that fuels the Trump cult is an intensifying anger directed at wokeness.  People are being exposed to it in their employment HR policies (as I am) and their children are being exposed to it in schools. The only way to stop Trump is to persuade Democrats to separate themselves from wokeness so they can win the votes of moderate voters (i.e. most voters). I’ll share with you a data point from one county that illustrates just how bleak the landscape now is for Democrats. I live in a rural Texas county with a population of less than 40,000 where Trump got more than 70% of the votes in 2020 and fewer than 45% are vaccinated against Covid-19. More than a year after the election, I still drive past several large, defiant “Trump 2020” banners on my way to work each day. (There is also an early, very large “Trump 2024” sign that I see each day.) The filing deadline for the March 2022 primary passed recently. In this county, there are about 10 contested local offices (county judge, county clerk, justice of the peace, etc.) The number of Democrats that filed to run for local office in this county was ZERO. Therefore, all winners in the Republican primary in March will run unopposed for those local offices in November. Yes, ALL of them. This is why so many Republicans act like they care only about primaries. They are being cynical and unpatriotic, but very rational. The horrifying truth is that the Democratic Party has simply ceased to exist in rural areas like this. I’m beginning to see parallels with Afghanistan, where the “government” had essentially zero support outside the cities. It all collapsed very quickly.I wish Democrats would spend less time worrying about gerrymandering and vote suppression and more time worrying about the fact that they don’t have a meaningful message that resonates with “normal” people. Some people worry that Trump will steal the 2024 election. In my view, they should worry instead that he will win without stealing. THAT is why you and others must continue to warn the nation and Democrats about the perils of wokeness. To put it bluntly, silence in response to the Democratic Party’s foolish dalliance with wokeness will elect Trump in 2024.I’m grateful my reader sees why I think this is important. If you want to defeat Trumpism, you need to defeat left-extremism. There is no other way. And President Biden has opted to back left-extremism. The Democrats are soon going to feel the impact of his fateful choice. 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Yossi Klein Halevi On Zionism

Hey, why not start the new year with solving the Israel-Palestinian problem? Yossi is an American-born Israeli journalist and his latest book is Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Following our episode with Peter Beinart last summer, many readers recommended Yossi as a guest to balance out the discussion on Israel. I’m grateful for the suggestion and truly enjoyed our conversation — alternately honest and difficult. How can one admire Israel while also being candid about its flaws? How deeply utopian was Zionism in the first place? You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here. For two clips of my conversation with Yossi — on the “bizarre, tragic” history of Zionism, and on the intractable nature of the Israeli settlements — head to our YouTube page. For a refresher on our episode with Peter that spurred Yossi’s appearance, here’s a chunk of that conversation on the state of Zionism:Below are many unaired emails from readers responding to our Beinart episode. This first reader feels that I’m “deeply wrong about Israel/Zionism”:I think most Westerners have a delusional view: that a two-state solution was ever acceptable to enough Arabs/Palestinians to have been possible. Many Westerners also have the equally delusional view that a binational state is viable (a view you don’t share, I was glad to hear). Unfortunately, for most Arabs/Palestinians, the dream isn’t about getting East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and a bit more, while leaving the rest to the Jews. They want Tel Aviv, Haifa and everything else, with no Jews.Every war over Israel has been fought by the Arabs in service of a one-state Judenrein solution, beginning in 1948, when they were offered and rejected a contiguous state in nearly half of Mandatory Palestine, from Sinai to Jordan to Lebanon — the river to the sea. The option for a two-state solution was on the table for more than half a century afterward, if the Palestinians had been willing to take it. Half-hearted participation by the Palestinian Authority in peace talks (which they were dragged to), with Hamas and Hezbollah jeering from the sidelines, isn’t remotely good enough.Whether or not you think the state of Israel should ever have been created (that discussion was the most disappointing part of your episode with Beinart), there are now nearly seven million Jews in their historic homeland (of thousands of years), out of a little over nine million inhabitants. Some three-quarters of those Jews were born there. Just under half of the Jews in Israel are Mizrahi/Sephardi, whose family members were largely expelled from Arab countries. They know exactly how the Arabs feel about the Jews, so they aren’t signing up for a binational state, now or ever.Moreover, the Arabs (the notion of a distinct Palestinian identity wasn’t a significant part of mainstream discourse until the 1960s and ‘70s) don’t actually want a single binational state. Agreeing to a peace on the basis of two states would get their leaders assassinated, because Palestinians continue to hope, against all evidence, that one day they’ll get all of it.Arabs living in Israel proper have far better lives and prospects than their brethren in neighboring states: they can vote, an Arab party is in the government, and Israel is the best place in the Middle East to be gay, among other things. Polls show that a majority of Israeli Arabs would prefer living in Israel to a Palestinian state. It would be ideal if the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza gave up their unrealistic expectation of driving the Jews into the sea and stopped promoting terrorism. Then, security restrictions could be relaxed and their lives could improve a lot. But I fear things are too far gone. The Second Intifada, and then Hamas’ unwavering commitment to ending the state of Israel, don’t inspire confidence.The best solution, to be honest, would be for Jordan — more than 20% of whose residents are Palestinians — to take over the Arab areas of the West Bank, and for Egypt to absorb the pestilential flyspeck half the size of Singapore that is Gaza.  But Jordan and Egypt wouldn’t touch those areas with a ten-foot pole because they’re ruled by warlords, gangsters and criminals. They’re Northern Ireland during the height of the Troubles, but a thousand times worse.I do agree with you and Beinart that the status quo could persist for a long time. I think if the PA collapses, as Beinart suggests, it’s not going to turn the West Bank into Gaza, because there’s too much economic interdependence between the West Bank and Israel. If it did, though, all that would happen is that Israel would annex the areas with significant Jewish settlements, cut the Jews in the outposts loose and create a hard border, leaving the West Bank population to figure things out for themselves and get bombed if they fire rockets.I get it that Bibi’s an asshole and he behaved unacceptably toward Obama, your fave. But Bibi is finished and may go to jail. Time to move on — for you and the Palestinians. Maybe think more about Xinjiang (which I was glad to hear you discuss with Beinart), where a million Muslims actually are in camps, being sterilized and reeducated. They don’t have the option of giving up terrorism and eliminationist pipe dreams for peace.“Pestilential flyspeck”? It’s that kind of rhetoric that turns me off, however sane the rest of the analysis. There’s no indication in my reader’s email that he understands why people thrown out of their own land and homes might harbor legitimate resentment, even rage. Another pro-Israel reader:Your discussion glossed over important points that, if discussed, would demonstrate the conflict is more two-sided than you and Beinart made it appear to be. For example, you stated that it’s apparent Israel has never supported a two-state solution, and it was all a lie. But you seem to have forgotten the Oslo Accords, where it was the PLO, not Israel, who ultimately walked away. In addition, Israel made the decision to evacuate its own citizens from Gaza in 2005, handing the Palestinians their own territory.What has happened since then? While Beinart mentions the UN says that Gaza is uninhabitable, he or you fail to mention that a terrorist group is running the place. In fact, in your discussion about Israel, terrorism is not mentioned once. How can Israel agree to a two-state solution when one of the parties declares death to Israelis in its constitution? When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the regime in the Palestinian territories is not held accountable. No doubt about it: the occupation creates considerable hardship on the Palestinian people. I just don’t know how the regime, particularly in Gaza, can be negotiated with.By the way, here is a picture of my grandfather, with my mom, aunt and uncle, on the boardwalk in Tel Aviv in 1962:My grandparents fled Iraq in 1941 after a horrible pogrom called the Farhud. It bothers me to no end when people call Jews “white colonizers.” My grandfather was far from white! Iraqi Jews trace their history to their exile from the Kingdom of Judea in 6th Century BCE. My grandmother would say she was a “Babylonian,” to signify her direct ancestral tie to the land of Judea. My grandparents and the generations of persecuted Jews before/around them is why Zionism exists and why it endures. I will be a passionate Zionist until my last breath. It’s the only place I know for sure where Jews will be tolerated. Peter Beinart will only realize this when it’s too late. A world that that is indifferent to the fall of the Jewish state is not a safe world for Jews anywhere.Yossi talks a lot about the Jews who immigrated from elsewhere in the Middle East, and it’s an overlooked point at times. From a reader critical of Israel:Thank you for having on Peter Beinart. I have followed you for years and assumed you were either a Zionist supporter or just didn’t want to touch the Issue. So I am pleasantly surprised.During the past eight years, I have been to the West Bank four times working on behalf of a Christian ministry in Bethlehem. The birthplace of Jesus Christ, Bethlehem is now surrounded by prison walls and guard towers on three sides. This cultural capital of Palestine, with its rich history, art, music and food, is being surrounded by settlements, so it cannot grow.  The situation is horrific. The Israelis have killed three young children just this week [in July], 77 children in 2021 so far. And every day the US sends at least $10.4 million of our tax dollars in military aid.Another critic of Israel:Zionism, as an ideology, has stopped progressing. It’s like Communism in the Eighties — all energy has seeped out. It has been replaced by very nasty ethno-nationalism and an optimistic economism (Israel the Start-up Nation). The underpinning ideology has boiled down to a large collection of cliched slogans, like the ones your Israeli readers wrote down. I can already fill in the Zionist trope bingo card. Nothing new has been added in the last 15 to 20 years, except an inflated sense of victimhood.This next reader, though, points to a Palestinian sense of the same forever-victim mentality:I believe this is a point that will resonate with you: the settlement project feeds into the “settler colonialism” mantra that is a key component of intersectional doctrine sweeping through much of America. As they say, “From Ferguson to Palestine!” In this context, my admittedly counter-intuitive argument that Palestinians will not let the Israelis leave the West Bank, just as they have successfully blocked Israel from divorcing itself from Gaza, cannot be processed by the progressive cerebral operating system (“does not compute,” as the robot would say). For this reason, the settlements and occupation are an even greater conundrum for Israel than ever before, requiring the most sober, de-politicized and mature decision-making by the new Israeli leaders. But so long as the international community indulges the Palestinian penchant for utilizing their own self-generated suffering as their most powerful weapon, I see no good solution for Israel. There’s no Iron Dome for what, from our perspective, is this profound dysfunction.Back to a pro-Israel position — one that is optimistic about a two-state solution:Thanks for your continued efforts to elevate the discourse. I am a fairly new subscriber to the Dish and very much enjoyed reading the responses to your Beinart conversation. In one of your replies, you posit:But again, I can’t explain or defend the settlements. It’s really that simple. And it’s striking that neither of my two correspondents mentions them. This is precisely what frustrates me about liberal Zionists: in the end, they always avoid that inexcusable reality.Consider the Israeli government’s actions in turning over the Sinai in 1982, and the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. In 1982, 1,200 settlers had barricaded themselves in Yamit (Yamit is considered to be part of biblical Israel by Orthodox Jews), and they were forcibly removed by the Israeli army. In the summer of 2005 (I was actually in Israel when the right-wing Sharon government pulled out of Gaza), it was common to see thousands of Israeli protesters in the lead up to the withdrawal. But, when it came time for the withdrawal, the army again removed the settlers from the 21 settlements in Gaza.My expectation is that when there is an opportunity for a two-state solution, the  course of conduct established in the two episodes above will again rule the day: the Israelis will remove the settlements that are necessary for a viable Palestinian state to exist. I wouldn’t for a moment posit that communities like Efrat will be removed, but assuredly bunches of other outposts in Judea and Samaria would disappear. This reality of Israeli history is fundamentally pragmatic. The Israeli right will continue to generate support by offering offer rhetorical support to the settler movement, and the Israeli left will continue to draw adherents by perseverating on the existence of the settlements. The dirty little secret is that when push comes to shove and the moment for a serious Palestinian State arises, it will be the settlers who are again relocated in the face of the national consensus.Here’s hoping. But I can’t say I agree. One more reader on the settlements:First of all, I’m DELIGHTED that you’re planning to invite on Yossi Klein Halevi — I was going to suggest you have him before seeing like four other dissenters beat me to it. (In addition to sharing his views on Israel, Zionism, and the Palestinians almost entirely, I also happen to know him personally and he is an absolutely wonderful guy — one of those people whose very presence calms you.)Anyhow, you said in your response to a reader that “the settlement policy is now and always has been the core obstacle to any deal” (emphasis mine). As a liberal Zionist, I have two problems.The first is the one you’d probably guess: While I grant that the settlements have certainly been an obstacle, I disagree that they’ve been the obstacle. They have serious competition — for instance, the dream that lives among an all-too-large contingent of Palestinians to displace Israel utterly. Call it “Greater Palestine,” if you will — and of course “displace” is a euphemism. I’d love to hear why you believe the settlements are somehow more “core” than that, a dream that is explicitly stated in Hamas’s charter.Second (and this is a major reason I’m so glad you're planning to invite Yossi on), is what the settlements symbolize for the Jewish people — that is, what the lands of the West Bank (the heartland of Biblical Judea and Israel, as I’m sure you know) mean for the Jewish soul. And here I’m cognizant of speaking more to your religious side. To renounce our claim to those lands is painful — necessary and right, no doubt, but painful too. And that is never acknowledged even rhetorically, let along with true compassion.No question that Yossi’s humanity and learning and empathy are impossible to ignore. Just listen to the podcast. And I understand the depth of the religious commitment to place. For the next Israel/Palestine chat, I’d like to invite a Palestinian. Who do you think would be the best? We’re open to any suggestions: dish@andrewsullivan.com. 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Michael Shellenberger On Homelessness, Addiction, Crime

I belatedly came to Shellenberger in my research on nuclear power’s potential to help cut carbon emissions. But his new book — on the terrible progressive governance in many American cities in recent years — is what gave me the idea to interview him. On homelessness, crime, addiction, and the fast-deterioration of our public spaces, San Fran-sicko, despite its trolly title, is empirical, tough-minded and, in my view, humane. But make up your own mind, in what was one of the more timely conversations I’ve had this year.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Read the full transcript here.  For two clips of our conversation — on the reasons why San Francisco progressives won’t build safe homeless shelters, and on the growing backlash against Democrats on crime and urban disorder — head over to our YouTube page. (And be sure to check out Shellenberger’s substack — he’s on a major roll this week.)A reader writes:I just listened to the Dishcast with Sam Quinones and am so grateful you are covering addiction and homelessness. I especially appreciated the perspective that homeless addicts — who I am afraid of and repelled by — are suffering the most, and in genuine need of help. It’s easy to forget when I’m frustrated and everyone seems to be diagnosing the real problem as my own bigotry! (A personal anecdote: my brother’s truck was recently stolen and destroyed by addicts in Bakersfield, where he works as a firefighter and puts out fires every day that are set by the homeless. This is a problem!)The diversity of guests on the Dishcast has been mind-expanding. In this episode I was reminded of John McWhorter’s claims about woke as the new religion. It seems as though homeless men, especially if they are racial minorities, have become sacred cows for progressives.I think there are some more achievable policy solutions than strengthening communities and social relationships, however. This article from the California Globe highlights some concrete things that could be done by redirecting the massive resources already going to homelessness. Here’s a clip of my conversation with Sam about the meth crisis:Another reader remarks:I loved your interview with Quinones. For one thing, I love his speaking style — many false starts and revisions, as he looks at the subject from many perspectives, going several directions before going ahead. (It’s my style as well.) I think it’s characteristic of many thoughtful people, but they don’t always get a chance to speak. The episode makes me want to read his book.Another reader:Thank you for introducing Sam Quinones to those of us who haven’t read his books. You and he shed so much light on the relationship between the large and ever-expanding encampments and meth and fentanyl use. He was able to explain the rapid expansion, which had been the most mysterious aspect of the issue for me. We have always had homelessness, but not like what we see today. It’s a different thing altogether. I used to think that taking the profit motive out of drugs and decriminalizing them would reduce the problem, but I think I heard the opposite from Quinones. I also was unaware of the meth issue among gay men. The gay men I socialize with don’t talk about it, but maybe they are not having the problem (we are boomers).Here’s a snippet of the convo on gays and meth:A recommendation from a reader:For those who are interested, there is a documentary on gay men and meth on Amazon Prime that is quite devastating to watch. (I’m not affiliated with Amazon, just passing along some info.)Yes — but it’s from 2014! We could use an updated one. From a reader with first-hand experience with the meth crisis:Overall, your perspective on crystal meth addiction in the gay male community is spot on. I was able to hide it for years, until one day I was unable to do so, and it caught up with me. Exacerbated by the COVID pandemic, I found myself unable to stop, as meth allowed me to cope with the isolation and other traumas. What I don’t think was discussed by you or Sam in his book are some positive steps towards recovery that many have found. First, the community of Crystal Meth Anonymous (CMA) moved itself online at the start of the pandemic and now continues to offer hundreds of meetings each week, in addition to in-person meetings across the world. I regularly find addicts are unaware of CMA and have trouble relating to those they find in AA or Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Second, some of us have found support against meth cravings through the use of the anti-depressant mirtazapine. There has been a small clinical trial. While not a panacea for meth addiction, I have met others who have found recovery through its use, along with a combination of regular attendance of recovery meetings.A reader who practices medicine in California touches on some themes that Shellenberger and I discussed:I wonder if you’re aware of the pressure put on physicians in the past to prescribe opiates. More than a decade ago, complaints of pain were termed “the fifth vital sign.” About that time the California medical board issued “guidelines” about dealing with complaints of pain. These were interpreted as meaning you could get in trouble with your licensing board if someone complained that you were unwilling to give them dope.Drug-seeking behavior has been a problem for clinicians forever. If the patient gets the desired controlled substance, there’s the added advantage that you get your drugs free, or for minimal copays. It’s found in all practices and is always unpleasant unless you give in to what the patient wants. It certainly is the easiest thing to do. They get their prescription and leave.(There are any number of legitimate uses for opioids, of course. I’m not discounting the pain of someone with terminal cancer. I’m talking about patients with chronic complaints of pain with no objective findings to explain the complaints.)Responsible medical practice requires that you not prescribe in bad faith. If I don’t believe what I’m told, I am not to prescribe controlled substances. There are many tells an experienced physician can see. Sometimes you’re told things that require you to suppress a laugh — for example, a man with multiple skin abscess from skin popping was “attacked by a swarm of bees.”This isn’t about being judgmental. It’s about not doing harm.In my area, officials are working on getting addicts permanent housing — “the problem is housing” — complete with “wrap around” services. Addicts are free to continue using once we get them housed. It didn’t work when they were living with mom and dad, so why should it work in the hotel rooms we’re buying? None of those responsible for making policy seem to have considered that their approach may very well make it easier to continue the addiction. With the best of intentions, I think it likely that the current approach will lead to more harm.  Incidentally, housing addicts in California has become a very big business.  Somebody is benefitting, even if it isn’t the addicted.Several readers below share their personal perspective after reading my latest column, “Woke: On the Wrong Side of History.” The first:Thanks for the fantastic essay. It really hit home for me as a Puerto Rican advancing through middle age, since so much has changed regarding race perspectives in my lifetime. Not only is the left (of which I count myself a member, sadly) on the wrong side of history, its most influential leaders are gobsmackingly ignorant of it. Hispanic support for Trump would not be such a shocking phenomenon for the left if it spent more time learning Hispanic history and less time trying to pretend Hispanics are all oppressed POCs wallowing in misery, desperately waiting for all-knowing lefty superheroes to liberate us from the shackles of white supremacy.Regarding your comments on Hispanics being “white adjacent” and your observation that “even within the CRT category of ‘brown,’ there are those who identify as white,” those are the key insights pointing towards a history that the left has either forgotten or refuses to recall: Nearly all Hispanic immigrants to the US hail from former colonies that had been ruled by Spain, a European (i.e., WHITE) country. As such, the history of these immigrants has nothing to do with the 1619 Project and very little to do with Anglo white supremacy; rather, these immigrant cultures were informed by a white perspective of the Latin variety.The Spanish imperial project (can you believe there ever existed a mean, horribly oppressive empire that spoke Spanish) was similar to that of the British, though it differed significantly because the Spanish did not aggressively police interracial mixing among whites, blacks, and natives. It was discouraged enough such that whites remained at the top of the hierarchy (which remains the case to this day), but a mixed-raced person could advance in Spanish society further than a “pure” black or indigenous person, especially if that person celebrated Spanish heritage, culture and so forth. Over time there have developed large cohorts of Latin American Hispanics who identify as white (irrespective of how they may present to Anglos) because Hispanic culture historically rewarded celebrations of European ancestry and identity without regard to a “one drop” rule. These people simply do NOT identify as “oppressed” POCs and, if anything, identify as the descendants of great white conquering “oppressors.” None of this changes when they immigrate to the US. Putting the moral questions regarding these developments aside, these identities are real and widespread and the Democratic left needs to understand them, rather than wish them away because they complicate the “Black and brown” narrative.There are data to back up my little history review. In the 2020 US Census, the government offered Hispanics more racial categories, such as “multi-racial” and “other,” in an attempt to steer them away from selecting white as a default option. Out of a total of 60 million Hispanics in the US, 20 percent still opted to choose white as the only selection for their race! That millions of Hispanics still identify as white ought to tell the left something about what they are getting wrong with this “brown” approach, namely that attempting to shoehorn an entire group made up of multiple races and backgrounds into one “oppressed” POC category is a fool’s errand.  Another reader points to a form of privilege not appreciated enough:I came from Cuba in mid-1960s at the age of 9 with no knowledge of English. My parents never learned English. By age 12 or 13, I had learned enough English so that friends of my parents would bring me their job applications and other forms to fill out. I was often impatient in doing that, something I deeply now regret. To me, the major privilege now isn’t color of skin, but knowing English and having American citizenship.People from Central America, South America, and Caribbean don’t think of themselves in terms of being part of an identity tectonic plate. They think of themselves in terms of the country from which they come. They begin to classify themselves as Hispanic, or Latina/o, or the revolting “Latinx,” as an Anglo heuristic.  (“Latinx,” in my opinion, is left-wing linguistic neo-colonialism.)By the way, when I went through diversity training at a very, very large, prestigious bank, among the microaggressions listed was, “Telling someone they speak English well.”Another reader sizes up the two parties philosophically:A friend recently insisted that the GOP has a form of nationalism that he described as “Country Music Nationalism,” which consists of “long neck beers, freedom, pickup trucks, flags, guns, farms, open roads.” A few of us pushed back, saying it’s not a positive narrative from the GOP, but a negative one (fear of foreigners, of snobs, of moral decay etc), and that patriotism is the confabulated positive version of it. Fear — in its Trumpian “they’re sending their rapists and murderers” form — is the narrative core.We then realized the Dems are also obsessed with the past, but not in a good way: its sins. The past is not a golden age to return to, but the source of all our current ills and our doomed future. The 1619 Project isn’t a track record of the massive progress we’ve made as a civilization, nor even how much we have left to do, but about how we are permanently tarnished and broken. We ultimately boiled it down to two messages:GOP: “The present is bad, our past was good. Return.”Dems: “Our past sins have doomed our future. Recant.”The GOP narrative has a direction, even if it’s the wrong one, and will ultimately continue to win until the Dems have a vision of the future that’s not just righteous indignation and self-abasement. The true tragedy is that we’re all moving into the future. To have two parties who are terrified of it, instead of excited and inspired by it, does not bode well for us no matter who “wins.” Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

David Wallace-Wells On Omicron And COP26

The Covid news keeps coming, and I wanted to understand it better, especially as Omicron makes its way across the Atlantic, and as vaccine effectiveness declines. Who better to talk to than David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine’s Covid specialist and environmental correspondent? He was on the Dishcast early this year, before the vaccines arrived, and he’s about as honest a broker on the pandemic as anyone. I also asked him to debrief Dishheads on the upshot of COP26, the recent Climate Change conference in Glasgow. I learned a lot — about the waste of solar panels and the potential of nuclear power to help us get past carbon more quickly.You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to the Dishcast feed. For two clips my conversation with David — on his sobering assessment of the vaccines against Delta, and on Biden’s bumbling on Covid pills and testing — head over to our YouTube page. A reader looks back to last week’s episode:I just listened to your podcast with Christina Sommers and Danielle Crittenden, and was pretty struck by your conversation with David Frum regarding President Biden. I’m a strong Biden supporter and am quite sanguine on his chances in 2024 (yes, I believe he will run if his health permits), so you can imagine I was more partial to Frum’s argument. But I’m wondering about your diagnosis of the prospects of his presidency. Do you think his situation is irreversible?You can point to any number of two-term presidents in recent memory and find a moment in time where, if the election were held on a given day, the president would badly lose re-election. I wasn’t around for Reagan’s presidency, but didn’t things look pretty terrible for him in early 1983? A Harris poll taken in early January of ‘83 had Mondale trouncing Reagan. FiveThirtyEight has Reagan hitting the mid-30s around that time, quite a bit lower than where Biden is now. Before that, by mid-1982, he was where Biden is now, polling-wise.You could say the same of Bill Clinton’s first two years. It strikes me that few mention his inglorious dip into the mid-30s only a few months into his term, again per 538. Then there were Clinton’s low-40s averages heading into the 1994 elections, the collapse of one of his signature legislative pushes, and his infamous drubbing at the hands of Newt Gingrich. Was it considered likely at the time that he would skate to re-election just two years later?I feel like citing H.W. Bush’s soaring public approvals in his first three years and his incredible collapse in 1992 is a cliché at this point. And of course Obama had his highs and lows, and spent much of 2011 treading water roughly where Biden is now in terms of his poll numbers — to say nothing of his total collapse after his first debate with Romney and rapid climb back to the lead just in time to clinch re-election (yes, I was around for your reaction to that!).I guess my question is, knowing that ultimately successful presidents can recover from political lows and have, why do I get the sense that you think Biden’s condition is terminal?Because of his age and declining abilities. This is no reflection on him: he’s pretty remarkable for a 79 year old. But his speeches lack fire and focus; he’s background noise in our politics; he keeps making gaffes, including a rather dangerous one on declaring support for Ukraine; he has allowed himself to be defined, fairly or not, by the far left. Cognitive ability declines sharply around 60. In 2028, which would be Biden’s final year in office if re-elected, he’d be 86, my mother’s age. Yes, Trump would be 82. But Trump has the energy and passion of the mentally ill — and I just can’t see Biden matching that even now, let alone in nearly a decade’s time.Another reader sounds the alarm for Biden and his party when it comes to America’s schools:The NYT posted this today (“Schools Are Closing Classrooms on Fridays. Parents Are Furious.), and I suspect it’s going to be the main theme in the midterm elections: parents and schools. We saw this play out in Virginia and NJ last month and it seems to be intensifying.Here in Portland, there is a serious battle going on with the Teachers Association and the school district. The teachers have proposed making Fridays a self-learning day for the remainder of the year. The school district is pushing back, particularly based on parent backlash. And the Oregonian newspaper has come out against the proposal as well.I think everyone sympathizes that teachers are undergoing an extremely difficult time, particularly with all the behavioral issues kids are having. But I can tell you that every parent I know is gobsmacked at the thought of returning back to online learning. There have to be other solutions. We can’t go back to having kids at home. I don’t think this has fully resonated with Democratic politicians, even after the backlash last month. While there’s been a lot of focus on CRT, just the fact of what parents have been dealing with the past 18 months of schools closings has been such a nightmare. I think this NYMag article was spot on about how blind the Democrats were to this issue, especially in New Jersey. This February article in The Nation about the situation on the West Coast was haunting and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.I don’t want to compare myself to other people, but as a parent, the past 18 months have been the hardest of my life. Every day is just holding things together and the impacts to kids are going to be felt for many years. What I’m just stunned about is how absent the Democratic leaders are on this issue. There’s a rage amongst parents right now that we feel unheard and are desperate. I feel like we’re headed towards a blowout midterm election that’s going to exceed what happened to the Democrats in 1994. And you can’t say they weren’t warned.Tyler Cowen predicts that even a mild wave of Omicron will cause chaos in the schools. I remain unimpressed by the cheering-up we’ve been exposed to recently about Biden’s future. Inflation is at a 40-year high; the Southern border is chaotic; we are still losing around 400,000 Americans a year to Covid and 100,000 to fentanyl and other opioids. Murder rates are through the roof — and are exacerbated by Democratic DAs refusing to prosecute violent criminals and keep them off the streets. Trump, meanwhile, has cemented his hold on an increasingly deranged GOP. Yes, there’s a long way to go. Yes, things can turn around. Yes, some strong aspects of the economy will become clearer over time, if we’re lucky. But if you think this administration isn’t in serious trouble, you’re dreaming. Next up, a collection of reader comments on last week’s column, “Why Roe Will Fall And Obergefell Won’t,” continued from our main page this week. First a dissent:I hope you’re right that Obergefell won’t fall, but I have my doubts. Three of the Justices who voted against Obergefell — a narrow 5-4 decision, compared to Roe’s 7-2 — are still on the Court: Roberts, Alito and Thomas (and Roberts wrote a pretty scathing dissent). Do you really think that there aren’t two of the new Justices (good Catholics all) who wouldn’t join the three still there to overturn the Obergefell decision? And you really believe that public opinion will change their long-held beliefs that not only is gay marriage wrong but probably that gay relationships are too?I have no reason to think that John Roberts believes that gay marriage and gay relationships are wrong. I scoured Google but didn’t come up with anything. Alito seems quite hostile on religious grounds, but it seems important to me to distinguish constitutional arguments with moral ones. Another dissent:As you know, the modern consensus on substantive due process posits that people have unenumerated fundamental rights in the Constitution that courts are obligated to protect. It’s the principle that undergirds everything from Griswold v. Connecticut to Roe to Lawrence v. Texas to Obergefell. Right now there are six legal originalists on the Court who simply believe this consensus to be based on a flawed premise. If the Constitution is silent on the issue, be it abortion or same-sex marriage, they believe it’s a political question that must be handled by legislatures. To them, it doesn’t matter if the political issue at hand is popular (like gay marriage). If a majority on the Court feels the whole root of Roe is rotten, why wouldn’t they want to cut down the whole tree? Alito and Thomas have already indicated they want to revisit Obergefell, after all.That’s why I find your position so naive. The conservative movement has been candid that once Roe goes, and the legal concept of substantive due process with it, they intend to do away with the rest of those domestic political issues we consider settled. A few months ago, for example, the Texas solicitor general submitted an amicus brief suggesting that the Court leave Lawrence and Obergefell “hanging by a thread,” adding that those two rulings, “while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe.”Furthermore, the pro-life movement openly espouses that certain forms of popular contraception (namely the birth control pill and IUDs) constitute abortifacients and should be banned. When the Court overturns Roe, red-state legislatures will redefine fetal personhood to begin at conception, which could functionally ban those forms of contraception. So the issue is not just abortion, which may or may not be morally unique. It is the entire platform of “social ills” that the religious right believes are morally indistinguishable from abortion.A big question with marriage equality, unlike abortion, is that hundreds of thousands of couples are now legally married. That’s a lot of facts on the ground that cannot be abolished overnight. Undoing those civil marriages would be a nightmare; and simply drawing a line under them, and banning all future marriages seems downright bizarre. It’s not impossible. And maybe I’m too complacent. But I think it’s a log shot. This next reader gets more personal:I agree with you that abortion is an incredibly complex ethical issue, and the tendency of some on the far left to treat it as no different from a trip to the dentist is facile and off-putting.However. I’m a woman who has willingly had three children, and it’s hard to put into words the visceral horror inspired by the thought of being forced to go through pregnancy and birth against your will. Opponents of abortion tend to gloss over that bit with the “just adopt” argument. Pregnancy — and particularly the birth itself — can damage your body in ways that last the rest of your life. Incontinence, prolapse, and serious perineal tears are all routine. In fact, for most healthy women, pregnancy and birth will be the most risky medical event in their lives. Some women do still die in childbirth in America — especially poor and black women, who will be overwhelmingly the most affected if Roe is overturned. We all know that if abortion rights become state by state, rich women will have no trouble traveling to procure an abortion; it will be poor women who pay the price.Forcing a woman to bring a pregnancy to term is inhumane and unacceptable — even if it is the will of the majority of people in conservative states.Another reader points to “one missed nuance in your good Roe/Obergefell piece”:When you write, “when it does not concern an easily-outvoted minority,” and when you explain why abortion isn’t strictly a “women’s issue,” you elide something that needs confronting. Abortion does in fact concern an easily-outvoted minority: women currently of childbearing age at any given time. And an even smaller minority: women actually pregnant and affected by the question in a way no one else is.I do believe that abortion is a taking of human life, and it’s a moral question that concerns us all. (I would say the same of warfare.) However, I’m reluctant for majorities to have unfettered say over a contested moral choice that affects the one person making it (or barred from making it) in such a fundamentally different way from the others who may vote on it without consequence to themselves. I don’t assert that the Constitution confers the right of the pregnant woman to be the complete arbiter of her own choice, or the complete arbiter of her unborn child’s right to life. But I do feel her ethical claim on that position is the strongest one. I would limit the voice of the community to defining limits — for instance, the tradition-supported idea of “quickening,” or the Roe-imposed idea of “viability,” or the right-supported idea of waiting periods for enforced reflection on the choice. I think the Roe court used some particularly unfortunate and contrived reasoning, and I agree that it contributed to a grievous period of political polarization over an institution that historically helped us avoid that very ill. But the court’s conclusion was correct.That’s pretty close to my own position. Another reader worries about the Court going much further than overturning Roe:I’m pro-choice. If all the Supreme Court does is overturn Roe, I’d call it an extremely good day for the pro-choice movement.What’s the point of being anti-abortion and learning that the Court overturned Roe, only to find that some states decide to make it cheap and easy to have abortions —either because it’s truly the will of the people, or because they cynically found a way to get huge revenues out of a “come-one, come-all” policy? Do you think anyone on the anti-choice side would be happy if “states rights” and the “will of the people” prevailed and the number of overall abortions remained steady? So I don’t think that Roe will be overturned, or even very limited, if the Court cannot find a way to ban all abortions everywhere. The bad news is I think there is a way. The conservative justices could use the logic of the so-called Human Life Amendments, one of which failed an initiative vote in Mississippi. The justices could find a 14th Amendment personhood right in the fetus and issue a total ban on abortions. If the fetus is a person, and especially if a viable fetus is a person, then well, you can’t kill people. And if you can’t figure out when viability begins, then you have to say that viability begins at procreation.  Goodbye Roe. Goodbye Griswold. Hello using the entire police power to prevent abortions.Another reader backs my argument that Roe is very vulnerable when compared to Obergefell:The parallels between laws regulating abortion and sexuality restrictions were drawn by Yale Law Professor John Hart Ely rather shortly after Roe was decided (emphasis mine):[O]rdinarily the Court claims no mandate to second-guess legislative balances, at least not when the Constitution has designated neither of the values in conflict as entitled to special protection. But even assuming it would be a good idea for the Court to assume this function, Roe seems a curious place to have begun. Laws prohibiting the use of “soft” drugs or, even more obviously, homosexual acts between consenting adults can stunt “the preferred life styles” of those against whom enforcement is threatened in very serious ways. It is clear such acts harm no one besides the participants, and indeed the case that the participants are harmed is a rather shaky one. Yet such laws survive, on the theory that there exists a societal consensus that the behavior involved is revolting or at any rate immoral. Of course the consensus is not universal but it is sufficient, and this is what is counted crucial, to get the laws passed and keep them on the books. Whether anti-abortion legislation cramps the life style of an unwilling mother more significantly than anti-homosexuality legislation cramps the life style of a homosexual is a close question. But even granting that it does, the other side of the balance looks very different. For there is more than simple societal revulsion to support legislation restricting abortion: Abortion ends (or if it makes a difference, prevents) the life of a human being other than the one making the choice.I recommend the entire piece.Another recommendation:I wonder if you’ve come across Ronald Dworkin’s piece “Slow and Steady,” where he compares and contrasts the issue of abortion to that of gay marriage. Dworkin suggests that because opinions on gay marriage were allowed to evolve largely through the political process (a state-by-state basis), it allowed social change to be achieved in a manner where a new consensus was established and the broader institution of marriage for gays was secured, by and large, through POLITICAL consensus and legislation, as opposed to judicial fiat. He contrasts this with abortion, arguing that with Roe, a universal right to abortion was speculated into existence and applied to the whole country. A theory imagined out of thin air, or at least from a novel interpretation of the Constitution, replaced the slow but steady process of acclimatization that goes hand in hand with accepted social change. For many conservatives the move seemed tyrannical; more important, it infuriated millions of religious Protestants, who adopted the new “family values” motto. The country has been fighting over abortion ever since.He goes on to suggest that the issue has become so polarising precisely because opinions were not able to evolve through the legislative process but was short-circuited by SCOTUS, thereby radicalising the Christian Right.I think you’re right: Roe is probably gone in all but name (and possibly completely overturned), which won’t bring us back to the days of the backstreet abortionists or abortions via coat-hangers, but will evolve on a state-by-state basis. Yes, that means it will disproportionately impact poor people and people of colour. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the American abortion laws today are more liberal than almost every other country in Europe. As Gerry Baker notes in the Times of London: The Mississippi act before the court would do no more, in fact, than bring that state’s law into line with the prevailing legal conditions for abortion in 39 of 42 European countries, including such notorious abusers of women as Germany and Denmark. So the idea that the present legal framework in the US is the only way to protect a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion … is palpable nonsense, and demonstrated to be so by the practice of at least 191 other countries that don’t resemble the Republic of Gilead.So, yes, it will be a messy process and it may well be the case that the Supreme Court takes a huge hit. But even Ruth Bader Ginsburg recognised that the legal reasoning behind Roe was highly flawed, so perhaps this will be a case of reculer pour mieux sauter.This next reader is confident that abortion will remain legal because of the huge cultural shift toward premarital sex:I think that both Roe and Obergefell reflect changes in attitudes about sexual morality. As of 1960, premarital sex was still widely viewed as wrong. For a young unmarried woman to get pregnant was getting “caught” doing this wrong thing, and abortion was a cover-up. Laws against abortion were consistent with reinforcing the norm against premarital sex. Very rapidly during the 1960s, premarital sex became widely accepted. To the extent that laws outlawing abortion are punishment for premarital sex, they punish something that is no longer considered a crime. I think that tolerance for premarital sex is what made Roe possible, and I don’t see that changing.  Today, I would speculate that the minority who are adamantly anti-abortion are comparable in numbers to the minority who are adamantly against gay sex. The anti-abortion forces are better organized and more relentless, and of course they understand that they cannot base their case on hostility to premarital sex. But they are very much outside of the mainstream. If Roe falls, I predict that the political fallout will be bad for anti-abortion politicians. They are better off seen as unsuccessfully flailing against the courts than seen as taking us back to the infanticide of  “Ode to Billie Joe.”Another reader challenges the “choice” rhetoric of those supporting abortion:One aspect of the “pro-life” vs “pro-choice” debate I never really see considered is what “choice” exactly are we talking about as being relevant to the discussion. The vast majority of abortions occur following a “choice” to have consensual sex, whereby getting pregnant is a real outcome no matter what sort of contraception you use. This study indicates something in the order of 1% of abortions are due to nonconsensual sex/rape. I’m not trying to belittle all the other reasons for having an abortion, but the fact is the vast majority are due to consensual sex.Inherent in the choice two people make to have consensual sex is the real possibility that pregnancy may be a result. Surely this is (or should be) understood and receive a greater emphasis in public dialogue, regardless of how inconvenient the consequence is. I guess I would argue that if you aren’t willing to accept the outcomes of “rolling the dice,” perhaps you shouldn’t be rolling the dice in the first place. To me, this is part of a wider issue in society where people could benefit from taking more responsibility for their actions rather than trying to offload consequences or look for quick fixes.Well, yes. Point well taken. I do think that the serious pro-life position would be super enthusiastic about making birth control far more accessible to avoid unplanned pregnancies. And yet, my own church takes the polar opposite approach. Another socially conservative view:Another reason why the abortion debate is messy is that it strikes at the heart of familial responsibility. To many people, asking a mother to endure nine months of pregnancy isn’t that different from forcing a father to endure say 18 years of blood and sweat working in a factory so that he can pay child support. All child-support laws, essentially, make the parental body an indirect resource for the familial child. “Pro-choice” is tantamount to saying absent fathers should have the ability, during pregnancy, to opt-out of child support laws if they choose, all without the women’s say. If that sounds disgusting, you are now closer to the instinctive reaction many have to pro-choice abortion laws in general. Abortion fundamentally destroys family obligation.Another reader on the role of men:My reasons for agreeing that abortion is not strictly a women’s issue is that the decision to bring a baby into the world affects an entire family: the father of the child that may be born, of course, but also what would be the siblings (at least half of women having abortions are already mothers), and any relatives who may need to support the woman, which may be a male relative. It is for this reason I think it has been a huge mistake for pro-choice activists to tell men they can sit this one out. While I could find no statistics about the number of men who are grateful that their unplanned pregnancies were able to be terminated, I’m confident that most men are very happy they were not forced into fatherhood (or into being grandfathers or uncles, for that matter). My husband definitely feels this way about the abortion his ex-girlfriend had. A final reader digs into some interesting history behind the word “person”: Your column contained a throwaway statement that it’s “unknowable” when the fetus becomes a person. When I am talking about abortion with non-believers, I always use the term “human being” rather than “person” because words carry their origins and baggage around with them, and the word “person” was invented or recast by the Catholic Church to define relations among the Three Persons of the Trinity.  You may know all this already, but under Roman law, a “person” was a Roman citizen. The word “person” derived from a word meaning “mask” or (by extension) “public role.” You were a person when the state recognized you as such. Because slaves were not legal persons, “personhood” was part of a caste system in which legal status became confused with humanity. Slaves were not legal citizens, and so it was easy to think of them as also less than human.In the controversy over Christ’s nature that occasioned the Council of Nicaea, the Roman term “persona” was recast to mean something more like what we call “personhood.” This was to help explain that God was Three Persons but One God. It was much richer philosophically and theologically than the Roman term. Thus the Christian concept of “person” entered Western culture and Western law. Christianity teaches that every human “person” is an image of God — and furthermore, that all human beings are, in fact, human persons. This second statement is not automatically derived from the first according to human reasons alone, since pagan cultures did in fact consider some human beings “sub-human” and/or not legally “persons.”So that’s why I don’t use the term when talking about abortion to non-believers. I prefer to anchor the right to life in the rights of all “human beings,” which is more of a Greek philosophical term without as much theological baggage. I believe human rights accrue to all human beings from the moment of conception, period. So whether or not we know “when” a human being “becomes a person,” we DO know (because science has told us without equivocation) when an individual human life begins. You’re probably familiar with some of the quotes by embryologists at this link, regarding when human life begins.Those who get hung up on “personhood” often confuse it with sentience or consciousness, which opens some ugly doors regarding whether people in a coma, with brain damage, or genetic conditions such as Down syndrome are “persons.” Just look at what Justice Sotomayor said recently comparing fetuses to brain-dead people.In short, for persuasion purposes I would rather locate the universal right to life in being human rather than in “personhood,” even though I agree that human persons are images of God and thus sacred. I would rather make others argue why some human beings are less than human or don’t deserve human rights, than make them argue that they are human but aren’t legal “persons.”I take the point. I use the word “person” in the modern Catholic sense: an inviolable, unique soul in a unique body. That’s also why I was so struck when the Catholic hierarchy applied the term to homosexuals. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

Femsplainers (+ Frum) On Culture Wars, Covid, Russiagate

I’ve been meaning to invite Christina Sommers and Danielle Crittenden on the pod since they first had me on theirs, Femsplainers, a few years ago. This week we talked about men and women, trans and cis, gay and straight, and they drank rosé and I smoked half a joint, as we did on their pod. For two clips of our conversation — on whether more women staying home during Covid was a good thing, and on how gender nonconformity is often a source of strength — head over to our YouTube page. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player embedded above, or right below it you can click “Listen in podcast app,” which will connect you to the Dishcast feed.At the last minute, we re-invited to the pod Danielle’s husband, David Frum, because we both wanted to hash out our differences over the Trump-Russia media coverage. (We first debated the issue ten months ago, and my column last week was in response to his latest in the Atlantic.) I think we may have made some progress in finessing where we differ, and why. But you be the judge. Things got a bit heated here:Meanwhile, readers continue to hash out the intricacies of Russiagate in a series of dissents that continue from our main page. First up:David Frum has a really good summary of the evidentiary record, excluding the Steele Dossier, showing that cooperation with Russia did occur. In your response, you basically agree that he’s right about everything and just try to define the media narrative as something greater than that and say it hasn’t been proven. It would take another thousand words to explain all the ways in which this doesn’t work. (It can’t be collusion because he already liked Russia?? Really?!! Sanctions imposed under duress and then deliberately undermined prove he’s not guilty? Huh?!!) From my point of view, you’re engaged in a hair-splitting exercise in denial. I guarantee that Rachel Maddow and others in the liberal media are not backing down from the idea that Trump and Russia may have colluded, cooperated, or coordinated (all three are bad), because they continue to see evidence that it’s true, regardless of the dossier — which has really been more of a distraction.Another reader begins by quoting me:“But this was not what the MSM tried to sell us from the get-go. What they and the Democrats argued — with endless, breathless, high-drama reporting — was that there was some kind of plot between Trump and Russia to rig the election and it had succeeded. Investigating this was hugely important because it could expose near-treason and instantly remove Trump from power via impeachment. This was the dream to cope with the nightmare.”Andrew, read this NYT article: it seems that Don Jr. actually *did* meet with a Russian attorney, who promised documents that would embarrass Clinton, and the Russian government *did* hack into the Clinton campaign’s emails and did release those emails, and Trump himself asked the Russians (on national TV) to release more emails. And of course, Trump actually won the election, and the Russian intelligence service’s email dump may well have pushed Trump over the finish line, so it’s hard to argue that the Russian campaign wasn’t a success. So I’m trying to figure out exactly what the MSM got wrong here.The only thing I can think of is that you think that the MSM actually accused the Trump campaign of initiating the hack of the Clinton campaign emails. But I can’t find any evidence that they did say that. In the article above, for example, the Times specifically says: “The precise nature of the promised damaging information about Mrs. Clinton is unclear, and there is no evidence to suggest that it was related to Russian-government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.”In reality, of course, the Trump campaign contributed nothing to the Russian hacking beyond making it clear that should Trump win the election, there would be no retribution for influencing our election — which could be the campaign’s biggest contribution to the Russian hacking.So, if you’re going to accuse the MSM of actually going further, please define what further actually means, and then, please, come up with a link to at least *one* article from CNN, NYT or the Washington Post to such an article. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable ask.Another reader raises more question:David Frum’s piece begins by setting a low bar, by his own admission, listing only those matters acknowledged by everyone. It leaves out other matters that are equally interesting, and it makes it fair to turn your question back around to you. If Trump really wasn’t guilty of outright treason or near-treason in his dealings with Russia, then:* Why was he desperate to fire Mueller?* Why did he meet privately with Putin on one occasion, barring his own translator, and on another, entertain the Russian ambassador and foreign minister in the Oval Office, with few or no witnesses?* Why did he make a craven public spectacle of himself standing next to the president of a hostile foreign power, raising the issue of election interference, and saying he believed him?* Why did he briefly consider turning the former US ambassador to Russia over to the Russians for questioning?Do you not find these matters worth considering, even though they weren’t cited by Frum? No less a Trump minion than Steve Bannon called the Trump tower meeting “treasonous” and commented further that “There’s no way [Don Jr. and his associates] didn’t take [the Russian visitor] up to the 26th floor to meet Dad.”In the end, you seem to take refuge in the overused dodge, “But you see, Trump is too dumb to be a conspirator, so it’s really OK, and there’s nothing to see here.”1. He wanted to fire Mueller because he cannot bear any rival authority, especially one with the power to subpoena. Show me an investigation Trump has not tried to obstruct. 2. No idea but this is again asking Trump to prove a negative. 3. Because he genuinely admires Putin more than the CIA. 4. Don’t know. But I’m not sure considering something and then not doing it is some kind of gotcha. Another reader looks to Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair:In your response to Frum, I’m mostly in agreement with you, but one line gave me a pause: “Manafort’s delivery of polling data to Moscow was deeply shifty.”I highly recommend you check out Aaron Maté’s deep dive on this particular point over at Real Clear Investigations. Mueller did not conclude that Kilimnik was a Russian agent, nor did he charge Manafort with sharing polling data. The Senate Intelligence Committee and Biden’s Treasury Department have claimed that — but without any public evidence to show for it. They didn’t even interview Kilimnik, who is a Ukrainian-American, a longtime associate of Manafort, and a former U.S. State Department asset. According to him and Rick Gates, the polling data was old, top-line, and mostly available to the public. This is a far cry from the collusion we were promised at the outset of the Mueller investigation, and it’s the only remaining “smoking gun” that the press still clings to.I understand why Frum would never mention these facts, but they’re the most important part of this whole affair, in my humble opinion. The Steele Dossier was used by the FBI to illegally spy on the Trump campaign and later administration, while some of the biggest names in U.S. intelligence and law enforcement were pushing the “Trump is a Russian agent” conspiracy theory: Brennan, Clapper, and to a lesser extent Comey and Hayden. It was the systematic delegitimization of the 2016 election by everyone who hated Trump for personal and policy reasons. Frum aims directly at so-called anti-anti-Trump journalists, because these folks happen to be the most civil libertarian-minded people I know on the Left. And they were right about this whole investigation, just by being skeptical from the beginning.Another reader argues that perception is reality — a reality that Trump himself created:While some of us did indeed wait for, and hope for, a “smoking gun” that would prove a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Putin’s government, I think you’re assuming a connection that the MSM (to use an impossibly vague generalization) didn’t explicitly make. We know Trump openly welcomed Russian interference in the 2016 election on his behalf. Mueller confirmed more than a hundred unexplained meetings between the Trump campaign and Russian actors, some of them known spies. And as he infamously demonstrated in Helsinki in 2018, Trump participated in covering up his connections to Russia during the campaign and well after the election. But was that enough to determine the outcome of the election? No one can determinatively say, and I seriously doubt it, but that’s really beside the point. Putin didn’t make Trump an illegitimate president. Trump did that himself by publicly behaving like we’d expect a Russian asset to behave, and intentionally creating the appearance that he was up to something behind the scenes — like his seizing of his interpreter’s notes after his first private meeting with Putin. Was his obsequious flattery of Putin and lying about his ties to Russia motivated by “kompromat”? Irrelevant. His behavior was his behavior. Why did he side with Putin over the findings of American intelligence? Because he had secret business dealings with Russia? (He did.) Or because he wanted to provoke and outrage “the libs”?It really doesn’t matter. We aren’t talking (at this point) about criminal “reasonable doubt” standards in a court of law. We’re looking at politics in the court of public opinion. And in politics, the appearance of impropriety is what matters. Trump openly displayed his contempt for the American system of self-government and the rule of law, and with that lawless disregard for our constitutional checks and balances alone he forfeited legitimacy in the eyes of millions, regardless of how they voted in 2016. He built his political career on the tabloid scandal of “birtherism,” then complained when political opponents painted him with the same brush.As for the Steele Dossier, you’ll recall that it wasn’t made known to the public until after Buzzfeed leaked the whole thing in January 2017 — well after the election. Not only was nothing in it ever used by the Clinton campaign as “oppo research” (a practice Trump himself defended in regard to the Trump Tower “dirt on Hillary” meeting), but it was never used in any of the charges brought against Trump campaign officials.I think you’re right about the embarrassment and defensive motivations of many in the press after Trump won. That was clearly on display. But it doesn’t explain Trump’s behavior — like his lifting of sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in 2019. Trump himself rarely offered any reasons for his actions — they always came down to “I did it because I can,” even when he couldn’t. He left it up to the rest of us to fill in the gaps he stubbornly refused to account for himself.It’s worth reiterating here that Trump’s behavior in all this, as in everything, was objectively appalling. My point is simply that that just doesn’t mean he’s guilty the way so many made him out to be. Another reader frowns at Mueller:Your condemnation of MSM is inconsistent with your accurate view of Trump. As a former federal prosecutor, it is hardly anomalous, let alone improper, to believe that Trump’s conflicts, pathological lying, motive, and shady past operated to render him particularly susceptible to Russian kompromat. It is not improper to believe that his repeated efforts to obstruct justice, including efforts to have witnesses lie, confirmed the notion that he had colluded with Russian assistance in the election. The failure to find a smoking gun confirming a federal conspiracy beyond any doubt does not mean it (or collusion, for which there is political consequence but no statutory prohibition) did not happen, or that those who claimed it had were craven opponents blinded by their own prejudice.  Alone among suspects, Trump was treated with unique deference by Robert Mueller. Mueller did not force him to testify (where, Trump’s lawyers realized, he would have either lied or taken the fifth); he applied a very narrow view of conspiracy law that ignored or at the very least downplayed the enormous circumstantial evidence you yourself cite; and he used the DOJ policy against prosecuting sitting presidents as the basis for refusing to conclude, as all the evidence proved, that Trump had obstructed justice. Those in the MSM who were, as you put it, “breathless” in expecting Trump’s imminent downfall no doubt failed to consider the possibility that Mueller’s narrow approach would provide Trump a political escape hatch. But they cannot be condemned for “overkill” given the wealth of evidence that did exist.Lastly, on a different subject, a somber note from a reader:I hope you and yours are enjoying a blessed Thanksgiving. In case you hadn’t already heard, Maj. Ian Fishback just had an untimely death. It was your coverage and praise of his moral courage back in the blog days that brought him to my attention, and the same is likely true for many others. I hadn’t heard news of him in years; didn’t know that he went on to pursue postgraduate studies; and certainly didn’t know of his mental health struggles. Our society, our country, and certainly the Veterans Administration owe heroes like Maj. Fishback MUCH better than he received. May we all do better, and may his memory be an inspiration.That’s a gut-punch. We so easily forget the trauma and psychological impact of serving in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially for a man like Fishback who also had to witness his peers violate the Geneva Conventions. If you have a moment, it’s worth re-reading the letter he once wrote to John McCain. It’s the letter of an American hero, a good and decent and courageous man, who came to die in an adult foster-care facility, after his demons overcame him. May he rest in peace. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.