Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will unveil a plan Thursday to ban privately run jails and prisons, which he says have a “perverse incentive” to increase the number of incarcerated people in the country.
Under the proposal by the Democratic presidential hopeful, the federal government would have three years to end its practice of using private companies to keep people behind bars. The ban would also apply to state and local governments, which have increasingly turned to private contractors in a bid to save money.
“It runs counter to the best interests of our country,” Sanders said in an interview Wednesday. “You should not be making a profit off of putting people in prison.”
Sanders’s “Justice Is Not For Sale Act,” which he plans to introduce as legislation in Congress, also includes several provisions intended to dramatically reduce the number of immigrants who are held in detention facilities while awaiting court hearings on their legal status.
Good. This blog is all for privatisation of state-owned industries and competitive free markets, but there is a limit to how far small government absolutism should go.
The most sacred and fundamental powers of any democratic government are the power to wage war and the power to imprison (or in America’s case, even execute) a citizen found guilty of committing a crime. Both matters are far too serious to be left to the private sector, especially for so tawdry a reason as cost reduction.
Just as Western democracies now rely on volunteer armies for defence and (generally – again, with some regrettable exceptions) eschew using paid mercenaries to do their dirty work, so the state, at whatever level of government is best applicable, should be directly responsible for the welfare and rehabilitation of offenders. Contracting the job out to private firms, ostensibly in order to save taxpayer money, is wrong and often counterproductive, producing the kind of perverse incentives correctly identified by Bernie Sanders. Besides which, the idea of private companies incarcerating citizens under government contract is morally repugnant, whether it is done in Britain, America or elsewhere.
There are plenty of things ripe for privatisation in America, including Amtrak (a giant taxpayer subsidy for wealthy elites living in the Acela corridor) and the United States Postal Service. In this day and age, there is less and less argument for the government having an active hand in transporting people, goods or items of correspondence. So by all means, let’s privatise what government has no business doing in the first place.
But when it comes to the most essential functions of government, some things ought never to have been handed over to the private sector in the first place. And the awesome power and responsibility which comes with incarcerating one’s fellow citizens is a case in point.
In a recent show, Bill Maher took American conservatives to task for daring to suggest that responsibility for the rise Donald Trump rests with liberals.
Money quote:
Is political correctness out of control? Of course it is. I think I might have done some sort of show about that once [Maher was host of “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher”]. I’ve been telling liberals when they had spinach on their teeth since 1993. I’ve ridiculed them for everything from offensive Halloween costumes to Islamophobia, from the self esteem movement to college campuses forgetting what free speech is. But none of that justifies embracing a dangerous buffoon, simply because his lack of political correctness is cathartic.
Trump is your problem. But somehow the party of personal responsibility doesn’t want to take responsibility for this one. Somewhere along the way, the slogan went from “Make America great again!” to “Look what you made me do!”
Amen to all of this. American leftists do indeed have much to answer for, but the rise of Donald Trump is not a problem primarily of their making.
It was the tri-cornered hat brigade whose admirable devotion to fiscal responsibility only materialised once Barack Obama took office, and then failed to force any meaningful change in Washington despite many of their number being elected to Congress in the 2010 midterms which, who have a case to answer. They were the Great White Hope whose inevitable failure formed the third strike against the political class.
It was not the Democratic Party which fanned the flames of birtherism (and then considered a nominee for president who was born in Canada) and refused to stand up to angry constituents demanding to see a birth certificate. That was all on the Republicans. Donald Trump led that effort, and nearly the entire GOP sat back with a tub of popcorn, thinking that the circus would benefit them politically. And so it did, until their attack dog finally broke the leash and turned on its handlers.
Has Barack Obama been a decidedly left-wing and in some (though by no means all) ways unimpressive president? Yes, he has. But is he a closet Communist, a secret Muslim planning to enforce hardline Islamism on America or a hopelessly incompetent buffoon? Absolutely not. He is a centre-left politician with undeniable skills, twice elected on a centre-left platform and governing according to a centre-left approach. But in their greed to quickly win back power without doing the hard work of making their own pitch to the voters more appealing, too many Republicans were willing to tolerate and sometimes actively participate in the anti-Obama hysteria for short term political gain.
If Democrats shoulder any responsibility for the danger that Donald Trump could soon be elected US president, it is only because they are now on the verge of nominating Hillary Clinton as their favoured successor – again, a highly competent technocrat and somebody with undeniable experience of executive power at the highest levels, but also somebody with no discernible core beliefs or values beyond the “bridges, not walls” buzzwords du jour.
Clinton’s political judgement has at times been…questionable. And she is dogged by a legitimate and troubling email scandal that cannot be dismissed as a mere partisan attack – to the extent that she is currently under investigation by the FBI. And that is to say nothing of the fact that the American political party supposedly the most committed to equal opportunity and social mobility is complicit in making the presidency a family affair. But none of this is remotely comparable to the danger which the Republican Party has unleashed on the country.
The warning signs were all there four years ago – a GOP primary debate stage filled with candidates like Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann, and whose few quasi intellectuals (like Newt Gingrich) were burdened with so much personal baggage that they were non-starters. Mitt Romney was the GOP’s best bet, but as their chosen candidate he was prone to gaffes and clangers (like the 47% remark) which helped ensure he would never reach the Oval Office. But did this generate any serious introspection as the GOP picked through the wreckage of the 2012 presidential election? No.
2015/16 saw a new slate of Republican candidates ranging from the well-meaning but vaguely ridiculous (Ben Carson) to the gormlessly patrician (Jeb Bush) to the empathy-devoid social conservative (Ted Cruz) to the not-quite-ready (Marco Rubio). No Paul Ryan. No promising new blood. The only candidate who fit the typical mould of a viable centre-right Republican candidate (John Kasich) never stood a chance, because he stubbornly refused to deal out sufficient quantities of crazy every time he opened his mouth.
Yes, the Democrats peddle in identity politics and often come down on the wrong side when it comes to favouring political correctness over freedom of speech, religion and behaviour. But it was the Republicans who opted to whip up (and profit from) blind fury about the state of the country instead of articulating a serious, coherent alternative. And in the end they were beaten at their own game. Why vote for the politician who smirks or winks when someone else is making ignorant, bigoted remarks when now you can vote for the real deal?
None of this means that the Democrats are not firmly capable of pushing Trump over the finishing line in November – as this blog has made clear. If their flawed presidential nominee doesn’t self-destruct on the launch pad before election day, the Left’s unbearable condescension toward those who disagree with them (you’ll see it earlier in the Bill Maher video, where he gloats about being the sole custodian of facts and truth) could well do the job.
But the Democrats and other American liberals did not cause this mess. Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president because there is a gaping void where serious, credible conservative policies which speak to Americans from every social strata (and which do not reek so strongly of elitist self interest) should be.
Or as Bill Maher puts it:
The Tea Party is named after a tax revolt. And TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already. And yet two years after Obama lowered taxes on 95 percent of Americans, 90 percent of tea people believed he’d raised them.
So if you don’t know the first thing about the thing you claim is the most important thing to you, are you bright? And is it my fault for pointing out “No”?
And through that gaping void of ignorance rode the host of The Apprentice, a man with no ideology, no policies and no impulse control, a man who gets into Twitter feuds with D-list celebrities and believes that the globalisation of trade can be reduced to a zero-sum game in which America always “wins”.
Oh, there is lots of blame to be appointed for how we arrived in this position. But as Bill Maher says, the party of personal responsibility should stop behaving like a petulant child – an innocent victim on whom Donald Trump was arbitrarily and unfairly inflicted – and take the lion’s share of responsibility themselves.
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On campus and off, the Right are coming under attack in America. And one does not need to approve of Donald Trump to abhor the violence currently being directed at his supporters
Protests outside a Donald Trump rally in downtown San Jose spun out of control Thursday night when some demonstrators attacked the candidate’s supporters.
Protesters jumped on cars, pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched signs and stole “Make America Great” hats off supporters’ heads before burning the hats and snapping selfies with the charred remains.
Several people were caught on camera punching Trump supporters. At least one attacker was arrested, according to CNN, although police did not release much information.
“The San Jose Police Department made a few arrests tonight after the Donald Trump Rally,” police said in a statement. “As of this time, we do not have specific information on the arrests made. There has been no significant property damage reported. One officer was assaulted.”
In one video circulating widely on social media, two protesters tried to protect a Trump supporter as other protesters attacked him and called him names.
Another video captured a female Trump supporter taunting protesters before being surrounded and struck in the face with an egg and water balloons.
To be sure, there have been instances of Donald Trump supporters behaving aggressively and attacking anti-Trump protesters, too. But the strong trend at present is that of anti-Trump supporters being unable to contain their anger and committing acts of violence and intimidation against Trump supporters.
Worse, though, is the way in which these acts of mob violence are often being blamed squarely on Donald Trump – as though the screaming, egg and punch throwing protesters are utterly blameless and without agency or responsibility for their actions. In this case, the mayor of San Jose was quick to blame Donald Trump for inciting the violence and his beleaguered supporters for bringing it upon themselves.
The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments had to deal with.
“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” [San Jose Mayor Sam] Liccardo said.
How quickly the much-vaunted compassion and tolerance of the Left evaporates when someone they don’t like is in the crosshairs.
And so we have the bizarre spectacle of the mayor of San Jose condemning Donald Trump for daring to hold a rally in the city for his supporters, and in so doing inflame the violent passions of the mob which then duly assembled to attack them. At one time, many on the Left could reliably be found condemning the act of so-called “victim blaming”, but when the victim hails from the radical Right then apparently those rules are inverted and the people cleaning blood and egg from their clothes are exclusively to blame for the behaviour of their attackers.
Or as Brendan O’Neill rightly puts it:
The behaviour of anti-Trump protesters is becoming more and more despicable. Last night in San Jose they physically attacked people leaving a Trump rally. This woman was cornered, spat on and pelted with eggs. Anti-Trump protests are starting to look less like left-wing demands for a more progressive politics and more like expressions of middle-class fury and disgust with the white proles lining up behind Trump. Class hatred disguised as radical politics.
There is a lot of truth in this. Many people have serious objections to Donald Trump and his presidential campaign. That is fair enough – this blog certainly does not want Trump within five miles of the Oval Office. But what we are now seeing in some of these protests goes beyond anger and objection to Donald Trump’s policies and behaviour, and is more an expression of rage and revulsion at those segments of American society which are receptive to the Trump message.
People who think that most voters will see these riots and reason that while the riots are terrible, we have to remember that Trump is worse — they’re deluded. Even if it is true, most people, left and right, don’t vote on the basis of reason. They vote on emotion. They vote on what’s in their gut. These Social Justice Warriors are making lots of people feel in their gut that Donald Trump is the only thing that stands between them and those mobs, and that if Hillary Clinton wins, mobs like that will have their champion in the White House.
Don’t come back to me and say, “It’s ridiculous that anybody would think such a thing.” Maybe it is. But it’s going to happen. A lot of people legitimately criticized the Republican Party and its presidential candidates for not taking Trump seriously enough early on, when they could have stopped him. Now the Democrats are not taking the effect of these anti-Trump rioters seriously enough. If they think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, then the most important thing for them to do is to do whatever they can to stop street mobs from vindicating Trump’s critique.
[..] I’ll say it again: Trump is a bad man. And the Left is doing its part to put him in the White House by vindicating his critique. The media may think it can control this by downplaying those videos of street violence, but there were many people there recording what actually happened and distributing those scenes on social media. Outside the leftist bubble, those videos are hand grenades.
Is this what the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics looks like, outside of the academic university setting? I think Dreher has a point – we are witnessing the more militant wing of the social justice movement.
On campus, there are powerful authority figures who can be co-opted by the Left to shut down “offensive” talks, place limits on free speech, create safe spaces in buildings and trigger warnings in the curriculum to protect students from incurring emotional “harm”. And increasingly, all it takes is a short social media campaign or a quick protest outside the chancellor’s office to bring spineless universities to heel in enforcing the new doctrine.
Outside of academia, it is different. There is no central authority which can be co-opted to make Bad Men with their Scary Ideas go away and silence those who anger the Left – at least not so long as the First Amendment exists. And in this non-academic environment, some people are clearly more used to settling disputes with their fists rather than their words. So perhaps it is not surprising that the same impulse to shut down Donald Trump and his supporters that would have seen No Platform petitions and safe spaces pop up to help traumatised students on campus is leading instead to physical violence in the real world.
Maybe, maybe not – it’s a working theory. But these protests are disturbing, and they show a particularly nasty aspect of the Left. The Tea Party rallies of the early Obama years, for all their tri-cornered hat festooned silliness, were typically not violent. American conservatives disagreed profoundly with the policies of Barack Obama, but they were not moved to rove the streets in gangs looking to beat up Obama supporters heading to one of the president’s re-election rallies. Though there are many obvious exceptions, as a general rule the Right seem better able to tolerate dissent – perhaps through being constantly exposed to liberal trends in the culture.
The Left, by contrast, are struggling at the moment. Whether it is their fortified enclaves in academia or out on the street, the American Left is becoming increasingly unable to tolerate dissenting opinions or to meet offensive speech with reasoned counterargument. Now, they are far more likely to respond with free speech restrictions at best, and outright violence at worst.
This phenomenon is bigger than Donald Trump and bigger than any one election cycle. But it is going to get worse before it gets better. And the real danger is that the Right, already cowed into virtual silence on campus and now under physical attack on the streets, will come to the conclusion that the only way to prevail is to adopt exactly the same tactics as are currently being used on them. And then we will have two sides seeking to ban each other’s guest speakers, restrict one another’s language, shelter in their own safe spaces and feeling entitled to attack other people simply for holding different political views.
Unpleasant? Yes. But unthinkable? Not any more.
In short, the forbearance of the Right – under considerable provocation – may be the only thing preventing serious civil unrest this election cycle.
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If Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, it will now be largely thanks to the army of sanctimonious, virtue-signalling left-wing commentators who are unwilling to (or incapable of) grappling with the roots of his appeal
Donald Trump’s path to victory in November leads directly through sanctimonious, fatuous, hectoring, intellectually snobbish attitudes like that shown in the image above, currently being widely circulated on social media.
Writer Andy Borowitz, wringing his hands about the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, pompously warns us:
Stopping Trump is a short-term solution. The long-term solution – and it will be more difficult – is fixing the educational system that has created so many people ignorant enough to vote for Trump.
One does not have to be a supporter of Donald Trump to realise that this is exactly the kind of morally certain, unfoundedly intellectually superior leftist bilge which could yet deliver the presidency to the unstable, egotistical reality-TV star.
It is the kind of toxic mindset which endlessly repeats to itself that the only reason someone might disagree with the pro-Identity Politics, pro-illegal immigration status quo is through a mental defect of some kind.
If Andy Borowitz were capable of extricating his head from his own posterior for a few short seconds, he might note that the median annual income of a Trump supporter is around $72,000 while that of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters is just $61,000 – a whole $11,000 more. In other words, Donald Trump supporters are so ignorant and uneducated that somehow they manage to out-earn the highly “enlightened” supporters of the two remaining Democratic Party candidates.
And yet the myth persists of the Trump voter as a knuckle-dragging, uncultured simpleton who has been led astray by Evil Right Wing lies and propaganda, while even the most air-headed of Clinton or Sanders supporters is preposterously transformed into a high-minded philosopher, imbued with deep wisdom and knowledge. What dangerous nonsense.
More odious still is the implication that Trump supporters need to be “re-educated” – that their political views and priorities are somehow invalid, and that rather than openly debating and examining those views in the marketplace of ideas, the holders of Trumpian views should be quietly taken aside and indoctrinated with “good” left-wing ideas.
It is the easiest thing in the world to make a snap judgement that those people who hold differing views do so out of either ignorance or malevolence. This is an emotional comfort blanket which the American (and British) Left cling to ever-more tightly, but which now increasingly threatens to suffocate them. Assume your opponent is stupid and the best you can hope to achieve is a loud shouting match. Actually take the time to understand your opponent’s arguments and put yourself in their place, and real political dialogue becomes possible.
People support the candidacy of Donald Trump for many reasons. Some are highly disaffected conservatives or anti-establishment types nursing a “let it burn” attitude toward Washington D.C. in general. Some are dispirited social conservatives who sense that they have lost the culture war and see in Trump someone who may not share their values, but who will nonetheless give their un-magnanimous liberal foes a good kicking.
Yes, some are racist and some are Islamophobic – though this critique of Trump supporters by the New Republic is little better than Borowitz’s own fatuous take. Others simply hold the position that people who are illegally present in the United States should not be conferred with the comfort and security of American residency or citizenship. Some are very wealthy and others are very poor. And crucially, Trump supporters are drawn from every level of educational attainment.
It may be technically possible to fix the educational system so as to stop producing people likely to support Donald Trump, as Borowitz wants, but it would mean the creation of a nationwide network of leftist madrassahs, places where conservative thought and academic freedom were utterly banished, which would hardly be conducive to liberal democracy.
If Andy Borowitz really wants to fix a festering national trend, he should worry less about an educational system which sometimes has the temerity to produce Donald Trump supporters, and more about the growing inability of American citizens to handle exposure to contrary ideas without resorting either to unbearable condescension or shrill demands for the offending speech to be banished.
For as long as Democrats and assorted anti-Trump forces assume that conservatives and others who disagree with them do so merely through lack of education, they will continue to underestimate their opponents – in this case, with potentially disastrous consequences.
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Michael Bloomberg delivers a college commencement speech worth hearing
While it is true that a generation of university students – the product of our therapeutic culture and “you can’t say that” attitude to political debate – is now being indoctrinated into the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics with alarmingly little resistance from the educational establishment, there is at least one graduating class which has been sent out into the world with a rather more inspiring (and small-L liberal) message ringing in their ears.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was invited to address the University of Michigan’s graduating class of 2016, and from the first word of his speech he tore into the culture of safe spaces, trigger warnings and all of the other illiberal symptoms of this new orthodoxy.
The most useful knowledge that you leave here with today has nothing to do with your major. It’s about how to study, cooperate, listen carefully, think critically and resolve conflicts through reason. Those are the most important skills in the working world, and it’s why colleges have always exposed students to challenging and uncomfortable ideas.
The fact that some university boards and administrations now bow to pressure and shield students from these ideas through “safe spaces,” “code words” and “trigger warnings” is, in my view, a terrible mistake.
The whole purpose of college is to learn how to deal with difficult situations — not run away from them. A microaggression is exactly that: micro. And one of the most dangerous places on a college campus is a safe space, because it creates the false impression that we can insulate ourselves from those who hold different views.
We can’t do this, and we shouldn’t try — not in politics or in the workplace. In the global economy, and in a democratic society, an open mind is the most valuable asset you can possess.
Think about the global economy. For the first time in human history, the majority of people in the developed world are being asked to make a living with their minds, rather than their muscles. For 3,000 years, humankind had an economy based on farming: Till the soil, plant the seed, harvest the crop. It was hard to do, but fairly easy to learn. Then, for 300 years, we had an economy based on industry: Mold the parts, turn the crank, assemble the product. This was hard to do, but also fairly easy to learn.
Now, we have an economy based on information: Acquire the knowledge, apply the analytics and use your creativity. This is hard to do and hard to learn, and even once you’ve mastered it, you have to start learning all over again, pretty much every day.
Keeping an open mind to new ideas is essential to your professional success — just as it’s crucial to our collective future as a democratic society.
Note the loud booing quickly drowned out by cheering when Bloomberg talks about the inherent intellectual and academic danger of a “safe space” – while his remarks were warmly received, there is clearly a very vocal group of students who did not want to hear this message, and who will step forth from the University of Michigan with very warped views about how political debate (and even ordinary interpersonal relationships) should be conducted.
Bloomberg then turns his attention to the presidential race and the state of American democracy in general:
Democracy in action can actually produce a lot of inaction, which we see every day in Washington and other levels of government, too. When governments fail to address the needs of the people, voters in both parties get angry and some politicians exploit that anger by offering scapegoats instead of solutions.
If we want to stop demagogues, we have to start governing again, and that requires us to be more civil, to support politicians who have the courage to take risks, and to reward those who reach across the aisle in search of compromise.
Here, Bloomberg is almost channelling Andrew Sullivan, who makes his incredibly welcome and sorely needed return to political commentary in the New York magazine with these words:
An American elite that has presided over massive and increasing public debt, that failed to prevent 9/11, that chose a disastrous war in the Middle East, that allowed financial markets to nearly destroy the global economy, and that is now so bitterly divided the Congress is effectively moot in a constitutional democracy: “We Respectables” deserve a comeuppance. The vital and valid lesson of the Trump phenomenon is that if the elites cannot govern by compromise, someone outside will eventually try to govern by popular passion and brute force.
(I’ll be blogging a response to Andrew Sullivan’s piece separately in due course).
Bloomberg closes with this warning:
Think about this: In 1960, only 4 to 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans said they would be upset if a member of their family married someone from the opposing party. In 2010, one in three Democrats and one in two Republicans said they would disapprove of such a marriage. In 1960, most people would never have believed that interparty marriage would attract such resistance, while interracial and same-sex marriage would gain such acceptance.
For all the progress we have made on cultural tolerance, when it comes to political tolerance, we are moving in the wrong direction — at campaign rallies that turn violent, on social media threads that turn vitriolic, and on college campuses, where students and faculty have attempted to censor political opponents.
As durable as the American system of government has been, democracy is fragile — and demagogues are always lurking. Stopping them starts with placing a premium on open minds, voting, and demanding that politicians offer practical solutions, not scapegoats or pie-in-the-sky promises.
This is a message which many students will not want to hear, but which needs to be transmitted nonetheless – and not only by commencement speakers, refreshing though it is to hear the likes of Bloomberg take up the cause.
University administrators and professors must also absorb and embrace this message and change the way they approach issues of free speech and academic freedom, for while they are not entirely responsible for the censorious and emotionally fragile nature of new students entering their institutions, they do represent the last and best hope of turning those students into robust and resilient young citizens by the time they graduate.
Michael Bloomberg delivering a crowd-riling, viral-ready commencement speech just as students are about to graduate cannot be our only firewall against the onslaught of this new illiberal movement. We must erect meaningful defences and interventions much earlier in the learning process – rather than simply bowing to the excessive demands and exaggerated sensibilities of perpetually offended students – if we wish to prevent our workplaces and government from going the same way as our university campuses.
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Semi-Partisan Politics 