Could someone explain to me the argument in favor of ethnic cleansing including why Americans should support it? I don’t support it regardless of who is practicing it: Germans, French, Dutch, Israelis, Palestinians, Ukrainians, Russians, anybody.

If your argument is a historical argument, it should rely on actual history rather than one side or another’s propaganda. For example, in Ukraine nearly all of the “Russianization” took place between 1897 and 1939. In other words it was the grandparents, great-parents, or great-great-grandparents of the present ethnic Russians in Ukraine who moved there. Take Odesa (Odessa), for example. It has been multi-ethnic since at least Catherine the Great’s time. Up until the last 50 or 60 years the largest ethnic group in the city were ethnic Russians.

Similarly in Israel. There have been Jews in the country the Romans called Palestine since Roman times at least. There have also been a few Bedouin Arabs there since then but most of the Arab population arrived after the 12th century. Most of the period since then Palestine was owned and ruled by the Ottoman.

I don’t think that Americans should be taking sides in the ethnic conflicts of other countries. I guess I could be persuaded differently by a convincing enough argument.

Why did the U. S. go to war in Europe against Germany and Italy in World War II? Offhand I would say there were several reasons:

• Pulling the British chestnuts out of the fire. The Brits were facing an existential threat and had been importuning us to enter the war against Germany for several years by the time we actually did.
• Germany did pose a threat to the U. S. albeit not an existential one. German ships and aircraft were attacking U. S. merchant ships.
• Germany invaded the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the American Left, which had been steadfastly opposed to entering the war, insisted that we enter.
• Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Japanese were allied with Germany and Italy. That removed the other impediment to U. S. entry into the war—American isolationists who also insisted that we enter the war.

Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor U. S. public opinion remained pro-neutrality and we were officially neutral despite providing supplies to both the British and Soviets.

Consider this article by Tatyana Deryugina and Anastassia Fedyk in the Japan Times:

After a monthslong delay, the fractious United States House of Representatives finally approved more than $60 billion in military aid for Ukraine last week — and not a moment too soon.
Two years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, there is mounting pessimism about Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. The Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer failed to achieve its stated objectives after repeated delays in the delivery of Western weapons, while Russia ramped up its own military production and made limited territorial gains. As a result, a growing chorus of voices is asking whether it’s time for Ukraine and its allies to rethink their aims and consider a negotiated settlement.

Europe has been here before. The same question was being asked in 1941, two years after Nazi Germany began its own imperialist conquest by invading Poland. Among the prominent figures arguing against U.S. entry into World War II was Charles Lindbergh, who argued that there was no chance of success and that it would be best for the European war to “end without conclusive victory.”

Charles Lindbergh was a prominent isolationist. As I observed above we didn’t enter World War II until almost 2½ years after Germany invaded Poland and our entry had nothing whatever to do with Poland. I presume the authors are casting Russia in the role of Germany during World War II and Ukraine as Poland. The invasion and defeat of Poland took 35 days.

Nowhere in the article cited to the authors explain how the Ukrainians can prevail against Russia in a war of attrition or why the United States should enter into direct combat with Russia as we did against Germany during World War II.

As I’ve observed many times before, I advocate providing material support for Ukraine in its war with Russia but my objective is to secure the best possible terms for negotiating a settlement with Russia not the stated objectives of the Ukrainians. I believe the alternative to a negotiated settlement isn’t outright Ukrainian victory but continued destruction and deaths along with the possibility of a completely landlocked permanently dependent Ukraine.

Via Christian Piekos at ABC 7 Chicago:

A Northwestern University spokesperson released the following statement after 11 p.m. on Thursday:

“Today, members of our community, along with individuals unaffiliated with Northwestern, set up an encampment on Deering Meadow, in violation of University policy. Throughout the day, University officials spoke with the demonstrators, including a two-hour meeting with senior administrators this evening, to convey that while we strongly support free expression, the safety of all members of our community cannot and will not be compromised, nor can their expression disrupt the learning environment or University operations. The University offered to let the demonstrators continue to peacefully assemble if they comply with Northwestern policies, including removing tents and ceasing the use of bullhorns and speakers. The offer was declined. The University will move forward with other options to protect the safety of the community and the continued operations of the Evanston campus.”

Tents, bullhorns, and speakers are not protests and do not constitute protected speech. Furthermore, the Northwestern campus is private property.

IMO the university should be checking IDs and having individuals who are not enrolled arrested and removed.

Is it my imagination or have we gone from a phase in which the only humor was irony to people being unable to recognize irony with blinding speed? I’ll give examples. If DA Alvin Bragg’s argument that Donald Trump engaged in illegal election interference holds up, then he’s engaging in illegal election interference. And if Trump isn’t exempt from the suit, then he wouldn’t be, either? Or if Jack Smith’s argument is correct and upheld, every living or future president would likely be subject to criminal suit?

I’m really, really not a Trump supporter. I’ve never voted for him and never will. I think he’s a shmuck unworthy of being president. But the irony of these suits is astonishing.

You might be interesting in this piece at UnHerd by Kat Rosenfield:

Between the chanting, the dancing, and the… well, whatever this is, it’s hard to blame the kids for wanting to join what is, for all intents and purposes, a party. It’s also hard to blame them for being somewhat bewildered when the party ends with their own university calling the cops, who in turn force them to disperse with a fire hose. It’s not just the brutality; it feels like a breach of contract. As writer and academic Tyler Austin Harper has noted, Columbia and others like it explicitly highlight their histories as incubators of political activism with the express purpose of attracting a particular type of young person, the kind for whom protesting and partying seem like one and the same thing.

I suspect that this is why these events have the feeling of performance, or even parody: a photogenic, vibes-based facsimile of radical activism instead of the thing itself. It’s not just that their ostensible goal of “divestment” — in this case, from ETFs that include shares in businesses with ties to Israel — is a categorical impossibility; a number of the campus demonstrators will openly admit that they neither know nor care what specific policies they’re demonstrating against. What matters is, they’re part of something, a tradition of campus activism that dates back a hundred years. For the students who are drawn to Columbia’s “Social Justice university” branding, protesting is less about results than participation, a sort of institutionally-sanctioned Larp, like one of those interactive team-building exercises where you get to solve a murder, or escape from prison — or, in this case, hunt a witch.

I wonder if it would surprise her that that is what the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s were like as well. Speaking as someone who was there and lived a half block from one of the universities most notable for the protests, right next door to one of major organizers, there were precious few protesters who were actually opposed to the war. There were lots who were opposed to the draft or, in other words, they were motivated by self-interest. And for others it was just something to do. I can’t speak for every protester at every demonstration at every university but that’s what I saw at my alma mater.

I subscribe to a newsletter called Tangle. Recently, Tangle interviewed recently retired Republican Colorado Congressman Ken Buck and I wanted to pass along a small passage from the interview:

We have some huge problems that we need to deal with — spending, immigration, you name it. And Republicans — the other side does it too — but Republicans are lying to the American public. The election wasn’t stolen. We don’t have political prisoners from January 6th. We have criminals who were assaulting police officers and destroying federal property.

Those kinds of lies I think undermine our credibility and our ability to deal with some of the most serious problems. So I announced that I wasn’t running for reelection. And as I got back into America and started talking to people, not in campaign mode but really listening to what they were saying, people believe we have the worst two major party nominees in modern history.

which at the very last provides some food for thought. Here’s another snippet:

We have a problem with how we elect members of Congress — the House, the Senate, governors, state legislatures. And the problem is that someone can win a primary with 34% of the vote. [Ed: Buck means “34%” of the total electorate, but the majority of one party] You know and I know that the primary vote is low anyway to start with, but they win that low vote with 34% of the vote, and then because they’re in a deep red or a deep blue district, they win the general election.

The result of that is that we get these people who have no background, who have no business making policy for the United States of America, and what they focus on is getting reelected and making themselves a social media star in a way that is harmful. It’s harmful because they are publicly attacking particular members. It’s one thing to have a policy debate on social media. It’s one thing to have a policy debate on TV or radio. It’s another thing when you attack a particular member.

It isn’t exactly what I wanted but I’m too lazy to keep tinkering with the right instructions.

A considerable amount of today’s commentary is about the case before the Supreme Court. From The Hill:

Former President Trump has a busy day in court Thursday as his New York hush money trial collides with presidential immunity arguments before the Supreme Court.

David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, has retaken the stand in Manhattan where he continues providing a timeline of his agreement to bury bad news about Trump during the then-candidate’s 2016 campaign.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the high court is hearing oral arguments in a historic case that weighs the limits of presidential immunity, which Trump is arguing makes him safe from prosecution in his three other criminal cases.

Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog:

In the final argument scheduled for its 2023-2024 term, the Supreme Court will hear argument on Thursday in former President Donald Trump’s historic bid for criminal immunity. The question before the justices is whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The court’s answer will determine not only whether Trump’s trial in Washington, D.C., before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, originally scheduled for March 4 but now on hold, can go forward, but also whether the former president’s trials in Florida and Georgia can proceed.

Jury selection is currently underway in a Manhattan courtroom, where Trump is being tried on charges that he broke state law when he made a “hush money” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels so that she would remain silent about her alleged affair with Trump as the 2016 presidential election approached. But Trump, the first president to be criminally prosecuted, was not yet president when the alleged conduct at the center of that case occurred.

Trump was indicted last summer on four counts arising from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. Trump, the indictment contends, created “widespread mistrust … through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud” and then perpetrated three criminal conspiracies to target “a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

Presidents are already immune from civil suit for acts taken as president. This case is about criminal suits. The challenge for the SCOTUS will be to define exactly when a president is immune from criminal suit without making presidents completely above the law. If they’re not extremely careful, expect every living and future president to be on trial for something.

You may find it surprising but I tend to agree with the claim in Robert Kagan’s recent Washington Post op-ed—for the MAGA Republicans freedom is not an objective or at least it is subordinated to other subjectives:

For some time, it was possible to believe that many voters could not see the threat Donald Trump poses to America’s liberal democracy, and many still profess not to see it. But now, a little more than six months from Election Day, it’s hard to believe they don’t. The warning signs are clear enough. Trump himself offers a new reason for concern almost every day. People may choose to ignore the warnings or persuade themselves not to worry, but they can see what we all see, and that should be enough.

How to explain their willingness to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government? The answer is not rapidly changing technology, widening inequality, unsuccessful foreign policies or unrest on university campuses but something much deeper and more fundamental. It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue. They feared it would be hard to sustain popular support for the revolutionary liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, and they worried that the virtuous love of liberty and equality would in time give way to narrow, selfish interest. Although James Madison and his colleagues hoped to establishment a government on the solid foundation of self-interest, even Madison acknowledged that no government by the people could be sustained if the people themselves did not have sufficient dedication to the liberal ideals of the Declaration. The people had to love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.

Americans are going down this route today because too many no longer care enough whether the system the Founders created survives and are ceding the ground to those, led by Trump, who actively seek to overthrow what so many of them call “the regime.” This “regime” they are referring to is the unique political system established by the Founders based on the principles of universal equality and natural rights. That, plain and simple, is what this election is about. “A republic if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin allegedly said of the government created by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This is the year we may choose not to keep it.

Where I disagree is that I don’t believe the issue is limited to a single party or even a single group within one party. Just to cite one example, recently in the oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that freedom of speech (or, actually, of the press as well) could “hamstring” government action:

“Some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Benjamin Aguiñaga, the Louisiana solicitor general. “I’m really worried about that, because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”

Actually, it all stands to reason. Officials are not elected based on their support for freedom of speech, of the press, or the other freedoms in the Bill of Rights. They are elected based on their promises to provide security and material benefits.

And to respond to Justice Jackson the “institutions established by the Founders” are intended to hamstring government.

It all reminds me of a quote from a play (I don’t recall which one): “Freedom is the most important thing to me. After I’ve eaten.”

I should add that I have some problems with Mr. Kagan’s framing of the contrast between liberals and anti-liberals. They can be summed up in one question: is compelled speech liberal or anti-liberal? I think it’s anti-liberal but many of those who support that anti-liberal viewpoint are not Christian nationalists.

Much of the essay is about Christian nationalism and I honestly have no idea how great a threat Christian nationalism constitutes but I think he has his history wrong. Like many Americans today he has little understanding of the relationship among government, society, and religion as envisioned by the founders. Suffice it to say that I doubt that the founders could have imagined religion being banned from the public square as many secular Americans want to be the case today. It would be interesting to know how they reconcile that with states having established churches twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution.

While I acknowledge that there is a tension among government, society, and religion, I think that it is in the very nature of religion to inform the views of adherents. Consequently, it cannot be banned from the public square entirely. How it affects government and the law may be constrained to some extent by law including Constitutional amendments. Eschewing that path is either mistaken or nihilistic.

Rather than dwelling on this I will merely observe that the first moment that verifiably true speech was held as damaging, we had already abandoned the institutions established by the founders. There’s no going back at this late date even if a majority of Americans wished it.