SHE’S BASICALLY ADOPTING A MORE EUROPEAN APPROACH TO ABORTION REGULATION: Tulsi Gabbard Says She Supports Regulating Abortion in the Third Trimester.
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ALEXANDRA DESANCTIS: Democrats Overplay Their Hand On Abortion: In New York and Virginia, state governments are working to loosen restrictions on late-term abortion—and giving the anti-abortion movement an opportunity. “It is unsurprising that abortions this late in pregnancy are vastly unpopular with the American public. Gallup polling from 2018 found that only 13 percent of Americans favor making third-trimester abortions “generally” legal, and only 18 percent of Democrats shared that position. Women reject late-term abortion at an even higher rate than men. A Marist survey from earlier this year found that 75 percent of Americans would limit abortion to, at most, the first three months of pregnancy, and majorities of Democrats and those who describe themselves as pro-choice agreed.”
This is why I think Trump should suggest we adopt a “more European” approach to the issue. Aside from the fun in watching lefties’ heads explode at having this “all civilized countries do it my way” argument thrown back at them, it’s also a political winner.
ROSS DOUTHAT: Will We See A Trumpism Of The Left?
Some kind of celebrity (ahem, Oprah, ahem) might be able to win the Democratic nomination under present circumstances. But they would need to be respectable rather than disreputable, and run a campaign that accepted guardrails and gatekeepers rather than gleefully destroying them. The wrecking-ball left-wing analogues to Trump that pundits have imaginatively toyed with — an Oliver Stone, a Sean Penn — wouldn’t stand a chance.
But what’s true today might not be true forever. The differences between the Democratic Party’s younger, poorer, browner base and its older, whiter, richer and more moderate leadership are a potentially unstable equilibrium. The anger coursing through left-wing protest politics could find a cruder, more nakedly demagogic avatar than Bernie Sanders. A Hillary Clinton administration could supply various betrayals and compromises or foul up in some disastrous way, encouraging a sense that the professional class that dominates liberalism’s upper reaches needs to give way to a revived (and larger) version of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition — a “real American future” analogue to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” appeals.
If Trump has thrived by imitating Europe’s right-wing nationalists, a Trumpism of the left would imitate the left-wing populists of Latin America and Asia — the Chavismo of Alicia Machado’s native Venezuela, or the Trumpian socialism presently being served up by the ranting, trigger-happy president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte.
This may sound implausible, indeed frankly un-American — but so did the ascent of Trump’s National Front-ish politics, and yet here we are. Cultural and demographic change can ripple into politics slowly, and then all at once. The elite checks on a gonzo left-wing populism are real and powerful, but so are the cultural forces roiling underneath. And the same demographic changes that have made the right more nativist and populist, more European and reactionary, could expose the left to a Latin American temptation if liberal governance ever really hits the rocks.
If and when it does, the Hillary Clinton campaign’s skillful deployment of Alicia Machado may be cast in a somewhat different light. It’s Clinton’s Democratic Party today — managerial, technocratic, polished, a little smug. But Machado’s wilder, messier, “I’m not a saint girl” style might have its own claim on the American left’s future, if the technocrats and managers ever let her kind of Democratic voter down.
And they will.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: THE LEFTIST ATTACK ON TRUMP FANS IN SAN JOSE IS ANTI-AMERICAN, AND IT WILL BACKFIRE. To which, Allahpundit adds:
I wonder how many protesters really fear the backfire potential of a Trump victory. If they knew for a fact that beating on Trump fans makes a Republican win in November more likely, would that discourage or encourage them? Trump winning would “heighten the contradictions” between left and right more than Hillary winning would. They’ve spent eight years suppressing the impulse towards “direct action” because mainstream Democrats aren’t going to go along with mass protests on Obama’s watch. With Trump in power the left will be united against a common enemy, and that unity will help to foster greater acceptance of radicalism, however uneasy liberals like Chait might be about tactics. Naturally, that radicalization will encourage people on Trump’s side to radicalize in response and then it’s off we go towards a more European society. That’s another reason why well-meaning people on both sides were so dejected about the riot last night. It’s easy to see where this is going and it’s plain that some on each side want it to go there. What can you say to people like that?
Read the whole thing.
MAYBE HE CAN ATTRACT DISAFFECTED SANDERS VOTERS AFTER HILLARY GETS THE NOMINATION: Donald Trump Wants To Make America More Like Denmark.
Well, actually, the package Trump offers — “save Social Security without cuts,” a vaguely pro-single-payer position on health care, plus temporarily banning Muslims and walling off Mexico — bears an eerie resemblance to the Danish government’s current policy mix.
His astonishing success selling it to the Republican base may portend ideological convergence between the U.S. right and Europe’s.
Like many American admirers of Scandinavian welfare states, Sanders lacks detailed knowledge of how those systems work, or an appreciation for certain cultural peculiarities that make cradle-to-grave welfarism politically sustainable there but not, so far, here. . . .
Denmark, tolerant and generous toward the Danes among its 5.6 million people, is deeply anxious about its 260,000 Muslims — so much so that a left-right parliamentary coalition recently authorized police to seize cash and valuables from refugees, ostensibly to help pay for their accommodation but also to deter them from coming at all.
You probably won’t hear Sanders urging imitation of that Danish policy at his next college-town rally, but Trump would surely approve of it.
Next: Trump pushes a proposal to make American abortion laws “more European.” Time to make popcorn.
Related: Tavis Smiley: Black America Could Get On The Trump Train. “Second, the number of everyday black voters who we assume will dismiss Trump because of his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attacks might well be inflated. . . . I have been taken by myriad conversations I’ve had with black folk who don’t find those comments by Trump necessarily or automatically disqualifying.”
CHANGE: More European nations are barring the door to migrants. “Increasingly, nations are taking matters into their own hands, putting up policies aimed at cutting the migrant flow and weeding out all but those most at risk from war. It happens amid rising security fears in Europe after the terror attacks in Paris by assailants including militants who disguised themselves as migrants, as well as hundreds of sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve in which asylum seekers are among the prime suspects.”
STANDING UP FOR SCIENCE: America’s Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly.
I’ve worked with Germans. And Brits. And Swedes. And Dutch people. And French people. All of whom professed themselves absolutely baffled by our insistence on wasting so much energy cooling our offices and homes, when we could just build buildings that cool themselves naturally if we open the windows occasionally.
For Europeans reading this, I may actually be able to clear up this baffling issue: Americans use air conditioning more because America is a lot hotter than Europe is. For example, in Washington, where the weather is apparently “pretty similar” to Berlin, it is expected to be 87 degrees Fahrenheit (31 Celsius) tomorrow. In Berlin, Weather.com informs me that temperatures are expected to be a torrid, sultry … 75 Fahrenheit (23 Celsius).
Of course, on any two random days, the weather might be unseasonably cold or unseasonably hot. You really need to look at monthly averages. And lo and behold, when we look, we discover that Washington has an average temperature of 88 degrees in July, while Berlin has an average temperature of … 73 (yes, that is indeed 31 and 23 Celsius).
And we’re not talking about a place that’s really hot, like Dallas (average July temperature is 96, or 36 Celsius) or Phoenix (106, or 41 Celsius). We’re just talking about a rather ordinary American city in roughly the middle of the country’s north-to-south span.
We do have some cities with more European temperatures, including San Francisco and Seattle, but they are not our largest population centers. The rest of the country, even places that are frozen wastelands in the winter, experiences summertime average highs above 80 degrees. That’s not a rogue heat wave, the kind that Northern Europeans complain about endlessly while futilely fiddling with their fans. That’s just what we Americans call “summer.” A heat wave is when it’s 100 degrees (38 Celsius) and your dog won’t go outside because the pavement burns his feet. . . .
You could argue that if Americans had not migrated en masse from the temperate north to the blistering sunbelt, we would need less energy for climate control. You could argue that, but you’d be wrong. Americans still expend much more energy heating their homes than cooling them. That’s actually not that surprising. The difference between the average temperature outside and the temperature that is comfortable inside is generally only 10 to 20 degrees in most of America, for most of the summer. On the other hand, in January, the residents of Rochester, New York — the cold, snowy, rapidly depopulating area that my mother hails from — you need to get the temperature up from an average low of 18 degrees (-8 Celsius) to at least 60 or 65. That takes a lot of energy.
On average, the move from cold areas to warm ones has actually saved energy, not caused us to use more. So why are we so down on air conditioning, while accepting flagrant heat use as normal? In part, it’s because air conditioning still seems optional. Unlike a cold winter with no heat, a hot summer with no cooling won’t definitely kill you.
Also, snobs, busybodies and puritans seem to occupy colder climates for some reason.
IF YOU SUPPORT BROAD ABORTION RIGHTS, you probably don’t want to suggest that America should become “more European.”
THEY NEED IT EVEN WORSE THAN WE DO: European Tea Party Movements On The March.
According to The Economist, this “insurgency is doing well partly because the mainstream has done so badly. Governments encouraged consumers to borrow, let the banks run wild and designed the euro as the pinnacle of the European project.” And “in the past five years ordinary people have paid a price for these follies, in higher taxes, unemployment, benefit cuts and pay freezes.” As a result, more Europeans are viewing the modern state as being “designed to look after itself, rather than the citizens it is supposed to serve.”
Uh oh. The rubes are catching on. And the term “global superclass” aptly summarizes the ambitions of transnational progressivism.
AS I KEEP SAYING, THE GOP NEEDS TO CAMPAIGN TO MAKE AMERICAN ABORTION LAWS “MORE EUROPEAN.” BBC: European Abortion Rules. Imagine, for example, what people would say if Texas tried to impose this rule:
Between 12 and 18 weeks of gestation, the women must discuss the procedure with a social worker. After 18 weeks, permission must be obtained from the National Board of Health and Welfare.
Abortions must be performed by a licensed medical practitioner and, except in cases of emergency, in a general hospital or other approved healthcare establishment.
That’s what it would take to make Texas’s laws as restrictive as Sweden’s.
HMM: U.S. Banks To Benefit From Euro Woes. “The more European banks are forced to bring their assets home, the more American banks stand to gain.”
STILL WAITING FOR THAT NEW CIVILITY TO ARRIVE, PART DEUX: Or, Two Papers In One!
Thomas Edsall, who blogs for the New York Times, opens a post today with a violent metaphor:
“Right now, before everyone gets to know him, is the time for Obama to push Romney face down in the dirt,” a key Democratic operative working outside the campaign told me last week. “You can’t let Romney go before the voters looking clean.”
What Obama lacks right now, however, is a bludgeon–a super PAC loaded with cash to hammer home negative advertising. Super PACs, as you may have heard, have emerged as the hit men of 2012.
Remember when the New York Times was complaining about violent uncivil rhetoric? Oh, but that was only on the right.
Meanwhile, here’s Bill Keller, until recently, the lead editor of the Times:
My gripe against Fox is not that it is conservative. The channel’s pulpit-pounding pundits, with the exception of the avuncular Mike Huckabee, are too shrill for my taste, but they are not masquerading as impartial newsmen. Nor am I indignant that Fox News is the cultural home of the Republican Party and a nonstop Obama roast. Partisan journalism, while not my thing, has a long tradition. [Which the Times occasionally comes clean about participating in, at least in its all-too-rare more honest moments — Ed] Though I do wonder if the folks at Fox appreciate that this genre is more European than American.
My complaint is that Fox pretends very hard to be something it is not, and in the process contributes to the corrosive cynicism that has polarized our public discourse.
Good thing the Times has bludgeoned off all of its own corrosive cynicism.
MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: If Only the Tea Partiers were More European.
Tea Parties? Not in Europe. Never. The pitchfork-toting crowd is a peculiar byproduct of the misinformed, disturbed politics of the United States, where Lindberghs, Limbaughs, and Levins have always proliferated. Protest movements on the continent, like the May 1st protests in Kungsträdgården, under a sea of Cuban flags and photos of Marx and Mao, are a more civilized celebration of dictatorship and egalitarianism.
Or how about the protests in Greece, where Tea Parti…errr…left-wing protesters took to the streets again today to demand that, as the government and economy collapses, that no austerity measures be taken. The result? Three people dead in the firebombing of a bank in Athens.
Indeed.
GERMANY’S TERROR BUST: Reading between the lines. Plus a reason why Bush should pursue a “more European” approach to anti-terrorism.
DESPITE ALL THE TALK ABOUT AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, this sounds more like the real thing:
On the evening of March 4, 10 French paratroopers reached Birao, Central African Republic, and dropped near an airstrip captured by rebel militia. The paratroopers ambushed the rebels, killing several and reclaiming the airport for the government.
In France, neither the public nor parliament was informed of the attack for three weeks. Coordinating the mission was the “Cellule Africaine,” a three-person office nestled behind the Elysée, France’s presidential palace. This wasn’t the first time the office has been involved in the Central African Republic’s internal affairs: In 1979, France toppled the former colony’s self-proclaimed emperor and reinstalled his predecessor.
[Charles de Gaulle] GUARDING FRANCE’S AFRICAN FRONTIERHow French presidents from de Gaulle (right) to Chirac have handled the “African Cell” and France’s interests in Africa.
For the past half-century, the secretive and powerful “African Cell” has overseen France’s strategic interests in Africa, holding sway over a wide swath of former French colonies. Acting as a general command, the Cell uses France’s military as a hammer to install leaders it deems friendly to French interests. In return, these countries give French industries first crack at their oil and other natural resources. Sidestepping traditional diplomatic channels, the Cell reports only to one person: the president.
But with France’s new President Nicolas Sarkozy preparing to assume office later today, the African Cell’s days may be numbered. There are accusations the French military bears some responsibility for the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, charges the government strenuously denies. There’s fierce debate over the French military’s continuing presence in the Ivory Coast, where soldiers were dispatched in 2002 when rebels threatened to overthrow President Laurent Gbagbo.
The Cell’s close ties to oil giant Elf Aquitaine, where top executives were jailed on corruption charges, were a source of embarrassment. And a former Cell chief is now facing charges related to arms trafficking to Angola.
Critics say the Cell’s support of nondemocratic African regimes, an artifact of France’s colonial past, is preventing these nations from making progress to modernity. And Africa, once evidence of imperial grandeur, is now viewed by many French as the source of a continuing flood of poor immigrants.
Perhaps Bush should win over Democrats by urging a “more European” foreign policy.
It’s a pay story at the WSJ, but the link above should work for nonsubscribers for a while.
THE GREENHOUSE-FRIENDLY NUCLEAR OPTION IN EUROPE:
The role of nuclear power in Europe received an unexpected boost yesterday as EU leaders hailed a landmark climate change deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and switch to renewable fuels.
Environmentalists complained that an ambitious headline goal to cut Europe’s CO emissions by a fifth by 2020 had been weakened by concessions to the main nuclear nations and the biggest polluters in Eastern Europe. . . . Jacques Chirac, the outgoing French President, welcomed the deal as one of the top three achievements of the EU during his 12 years in the Elysée Palace.
Tony Blair was also pleased with the concession towards the nuclear powers. The outcome will give a boost to his plans to rebuild Britain’s ageing nuclear power stations which suffered a setback last month when the High Court ruled that the consultation process was seriously flawed. Mr Blair said: “There is then the 20 per cent target on renewable energy. In setting that, there will be permission to look at the energy mix that countries have . . . including nuclear technology, which obviously helps the UK as well.â€
I think that America should take a “more European” approach to energy policy.
MAYBE BUSH SHOULD TRY TO SELL HIS SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS AS “MORE EUROPEAN:”
Sweden is close to implementing new surveillance legislation that will include the monitoring of emails, telephone calls and keyword searches using advanced pattern analysis. The objective is to detect ‘threats such as terrorism, IT attacks or the spread of weapons of mass destruction’ but the proposals have divided the country. In a misguided attempt to put people at ease, the government admitted that Sweden has been tapping its citizens’ phones for decades anyway.
‘Cause the Europeans are, you know, more progressive than we are.
CRACKS IN THE OPPOSITION TO NUCLEAR POWER: I like the remark in the comments about heavy French reliance on nukes. Maybe Bush can sell this as an effort to have a “more European” energy policy. Will that get Democratic buy-in?
With the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks coming up, we thought we’d talk to law professor and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, whose latest book, Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency looks at terrorism, the Constitution, and issues of surveillance, civil liberties, and history. One quote: “Civil libertarians are in a state of denial.” Despite this sound-bite, though, his overall views are rather moderate even if not politically correct.
You can listen directly — no messy downloading — by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. Or you can download the file directly by clicking right here. There’s a lo-fi version here, and you can subscribe via iTunes here.
Surveillance-themed music by The Nevers.
UPDATE: Some comments here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: A summary of the main points here.
MORE: Glenn Greenwald says that Posner is being un-conservative by advocating “drastically expanded police powers.” Some things that Posner advocates in his book might fall within that category, though generally I think that’s something of an overstatement. As I note in the podcast, what’s interesting is that Posner’s advocating a “more European” approach to national security powers, which produces a left/right role reversal. Posner also makes the point that it’s interesting that the Supreme Court’s foreign-law enthusiasts don’t look to Europe as a model in these areas, as they do in the case of capital punishment.
Meanwhile, Allah characterizes this as an interview with God. Posner’s a god on the legal scene, but I wouldn’t call him God. Then again, who am I to argue about this stuff with a guy named Allah?
There’s also this depressing note: “There is something seriously wrong with this country when I have to download a random podcast to listen to an eminent scholar like Posner while cranks like Walt & Mearsheimer are hosting their talk at the National Press Club, televised on C-SPAN.” And JonBenet stories trump all!
But by “random podcast” I believe he meant “first-rate Internet audio production” . . . .
EUROPE AND TERRORISM: Victor Davis Hanson predicted that Europe would crack down quietly, and now it’s coming true:
Four and a half years after the Sept. 11 attacks, and after deadly bombings in Madrid and London since then, the troubled debate within Western democracies over how to weigh security against basic freedoms has only grown and spread, as the legal tools for dealing with terrorism suspects multiply.
The clashing of priorities has been clear in the United States, in the domestic debates preceding the renewal of the Patriot Act, and in the international uproar over prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.
But many European governments, including some that had criticized the United States for its antiterrorism measures, have been extending their own surveillance and prosecution powers. Officials, lawyers and human rights experts say that Europe, too, is experiencing a slow erosion of civil liberties as governments increasingly put the prevention of possible terrorist actions ahead of concerns to protect the rights of people suspected, but not convicted, of a crime.
As I’ve suggested before, perhaps Bush should mollify his critics by promising to take a “more European” approach.
ABORTION BILLS ARE BUSTING OUT ALL OVER: With legislation in South Dakota, and, according to this report, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina and Kentucky, the issue is heating up. I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.
Bad: I’m against these bills. I don’t think abortion ought to be illegal. I think that outlawing abortion (not “late term” or “partial-birth” abortion, which is a relatively minor issue except for its symbolism, and which could be regulated under Roe anyway, but abortion in general) is a bad idea. While it’s possible that such laws would reduce the number of abortions, I suspect that there would be substantial black markets, noncompliance, civil disobedience, and other side effects — something not as far-reaching, perhaps, but in many ways like the destructive consequences of banning guns. One advantage — you can go to another state to have an abortion, but you can’t legally go to another state to buy a gun. That may cut down on the black-market angle, unless a lot of states enact bans, which I doubt. As the South Dakota story above notes, that’s nearly the situation in some states already, on a de facto basis.
Good: On the other hand, I think the abortion issue is “stuck,” and would probably have reached a better, or at least less painful, resolution via legislative processes if Roe v. Wade hadn’t shunted the issue aside. That resolution would probably look more like what we see in Europe — abortion available, but less freely than in the U.S. — and the political pathology associated with abortion polarization would have been avoided. I also suspect that the absolutist slogans on both sides today come from the “stuckness” created by Roe. That sort of thing is easy when the sloganeers know there’s no real chance of their slogans being enacted into law in a fashion that would require them to take responsibility. The democratic process might well discharge the tensions built up over the past three-plus decades.
Horserace point: I’m pretty sure that this development will actually be bad for the Republicans. When the topic is defense, the Democrats lose. When it’s sex, the Republicans lose. And the abortion debate will, I think, turn into a sex debate before it’s over. (I suspect that Missouri Governor Matt Blunt agrees — but pro-choicers may not benefit from a major public debate either).
Advice for the GOP: Try to convince the media that you want to see American abortion law look “more European.”
Advice for the Democrats: Don’t act like you’re ashamed of abortion. Don’t talk about a “woman’s right to choose” without saying what she’s choosing. You can’t win on a policy you’re ashamed of.
Of course, maybe I’m just “pro-death” like Scott Adams, which would probably make taking my advice a terrible mistake. I mean, more than usual. . . .
UPDATE: Stephen Waters writes: “The real issue isn’t abortion, but how do you take care of unwanted children.” This is actually one place where I’ll give the pro-lifers credit. Back when I did pro-choice stuff in college, I challenged them to support, rather than condemn, unwed mothers, and I think they’re actually much better about that. Indeed, I know of several teen moms (one who used to live right across the street from me) who were treated quite supportively by very conservative religious folks who saw that as part of their pro-life duty.
Of course, one reason they honor the choice to have a child rather than an abortion may be because it is a choice.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s somebody recommending the German model.
PERHAPS BUSH SHOULD DEFEND HIS WIRETAPPING PROGRAM as an effort to be more European: “The fact is that in much of Europe wiretapping is de rigueur—practiced more regularly and with less oversight than in the United States. Most Europeans either don’t know about this or, more likely, simply don’t care.”
HMM: “[T]he UK will start recording the movements of all vehicles on the roads, upgrading the already existing CCTV network so that they can automatically read license plates numbers as they pass by, and keeping that information for two years. And with no FISA court authorization.” This gives me an idea: Perhaps Bush should simply say that he’s surrendering to critics’ demands that we take a “more European” approach to national security.
STEPHEN GREEN is blogging EU budget issues, the Parmalat scandal, and more European developments. Just keep scrolling.
Plus: His recipe for a dry martini. Personally, I prefer more vermouth than that.
MORE EUROPEAN FINANCIAL SCANDALS:
The European Commission was facing a crisis last night after its auditors found Brussels had failed to shut down a network of slush funds and that abuses had spread beyond a statistics office at the centre of the scandal.
MEPs called for the head of Pedro Solbes, the economics commissioner, after a final audit report leaked yesterday said missing records and the total breakdown of financial control at Eurostat, the statistics agency, made it impossible to know how much taxpayers’ money had vanished or what it was used for.
Investigators identified the loss of £3 million in “a vast enterprise of looting” by senior officials in Luxembourg, mostly through inflated contracts with outside firms.
Obviously, there should have been enough American troops to prevent the looting.
WHY AREN’T MORE European women online? Beats me.
