George Leef correctly argues that Nancy MacLean continues to embarrass her employer, Duke University. A slice:
Note that merely questioning a “progressive” belief such as the benefit of diversity training is enough to unleash an academic mob, while writing a book that smears a Nobel laureate and resorting to nasty stereotyping of people to defend it elicits no disapproval at Duke. That tells us a lot about the double standards now in place throughout our higher education system.
Will Boisvert celebrates, rightly so, modernity’s conquest of climate. (HT Paris Lovett)
Henry Miller explains that “the organic industry is a case study in rent-seeking.”
Vincent Geloso is a very careful scholar, one always worth reading.
Also from Veronique is this truth about tariffs.
Those who share Trump’s worldview might call this strategy ingenious. It is certainly unconventional, provocative, and possibly unhinged. Whatever you call it, Trump’s gunboat diplomacy is a major departure from the policy continuity of the last 13 U.S. administrations, and it presents a grave threat to the international trading system and the global economy.
Not since Herbert Hoover has a U.S. president been so cavalier about the consequences of protectionism. Never has a president been more dismissive of the importance of trade to our prosperity and security. Never has a president been so impervious to the lessons of history.
On trade, Trump is one-dimensional. He sees deficits as proof that the United States is losing at trade (and losing because the foreigners cheat). A winning policy, he believes, would produce trade surpluses. But, if that’s true for the United States, it’s true for all countries and since all countries can’t run surpluses, trade can’t possibly be an exercise in cooperation and mutually beneficial exchange. To Trump, trade is a survival-of-the-fittest, winner-take-all, Hobbesian struggle.
