Frederick Hess is rightly critical of Tucker Carlson’s civic nihilism. Two slices:
We seem intent on turning the citizenry of the most prosperous, successful, and blessed multi-ethnic democracy in history into a clutch of angry, polarized, nervous, jealous chumps. For much of my life, this was the kind of thing I expected from the wilder precincts of the sky-is-falling campus left.
Today, it’s become a remarkably bipartisan exercise.
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They’re channeling the dupes who used to prattle on about the supposed superiority of Cuban health care and literacy efforts, or bought into the agitprop about China’s “miraculous” management of Covid. You see it among the deranged right-wingers who think America’s elected officials sacrifice kids at a D.C. pizza restaurant or that our elections are rigged by Venezuelan vending companies. It’s also on display when the Republican presidential front-runner reacts to the death of a heroic Russian dissident by ranting, “Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!”
Can government tell Big Tech companies how to edit content and police their platforms? That’s the question before the Supreme Court on Monday in two cases with major First Amendment implications (Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton).
NetChoice, a tech industry group, is challenging Texas and Florida laws that seek to prevent social-media platforms from silencing conservatives. Republicans are rightly frustrated by censorship that often tilts against conservatives, including us. But the solution to business censorship of conservatives isn’t government censorship of business.
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Conservatives are understandably concerned that left-leaning tech companies want to exclude their ideas. There is no easy solution to this problem. Exposure and condemnation of the censorship has helped. But it never turns out well for conservatives, or anyone else, when the supposed remedy is giving government more power to control speech. The Supreme Court can make that clear to Texas and Florida.
Tarnell Brown tells tariff truths. A slice:
Farmers were not the only sector to benefit from these new markets; as China grew to become the third-largest importer of American goods behind Canada and Mexico, this flow of trade increased the average purchasing power of American households by approximately $1500 from 2000 – 2007. This relationship also helped underwrite over one million jobs in the United States. Despite these benefits, Mr. Trump addressed his concerns with what he believed to be untenable trade practices on China’s part by levying a 25 percent tariff on some 1102 Chinese products with an approximate value of $50 billion. Beijing responded by levying their own 25 percent tariff on $50 billion worth of American products, and the contest of one-upmanship was on.
James Pethokoukis finds yet further reason to be skeptical of industrial policy. A slice:
TSMC’s experience operating here in America should, at minimum, temper US policymaker enthusiasm for industrial policy. Spending taxpayer money is only part of the equation. That dough then needs to make things actually happen within a political economy that in too many places is built to hinder rather than encourage progress. Reality again wins over ideology.
Beyond the violence and lack of trust, pervasive extortion suppresses investment, growth, job opportunities and economic mobility. Yet despite the high cost to entrepreneurs, workers, professionals and consumers, Mexicans continue to tolerate widespread extortion as if no option exists.
In his 2020 book “La Economía de la Extorsión,” Mexican economist Luis de la Calle argues that ending this long tradition of impunity is both possible and necessary if the country hopes to generate faster economic growth. A crucial step for Mexicans, he writes, is to recognize that there is nothing normal about swimming through life victimized by extortionists and denied the right to life, liberty and property.
David Henderson’s most-recent weekly reading.
David Beito reviews Linda Upham-Bornstein’s new book about taxpayer revolts.
Chabria tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
The process of human cognition, of knowing, is one of trial and error and predicated on our inexhaustible fallibility.
Censorship, which holds one set of assumptions infallible, guarantees a low trust society fractured into accepting ignorants and truth seekers branded heretics.
