Tough Choices

Liberals have been successful in taking ownership of all things having to do with nature, wildlife, climate change and the environment.   The left has seized the moral high ground and it has given them great latitude and has empowered, for instance, the EPA and the Obama Administration to enter into international agreements without legislative input or oversight, and without cost/benefit analysis. By portraying capitalists and uncaring exploiters of the environment and people, they make the case that government alone is benign enough and represents a broad enough interest to control the disposition and allocation of resources.  Last year, Pope Francis jumped into the fray and clearly weighed in on the side of Big Government, harshly criticizing capitalism.  Never mind that the actual environmental record of state controlled economies is very poor—see, for instance, the old Eastern Bloc.  The actual track record of democratic capitalism is far superior to the alternative in efficient use of resources and caring for the environment.

But conservatives have to do a much better job in making its case, and in helping to frame its policy decisions and positions.  I believe that environmental stewardship and the tradeoffs that need to be made will best be handled without massive empowerment of government.  But first, capitalists need to show themselves to be engaged on the issue, and to be pro-active with sane and sensible policies.

This weekend, a terrible incident occurred at the Cincinnati Zoo.   A young child fell into the gorilla exhibit and a western lowland gorilla that was lording over the child was shot by zoo authorities.  The incident sent off a storm of controversy, with, some calling for the prosecution of the mother that was overseeing the child and others finding fault with the zoo and its decision making.  Others advocated a boycotting of zoos.   The incident harkened back to a similar incident at Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago, where a child also fell into the gorilla habitat and was protected by one of the gorillas, and both came out unharmed.  In the Cincinnati incident, zoo personnel were faced with a terrible choice and elected to kill the gorilla.  As someone who works in a field in which there is sometimes limited information and time pressure to make a hard decision, I appreciate the difficulties with which the zoo authorities were faced.   It was a heartbreaking and saddening decision to have to make—to put down this rare and magnificent animal, that for all we know, may have similarly been investigating and protecting this child.  We will never know.

This is a hard, but teachable moment.  There have been several incidents in the past year that have surfaced in the media about human and animal interaction that had terrible outcomes.  In Yosemite, a baby bison was taken and put in an SUV because visitors thought it “looked cold” and had to be euthanized.   In Argentina, a baby dolphin was passed around to beachgoers and died as a result.  And a Minnesota dentist that shot Cecil the lion was driven out of business when the incident became public.  Most notably, SeaWorld has announced that it is phasing out the killer whale shows that have been a main attraction for decades.

Zoos have an important function.   Modern civilization has separated us from nature and the environment.   They are an important connection between human populations and the natural world.  They are vital to research and the continuation of endangered species.   Most humans will not be able to view these wonderful animals in the natural world.  By seeing animals in as natural surroundings as possible, people will be more likely to support conservation and animal protection efforts.  But zoos and entities like SeaWorld are NOT entertainment centers.  They need to migrate away from that business model—one which exploits animals and entertains.  They should refashion themselves more like universities—research institutions that educate, and introduce the young to knowledge and to connect them with animals and the natural world.

Conservatives need to lead on the issue of wildlife and the environment.  We have not been, and need to be.  Otherwise, the default position will be an ever expanding role of Big Government.

What Now?

Now that Donald Trump has sealed up the Republican nomination and Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, what is a free market Constitutionalist to do?  

I don't know.  I just don't know.  I am suffering with the worst case of political cognitive dissonance of my adult life.

Do you cast your lot with Donald Trump (How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Trump), or, as conservative/libertarian humorist P.J. O'Rourke just declared, go with Hillary, rationalizing that she is "the second worst thing that could happen to our country."

Do you go with the woman with a rat's nest of conflict of interests, currently under F.B.I. investigation for her atrocious email server scandal, who shamelessly panders to interest groups, and who, while simultaneously claiming to be the vanguard of women's rights, enabled her husband to prey on several women?  Or do you go with bombastic iconoclast, the real estate and reality television guy, who has shown an ability to shake up the status quo at a time the status quo badly needs to be shaken?  And  shaken vigorously.

In my January 16 post, I spun out the reasons I thought Trump could take all the marbles and those turned out to be accurate.   Whatever he is doing appears to be working as he dismantled the entire Republican field one by one.  His ham-fisted crude bluntness, for instance, demolished the young conservative darling, Marco Rubio and he rattled him so badly that Rubio could do little more than repeat scripted talking points.  His "Make America Great Again" theme has great appeal and is in stark contrast to the current administration that has spent more time apologizing for America and talking about a borderless world than the virtues of America.  He is not afraid to take on hard issues ---a broken immigration policy, Islamic terror, political correctness that has gone way beyond common sense.   And, unlike Mitt Romney, he hits back... hard.   He has a number of appealing attributes, and potential (and I mean potential because he has never led in government) leadership capabilities.

We know Hillary all too well.  One of her major deficits is that we have Clinton fatigue.  The Clinton M.O. is well known-- play in the grey area, obfuscate, delay, distract, spin.  These are skills the family has perfected over decades of public life. We know her track record. Whitewater, Travelgate, Hillarycare, Benghazi, Russian reset, Assad the "reformer," and leading from behind in Libya.  Worst of all, she squandered a formidable lead to a community organizer with no executive experience and lost the nomination in 2008.

With all that baggage, it seems like jumping on the Trump Train would not be all that difficult.  Many have--- Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, the folks at Fox, and even Larry Kudlow is pretty open to him.

I'm with Paul Ryan.   I'm not ready yet.  And I don't know if I will ever be.

There are a host of things about him that trouble me deeply. 

He is NOT an advocate of free market principles.  He is open to a $15 minimum wage.  He is fine with more tax increases (without talking about how we are going to put government on a diet).  His recent suggestion that America's creditors might take a discount is nothing short of ludicrous.  Worst of all is his policy toward China.  I agree that a tougher negotiating stance is appropriate but he seems not to have heard of Smoot Hawley.  He may, in fact, be more progressive than Obama on health care.  Yes, it is true that while Trump is promising jobs, Bernie Sanders is promising "free stuff," but there is no evidence that suggests that a massive trade war will do the trick.

On foreign policy matters, it gets worse.  He really lost me with his assertion that "Bush lied." While "putting America first," rebuilding America's military that Obama gutted and regaining American sovereignty have great appeal after the Obama years, his suggestions that we withdraw from NATO or permit or encourage Japan and South Korea to arm themselves with nuclear weapons is simply nuts.   His proposed policy of completely ceding the Middle East to Russia makes no sense. His man crush on Vladimir Putin is perplexing.   In international affairs, we need to lead, and advocate the American virtues of individual liberty, democracy and free markets.  Trump is correct to say that P.C. is a big impediment to these principles.  He is utterly wrong in advocating American isolationism in these matters.   America needs to lead and the world needs America to lead.

In the final analysis, I cannot vote for Hillary under any condition. Conservatives P.J. O'Rourke and Jonathan Hoenig have cast their lot with her.  I simply cannot.   She is unprincipled and continues to advocate the growth of a welfare state that has no more room to grow (expanding Obamacare subsidies to illegals).

Neither of the candidates are addressing the core issues that need to be addressed: tax reform, entitlement reform, and regulatory reform (the out-of-control regulatory state that continues to suck the oxygen out of the economy), and their relation to economic growth and vitality.   

Finally, there is the Constitution.  Progressives continue to erode the structure and rights guaranteed under the Constitution.  In particular, they continue to chip away at the 1st Amendment (offensive speech, freedom of religion), and the 2nd (Hillary is focused on gun control).   I have been particularly harsh on Obama (the Constitutional law lecturer) for his "pen and phone" approach to governance.   Rather than do the hard work of hammering out a deal and compromise with Congress, he has attempted to exert his will through the executive and the judicial branches on major policy issues.  Whatever the vicissitudes of the electorate, it is vital that the next president respect the structure of the Constitution, and demonstrate and articulate a fidelity to our founding document that Obama did not. Unfortunately, I do not at present see Trump as the leader that will take us back to our core values and our core document.  So far, I see the opposite.  I see someone that is more likely to "game the system" just as Obama has done to achieve his ends.

Perhaps he will evolve now that he has sewn up the nomination, but I have not yet bought a ticket on the Trump Train.

Predators

Sexual misconduct among the political class has become so commonplace that it doesn't even herald the death knell of one's career in public life.  Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Anthony Weiner and a number of other well known public figures have all had their dalliances exposed and have gone on to new lives after suffering some short term humiliation.  We've had call girls, sexting and cigars.  These sordid affairs caused a speed bump in their lives, but many of these transgressors more or less recovered.  

Not this time.  This time it was kids.

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 years in prison for molesting at least 4 boys while a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School.  He was caught paying hush money to some of the victims.  It is amazing to me that Hastert was able to get friends to write letters asking for leniency (the defense asked for probation).   And the judge rightfully threw the book at him.   Sex abuse of a minor is a horrific crime.  It steals their youth, and often their lives, leaving them scarred forever.

It occurred to me that this kind of deviant and despicable behavior may be more common than I thought among the coaching profession and that we need to be vigilant and alert in protecting our children.  As was the case in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal (see the film Spotlight), predators often occupy a position of trust and authority.  It follows, then, that athletic coaches and trainers are in the perfect position to prey on kids.

Jerry Sandusky is the poster child for this monstrous behavior, having used his position at Penn State to abuse many, many children under the nose of Penn State, ultimately tarnishing the school and Joe Paterno.  

In the 2005 documentary film, The Heart of the Game, which chronicled a girls high school basketball team in Oregon, one of the athletes was suffering a myriad of behavior problems and ultimately had her basketball career derailed. Only later in the film did we learn that her adult personal coach and trainer was taking advantage of her.

At the high school where I coached in the early 1980's, 3 athletes brought a suit several decades after the alleged instances occurred against one of the coaches for sexual abuse.   One of those athletes, Arny Alberts, wrote a book about these incidents (Burnt Cookies--available on amazon.com) and the lifelong problems it caused ---depression, alcohol abuse, guilt and shame.  

Brooke de Lench of MomsTeam Team Institute for Youth Sports Safety has a good blog post on warning signs for sexual abuse by a coach (http://momsteam.com/health-safety/sexual-abuse/warning-signs-sexual-abuse-by-coach-of-child).  Her post should be read by anyone whose child is participating in organized sports.

It's hard to say how prevalent sexual abuse is among the coaching profession but these incidents suggest that it may be more widespread than is generally thought and parents should be vigilant and pay attention at all times.   Violating the public trust is one matter, violating the coach/young athlete relationship is another.   Hastert caused a great deal of pain among some young athletes and he will and should pay a heavy price. Shame on those that wrote letters on his behalf urging leniency.

Mythology

The Left often gets policy dreadfully wrong, but is rarely apologetic about it.   Liberals like Ted Kennedy were so certain about policies and outcomes and were prepared to impose tremendous costs on us, expose us to risks, and in some cases, erode our freedoms and livelihoods to pursue a path to nowhere. 

Once again, we are being asked to make large sacrifices in the name of climate change.   With Al Gore as the great proselytizer, we are told that climate change is “settled science,” and that anyone that questions it is a “climate change denier,” (language that associated with Holocaust deniers), and is relegated to the same intellectual status as fundamentalist Christians that chose the book of Genesis over Evolution.

However, before we blindly accept the Left’s demands that we kill certain industries (e.g. coal), use public funds to fund others (solar) and agree to impose large costs on ourselves, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves of  a few of the big misses the Left has had during our lifetime.

·         Population Bomb. Certainly, Paul Ehrlich was at the forefront of this looney bomb of an idea.  I remember reading his book Population, Resources, Environment in the early 70’s.  The basic notion was that earth had a fixed “carrying capacity” and that population growth was exponentially headed to a place that would exceed earth’s capacity (today’s stepchild idea is “sustainability.”  There would be dire consequences if population growth was not arrested—widespread famine, depletion and social unrest.  He proposed   Ehrlich and his progeny proposed zero population growth (ZPG) and, if voluntary measures weren’t sufficient, proposed mandatory sterilization.  What we are learning now is that the truth is the exact opposite.  Population growth is vital to a growing economy.  And growing, vibrant economies are gentler on the environment.   And Ehrlich and “intellectuals” of his ilk assume that science, technology and business processes do not advance.   They most certainly do.  Almost a half century after his landmark book, the Population Bomb, we are now worried more about population crashes.  Europe, Japan, China and Russia face tremendous economic problems not because of overpopulation, but because of an aging one with fertilization rates down dramatically.  The same has occurred in the Muslim world as Muslim populations are crashing from 7 births per woman a generation ago to 2 now.  Compared to other countries, America is in decent shape, especially with immigration.  If we would have followed the prescriptions of Ehrlich and his ilk, we would have been in deeper trouble and it would have taken a Nazi-like government to execute them.

·         Peak Oil.  This is my personal favorite.  Peak oil is the ugly cousin of ZPG—the foundational notion is that we are a planet whose population is outrunning its resources.  The idea of peak oil really got lift during the oil embargo and gained momentum during the disastrous Carter years.  Even as recently as a few years ago, when gas was hovering at $4/gallon, President Obama, defending his energy policies, piously announce, “We can’t drill our way out of this problem.”


Uh, we kinda did. 

We are now drowning in the stuff.  We don’t have enough storage capacity. Banks balance sheets are in pretty good shape now, except for loans to oil related companies.  Osama bin Laden is dead and so is OPEC.   As sanctions have been dropped, Iranian oil is coming on line as well.  All those smug Middle East regimes that thought they could freeze America out are looking at an oil exporting America now—despite the restrictions that Obama put on leases permitting drilling on federal land and offshore drilling.  At the root of this is good old American innovation—sideways drilling and fracking.   The oil industry, ever a demonic icon of the Left has done a great job of marginalizing the importance of those odious Middle Eastern regimes.  Unleashed, American industry and technological innovation have a pretty good track record of problem solving.  The Left has been very quiet about this lately (except for the extremists that want to ban fracking with no evidence to support why it makes sense).

·     Giving the Palestinians a homeland will end terrorism.   This idea has been the conventional wisdom since the 1972 Olympics, and still echoes around the Obama administration.  It makes about as much sense as Marie Harf’s assertion that “we can’t kill our way out of this problem [Islamism],” and that what is needed is more economic opportunity (derided as “jobs for jihadis”).  This idea accelerated after the first Gulf War and a deal was almost reached in 1993 and ended with the Israelis giving up large concessions and Arafat walking away from the deal.  But bad actors from Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden routinely cited “the plight of the Palestinians” on their list of grievances to justify their bad acts.

We now know that the Palestinian issue is a red herring.    Every Jew in Israel could agree to pack up and move to Miami and New York, hand the deed to the Palestinians and never come back, and Islamic terrorism would continue unabated.  Funded by the Iranians, Hamas and Hezbollah will continue to harass Israel and seek its destruction.    Despite liberal attempts to punish Israel (even pushing for boycotts and disinvestment) and frame the Israelis as the oppressors, the Palestinian issue is, and has been, a sideshow since the Iranian revolution.  Islamic terror wouldn’t even slow down if a two state solution could even be reached.  But that doesn’t keep the Left from trying.  As recently as a few years ago, Obama was calling on Israel to pull back to its 1967 borders and just last week Biden was bashing Netanyahu’s policies.  “Land for peace”  is illusory.  It won’t stop attacks on Israel and certainly won’t affect the Islamist’s ardor for attacking the West anywhere else.

·         SDI.  Just as Obama mocked Romney in the 2012 debates for asserting that Russia was our greatest existential threat (“the 80’s are calling and want their foreign policy back”—now Russia is buzzing our warships and surveillance planes), the Left mocked Reagan’s plan for a defensive shield as “Star Wars.”   But missile defense has made great strides in the 33 years since Reagan proposed it.  SDI has not, of course, turned out exactly the way Reagan envisioned it.  But it has already had three large victories under its belt.  First, the very idea was instrumental in ending the Cold War.  Reagan would not bargain it away to the Soviets at Reykjavik, even though he did not even have it to bargain away.  But the mere idea of an effective shield using US technology was more than the Soviets could bear.  Second was the success of the Patriot missile system in the Persian Gulf War.  Its actual effectiveness was somewhat limited, but it was enough to keep the Israelis from being dragged into the war.  Third was the Iron Dome.  Using technologies developed from SDI, the Israelis have developed their own missile system that has been effective at intercepting Hamas rockets and keeping them from inflicting more Israeli casualties.   Recently, I saw a presentation by James Syring, head of the US Missile Defense Agency.  I was impressed with our capabilities and they keep improving.  With Iran and North Korea plowing ahead with their missile programs, the vision of Ronald Reagan is still very much alive, although in different form.  Ted Kennedy and other liberal Democrats worked hard to defund and kill the program and it is easily foreseeable that we will be happy if it is even somewhat effective.  It does not have to be close to 100% effective (although that would be nice).   But if it is enough to change the probabilities, these bad actors might have second thoughts about attacking us first.

And if we are successful in knocking down an Iranian or North Korean strike, people will forget how dreadfully wrong those on the Left were. These examples were huge whiffs by policy advocates that either had or could have had costly implications including the loss of human life on a grand scale.  Before we dive right in and merely accept policy prescriptions on climate change, we ought to think about the Left’s track record on some of these big issues  as we confront their push to restrict freedom and enlarge government power in the name of climate change.  They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Juxtapositions

The other day, I awoke, sipped coffee and in my drowsy state, checked Twitter and saw the initial news reports of the terrorist attack in Brussels.  I padded downstairs to retrieve the morning paper, unfolded it and saw this photo of Barack and Raul splashed across the front page.

Similarly, another photo of Obama standing at attention directly under a wall mural of Che Guevara was circulating.  As I noted in my earlier post "Words and Symbols," symbols matter greatly, in my view. Symbolism was not lost on Obama when Nikki Haley and the rest of the country after the church shooting in South Carolina as we went into hysteria over the Confederate.  Amidst great fanfare, the Confederate flag was removed from the state capitol and  schools municipalities removed statues of Confederate generals and war heroes.  Yet somehow, the symbol of  the leader of the Free World standing under Che eluded Team Obama.

I wish I could find a word to describe, "Way Beyond Tone Deaf."

But he was not finished.  Later, as the body count in Brussels rose, and we learned that Americans were among the injured and missing, did Obama cut short his visit and meet with his national security team and confer with European allies?  Nope. We later saw him doing the wave at a baseball game with Communist thug, Raul Castro, unaffected by events that sent Europe reeling, breezily laughing and joking with the leader of the regime that almost started a nuclear holocaust, and just hours earlier jailed dissidents and forcibly removed the courageous "Ladies in White."

And another juxtaposition that caught my attention was the scene of the nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor at the Supreme Court steps fighting for religious liberty as they took the Obama Administration to court over the birth control mandate of the ACA.  With fines totaling $70 million hanging over the charity's head, it is clear that the Obama administration may not have a clear strategy to fight ISIS, but it does have one to fight the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Of course, not to be outdone, the Republican candidates had their own overlays.  The day before the Brussels attacks, Donald Trump announced that we should get out NATO and that we should consider using tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS.  It's hard to imagine two worse options to exercise. Nukes are not terribly effective at defeating surreptitious guerrilla wars. And we should be leading and strengthening NATO, not pulling out.  Ted Cruz was not doing much better a few weeks ago, advocating carpet bombing to defeat ISIS. Meanwhile, the leading Republican candidates were making unseemly and nasty comments about each other's wives in an exchange more appropriate to the Jerry Springer Show than a contest for the leadership of the free world.

While reports surfaced that 400 ISIS fighters have been dispatched to Europe, Obama was smiling and doing the tango in Argentina.   In ordinary times, the photos of a U.S. president would be of him looking pensively across the table at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, peppering him with questions about his ISIS Action Plan.  Not this president.  Instead, he casually announced that, "ISIS was on the top of his priority list (details to follow)," but then followed up quickly with his statement that "ISIS is not an existential threat" to the U.S.  Apparently,  Cuba has been removed from the "state sponsors of terrorism," list and the entire European continent has been removed from the "vital to Western Civilization" list.   The President promptly returned to cha-cha-cha-ing and telling the Argentinians that Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism are basically co-equals and that they should "chose what works."  Oh, and he didn't fail to issue the obligatory apology for America's past sins toward Argentina.

But, wait, there's more.  Today, it was announced that 7 Iranians were indicted for hacking into U.S. banks, only a day after it was reported that the Obama administration is in secret negotiations with Iran for the release of another $2 billion to them.  The Iranians haven't yet caught on to the fact that with this administration, you don't have to do computer espionage to get money--just make them a lot of false promises of things you say you will do in the future and they will GIVE it to you.

In summary, with the world in chaos, the Obama administration's reaction was to make a perfunctory statement about the attack and on the West tell the world that "if people's lives get interrupted, the terrorists win." He evidently missed the nuance that HIS life is SUPPOSED to be interrupted so that the rest of us can feel safe enough to go on with ours.  The Republicans, on the other hand, expressed a desire to either nuke or carpet bomb them, which is sure to win the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims world over.

John Kerry chimed in, too, this week, stating that the "presidential campaign has been an embarrassment for the U.S."  This is the same John Kerry who, when informed that a former Gitmo prisoner was engaged in terrorist activity, said, "He's not supposed to be doing that."  And the same John Kerry that thanked Iran for returning our captured sailors that they held at gunpoint and videotaped for worldwide propaganda distribution.  John Kerry is somewhat an authority on embarrassing the U.S.

And if that isn't enough, while Obama was cavorting with one Communist dictator, the other one was vying for his attention as Kim Jong-un spent the week firing off missiles, showing off a miniature warhead and threatening to launch a first strike against the U.S.  This is the other regime that a Democrat negotiated a nonproliferation agreement with, as you will recall.  So, if we follow Obama logic---that 60 years of isolation isn't working and we should unilaterally change course, we would expect a delegation from the U.S. to visit Pyongyang, profusely apologize for the imperialist aggression of General MacArthur, drop the embargo, and bring Dennis Rodman with to accompany Dear Leader to a basketball game. After all, whatever we are doing isn't working.

This was probably the worst week in foreign affairs that I remember in the past 40 years.  The once proud and strong America of Ronald Reagan and George Shultz has turned into the Keystone Kops.  I recall the tensions over the shootdown of KAL 007 by the Soviets.  If that had occurred with this team in charge, you can bet Obama would not have canceled his tee time and Kerry would have mumbled meekly, "They're not supposed to do that."

These are dark days for the West and I do not see anyone in the field of candidates right now that I am confident will put us on a saner path.

Mobocracy

I had an opportunity to witness a political event up close and personal last weekend.  Following a business meeting, I walked past the Palmer House in downtown Chicago, when I noticed a crowd gathered in front of the hotel.  I immediately suspected it was some union protesting the working conditions at the hotel but the crowd was bigger than I normally see.  As I drew closer, it became clear to me that it was part of the group gathered to protest Donald Trump’s rally at UIC. 

The crowd was approximately half African American with a substantial portion of Occupy Wall Street types thrown in.   There were several people on megaphones, and most of the signs were hand marked, with either messages damning Donald Trump, or Republican governor Bruce Rauner, or demanding free this or free that.  If anyone in the crowd actually worked in an office, I would be surprised.  It was quite discomfiting, a middle aged businessman in a dark suit and tie, walking past the menacing sneers and glares.  This was not just a group of peaceful protesters.  This was an angry mob, yelling, fists punched in the air, girding for battle, and, as I learned later, organized to disrupt Donald Trump’s planned rally.  It occurred to me that if I had donned on of Trump’s red “Make America Great Again,” caps, I clearly would have been confronted or at least verbally assaulted.

This gathering was classic Saul Alinsky—deliberately designed to disrupt the process and shut down free speech.  And it is going on all across the country on college campuses.  It is pure thuggery, organized to implicitly threaten, intimidate and stifle dissent.

I got my first taste of mob disruption late last spring.  The University of Chicago has its annual awards ceremony at graduation and a friend of mine was to receive the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for extraordinary contributions to teaching at the University.  Others were to receive other academic and service awards.  Parents and relatives from all over the country came to see their family members receive these honors.   A group demanding that the U of C house a trauma center at its hospital disrupted the program, shouted everyone down, as the protesters marched around with placards yelling and giving speeches.  They were not going to leave without a physical confrontation with the authorities (which   clearly wanted).   As a result, the families and recipients had their day ruined.  Some of the recipients (including my friend) had worked tirelessly for a lifetime only to have the only day when their sacrifices and achievements were to be publicly recognized by the institution and their families ruined. 

The problem is that the bullying worked.  This February, the University announced plans for its new Level 1 Trauma Center.

I have a lot of problems with Donald Trump as the nominee of the Republican Party.  I do not like his stance on trade.  His foreign policy positions do not sit well with me.   His assertion  that “Bush lied” to get us into the war with Iraq was outrageous.  I’m  not partial to his interrupting, bullying style.

Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters absolutely have the right to speak and to whip up more support in an unimpeded forum.  Surely, BLM and the Marxists Moveon.org folks also have the right to speak.  But they do not have a license to disrupt legitimate political discourse, even if the person they are opposing is appealing to emotion.  Like the bunch that disrupted things at U of C, the protesters were spoiling for a fight.  Thoughts of Russia in 1917 flashed through my mind.

The Left has elevated its bullying tactics---disrupt to get what it wants or to shut down speech with which it disagrees.    It is working marvelously on college campuses across the country.  The U of C caved into their demands and will commit to millions to sustain its trauma center.  Donald Trump cancelled his appearance in Chicago.  Condi Rice was shouted down in Vermont last year and canceled an appearance at Rutgers.  Worse, immediately following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino,   General Loretta Lynch vowed to aggressively prosecute anti-Muslim speech (we are attacked and our government acts to curtail 1^st Amendment rights).

This is a scary development. More and more, we are allowing thuggery to change policy and to curtail free speech.  This is not how we make decisions or engage in debate and discourse.  We have institutions and political systems with structures in place to manage decision making and dissent.  Our bicameral legislature, for instance, was deliberately designed to cool mob passions. 

The Left has figured out how to manipulate and intimidate and, as a result, if we do not check this, we are in danger of descending into mobocracy. Seeing the angry mob with my own eyes was a stark reminder of how close we are to descending into chaos and violence as interest groups simply bully institutions into complying with their wishes.  This will be a terrible direction for our republic, and it needs to be checked now.  We haven’t seen this sort of thing since 1968.  But the flames are burning hotter and it was an unsettling thing to witness it in person.

The mob had an opposite effect on me.  I left the scene wondering if I should vote for Trump out of sheer defiance.

Why Now?

I visited with an old friend of mine last week-- a rare individual, a skilled and knowledgeable economist that also has Democratic leanings.  We spent a great deal of time discussing the economy, America's place in the world and the absolute circus that are the primary races.  He asked the question, "Why now?"  We are facing trends that have been headed in the same direction for decades (slow or no income growth, contraction in manufacturing employment, income disparity).  Why is the political explosion happening at this particular time?  While the fissures are less pronounced on the Democratic side, the strong showing of Bernie Sanders and the anger expressed in Democratic exit poles show frustration and anger on both sides of the aisle.  With Republicans, it has caused a complete rupture of the existing order.

Why now?  I believe that the answer is almost entirely economic, with national pride mixed in.

Like an earthquake, the political melee, I believe, is the result of tectonic forces that have been gradually building over a long period of time.  Real wages have been stagnant for 35 years.  That is not a new development.  Wage stagnation was patched over with the dotcom bubble and the real estate bubble, but we now have been in a period of sub-3% growth for 10 years.   People don't feel that they are getting ahead.   Worse, their kids can't get ahead. Prior to the collapse of real estate, many parents financed their childrens' college education through home equity loans.  With that vehicle no longer available, we are seeing the explosion of student debt over the past eight years. Couple the student loan hangover with the worst post-WWII expansion ever, you can almost feel the frustration build.  With the worst labor participation rate in 35 years, the real unemployment rate is probably in the 10-12% range.  Many college graduates are still residing in their parents' basements, several years into the expansion.  The '81-'82 recession was nasty (I graduated into that), but it was over quickly and followed by rapid growth under Reagan.  It is one thing to see your own opportunity flatten-- it is another to see that happen to your children.  

The Democrats have a simple answer and that is to promise more free things to people.  Bernie Sanders was able to garner enthusiastic support from young people because they have been steeped in the progressive bubble of college, and the prospect of free things has an irresistible.  Argentinians fell for it and they are just now able to return to the capital markets after being banished for 15 years. Hillary is selling a more muted version of that, but it is basically the same elixir: higher taxes (we just have to hunt down more wealthy people) and more regulation (going after Wall Street--never mind that we already did that with Dodd-Frank) with special attention toward pandering to special interest groups (both Sanders and Clinton almost tripped over themselves chasing after Al Sharpton).

Republicans have a much different problem, and are a more fractious, unruly group.  Someone once joked that there were actually two Republican parties:  the Libertarians and the Nazis.  Actually, there are three broad segments-- Libertarians (me), Democrat lite (Boehner), and Evangelical.  All are suspicious of one another, and they don't get along very well.  The problem is that each time the party has run a Democrat lite (or some version of it), the Republicans have lost.  Dole, Bush '92, McCain, and Romney.  

The long grind of this virtually zero growth expansion has created enormous pressures that exposed the fissures in the Republican party.  But the real spark has been the Obama administration.  He articulated his disdain for working class middle America when he wrote them off as bitterly clinging to their guns and religion and then accused them of bigotry.  This is also a very patriotic segment of America.  And an Obama that began with an apology tour, forfeited hard earned victories in places like Fallujah, shows deference to CAIR, released terrorists from Gitmo only to return to battle and permitted our sailors to be held at gunpoint by the Iranians while thanking the mullahs angered this group.  It is mostly their sons and daughters that sacrificed in Iraq and would be sailing in those vessels.  They see economic stagnation and America in retreat or humiliated in every corner of the world.

Why now?  The wooden, patrician Democrat-lite Republican Establishment watered down message lost its force. Its demise was foreshadowed by Eric Cantor's loss and John Boehner's ouster.  It could only promise tax cuts (which Democrats disabled quickly as being for "the wealthy").  Jeb Bush and John Kasich never got very much traction at all.  Marco Rubio made too many tactical errors and, beginning with the Gang of 8, showed a penchant for walking into ambushes, as he did with Christie, then fell into a name calling contest with Trump (which he was sure to lose).  

Trump's message is simple, "Make America Great Again" and "I will bring back jobs."  For a lot of middle America, a lot of sins will be forgiven if you can deliver on those two things.  Trump is scary, ham fisted, and has said things that are reminiscent of strongmen of an earlier era ("I'll bring back waterboarding and worse," "Bush lied," "Mrs. Ricketts should be careful").   His stance on trade smacks of Smoot-Hawley (and we know how that ended).  His stated admiration of Putin is scary.  

The comparisons with 30's fascists will continue unless he is able to tone things down and present himself as more presidential.  We would do well to remember that Germany turned ultra nationalistic through a democratic process under economic stresses and international humiliations in an earlier era.

Why now?  Trump is a result of the perfect storm.  He is the stepchild of an Obama administration that has presided over economic stagnation, and that has turned its back on American exceptionalism and global leadership.  Rather than advance liberty, democracy and human rights, the administration has made large concessions to Communists, Islamists, and Oligarchs that are antithetical to American values.  But Trump is also consequence of an inept, overly patrician, stagnant Republican party that lost the ability to connect and message with working class middle America, and has completely ignored black America.  

Why now?  Bill Clinton had it right over 20 years ago--It's the economy, stupid.There is anger and frustration across the political spectrum and it is being personified in different ways.  Black Lives Matter expresses its frustration differently than the ardent Trump supporters, but in essence, they are both raging at a political system that has failed them.   Voters on the right believe that the 47% getting government benefits that we can no longer afford are weighing down the economy.  Voters on the left believe that the "system is rigged," and have valid gripes about a government that bailed out Wall Street.  With an economy that can't seem to get its legs, the anger is starting to manifest itself in unusual, ugly ways.   The stagnation has gone on too long.

Robert Kagan is correct to be concerned about the rise of Trumpism.   But the insidious authoritarianism of Big Government that Sanders and Clinton are peddling may be just as dangerous and damaging to the country.