Commenting on the Issues of the Moment
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The New Conservative Flagship ANNUAL REPORT 2020A About American Compass Table of Contents Our Mission To restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity: 1 Founder’s Letter 4 REORIENTING POLITICAL FOCUS from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions. SETTING A COURSE for a country in which families can achieve self- sufficiency, contribute productively to their communities, and prepare the next 2 Year in Review 10 generation for the same. Conservative Flagship 12 HELPING POLICYMAKERS NAVIGATE the limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security. Changing the Debate 14 Our Activities Creating Community 16 AFFILIATION. Providing opportunities for people who share its mission to The Commons 18 build relationships, collaborate, and communicate their views to the broader political community. Our Growing Influence 20 DELIBERATION. Supporting research and discussion that advances understanding of economic and social conditions and tradeoffs through study of history, analysis of data, elaboration of theory, and development of policy 3 Our Work 21 proposals. ENGAGEMENT. Initiating and facilitating public debate to challenge existing Rebooting the American System 22 orthodoxy, confront the best arguments of its defenders, and force scrutiny of unexamined assumptions and unconsidered consequences. Coin-Flip Capitalism 26 Our Principles Moving the Chains 30 AMERICAN COMPASS strives to embody the principles and practices of a healthy democratic polity, combining intellectual combat with personal civility. Corporate Actual Responsibility 34 We welcome converts to our vision and value disagreement amongst A Seat at the Table 38 our members. -
S E R I E S the Fiscal Policy Context for A
SERIES FEDERAL BUDGET The Fiscal Policy Context for a Conservative Reform Agenda JAMES C. CAPRETTA Edited by Yuval Levin and Ramesh Ponnuru FEDERAL BUDGET First Edition All Rights Reserved: Copyright © 2015 by Conservative Reform Network No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission, except where permitted by law. Printed in the USA 2. FEDERAL BUDGET Published by: FEDERAL BUDGET 4. The Fiscal Policy Context for a Conservative Reform Agenda JAMES C. CAPRETTA 5. Dear Reader: The Conservative Reform Network (CRN) recognizes that today’s challenges won’t be met by yesterday’s solutions. That’s why we are eager to deliver a new series of important policy papers that will offer fresh, innovative solutions to some of the biggest policy challenges facing America—practical solutions that are ready to be put into action. John Murray Chairman Building on the tremendous success of our 2014 essay collection, Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class, we are pleased to bring you Room to Grow: A Series. Each briefing book in the series will tackle a specific set of domestic policy challenges and provide thoughtful analysis from a leading expert in the field. CRN commissioned this series of more than a dozen briefing books to show how a conservative agenda can empower individuals by replacing failed one-size-fits-all government programs with policies that foster opportunity, choice, and competition. -
Enterprise Report Restoring Liberty, Opportunity, and Enterprise in America
Issue No. 4, Fall 2020 Enterprise Report Restoring Liberty, Opportunity, and Enterprise in America Sharing the Blessings of Freedom By Robert Doar During these difficult past few months, AEI scholars have been tackling all of our toughest challenges. We have written about the economy, of course, and the pandemic. We have called attention to the dangers posed by China. We have also written about the importance of employment to people trying to escape poverty. And we have not been afraid to take on the thorniest of issues in America: race. This topic is not new to AEI. In a previous period, our community played a key role in the national discussion, as scholars such as Ben Wattenberg, Bob Woodson, and Walter Berns reacted to the excess of the 1960s and 1970s. Back then, AEI scholars were for peaceful protests in Selma but against violent lawlessness in Newark or Columbia University. We were for civil rights under law but against quotas that defined people by their race or gender rather than the content of their character. We knew Jim Crow had to go, but we also believed in Justice John Marshall Harlan’s admonition that our laws should be color-blind and that our Constitution “neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” That spirit remains very much a part of who we are at AEI; I have written about it, and so has one of our newest scholars, Ian Rowe. Together, these principles promote economic opportunity for all and ensure that every American shares in the blessings of freedom and equality that make our country great. -
Conservatism and the Quest for Community
Conservatism and the Quest for Community William Schambra he age of obama has been an age of revival for the Progressive Tideal of a “national community.” It is a vision rooted in two core beliefs: that direct, local associations and channels of action are too often overwhelmed by the differences among communities and the fractious character of American public life; and that rather than strengthening the sources of these differences, modern government should seek to overcome them in the service of a coherent national ambition. By dis- tributing the same benefits, protections, and services to all Americans, fellow feeling and neighborliness can be fostered among the public; combined with the power of the national government and professional expertise, this communal sentiment can then become a valuable weapon for attacking America’s most pressing social problems. A century ago, this ideal was a central tenet of the Progressive agenda — which sought, as Progressive icon Herbert Croly put it in 1909, the “subordination of the individual to the demand of a dominant and constructive national purpose.” It was an important goal of the New Deal, which President Franklin Roosevelt described in 1933 as “extending to our national life the old principle of the local community.” It was the essence of the liberal agenda of the 1960s, which President Lyndon Johnson called an effort to “turn unity of interest into unity of purpose, and unity of goals into unity in the Great Society.” And it was at the core of Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency in 2008, which promised to over- come petty differences and, as Obama put it in one campaign speech, to Wil l i a m Sch a m br a is the director of the Hudson Institute’s Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. -
Congress Is Weak Because Its Members Want It to Be
CommentaryJULY/AUGUST 2018 DOUBLE ISSUE Congress Is Weak Because Its Members Want It to Be BY YUVAL LEVIN Game of Peacock Thrones BY SOHRAB AHMARI Should Jews Flee Europe? BY MELANIE PHILLIPS Commentary How Israel Became a JULY/AUGUST 2018 : VOLUME 146 NUMBER 1 146 : VOLUME 2018 JULY/AUGUST TV Powerhouse BY HANNAH BROWN Philip Roth’s My Time Among Joyless the Exuberance Anti-Israelites BY RUTH R. WISSE CANADA $7.00 : US $5.95 BY ARDIE GELDMAN We join in celebrating Israel’s 70 years. And Magen David Adom is proud to have saved lives for every one of them. Magen David Adom, Israel’s largest and premier emergency medical response agency, has been saving lives since before 1948. Supporters like you provide MDA’s 27,000 paramedics, EMTs, and civilian Life Guardians — more than 90% of them volunteers — with the training, equipment, and rescue vehicles they need. In honor of Israel’s 70th anniversary, MDA has launched a 70 for 70 Campaign that will put 70 new ambulances on the streets of Israel this year. There is no better way to celebrate this great occasion and ensure the vitality of the state continues for many more years. Please give today. 352 Seventh Avenue, Suite 400 New York, NY 10001 Toll-Free 866.632.2763 • [email protected] www.afmda.org Celebrate Israel’s 70th anniversary by helping put 70 new ambulances on its streets. FOR SEVENTY Celebrate Israel’s 70th anniversary by putting 70 new ambulances on its streets. please join us for the ninth annual COMMENTARY ROAST this year’s victim: JOE LIEBERMAN monday, october 8, 2018, new york city CO-CHAIR TABLES: $25,000. -
United States: National Affairs, Anti-Semitism
United States National Affairs TheBush administration began the year buoyed by the results of the November 2004 elections: the president's decisive reelection and a strong Republican showing in the congressional races in which the party, already in control of both houses, gained four seats in the Senate and three in the House. The president promised to spend the "political capi- tal" he had earned on an agenda that included Social Security reform, tax cuts, and the continuation of an aggressive global war on terror. The organized Jewish community, meanwhile, geared up for another four years of an administration strongly allied with most Jews on Israel's defense needs, defiantly committed to an increasingly complicated and controversial war in Iraq, and diverging sharply from the majority of American Jews on many domestic issues. THE POLITICAL ARENA olected President Ldent Bush won immediate praise from Jewish leaders for his intment of Judge Michael Chertoff, the son of a rabbi, as secretary meland security. Chertoff had been a widely respected prosecutor hen chief of the Justice Department's criminal division before be- a judge on the Third Circuit of the U.S. Court ofAppeals. He jominated for his new post on January 11 and confirmed by the e on February 15. Another appointment of a prominent Jew was )f Elliott Abrams, who had held a variety of government positions, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security )ther presidential appointments were generally applauded by the ommunity. Condoleezza Rice, seen as a friend of Israel, moved ional security advisor to secretary of state. -
Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21St Century (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2020)
OUR COMMON REINVENTING AMERICAN PURPOSEDEMOCRACY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY COMMISSION ON THE PRACTICE OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects and great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FINAL REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE COMMISSION ON THE PRACTICE OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP OUR COMMON REINVENTING AMERICAN PURPOSEDEMOCRACY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY american academy of arts & sciences Cambridge, Massachusetts © 2020 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-87724-133-3 This publication is available online at www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose. Suggested citation: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2020). PHOTO CREDITS iStock.com/ad_krikorian: cover; iStock.com/carterdayne: page 1; Martha Stewart Photography: pages 13, 19, 21, 24, 28, 34, 36, 42, 45, 52, -
Beyond a Politics of Nostalgia: a Discussion with Yuval Levin on Moving the Country Forward
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE BEYOND A POLITICS OF NOSTALGIA: A DISCUSSION WITH YUVAL LEVIN ON MOVING THE COUNTRY FORWARD INTRODUCTION: MICHAEL R. STRAIN, AEI REMARKS: YUVAL LEVIN, ETHICS & PUBLIC POLICY CENTER DISCUSSION: YUVAL LEVIN, ETHICS & PUBLIC POLICY CENTER; MICHAEL R. STRAIN, AEI 5:30 PM – 6:45 PM WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2016 EVENT PAGE: http://www.aei.org/events/beyond-a-politics-of-nostalgia-a- discussion-with-yuval-levin-on-moving-the-country-forward/ TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED BY DC TRANSCRIPTION – WWW.DCTMR.COM MICHAEL STRAIN: Good evening. Good evening. Thank you. I’m Michael Strain, director of economic studies here at AEI. Thank you all for coming. Thanks to all of you who are joining us on the live stream and to all of you who will be watching the video later on. A reminder to everybody in the room that full video of the event will be available tomorrow or the next day so you can spread it around to your friends who weren’t able to make it. AEI is very happy to welcome Yuval Levin here tonight. Dr. Levin is one of conservatism’s leading public intellectuals. He’s just published an important new book, “The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism.” All of us at AEI are very pleased that he could join us here tonight to discuss how our politics is dripping in nostalgia, how as a society and an economy we have moved from an age of cohesion and consolidation to an age of fragmentation, and to discuss his vision of how we can move forward in a more constructive way beyond the nostalgia for the past and taking into account the realities of the present and the future. -
YUVAL LEVIN on the War on Civil Society
2012_8_13 B UPC_1_cover61404-postal.qxd 7/24/2012 7:14 PM Page 1 August 13, 2012 $4.99 AURORA & EVIL — D GEORGE GILDER: WHAT IS CAPITALISM? a v id G e le rn te r Under President Obama: Julia has looked to the government for guidance and succor at every stage of her life. But it has been no subst itute for real community. She is a bleached-out creature of the state, living in a hollow republic. $4.99 YUVAL LEVIN 33 on the war on civil society 0 74820 08155 6 www.nationalreview.com base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 7/23/2012 3:45 PM Page 2 Trim 1 D CYAN BLK : 2400 9 45˚ 105˚ 75˚ G PMS base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 7/23/2012 3:46 PM Page 3 Strike Mobility Surveillance & Engagement Unmanned & Missile Systems Global Support www.boeing.com/militaryaircraft TODAYTOMORROWBEYOND D BLK : 2400 9 45˚ 105˚ 75˚ G toc_QXP-1127940144.qxp 7/25/2012 1:37 PM Page 1 Contents Amity Shlaes on Calvin Coolidge p. 18 AUGUST 13, 2012 | VOLUME LXIV, NO. 15 | www.nationalreview.com COVER STORY Page 27 BOOKS, ARTS The Hollow Republic & MANNERS 41 GREEN SHIFT President Obama’s “you didn’t build Steven F. Hayward reviews How that” speech in Roanoke, Va., shows to Think Seriously about the Planet: The Case for an us not only a man chilly toward the Environmental Conservatism, potential of individual initiative, and not by Roger Scruton. only a man deluded about the nature 42 THE OBAMA FAILURE of his opponents and their views, but Samuel R. -
Part V Jfk- Media Image and Legacy
PART V JFK- MEDIA IMAGE AND LEGACY 242 Chapter 20 Kennedy’s Loyal Opposition: National Review and the Development of a Conservative Alternative, January- August 1961 Laura Jane Gifford The March 25, 1961, National Review related the contents of a recent subscriber letter in a back-cover subscription appeal. This man, “usually understood to be a liberal” and well-placed in New York Democratic circles, wrote the magazine and explained: Of course I am not in agreement with most of your criticism of President Kennedy; nor do I believe you will get far in your obvious editorial support of Senator Barry Goldwater, but renew my subscription, for I can no longer get along without National Review. I find that National Review is a whiskey I must sample once a week. From every other journalist I get a sensation of either soda pop (and who does not finally gag on effervescent, treacly sugar water), or from the intellectual journals of my own persuasion I now get no more than strained vegetable juices unfermented. So I am now a tippler. Eight dollars enclosed. The advertisement’s writer went on to speculate that perhaps National Review’s rarified appeal stemmed from its very lack of broadmindedness; rather, “it is a magazine of fact and opinion, of discourse and criticism, on the central questions of our age,” questions identified as dealing with how to meet the Communist challenge, “resuscitate the spirit in an age of horror,” guard one’s mind against uniformity in the age of mass appeal, and resist collectivism, preserve freedom and teach love of country, respect for past wisdom and responsibility to the future. -
Specialization and Trade
Specialization and Trade 100148_FM.indd 1 5/20/16 9:15 PM 100148_FM.indd 2 5/20/16 9:15 PM Specialization and Trade A RE-INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMICS Arnold Kling CATO INSTITUTE WASHINGTON, D.C. 100148_FM.indd 3 5/20/16 9:15 PM Copyright © 2016 by Arnold Kling. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kling, Arnold S., author. Title: Specialization and trade : a reintroduction to economics : an introduction / Arnold Kling. Description: Washington, D.C. : Cato Institute, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016017478 (print) | LCCN 2016023070 (ebook) | ISBN 9781944424152 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781944424176 (audiobook : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781944424169 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Economics. | Economic specialization. | Interna- tional trade. Classification: LCC HB171 .K545 2016 (print) | LCC HB171 (ebook) | DDC 330—dc23 Printed in the United States of America. CATO INSTITUTE 1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001 www.cato.org 100148_FM.indd 4 5/20/16 9:15 PM CONTENTS Foreword . vii. Acknowledgments . .ix . Introduction . 1. 1. Filling in Frameworks . 21. 2. Machine as Metaphor . 37. 3. Instructions and Incentives . 51 4. Choices and Commands . .61 . 5. Specialization and Sustainability . .77 . 6. Trade and Trust. 91 7. Finance and Fluctuations . 103. 8. Policy in Practice . 121. 9. Macroeconomics and Misgivings . 135. 10. Concluding Contemplation . .177 . Appendix: How Housing and Mortgage Policy Worked in Practice . .179 . v 100148_FM.indd 5 5/20/16 9:15 PM 100148_FM.indd 6 5/20/16 9:15 PM Foreword Early in 2015, I came across a volume of essays edited by E. Roy Weintraub titled MIT and the Transformation of American Economics.1 After digesting the essays, I thought to myself, “So that’s how it all went wrong.” Let me hasten to mention that my own doctorate in eco- nomics, which I obtained in 1980, comes from MIT. -
H-Diplo | ISSF Policy Series America and the World—The Effects of the Trump Presidency
H-Diplo | ISSF Policy Series America and the World—The Effects of the Trump Presidency The Derangements of Sovereignty: Trumpism and the Dilemmas of Interdependence Essay by Samuel Zipp, Brown University Published on 2 June 2021 | issforum.org Editor: Diane Labrosse | Production Editor: George Fujii https://issforum.org/to/ps2021-35 I suppose it goes without saying that any account of Donald Trump’s presidency, whether concerned with foreign or domestic affairs, must now begin with the grim and brutal events of January 6th, 2021. The insurrection at the United States Capitol was clarifying. We can now see just what Trump stands for, in the last instance. His actions that day, or in the months preceding the assault, may or may not fit the legal definition of “incitement,” but they fall squarely in that moral region. Incitement, they reveal, was the motivating force at the heart of his entire campaign for semi-absolute rule. He stoked the fears of the disconnected and precarious, supercharging our fragmented media ecology of misinformation, ginning up a mob to install himself as what his most fervent supporters call “GEOTUS,” or God Emperor of the United States. Trumpism is, it turns out, what it always appeared to be. It is a corrupt cult of personality riding on a sea of lies. It is a long con expertly worked to pervert and subdue democracy by manipulating resentment and fear—and all to satisfy one man’s vanity. But Trumpism also appears to have reached one end point. It didn’t work—at least not yet. Trump has been impeached again.