There is, I suppose, not much point in trawling the internet every morning and arguing with random conservative posts. But sometimes I just shake my head and can't help myself. Here is Jimmy Quinn, national security correspondent for National Review:
There’s a lot to say about the implications of the Biden administration’s apparent return to a version of the old policy of engagement with Beijing. As Xi receives a warm welcome in the Bay Area, it’s worth referring back to what Senator Marco Rubio said in November of 2020 as the senate prepared to vote on then-president-elect Biden’s nominees: “Biden’s cabinet picks went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline.”
Two things. First, Joe Biden has been tougher on China than any American president in recent memory. What do Quinn and folks like him want? Is a single meeting that's relatively neutral really enough to throw them into a tizzy?
Second, in what way has America declined? I don't mean, "What stuff has happened you disagree with?" Everyone, everywhere, for all time has had a list of that. I mean, "What evidence do you have of any decline in American power or prosperity?" Our economy is outpacing everyone in the world. Our military is unmatched and we've led the world in building an alliance against Russia's aggression in Ukraine. The dollar remains mighty. Our universities are still the best in the world. We're a net oil and gas exporter. Entrepreneurism is booming and no other country comes close to matching us. Donald Trump is no longer president. We're world leaders in artificial intelligence, the most important technology of the next few decades.
So what's the problem? Some annoying wokeism? A few too many illegal immigrants—which we probably need anyway? Too many opioid deaths? With all due respect, this stuff is small potatoes. On the big issues we're the envy of the world, and with good reason.
National power, prestige, and prosperity are all relative. We are relatively less powerful, prestigious, and prosperous compared to a lot of places than we were twenty or thirty years ago when those places were far, far worse off than they are now. We haven't declined; they've advanced.
What Quinn and his ilk want is for things to stop getting better anywhere and everywhere else. How to go about doing that in a way that isn't evil, I can't imagine.
If we could only do nationally what California did and get rid of most of our elected Republicans, there'd be no holding us back!
I still don't have a helicopter in my garage, and it's looking increasingly likely that I never will. That's America in decline.
And where's my jet pack? And my Mr. Fusion powered time machine?
two words: hurt feelings
"What do Quinn and folks like him want?"
They want a toughness performance. Like Mike Pence scowling at North Korea or Donald Trump dropping a "MOAB" on nothing and repeatedly bragging about it to all comers. And no, they don't care that it's all ineffectual. It's only about the show.
Yes, their mentality really is that juvenile.
"in what way has America declined?"
For folks like Quinn, the answer seems so obvious they probably don't think to say it: America used to have a Republican president, but now it has a Democratic one. See? Decline.
the republican president sent love letters to the north korean dictator, allowed iran to rebuild its nuclear capability, imposed largely ineffectual tariffs on china, and failed to cajole mexico into paying for the big beautiful republican wall
otoh, they *did classify canada as a foreign threat so they're not without accomplishments
Drum: "Our economy is outpacing everyone in the world."
China GDP per capita growth 2018 to 2022: 5.0% a year
U.S. GDP per capita growth 2018 to 2022: 1.2% a year
E.U. GDP per capita growth 2018 to 2022: 0.8% a year
China is growing almost 5 times faster than the U.S. in per capita income.
Where did you get those figures? Because if that growth rate was reported by the Chinese government...
Back in the 1980's people were sure that Japan was an economic powerhouse that would soon outstrip the United States and leave our economy in the dust. It never happened. China has been growing rapidly, but it has severe demographic problems and won't be catching up to America in the near future, if ever. And as another commenter has mentioned, you can't really trust Chinese economic statistics.
Wow!!! You believe Chicom's numbers?????!!!!!
My kids are no longer kids; they're middle aged adults. But years ago, my kids really were kids. When my sons were in their teen years, they were still growing some. A gain of two inches in a year for my teen agers was notable; I wondered if/when they'd ever stop growing. At the same time, my four year old daughter gained two inches. Amazingly, her growth rate was double the teen agers, based on Roboto's calculation method (percentage of growth).
Perhaps in economics, percentage of growth isn't the best way to measure prosperity, when the baseline is so low.
You can't tout per capita income by giving us stats about per capita GDP. They're not the same thing.
This is just right-wing righter writes against a Democrat president. It doesn't mean to make any sense.
Like the rest of the stuff in NR.
Kevin, why do you keep looking at the National Review? If you want sane conservatives, go to The Bulwark or The Economist. The NR lost its mind during the Trump years, and clearly has not recovered.
Once again Kevin ignores the still-increasing inequality. Most other advanced countries have less inequality. The US has had better GDP growth than other developed countries, but it's still mostly going to the rich. Then there's health care and the declining longevity among lower-income people. Even many poor countries have better health care for the non-affluent. Because most advanced countries have better social services, you can't compare on the basis of median income, much less average income. But if the US is not doing as well as other advanced countries in terms of benefits to most citizens, it's not because of out-of-control liberalism, its because the US took a sharp right turn politically about fifty years ago and the country has been run for the benefit of the rich.
Do the inhabitants of say most European countries or Japan really envy Americans? I don't know if there are polls on this. Do people in other countries want to have huge militaries so that they can invade or fight wars wherever they want in the world? They might want enough military to invade or protect themselves against their traditional enemies.
Of course Americans are envied by people in most of the world, that is the less-developed part. People in those countries could do better for themselves in this country even if they accept lower wages or salaries than current inhabitants.
"Once again Kevin ignores the still-increasing inequality"
Kevin is arguing that conservatives like Quinn are baseless when they bemoan "American decline." I'm pretty sure that Quinn is not handwringing about increasing income inequality or lack of single-payer health care, and that's Kevin's point--on all the metrics *people like Quinn* claim to care about, America is indeed the envy of the world.
Right. NR could give less than two f%#s about inequality. What irritates them is that their inferiors are allowed to criticize them and that rich people aren't getting all the money.
If the world includes Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand then the world does not envy the US. Many if not most of the population of these places prefer where they live or other parts of these places. They prefer to live longer with less crime, better healthcare and more vacations in towns and cities with usable public transportation and walkable neighborhoods.
Do the inhabitants of say most European countries or Japan really envy Americans?
Kevin oversells his arguments like this a lot. Europeans aren't envious about America's economic inequality, short vacations, urban squalor, ludicrous gun laws, sky high rates of intentional homicide, raging fentanyl problem, lack of guaranteed healthcare coverage, increasingly dysfunctional politics, and dismal lack of trains and transit.
"A few too many illegal immigrants—which we probably need anyway?"
Which we need? Hello, if human beings are referred to the word is "whom"! I do hope we all think of immigrants, including illegal immigrants, as human beings!
As one grammar Nazi to another, I think the antecedent of "which" is the word "few," not "immigrants." However, you could make a case for using "that" instead of "which."
"which we need anyway" is perfectly acceptable standard Englsh.
In nearly all cases, using "whom" makes you sound like a prig.
'Envy of the world except for Canada' you mean,
Life Expectancy in North America,
https://i.redd.it/qonbd3baji0c1.png
For as awful as America allegedly is, I don't see Jimmy Quinn and the rest of the National Review/Fox News/naysayer gang leaving the country en masse. Surely, there is some other country out there that is perfect in every conservative way, has modern living standards AND is welcoming to people like Jimmy Quinn (e.g. non-billionaires), right? Why are these people slumming it here in America when they could be delivering their brilliant insights from anywhere else on earth? You don't like the "decline," Jimmy? GTFO then.
Rod Dreher, an editor of The American Conservative, actually did move to Budapest, Hungary last year, and seems to be planning to stay there. He has long been an outspoken admirer of Viktor Orban.
Orban can have him.
Our current descent into fascism could put an early end to all the great stuff you mentioned. We're only one election away, with a third of the electorate totally cool with fascism and another 1/6+ willing to go along if the economy goes south for a couple of quarters.
.. or Biden has some health event.
I’m curious if there’s any way to actually support a statement like this:
“Our universities are still the best in the world.”
What kind of data points might be utilized to measure if America has the “best” universities?
It’s definitely not the number of PHDs on the faculty, because we all know that our modern PHDs will happily gloat about how exhilarated and excited they are to see terrorists killing Jews.
It’s not the number of publications a faculty writes for, because when peer review consists entirely of far left peers, those publications aren’t worth much. And this problem has been exemplified by people who have easily been able to get fake nonsense published in esteemed journals, so long as that fake nonsense espouses all the correct intersectional, anti racist, and post colonial buzzwords.
It’s not intellectual, or “viewpoint,” diversity, because there isn’t any. Polls of faculty indicate, basically, that only Left ideologies still exist on campus. Conservatives are gone, and now even Liberals are on decline. It’s now mostly just Leftists.
And it certainly isn’t due to any type of free speech culture. Be serious. The FIRE organization has done great work here documenting the declining amount of free speech on campus. The few remaining Liberals are afraid to teach, the declining number of students with open minds are afraid to speak, and the number of disinvited guests (with sacrilegious views) grows.
“So what's the problem? Some annoying wokeism?”
I’m accustomed to this kind of comment from idiots, but it bothers me when I hear it from otherwise smart Liberals like Kevin. And I suspect this kind of inexplicable blindness is due largely to tribalism. It’s just really hard for a lot of people on the Left to acknowledge the serious nature of the problems on our own side. And that’s partly due to the fact that the problems with modern Republicans are also serious and frightening. So we want to focus on the problems with them instead of the problems with us.
That kind of mutual radicalization is in fact the real story of our times, and people who dismiss Wokeness as inconsequential are missing it.
Republican radicalization in and of itself is not our main problem, and if that’s all you focus on then you may inadvertently wind up doing more harm than good.
Republican/MAGA AND Democrat/LEFTIST radicalization is the real problem of our times. The two sides continue to radicalize each other. And our universities are just one of many casualties.
Waaahhh, no one agrees that wokeism is terrible. Boooorrrrriiiiinnnngggg.
No, Leo is right--if you follow the right threads on twitter, there are litterally *several* examples of the things he is complaining about. That means that there could be *dozens more* out there unreported among the nearly 6000 colleges and universities in our nation of 19 million college students and 332 million residents.
Plainly, Leo is 100% not-crazy when he concludes that the entirety of academia in this country is silently terrorized by wokism into nefariously doing something or other.
Lol
@aldoushickman:
The entire California Community College system, for example, now explicitly requires all of its faculty and staff to accept, evangelize, teach, and practice anti-racism. Otherwise they will be fired (or, in academic terms, denied tenure).
This is one of the largest school systems in world history, and it has publicly and explicitly abandoned academic freedom and embraced ideological extremism.
If you refuse to acknowledge this kind of obvious fanaticism when it's practiced by your own side, you are a very serious part of the polarization problem our country is facing.
Also, this is an ignorant and misleading thing to say:
"if you follow the right threads on twitter, there are literally *several* examples of the things he is complaining about"
There are indeed conservative threads on twitter complaining about the problems in Modern Leftist academia.
There are ALSO a lot of LIBERAL twitter threads, columnists, substackers, and bloggers complaining about the same thing. But, as I've said, Liberals no longer have a voice on campus; it's only Leftists there.
So you have to have your head buried very deeply underground to honestly believe that it's only conservatives complaining about our colleges and universities. Please try harder.
"anti-racism" is (in your own words) "ideological extremism"?!?
Yes, that is actually how Leo sees things.
More Nobel Prize winners at American universities; five of the top seven: https://ischoolconnect.com/blog/top-universities-with-most-nobel-prize-winners/
And by the way, any time you want to support your opinions with actual *facts*, or *data*, or *statistics*, feel free. Otherwise, I’ll continue to treat you as the fatuous blowhard as which you present.
We need to look to Kanye West when he said "George Bush doesn't care about Black people." during the Katrina fund raiser. There is no reason other than they don't like Democrats. If F Joe Biden didn't prove to the left that no one will ever appease the right than nothing will. I mean it's Joe old white man Biden the most centrist Democrat ever. The left needs to stop trying to read the tea leaves trying looking for something we can do differently. Liberals are to Republicans what people of color are to a Klansman. There is no rational reason and there is nothing liberals can do to change it. It is self evident to Republicans that everything Joe Biden does is wrong because Joe Biden is a liberal. It is just known.
@Wichitawstraw:
I think you make some accurate observations when you describe the way modern Republicans demonize the Left.
A few points, however. First of all, there are, in fact, some serious problems with the modern Left. We have carelessly provided republicans with legitimate ammunition against us.
Men on female sports teams (because they self identify as women)? Racial hiring quotas (in the name of antiracist equity)? Liberal colleges and universities that explicitly endorse favored ideologies (such as the antisemitic religion known as DEI) as opposed to academic freedom?
All of those problems are real, they are all the fault of Liberal/Leftists, and they are all overwhelmingly unpopular not just with Republicans but with clear majorities of the adult population.
Another point: Republicans aren’t the only ones who demonize their opponents. The Left does it too. Have you ever looked at the DaikyKos website? It’s a passionate hate-fest.
And, sure, we can claim we have legitimate reasons to condemn republicans. But, as already indicated, they can claim legitimate reasons for demonizing us as well.
Both sides (yes, I said “both sides”) have radical elements. And both sides are part of the problem. And both sides need to get their own radicals under control.
"Men on female sports teams"
I love how this is your first example of a "serious problem." Absolutely fuck-all depends on who plays what on fucking sports teams--sports are either an entertainment industry employing nearly nobody, or something that kids play as a pastime.
You're engaging in the equivalent of not merely kvetching about, say, a trans man getting a best supporting actor nomination, but demanding that everybody regard it as a Serious Problem and freaking out when most people respond with "y'know, this really does not impact my life one iota--please stop bringing it up all the time."
Is Leo new around here? He's quite a live wire.
No, he shows up here now and then. And his schtick is always the same: write a few sentences pretending to be balanced, and then conclude, "See? Republicans are right."
He has said a few things that make me suspect he is a white supremacist, but he is smart enough not to be obvious about that around here.
Yes.
Not sure where you got from my post that the left does nothing wrong - there is plenty the left does wrong, but fixing them won't change the perception of people who have an opinion on what shoes M&M's should wear. All the things you mentioned could be fixed tomorrow and the outrage machine will just crank up a new outrage.
And yes both sides have radical elements. The difference is on the left they mostly run student organizations and some non-profits. On the right they are Speaker of the House and the presumptive nominee for President.
@Wichitawstraw:
Sorry, but this is just uninformed; you're simply wrong and there's no two ways about it:
"The difference is on the left they mostly run student organizations and some non-profits. On the right they are Speaker of the House and the presumptive nominee for President."
The Leftists control academia, publishing, journalism, and most if not all major TV and Hollywood studios. They also wield significant influence in the Democratic party.
Just ask yourself how free Joe Biden is to publicly state overwhelmingly popular positions like these: people should be judged on their own merits instead of on their immutable traits like race, structural racism does not in fact contaminate every aspect of society (nor does it explain every kind of demographic disparity), and our country should aim for equality of opportunity rather than equity of outcome.
All of those statements would help him win a national election for President, but if he said any of them he would be utterly denounced, nonstop for weeks if not months, by every academic, every mainstream newspaper, and most if not all of the activists in his own party.
The idea that the ideological extremists on the Left have no influence is an absurdly false excuse that Dems trot out as yet another attempt to dodge the problems on their own side. Get over it.
Like most political errors, it's FOX/GOP. Misquoting Churchill - Never in the field of human history have so many been so pissed about so little.
Two things. First, Joe Biden has been tougher on China than any American president in recent memory. What do Quinn and folks like him want?
Obviously what "they want" is to make Biden a one termer, hence their constant lies about Joe's record.
I thought Jimmy was a former infantry officer with a bone to pick with the higher-ups, speaking from a position of some authority.
This is Jimmy Quinn.
https://www.nationalreview.com/author/jimmy-quinn/
Wonder if he shaves every day.
Heehee.
If we descend into autocracy, well, that's the end of the democratic experiment and I fully expect the US to break up along regional blue state clusters.
I *demand* a way to upvote posts and comments here. What am I [paying] for anyway?!? [And how the hell do I italicize, instead of the inadequate *[word or phrase]*??
Use the HTML hashtag <em>. Be sure to end italicization with </em>. Anything between those will be italicized
Like this.
It's received wisdom on the right that the president is a bought-and-paid-for puppet of the CCP, who has behaved towards Xi with craven weakness. Expecting them to support this core belief with evidence and rational argument simply demonstrates a complete failure to understand their mental processes.
The conservative "intellectuals" are the same people who complain the economy is in the shitter while they watched their stock portfolio climb 20% in 18 months.
Calling the lying liars liars is mostly spitting in the wind. They don't care. They aeren't arguing over FACTS, Kevin, they are selling advertising. That's literally everything.
I think what Quinn wants is right there in his statement. He wants the country run by people who don' t have nice resumes or Ivy League degrees. In other words, he wants affirmative action for people who don't do well on standardized tests. Bannon. Hannity. etc.