American Affairs: Why a New Policy Journal?

Social discord, frequently inflamed by proliferating versions of identity politics, is becoming more prevalent.

.. what if public discontent is a reasonable response to a misguided and complacent elite consensus?

.. American political theatre stages ever shriller battles over increasingly trivial matters.

.. We believe that recognizing failures and encouraging new ideas are not betrayals of American “optimism” but are instead healthier expressions of it.

.. Today, the celebration of “disruptive” technological innovation is virtually unanimous. Why then is corporate and government investment in basic research in decline? Why is productivity stagnating?

.. we are told that more and more jobs will be lost to automation, and that the “new economy” will be a highly bifurcated service economy. But if “average” is truly over, what does that mean for an American republic predicated on a strong and independent middle class

.. Yet the most conspicuous global phenomenon of the present time would appear to be the resurgence of nationalism

.. Can nationalism be leavened by justice—or even be essential to it—rather than being abandoned to its worst expressions?

.. Was meritocracy fated to produce social stratification? Or are we privileging certain forms of merit while excluding others?

.. Have the permanent campaigns of identity politics on the left and the “culture wars” on the right concealed the true content of our common citizenship?

.. The promise of America is no longer being realized as it once was. Revival and realignment are critically needed.

How conservatism is changing in the Trump era

The 1970s saw the proliferation of single-issue interest groups that constituted the New Right. The first Conservative Political Action Conference was held in 1973. In 1977, a year after losing the Republican nomination to incumbent Gerald Ford, Reagan addressed the conference. “The new Republican party I am speaking about,” he said, “is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat, and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism.”

.. American Affairs got its start as a blog, the Journal of American Greatness, whose objective was to provide, in the words of its most famous contributor, “a sensible, coherent Trumpism.”

.. It is not Trumpism but this larger concept that needs to be made sensible and coherent. I am speaking of nationalism.

.. It is not Trumpism but this larger concept that needs to be made sensible and coherent. I am speaking of nationalism.

.. When the Cold War ended, Mitchell writes, victorious elites in Washington, London, and Brussels began constructing a world where attachments to national identity would be attenuated or even severed. One would belong to a group above the nation — be a “citizen of the world,” an employee of a multinational corporation or NGO, a partisan of Davos, a subject of the EU — or to a hyphenated group below it.

.. Increasingly, power is shifted away from individuals elected to represent the political community toward unelected officials qualified to hold the positions responsible for administering the government — that is, providing for consumption. Like all managers, they derive their power from the administrative expertise and credentials that qualify them for office rather than from democratic legitimacy. They are accountable, that is, not to the political community but to the other managers that define their qualifications.

.. This lack of accountability has been highlighted again and again over the last 16 years. First 9/11 happened and no one was fired. Then Saddam turned out not to have had WMD and no one was fired. The economy came close to collapse — and the banks were bailed out.

.. This lack of accountability has been highlighted again and again over the last 16 years. First 9/11 happened and no one was fired. Then Saddam turned out not to have had WMD and no one was fired. The economy came close to collapse — and the banks were bailed out.

America Is Already Paying for the Wall With Mexico

Trump now faces a southern neighbor largely united in its anti-U.S. sentiment. This sentiment is not primarily moved by his intention to renegotiate NAFTA; or his racist, anti-Mexican rhetoric; or even by the idea of the wall itself, which anyone who has actually been to the U.S.-Mexico border knows is patently absurd given the topography along the 2,000-odd mile length of the border—not to mention the large swathes of protected or privately owned land there. The sentiment, which led every single political leader in Mexico to demand that President Peña Nieto cancel his trip to Washington, comes from the indignity of the notion that Mexico will somehow pay for the wall.

.. Gratuitously bashing Mexico and Mexican immigrants plays well with Trump’s base, and in his ignorance, he seems to believe he can do it without consequences.

.. As Mexico prepares for a presidential election in 2018, every candidate worth his or her salt will try to outdo the competitors in anti-U.S. posturing. They will promise to expel armed U.S. law-enforcement personnel from Mexico, to legalize drugs, to allow Central American migrants to reach the U.S. border, to stop sharing water with drought-ravaged border states.

.. From an early age, every Mexican is taught that Mexico lost half its territory to its imperialist northern neighbor. Ask any Mexican child and they will name all six “Niños Heroes,” young cadets who died defending Chapultepec castle from the invading U.S. forces in 1847.

.. We will just as soon suffer hardship, or even death, than be submitted to humiliation from the U.S.

.. When Trump attacks Mexico, when he blithely says that Mexico will pay for the wall, he is not pre-conditioning a negotiating counterpart. Instead, he is undoing years of patient diplomacy and riling up a long-dormant Mexican nationalism

.. In essence, Trump is limiting the Mexican president’s range of negotiation, because any concession will now be seen as a sign of weakness, a loss of pride, an attack on our sovereignty.

.. even if both presidents meet and smile and agree to work together, the sentiments of nationalism and mistrust wrought by Trump will permeate throughout the bureaucracy and will be hard to eradicate. Expect less bilateral cooperation in the future, less information-sharing, and less goodwill, all because of Trump’s wall. Mexico would just as soon suffer economic hardship than pay for something so stupid, so offensive, and so useless. If you don’t believe me, go to Mexico and see the monuments we erect to the Niños Heroes for giving up their lives resisting the U.S. invasion.