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November 2017

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Communism’s Long Shadow Over India The Bolshevik revolution helped disfigure the country’s economic imagination.By Sadanand Dhume

By on November 17th, 2017

As the world marks the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, our attention has naturally turned to how communism ravaged the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European vassals. But the ideology also cast a shadow outside the communist world. In terms of the sheer number of people affected, India suffered more than any noncommunist country. Overcoming this poisonous legacy remains a work in progress.

Of course, democratic India witnessed no Soviet-style show trials or gulags. There is no modern Indian equivalent of China’s brutal Cultural Revolution or Great Leap Forward. Nothing in independent India’s experience approaches the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

But though India may have been spared the worst of communist excesses, it nonetheless paid a price for the ideology’s rise to global prominence. Simply put, communism helped disfigure India’s economic imagination. If India still houses 268 million people who earn less than $1.90 a day—the World Bank’s official estimate for poverty—at least part of the blame belongs to politicians besotted by the Soviet experiment before it finally collapsed.

Lenin’s revolution had an impact on India even before its independence from Britain in 1947. Twenty years earlier, Jawaharlal Nehru, at the time an up-and-coming leader in the Congress Party, visited Moscow for the 10th anniversary of the revolution. He later wrote: “I had no doubt that the Soviet Revolution had advanced human society by a great leap and had lit a bright flame that could not be smothered.”

Though himself a Fabian socialist, a worldview he picked up as a student in Britain, Nehru freely acknowledged the impact of communism on his economic thinking. After independence, with Nehru at the helm, India enthusiastically embraced state planning. As the theory went, high-minded bureaucrats would make better economic decisions than grubby entrepreneurs.

Nehru decreed that lavishly funded state-owned companies would control “the commanding heights” of India’s economy. The phrase itself was borrowed from Lenin. In 1955 the ruling Congress Party declared its intent to establish “a socialistic pattern of society” in India.

Nehru’s fans point out that planning was all the rage in the 1950s. Communists were hardly the only ones enamored by it. This is true, but it glosses over prescient early critiques of India’s statist path by the University of Chicago’s Milton Friedman and the Indian free market economist B.R. Shenoy.

Over the first three decades of independence, Nehru, followed by his daughter Indira Gandhi, built one of the most dirigiste economies outside the communist world. Between them they nationalized aviation (1953), life insurance (1956), banks (1969) and coal mines (1973). CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s South China Sea Message He laid down some important markers on his Asia tour.

By on November 17th, 2017

An underreported theme of President Trump’s Asia tour was his attention to a regional flashpoint overshadowed by North Korea: the South China Sea. While Mr. Trump avoided public statements on the issue in China, he laid down important markers in Vietnam and the Philippines.

For five years China has escalated tensions by building military bases on artificial islands. Last year a United Nations tribunal found that China’s claim to territorial waters violated international law, but Beijing dismissed the judgment. Chinese vessels continue to harass the ships of the other six nations that claim territory and economic rights in the area.

In his Nov. 10 speech to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Danang, Mr. Trump cited territorial expansion as a threat to regional stability. “We must uphold principles that have benefitted all of us, like respect for the rule of law, individual rights, and freedom of navigation and overflight, including open shipping lanes. These principles create stability and build trust, security, and prosperity among like-minded nations,” he said.

The remarks are a direct challenge to China, which warns away ships and planes that pass near the land features it controls. Beijing reacted with outrage after the U.S. Navy conducted four “freedom of navigation operations” this year to assert the right to use waters claimed by China. An estimated $4.5 trillion in trade transits the South China Sea annually.

U.S.-Vietnam relations continue to warm as a result of China’s pressure. In July Vietnam abandoned oil exploration in its exclusive economic zone after threats from Beijing. Mr. Trump urged the Vietnamese to buy Patriot missiles, and the relationship could deepen into a strategic partnership.

In Manila, Mr. Trump and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte issued a joint statement that stressed “the importance of peacefully resolving disputes in the South China Sea, in accordance with international law, as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention.” Last year’s tribunal decision was based on the convention.

This is significant because Mr. Duterte previously offered to put the verdict aside and sought to cooperate with Beijing on oil-and-gas exploration. But China’s aggressive behavior is creating political pressure on Mr. Duterte to defend Philippine claims.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

At Williams, a Funny Way of ‘Listening’ A mob kept disrupting a speaker I invited to campus. The president calls that a success. By Zachary Wood

By on November 17th, 2017

‘You’re a racist white supremacist!” a Williams College student shouted at Christina Hoff Sommers, after she finished a recent campus talk on feminism.

To their credit, a handful of students responded to Ms. Sommers’s talk with challenging questions and cogent criticisms. But insults, rants and meltdowns consumed the majority of the question-and-answer session. As president of Uncomfortable Learning, a student group that invites controversial speakers to campus, I did my best to moderate.

After one student activist shouted “f— you!” at the speaker, an administrator seemed to affirm the heckler’s veto, signaling to me with a timeout gesture that it was time to end the event. In an effort to give as many students as possible a chance to engage the speaker, I approached the administrator and negotiated another 15 minutes for questions. But the remainder of the Q&A consisted mostly of bellicose rhetoric and long-winded stories of personal trauma, many of which had little to do with the topic at hand. Ms. Sommers, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and critic of third-wave feminism, endured such “questioning” for more than an hour.

As a college senior eager to engage in lively debate, I’m disappointed in students who used this event as an opportunity to taunt and disparage a speaker who made every effort to engage in good faith. Although many student activists at Williams seem hostile to conservative ideas, I believe all of my peers are capable of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

But college administrators aren’t much help. Since Ms. Sommers’s talk at Williams, my college’s president, Adam Falk, has characterized the event as a success. He wrote in the Washington Post this week that “our students listened closely, then responded with challenging questions and in some cases blunt critiques.”

That grossly misrepresents what happened. During Ms. Sommers’s talk, many students did not “listen closely.” Instead, they acted disruptively by mocking her and snickering derisively throughout her entire speech.

For each “challenging question,” there were at least five personal attacks, directed either at her or at me for inviting her. One student started yelling aggressively, blaming me for his parents’ qualms about his sexual orientation. His rant lasted for at least five minutes. Other students stood up and exclaimed that they were better than the speaker because she was “stupid, harmful, and white supremacist.”

Shortly after the event, I heard from several friends that many members of the Black Student Union want nothing to do with me or other black students associated with Uncomfortable Learning. I expect this kind of recrimination. But I can’t speak for other students who’ve told me they worry about how their interest in my group may affect their relationship with their black classmates.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Californians Worth Their SALT Tax reform passes the House, thanks to the support of 11 Golden State Republicans. Kimberley Strassel

By on November 17th, 2017

Hell hath no fury like a swamp creature scorned, and that ferocity was trained almost exclusively these past weeks on California House Republicans. The attack was a case study in standing up to entrenched special tax interests, and a lesson to other Republicans in the virtues of having the backbone to go on offense.

The House GOP passed its tax-reform bill on Thursday, and special medals of valor go to the 11 of 14 California Republicans who voted in support. The lobbyist brigade had joined with Democrats to target the Golden State delegation, seeing it as their best shot at peeling off enough Republicans to kill the bill. The assault was brutal, dishonest and all-out.

The National Association of Realtors, incensed that the nation’s millionaires might face limits on their mortgage-interest deduction, staged a “fly-in” to Washington, sending dozens of real-estate agents to harass Californians. The California Association of Realtors took out full-page ads in state and national newspapers, accusing Republicans of “punishing” state homeowners. National and California-based housing and building associations staged press conferences, online ad campaigns, petition drives—targeting everyone from Palmdale’s Steve Knight to the Central Valley’s David Valadao.

Gov. Jerry Brown unleashed on state Republicans, calling them “sheep” for supporting an end to most state and local tax, or SALT, deductions, and sending them letters deploring the tax hit on residents of high-tax California. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused them of “looting” the state. Her Senate counterpart, New York’s Chuck Schumer, warned of “political fallout” that would be “catastrophic.” Liberal groups, super PACs and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee unfurled a digital and TV ad blitz, charging the GOP with “eliminating middle-class tax deductions” to help the wealthy.

This is the reward for attempting to simplify the tax code—the forces of distortion scurry to protect their privileges. Democrats had hoped Republican infighting would tank tax reform. But as the GOP kept marching, the left and special interests instead turned to picking off blue-state Republicans with scare campaigns about mortgage interest and SALT. Most of the New York and New Jersey GOP contingencies quickly caved, which left the Californians to field all the incoming fire. Had they defected in the same manner as their Northeastern colleagues, the bill would have failed.

Their resistance instead shows the virtues of aggressively arguing the tax-reform case. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Ways and Means member Devin Nunes are Californians themselves, and they worked to keep the delegation armed against the disinformation. The press, for instance, continued to parrot Realtor-fed numbers about super-high house values, even though much of the state outside pricey San Francisco and Los Angeles would not be hit. In Central Valley districts like Mr. Nunes’s, approximately 98% of homes aren’t worth enough to be subject to the $500,000 proposed principal limit on the mortgage-interest deduction. Members made a point of repeating this. Some also reminded middle-class constituents that the left often notes the mortgage deduction mostly benefits wealthier Americans. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian state – enhancing or eroding US national security? Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on November 17th, 2017

The choice of business and social partners should be based – objectively – on a proven track record, not – subjectively – on unproven hopes and speculation.http://bit.ly/2hxkCik

Similarly, the assessment of the potential impact of the proposed Palestinian state on US national security should be based – objectively – on documented, systematic, consistent Palestinian walk (track record) since the 1930s, not – subjectively – on Palestinian talk and speculative scenarios.

Furthermore, an appraisal of the Arab attitude toward a proposed Palestinian state should be based – objectively – on the documented, systematic and consistent Arab walk since the mid-1950s, not – subjectively – on the Arab talk.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accord, the documented track record of the Palestinian political, religious and media establishment has featured K-12 hate-education and religious incitement. This constitutes the most authoritative reflection of the worldview, state-of-mind and strategic goals of the proposed Palestinian state.

Moreover, since the 1930s, the Palestinian track record has highlighted close ties with the enemies and adversaries of the US and the Free World.

For example, the Palestinian Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, whose memory and legacy are revered by the Palestinian Authority, embraced Nazi Germany, urging Muslims to join the Nazi military during World War II. Moreover, in 2017, Hitler is still glorified by Palestinian officials and media, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf is a best-seller in the Palestinian Authority.

During and following the end of WW2, the Palestinian leadership collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest intra-Muslim terror organization – which also aligned itself with Nazi Germany. In fact, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas were key leaders of the Palestinian cell of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo.

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