From the right: Obama’s Echo Chamber Lives On

After President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, notes Matthew Continetti at Commentary, news broadcasts were a veritable reunion for the Obama administration’s “echo chamber” — former adviser Ben Rhodes’ term for the president’s credulous fellow travelers in the media who helped push his Iran deal.. NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC and CNN all brought on guests to push the anti-Israel line, sensing a direct attack on Barack Obama, whose UN resolution on his way out the door took aim at Jewish rights in Jerusalem’s holy sites. Says Continetti, “The objective was to discredit and undermine President Trump’s policy while isolating the conservative government of Israel,” not to state facts. It was a reminder that “whatever nonsense President Obama and his allies say today, the press will echo tomorrow.”

From the left: Alabama Race Boosts Pro-Choicers

Christina Cauterucci thinks there’s a key lesson Democrats can learn from Doug Jones’ victory over Roy Moore in Alabama: “Red-state abortion politics are not the intractable obstacle center-left partisans believe them to be.” Writing at Slate, Cauterucci points out that Moore ran hard on anti-abortion politics in large part because that was the issue on which Jones was farthest to his left, and Alabama is a socially conservative state. But it didn’t work, and one reason, Cauterucci thinks, is because Jones’ refusal to moderate on the issue didn’t dampen enthusiasm from the liberal base, which “made it possible for progressives to feel good about backing him with their money and volunteer hours. Black voters, who support abortion rights by wider margins than whites, played a major role in Jones’ victory.”

Culture file: No, ‘Simpsons’ Character Isn’t Problematic

A new film by Asian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu, “The Problem With Apu,” takes aim at the cultural stereotypes reinforced by the beloved “Simpsons” character. But in fact, writes Liel Liebovitz at Tablet, the show is chock-full of such ethnic caricatures. And whether you find them problematic probably depends on (in the words of the British journalist David Goodhart) if you see America as “a somewhere or an anywhere.” Liebovitz explains: “If you think America is a somewhere — a specific place with a specific culture and specific traditions — you likely don’t care very much about such things. Somewheres look at” those characters “and understand that they are, first and foremost, Americans, no matter their ethnicity or their sexual orientation or even their religion.” Only those who believe all places are interchangeable see self-effacing stereotypes as “a great threat to the egalitarian idyll to which we must all strive.”

Centrist: Inside the Campus Outrage Machine

Identity politics is at the heart of the campus cancer, Jonathan Haidt argues at City Journal. Not all identity politics is bad: think Martin Luther King Jr. But the modern emphasis on “intersectionality” — the combination of racist, sexist and other prejudices — is devastating: “A funny thing happens when you take young human beings, whose minds evolved for tribal warfare and us/them thinking, and you fill those minds full of binary dimensions. . . . You turn on their ancient tribal circuits, preparing them for battle.” Students taught to “prioritize social justice over the disinterested pursuit of truth are given just one lens — power — and told to apply it to all situations. . . This is not an education. This is induction into a cult.”

‘Liberaltarian’: The Case for a Universal Basic Income
Dalibor Rohac at The American Interest points to a reform that could restore upward economic mobility while protecting social cohesion from the “creative destruction” of capitalism: A vast shakeup of existing regulation that favor vested interests, paired with “a strong and generous social safety net, which will not let anyone slip through the cracks.” This means replacing the entire welfare state with a Universal Basic Income — a minimum payment to all. It might cost more, but: “A political bargain that increases government welfare spending — while also boosting the growth rate of the economy — might very well be worth it.”