Conservative: Dems’ Coalition of the Self-Defeating
A recent Wall Street Journal-NBC poll suggests the only energy in either the Republican or Democratic parties “is coming from people, policies, and positions that almost the whole country hates,” according to Noemie Emery in the Washington Examiner. Turns out a large slice of the public, by equal margins, views both sides as “insane” and out of the mainstream. Unlike the GOP, though, Democrats “hit a sudden red light at the recent election and proceeded to fall off a cliff.” And it happened precisely when the celebrity- and activist-driven Resistance “emerged as the face and the voice and the life of the party.” A “young, rich and cocky” base has put “the demands of the race-gender lobbies over most voters’ more mundane concerns.” And, she adds, “the damage gets worse every day.”
Iconoclast: Children Are Being Euthanized in Belgium
Deliberately taking the life of a small child, even a terminally ill one who wants to end his or her suffering, is illegal everywhere — except Belgium, notes Charles Lane at The Washington Post. In 2016 and 2017, according to a new report, Belgian physicians “gave lethal injections to three children under 18” who’d asked for them. Two of the children were a 9-year-old with a brain tumor and an 11-year-old with cystic fibrosis. Everywhere else, it’s presumed “absurd to grant ultimate medical autonomy to someone too young to vote or legally consent to sex.” But in Belgium, “a kind of libertarian technocracy has conquered these qualms.” Indeed, euthanasia advocates claim denying children this right is discriminatory.
Economist: Are Americans Ready for Socialism’s Bill?
Democratic socialism may be “having its moment” with voters, but Brian Riedl at Vox predicts it will face resistance not only from lawmakers “but from basic math.” That’s because the democratic socialist agenda of free college, single-payer health care, guaranteed jobs and more “would require astonishingly high expenditures that would cause the federal deficit to skyrocket.” Examples: Medicare for All’s cost has been pegged at $32 trillion over the next decade; free college at $807 billion over the same period and 12 weeks of paid family leave at $270 billion. Then there’s the proposal for a guaranteed job for everyone at $15 an hour plus benefits. Cost: $6.8 trillion over 10 years, and that’s probably low. Paying for it means crippling, Europe-style taxes. Because “even their revolution can’t repeal the laws of math.”
Foreign desk: Sanctions Miss Shot To Help Iran’s People
In light of growing anti-government protests in Iran, the Trump administration might have wanted to link the re-imposition of sanctions to the struggles of that nation’s freedom movement. But as Bloomberg’s Eli Lake argues, the new punishments instead “are blunt weapons that punish the entire Iranian economy, as opposed to more narrow measures that punish the regime.” Yes, they will “accomplish an important objective in depriving Iran’s treasury the funds it uses to finance its proxy forces in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.” But average Iranians will suffer, too. That’s why Washington should consider more targeted sanctions, like penalties against “the umbrella organization that controls the regime’s domestic and foreign propaganda.” Moreover, the president should send “an important signal to the Iranian people” and publicly echo Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s demand for domestic reforms.
From the right: Root Cause of Chicago’s Urban Violence
Even those accustomed to high casualty figures in Chicago are appalled by last weekend’s: 72 people shot, 10 fatally. Those are “downright massacre-level” numbers, declares Monica Showalter at American Thinker. All this violence is being spurred by urban gangs, police say. Yet as a 2012 Chicago magazine article reported, gangs and Chicago Democrats are engaged in “an unholy alliance.” Indeed, “Democratic politicians sidle up to gang leaders for votes and use their thugs as substitutes for their political organizations,” muscling voters to the polls. “Gang leaders in turn make demands of politicians for protection from police and get flows of city funds,” generally as “jobs for youth” city subcontractors.” Says Showalter: “Democrats have created this gang-hell bacchanal of murder, unknown in few places outside Caracas.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
