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In the past, the deaths of news organizations have jeopardized the prospect of a safe, well-informed, civically-engaged community

One 2014 paper found a substantial drop-off in civic engagement in both Seattle and Denver from 2008 to 2009, after both cities saw the closure of longstanding daily newspapers

The problem is that Zuckerberg lays out concrete ideas about how to build community on Facebook, how to encourage civic engagement, and how to improve the quality and inclusiveness of discourse—but he bakes in an assumption that news, which has always been subsidized by the advertising dollars his company now commands, will continue to feed into Facebook’s system at little to no cost to Facebook

In some ways, Zuckerberg is building a news organization without journalists. The uncomfortable truth for journalists, though, is that Facebook is much better at community building in the digital age than news organizations are.

Facebook is asking its users to act as unpaid publishers and curators of content

for context: The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun claims that its  circulation of 9 million copies daily makes it the largest in the world

Last quarter, Facebook counted nearly 1.9 billion monthly active users.

The New York Times had about 1.6 million digital subscribers as of last fall.

you can see how Zuckerberg is continuing to push Facebook’s hands-off approach to editorial responsibility. Facebook is outsourcing its decision-making power about what’s in your News Feed. Instead of the way a newspaper editor decides what’s on the front page, the user will decide.

“For those who don’t make a decision, the default will be whatever the majority of people in your region selected, like a referendum,” Zuckerberg wrote. Which makes some sense. There are all kinds of issues with an American company imposing its cultural values uniformly on 1.9 billion individuals all over the world.

In the United States, the combined daily prime time average viewership for CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC was 3.1 million people in 2015,

and now also to act as unpaid editors, volunteering to teach Facebook’s algorithmic editors how and when to surface the content Facebook does not pay for.

In other words, Facebook is building a global newsroom run by robot editors and its own readers.

he must also realize that what he’s building is a grave threat to journalism

Lip service to the crucial function of the Fourth Estate is not enough to sustain it. All of this is the news industry’s problem; not Zuckerberg’s. But it’s also a problem for anyone who believes in and relies on quality journalism to make sense of the world.

Zuckerberg doesn’t want Facebook to kill journalism as we know it. He really, really doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean he won’t.

This failing in the West’s economies is also a failing of economics

many people have long felt the desire to do something with their lives besides consuming goods and having leisure. They desire to participate in a community in which they can interact and develop.

Our prevailing political economy is blind to the very concept of inclusion; it does not map out any remedy for the deficiency

injustice of another sort. Workers in decent jobs view the economy as unjust if they or their children have virtually no chance of climbing to a higher rung in the socioeconomic ladder

though the injustices in the West’s economies are egregious, they ought not to be seen as a major cause of the productivity slowdowns and globalization. (For one thing, a slowdown of productivity started in the US in the mid-1960s and the sharp loss of manufacturing jobs to poorer countries occurred much later—from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.) Deeper causes must be at work.

justice is not everything that people need from their economy. They need an economy that is good as well as just. And for some decades, the Western economies have fallen short of any conception of a “good economy”—an economy offering a “good life,” or a life of “richness,” as some humanists call it

The good life as it is popularly conceived typically involves acquiring mastery in one’s work, thus gaining for oneself better terms—or means to rewards, whether material, like wealth, or nonmaterial—an experience we may call “prospering.”

As humanists and philosophers have conceived it, the good life involves using one’s imagination, exercising one’s creativity, taking fascinating journeys into the unknown, and acting on the world—an experience I call “flourishing.”

“Money is like blood. You need it to live but it isn’t the point of life.”4

prospering and flourishing became prevalent in the nineteenth century when, in Europe and America, economies emerged with the dynamism to generate their own innovation.

today’s standard economics. This economics, despite its sophistication in some respects, makes no room for economies in which people are imagining new products and using their creativity to build them. What is most fundamentally “wrong with economics” is that it takes such an economy to be the norm—to be “as good as it gets.”

In nineteenth-century Britain and America, and later Germany and France, a culture of exploration, experimentation, and ultimately innovation grew out of the individualism of the Renaissance, the vitalism of the Baroque era, and the expressionism of the Romantic period.

What made innovating so powerful in these economies was that it was not limited to elites. It permeated society from the less advantaged parts of the population on up.

High-enough wages, low-enough unemployment, and wide-enough access to engaging work are necessary for a “good-enough” economy—though far from sufficient. The material possibilities of the economy must be adequate for the nonmaterial possibilities to be widespread—the satisfactions of prospering and of flourishing through adventurous, creative, and even imaginative work.

prospering

ince around 1970, or earlier in some cases, most of the continental Western European economies have come to resemble more completely the mechanical model of standard economics. Most companies are highly efficient. Households, apart from the very low-paid or unemployed, have gone on saving

In most of Western Europe, economic dynamism is now at lows not seen, I would judge, since the advent of dynamism in the nineteenth century. Imagining and creating new products has almost disappeared from the continent

The bleak levels of both unemployment and job satisfaction in Europe are testimony to its dreary economies.

a recent survey of household attitudes found that, in “happiness,” the median scores in Spain (54), France (51), Italy (48), and Greece (37) are all below those in the upper half of the nations labeled “emerging”—Mexico (79), Venezuela (74), Brazil (73), Argentina (66), Vietnam (64), Colombia (64), China (59), Indonesia (58), Chile (58), and Malaysia (56)

The US economy is not much better. Two economists, Stanley Fischer and Assar Lindbeck, wrote of a “Great Productivity Slowdown,” which they saw as beginning in the late 1960s.11 The slowdown in the growth of capital and labor combined—what is called “total factor productivity”—is star

What is the mechanism of the slowdown in productivity

The plausible explanation of the syndrome in America—the productivity slowdown and the decline of job satisfaction, among other things—is a critical loss of indigenous innovation in the established industries like traditional manufacturing and services that was not nearly offset by the innovation that flowered in a few new industries

hat then caused this narrowing of innovation? No single explanation is persuasive. Yet two classes of explanations have the ring of truth. One points to suppression of innovation by vested interests

some professions, such as those in education and medicine, have instituted regulation and licensing to curb experimentation and change, thus dampening innovation

established corporations—their owners and stakeholders—and entire industries, using their lobbyists, have obtained regulations and patents that make it harder for new firms to gain entry into the market and to compete with incumbents.

The second explanation points to a new repression of potential innovators by families and schools. As the corporatist values of control, solidarity, and protection are invoked to prohibit innovation, traditional values of conservatism and materialism are often invoked to inhibit a young person from undertaking an innovation.

ow might Western nations gain—or regain—widespread prospering and flourishing? Taking concrete actions will not help much without fresh thinking: people must first grasp that standard economics is not a guide to flourishing—it is a tool only for efficiency.

Widespread flourishing in a nation requires an economy energized by its own homegrown innovation from the grassroots on up. For such innovation a nation must possess the dynamism to imagine and create the new—economic freedoms are not sufficient. And dynamism needs to be nourished with strong human values.

a reform of education stands out. The problem here is not a perceived mismatch between skills taught and skills in demand

The problem is that young people are not taught to see the economy as a place where participants may imagine new things, where entrepreneurs may want to build them and investors may venture to back some of them. It is essential to educate young people to this image of the economy.

It will also be essential that high schools and colleges expose students to the human values expressed in the masterpieces of Western literature, so that young people will want to seek economies offering imaginative and creative careers. Education systems must put students in touch with the humanities in order to fuel the human desire to conceive the new and perchance to achieve innovations

This reorientation of general education will have to be supported by a similar reorientation of economic education.

But although the violence went down, the reconciliation never occurred. According to the legend of the surge, Iraq’s collapse stems from Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops at the end of 2011. “If we’d had a residual force of 10,000 to 12,000,” Senator Lindsey Graham said last year, “I am totally convinced there would not have been a rise of al-Qaeda.” In reality, the prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, began persecuting the Sunnis—thus laying the groundwork for their embrace of ISIS—long before American troops departed the country. As early as 2007, writes Emma Sky, who advised both Petraeus and his successor, General Ray Odierno, “the U.S. military was frustrated by what they viewed as the schemes of Maliki and his inner circle to actively sabotage our efforts to draw Sunnis out of the insurgency.”

In the late 1970s, the legend of the congressional cutoff—and it was a legend; Congress reduced but never cut off South Vietnam’s aid—spurred the hawkish revival that helped elect Ronald Reagan. As we approach 2016, the legend of the surge is playing a similar role. Which is why it’s so important to understand that the legend is wrong.

The surge was not intended merely to reduce violence. Reducing violence was a means to a larger goal: political reconciliation. Only when Iraq’s Sunni and Shia Arabs and its Kurds all felt represented by the government would the country be safe from civil war. As a senior administration official told journalists the day Bush announced the surge, “The purpose of all this is to get the violence in Baghdad down, get control of the situation and the sectarian violence, because now, without it, the reconciliation that everybody knows in the long term is the key to getting security in the country—the reconciliation will not happen.”

The legend of the surge has become this era’s equivalent of the legend that America was winning in Vietnam until, in the words of Richard Nixon’s former defense secretary Melvin Laird, “Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975.”

One day, Republicans will resume the painful work they began in 2006—the work of reconciling conservative attitudes with the limits of American power. Let’s hope they don’t do too much damage before that day comes.

These errors came well before Obama’s decision to remove American troops at the end of 2011. The fact is, the U.S. failed to stop Maliki’s slide into sectarian tyranny even when it still had 100,000 troops patrolling Iraqi soil. That’s because America had already lost much of its leverage. Once the surge succeeded in reducing violence, Maliki no longer needed American troops to keep him in power

The problem with the legend of the surge is that it reproduces the very hubris that led America into Iraq in the first place. In 2003, the Bush administration believed it could shatter the Iraqi state and then quickly and cheaply construct a new one that was stable, liberal, democratic, and loyal to the United States. By 2006, many conservatives had realized that was a fantasy

in 2007 and 2008, through a series of bold innovations, the United States military bribed, cajoled, and bludgeoned Iraqis into multiple cease-fires. The Iraqi state was still broken; its new ruling elite showed little of the political magnanimity necessary to reconstruct it in an inclusive fashion. And the Band-Aids that Petraeus and his troops had courageously affixed began peeling off almost immediately. Nonetheless, Republicans today say the Iraq War was won, and would have remained won, had the U.S. left 10,000 troops in the country after 2011.

the same wild overestimation of American power that fueled the war in Iraq now fuels the right’s opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran. To hear hawks tell it, the United States can scuttle the current deal, intensify sanctions, threaten war, and—presto—Tehran will capitulate. But Iranians have been living under the threat of attacks from America or Israel for more than a decade now. And British and German diplomats have warned that if the U.S. Congress torpedoes the agreement, sanctions pressure on Iran will go not up but down, as countries that have lost billions by limiting their trade with Tehran stop doing so.

The tragedy of post-surge Iraq has its roots in America’s failure to make the Iraqi government more inclusive—a failure that began under Bush and deepened under Obama

Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon called the president’s Iraq policy “absurd” if not “criminal.” George Will, the dean of conservative columnists, deemed neoconservatism a “spectacularly misnamed radicalism” that true conservatives should disdain.

both men believe that Obama's pursuit of a deal is not Chamberlain-like, but instead a regional necessity—so long as Iran is kept at least a year away from nuclear breakout.

All options for me are still on the table,” including the military option. But when asked if a nuclear Iran posed an "existential threat," he demurred: "It is a big threat. That’s enough.

Goldberg: Come to this large question of the Labor Party. Why is the Labor Party in such a diminished state? Where did it go wrong?

For a long time, we were members in coalitions of other leaders. We kind of were erased of our identity. It took us time to recover, and we also lost touch with new groups in society while taking the role and demanding to be part of it. For example, the Russian immigration of a million people

Add to it other groups. The Arab population—they gave 96 or 98 percent support to Ehud Barak.

Couple it with the fact that there's a young generation who took over, who's coming in, who's voting, and they don't remember the legacy of Labor. And add to that the fact that even within that young generation, or the general public at large, we were viewed as giving up too quickly to the Palestinians or the Arabs.

The fact that there is no connection, no discussion, no discourse or no trust between the leaders, is adverse to the ability to reach an agreement. Yesterday morning I had breakfast with Gerry Adams, the leader of the [Irish Republican Army's political wing] Sinn Fein. May I remind you he was an outcast? He came to Israel and Palestine. I know him. And we had breakfast. And I said to him, “Gerry, could you tell me, what was the moment of truth, that all of a sudden you guys moved?” And he said, “When we all came to realize that we won't achieve it in any other way—both sides.”

Goldberg: Israel is quite obviously a Jewish state. What's so bad about passing a law that says, Israel is a Jewish state? Herzog: I will explain the following and I said it in the floor in the parliament when I debated with Netanyahu last week. I said that when it comes to the deal with the Palestinians, in the final-status moments, I think it's correct to say that both states are nation-states, that Palestine will be the nation-state of the Palestinian people and Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people, as it is derived from the November [19]47 UN Partition Plan of Resolution. But this has nothing to do with what's within Israel. Within Israel, all citizens must feel they are equal, not only to say it, but they must feel it. And coming forward with this discourse, on Jewish state, treads on racist undertones, makes a feeling that somebody will be preferred on the other. The way a majority treats a minority is essential to the well-being of our society. The Arab community in Israel is 20 percent. It's comprised of all denominations of Christianity and Islam. Fascinating community—like all other communities in Israel, non-homogeneous at all. Many of them want to be part of an inclusiveness in the Israeli public life all throughout, and there are many who want to be secessionists. Our duty is to be inclusive, if you want to protect the well-being of the state. And to make anybody feel, in any form or manner, that he is not that, is not only a huge mistake; it's against the basic inherent declaration of independence of the state of Israel, which is our Magna Carta.

It depends on building trust. It depends on confidence-building measures. It depends on being innovative, bold, and it depends on radiating to the people that there is hope. The situation that we see right now is so devastating because there's a feeling of lack of hope. There's a despair feeling and most worrisome of all is the unleashing of feelings of religious hatred that is so dangerous to all of us, turning it into religious war.

I speak a lot to Abu Mazen, and I said to Abu Mazen, “People say that even if I negotiate with you, you'll never make peace with us.” And he laughed, and he said, “I'm sure we can reach an agreement.”

I believe in freezing settlement construction outside the blocs as part of confidence-building measures. But it should be part of a plan that Israel presents. And this plan should of course take into account, most importantly, the basic inherent security needs of the state of Israel.

I do believe however, unequivocally and from the bottom of my heart, that since it's a must, it's a must under all circumstances, to separate from the Palestinians, that if it fails, we will have to take steps that define our borders in a clearer way.

There are ways, even if you don't negotiate, you can coordinate. Even if you can freeze settlement construction as I mentioned. You can do steps that say, I gave priority to that area and not the other. But I think it's a mistake that we already assume that it's over. It's part of the tragedy that unfolds in front of our eyes. It is not true, I'm telling you absolutely. It is possible, absolutely possible still, to make peace with the Palestinians.

Goldberg: Well, I've heard people on the right in Israel talk about replacing Europe, for instance, with a China-India policy. You don't think that Israel can pivot east? Herzog: There's nothing to compare, with all due respect to these important countries, economically they are very important countries. But we look at the record, look at the record in the United Nations. Look at the record in the UN Security Council. We have only really one trustworthy ally, which we really share affection and trust with on so many levels, and there's nothing to replace that.

Goldberg: The Palestinian Authority is a fairly weak and corrupt body. Obviously Palestine itself is divided between two competing and sometimes warring parties. Why do you—you seem to have more faith in the Palestinian Authority than the average Israeli. Herzog: Because they lead a moderate Palestinian political body. Let's be frank about it. We always love to judge everybody else's political systems. I'm not judgmental. If I have to take a decision between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, I believe in working with the Palestinian Authority, and I believe it's feasible.

And they are working. Look at the summer. Let's put it in perspective. Following the abduction of the three boys, which was a huge tragedy for Israelis and for everybody, the Palestinian Authority functioned properly. They coordinated with us [in our] efforts to find their whereabouts. They handled the situation in calming it down, despite the fact that there were many Israeli operations on the ground. Then came Protective Edge in the summer in Gaza, so before kind of always, everybody loves to term them as weak. So far, Abu Mazen survived four or five Israeli prime ministers to the best of my recollection

Goldberg: You are prime minister—what is your settlement policy? Herzog: My settlement policy first and foremost is based on the famous [Clinton] parameters. I believe in the blocs. I definitely believe in Gush Etzion [a major settlement bloc just outside Jerusalem] being part of Israel. It's essential for its security.

—what makes you think that now, which most people see as a very inauspicious time for a revised peace process—what makes you think that now is the time to try to move towards this two-state solution?

Herzog: It's not that now is the time. It has been a long drawn-out process. Don't forget Oslo. You're ignoring a lot of things. You're ignoring the Khartoum process of ‘68 and compare it to today. It's a totally different ball game, totally different arena. Today there is an intense interfacing and discourse between us and the Palestinians, not necessarily through the leaders.

my fear is, that within the Palestinian and Israeli camp, the peoples are losing faith in the possibility of separating and coming to the two-state solution. It was there, believe me, it was there. In 1994, during the Rabin era, there was a huge majority for it in both peoples. Unfortunately, terror on both sides led to the fact that we got into a stumbling block with no possibility of moving forward, and then we repeated it time and again.

Goldberg: Where does that come from?  Where does that impulse to suddenly slaughter a group of rabbis with a meat cleaver come from? Herzog: There's no justification of it, none whatsoever. It's against any moral, legal, or human values, period. And it's shocking. Nonetheless, when you look at the whole picture, we have to analyze it, and in order to neutralize these elements, we have to bring hope. And we cannot give up on that.

"I think I prefer others who have a better grasp in my view of the challenges we face," McCain said, adding that he will stay neutral through the duration of the primary.

suggesting he'd need to separate himself from the top of the ticket. Kinzinger, a Jeb Bush supporter, said he was "very concerned" about the rhetoric from Trump and what it would mean in a general election.

"I think his tone has been bad -- it's not an inclusive tone," said Kinzinger, a leading moderate. "Only 30-something percent, maybe of Americans identify as Republicans,

"What she ultimately is trying to do is talk about how do we have a message that's inspiring, inclusive, hopeful, optimistic and that unites the country," Ryan said.

They want to harness the energy of the grassroots that is powering the candidacies of Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz,

Nowhere is that more urgent than the race for the Senate, where 24 GOP seats are in contention, including in states like Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Florida. To stay in the majority,

Our presidential candidates are out there beating each other up at the moment, and that's going to solve itself at some point during the process,"

McConnell's remarks comments came after the choice of the GOP leader and House Speaker Ryan -- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley

"We don't want to have another President like this one who divides our country," Ryan told reporters.

North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a member in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said Haley was a "very articulate speaker, a very persuasive speaker."

I think the American people don't want that -- whether you are an unaffiliated voter, Democrat of Republican they want it to be about what affects them on Main Street not necessarily what affects those who end up in Washington, D.C."

"If Republicans are afraid to bring their standard-bearer's policies up for votes, Democrats will hold Republicans accountable by seeking floor votes on Trump's policies ourselves," Reid said.

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," McConnell said.

Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, an ally of party leaders, said congressional Republicans are very mindful that whoever the nominee is "going to be is the most important single factor in whether or not we retain majorities in the Senate and the House."

"telling everyone it's going to be 'awesome or great and huge' is not going to cut it all the way through November."

their own alternative health care reform proposal, a major overhaul of the tax code

But multiple members and aides said no decisions were made about whether the House and Senate will actually vote on new proposals they intend to unveil in 2016 to contrast with Democrats.

Trump would listen to their ideas, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California,

Still, by promoting conservative ideas, they believe, it will be enough to differentiate Republican lawmakers from the likes of Trump.

"What we are trying to do is ensure that our members are well-positioned to make their argument about why we need to continue to have a Republican majority,"

you can usefully combine these takes, and describe Bush nostalgia as a longing for something America used to have and doesn’t really any more — a ruling class that was widely (not universally, but more widely than today) deemed legitimate, and that inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.

we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

Those virtues included a spirit of noblesse oblige and personal austerity and piety that went beyond the thank-you notes and boat shoes and prep school chapel going — a spirit that trained the most privileged children for service, not just success, that sent men like Bush into combat alongside the sons of farmers and mechanics in the same way that it sent missionaries and diplomats abroad in the service of their churches and their country.

However, one of the lessons of the age of meritocracy is that building a more democratic and inclusive ruling class is harder than it looks, and even perhaps a contradiction in terms. You can get rid of the social registers and let women into your secret societies and

you still end up with something that is clearly a self-replicating upper class, a powerful elite, filling your schools and running your public institutions.

you even end up with an elite that literally uses the same strategy of exclusion that WASPs once used against Jews to preserve its particular definition of diversity from high-achieving Asians — with the only difference being that our elite is more determined to deceive itself about how and why it’s discriminating

certain of the old establishment’s vices were inherent to any elite, that meritocracy creates its own forms of exclusion

the WASPs had virtues that their successors have failed to inherit or revive

The WASP virtues also included a cosmopolitanism that was often more authentic than our own performative variety — a cosmopolitanism that coexisted with white man’s burden racism but also sometimes transcended it

The goal would have been to keep piety and discipline embedded in the culture of a place like Harvard, rather than the mix of performative self-righteousness and raw ambition that replaced them.

for every Brahmin bigot there was an Arabist or China hand or Hispanophile who understood the non-American world better than some of today’s shallow multiculturalists.

And somehow the combination of pious obligation joined to cosmopolitanism gave the old establishment a distinctive competence and effectiveness in statesmanship — one that from the late-19th century through the middle of the 1960s was arguably unmatched among the various imperial elites with whom our establishment contended

So as an American in the old dispensation, you didn’t have to like the establishment — and certainly its members were often eminently hateable — to prefer their leadership to many of the possible alternatives

And as an American today, you don’t have to miss everything about the WASPs, or particularly like their remaining heirs, to feel nostalgic for their competence

long with the establishment failure in Vietnam, which hastened the collapse of the old elite’s authority, there was also a loss of religious faith and cultural confidence, and a belief among the last generation of true WASPs that the emerging secular meritocracy would be morally and intellectually superior to their own style of elite

the WASP ascendancy did not simply fall; it pre-emptively dissolved itself.

its virtues were to some extent transferable to a more diverse society: The establishment had always been somewhat permeable to arrivistes,

in our era their admirable influence is still felt in figures as different as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney

In such a world the establishment would have still admitted more blacks, Jews, Catholics and Hispanics (and more women) to its ranks … but it would have done so as a self-consciously elite-crafting strategy, rather than under the pseudo-democratic auspices of the SAT and the high school resume and the dubious ideal of “merit.”

At the same time it would have retained both its historic religious faith (instead of exchanging Protestant rigor for a post-Christian Social Gospel and a soft pantheism) and its more self-denying culture (instead of letting all that wash away in the flood of boomer-era emotivism).

“Those who are mourning the passing of the old Establishment should mourn its many failures, too,” he writes. Which is fair enough: The old ruling class was bigoted and exclusive and often cruel, it had failures aplenty

it’s to look forward, and to suggest that our current elite might someday be reformed — or simply replaced — through the imitation of the old establishment's more pious and aristocratic spirit.

Right now, almost all the discussion of our meritocracy’s vices assumes the system’s basic post-WASP premises, and hopes that either more inclusion (the pro-diversity left’s fixation) or a greater emphasis on academic merit (the anti-affirmative right’s hobbyhorse) will cure our establishment’s all-too-apparent ills.

a more radical theory of the case, one proposed by Helen Andrews in a 2016 Hedgehog Review essay on meritocracy and its discontents:

The meritocracy is hardening into an aristocracy — so let it. Every society in history has had an elite, and what is an aristocracy but an elite that has put some care into making itself presentable? Allow the social forces that created this aristocracy to continue their work, and embrace the label

By all means this caste should admit as many worthy newcomers as is compatible with their sense of continuity. New brains, like new money, have been necessary to every ruling class, meritocratic or not

they must give up any illusion that such tinkering will make them representative of the country over which they preside. They are separate, parochial in their values, unique in their responsibilities. That is what makes them aristocratic.

If we would learn from their lost successes in our own era of misrule, reconsidering this idea — that a ruling class should acknowledge itself for what it really is, and act accordingly — might be a fruitful place to start.

Being tough on terrorism became a core conservative value that was expressed, in part, as support for Israel — specifically, as support for harsh Israeli policies toward the conflict. This also aligned with increasingly negative attitudes toward Muslims. And an atmosphere of us-versus-them politics equated supporting Israelis with opposing Palestinians.

Though George W. Bush, then the president, encouraged both inclusion of Muslims and neutrality on Israel, polarization pulled some conservatives toward a zero-sum view of the conflict, in which maximally opposing Palestinians became a matter of identity. Photo

This opened a gap between the identity politics of the Republican base and the policies of its leaders — precisely the sort of gap that Mr. Trump would exploit in his presidential primary bid. As he rose by saying what others would not, he supercharged the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s salience to identity issues among what would become his base.

Mr. Trump advocated severe restrictions on legal and illegal immigration, particularly from Muslim-majority countries whose citizens he said posed a threat. In doing so, the president aligned fear of demographic change with fear of terrorism.

These policies meet rising conservative demands that the United States abandon its traditional neutrality on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and instead side overtly with Israel

While some say pro-Israel groups are responsible for this shift, Mr. Trump, who has had an icy relationship with those groups, in fact appears to be following the Republican base. In 2014, 51 percent of Republicans said the United States should lean toward Israel in peace talks. That number has since grown to 58 percent.

Mr. Trump represents the culmination of a trend that pro-Israel groups resisted for years: the loss of Jewish support. Even as Jews grew more liberal, many supported strongly pro-Israel policies. But as “pro-Israel” becomes synonymous with “conservative Republican,” Jews are drifting away. They oppose moving the embassy by almost 3-to-1.

Party politics started this process. In 2015, Republicans invited Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s right-wing prime minister, to address Congress in opposition to Mr. Obama’s policies on Iran. Though intended to turn American Jews and others against Mr. Obama, it had the opposite effect, polarizing them against Mr. Netanyahu.

Mr. Trump has taken it drastically further. He has indulged hard-core conservative instincts to a degree that, deliberately or not, attracted support from a white nationalist fringe that also tends to be hostile to Jews.

He is moving the idea of being “pro-Israel” even further right, separating it even from the Jewish support that is ostensibly critical to Israel’s long-term survival.

But if there’s been a massive online campaign of progressive allyship with Jews, I’ve missed it. If corporate executives have sent out workplace memos expressing concern for the safety of Jewish employees, I’ve missed it. If academic associations have issued public letters denouncing the use of anti-Semitic tropes by pro-Palestinian activists, I’ve missed them.

It is especially despicable when Israel is singled out in ways that apply to no other country. To take just one example, when was the last time you heard of a campus demonstration or a call for boycotts and divestment in response to Turkey’s 47-year occupation of northern Cyprus or its routine bombardment, using American-made jets, of Kurdish militants in Iraq?

But, again, this doesn’t go far enough. The accusations made against Israel — stealing Palestinian land (despite the fact that Israel vacated the territory from which it was subsequently attacked) and wanton violence against Palestinian civilians, particularly children (despite the fact that Israel regularly warned its targets to vacate buildings before targeting them) — can’t help but make me think of ancient libels about Jewish greed and bloodlust.

This ought to be whistling loudly in the ears of progressives who claim to be horrified by every form of prejudice. Instead, they have indulged an anti-Israel movement that keeps descending into the crudest forms of anti-Semitism.

Progressives will have to come to their own reckoning about what to do about the burgeoning anti-Semitism in their midst. As for Jews, they should take the events of the last few days less as an outrage than as an omen.

Bukele in subsequent messages on Twitter noted that Bitcoin could be "the fastest growing way to transfer 6 billion dollars a year in remittances." He said that a big chunk of those money transfers were currently lost to intermediaries and with Bitcoin more than a million low-income families could benefit.

He also said 70% of El Salvador's population does not have a bank account and works in the informal economy. Bitcoin could improve financial inclusion, he said.

Experts including Mittelstadt, however, have said reinstating the draft might in fact help build a more inclusive society.

Despite playing an increasing role in the US military and filling combat roles, women are not required to register.

A more inclusive military draft … would compel everyone in the nation to stop and rethink about who we send to wars, how we fight – and why we fight them at all.

All American men aged 18 to 25 are required by law to register with the SSS. Many do so when applying for a driver’s license or applying for student loans. Those who do not register cannot receive federal financial aid or work for the federal government.

Should the US and Iran go to war, America’s fighting will be done by its volunteer military, about 1.3 million strong and dominated in the enlisted ranks by recruits from working-class and minority groups.

A return to the draft may remain unlikely, but the SSS says it is prepared to “rapidly provide personnel in a fair and equitable manner while managing an alternative service program for conscientious objectors”

As a former central banker, Rajan gives special attention to the community’s role in financial markets and goes so far as to defend long-ago prohibitions on usury.

On one page, Rajan recommends that “powers should stay at the most decentralized level consistent with their effective use,” but on the next he declares that “when inclusiveness goes up against localism, inclusiveness should always triumph.”

Rajan’s real aim seems to be movement “toward one borderless world,” with stronger communities a perhaps helpful means to that end

Mr. Friedman’s cramped vision enhanced the power of the stock market and silenced the voice of workers, leading to profound inequality.

Mr. Friedman’s adherents gained influence in government and the business community. At the same time as Mr. Friedman’s adherents disparaged government’s role, they sought enormous tax subsidies, greatly reducing the share of taxes that corporations paid.

The promise of vital legislative protections against the excesses of unconstrained capitalism — including the National Labor Relations Act, minimum wage laws, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, antitrust regulations and consumer safety laws, to name a few — were undercut by two generations of ceaseless attack.

The concerns Mr. Friedman lampooned as obsessions of the “contemporary crop of reformers” in 1970 remain urgent problems

As would be expected when business leaders were told not to worry about “providing employment,” wages stagnated and inequality grew.

In the past 50 years, instead of gains for stockholders and top management tracking gains for workers — as characterized by the period when Mr. Friedman wrote — the returns of our capitalist system have become skewed toward the haves.

From 1948 to 1979, worker productivity grew by 108.1 percent and wages grew by 93.2 percent, with the stock market growing by 603 percent.

As would be expected when corporations were told not to worry about “avoiding pollution,” they used their muscle to undermine environmental protection and to conceal the dangers of climate change

As would be expected when corporate leaders were told not to worry about “eliminating discrimination,” corporate political spending was used to help seat elected officials who opposed measures designed to reduce racial disparities in education, pay and wealth, and to support gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts.

By contrast, from 1979 to 2018, worker productivity rose by 69.6 percent, but the wealth created by these productivity gains went predominately to executives and stockholders. Worker pay rose by only 11.6 percent during this period, while compensation for chief executives grew by an enormous 940 percent and the stock market grew by 2,200 percent.

the entire future of humanity is now at risk.

To reverse the Friedman paradigm, companies should embrace an affirmative duty to stakeholders and society. This requires tangible, publicly articulated goals, such as paying living wages to their workers, respecting workers’ right to join a union, promoting racial and gender inclusion and pay equity, enhancing safety protocols, and reducing carbon emissions

In doing so, corporate leaders will also set an example that institutional investors should be required to follow in their own investing and voting policies.

But adopting a stakeholder-centric governance model is only half the battle. Business leaders must support the restoration of fair rules of the game by government; respect the need for strong and resilient public institutions to govern a complex society; pay their fair share of taxes; and stop using corporate funds to distort our nation’s political process

Mr. Friedman wrote the influential essay at a time when economic security was strong, as the New Deal’s principles produced widespread prosperity, reduced poverty and helped Black Americans take their first real strides toward economic inclusion

Since then, the United States has gone backward in economic equality and security — a situation that the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed for all to see

America’s business community should heed these lessons of history and help restore the ideals of fairness, equality and economic common sense that showed that a capitalist economy could work for the many.

The passage, and in particular its description of the year 1619 as “our true founding,” quickly became a flashpoint for controversy around the project. Critics on both the Left and Right took issue with the paper’s declared intention of displacing 1776 with the alternative date—a point that was also emphasized in the magazine feature’s graphics, showing the date of American independence crossed out and replaced by the date of the first slave ship’s arrival in Jamestown, Virginia.

But something changed as the historical controversies around the 1619 Project intensified in late 2019 and early 2020. A group of five distinguished historians took issue with Hannah-Jones’s lead essay, focusing on its historically unsupported claim that protecting slavery was a primary motive of the American revolutionaries when they broke away from Britain in 1776

Other details of the project soon came under scrutiny, revealing both errors of fact and dubious interpretations of evidence in other essays, such as Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project piece attempting to connect American capitalism with slavery.

Finally back in March, a historian who the Times recruited to fact-check Hannah-Jones’s essay revealed that she had warned the paper against publishing its claims about the motives of the American Revolution on account of their weak evidence. The 1619 Project’s editors ignored the advice.

the passage came to symbolize the Times’s blurring of historical analysis with editorial hyperbole. The announced intention of reframing the country’s origin date struck many readers across the political spectrum as an implicit repudiation of the American revolution and its underlying principles.

Rather than address this controversy directly, the Times—it now appears—decided to send it down the memory hole—the euphemized term for selectively editing inconvenient passages out of old newspaper reports in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984

Without announcement or correction, the newspaper quietly edited out the offending passage such that it now reads:

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Discovery of this edit came about earlier this week when Nikole Hannah-Jones went on CNN to deny that she had ever sought to displace 1776 with a new founding date of 1619. She repeated the point in a now-deleted tweet: “The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 was our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776.” It was not the first time that Hannah-Jones had tried to alter her self-depiction of the project’s aims on account of the controversial line

But this time the brazen rewriting of her own arguments proved too much. Hannah-Jones’s readers scoured her own Twitter feed and public statements over the previous year, unearthing multiple instances where she had in fact announced an intention to displace 1776 with 1619.

The foremost piece of evidence against Hannah-Jones’s spin, of course, came from the opening passage of from the Times’s own website where it originally announced its aim “to reframe the country’s history” around the year “1619 as our true founding.” When readers returned to that website to cite the line however, they discovered to their surprise that it was no longer there.

It wasn’t the only edit that the newspaper made to further conceal its previous denigration of 1776. Prompted by the discovery of the first deletion, Twitter users noticed another suspicious change to the project’s text. The print edition of the 1619 Project from August 2019 contained an introductory passage reading:

In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.

The website version of the 1619 Project now reads: In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed.

The appeal of this argument is its simplicity. You can tell if a place is enabling systemic racism merely by counting the people of color in it; and you can tell if a place isn’t by the same rubric. The drawback, of course, is that the world isn’t nearly as simple

On some measures, the NYT is already a mirror of NYC. Its staff is basically 50 - 50 on sex (with women a slight majority of all staff on the business side, and slight minority in editorial). And it’s 15 percent Asian on the business side, 10 percent in editorial, compared with 13.9 percent of NYC’s population. 

But its black percentage of staff — 10 percent in business, 9 percent in editorial — needs more than doubling to reflect demographics. Its Hispanic/Latino staff amount to only 8 percent in business and 5 percent in editorial, compared with 29 percent of New York City’s demographics, the worst discrepancy for any group

notice how this new goal obviously doesn’t reflect New York City’s demographics in many other ways. It draws overwhelmingly from the college educated, who account for only 37 percent of New Yorkers, leaving more than 60 percent of the city completed unreflected in the staffing.

We have no idea whether “white” people are Irish or Italian or Russian or Polish or Canadians in origin. Similarly, we do not know if “black” means African immigrants, or native black New Yorkers, or people from the Caribbean

Around 10 percent of staffers would have to be Republicans (and if the paper of record nationally were to reflect the country as a whole, and not just NYC, around 40 percent would have to be

Some 6 percent of the newsroom would also have to be Haredi or Orthodox Jews

48 percent of NYT employees would have to agree that religion is “very important” in their lives; and 33 percent would be Catholic.

Taking this proposal seriously, then, really does require explicit use of race in hiring, which is illegal, which is why the News Guild tweet and memo might end up causing some trouble if the policy is enforced.

It would also have to restrict itself to the literate, and, according to Literacy New York, 25 percent of people in Manhattan “lack basic prose literary skills” along with 37 percent in Brooklyn and 41 percent in the Bronx.

My point is that any attempt to make a specific institution entirely representative of the demographics of its location will founder on the sheer complexity of America’s demographic story and the nature of the institution itself

Journalism, for example, is not a profession sought by most people; it’s self-selecting for curious, trouble-making, querulous assholes who enjoy engaging with others and tracking down the truth (at least it used to be). There’s no reason this skillset or attitude will be spread evenly across populations

It seems, for example, that disproportionate numbers of Jews are drawn to it, from a culture of high literacy, intellectualism, and social activism. So why on earth shouldn’t they be over-represented? 

that’s true of other institutions too: are we to police Broadway to make sure that gays constitute only 4 percent of the employees? Or, say, nursing, to ensure that the sex balance is 50-50? Or a construction company for gender parity?

take publishing — an industry not far off what the New York Times does. 74 percent of its employees are women. Should there be a hiring freeze until the men catch up? 

The more you think about it, the more absurdly utopian the Kendi project turns out to be. That’s because its core assumption is that any demographic discrepancies between a profession or institution and its locale are entirely a function of oppression.

That’s how Kendi explains racial inequality in America, and specifically denies any alternative explanation.

So how is it that a white supremacist country has whites earning considerably less on average than Asian-Americans? How does Kendi explain the fact that the most successful minority group in America are Indian-Americans — with a median income nearly twice that of the national median?

Here’s a partial list of the national origins of US citizens whose median earnings are higher than that of white people in America: Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Pakistani, Iranian, Lebanese, Sri Lankan, Armenian, Hmong, Vietnamese.

But it is absurd to argue that racism is the sole reason for every racial difference in outcome in the extraordinarily diverse and constantly shifting racial demographics of New York City or the US

It’s true, of course, that historical injustices have deeply hurt African-Americans in particular in hobbling opportunity, which is why African-Americans who are descendants of slaves should be treated as an entirely separate case from all other racial categories. No other group has experienced anything like the toll of slavery, segregation and brutality that African-Americans have. This discrimination was enforced by the state and so the state has an obligation to make things right. 

You can argue that these groups are immigrants and self-selecting for those with higher IQs, education, motivation, and drive. It’s true. But notice that this argument cannot be deployed under the Kendi test: any inequality is a result of racism, remember?

In fact, to reduce all this complexity to a quick, crude check of race and sex to identify your fellow American is a kind of new racism itself.

It has taken off because we find it so easy to slip back into crude generalizations.

for all those reasons, attempting to categorize people in the crudest racial terms, and social engineering them into a just society where every institution looks like every other one, is such a nightmare waiting to happen. It’s a brutal, toxic, racist template being imposed on a dazzling varied and constantly shifting country.

this explicit reintroduction of crude racism under the guise of antiracism is already happening. How many institutions will it tear apart, and how much racial resentment will it foment, before it’s done? 

this cannot mean a return to the status quo ante. That would ignore the lessons of the 21st century — that neoconservatism’s desire to rule the world is a fantasy, and that zombie Reagonomics has been rendered irrelevant by its own success and unintended failures

What the right needs to do, quite simply, is to seize the mantle of cultural conservatism while moving sharply left on economics.

Here’s the gist of a platform I think could work. The GOP should drop the tax cut fixation, raise taxes on the wealthy, and experiment with UBI

It needs a workable healthcare policy which can insure everyone in the country, on Obamacare private sector lines. (Yes, get the fuck over Obamacare. It’s the most conservative way to achieve universal access to healthcare we have.

It has to promote an agenda of lower immigration as a boon to both successful racial integration and to raising working class wages.

It needs finally to acknowledge the reality of climate change and join the debate about how, rather than whether, to tackle it.

It has to figure out a China policy that is both protective of some US industries and firm on human rights.

It needs to protect religious freedom against the incursions of the cultural left.

And it needs to become a place where normie culture can live and thrive, where acknowledgment of America’s past failures doesn’t exclude pride in America’s great successes, and where the English language can still be plainly used.

No big need to change on judges (except finding qualified ones); and no reason either to lurch back to worrying about deficits in the current low-inflation environment.

I believe this right-of-center pragmatism has a great future. It was the core message behind the British Tories’ remarkable success in the 2019 election

The trouble, of course, is that GOP elites would have a hell of a time achieving this set of policies with its current membership. Damon Linker has a terrific piece about the problem of Republican voters most of whom “remain undaunted in their conviction that politics is primarily about the venting of grievances and the trolling of opponents. The dumber and angrier and more shameless, the better.”

I see no reason why someone else couldn’t shift it yet again — not back to pre-Trump but forward to a new fusion of nationalist realism, populist economics, and cultural conservatism. By cultural conservatism I don’t mean another round of the culture wars — but a defense of pride in one’s country, respect for tradition, and social stability. There is also, I suspect, a suppressed but real desire for the normality and calmness that Trump has eviscerated.

What I was trying to argue is that the roots of critical theory are fundamentally atheist, are very much concerned with this world alone, and have no place for mercy or redemption or the individual soul.

Christians who think they can simply adopt both are being somewhat naive. And yes, I feel the same way about “liberation theology” as well, however sympathetic the Pope now is.

It seems to me the logical outcome of a broad application of critical theory will be a wider revival of white supremacy. Where there’s no possibility of redemption, resistance becomes inevitable.

“Right now it’s about belonging to the community within the brand,” said Horowitz. “Before it was [about] fitting in. And there is a very, very big difference between belonging and fitting in. We no longer want people to change who they are just to fit in to be part of the brand. We want you to belong to the brand as you are.”

Abercrombie’s brand evolution mirrors the evolving sensibilities of the customers it hopes to dress. Inaccessibility is out; inclusivity is in.

Shoppers are no longer reliant on brands’ choice of models and marketing but can see for themselves what people just like them are wearing and what real people think of their clothes.

“TikTok has democratized the haul video, the outfit video,” said Rebecca Jennings, a Vox senior correspondent covering Internet culture. “If you were posting that on YouTube or Instagram, you would’ve had to build an audience and already be a content creator. But on TikTok, anyone can do that … [so] we’re seeing a lot more regular people’s clothing. It can spread fashion trends really, really fast.”

“We are owning it,” Corey Robinson, senior vice president of design and merchandising at Abercrombie, said of company’s past. “Because we wouldn’t have made these changes without it … And people are seeing that we’re changing, just like they change.”