One of the most notable but mostly uncovered political developments in recent years has been how enthusiastically many Religious Right leaders have embraced Russia’s anti-democratic president, former KGB official Vladimir Putin. It seems even more remarkable that the Republican Party’s presidential nominee has been lavishing praise on Putin even as Russia maneuvers to diminish America’s influence in the world. As president, Putin has consolidated his power through attacks on the independent media, the persecution of political opponents, and restrictions on civil society. He has annexed…
The Israeli Left Has Essentially Collapsed
Some research reveals an interesting pattern in Israeli history compared to other industrialized Western nations: the complete and utter collapse of the Israeli Left since the founding of Israel, and the steady ascendancy of the Israeli Right – and not an Anglophone-style milquetoast Right, but a nationalistic and religiously-inclined Right descended from militiamen and terrorists. Here’s my attempt to numerically chart the collapse of the Israeli Left: Israel’s proportional representation system has wrought a litany of factional, religious, regional, and ethnic parties since the country’s founding,…
When a Driverless Car Crashes, Should Passengers or Pedestrians Get Protected First?
Driverless cars pose a quandary when it comes to safety. These autonomous vehicles are programmed with a set of safety rules, and it is not hard to construct a scenario in which those rules come into conflict with each other. Suppose a driverless car must either hit a pedestrian or swerve in such a way that it crashes and harms its passengers. What should it be instructed to do? A newly published study co-authored by an MIT professor shows that the public is conflicted over…
Donald Trump Is the Candidate Conservative Intellectuals Conditioned Their Base to Want
It’s been said that societies elect the governments they deserve. That’s certainly the case with the American Right and Donald Trump. In spite of this, many Republicans have been beside themselves about the man for the past 12 months. According to his critics, the former reality-TV star is a gross departure from the conservative tradition. They couldn’t be more wrong. One group of Trump disparagers were so discontented with their future nominee that they vowed to found their own rump organization, the Renegade Party, in…
Negative Partisanship: Dislike of the Opposing Party Is a Big Factor in Voting
The 2012 election saw the highest levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting since the American National Election Studies began tracking American voting patterns in 1952. Over 90% of Democrats and Republicans, including voters who claimed to be independents but indicated that they leaned toward one party or the other, supported their party’s presidential candidate. Close to 90% supported their party’s House and Senate candidates as well, and 83% cast a straight-party ballot for president, House, and Senate. There is no reason to expect voting…
The Left Machine: Foundations and Elizabeth Warren
Part 1: Massive Foundations put billions into left wing activist campaigns, but nobody seems to notice. In part 1, I explained that left wing Foundations fund an enormous amount of research, activism and media — creating, promoting and covering their own political campaigns. In part 2, I will give you an example of how this works. Specifically, how Elizabeth Warren built her career on the kind of “sponsored” research that she criticizes today. Last September, Elizabeth Warren attacked Brooking’s scholar, Robert Litan over alleged “financial conflicts of interest” related to…
The Trump Victory Proves the GOP Is Fundamentally Broken
If 2012 was the presidential election in which data-driven journalism really came into its own, the 2016 Republican nomination contest has been the one in which the conventional wisdom has continually been shattered. Besides driving Republican officials to distraction, Donald Trump has been the bane of journalists from data geeks like Nate Silver and the New York Times’s Nate Cohn to more old school analysts like Ron Brownstein of National Journal. The former television star’s unorthodox background and brash demeanor has upended the conventional wisdom…
The Left Machine: Foundations and Government
Part 1: Left wing Foundations put billions into left wing activist campaigns, but nobody seems to notice. Part 2: How Foundations buy manufactured “research” from activist-academics like Elizabeth Warren. In part 1 of this series on the Foundations behind the Left, I mentioned that left wing Foundations sometimes collaborate with government agencies. Let’s look at one particular collaboration. The Open Technology Fund (OTF), was started under Secretary of State Clinton, and is funded by “yearly U.S. Congressional appropriations for State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs”, which are routed to…
The Left Machine: Foundations and Media
I’ve already described how deep-pocketed, left-wing foundations funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to liberal groups and news outlets, largely without much media scrutiny, which is at least partly “due to the fact that the left wing Foundations fund many media organizations…” and the media seems to be hesitant to bite one of the increasingly few hands that feed it. The result is a perfect circle jerk of Foundation-funded research pushed by Foundation-funded activists covered by Foundation-funded media. One recent example illustrates how this model works. Last year, InsideClimate News and…
The Rise of Irreligion is the GOP’s Real Demographic Crisis
In the past several years, many trees have been felled and pixels electrocuted in the service of discussion about the impact of Hispanics on the American electorate. No one knows for sure which way they’ll vote in the future but everyone is interested in discussing it. Curiously, though, an even larger political shift is taking place yet receiving almost no attention whatsoever from political reporters—the emergence of post-Christian America. Judging solely from the rhetoric and actions of the Republican presidential candidates this cycle, you would be…
Tim Cook and Apple Are Right: Encryption Is a Human Right That Must Be Protected
Apple is under fire from critics but this time it’s not for a hardware or software mishap. Instead, the company is being sued by the U.S. federal government to compromise the security of its users by creating a means of bypassing encryption on its iPhone mobile phones. At issue in the dispute is the smartphone of Syed Rizwan Farook, the man at the center of the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California which killed 14. Before his death, Farook had enabled full device encryption…