In his regular Washington Post column Josh Rogin expresses dismay at the continuity between the Trump foreign policy and the Biden foreign policy:

senior European diplomat noted that, in dealings with Washington on everything from vaccines to travel restrictions, the Biden policies were “’America First’ in logic, whatever the rhetoric.” A Canadian politician said that if followed, Biden’s “Buy America” plans are actually more protectionist than Trump’s. Despite having criticized Trump’s tariffs repeatedly, Biden has kept nearly all of them. (In fact, many have been expanded since most exemptions to them have been allowed to expire.) Key Asian allies keep pressing Biden to return to the Trans-Pacific Partnership — much praised by him when the Obama administration negotiated it. Instead, it has been shelved.

Another striking example of Biden’s surprisingly Trumpian foreign policy is the Iran deal, one of the landmark accomplishments of the Obama administration. Throughout his election campaign, Biden argued that Trump’s withdrawal from that agreement had been a cardinal error and that, as president, he would rejoin it as long as Iran would also move into compliance. His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, described Trump’s reimposing of secondary sanctions against Tehran despite opposition from U.S. allies as “predatory unilateralism.”

But since he took office, Biden has failed to return to the deal and has even extended some sanctions. Having long argued against trying to renegotiate the deal, Biden officials now want to “lengthen and strengthen” it. So far, this Trump-Biden strategy has not worked. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium went from less than 300 kilograms in 2018 to more than 3,000 kilograms in May.

Or consider policy toward Cuba. The Obama administration was bold enough to tackle one of the most glaring failures in U.S. foreign policy. Having isolated and sanctioned Cuba since 1960 to produce regime change in that country, the United States had instead strengthened Cuba’s Communist government. Fidel Castro sparked nationalist fervor by blaming all of Cuba’s problems on the embargo and, far from being toppled, he ended up staying in power longer than any nonroyal leader on the planet.

It has been observed time and again that there is a remarkable continuity in American foreign policy regardless of president, regardless of party. There’s a simple reason for that. U. S. foreign policy is not created from whole cloth every four or eight years but is an emergent phenomenon crafted by balancing a number of competing even conflicting forces. Presidents may change and the letters behind their names may change but the competing interests don’t change other than to become more entrenched.

Mr. Rogin might consider that the possibility that presidents are responding to the events and political imperatives of the day and frequently, much to their surprise, whatever he or she said on the campaign trail simply does not fit with those events and imperatives, viz. Candidate Biden’s invitation to those who wanted to come to the U. S. and his rather obvious need to reverse course to something that more closely resembles what the Trump Administration was doing. You can’t step in the same foreign policy river twice.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal physician Joseph A. Ladapo makes some remarks about President Biden’s vaccine mandate, some of which strike me as sensible and some of which risk his being shunned in the contemporary form that the “shunning” of the Amish community takes at Facebook, Google, et al. for spreading disinformation. Here’s what strike me as interesting and pretty good sense:

The common argument for vaccine mandates is: You have no right to infect me. But cases are partly driven by asymptomatic and presymptomatic spread—people who are unaware that they even are infected. It isn’t practical to punish adults who have no symptoms. This is why other diseases that can be spread by people without symptoms—such as influenza, genital herpes and hepatitis C—are met with policies like voluntary vaccination drives, screening protocols for sexually transmitted diseases, and clean needle exchange programs for intravenous drug users. Doctors and public health officials used to understand that stopping spread is usually not practical.

Here’s another problem: The vaccines reduce but don’t prevent transmission. Protection from infection appears to wane over time, more noticeably after three to four months, based on a large study of more than 300,000 people in the United Kingdom. As clinical studies from the U.S., Israel, and Qatar show—and many Americans can now personally attest—there is substantial evidence that people who are vaccinated can both contract and contribute to the spread of Covid-19.

qualified by this:

The data still show that people who are vaccinated against Covid-19 are less likely to become infected than people who aren’t vaccinated. People who have recovered from Covid-19 appear to have the most protection of all.

Taken together that’s why I believe that COVID-19 is here to stay and we have reached the point in which we are learning to live with the risks it presents. And this strikes me as making a good point:

But these realities aren’t informing vaccine policy. When New York Gov. Kathy Hochul discussed expanding vaccine mandates to state-regulated facilities, she said: “We have to let people know when they walk into our facilities that the people that are taking care of them” are “safe themselves and will not spread this.” In fact, the data say they can and will spread it.

while this echoes a point I’ve made around here:

The response from many vaccine advocates has been to promote boosters, and the momentum behind third shots is outpacing the limited data available. The reality is that a more practical approach to managing Covid requires a diverse set of strategies, including using outpatient therapies.

Yep, medicine is hard and complicated. One size does not fit all. That’s why physicians exist and their jobs haven’t been automated away. This is the part that I think risks getting him “shunned”:

Other medications like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, on which health officials seem determined to close the book, are, in reality, unsettled. Controlled clinical trials have yielded conflicting results, but many physicians with substantial experience treating patients with Covid-19—including members of the Early COVID Care Experts group—have reported low rates of hospitalization and death when using these therapies. Some of these patient cohorts are large and have been published in peer-reviewed journals, such as one study of 717 outpatients published in Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease.

That leaves us with his conclusion which strikes me as combative but not entirely without reason:

Vaccine mandates can’t end the spread of the virus as effectiveness declines and new variants emerge. So how can they be a sensible policy? Is it sensible to consign tens of millions of people to an indeterminate number of boosters and the threat of job loss if it isn’t clear more doses will stop the spread, either?

He neglects to make a point I have made repeatedly here and cannot be answered on an a priori basis but only based on a more empirical approach. Which strategy will actually result in fewer cases of COVID-19 here? A third booster inoculation here for people who’ve already received inoculations, contracted the disease and recovered, or both? Or ensuring that people in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, etc. and the Afghan refugees who are coming here inter alia are inoculated against the disease? I also wonder if we have enough information at this point about the experience with the mRNA vaccines to know whether an inoculation once a year, multiple times per year, or once a month has adverse effects.

I don’t believe that making that decision based on purely political considerations serves us well.

There’s a thought-provoking essay on progressivism in the guise of a book review at City Journal by Mike Sabo. Read the whole thing—it’s not particularly long. Here’s a snippet:

The Progressives’ strong belief in the notion of historical progress also guided their foreign policy. History had demonstrated that modern democracy was the “permanent and most advanced form of government,” Wilson once wrote. To make the world safe for democracy, the Progressives’ idealistic foreign policy necessitated an aggressive series of interventions in Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, Mexico, and the Philippines.

History had chosen the United States to lead the “children” (as Wilson described other sovereign nations) so that they could someday reach the heights of democratic governance. And should certain “barbaric races” fail to do what they were told, Progressive historian Charles Merriam wrote in a particularly appalling passage, they “may be swept away.”

Now what’s being “swept away” are the underpinnings of the most prosperous, happiest, most benign country in the history of the world to be replaced by what? Progress, we are told. I don’t believe that any 19^th century Progressive would recognize the technocratic aristocracy being promoted today as progress.

The editors of the Washington Post oppose protesting at the homes of judges or politicians (to the extent that those are two different groups):

Monday night’s demonstration was organized by the liberal group ShutDown DC to demand Justice Kavanaugh’s resignation because of his recent vote not to block a Texas law banning abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy. “Another blatant attempt to intimidate the judiciary,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). Notably, and to their credit, two Democratic senators who opposed Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), also denounced the protest. “Politics ain’t beanbag. We all know that you have to have a tough mental hide to be in this business,” Mr. Durbin said Tuesday at the start of a Judiciary Committee hearing. “But it’s absolutely unacceptable, from my point of view, to involve any major public figure’s family or their home or to involve yourself in criminal trespass in the name of political freedom of speech.” Those not happy with the court’s action, he and Mr. Leahy said, should express themselves at the ballot box or outside the courthouse.

We agree. Leave spouses, children and homes out of it. If that appeal for basic civility and decency isn’t persuasive, those who engage in these reprehensible tactics should realize they are only hurting their cause when it is overshadowed by their tactics.

I disagree with them or, more precisely, I consider this two distinct questions:

1. Should people be allowed to protest at the homes of judges?
2. Should they be allowed to protest at the homes of elected officials?

I’m actually chary of protests at anybody’s home since I think that all demonstrations carry implied threats of violence. Mob action is hard to contain. But I distinguish between Supreme Court justices and elected federal officials. The Supreme Court is supposed to be the technocratic wing of the federal government, not serving at the pleasure of the executive or even of the people. They are supposed to be legal scholars who arrive at rulings based on the law and precedent rather than ideology or politics. Rather than moving in the direction of a more politicized court we should be going in the opposite direction.

Therefore my answer is I don’t think they should be protesting at all and protests are uncivil by their nature but to the degree that such protests are their right protesting in front of homes is not out-of-bounds.

I would also submit some questions. Should people be allowed to protest in front of the White House? If your answer is “yes”, how do you square that with the editors’ view? I don’t think it can be done.

In his Wall Street Journal column William Galston does the same analysis I did, makes the same points I did, and reaches much the same conclusion I did:

In other words, President Biden’s proposal raises a real controversy. But it isn’t a moral controversy: Liberty is limited when the exercise of my liberty affects others. Nor is it a constitutional controversy, because the American system divides authority to promote health and safety between the states’ police powers and the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce. The controversy is over the interpretation of a federal law whose constitutionality is unchallenged. The courts will determine the proper application. Everything else is political theater.

Yes, the government has the authority to mandate vaccinations. State and local governments do and the scope is limited to their jurisdictions. Yes, the federal government has the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Is that enough to empower President Biden’s decree? I think it’s self-evident that the president cannot on his own authority produce such decrees under emergency powers. That’s too open-ended. It means he could do anything at any time to anyone which is rather clearly beyond his power.

That’s not a partisan pronouncement. It shouldn’t matter whether you agree with the president or not or like him or her or not. It’s a completely legitimate legal question and I hope the court will rule on it quickly.

Rather than commenting on the editors’ of the Wall Street Journal’s chortling about Europe’s self-inflicted energy production problems:

Energy prices are soaring in Europe, and the effects are rippling across the Atlantic. Blame anti-carbon policies of the kind that the Biden Administration wants to impose in the U.S.

Electricity prices in the U.K. this week jumped to a record £354 ($490) per megawatt hour, a 700% increase from the 2010 to 2020 average. Germany’s electricity benchmark has doubled this year. Last month’s 12.3% increase was the largest since 1974 and contributed to the highest inflation reading since 1993. Other economies are experiencing similar spikes.

Europe’s anti-carbon policies have created a fossil-fuel shortage. Governments have heavily subsidized renewables like wind and solar and shut down coal plants to meet their commitments under the Paris climate accord. But wind power this summer has flagged, so countries are scrambling to import more fossil fuels to power their grids.

I just want to make one point. We should ban the export of compressed wood pellets. Period. An outright ban. Heed Yogi Berra’s advice. Although in theory there’s no difference between practice and theory in practice there is.

In theory wood pellets, widely used for heating in Europe, particularly in Germany, can be carbon neutral. You cut down one tree; you plant ten. In practice we’re clear-cutting old growth U. S. (and Canadian and Brazilian) forests so that the Germans can burn them in their stoves and feel good about how green they are. It’s a lie.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark on the end run the Democrats are attempting around Senate rules:

Spending $3.5 trillion on a budget bill apparently doesn’t satisfy the progressive imperative. Democrats control the 50-50 Senate thanks only to the Vice President as tiebreaker, and they lack the votes to nuke the filibuster. Nevertheless, they insist that their mammoth budget bill must also include big policy changes, even if it takes bending Senate rules beyond recognition.

On Friday the Senate’s parliamentarian heard arguments from both sides on how much a reconciliation bill can rewrite immigration law. Democrats want to give green cards to as many as eight million people. Legalizing the so-called Dreamers who came here as children is a good idea on the merits, but is it a budget item? The obvious answer is no, and everybody knows it. Legalizing eight million people would have budgetary effects, but revenues and outlays are clearly beside the point.

Other non-budgetary matters embedded within the legislation include include measures to promote unionization or to encourage production of “clean energy”.

As I’ve said before I’m a ways and means sort of person and one of the things that bothers me about all of this is that it isn’t remotely democratic, either with a small or large “D”. The point man for the $3.5 trillion spending bill in the Senate is Bernie Sanders who still is not a Democrat. And a majority of a majority is not necessarily a majority—it may actually be a minority as it is in this particular case. If you’re going to wail and gnash your teeth because your political opponents are undemocratic, it behooves you to be democratic yourself and in this particular case the bipartisan support and, indeed, the Senate majority is on Joe Manchin’s side rather than Bernie Sanders’s.

Most of Megan McArdle’s comments in her Washington Post column about the kerfuffle over the Met Gala aren’t particularly interesting but her peroration and conclusion are:

Indeed, of the roughly $1 trillion that House Democrats propose to raise from high-income individuals, comparatively little is raised by closing loopholes of any sort; most of the new revenue would come from jacking up income and capital gains tax rates on individuals who make more than $400,000 a year, and from a special surtax on people making more than $5 million annually. That would, of course, be painful for the very rich, and Ocasio-Cortez’s never-never proposal for a 70 percent rate would pain them even more — but some more than others.

Status goods are positional: As long as all the other multimillionaires have to pay the same tax, people who spend a lot of money on charity won’t see their position in the pecking order change much. It might actually improve relative to the sort of rich person who likes to buy giant yachts and whatnot. That might be desirable — most of us want to encourage charity. But it suggests that kind of rich people who go to the Met Gala were not the ones most likely to be offended by her dress.

Where the dress might fail as an embodied critique of the wealth on display at the gala, it arguably succeeds as a physical symbol of one problem with progressive politics. As critics on the left and the right have noticed, that politics often seems noticeably less effective at uprooting existing power structures than it is at securing a few of the rebels access to the corridors of power and privilege. And from the outside, they often appear to be enjoying themselves in much the same fashion as the other insiders, while covering their backs with ritual denunciations that no one takes very seriously.

That hasn’t noticed only by Ms. McArdle. The editors of the WSJ have pointed it out rather archly as well. And note how well it ties in with Ross Douthat’s observations below. It isn’t simple hypocrisy; it’s using elected office to increase your power, status, and wealth.

The editors of the Washington Post observe the same thing with an undertone of despair:

Democrats do not have the luxury of expanding a needless and expensive tax break. Even if they passed Mr. Neal’s proposal intact and held the line on loopholes, they would still struggle to pay for their bill without embracing accounting gimmicks. Mr. Neal’s plan would raise $2.9 trillion, but Democrats seek to spend $3.5 trillion — and experts say the real cost of the programs they desire would be far higher than that estimate. Democrats argue that the economic growth their bill spurs would fill the gap. This is wishful thinking.

If anything, Democrats should be reexamining some obvious pay-fors that Mr. Neal failed to propose, such as closing the carried interest loophole, which allows hedge fund managers to avoid income taxes. A carbon tax would help fight climate change, and it would not impact most taxpayers if a chunk of its revenue were recycled back to the public.

It takes Ross Douthat a while to build up to his point in his latest column in the New York Times but he does ultimately and I found it interesting:

Early in the pandemic a political observer might have assumed that facing a mortal threat — one that emerged in China, no less — conservatives would embrace restrictions and quarantines the way they embraced the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 expansions of federal power, while liberals and the left would accuse the right of giving up too much liberty for the sake of safety.

Something like this divide existed very early on, with conservatives like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas expressing alarm about the outbreak while liberals decried the potential racism of a “Wuhan virus” panic. But by late spring of 2020, the entire dynamic was reversed: Liberals supported tough government interventions to fight the virus, the right was full of fierce libertarians, and so it has mostly remained.

You can blame Donald Trump’s early insouciance for establishing this pattern, or the way that Covid hit blue metropoles hardest early while taking much longer to take root in rural regions. But it’s also useful to do in-group/out-group analysis, which suggests that conservatives were more willing to support limitations on liberty that fell on foreigners and international travelers — to them, out-groups — but balked at restrictions that seemed to fall most heavily on their own in-groups, from the owners of shuttered businesses to the pastors of closed churches to the parents of small children deprived of school.

For many liberals, it was the opposite. Early on the idea of a travel ban or quarantine rule looked authoritarian and bigoted because it seemed likely to punish their own constituencies, especially immigrant communities in big cities. But the restrictions that were imposed from March onward were developed within one of liberalism’s inmost in-groups — the expert class, the public-health bureaucracy — and geared in different ways to the needs of other liberal constituencies: The professional class could adapt to virtual work, the teachers’ unions could mostly keep their paychecks without risking their health, and the youthful antiracism activists of spring and summer 2020 were conveniently deemed to be exempt from the rules that forbade other kinds of gatherings.

This same pattern shows up in the debate over vaccine mandates. The mainstream right clearly found it easier to be uncomplicatedly pro-vaccine when anti-vax sentiment was coded as something for crunchy “Left Coast” parents, as opposed to conservatives skeptical of the public-health bureaucracy and sharing Facebook posts on ivermectin.

Where does that leave us?

• Politics is based on interest not principles.
• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
• Changing your mind when your team’s stakes change can be a path “to stronger principle, greater charity, or both”.

That last is pretty Hegelian and it’s hard to see how it can happen when changing your mind as new facts emerge is seen as weakness or, worse, apostasy.

How can we improve the odds of the latter actually taking place? It isn’t guaranteed. A change of positions as your team’s stakes change can also lead to a complete abandoning of principle and charity. I think there needs to be more space for diversity of opinion than is presently tolerated which is darned hard to do in the era of social media when extreme views that adhere to the ideological orthodoxy are rewarded and all other views are punished. Or can barely be heard through the din.