The editors of the Wall Street Journal point out the truth of the situation that Illinois and other states are in:

Illinois’s population has declined by 157,000 over the past five years, which is equivalent to the mid-sized city of Rockford. According to research outfit Wirepoints, more than 114,000 residents left the state on net in 2018 and nearly 1.5 million people since 2000. Cold weather? While Illinois’s population has declined by 0.8% since 2010, Indiana’s has grown 3.1% and Wisconsin’s by 2.2%.

These population shifts mean that several states including New York, Illinois and Minnesota are likely to lose House seats after the 2020 reapportionment. States that have been rapidly adding population like Arizona, Florida and Texas are likely to increase their representation. It’d be nice to think this would finally prompt Democratic politicians to rethink their anti-growth policies. But with state political cultures dominated by public unions and welfare spending, they probably require a much deeper crisis to face reality.

Incoming Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker is already backing off from the platform on which he ran. Apparently, he isn’t really a guy who believes that Illinois can tax and spend its way to prosperity. He just plays one on TV.

Here’s Mamie posing with the Christmas tree. She’s getting to be a very grown-up girl.

Robert Ford, U. S. ambassador to Syria under President Obama, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, gives his opinion about President Trump’s decision to withdraw our troops from Syria:

Stability, not a deeply embattled Syrian Kurdish autonomous zone, is the vital long-term U.S. interest in northeastern Syria. Turkey can accept with conditions the return of Syrian government forces into the area, as Russia and Iran want. Ankara dislikes the Assad government, but it dislikes more the prospect of an autonomous Kurdish region along its border.

That is so obviously correct that it sparks the inevitable question: why are so many people complaining so bitterly about the announcement? Let’s consider a few reasons.

• If Trump is for it, they’re against it.
• They disagree and think that a Syrian Kurdish autonomous zone is in the U. S. interest. Why?
• They think that the U. S. has short-term interests which temporarily over-rule our long-term interest. What?
• They’re focused on something other than U. S. interests. What?
• They haven’t thought it through.

Have I missed anything? This is genuinely puzzling to me.

As usual we had a lovely Christmas. The tree we had this year was one our prettiest. We followed our usual pattern—Christmas in the morning, birthday at night.

I gave my wife a Dremel Versa, a copy of Ruth Gordon’s autobiography,a copy of John Fante’s novel, Ask the Dust (I thought she might like it because it’s been called one of the best novels about Los Angeles), and a new, leather band for her Fitbit.

She gave me several new shirts and a new raincoat (presumably she was tired of my old, ragged one), and a bottle of good Bourbon.

For Christmas dinner I had ordered a country ham and prepared sweet potatoes and green beans.

We made a birthday cake which was without doubt the best we have ever made—gingerbread layer cake with ermine frosting. The gingerbread was definitely for adult tastes, not as sweet as most cakes and seasoned with free ginger, ground ginger, pepper, and cayenne pepper. The frosting was the perfect accompaniment. These were so good I have to share them. I’ll post the recipes later.

For me this was probably the saddest Christmas since my dad died, sadder even than the Christmas that my mom died. It is a difficult time to be a Catholic. I will remain a Catholic until I die but I find it nearly impossible to be an observant Catholic. I don’t think it is any longer possible to doubt the complicity of the whole body of the clergy in the crimes that have been perpetrated for so many years.

I’m not a Donatist so I do not require perfection of the clergy but I don’t demand perfection, just sincere contrition, penance, and commitment to change as our tradition requires but I don’t even see that in evidence. I don’t trust myself to exchange a simple “Hello” with my parish priest without punching him in the nose.

After six paragraphs of throat-clearing, the editors of the Washington Post finally get around to the point they’re trying to make about the “wait in Mexico” policy with respect to those seeking to enter the United States via our southern border:

What is clear is that the United States is not absolved of responsibility for migrants legitimately seeking asylum simply because they are compelled to wait elsewhere. If asylum seekers are preyed on, exploited and harmed after having been returned to Mexico, U.S. officials will not be able to shrug off their moral responsibility. The United States is bound by law and international obligations to welcome and vet migrants fleeing persecution, and to grant asylum to those who meet specific criteria. That obligation cannot be abrogated by an announcement.

In bridge “crossruffing” is a play where tricks are made by taking alternate ruffs, playing a non-trump card to be trumped by the partner, in each hand. In this paragraph the editors are attempting to crossruff legal and moral arguments. Neither is nearly as strong as they appear to believe.

The phrase “legitimately seeking asylum” is just being coy. Anyone may legitimately seek asylum. Three-quarters or more of the applications for asylum from Central Americans or Mexicans are denied because they don’t meet the requirements for asylum, something intended for religious, racial, ethnic or political persecution. In other words when you take those who don’t even bother applying into account, the actual asylum-seekers comprise a tiny fraction of those who come here.

As to the moral argument, I’ve already made my views clear. I think we are morally obligated to treat those who come here legally or illegally decently and kindly. We are not morally obligated to allow them to remain, give them jobs, or grant them citizenship. The notion that we are morally obligated to extend that level of consideration to those who haven’t actually come here is simply incredible.

Pollsters tell us that in the Americas alone 150 million people would move here from other countries if they were given the chance. We have no moral obligation to accept them and suggesting that we do goes beyond being foolhardy.

At New York Magazine Andrew Sullivan reacts to the reports that we will be removing our troops from Syria and (at least some) from Afghanistan:

Neoconservatism, it seems, never dies. It just mutates constantly to find new ways to intervene, to perpetuate forever wars, to send more young Americans to die in countries that don’t want them amid populations that try to kill them. If you want the most recent proof of that, look at Yemen, where the Saudi policy of mass civilian deaths in a Sunni war on Shiites is backed by American arms and U.S. It’s also backed by American troops on the ground — in a secret war conducted by Green Berets that was concealed from Congress. There is no conceivable threat to the U.S. from the Houthi rebels in Yemen; and there was no prior congressional approval. Did you even know we had ground troops deployed there?

The same for liberal internationalism, which also never seems to die, however many catastrophes it spawns. There’s always an impending “massacre” somewhere to justify intervention, which is why we have been dutifully told that withdrawing from Syria would lead to a “slaughter” of the Kurds. Remember the massacre that gave Hillary Clinton a chance to launch another Middle Eastern war in Libya? How many more innocents were slaughtered after we toppled Qaddafi than those in danger before? And all because Clinton refused to learn a single thing from Iraq. (If Clinton had actually won in 2016, we would probably have far more troops occupying Syria today, and be digging in for the long haul, and we’d probably have even more troops in yet another doomed surge in Afghanistan. That goes some way to explaining why Clinton has a massive 31/62 negative approval rating in the latest, Democrat-friendly Quinnipiac poll, much worse than even Trump.)

The claim that being opposed to invading countries with the presumed intention of imposing liberal democracy on them at the point of a gun is isolationism is a particularly vicious canard and it’s high time that we start punching people who make that accusation in the nose. At the very least. Is there some sort of strategic tar and feathers shortage?

At City Journal Steve Malanga recaps outgoing Rahm Emanuel’s warning to the Chicago City Council:

The more troubling that the fiscal situation in Illinois becomes, the less levelheaded local officials sound about facing up to their problems. That was evident last week, in the reaction that incoming governor Jay Pritzker and several Chicago mayoral candidates had to a speech by outgoing Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel on the state’s deep pension problems.

Speaking before the city council, Emanuel, who will not seek reelection, warned that raising taxes alone won’t solve the city’s own pension troubles. Emanuel has run into opposition—in the courts and in Springfield—to his efforts to cut pensions costs, and he pointed out that the city has already raised taxes several times, including a huge property-tax increase in 2016, just to cover the growing pension costs. Chicago will need more new revenue as it faces sharply higher pension payments over the next two years, including $276 million in additional annual contributions just for the city’s public-safety retirement system. Emanuel urged the state to consider sweeping fixes, including changes to the state’s constitution, and he argued that the course favored by the Democratic Party’s increasingly powerful progressive wing—to solve the problem by taxing the wealthy—endangered prosperity. “You’re going to cut jobs doing that,” Emanuel said.

Those who will soon be in charge of trying to fix the mess jumped to dismiss Emanuel’s ideas. Oversimplifying the issue, state comptroller Susana Mendoza, a candidate for mayor, said, “We do not mess with people’s pensions,” adding, “End of story.” Former city hall insider Gery Chico, also running for mayor, somewhat naively suggested that one way to fix the problem is to “figure out how to do things better,” as if saving a few dollars here and there could possibly suffice. Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot likened the movement to reform pensions to pulling “the rug out from under” city employees and retirees, while incoming governor Pritzker was equally simplistic in his dismissal of Emanuel’s ideas: “I believe when you’re promised something . . . you ought to get whatever you’ve been promised.”

Much as I detest him I think that Emanuel’s warning is what any honest Illinois politician would say in private and not seeking re-election. At this point the question is not whether Illinois local and state government will go bankrupt but when and what havoc they will create along the way. As long as we hold to the state constitution’s present requirements on pensions the state’s only workable option is to drive the wages of public employees down in self-defense.

That’s not going to happen so it can only end in disaster. The only remaining question is whether the disaster will take the Democratic Party along with it.

I presume that Stephen Walt’s piece at Foreign Policy in which his thesis is that the foreign policy blunders of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations are directly responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves and, indeed, the rise of Trump:

There is no question that Trump places little value in democracy, human rights, the rule of law, or other classic liberal values, and he seems to have a particular disregard for America’s democratic partners and a soft spot for autocrats. But it is a mistake to see him as the sole—or even the most important—cause of the travails now convulsing the U.S.-led order. Indeed, the seeds of our present troubles were sown long before Trump entered the political arena, and are in good part due to foreign-policy decisions made by the administrations of former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Think back a quarter century, to the beginning of the “unipolar moment.” Having triumphed over the Soviet Union, the United States could have given itself a high-five, taken a victory lap, and adopted a grand strategy better suited to a world without a superpower rival. Rejecting isolationism, Washington could nonetheless have gradually disengaged from those areas that no longer needed significant American protection and reduced its global military footprint, while remaining ready to act in a few key areas should it become absolutely necessary. These moves would have forced our wealthiest allies to take on greater responsibility for local problems while the United States addressed pressing domestic needs. Making the “American dream” more real here at home would also have shown other nations why the values of liberty, democracy, open markets, and the rule of law were worth emulating.

will be like waving a red flag in front of a bull to many but I think he’s right. Rather than restating his piece let me give four suggestions of my own for the biggest blunders of those four successive presidents (I include George H. W. Bush).

1. We should never have placed troops in Saudi Arabia and, if we did, we should have removed them when the emergency was over.
2. We should never have expanded NATO.
3. We should have integrated China into the global economy much more slowly and only as a consequence of proven reforms on the part of the Chinese authorities including political reforms.
4. We should have conformed rigorously to the rule of law including all of our international obligations. That means no bombing of Serbia, no invasion of Iraq, no torturing of prisoners, no drone war, no bombing of the Libyan government, the list is practically endless.

I was delighted to see this observation from James McWhorter at Atlantic:

Many will answer with what can be summed up with the grand old mantra, “If you’re white, you’re all right, if you’re brown, stick around, but if you’re black, get back.” The idea is that animus against black Americans—as opposed to Latinos or Asians—is so profound as to stanch striving. But that line is a tad elderly now, and the success since the 1970s of so many Caribbean and African immigrants—richly familiar with racism—has shown its obsolescence. In Ivy League institutions, typically almost half of black students come from immigrant families, despite such students representing less than 15 percent of the general black population of people their age.

That is the dirty secret of racial set-asides and preferences. Rather than going to the inner city or rural American blacks for whom they were presumably intended, far too frequently the beneficiaries of those programs have been Caribbean or African blacks. White Americans have enough sins of their own ancestors for which to atone. We should not feel that we are responsible for the sins of the English, French, and Spanish as well.

This is not a new observation. Those on the front lines of integration and desegregation pointed it out 40 years ago and were frequently shouted down.

But I was mortified to see this:

Okay, first-generation Americans have, as it’s often phrased, a “pluck” one can’t expect native-born blacks to have as often. But to insist that native-born blacks require whites’ love in a way that Nigerian newcomers do not would seem to claim weakness as a birthright.

How an intelligent, well-educated American black man can write such drivel in the 21st century baffles me. Immigrant pluck as an explanation for why some Caribbean and many African blacks prosper here while American blacks, the descendants of Southern slaves, so frequently do not is BS. The reality is that that dialect, affect, and culture make a difference. There are still some knuckle-dragging whites for whom skin color alone is all that matters but many, many more white Americans find black folk with British or Jamaican or Nigerian accents charming, superior even.

It’s not merely speech. The metalinguistic features of communication—certain non-verbal signals—that accompany Standard Black English are well-known. Things like communication distance, volume, pitch, and eye contact. And they keep black folk down.

That’s why I weep when I hear people being denounced for “acting white”. I don’t ask that American blacks act white but in order to prosper they need to communicated effectively with white folk who may have visceral reactions to SBE and its metalinguistic features.