I’ve mentioned this before but I think it bears mentioning again.

The concepts of “right” and “left” derive from the seating of delegates in the French National Assembly in 1789. Supporters of the king sat on the right of the chamber. Supporters of the revolution sat on the left. Over 230 years the terms have lost relevancy.

Politics doesn’t travel well. As a general rule under the parliamentary systems that prevail in Europe the range of political views represented are enormously greater than in the United States. For 70 years it has been a joke in Britain that both the American Democratic and Republican parties fit within the spectrum of political views held by members of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. It’s still true. Even with the drift in views that has occurred in the U. S. over the last 30 years the Democratic Party is at the very most a centrist party while the Republican Party is at most a right wing party. IMO both are better considered center-right parties by European standards. Keep in mind that in most European countries there are far left parties who represent at least 10% of the population and there are far right parties who represent at last 10% of the population. We don’t even have far left or far right factions of the major parties with that kind of popular support.

All of that supports George Will’s wisecrack that American politics is like a football game played between the 40 yard lines.

My advice to Americans is don’t think you can make common cause with European political parties. Just because they’re called “right” or “left” and you think of your political views in those terms, don’t think that they believe what you do.

In France demonstrators came out for the gilets jaunes demonstrations for the fifth consecutive week. Per France 24 half as many demonstrators showed up this week as last in Paris:

housands of protesters are back out on the streets of Paris and other French cities, towns and villages, braving freezing cold temperatures and defying calls to hold off after a gun attack in Strasbourg earlier this week.

France’s interior ministry said the number of protesters across the country was estimated at 33,500 at midday, around half the level of a week ago. Police in Paris said fewer than 3,000 had gathered in the capital for the fifth consecutive Saturday of demonstrations, which have so far been peaceful.

but they do seem to be spreading. In addition to Paris there have been demonstrations in Nantes, Brest, and Marseilles, among other cities, as well as in Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, and Britain.

At least in France the demonstrations seem to have a nationalist cast. For example, women are dressing as Marianne, symbol of the Republic.

I do not see much evidence of the battle over the direction of U. S. foreign policy that Emma Ashford and Trevor Thrall write about in their piece at War on the Rocks:

Curious to understand where the right and left are heading on foreign policy, we’ve held a variety of events at the Cato Institute to try and understand this question: a roundtable building on Patrick Porter’s work on the “liberal international order,” events with notable critics of the existing foreign policy consensus, such as Harvard’s Stephen Walt, meetings to explore potential areas of common ground between libertarians and progressives, and interviews with experts for Power Problems, our biweekly podcast.

The results highlight not only the internal debate inside the Republican Party, but also the growing demand inside the Democratic Party for a coherent alternative both to Trump and to the existing foreign policy consensus that he helped discredit. We also found evidence of an unexpected and potentially significant turn in U.S. foreign policy: a new bipartisan consensus on the need to confront and contain China.

What I do see is a gap between what those in charge of the federal government and both political parties want and what most Americans want. What I see is an elite consensus in favor of intervention, sometimes for security reasons, sometimes for humanitarian ones, while ordinary people are willing to go to war to defend the U. S. when we are attacked but not for other reasons.

For example, I have yet to encounter any ordinary person who’s greatly exercised about America’s abdicating its leadership role in world affairs such as it is. But there are endless editorials, articles, and opinion pieces about that in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets for elite opinion.

Other than, possibly, a few Ukrainian-Americans, is anyone outside of elite circles very much concerned about the war between Russia and the Ukraine? I’m more concerned that the present Ukrainian government will push us into a war with Russia than I am about Russia wanting to avoid having a hostile periphery. Maybe it’s because I’ve observed that cornered rats will strike.

The “false dilemma” also called the “black or white” fallacy is the logical fallacy in which only two alternatives are presented while other alternatives are possible. Keep that in mind as you read this article by Antara Haldar at Atlantic:

Economists’ resistance to incorporate the wisdom of behavioral approaches may seem like a frivolous concern confined to the ivory tower, but it has serious consequences. What students are taught in their economics classes can perversely turn models and charts that are meant to approximate reality into aspirational ideals for it. Most economics majors are first introduced to Homo economicus as impressionable college freshmen and internalize its values: Studies show, for instance, that taking economics courses can make people actively more selfish. The consequences are only made more acute by the fact that business, a more preprofessional version of economics, is the single most popular major for college students in the United States—some 40 percent of undergraduates take at least one course in economics. That behavioral economics has been minimized and treated as an aberration by the mainstream has major bearings on how students make sense of markets and the world.

There are such things as first and second order approximations. When you’re dealing with the real world, sometimes those are good enough. A first order approximation is certainly better than throwing up your hands and deciding that most of what we experience in life is unexplainable because the offered explanation doesn’t deal with 100% of the cases or even deals with 100% of the cases only approximately.

I recommend that you read this interesting post by Andrew Lynn at The Hedgehog Review. Here’s a snippet:

According to conservative journalist and blogger Andrew Sullivan, today’s cultural Marxists are deeply invested in toppling power structures of patriarchy and white privilege. They do so, according to this version of history, by following the Frankfurt School thinkers in transposing the oppressed-oppressor conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie into the cultural realm, assigning oppressed status to various nonprivileged identity groups. Emergence of a victimhood culture follows, as groups laying claim to various identities articulate grievances against dominant groups and the structures that serve their interests. Rational adjudication of truth then becomes subsumed under demands for the subversion of power, patriarchy, and privilege across unjust social institutions, perpetuating continual identification of conflict within the established social order.

There are many problems with this narrative, of course, and here’s one: Such a vision of an ever-in-conflict social order is only loosely “cultural” and could be constructed entirely independent of anything “Marxist.” You can find it in Machiavelli, Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand, to name just a few. Indeed, today the most popular accounts of society as groups in perpetual conflict over resources—whether material, symbolic, or political—are found in best-selling books by evolutionary psychologists and biologists eager to apply their disciplinary insights to questions far outside their field. It is more the diffusion of Darwin—not Derrida—that underlies popular conflict-grounded accounts of morality and culture today.

I think there’s broad dissatisfaction among the people in “the West” and the dissatisfied probably don’t know much more about Marx or Derrida than they do about Marlon Brando in the clip above.

I agree completely with Gregory J. Wallance’s observations in an op-ed at The Hill:

Democrats certainly should be talking about the Dreamers, ending family separation and a humane asylum policy. At the same time, they should be proposing effective immigration law enforcement measures such as better technology, more border personnel, more immigration judges, more effective tracking of visa overstays and efficient deportations of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes. In short, the Democrats’ border security policy should be to build “smart barriers” and not “dumb” walls.

Such an approach, in fact, is pro-immigration because it will build support for lawful immigration and for much-needed reforms.

Is insisting on “comprehensive immigration reform” simply using the leverage they have or is it just a way of kicking the can down the road?

What conclusions should be drawn from the Democratic leadership’s present position:

1. They’re doing the best they can with the tools at their disposal.
2. Their only real policy is resistance. If Trump is for it, they’re against it.
3. They don’t believe that illegal immigration presents any security, law enforcement, budget, social, or economic problems that are worth dealing with.
4. They think that U. S. law will enforce itself.
5. They actually support open borders.
6. They want to be seen to support open borders but maintain plausible deniability that’s the case.
7. Electorally it is safer for them to do nothing than to act.

Just as a reminder you can conclude nothing from what politicians propose or vote for or against when they know it won’t pass.

I don’t think that Peggy Noonan really appreciates what is happening in American politics and, indeed, in American culture more broadly. From her most recent Wall Street Journal column:

Politics is part theater, part showbiz, it’s always been emotional, but we’ve gotten too emotional, both parties. It’s too much about feelings and how moved you are. The balance is off. We have been electing magic ponies in our presidential contests, and we have done this while slighting qualities like experience, hard and concrete political accomplishment, even personal maturity. Barack Obama, whatever else he was, was a magic pony. Donald Trump too. Beto O’Rourke, who is so electrifying Democrats, also appears to be a magic pony.

Messrs. Obama and Trump represented a mood. They didn’t ask for or elicit rigorous judgment, they excited voters. Mr. Trump’s election was driven by a feeling of indignation and pushback: You elites treat me like a nobody in my own country, I’m about to show you who’s boss. His supporters didn’t consider it disqualifying that he’d never held office. They saw it as proof he wasn’t in the club and could turn things around. His ignorance was taken as authenticity. In this he was like Sarah Palin, another magic pony.

After two wars and an economic crisis, Mr. Obama gleamed with hope and differentness. This shining 47-year-old intellectual—surely he’ll turn things around. He’d been an obscure and indifferent state legislator who was only two years in the U.S. Senate when the move to make him president began. It was all—a feeling. He was The One. Mr. O’Rourke, who’s shooting up in the polls as a possible Democratic contender, is sunny, friendly, even-keeled. He reminds some Democrats of Bobby Kennedy—soulful, able to see and summon the things you like best in yourself. He even looks like a son of Bobby Kennedy. He is 46, has served only six years in the House, and before that was on the City Council of El Paso, Texas.

Our public political culture has given in too much to emotionalism. Last week at the George H.W. Bush funeral, which functioned as a two-hour portal into the old America, something was unsatisfying. Bush’s political life spanned 30 years. He had a way of seeing the world, thoughts and assumptions about it, a point of view, and these things had an impact on history. But most everyone speaking, and most in the pews, spoke not of the meaning of these things but of his personal qualities. That has its place, but we are talking history here, and the thoughts that produce it. The same was true at John McCain’s funeral.

We are highlighting emotions in our public life at the expense of meaning. And again, emotions are part of life and part of us, but only part, not the whole.

Communication through tempered speech and reason are artifacts of literacy. As we increasingly enter a post-literate world, emotion and visual imagery become ever more significant. As I have said before and will say again: turn off the sound when you watch a political speech. The words aren’t important at least not any more.

I don’t believe that our new mode of communication is compatible with liberal democracy and it certainly isn’t conducive to solving the real world problems that face us. But that’s another subject. I don’t want post-democracy but it appears that’s what we’re going to get. The caravan has moved on.

I usually don’t think much of Marc Thiessen’s Washington Post columns but his most recent is an exception:

Good news for the incoming House Democratic majority! They have something President Trump really, really wants: money to build a border wall. Trump is desperate for this money. Mexico won’t give it to him. Only congressional Democrats can. Without their consent, he can’t deliver on one of the key campaign promises he made during the 2016 election.

There’s a name for this in classic negotiating strategy. It’s called “leverage.” Good negotiators use leverage (something they have, which their adversary wants) to obtain what are called “concessions” (something their adversary has, which they want). The result is what experts call “compromise.” This is how the civilized world gets things done.

But in a fit of pique, Democrats are throwing away their leverage, insisting that they will never — under any circumstances — give Trump the wall he so desperately wants. The reason? Because he wants it and they despise him.

There is a name for this in negotiating strategy as well. It’s called “insanity.”

I would suggest a different word: fanaticism. In that I’m thinking of one of the remarks of that most quotable of 20th century philosophers, George Santayana: “Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”

Do read the balance of Mr. Thiessen’s column. It’s a primer in negotiation.

However, assume that the Democratic leadership isn’t insane, fanatical, or mistaken. What is their aim?

I’ve mentioned before that sometimes when I read an opinion piece there is something I just can’t get past. I was predisposed to agree with Fareed Zakharia’s most recent Washington Post column, the thesis of which is that left populists and right populists are making common cause against government-as-usual but I couldn’t get past this statement:

Thus far, the “yellow vest” protests in France have lacked a party, structure and leadership. But lists of demands have been circulating. At their heart is an unworkable fantasy, such as a constitutional cap on taxes at 25 percent , coupled with a massive increase in social spending.

Let’s do a little back-of-the-envelope calculation. Total personal income in France is around $2 trillion per year. 25% of that is around $500 billion. Present French government spending is around $136 billion. Maybe my math is rusty but it certainly appears to me that there’s a considerable amount of space between $500 billion and $136 billion. Sounds pretty workable to me.

The present personal income tax rate in France is 45%.

The fantasy is not that France can lower its taxes and increase its social spending. The fantasy is that good outcomes can be achieved solely on the basis of regressive taxes and that’s the status quo, not just in France but here in the United States as well.

Yes, the people are revolting. Who can blame them? The people who are supposed to know better have made a right hash of things. Somehow those betters always seem to make out pretty well.