Month: July 2018

There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.  This began the night of the election and shows no signs of abating.  The current issue of Foreign Affairs, the august publication dedicated to the impact of the world on the US and vice versa, is dedicated to unraveling this question from the point-of-view of foreign affairs and policy. In the issue is an article from Amy Chua, John M. Duff, Jr., Professor of Law at Yale, adapted from her new book, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations.  In it, Chua argues that tribalism explains not just messy American involvements in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but Trump.  In the case of those three messy wars, she notes that American policy makers failed to recognize questions of ethnic or national identity in those three countries, hence the quagmires.  Her argument is compelling and well argued. But when it comes to Trump, it seems to me she is on much shakier ground.  She argues that tribalism is what led to white voters to elect him.  She notes that the white majority in the United States is shrinking and Trump capitalized on that.  So far, so good.  She goes on to discuss classism and the plight of the (white) poor in the country.  Again, so far, so good. But it’s when she gets into...

News has erupted in the United Kingdom that Scotland Yard has been using children as spies for criminal cases.  Not surprisingly, most British are sickened and appalled by this, as are the usual array of human rights groups.  There can be no defence of this. None.  This is one of the most morally repugnant things I have ever come across in my life. The children are pulled from a database about gang members, apparently.  And certainly, some have already decided that they’re criminals and therefore forfeit their civil rights.  It’s not that simple.  First, they’re children.  Second, being in this database is not necessarily an indication of criminality.  Third, even if they are, that is not an excuse to curtail someone’s civil rights. To do so is inhumane. It says that someone is less of a human due to past behaviour. The House of Lords committee that revealed the existence of this programme is sickened.  Even David Davis, one of the most self-serving British politicians of our era (he resigned from PM Theresa May’s cabinet a couple of weeks ago) is appalled.  I wonder what Boris Johnson thinks? And yet, here is May’s spokesperson defending this practice: Juvenile covert human intelligence sources are used very rarely and they’re only used when it is very necessary and proportionate, for example helping to prevent gang violence, drug dealing and the ‘county lines’...