Im-Politic: Ivy League Princeton Turns Bush League in the History Wars

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cancel culture, Christopher L. Eisgruber, Founding Fathers, history wars, Im-Politic, Ivy League, James Madison, Princeton University, race relations, racism, slavery, Washington Post, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Full disclosure: Although I graduated from Princeton University and believe that I got a great education there (for a princely sum, to be sure), for various reasons, I never felt much affinity to the place (except for the basketball and other athletics teams – long story). As a result, I’ve never given it a dime . Even so, it’s depressing to learn that for the last seven years, the school as been run by a leadership team that’s full either of guilt-driven liberals, ignoramuses, utter ditzes, or some combination of the two.

I know this because the university’s president, Christopher L Eisgruber, has just explained in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post why he persuaded Princeton’s Board of Trustee to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs.

My scorn for this move and those responsible for it has nothing to do with any doubt concerning the racist views and policies of a figure who was not only President of the United States, but president of Princeton. I’ve fully recognized Wilson as a racist here and here. Nor do I hold the former Woodrow Wilson School in any special regard. In fact, I’ve long considered “public and international affairs” as being about as legitimate a university course of study as sports communications.

Instead, I view the Wilson name removal as (to quote Eisgruber) “an excess of political correctness” precisely because he’s also expressed strong agreement with one of the few sensible notions that have emerged from America’s recent history wars – that there’s a crucial distinction between figures who are known only or mainly for supporting treasonous and racist and other odious views and policies, and those whose role in U.S. history entailed much much more. More.

In this vein, Eisgruber acknowledges explicitly that Wilson “is a far different figure than John C. Calhoun or Robert E. Lee, people whose pro-slavery commitments defined their careers and who were sometimes honored for the purpose of supporting segregation or racism.” He recognizes that many of Wilson’s achievements both at the university and in the White House can legitimately be called “genuine” and even “grand.” And he goes on to admit that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

Weirder still: As Eisgruber explains, responding in 2015 to student demands that the university “de-Wilson-ize” itself Eisgruber asked the Board to study how Princeton was presenting Wilson’s record and legacy, and the school ultimately decided to “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.”

In my view, that’s exactly the right way to handle the matter, and I’ve since urged that participants in the national debate to think harder about similarly thoughtful ways to deal with other historical figures who also deserve to be remembered as more than racists whatever flaws on the issue they demonstrated or embodied.

But Eisgruber and the Princeton board have taken the easy, and simplistic way out. Although nowadays the concept of “slippery slope” is abused way too often (because it too conveniently defines out of existence any need and ability to make intelligent choices or draw important distinctions), Princeton’s decision raises the question of why Abraham Lincoln or the Founding Fathers, with their own problematic racial records and actual slave-owning, shouldn’t be expunged from the nation’s public places as well (or from whatever private places honor them).

According to Eisgruber, he changed his mind because even with the 2015 changes, Princeton was still honoring Wilson

“without regard to, and perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.

“And that, I now believe, is precisely the problem. Princeton is part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored and turned a blind eye to racism, allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against black people.”

But of course, the university had taken specific steps to (as Eisgruber told us) “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.” So what’s changed between then and now?

Similar questions arise from Eisgruber’s associated contention that “When a university names its public policy school for a political leader, it inevitably offers the honoree as a role model for its students. However grand some of Wilson’s achievements may have been, his racism disqualifies him from that role.”

If so, however, why keep Wilson’s name on one of its residential colleges and on it’s “highest award for undergraduate alumni”? (As Eisgruber calls the Woodrow Wilson Prize. Unless that, too, has changed? Eisgruber didn’t specify.)

Finally, why have Eisgruber and the Board stopped with Wilson? The university also still honors the slave-owning (and pretty consistent slavery supporter) Founding Father and former President of the United States James Madison in at least two ways: a scholarly program called the James Madison Society, and a dining option called “Madison Society”. What the heck is so special about him? Why not kick this racist SOB’s name off the campus, too? 

Nothing could be clearer than that Eisgruber has no rational answers to these questions – and may not have even asked them. In fact, the only intellectually honest or competent sentence in his entire article is his confession that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate [Wilson’s] life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

In other words, Princeton’s decision stands as a monument – to ignorance. And you can probably throw in intellectual cowardice and faddism as well.

Im-Politic: On Sports, Politics, and Boundaries

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boycotts, China, culture, entertainment, First Amendment, free speech, Hong Kong protests, Im-Politic, national anthem, National Basketball Association, National Invitational Tournament, NBA, politics, Princeton University, protests, social media, sports, Vietnam War

One my my funnest (indulge me) memories of college was driving round trip between central New Jersey and New York City’s Madison Square Garden four times one week in the spring of 1975 to see the Princeton men’s basketball team play in – and win! – the National Invitational Tournament (which was a reasonably big deal back then).

During one of the games, a friend and I unfurled a dorm-made sign protesting something or other about the rapidly ending Vietnam War. We considered it an important message to send, and given the conflict’s damage to America’s economy, politics, society, and culture, and given the destruction wreaked throughout Southeast Asia, I have no problem all these decades later with the content.

In retrospect, though, I wish we’d left the banner back on campus, because I’m now convinced that injecting political and policy debates into a college basketball game wasn’t the right decision. I’m bringing it up today because I wish those well-meaning basketball fans supporting the Hong Kong protesters and China’s other repressive policies inside the arena would recognize that these actions are mistaken, too.

Don’t get me wrong: As I’ve written, I have no problem with athletes and other figures from the sports world expressing political and policy views. I don’t find them to be of any special interest, and way too often they’re the epitomes of ignorance, virtue signaling, or both. But all of them – along with celebrities and others from entertainment circles – unmistakably enjoy the same First Amendment rights of all other Americans. (Complications do arise, however, when their free speech rights clash with their obligations as employees of companies concerned that such words and actions will be bad for business.)

In fact, I’ve also urged National Basketball Association officials, players, owners, and other employees to think much more seriously about their partnership with China (and, by extension, other repressive countries), and even consider a boycott.

But just as I’ve urged athletes to keep their political views (e.g, taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem before pro football games) off the court and playing field (because their fame gives them so many other high-profile opportunities to speak out – and to big audiences), I’d urge fans to keep home their own beliefs, however heartfelt and morally compelling. The same, by the way, should apply to entertainers turning awards shows into political fora.

For even though spectators lack the renown and followings of athletes and entertainers, they’re hardly devoid of influence. They can choose to stay away from arenas, cinemas, theaters, and other venues showcasing performers, franchises, or entertainment businesses whose actions or statements they dislike. They can also organize boycotts of these individuals and organizations if they wish – and social media gives them a more powerful megaphone than ever. (For the record, I’m anything but enthusiastic about such politicization, especially regarding prominent individuals and organizations who fail to take desired stances.)

And I can’t imagine how any court could legitimately decide that such protesters aren’t allowed to make their views known verbally and/or visually on public transportation corridors and systems leading to and servicing sports or entertainment venues (subject of course to any level of government’s right to regulate protest activity in such a way as to permit travel and other everyday activity from proceeding).

But even if businesses and organizations that stage sports or entertainment events lacked the legal authority to ban activity at events that has nothing intrinsically to do with the sporting or entertainment angle of these events (the current legal consensus is pretty unclear, at least judging from this article), would anyone this side of rational and sane really want to go to, say, a Los Angeles Lakers pro basketball game and be forced to listen to some attendees heckle star LeBron James all contest long for his failure to condemn China’s human rights practices? Or to need to see “Free Hong Kong” banners throughout the Staples Center or any other NBA court?

The law plainly prevents such heckling or chants or other disruptive behavior at entertainment events where it’s crucial to listen to the performers. But even when speaking and listening aren’t important, who would really want to visit an art museum whose every gallery contains a protester or two or ten holding up Pro-Life or Pro-Choice signs? Who would really want to walk around a Central Park blanketed with Dump Trump or MAGA posters?

The sports, entertainment, and cultural worlds shouldn’t be shielded from politics and policy, and indeed can’t be – unless we want to make them completely irrelevant to our lives and to our posterity. But given all the opportunities available to all Americans nowadays to express political and policy views, it seems not only entirely reasonable to treat actual performances as refuges – including as escapist opportunities, from these other spheres, but essential to the health and vibrancy of both individuals and the nation as a whole. And these are boundaries that a genuinely wise society should be respected regardless of whether, and to what extent, they’re legally enforceable or not.

Making News: On National (Laura Ingraham) Radio This Morning – & More!

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Asia, Associated Press, Chris Rugaber, Facebook, Jerome Powell, Laura Ingraham, Lifezette.com, Making News, North Korea, Princeton University, The Laura Ingraham Show, Trump

I’m pleased to announce that I am scheduled to appear this morning on Laura Ingraham’s nationally syndicated radio show to talk about President Trump’s trip to Asia.  Listen live at 10:35 AM EST at this link. And of course if you can’t tune in, I’ll post the podcast as soon as it’s available.

The segment will deal with many of the issues raised in my new column for Laura’s Lifezette.com news site. Click here to read this call for a thorough (and Trump-ian) overhaul of America’s strategy toward the Asia-Pacific region in general and the North Korea crisis in particular.

And this November 3 Associated Press profile of Jerome Powell, Mr. Trump’s new appointee to chair the Federal Reserve, contains a funny anecdote from the days when “Jay” and I were Princeton University undergraduates.

Just FYI, AP reporter Chris Rugaber figured out the connection (which is pretty casual) through a fine bit of journalistic sleuthing. As soon as he heard about the Powell appointment, he scoured his Facebook page and discovered we had friended each other. So he called me on Halloween afternoon to see if I had any insights to offer.

And keep checking back with RealityChek for news of media appearances and other developments.

 

Im-Politic: Immigration’s Essential – but Elusive – Assimilation Dimension

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assimilation, bilingualism, burkini, France, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, multiculturalism, Muslims, New York City, Princeton University, reconquista, secularism, terrorism

Donald Trump’s trip to Mexico today is once again focusing national attention on immigration issues. But since I wrote Monday about the Republican presidential candidate’s self-inflicted wounds on this front, and how he can fix them, there’s not much point to returning to the subject as such until Trump has finished his talks with Mexico’s, President Enrique Pena Nieto, and then delivered an eagerly awaited speech on his overall strategy and key details.

Instead, let’s deal today with what might be called the other side of the immigration coin – assimilation. I’ve long suspected that its recent U.S. policy failures on this front that account for much of the restrictionist camp’s fervor. (It’s certainly loomed large in my own thinking.) That is, I believe there would be much more support from current immigration policy critics for greater inflows and even for some form of legalization of current illegals if they had any reason to believe that government at any level would take seriously the challenge of ensuring that newcomers and the existing illegal population learn about and adopt the core values and shared identity so largely responsible for America’s unprecedented success.

At the same time, some news over the last month should remind all Americans that, however necessary, effective assimilation policies are easier supported than formulated. And I’m now convinced that the challenges will continue growing ever greater even if political will was not lacking. For that conclusion, thank the “burkini.”

Immigration waves of course have always triggered opposition for a variety of reasons – and have included subversion of “Americanism.” But it’s easy to dismiss most of this particular objection as thinly disguised prejudice because civic education was such a priority national mission. I’m not a fan of anecdotes, but here’s a relevant family story.

My father’s parents came to this country from Lithuania in the early twentieth century, along with millions of other Eastern and Southern Europeans. As with so many from the former region, they quickly settled in an overwhelmingly Eastern European New York City Jewish neighborhood where English was rarely used. Similar quasi-voluntary ghetto-ization was the experience of numerous other immigrant groups in their new Northeastern and Midwestern urban homes.

Fast forward to 1929. My five-year old father has just entered kindergarten, and like many classmates barely speaks any English because it was largely absent not only in the playground or the synagogue or the delicatessen or butcher shop. It wasn’t spoken at home, either, because his parents’ knowledge was still pretty elementary. Fortunately, he had a more practical aunt who admonished them to get with the English program in order to improve his chances of academic success.

But even more important, my father told me many times that, despite his early linguistic limitations, in retrospect nothing was (subconsciously) clearer to his little-kid mind than that a major purpose of his schooling was to turn him into what he called “a little American.”

In recent decades, how many parents and students out there can honestly say that that’s been their own experience or their children’s experience? If anything, schools today at all levels often seem to be sending the opposite message. In my step-son’s prep school, which was actually on balance very responsible in educating rather than propagandizing students, he was nonetheless urged to think like a global citizen. My own alma mater recently changed its informal motto from former President Woodrow Wilson’s “Princeton in the Nation’s Service” to (the much stylistically clumsier) “Princeton in the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity.”

Not that there aren’t often broad overlaps between national interests and worldwide interests. But this overlap isn’t always present. So when they conflict, what does Princeton want its students to do? And for my son’s less ambiguous school, who defines those global interests and their supposed citizenship responsibilities? What political community other than one that is national in scope enjoys the necessary legitimacy (provided of course that the government is reasonably accountable to its population)?

And lest you believe that schools are the only possible channels of civic education – or the main obstacles – think of the rampant bi- and multi-lingualism that’s overcome broad swathes of the country. Its most recent – and one of its most absurd – extensions has been New York City’s decision to relieve cab drivers of the requirement of speaking English proficiently.

So I hope I’ve established my pro-assimilation street cred – and the case that this ideal has greatly weakened in recent decades. And yet a huge fly has just been stuck in this ointment, in the form of the burkini controversy in France. It seems pretty clear to all thinking people that the ban by certain French beach towns of the full-body swimwear worn by many devout Muslim women has taken the push-back against multi-culturalism way too far – and in an ironically misogynistic way. But what’s most important about this episode is its reflection of France’s longstanding national approach to assimilation – which is often described as “aggressive secularism.”

In other words, you can make a strong argument that France has followed the assimilation-ist route that I’ve just endorsed. And it’s even easier to argue that, as numerous riots and bloody terrorist attacks over the last decade make tragically clear, this approach has failed miserably.

Not surprisingly, any number of explanations have been offered, ranging from widespread economic and social discrimination faced by French Muslims; to the transformation of France’s secularism into an intolerant faith itself; to Islam’s inherent nature as a religion with a prominent public and political dimension that is fundamentally incompatible with even genuinely tolerant secularism.

It’s tempting to point out that France’s history with immigration and assimilation simply isn’t relevant to the U.S. immigration debate nowadays, in part because America’s national identity has never been based on “blood and soil,” but on an ideology that is largely pluralistic itself; and in part because the Hispanic-origin population at the latter’s center doesn’t hold such separatist views. In other words, it’s often argued, the host country here has always faced fewer obstacles towards integrating newcomers, and today’s immigrants are anxious to be integrated.

Nonetheless, reasons for doubting these integrationist claims have resulted from many Hispanics’ distinctive insistence on bilingualism, as well as from periodic calls from the Mexican-American community in particular for a “reconquista” (“reconquering”) of American territory annexed by the United States after the Mexican war of 1848. And don’t forget the bi-national lifestyles (called “circular migration” by specialists) of so many Mexican-Americans, which tend to undermine the closely related ideas of borders and distinct political communities.

I’m still confident that a truly successful U.S. immigration policy absolutely requires a more successful approach to assimilation, for political reasons but also for the health of our society.  But France’s experience has made me a lot less confident that the goal will be achieved any time soon even if enough of the nation was on board. 

Im-Politic: Why Most of the U.S. History Wars Shouldn’t Even Be Fought

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Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Confederacy, Confederate flag, Founding Fathers, history, history wars, Im-Politic, political correctness, Princeton University, racism, Robert E. Lee, slavery, Woodrow Wilson

Last week I wrote about my experiences with the political correctness and free speech disputes at my alma mater Princeton University in the mid-1970s and, what do you know? They reappeared on the campus this past week in their “history wars” form. It’s worth covering – but not because the demands for more or less erasing the physical legacy of former university and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from the campus were especially novel or unusual according to the standards of our time. Nor was the university’s response, which could be interpreted in various ways ranging from a polite brushoff to an instance of kick-the-can-ism.

Instead, this episode is worth covering because it provides a good opportunity for presenting some common-sense guidelines on depicting historical figures in public spaces or within private communities when such a private controversy arises (as in the case of a private university).

The Princeton students protesting the university’s longstanding showcasing of Wilson base their position on the former president’s segregationist views on racial subjects and on the segregationist policies he approved during his White House tenure. There’s no legitimate doubt that their accusations are accurate.

Defenders of the university status quo have pushed back with equally accurate points – noting that some of Wilson’s decisions on a related question – the role of Jews in American society – both on the campus and in Washington, D.C. were enlightened by the standards of his time. Indeed, they legitimately go even further, and argue that, in both these positions, Wilson was a major champion of many progressive values. (Here’s an excellent summary of this case.)

In my view, the pro-Wilson forces have the better argument, by a considerable margin. But they don’t deserve victory for the reasons they emphasize – i.e., because their opponents have failed to recognize what how exemplary Wilson really was. Instead, their position is stronger because it makes clear what should matter most in evaluating and acknowledging the role of historical figures: the sum total of their records and significance. As a result, leaders like Wilson deserve recognition because their impact on university and American history far transcended characteristics rightly regarded as shortcomings today, and that were hardly impressive even in their own eras.

That is, Wilson was not simply a racist. He was someone whose actions shaped American politics and higher education in ways felt even today. And because this record was at worst lamentable in some (but hardly all) respects, it’s fitting and proper that the nation – and the university – have decided to honor him.

In this way, therefore, Wilson resembles the Founding Fathers. As widely known, Washington and Jefferson were slave-holders. But obviously they were so much more. It’s somewhat less widely known that Lincoln held racist views about black people. But he was so much more. This point might seem indistinguishable from the debate over merits that I just belittled, and obviously they’re very close. The essence of it is, though, that for figures of wide-ranging importance whose legacy was not overwhelmingly malevolent, these debates simply shouldn’t be necessary. Therefore, when they break out, the kind of common sense that’s essential for sound decision-making inevitably and damagingly takes a back seat.

Moreover, in this way, Wilson, the Founders, Lincoln, and others in this category fundamentally differ from, say major Confederate leaders. Although Robert E. Lee, for example, served America admirably in the Mexican War (which was not an especially admirable venture), his name wouldn’t be on roads, public schools, and even university campuses all over the country because of that role, or even because he became commander at West Point. He’s only widely remembered at all because he was a leader of the greatest single act of treason – and one motivated overwhelmingly by racist considerations – in American history. So he clearly belongs in the textbooks – along with other prominent Confederates. But honoring their memory, and that of their cause, is disgraceful.

Not every such decision is an easy call. Andrew Jackson, for instance, embodied many praiseworthy populist impulses, and was certainly a consequential president. He also rose above sectional interests and perspectives by opposing southern claims of states rights over federal law, and would have enjoyed great ratings had opinion polls existed back then. But his Indian expulsion policies were reprehensible, and arguably so even for the early 19^th century.

If the common sense rule is invoked, however, Americans shouldn’t be faced with too many of these hard calls. Because the essence of history is change, and because it’s vital to keep learning about and rethinking the past, judgments about various historical events and individuals should never be fixed in stone or so viewed. But unless you think that the basic, admirable narrative of American history is fundamentally wrong, or that most of our leading forebears were in fact generally contemptible, you’ll agree that the overwhelming burden of proof is on the revisionists to overturn the current consensus on events and individuals that Americans have chosen to honor – and that far more often than not, this burden has not remotely been met.

Im-Politic: What I Did – & Didn’t Do – in the PC Wars

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Baby Boomers, Chile, First Amendment, free speech, hate speech, Im-Politic, junta, political correctness, Princeton University, The Daily Princetonian

Time to take a break from the terrorism wars and turn to the latest round of political correctness wars raging on many of the nation’s college campuses.  Given their seeming prevalence, it was instructive to be reminded recently that (a) I used to be a college student and (b) I was involved in some of these skirmishes back in the day myself.

The specific incident took place in November, 1974, and concerned a speaking invitation that the debating society at Princeton University extended to Chile’s ambassador to the United States. To save everyone the need to Google this, the decision was controversial because Chile’s democratically elected socialist government had just been overthrown the year before in a military coup, and the ambassador was a general who represented the junta responsible and its repressive rule.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the campus was convulsed in debate over how – or if – to respond to the planned event. (The counterculture and any major political residue of the 1960s was long gone by then from Princeton.) But the invitation certainly triggered an unusual amount of discussion and even actions by individual students and by various campus groups, including the student government.

For example, the latter voted to condemn the junta, but turned down a motion to urge students to boycott the speech. The campus Socialist Study Group (trust me – it was small), denounced the invitation itself, and also sponsored a “militant boycott.” This consisted of a protest outside the venue whose participants sought to convince others not to attend.  (This account comes from articles in the digital archives of the student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian.)

What I find especially interesting – and pertinent for today’s free speech controversies – is that I can’t find any record, and don’t personally recall, any organization or individual at the university that urged that the invitation be withdrawn, or that the speech be disrupted. In fact, the Socialist Study Group explicitly decided to oppose any attempt to interfere with the event. And I found genuinely eloquent and moving one activist’s rationale for the planned demonstration: “We want it to be impossible for someone to get inside without having to ask himself ‘why am I going inside?'”  

Of course, The Princetonian needed to weigh in, and as one of the editorial page editors, I drafted our perspective. In retrospect, the main point made seems sensible – and struck the necessary balance between tolerance and conscience. The editorial blasted Heitmann as “nothing more than a thug in formal clothing” but insisted that “The wisdom of Whig-Clio’s [the debating society] decision to invite him is both debatable and immaterial.” It continued:

“What is important is that when [Ambassador Walter] Heitmann appears, the community should expose him to the full force of its outrage and indignation. Accordingly, we strongly urge all members of the university to protest vigorously Heitmann’s presence and’the murderous nature of what he represents. At the same time, the community should remember that to disrupt the ambassador’s speech is to resort to his own gutter tactics.”

And then came the part that, in my mind, was crucial. The edit spotlighted and praised the debating society’s president for announcing that the ambassador had agreed to take questions after his speech. That, apparently, had not been a foregone conclusion. According to the editorial, this decision mattered because:

“it adheres to the spirit as well as the letter of free speech, a notion which entails much more than undisturbed presentation. At its crux lie ideas of discussion and exchange, which are by no means served by giving Heitmann a soapbox and then permitting him to make a neat, quick exit.”  

The upshot: Heitmann gave his speech. A crowd estimated at 275 protested outside. Their chants could be heard through the windows of the venue that remained open, but evidently were not loud enough to interfere with the proceedings. Inside, two students who were standing with their backs to the podium moved to the rear of the room when, according to the Princetonian, they were “told that they were blocking the view of the audience….” But no one was hurt or arrested.  And by all accounts, Heitmann was challenged vigorously.

But although preventing “neat, quick exits” and insisting on opportunities for genuine exchange still seems to be a good policy for handling speakers with arguably offensive messages, it doesn’t address another major aspect of today’s campus speech controversies: what seem to be increasingly common instances of what deserves to be called – at least unofficially – hate speech.

I imagine that it’s difficult for my baby boom peers to get a grip on this problem, because racial and homophobic and similar epithets were practically unheard of in public, on campus of off, whether in the form of slogans scrawled on walls or insults shouted at individuals or groups.

The First Amendment enthusiast in me bridles at the thought of official responses, especially when it comes to remarks made in the heat of the moment. But the rest of me believes that everyone has a right to go about their daily routines, especially in a place of learning, without being assaulted audibly or visually by words whose only purpose can be to denigrate and harm and in fact to dehumanize, but that fail to threaten physical violence (a plausible threshold in my view for legal action, along with findings of vandalism).

Any thoughts from you RealityChek readers on handling this dilemma would be most welcome. But until I figure this out, I’m left with the hitherto unimaginable thought that, at least compared with the present, my time as a student, in the ’60s and ’70s, was generally a garden party.

Im-Politic: Evidence that Trump is Right. American Trade Policies Literally are Killing Us

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2016 elections, Angus Deaton, Anne Case, Donald Trump, faith-based voters, families, H1B visas, Im-Politic, Immigration, middle class, mortality, Nobel prize, Princeton University, Republicans, Rick Santorum, Trade, working class

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has drawn a lot of scorn from the Mainstream Media and the nation’s political chattering class by insisting that countries like China, Mexico, and Japan are “killing” America on trade. The vast majority of them know nothing about U.S. trade policy, and those with a smidgeon of familiarity with the subject don’t take seriously the idea (drawn straight from conventional economics) that growing trade deficits subtract from America’s growth and employment levels.

But last week, the nation received stunning news that Trump literally may be right, along with new insights into why a White House aspirant blasting U.S. trade (and immigration) policies in the harshest possible terms has gained such traction despite a personal style and background that are highly unconventional in elective politics – to put it mildly.

A new study claiming that middle-aged American whites have recently been dying at much higher rates than their counterparts in other high-income countries also points to a strategy through which Trump can dramatically improve his standing with the religious conservative voters who still view him with such skepticism, but who wield major clout in early caucus state Iowa, and early primary state South Carolina.

The study was co-authored by no less than Angus Deaton, the Princeton University professor who just won the Nobel prize for economics, and his wife Anne Case, also a noted Princeton economist. It purports to show that, between 1999 and 2013, there has been “a marked increase in the all-cause mortality of middle-aged white non-Hispanic men and women in the United States between 1999 and 2013.”

Moreover, according to Deaton and Case, “This change reversed decades of progress in mortality and was unique to the United States; no other rich country saw a similar turnaround.” And just as intriguingly, this trend in mid-life mortality, which marked a major reversal from an overall decline in death rates for Americans aged 45 and older, “was confined to white non-Hispanics.”

But what really links the Deaton and Case findings to economic developments are the data they present shedding light on the causes of increasing mortality among this white cohort – which they themselves argue reveals the connection. Their summary is worth quoting in full:

“This increase for whites was largely accounted for by increasing death rates from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. Although all education groups saw increases in mortality from suicide and poisonings, and an overall increase in external cause mortality, those with less education saw the most marked increases. Rising midlife mortality rates of white non-Hispanics were paralleled by increases in midlife morbidity. Self-reported declines in health, mental health, and ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work, as well as clinically measured deteriorations in liver function, all point to growing distress in this population.”

The authors continue:

“Although the epidemic of pain, suicide, and drug overdoses preceded the financial crisis, ties to economic insecurity are possible. After the productivity slowdown in the early 1970s, and with widening income inequality, many of the baby-boom generation are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents. Growth in real median earnings has been slow for this group, especially those with only a high school education. However, the productivity slowdown is common to many rich countries, some of which have seen even slower growth in median earnings than the United States, yet none have had the same mortality experience.”

As Deaton and Case explain it, American workers’ feelings of economic insecurity are so much greater than those of their European counterparts mainly because their retirement arrangements are so much shakier. Most American employers who still provide pension plans have moved to the defined contribution model – “with associated stock market risk.” In Europe, by contrast, most employers still offer defined benefit plans.

I have no doubt that the authors have identified a big piece of the problem. But here’s another, and one that’s directly related to the Trump campaign: Whereas recent U.S. presidents from both major parties have pushed a long string of trade deals that have encouraged American businesses to offshore massive numbers of high wage industrial jobs, Europe’s governments have worked much harder to keep that employment – and the underlying production – at home.

As made clear in my book on globalization, The Race to the Bottom, the resulting job loss and wage stagnation (and often declines) have rippled throughout the entire American middle and working class. And although it’s eminently reasonable to believe that the U.S. economy has significantly outperformed the Europeans for many years, these death rate data indicate that this outperformance has been scarcely relevant to the most important test of a successful society by far – improving the lives of the great majority of its people.

And here’s another Trump-ian tie-in overlooked by Deaton and Case. European governments obviously have been as eager as the U.S. government to admit huge numbers of immigrants from very low-wage countries into their economies. But where European and U.S. immigration policies differ significantly entails their openness to immigrants with relatively high levels of skills and education. In other words, there’s nothing in Europe remotely like the American H-1B program, which has fostered major immigration-related job displacement (and therefore wage decreases) in white collar occupations that were supposed to be immune to competition from much cheaper foreign workers. More generally, this kind of offshore outsourcing has hit a wide variety of jobs in the professions in addition to technology positions.

So this is nothing less than a golden opportunity for Trump – both with the downwardly mobile whites in general who have flocked to him not only in great numbers but on a sustained basis so far, and with the so-called evangelicals who represent so much of the Republican primary electorate. For the causes of rising white mortality described by Deaton and Case are inarguably both causes of family break-up – especially divorce – and symptoms of the strains placed on families by economic angst.

Of course, faith-focused voters have long blamed the weakening of the traditional American family overwhelmingly on the rise of more permissive social and cultural values since the 1960s. But some U.S. politicians – notably pundit and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who has run this year and in 2012, have made the connection with economic forces. And the Eaton-Case study gives Trump the kind of ammunition that Buchanan – who, unlike Santorum, went after U.S. trade policy – never had. Moreover, Trump has the kinds of communications skills both to capitalize on the new data, and to present it in exciting and fresh-sounding – not to mention somewhat sensationalistic – ways.

The Deaton-Case findings aren’t accepted by everyone. But whose are? More important, in politics, it’s all too easy to make persuasive claims that have no credible sources. Making claims that come from supremely credible sources can be even more effective – including by blunting lots of Mainstream Media and chattering class scorn. So I’m really looking forward to Trump’s next appearance on “Meet the Press” or some similar brain-dead national media outlet, when he tells the moderator, “Our trade and immigration policies are literally killing us! And you don’t have to take my word for it!”