Politico: Democrats Aren’t Moving Left. They’re Returning to Their Roots.

What’s fueling this argument? For one, more Democrats have rallied, either noisily or cautiously, around such policy innovations as “Medicare for all,” universal college and a universal basic income. That a smattering of Democratic candidates have elected to call themselves “democratic socialists” has only fueled the claim that such programs are “socialist.” “The center is Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, not Eugene Debs and Michael Harrington,” warned New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens recently. (Debs and Harrington were self-identified socialists.)

But there’s something wrong with this historical interpretation: Truman strongly supported single-payer health care. Moynihan supported a universal basic income in the 1960s. Dating back to World War II, Democrats sought to make a government-paid education available to as many Americans as possible. If Democrats are marching to the left, that road leads directly back to platforms and politicians who, in their day, commanded wide support and existed firmly in the mainstream of political thought.[...]

What pundits today decry as a radical turn in Democratic policy and politics actually finds its antecedents in 1944. With the country fully mobilized for war, President Franklin Roosevelt called for “a second Bill of Rights … an economic bill of rights” that would entitle all Americans to a “useful and remunerative job,” “the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation,” the “right … to a decent home,” “the right to adequate medical care” and the “right to a good education.” His speech found partial inspiration in a report by the National Resource Planning Board, which advanced the necessity of a “socially provided income.”[...]

Only in the 1960s did Democrats abandon the concept of universal, single-payer health care and champion a narrower program of guaranteed hospital insurance and voluntary medical insurance for the elderly—the program that we now know as Medicare. They didn’t abandon universal coverage because they viewed it as too radical. Rather, they believed it was no longer necessary. After World War II, major employers began extending unprecedented benefits to workers, including annual cost-of-living adjustments to wages, defined benefits pensions and private health insurance. Given this reality, they turned their focus to a narrower subset of the population that, by definition, would not benefit from employer-based health programs: senior citizens.[...]

The Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, the Christian Democratic Union in Germany, Christian Democrats in Italy, the Austrian People’s Party, and the Popular Republican Movement in France are prime examples of center-right organizations that collaborated with socialist and centrist parties in establishing a welfare state that defined what historian Tony Jundt called the “‘European way’ of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations.” The contours of this welfare state varied from country to country, and to be sure, socialists, liberals and conservatives contested—and continue to contest—just how generous the state should be to its citizens. But by the turn of the 21st century, Jundt argued, the “European Way” had become “a beacon … and a global challenge to the United States and the competing appeal of the ‘American way of life.’”  

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Foreign Affairs: Is Major Realignment Taking Place in the Middle East?

Alignments in the Middle East have long been shifting tectonic plates. For decades, regional powers—particularly Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—have competed to maximize power against the backdrop of interventions by Russia, the United Kingdom, and, later, the United States. Until recently, the United States and its regional allies—Israel, the majority of the Arab Gulf states, and Turkey—were aligned against Iran. In the aftermath of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, it seemed certain that these regional powers, backed by Washington, would succeed in isolating the mullahs. But myriad domestic, regional, and international factors have combined to obviate this long-standing status quo. The most significant result of these developments has been Turkey’s drift away from the United States and toward Iran and Russia.[...]

Erdogan’s beliefs shape his perception of the regional order. The Turkish president appears to see himself as a modern-day sultan, the rightful heir to Sunni leadership. He has gone so far as to claim that his “is the only country that can lead the Muslim world.” This makes the House of Saud less of an ally and more of a competitor. [...]

These developments have occurred against the backdrop of the Syrian conflict, where the United States and Saudi Arabia have remained united by a long-standing partnership, their respective enmity toward Iran, and the ongoing war in Yemen. For Turkey, the Iran-Russia nexus now seems to be a better fit than NATO. Ankara is preoccupied with stabilizing Syria, even if this means that President Bashar al-Assad remains in power. This objective aligns with Iranian and Russian goals. Moscow and Tehran have worked closely together in Syria—with Russia providing air cover to Iran’s ground troops—to secure both Assad’s grip on power and their own regional status. Both they and Turkey have an interest in preserving Syria’s territorial integrity, which could help them avoid a possible regional fragmentation and state failure that could spill over and threaten their own survival. [...]

In the morass of Middle East geopolitics, Turkey appears to be the big winner, capitalizing on this realignment to improve its image in the Muslim world as a leading nation willing to stand up to Saudi Arabia—whose closer relationship with Israel and leading role in the disastrous war in Yemen have tarnished its reputation. Ankara seems to be playing both sides of the Syrian conflict, perhaps in an attempt to maximize its leverage in future negotiations. Indeed, the success of U.S. Syria policy depends in part on Turkey. As a result, Washington should understand Ankara’s main regional objectives and assess NATO’s ability to forestall an undesired shift in the regional balance of power.

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Foreign Policy: The Economic Crisis Is Over. Populism Is Forever.

The larger significance of Merkel’s fate is that the materialist assumptions of Western liberalism no longer capture the reality of Western politics and culture. It is in the nature of liberalism, a credo founded on rationalism, secularism, and utilitarian calculation, to regard material interests—i.e., your pocketbook—as real and the realm of values as ephemeral. That is why in What’s The Matter With Kansas?, the economist Thomas Frank could argue that Republicans had hoodwinked working-class Americans into voting against their true interests by seducing them with traditionalist values. That is also what Barack Obama was thinking when he said during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign that working-class voters “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

It is, of course, no coincidence that the wave of populist nationalism now breaking over the West began in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, when millions of working- and middle-class voters lost savings, jobs, and future prospects. But the wave engulfed liberal politics even where economic pillars remained intact. Poland was Eastern Europe’s economic engine—its Germany—when the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party defeated the classically liberal Civic Platform in 2015. Civic Platform Prime Minister Donald Tusk had described his platform as the maintenance of “warm water in the tap.” When I was in Warsaw the following year, Konstanty Gebert, a columnist and former Solidarity leader, said to me, “He thought that was enough, but he was wrong. People wanted history, they wanted glory, they wanted meaning. And PiS offered a meaning. Their meaning was, ‘We’ll make Poland great again.’”[...]

It is also no coincidence that hostility to immigrants and refugees runs much hotter in eastern Germany than in the wealthier and more open west. Yet during several visits to Dresden, near the country’s eastern border, I found that economics was not uppermost in the minds of either the officials of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party whom I met nor even among the marchers in the weekly rally of the anti-immigrant group Pegida. The demonstrators were not lumpen; most were small-town folk who had seen a few Muslim refugees—often very few—and concluded that their world was under siege. The nationalist spirit has begun spreading westward: In elections this month in wealthy and worldly Bavaria, the AfD won more than 10 percent of the vote and entered parliament there for the first time. The right of center fell, the left of center collapsed, and both extremes profited.

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The Huffington Post: Trump Keeps Lying About Having Started His Wall, And His Supporters Don’t Care

Donald Trump keeps claiming that construction on his promised “great wall” is well underway although not a single yard of it has been built, and his supporters are getting mad ― not at the president, but at those who point out his lie.[...]

“All politicians are liars. They’re all weasels,” said the 60-year-old from Panama City. “You know why he’s so good? Because he’s up there breaking all the furniture. If he wanted to shoot somebody on Broadway, I’d vote ‘not guilty.’”[...]

Trump promised hundreds of times during his campaign that he would force Mexico to pay for the wall’s construction. Yet nearly two years into his presidency, he has not even once broached the topic with that country. In fact, he acknowledged to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto just days after taking office that he understood Mexico would not pay for the wall but asked Peña Nieto not to say that publicly to avoid embarrassing Trump with his supporters.  [...]

With most of Trump’s thousands of falsehoods, it is unclear whether he knows he is saying something untrue. Trump has proven to be deeply ignorant on any number of issues important to the presidency, so in many cases, a given falsehood could be a matter of him lacking information about a topic but forming a strong opinion nonetheless.

But on the matter of the wall, Trump does seem to understand that Congress has not provided any funding for its construction. In fact, he threatened to veto a massive $1.3 trillion spending package in March because it did not pay for his wall. He wound up signing it anyway, and said he did so because of all the money it contained for the military.

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The Economist: A potential cure for HIV (May 18, 2017)

Scientists have developed a therapeutic vaccine for HIV which has the potential to create a functional cure for the disease. Here's how it works.

Have doctors found a cure for HIV? Since 1981 the AIDS epidemic has killed around 35 million people. Up until now HIV antiretroviral drugs have been the only way to control the disease. But they create their own problems as antiretrovirals can cost around $10,000 a year.

Quartz: Why Dutch and Danish retirees sleep well at night

No country has figured out how to finance a third of your life out of the labor force. But some countries have better systems than others. The latest annual, Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index , now in its tenth year, ranks the health and viability of national retirement systems around the world. It has once again awarded the Netherlands a top slot, and Denmark, last year’s winner, is right behind. They rank highly in terms of the level of benefits they supply, their sustainability (the Dutch and Danish don’t worry about their system going bust), and transparency. There are many things we can learn from their success, they show how most countries are on the wrong track. [...]

About 90% of Danes also have access to a retirement account through work. It is similar to the US’s 401(k), where employers and employees contribute to an account and employees bear the investment risk. The wide coverage is what makes Danish pensions so special: In the 1980s only 35% had access to a pension account through work. The increase comes from the roll out of new pension accounts that targeted blue-collar workers. Danes contribute between 12 to 18% to their employee pension accounts. Benefits are paid as an annuity after retirement, though sometimes Danes can take it as a lump sum.[...]

Argentina is at the bottom of the rankings, and offers lessons about what makes a retirement system work. It primarily relies on state pension funded mostly by current tax dollars like the other countries, but with erratic tax revenue the funding is not secure. Argentine pensions used to feature individual saving accounts until the state appropriated them in 2008. The Mercer report has concerns about the pension’s sustainability and if it offers enough to the poorest Argentines. It shows how a lack of transparency, unstable institutions, and fiscal pressure can undermine any pension system.

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Scientific American: Abortion Is a Problem to Be Solved, Not a Moral Issue (September 1, 2018)

Abstinence would obviate abortions just as starvation would forestall obesity. There is a reason no one has proposed chastity as a solution to overpopulation. Sexual asceticism doesn't work, because physical desire is nearly as fundamental as food to our survival and flourishing. A 2008 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health entitled “Abstinence-Only and Comprehensive Sex Education and the Initiation of Sexual Activity and Teen Pregnancy” found that among American adolescents ages 15 to 19, “abstinence-only education did not reduce the likelihood of engaging in vaginal intercourse” and that “adolescents who received comprehensive sex education had a lower risk of pregnancy than adolescents who received abstinence-only or no sex education.” A 2011 PLOS ONE paper analyzing “Abstinence-Only Education and Teen Pregnancy Rates” in 48 U.S. states concluded that “increasing emphasis on abstinence education is positively correlated with teenage pregnancy and birth rates,” controlling for socioeconomic status, educational attainment and ethnicity.

Most telling, a 2013 paper entitled “Like a Virgin (Mother): Analysis of Data from a Longitudinal, US Population Representative Sample Survey,” published in BMJ reported that 45 of the 7,870 American women studied between 1995 and 2009 said they become pregnant without sex. Who were these immaculately conceiving parthenogenetic Marys? They were twice as likely as other pregnant women to have signed a chastity pledge, and they were significantly more likely to report that their parents had difficulties discussing sex or birth control with them.

When women are educated and have access to birth-control technologies, pregnancies and, eventually, abortions decrease. A 2003 study on the “Relationships between Contraception and Abortion,” published in International Family Planning Perspectives, concluded that abortion rates declined as contraceptive use increased in seven countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Turkey, Tunisia and Switzerland). In six other nations (Cuba, Denmark, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea and the U.S.), contraceptive use and abortion rates rose simultaneously, but overall levels of fertility were falling during the period studied. After fertility levels stabilized, contraceptive use continued to increase, and abortion rates fell.

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Scientific American: How Identity, Not Issues, Explains the Partisan Divide (June 19, 2018)

U.S. liberals and conservatives not only disagree on policy issues: they are also increasingly unwilling to live near each other, be friends, or get married to members of the other group. This rejection based on group membership is called affective polarization, meaning that our feelings (affect) are different towards members of our own group compared to outsiders. Growing intolerance in the U.S. is a puzzle because disagreeing about policies need not cause rampant mistrust and legislative gridlock. For example, countries with proportional electoral representation like Germany create functional coalitions across different ideologies.

Now, surprising new research suggests that what divides us may not just be the issues. In two national surveys, political psychologist Lilliana Mason of the University of Maryland measured American’s preferences on six issues such as abortion and gun control, how strongly they identified as liberals and conservatives, and how much they preferred social contact with members of their own ideological groups. Identifying as liberal or conservative only explained a small part of their issue positions. (This is consistent with findings that Americans overestimate the differences in policy preferences between Republicans and Democrats.) Next, Mason analyzed whether the substantial intolerance between liberals and conservatives was due to their political identities (how much they labelled themselves as “liberal” or “conservative”) or to their policy opinions. For example, who would be more opposed to marrying a conservative: a moderate liberal who is pro-choice, or a strong liberal who is pro-life? Across all six issues, identifying as liberal or conservative was a stronger predictor of affective polarization than issue positions. Conservatives appear particularly likely to feel cold towards liberals, even conservatives who hold very liberal issue positions.

At the same time, the research has several important limitations. First, the study did not use an experimental design—it’s based on surveys—so the results cannot speak to whether affective polarization causes partisan conflict. Moreover, the set of included policy issues was not comprehensive and may therefore underestimate the links between issue positions and identity or with outgroup dislike. Furthermore, expecting a strong link between ideology and issue positions ignores the fact that many individuals respond to political surveys by repeating what they’ve recently heard from media and political elites rather than reflecting on personal values. These observations can explain why American’s issue positions often appear contradictory and unstable over time.

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Al Jazeera: Saving MBS from himself is the key to Saudi Arabia's stability

The return to Saudi Arabia this week of Prince Ahmad bin Abdelaziz, the last surviving full brother of King Salman, following six year of self-imposed exile, confirms the seriousness of the situation in the kingdom.[...]

As Prince Ahmed never publicly accepted MBS's appointment as crown prince, speculation is rife that he has come to replace or challenge him. However, it is much more likely that his return is part of the House of Saud trying to demonstrate unity in the face of the increasingly difficult predicament it faces.[...]

The combination of overconfidence, overambition and lack of diplomatic experience, which came to characterise MBS and his circle of advisers, is what led to the murder of Khashoggi - whether he was involved in it directly or not.[...]

Any of these moves could prove incredibly difficult, if MBS decides to resist - and he has the tools to do so. He is popular with a sizeable part of the Saudi population and has managed to build over the past three years his own deep state, which could sabotage efforts for a transfer of power.

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