The Taliban are using our technology. Because of course they are.

The American war in Syria may end soon. When did it start?

My last comments on the Kevin Williamson affair

Dear Atlantic: Hire David French instead

There've been debates in recent days about The Atlantic's decision to hire National Review's Kevin Williamson. Conservatives think (not without merit, I think) that every time a mainstream publication hires a conservative, liberals try to get that conservative fired.

On the other hand: Williamson is a dick. He's been a little bit racist,  a little bit snooty, and you'll forgive women for thinking his proposal to execute women who've had an abortion is-a non-starter. He's a talented provocateur, too smart and self-aware to let himself go Full-Blown Milo, but he also delights sticking a thumb in the eye of people who disagree with him.

I'm not going to say The Atlantic shouldn't hire Williamson. I will say there's a National Review voice they should've hired instead: David A. French.

There would still be complaints. Critics have long eyed his marriage with suspicion. He's religiously conservative on sexual matters. He's skeptical, even hostile to Black Lives Matter. There's not much about which I think he's right.

On the other hand, French is a writer who takes liberals and liberal arguments seriously. Which makes him a great writer for The Atlantic's audience: He's willing to explain his ideas, and why he thinks liberal ideas are wrong, and he's generally better at doing it without resorting to trollish, strawman arguments. And he's been willing to call out his side for its failures — something that might earn the trust of liberal readers.

I don't agree with French about much. A lot of liberals would no doubt protest his appointment. But he lacks Williamson's baggage, and possesses some virtues Williamson does not. If The Atlantic  is reconsidering Williamson's appointment, it could do much worse than to hire David A. French.

I'm not happy with how we debate each other these days.

Why Trumpian immigration enforcement isn't really conservative

I've heard about this before, but it still astonishes me:

Border Patrol officers are working without permission on private property and setting up checkpoints up to 100 miles away from the border under a little-known federal law that is being used more widely in the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration. 

Trump administration officials defend the government’s decades-old authority to search people and property, even without a warrant, far from the border. They call it a vital part of preventing weapons, terrorists and other people from illegally entering the United States. 

An estimated 200 million Americans live within 100 miles of the border, according to the A.C.L.U. At least 11 states — mostly in the Northeast and Florida — are either entirely or almost entirely in the 100-mile radius.

Conservatives talk about liberty and rule of law a lot, but what they're doing is giving police virtually unfettered power over much of the country. At the very least, they owe an accounting of how this squares with their limited government rhetoric.

The immorality of Trumpist immigration enforcement

I've suggested before that Trumpist immigration enforcement might be an act of injustice far worse than the offense of illegal immigration. We have two more examples this week of why it might be so.

First, we have the story of Jorge Garcia, a Detroit man being deported after 30 years in the United States. He was brought to the United States when he was 10; his deportation separates him from his wife and two children, all of them U.S. citizens. Please, read his story.

 Second, we have this atrocity:

US border patrol agents are routinely sabotaging water supplies left for migrants in the Arizona desert, condemning them to death, humanitarian groups have said. Travellers attempting to cross into the US from Mexico regularly die of dehydration, as well as exposure to extreme heat or cold, so aid groups leave water bottles and emergency stocks such as blankets at points throughout the Sonoran desert. A video released by the groups showed border patrol agents kicking over water bottles and pouring away their contents. A statement from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it was aware of the footage and that it was filmed around six years ago.

In the first case, a family is destroyed and disrupted — no doubt causing ripple effects in the community — because a man was born on one side of the border but, through circumstances not of his making, lived on this side of the border. As best I can tell, his actual presence in the country was doing nobody harm. Which means the greater harm is done by deporting him.

In the second case, people are being condemned to death and suffering to thwart the possibility of them being on the wrong side of the line.
 

 My friends in favor of immigration restrictions believe that a country has a right to make rules about who gets to come in and who doesn't. They are correct. But that doesn't make these kinds of enforcement actions moral. We're condemning people to death for, in essence, not following bureaucratic rules. We're destroying families whose only offense was actually committed by an older generation — unless, of course, you want to start making the case that 10-year-olds are in control of where older relatives take them.

 That is wrong. It is a sin. It is a sin being carried out in our name.