| Carlson goes on to say that Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi “are wonderful places to live.” (And, oddly, that he grew up in a country that had cities like those, which is odd because American cities in the ’70s and ’80s did not look like Abu Dhabi, and were not extraordinarily safe.)
One reason why we don’t have clean streets in New York the way they do in Singapore is because we don’t cane people for minor crimes. We don’t give people the death penalty for manufacturing drugs (200 grams of cannabis resin warrants execution, if you’re not careful), nor do we lock people in jail for a decade for the purported crime of getting high. We don’t crack down on jaywalking, spitting, or cigarette-smoking the way they do. We also don’t tend to use corporal punishment for our children.
Carlson’s point is fine that people care about quality of life issues, that Skid Row in Los Angeles and subway-station junkies in New York City are embarrassments, and that our city officials ought to be able to clean up the streets to improve the lives of taxpaying residents—not just when Xi Jinping comes to town. You might think existing public disorder needs to be curbed, but there are many possible ways of doing so that could still protect civil liberties and wouldn’t turn American cities into authoritarian hellholes. (In fact, we should probably turn to Russian out-migration numbers to see whether residents agree with Carlson’s assessment.)
I simply do not think we need to hand it to authoritarians under any circumstances or speak in flattering terms about Putin’s ability to govern. It’s not that compliments like these ought to be haram; it’s that Carlson is examining only one side of the ledger, and missing all the ways Russian laws rain down brutality on the innocent and undeserving. Just ask some of the tourists who’ve had their stays in Russia involuntarily prolonged, like Brittney Griner.
Senate passes Ukraine aid bill: Early this morning, an aid package for Israel and Ukraine cleared the Senate, as a group of Republicans split from their party and voted with the Democrats. The $95 billion emergency aid bill—$60 billion of which is meant for Ukraine, bringing the total U.S.-footed tab to $170 billion—must now clear the House, which makes its fate uncertain.
On Monday night, a group of 17 Republicans, mostly moderates and national security hawks, joined with Democrats to get the bill across a final procedural hurdle. Then, this morning, five more Republicans joined the dissenters’ ranks. This saga highlights what most Republicans already know to be true: that the party is sorely divided on whether the United States ought to be the world’s police, and—if consensus is shifting away from that role—how the U.S. ought to deal with its allies in the interim. |
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