Political Balancing Acts
A new think tank, liberalism's future, family policy, GameStop, and more
“Rounding Up” is a newsletter rounding up various links, newsletters, and podcasts from the perspective of political reform. If you’d like to join this experiment, please subscribe.
This week’s issue covers a lot of territory—from a new populist effort to debates about the future of liberalism to wage policy to King Lear.
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Get building: Former Trump OMB director Russell Vought has started a new populist-oriented think tank: the Center for American Restoration. In The Federalist, Vought lays out the aims of this new organization. Some of his bullet-points:
Extending the principle of being pro-life to a nationwide enthusiasm for promoting life and increasing the birth rate—having more children and bigger families, adopting children, and championing (not simply enduring) the disabled.
Rejecting the militant “successor ideology” that has taken root in elite institutions, unifying the country around the principle of equality under the law, and developing an agenda to loosen its grip and dampen the power of “cancel culture.”
Challenging the policy architecture that has hollowed out productive work for America’s working class and transferred the gains of the American economy to the service-sector elites.
Ending corporate free-riding from anti-competitive market dominance and expensive government subsidies in critical industries including health care and drugs, technology, and provision of critical infrastructure through aggressive antitrust enforcement.
Fighting for an immigration policy that puts America first, promoting an authentically skills-based system that preserves tight labor markets for low-wage workers and ensures that limited high-skilled visas fill the real gaps in our economy, not the needs of big tech companies on our coasts, and keeps us secure.
Focusing on China as the predominant national security threat for the foreseeable future and ensure that it cannot rise into a world hegemon, while also clearly articulating what the United States expects of China for both countries to be able to coexist peacefully.
Henry Olsen seems impressed by this effort, so far.
Francis Fukuyama’s inaugural essay for American Purpose—“Liberalism and Its Discontents”—generated a splash when it was first published in 2020. ( I wrote something on it back then.) Now, American Purpose has released a two-part symposium on his essay and the “future of liberalism.” Ten essays—ten different approaches. A few samples….Aaron Sibarium: It’s the tech, dude….Liberalism has always been in crisis, Dhruva Jaishankar says…. Joseph E. Capizzi finds that liberalism requires deeper ethical commitments to survive…
Post-what: What is “postliberalism”? In his new Q&A, Ben Woodfinden offers some thoughts.
First off, it’s not clear to me that there’s actually a coherent and unified concept we can call “postliberal” and there seem to be some different camps. The first camp is basically just beefed up reform conservatism, one-nation toryism, and old style continental christian democracy. Now this camp I’d definitely fit into, but I’m not sure what is fundamentally post liberal about it. It’s a rejection and important corrective of a certain kind of liberalism, but that doesn’t make it postliberal.
Greg Weiner defends Madisonian republicanism.
Family Affairs: The Institute for Family Studies is hosting a symposium on family policy. Contributions so far: Patrick Brown on what debates about tax policy can reveal about the GOP; Sam Hammond making the case for a universal child allowance; and Angela Rachidi raising doubts about the refundable CTC as a policy mechanism for working families.
Local pharmacies have done a better job rolling out the coronavirus vaccine than many national chains have, Matt Stoller argues:
You go into a pandemic with the health care infrastructure you have, and ours happens to be quite concentrated and corrupt. But fortunately, we have this natural experiment. Where there are independent pharmacies, we get the benefits of community leaders owning the infrastructure needed by the community.
At American Compass, Oren Cass has multiple posts on immigration and wages. Marshall Auerback looks at potential shifts in the German economy. And a chat with former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
Daniel J. Hopkins, Eric Schickler, and David Azizi say that American political parties have become like chain stores—the positions of state Democratic (or Republican) parties have come to focus more on national brands than local politics.
Game stopped? Chris Arnade argues that the Game Stop short-squeeze reveals a class disequilibrium that provokes a broader social alienation: “This will harden a cynicism that already exists in large parts of America. A cynicism that will convince more and more people to play all of their life, recklessly.”
Need more reading material? Alan Jacobs recommends some newsletters.
A transcript of Michael Lind’s interview with “The Realignment.”
New (?) kids on the block: Bari Weiss, Scott Alexander, and Will Wilkinson have all started Substacks.
At the always-interesting Manifesto! podcast, Jacob Siegel and Phil Klay talk King Lear, the grotesque, and more.
Speaking of Shakespeare…Midsummer Eve by the Pre-Raphaelite (or Pre-Raphaelite-ish) painter E.R. Hughes: