View from Europe: Helmut Kohl’s Cold War Heroics
Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor who presided over the country’s reunification as the Cold War ended and who died Friday, deserves his place in German history “right alongside Otto von Bismarck,” insists Josef Joffe at The American Interest. That’s because “the ‘Iron Chancellor’ unified Germany with ‘blood and iron’ in 1871. Kohl pulled off Unification 2.0 in 1990 without a shot being fired.” In the 1980s, too, Kohl helped save NATO by facing down mass protests and hosting intermediate-range forces on West German soil. “Kohl’s courage, we should conclude, was the beginning of the end of the Cold War — and the Muscovite empire in Europe. The Wall collapsed in 1989, and so did the Soviet Union just two years later.”
Libertarian Take: Treating Speech Like Violence
Malicious speech didn’t used to legally be considered violence, but that may change now, warns Robby Soave at The New York Times. At issue is the conviction of Michelle Carter — the Massachusetts woman who, when 17 years old, encouraged her 18-year-old boyfriend to follow through on his suicidal thoughts — for involuntary manslaughter. Some states criminalize suicide encouragement, but Massachusetts doesn’t. Soave says a single case like this may not be enough to establish precedent, but it will likely encourage both law enforcement and school officials who have been increasingly seeking to punish teenage bad behavior in the courts: “Let’s empower teachers to confront harassment and refer troubled teenagers to mental health professionals,” he urges —but don’t “broadly criminalize teen cruelty.”
From the Right: Why Pols Feed the Flames of Voter Anger
Politicians are feeding the irrational anger of the electorate, explains Ben Shapiro at National Review. Democrats like Bernie Sanders have picked up a cue from Donald Trump in harnessing the power of unhealthy rage. Challenging illogical thinking that triggers such anger is the best way to deal with it, he writes, but “politicians are trained to do the opposite. Politicians spend their lives seeking the favor of others. That means they find it wildly beneficial to nurse the emotions of constituents.” So pols believe that “if a constituent is angry, the best option isn’t to help break the chain of emotional volatility — it’s to channel that volatility into the beating back of enemies.” Pols need to rein it in or that anger will “burst loose in ways those politicians never anticipated.”
Foreign Desk: Death of ISIS Chief Would Help al Qaeda
Even if reports of the killing of ISIS leader Omar al-Baghdadi are true, says Adnan Khan at MacLean’s, his death wouldn’t be an unalloyed good for the West. That’s because unlike Osama bin Laden, who built an organization that could withstand decapitation, Baghdadi positioned himself at the top of a caliphate: “With Baghdadi gone, the ISIS brand will fade. If it continues to transition to an al-Qaeda-style, franchise-based movement, a process it began last year, it will only benefit al Qaeda.” And terrorism experts “worry the death of Baghdadi would set the stage for a rapprochement between ISIS and al Qaeda” and tip the power balance back to al Qaeda, which would then grow much stronger.
Law Wonk: Chutzpah of Travel Ban Opponents
International-law specialist E.M. Oblomov has found an “audacious example” of chutzpah. The group HIAS has worked since the late 19th century to help Jews fleeing oppression settle in the United States, with its work reaching its pinnacle during the drive to help Soviet Jews and the 1975 Jackson-Vanik Amendment pressuring the Soviets on the matter. “Though [Jackson-Vanik] was written in ethnically and religiously neutral terms, the policy it put into effect was designed to favor Soviet Jews,” Oblomov writes at City Journal. But “that was then.” Today, HIAS is the second plaintiff in the suit against President Trump’s travel ban, arguing it crosses the Constitution’s Establishment Clause by violating religious neutrality in effect, even if not explicitly written to do so. In other words, precisely what HIAS’s mission has always been: “Even by the standards of chutzpah, that’s quite a pivot.”
Compiled by Seth Mandel