The Weekly Sift

This week we got a look at the new National Security Strategy. If you’ve been ignoring all the MAGA rhetoric about “heritage Americans” or blood-and-soil nationalism, the new NSS codifies a lot of these ideas into national policy. Namely, immigration of non-European people is framed as a threat to the “spiritual and cultural health” of the United States, and Europe itself faces “civilizational erasure”. So the US should not only clamp down on immigration itself, but back the “patriotic parties” in Europe that want to preserve European whiteness.

Also, the US no longer stands for any particular principles like democracy or human rights. Instead, we want to do business and make money wherever we can, without disturbing “other countries’ differing religions, cultures, and governing systems.” (Except for Europe, where we want to see right-wing parties take power.) And we no longer envision or support a rules-based international order. Instead, we want to go back to the great-power spheres of influence that worked so well until World War I.

The featured post goes into greater detail about the NSS, and quotes at length from an insightful conversation between (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol. It should be out around 10 EST.

The weekly summary then as to cover the increasing hot water around Pete Hegseth, yet another partisan ruling by the Supreme Court, a DoJ ad apparently aimed at recruiting bloodthirsty immigration judges, a neurologist’s theory about subtle Covid-related brain damage that is changing social behavior, and a few other things. I’ll try to get it done around noon.