“Three of Donald Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination,” Jeff Stein reports at the Washington Post, “are pushing for cuts to Social Security benefits that would only affect younger Americans.”

With the first Republican primary debate approaching,  the nomination contest is a two-way race between former president Donald Trump (far ahead) and everyone else (far behind). It’s Big Idea time in that trailing pack, with every candidate casting about for some kind of policy proposal that might help him or her close the distance.

Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley aren’t really doing Big Idea Time stuff here. A Big Idea needs to be unique to a candidate. Three people saying the same thing (keep the checks coming to retirees, promise younger people fewer future benefits) isn’t a Big Idea. It’s the collective moan of runners who are out of breath and limping.

The last Big Idea on Social Security came in 2016 from Chris Christie. It didn’t help him because no one was really listening to anyone but Donald Trump, but at least it seemed actuarially sound from the standpoint of “saving” Social Security. Raise the retirement age by one week per year, he said, so that nobody’s retirement age gets pushed WAY back; and means-test benefits such that people don’t get benefit checks while still earning more than $200,000 per year.

“Keep those checks coming to old people and tell young people they’re gonna get screwed” is not only not a Big Idea, it’s pretty much electoral suicide. Yes, older people vote at higher rates than younger people, but throwing either group under the bus is a great way to get dragged under that bus with and by them.

For the original Big Idea on Social Security, let’s consult the program’s founding father, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“It is proposed,” FDR wrote in a 1935 message to Congress, “that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.”

Social Security should, per FDR,  have served a short-term purpose then disappeared as personal, private sector retirement accounts took its place.

Instead, Congress spent all the money it took in Social Security taxes and then some, financing benefits for retirees with the taxes paid by younger workers, even as the former population grew faster than the latter. We have a name for that practice: “Ponzi Scheme.” Like all Ponzi Schemes, Social Security will, at some point, collapse into bankruptcy.

Nor, whatever you may have been led to believe, are you “owed” benefits. “The noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act,” the Supreme Court ruled in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), “cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits are based on his contractual premium payments.” In short, there’s no actual government IOU to U.

Any truly Big Idea on Social Security will necessarily involve winding it down and closing it out with the minimum possible damage to its victims.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On July 18, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution by the kind of lopsided vote (412 for, 9 against, 1 present) normally reserved for proclamations lauding members’ hometown Little League programs. Unlike most legislation, Concurrent Resolution 57 is short enough to fit comfortably into newspaper op-ed length:

“Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that —

“(1) the State of Israel is not a racist or apartheid state;

“(2) Congress rejects all forms of antisemitism and xenophobia; and

“(3) the United States will always be a staunch partner and supporter of Israel.”

The billions Congress wastes annually on xenophobic nonsense like “border security” and “countering China”  belie the resolution’s second point, and the third point is simply bizarre — ask the Lakota or the Cherokee about how trustworthy the US is when it comes to “always” commitments.

But what about that first point, which was what the resolution was really intended to get across after US Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) stepped on a political third rail by contradicting it on July 16 (Jayapal quickly turned tail, apologized, and voted for the resolution)?

Well, there’s a problem with that point as well:

Israel IS a racist (at least if the concept of “race” encompasses ethno-religious groups) and apartheid state.

Israel was expressly founded as a “homeland” for people of a specific ethnic/religious group, and its “basic law” clearly and unambiguously affirms that “Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it.”

Non-Jews, and especially Palestinian Arabs, are legally treated as second-class citizens, when they’re treated as citizens at all. For example, a “right of return” to Israel is offered to all Jews, no matter where they were born, but not to Palestinian Arabs who may have actually been born right there.

That’s racist, period. Disagree? Substitute “Montana” for “Israel” and “white” for “Jewish.” How does it read now?

As for the “apartheid” allegation, no other term fits a state which has spilled outside its internationally recognized borders (as codified in 1948 by United Nations Resolution 181) and set up a two-tier system based on race/ethnicity in territory it occupies. A system where Arabs are subject to Jewish rule without representation in the Knesset, where Arab property is subject to legalized theft by Jewish “settlers,” where roads and other infrastructure facilities are segregated into “Arab” and “Jews Only” use, and under which a menial class of Arabs are allowed to cross into Israel proper from their designated “homelands” to work, but not to live.

The usual defenses I see of Israel on these matters is that its existence as a “Jewish state,” and its apartheid treatment of Palestinian Arabs, are justified and must therefore not be considered “racist” or “apartheid.”

Presumably American supporters of racial segregation and South African supporters of the original “apartheid” considered their systems justified as well.

Claiming something’s justified doesn’t magically make it something other than what it is.

Neither does lying about it in a congressional resolution.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Over the last seventeen months, it’s become customary for those who disagree with US foreign policy  on the Ukraine war to preface every objection to that policy with at least one, possibly two, disclaimers.

Disclaimer #1: The Russian invasion, they’ll concede, was “unprovoked.”

Optional Disclaimer #2: The Russian invasion, they’ll say, was “unjustified.”

I understand the impulse. They’re trying to preemptively communicate that they are “anti-war” or “anti-intervention” without being mistaken for horror of horrors, “pro-Russia.”

But those disclaimers are neither necessary nor wise.

The Russian invasion was not “unprovoked.”

For one thing, to “provoke” is, per Merriam-Webster, “to incite to anger” or to “arouse to a feeling or action.” Who decides whether Party A has been “incited” or “aroused” by Party B? Party A.

For another, Ukraine, NATO, and the US had been put on notice for quite some time (at least eight years, and actually more like 20) that Russia considered their actions provocative … and chose to continue down the same route rather than backing off or negotiating an amicable solution. The provocations were, in other words, both ongoing and intentional, not just occasional accidents.

To say that an action is “provoked,” though, is not the same thing as saying that the action is “justified.”

You might “incite me to anger” by singing loudly every time you walk past my house, but that doesn’t mean I’m justified in getting out my 12-gauge and sending you to your grave. Cutting me off in traffic may justify a honk of the horn and a selected obscenity or two. It doesn’t justify following you home and burning your house down.

Was the Russian invasion “justified?” I don’t think so, but arriving at that conclusion is not some kind of automatic slam-dunk. Opinions do vary on what constitutes an acceptable casus belli, and on the truth or falsehood of various underlying factual claims.

My own opinion on US meddling in Russian/Ukrainian relations doesn’t depend on an assessment of whether the invasion was provoked, unprovoked, justified, or unjustified, so I don’t need any such disclaimers.

Rather, my opinion is based on the notion that even if the US government has one or more legitimate purposes (in my opinion it has none), those purposes don’t extend to stealing money from you to buy weapons and sending them halfway around the world in the hope of helping one authoritarian gang win a turf war versus another authoritarian gang.

If you think I’m engaging in “moral equivalence,” you’re absolutely right. There’s nothing wrong with moral equivalence statements if the people/actions being described are morally equivalent. Looking at you, Putin/Zelenskyy/Biden.

I’m not “pro-Russia,” “pro-Ukraine,” or even “pro-US.” I’m pro-peace and anti-war. Stick that disclaimer in your pipe and smoke it.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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