It always strikes me that the United States could learn a lot from how India responds to terrorist attacks. From an outsider point of view, India seems to have a few clear priorities. They want robust economic growth. They want to maintain a clear military edge over Pakistan. They want to be able to deter a Chinese attack. And they want to be respected on the world stage as a great power. They understand that these are difficult but attainable goals. And they understand that neither Pakistan nor sundry irregular Islamist groups has it within their power to prevent India from meeting those goals. So when India’s citizens are killed by terrorists, it’s of course important to try to reduce vulnerability to future attacks, but most of all it’s important not to allow low-cost terrorist attacks to derail India’s national priorities.

US policy, by contrast, is dominated by hysteria, moralism, and a self-defeating quest for absolute security. It’s conventional wisdom that terrorism is a tool of the weak, but unwillingness to take a deep breath and realize that al-Qaeda is, in fact, weak. If we want to build a strong, prosperous, respected America then Osama bin Laden can’t stop us. He can only goad us into taking actions that undermine our strength, prosperity, and international standing.

I thought Ezra Klein really cared about me, but he send this same card to the whole internet.

Kevin Drum considers the issue of does it really make sense to think of the United States as engaged in a clean tech race with China, Germany, and others. The level on which it clearly doesn’t make sense, is that China racing ahead doesn’t make us worse off. It’s not, in that sense, a real race. On the other hand, I think there are real benefits to being the first mover. One reason the US still does a lot of the high value-added stuff in product design and marketing for the sorts of gizmos that are likely to be manufactured in Asia is precisely that the United States spent decades leading the world in high-tech manufacturing. That foundation laid around a hundred years ago pays off lasting dividends today.

But fundamentally, the “race” metaphor probably makes the most sense as an analogy to something like the Olympics. People like to cheer for American athletes. And the Dutch cheer for their long-track speedskaters and the Canadians for their hockey team, and the Koreans for their short-trackers, and all the rest. On some level, it doesn’t really matter who wins. On another level, without the competitive spirit you wouldn’t have the games. So it makes for a healthy deployment of nationalist sentiments and national pride.

A growing number of Israeli figures, including most recently Ehud Barak, have been acknowledging the untenable nature of the status quo. But few people in the Israeli political mainstream seem interested in articulating policies that fit their diagnosis. As Daniel Levy comments:

They show realist tendencies, but there is a powerful disconnect (one that was pervasive in Barak’s speech) between most of this camp’s diagnosis of the situation (an “end of the world as we know it” threat of apartheid or binationalism) and their prescription for addressing it: resume negotiations, blame the Palestinians, more of the same. It’s like telling someone they have life-threatening yet treatable cancer and prescribing two aspirins a day.

If the situation is so dire, then bolder steps are surely called for.

You see, of course, something similar in the debate among American Jews. To acknowledge in some abstract sense the need for Israel to un-settle the West Bank and retreat to morally, politically, and demographically defensible borders that leave space for a viable independent Palestine is commonplace. But many people are very uncomfortable with the idea that US policy should do anything about the situation, with the idea that the conflict has any broader negative consequences for the United States, or with anyone (and especially non-Jews) offering any rhetorically strong criticisms of Israeli conduct or questioning the good-faith of Israeli officials.

Back on the 12th I posted the Economic Report of the President’s skill stagnation chart:

David Frum comments:

The most obvious explanation for this change: immigration. Unlike Canada and Australia, which emphasize highly skilled migrants, U.S. immigration policy is skewed in favor of the very low-skilled.

Katz & Goldin consider and reject this hypothesis on page 33 of their book:

That said, I do agree with Frum that America would do well to increase the number of high-skill immigrants that we permit to enter the country. I’m not a supporter of reducing the volume of low-skill immigration (indeed, wouldn’t mind seeing more of it) but the purely economic case is even clearly that more immigration by educated people would be beneficial to most native-born Americans as well as to most low-skill immigrants to the USA. It seems particularly silly that people who come to the US on student visas and successfully obtain degrees here don’t automatically garner permission to work in America.

“Dan Coats Rents Home For Indiana Senate Run”.

I can see it now: Evan Bayh—at least he’s not moving to North Carolina.