Transportation Finance: Kentucky'S Structure And National Trends: Fill & Download for Free

On Thursday, March 12th, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, could have insisted that he and his colleagues work through the weekend to hammer out an emergency aid package addressing the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, he recessed the Senate for a long weekend, and returned home to Louisville, Kentucky. McConnell, a seventy-eight-year-old Republican who is about to complete his sixth term as a senator, planned to attend a celebration for a protégé, Justin Walker, a federal judge who was once his Senate intern. McConnell has helped install nearly two hundred conservatives as judges; stocking the judiciary has been his legacy project.Soon after he left the Capitol, Democrats in the House of Representatives settled on a preliminary rescue package, working out the details with the Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin. The Senate was urgently needed for the next steps in the process. McConnell, though, was onstage in a Louisville auditorium, joking that his opponents “occasionally compare me to Darth Vader.”The gathering had the feel of a reunion. Don McGahn, Donald Trump’s former White House counsel, whom McConnell has referred to as his “buddy and co-collaborator” in confirming conservative judges, flew down for the occasion. So did Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose Senate confirmation McConnell had fought fiercely to secure. Walker, the event’s honoree, had clerked for Kavanaugh, and became one of his lead defenders after Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault. McConnell is now championing Walker for an opening on the powerful D.C. Court of Appeals, even though Walker has received a “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, in part because, at the age of thirty-eight, he has never tried a case.Another former Senate aide of McConnell’s, a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Kentucky, Gregory Van Tatenhove, also attended the Louisville event. His wife, Christine, is a former undergraduate scholar at the McConnell Center—an academic program at the University of Louisville which, among other things, hosts an exhibit honoring the Senator’s career. Recently, she donated a quarter of a million dollars to the center.McConnell, a voracious reader of history, has been cultivating his place in it for many years. But, in leaving Washington for the long weekend, he had misjudged the moment. The hashtag #WheresMitch? was trending on Twitter. President Trump had declared a national emergency; the stock market had ended one of its worst weeks since the Great Recession. Nearly two thousand cases of covid-19 had already been confirmed in America.Eleven days later, the Senate still had not come up with a bill. The Times ran a scorching editorial titled “The Coronavirus Bailout Stalled. And It’s Mitch McConnell’s Fault.” The Majority Leader had tried to jam through a bailout package that heavily favored big business. But by then five Republicans were absent in self-quarantine, and the Democrats forced McConnell to accept a $2.1-trillion compromise bill that reduced corporate giveaways and expanded aid to health-care providers and to hard-hit workers.McConnell, who is known as one of the wiliest politicians in Washington, soon reframed the narrative as a personal success story. In Kentucky, where he is running for reëlection, he launched a campaign ad about the bill’s passage, boasting, “One leader brought our divided country together.” At the same time, he attacked the Democrats, telling a radio host that the impeachment of Trump had “diverted the attention of the government” when the epidemic was in its early stages. In fact, several senators—including Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut—had raised alarms about the virus nearly two months before the Administration acted, whereas Trump had told reporters around the same time that he was “not concerned at all.” And on February 27th, some three weeks after the impeachment trial ended, McConnell had defended the Administration’s response, accusing Democrats of “performative outrage” when they demanded more emergency funding.Many have regarded McConnell’s support for Trump as a stroke of cynical political genius. McConnell has seemed to be both protecting his caucus and covering his flank in Kentucky—a deep-red state where, perhaps not coincidentally, Trump is far more popular than he is. When the pandemic took hold, the President’s standing initially rose in national polls, and McConnell and Trump will surely both take credit for the aid package in the coming months. Yet, as covid-19 decimates the economy and kills Americans across the nation, McConnell’s alliance with Trump is looking riskier. Indeed, some critics argue that McConnell bears a singular responsibility for the country’s predicament. They say that he knew from the start that Trump was unequipped to lead in a crisis, but, because the President was beloved by the Republican base, McConnell protected him. He even went so far as to prohibit witnesses at the impeachment trial, thus guaranteeing that the President would remain in office. David Hawpe, the former editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, said of McConnell, “There are a lot of people disappointed in him. He could have mobilized the Senate. But the Republican Party changed underneath him, and he wanted to remain in power.”Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican political consultant, agrees that McConnell’s party deserves a considerable share of the blame for America’s covid-19 disaster. In a forthcoming book, “It Was All a Lie,” Stevens writes that, in accommodating Trump and his base, McConnell and other Republicans went along as Party leaders dismantled the country’s safety net and ignored experts of all kinds, including scientists. “Mitch is kidding himself if he thinks he’ll be remembered for anything other than Trump,” he said. “He will be remembered as the Trump facilitator.”The President is vindictive toward Republicans who challenge him, as Mitt Romney can attest. Yet Stevens believes that the conservatives who have acceded to Trump will pay a more lasting price. “Trump was the moral test, and the Republican Party failed,” Stevens said. “It’s an utter disaster for the long-term fate of the Party. The Party has become an obsession with power without purpose.”“If you don’t want me to sound like that when I imitate you, then don’t sound like that when you talk to me.”Cartoon by William HaefeliBill Kristol, a formerly stalwart conservative who has become a leading Trump critic, describes McConnell as “a pretty conventional Republican who just decided to go along and get what he could out of Trump.” Under McConnell’s leadership, the Senate, far from providing a check on the executive branch, has acted as an accelerant. “Demagogues like Trump, if they can get elected, can’t really govern unless they have people like McConnell,” Kristol said. McConnell has stayed largely silent about the President’s lies and inflammatory public remarks, and has propped up the Administration with legislative and judicial victories. McConnell has also brought along the Party’s financial backers. “There’s been too much focus on the base, and not enough on business leaders, big donors, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page,” Kristol said, adding, “The Trump base would be there anyway, but the élites might have rebelled if not for McConnell. He could have fundamentally disrupted Trump’s control, but instead McConnell has kept the trains running.”VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKERWatch A Reporter’s Video from Inside the Capitol Siege | The New Yorker Video | CNE | Newyorker.comOn January 6th, 2021, Luke Mogelson followed Trump supporters as they forced their way into the U.S. Capitol, using his phone’s camera as a notebook.https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/a-reporters-footage-from-inside-the-capitol-siegeMcConnell and the President are not a natural pair. A former Trump Administration official, who has also worked in the Senate, observed, “It would be hard to find two people less alike in temperament in the political arena. With Trump, there’s rarely an unspoken thought. McConnell is the opposite—he’s constantly thinking but says as little as possible.” The former Administration official went on, “Trump is about winning the day, or even the hour. McConnell plays the long game. He’s sensitive to the political realities. His North Star is continuing as Majority Leader—it’s really the only thing for him. He’s patient, sly, and will obfuscate to make less apparent the ways he’s moving toward a goal.” The two men also have different political orientations: “Trump is a populist—he’s not just anti-élitist, he’s anti-institutionalist.” As for McConnell, “no one with a straight face would ever call him a populist—Trump came to drain the swamp, and now he’s working with the biggest swamp creature of them all.”ADVERTISEMENTWhen Trump ran for President, he frequently derided “the corrupt political establishment,” saying that Wall Street titans were “getting away with murder” by paying no taxes. In a furious campaign ad, images of the New York Stock Exchange and the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs flashed onscreen as he promised an end to the élites who had “bled our country dry.” In interviews, he denounced his opponents for begging wealthy donors for campaign contributions, arguing that, if “somebody gives them money,” then “just psychologically, when they go to that person they’re going to do it—they owe him.”McConnell, by contrast, is the master of the Washington money machine. Nobody has done more than he has to engineer the current campaign-finance system, in which billionaires and corporations have virtually no spending limits, and self-dealing and influence-peddling are commonplace. Rick Wilson, a Never Trumper Republican and a former political consultant who once worked on races with McConnell’s team, said, “McConnell’s an astounding behind-the-scenes operator who’s got control of the most successful fund-raising operation in history.” Former McConnell staffers run an array of ostensibly independent spending groups, many of which take tens of millions of dollars from undisclosed donors. Wilson considers McConnell, who has been Majority Leader since 2015, a realist who does whatever is necessary to preserve both his own political survival and the Republicans’ edge in the Senate, which now stands at 53–47. “He feels no shame about it,” he said. “McConnell has been the most powerful force normalizing Trump in Washington.”Al Cross, a columnist and a journalism professor at the University of Kentucky, who is considered the dean of the state’s political press corps, believes that McConnell’s partnership with Trump “is the most important political relationship in the country.” He had hoped that McConnell would push back against Trump. After all, past Republicans have crossed party lines to defend democracy—from censuring Joe McCarthy to forcing the resignation of President Richard Nixon. “But Trump and McConnell have come to understand each other,” Cross said. “The President needs him to govern. McConnell knows that if their relationship fell apart it would be a disaster for the Republican majority in the Senate. They’re very different in many ways, but fundamentally they’re about the same thing—winning.”In a forthcoming book, “Let Them Eat Tweets,” the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson challenge the notion that the Republican Party is riven between global corporate élites and downscale white social conservatives. Rather, they argue, an “expedient pact” lies at the heart of today’s Party—and McConnell and Trump embody it. Polls show that there is little voter support for wealthy donors’ agenda of tax cuts for themselves at the expense of social-safety-net cuts for others. The Republicans’ 2017 tax bill was a case in point: it rewarded the Party’s biggest donors by bestowing more than eighty per cent of its largesse on the wealthiest one per cent, by cutting corporate tax rates, and by preserving the carried-interest loophole, which is exploited by private-equity firms and hedge funds. The legislation was unpopular with Democratic and Republican voters alike. In order to win elections, Hacker and Pierson explain, the Republican Party has had to form a coalition between corporatists and white cultural conservatives who are galvanized by Trump’s anti-élitist and racist rhetoric. The authors call this hybrid strategy Plutocratic Populism. Hacker told me that the relationship between McConnell and Trump offers “a clear illustration of how the Party has evolved,” adding, “They may detest each other, but they need each other.”Although the two men almost always support each other in public, several members of McConnell’s innermost circle told me that in private things are quite different. They say that behind Trump’s back McConnell has called the President “nuts,” and made clear that he considers himself smarter than Trump, and that he “can’t stand him.” (A spokesman for McConnell, who declined to be interviewed, denies this.) According to one such acquaintance, McConnell said that Trump resembles a politician he loathes: Roy Moore, the demagogic former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, whose 2017 campaign for an open U.S. Senate seat was upended by allegations that he’d preyed on teen-age girls. (Moore denies them.) “They’re so much alike,” McConnell told the acquaintance.McConnell’s political fealty to Trump has cost him the respect of some of the people who have known him the longest. David Jones, the late co-founder of the health-care giant Humana, backed all McConnell’s Senate campaigns, starting in 1984; Jones and his company’s foundation collectively gave $4.6 million to the McConnell Center. When Jones died, last September, McConnell described him as, “without exaggeration, the single most influential friend and mentor I’ve had in my entire career.” But, three days before Jones’s death, Jones and his two sons, David, Jr., and Matthew, sent the second of two scorching letters to McConnell, both of which were shared with me. They called on him not to be “a bystander” and to use his “constitutional authority to protect the nation from President Trump’s incoherent and incomprehensible international actions.” They argued that “the powers of the Senate to constrain an errant President are prodigious, and it is your job to put them to use.” McConnell had assured them, in response to their first letter, that Trump had “one of the finest national-security teams with whom I have had the honor of working.” But in the second letter the Joneses replied that half of that team had since gone, leaving the Department of Defense “leaderless for months,” and the office of the director of National Intelligence with only an “ ‘acting’ caretaker.” The Joneses noted that they had all served the country: the father in the Navy, Matthew in the Marine Corps, and David, Jr., in the State Department, as a lawyer. Imploring McConnell “to lead,” they questioned the value of “having chosen the judges for a republic while allowing its constitutional structures to fail and its strength and security to crumble.”John David Dyche, a lawyer in Louisville and until recently a conservative columnist, enjoyed unmatched access to McConnell and his papers, and published an admiring biography of him in 2009. In March, though, Dyche posted a Twitter thread that caused a lot of talk in the state’s political circles. He wrote that McConnell “of course realizes that Trump is a hideous human being & utterly unfit to be president,” and that, in standing by Trump anyway, he has shown that he has “no ideology except his own political power.” Dyche declined to comment for this article, but, after the coronavirus shut down most of America, he announced that he was contributing to McConnell’s opponent, Amy McGrath, and tweeted, “Those who stick with the hideous, incompetent demagogue endanger the country & will be remembered in history as shameful cowards.”McConnell also appears to have lost the political support of his three daughters. The youngest, Porter, is a progressive activist who is the campaign director for Take On Wall Street, a coalition of labor unions and nonprofit groups which advocates against the “predatory economic power” of “banks and billionaires.” One of its targets has been Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and C.E.O. of the Blackstone Group, who, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, has, since 2016, donated nearly thirty million dollars to campaigns and super pacs aligned with McConnell. Last year, Take On Wall Street condemned Blackstone’s “detrimental behavior” and argued that the company’s campaign donations “cast a pall on candidates’ ethics.”Porter McConnell has also publicly criticized the Senate’s confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh, which her father considers one of his greatest achievements. On Twitter, she accused Kavanaugh’s supporters of misogyny, and retweeted a post from StandWithBlaseyFord, a Web site supporting Christine Blasey Ford, one of Kavanaugh’s accusers. The husband of McConnell’s middle daughter, Claire, has also criticized Kavanaugh online, and McConnell’s eldest daughter, Eleanor, is a registered Democrat.All three daughters declined to comment, as did their mother, Sherrill Redmon, whom McConnell divorced in 1980. After the marriage ended, Redmon, who holds a Ph.D. in American history, left Kentucky and took over a women’s-history archive at Smith College, in Massachusetts, where she collaborated with Gloria Steinem on the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project. In an e-mail, Steinem told me that Redmon rarely spoke about McConnell, and noted, “Despite Sherrill’s devotion to recording all of women’s lives, she didn’t talk about the earlier part of her own.” Steinem’s understanding was that McConnell’s political views had once been different. “I can only imagine how painful it must be to marry and have children with a democratic Jekyll and see him turn into a corrupt and authoritarian Hyde,” she wrote. (Redmon is evidently working on a tell-all memoir.)Steinem’s comment echoed a common belief about McConnell: that he began his career as an idealistic, liberal Republican in the mold of Nelson Rockefeller. Certainly, McConnell’s current positions on several key issues, including campaign spending and organized labor, are far more conservative than they once were. But when I asked John Yarmuth, the Democratic congressman from Louisville, who has known McConnell for fifty years, if McConnell had once been idealistic, he said, “Nah. I never saw any evidence of that. He was just driven to be powerful.”Yarmuth, who began as a Republican and worked in a statewide campaign alongside McConnell in 1968, said that McConnell had readily adapted to the Republican Party’s rightward march: “He never had any core principles. He just wants to be something. He doesn’t want to do anything.”For months, I searched for the larger principles or sense of purpose that animates McConnell. I travelled twice to Kentucky, observed him at a Trump rally in Lexington, and watched him preside over the impeachment trial in Washington. I interviewed dozens of people, some of whom love him and some of whom despise him. I read his autobiography, his speeches, and what others have written about him. Finally, someone who knows him very well told me, “Give up. You can look and look for something more in him, but it isn’t there. I wish I could tell you that there is some secret thing that he really believes in, but he doesn’t.”The notion that McConnell started out as an idealist is a staple of most versions of his life story, including his own autobiography, “The Long Game,” published in 2016. He describes his awe, as a young congressional intern, at seeing crowds gather on the Washington Mall for Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in 1963. McConnell, who was on summer break from the University of Louisville, writes that he recognized he “was witnessing a pivotal moment in history.”McConnell was born in Alabama in 1942, and grew up in the segregated Deep South. He spent much of his childhood in Georgia before moving with his family to Louisville, Kentucky, just before his high-school years. His mother, the daughter of Alabama subsistence farmers, was a secretary in Birmingham when she met McConnell’s father, a mid-level corporate manager who had grown up in a more prosperous family but had dropped out of college. McConnell, in his autobiography, describes his mother’s wedding dowry as little more than “an apple corer and a can opener.” But his parents, he writes, gave him a comfortable middle-class childhood and “instilled me with a deep-seated belief in equal and civil rights, which, given their own upbringing in the Deep South, was quite extraordinary.” He quotes a moving letter from his father celebrating the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and writes that he, too, supported the legislation. That year, McConnell even voted for Lyndon Johnson for President.McConnell’s book does not mention that his father, who worked in the human-resources department at DuPont, was deposed by lawyers for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund in a historic racial-discrimination case. Kerry Scanlon, one of the lawyers, told me, “The leadership at that plant seemed to define racism. There was a plantation system in which the black employees did the hardest jobs, like working in front of these open fires where they got burned—and they got the worst pay. There was a systemic pattern of racism.” After years of litigation, the company settled the case, for fourteen million dollars.McConnell writes that the formative experience of his early life was contracting polio at the age of two, ten years before Jonas Salk developed his vaccine. McConnell’s father was away, having joined the military after the start of the Second World War, and so for the next two years his mother, largely alone, confined him to bed except for a painful daily regimen of exercises. His first memory is of his mother’s purchase of a pair of saddle shoes that allowed him to look like other kids once the doctors finally allowed him to walk. He emerged unimpaired, other than having a weak left leg. He credits the experience, and his mother’s determination, with giving him the focus and drive that have propelled him throughout his career. Beating polio, he writes, was the first in a lifetime pursuit of hard-fought “wins.” In recent weeks, as McConnell has contended with the coronavirus challenge, he has said that it brings back “this eerie feeling” of “fear that every mother had” during a polio epidemic.Cartoon by Roz ChastAn only child, McConnell remained close to his mother, who shared his flinty personality. He also remained devoted to the idea that grit and preparation could beat even the longest odds. He keeps on his office wall a framed copy of a quotation often attributed to Calvin Coolidge, which begins, “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.” (Some people who knew of this found it ironic when, in 2017, in the Senate, he criticized Elizabeth Warren for refusing to yield the floor, complaining, “She persisted.”)ADVERTISEMENTIn his book, McConnell recounts a day when his father ordered him to cross the street and beat up an older boy who had been pushing him around. McConnell protested that the boy was bigger, but his father said, “It’s time you showed him who’s boss.” Fearing his father more than the bully, McConnell went over and sucker-punched his neighbor. McConnell writes that the lesson taught him the importance of “standing up for myself, knowing there’s a point beyond which I can’t be pushed, and being tough.” He admits that he’s been criticized for his toughness, but adds that “it’s almost always worked.”McConnell’s first ambition was to be a baseball player. He was a good Little League pitcher, but by middle school his physical limitations ended his hopes. According to people who know him, his box-score approach to politics—“Our team against their team,” as one put it—is merely a substitute for his competitive approach to sports.When McConnell tells the story of his first campaign—for student-council president—what leaps out is that he seemed far more interested in winning the title than in doing anything with it. As an underclassman, he was an introvert who sat by himself in the back of the auditorium at assemblies, and he was dazzled by the student-council president, who “had the envy of everyone.” When he confided this to his mother, she encouraged him to run for the position. He told her, “I don’t have even one friend.” But, McConnell writes, he went ahead, realizing that he could hustle endorsements from popular cheerleaders and athletes by giving them the “one thing teenagers most desire. Flattery.” He won. He writes that, upon having his first taste of the respect that comes with holding elected office, “I was hooked.”McConnell was the kind of political nerd who, as a kid, watched both parties’ Conventions gavel to gavel, and he soon set his sights on a goal: becoming a U.S. senator. He wrote his college thesis on Kentucky’s famed nineteenth-century senator Henry Clay, who was known as the Great Compromiser. The Senate seemed like the ideal place for McConnell: he lacked charisma but had single-minded ambition, as well as a gift for savvy, farsighted planning. He also had a flair for cultivating powerful backers, and for what he has called “calculated résumé-building activities.” After college, he got an internship with the Kentucky senator John Sherman Cooper. McConnell describes the glamorous Republican moderate as “the first truly great man I’d ever met.” Cooper socialized in Georgetown with the Kennedys, and the press praised him for following his conscience instead of Kentucky polls. He backed the Civil Rights Act and opposed the Vietnam War, telling McConnell that there were times to follow the herd and times to go your own way.In those days, McConnell opposed the war himself. Nevertheless, in 1967, after graduating from the University of Kentucky’s law school, he began serving in the Army Reserve, because, he acknowledges, it was smart politically. Five weeks later, he obtained a medical discharge, for an eye condition. McConnell has claimed that he “used no connections” to get out. But, soon after he enlisted, his father contacted Senator Cooper, who intervened with the commanding officer at McConnell’s base. Records show that Cooper pressured the Army to move quickly, suggesting that McConnell had immediate academic plans: “Mitchell anxious to clear post in order to enroll NYU.” He never enrolled.Instead, McConnell began his political climb. It started poorly. In 1971, he ran for the state legislature, but he was disqualified because he didn’t meet the residency requirements. He vowed never again to ignore the fine print, and has since become a master of the Senate’s arcane rules.In 1973, during the Watergate scandal, McConnell wrote an op-ed in the Louisville Courier-Journal denouncing the corrupting influence of money on politics as “a cancer,” and demanding public financing for Presidential elections. To read the op-ed now is head-spinning, given his current views. On closer examination, though, there is a consistency to his flip-flop. His call for reform reflected the political consensus after Nixon’s disgrace. In other words, the anti-corruption position he took in 1973 was in his political self-interest, just as his embrace of big money has been in recent decades. As he confessed to Dyche, his biographer, the op-ed was merely “playing for headlines.” McConnell, planning to run for office as a Republican, wanted to clear his name of Nixon’s tarnish.McConnell had been hired by a Kentucky law firm, but he found it dull. In Louisville, he became friends with the sister of the Deputy Attorney General, Laurence Silberman, and in 1976 he used the connection to get a job working for Silberman in D.C., as Deputy Assistant Attorney General. The experience appears to have influenced his thinking about money in politics and much else. He became an acolyte of Silberman and two other towering figures of conservative jurisprudence then at the Justice Department: Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia.After Watergate, Congress had cracked down on political money by imposing strict limits on campaign contributions and spending, and created the Federal Election Commission to enforce the new laws. But conservatives, as well as a few liberal groups, including the A.C.L.U., began to litigate against the reforms. James Buckley, a conservative New York senator, challenged the spending limits as an infringement of his ability to pay for political communication, and thus a violation of his right to free speech.The case, Buckley v. Valeo, went to the Supreme Court, and Buckley won. It marked the beginning of a forty-year, largely right-wing assault on efforts to keep private interests from corrupting American politics. Charles Koch, the arch-conservative billionaire oil refiner from Kansas, who was intent on using his fortune to seize control of American politics, was an early champion of the cause. McConnell adopted the “Money is speech” idea as his own, and eventually became the country’s most relentless proponent of more money in politics. John Cheves, a reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader, has described a class that McConnell taught in the seventies, at the University of Louisville. On a blackboard, he wrote down the three things he felt were necessary for success in politics: Money. Money. Money.In 1977, McConnell ran for the position of Jefferson County judge / executive, the official overseeing the county that encompasses Louisville. A contemporary news account documents that, after announcing his candidacy, he promised to limit his campaign spending. But Mike Ward, who had elicited the pledge as the chair of Common Cause Kentucky, told me, “He snookered me.” Ward says that he thought McConnell meant to limit spending throughout the campaign, but McConnell’s promise applied only to the primary, in which he had no serious opponent. In the general election, he spent a record amount—and won.Ward, a Democrat who was later elected to Congress, suggests that McConnell’s first campaign was misleading in other ways. Unlike much of Kentucky, Louisville is a Democratic stronghold. “We’re a moderate community, so to get elected he masqueraded as a progressive,” Ward said. To win the endorsement of labor unions, McConnell pledged to support collective bargaining for public employees, an issue he dropped after taking office. Years later, he admitted to Dyche that he’d been “pandering.” Abortion-rights groups believed that McConnell was on their side, but he claims that they were mistaken. Ever since then, he has called himself “pro-life,” and has packed the courts with judges who oppose Roe v. Wade. According to two people who have been close to McConnell, he attends church but isn’t especially religious, nor does he care about abortion; but, as one of the sources put it, he “will never take any position that could lose him an election.”The race for county judge / executive got ugly. McConnell’s Democratic opponent, Todd Hollenbach, was then in the midst of a divorce, and Hollenbach told me that McConnell “made an issue of my family life.” McConnell’s spokesman denies this, but Dyche’s biography describes McConnell “calling attention to his opponent’s domestic life” with an ad describing himself as “a lucky guy” with “a great wife and two kids.” Once McConnell was elected, according to two sources, he made a sexual advance toward one of his female employees. Although his spokesman says that this didn’t happen, one of the sources told me, “It’s the God’s honest truth.” Yet McConnell’s first press secretary, Meme Runyon, praised him for hiring a number of young women, including her, and giving them career-making professional opportunities.ADVERTISEMENTThree years after defeating Hollenbach, though, McConnell, amid accusations of infidelity, got divorced himself. He soon began searching for a new spouse. Keith Runyon, Meme’s husband and a former editorial-page editor of the liberal Louisville Courier-Journal, vividly recalls him showing up at their house for dinner badly sunburned after a day of campaigning at a fish fry. McConnell, who has limited patience for such glad-handing, confided a plan. Runyon recalls him saying, “One of the things I’ve got to do is to marry a rich woman, like John Sherman Cooper did.” Runyon added, “Boy, did he ever.”McConnell’s spokesman disputes Runyon’s account, but, in 1993, McConnell married Elaine Chao, an heiress, who is currently serving as Trump’s Secretary of Transportation. McConnell devotes a chapter of his autobiography to “Love,” describing how he and Chao, who emigrated from Taiwan as a child, are “kindred spirits.” He explains, “We both knew the feeling of not fitting in, and had worked long and hard in order to prove ourselves.” Chao graduated from Harvard Business School, ran the Peace Corps, served as President George W. Bush’s Labor Secretary, and has been a director on such influential boards as those of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. She also brought a sizable fortune into McConnell’s life. Her father, James Chao, is the founder and chairman of the Foremost Group, a family-owned maritime shipping company, based in New York, which reportedly sends seventy per cent of its freight to China.When McConnell presided over Trump’s impeachment trial, in which the President was accused of trying to extort Ukrainian officials into helping him smear his political rival Joe Biden, he allowed Republican senators to keep insisting that the “real” Ukraine scandal was the Biden family’s enrichment from their connections with the country’s rulers. Yet McConnell must have known that virtually any criticism one could make about the Biden family could be made as well about the Chao family. In fact, such criticisms had been made in the book “Secret Empires,” by the conservative writer Peter Schweizer. Republicans who promoted the book’s accusations against the Biden family evidently skipped the adjoining chapter on McConnell and the Chao family.As the Times has documented, McConnell and his in-laws have benefitted from unusual connections in Beijing. One of James Chao’s schoolmates was Jiang Zemin, who later became China’s President. According to the paper, James took a stake in a state-run company closely associated with Jiang. James and his daughter Angela, the chairman and C.E.O. of the family business, have also been on the boards of directors of some of China’s most powerful state-run businesses, including the Bank of China. Moreover, both Angela and her father have been on the board of a holding company that oversees China State Shipbuilding, which builds warships for the Chinese military. Angela Chao told the Times, “I’m an American,” and suggested that nobody would question the business “if I didn’t have a Chinese face.”“Guys, this isn’t what I thought swimming with dolphins would be like.”Cartoon by Will McPhailMcConnell’s marriage also made him kin to some of the most influential businessmen in America. Angela Chao was married to the investment banker Bruce Wasserstein, who died in 2009, and she’s now married to Jim Breyer, a billionaire venture capitalist with huge financial interests in China. In 2016, Breyer joined the board of directors of Blackstone, giving McConnell a brother-in-law at a company that financially supports his campaigns, and that manages more than half a trillion dollars.Chao family members were campaign donors of McConnell’s even before his marriage to Elaine. According to the Times, over the years the family has given more than a million dollars to McConnell’s campaigns or pacs tied to him. Furthermore, disclosure forms show that, after Elaine Chao’s mother died, in 2007, the family gave her and McConnell as much as twenty-five million dollars, making McConnell one of the Senate’s wealthiest members.It can be a danger for affluent Washington insiders to appear out of touch, and Kentucky is one of America’s poorest states. McConnell and members of his staff have berated the home-town paper for running a photograph of him in a tuxedo. McConnell owns a modest house in Louisville, and at home he makes a habit of doing everyday errands himself, such as shopping for groceries at a nearby Kroger. He attends local college sports events with a few old friends; they wear headphones, to follow the plays on the radio, and high-five one another when their team scores. Chao has been less vigilant about playing down her wealth. When she directed the Peace Corps, she stirred talk by arriving at work in a chauffeured car. At the Labor Department, the Times reported, she “employed a ‘Veep’-like staff member who carried around her bag.” A luxury beauty-and-fitness purveyor in Washington told me that she couldn’t get her staff to continue providing services for Chao after Chao knocked a makeup brush out of a beautician’s hand during one appointment and threw a brush on the floor during another. Kentucky Democrats have tried to make an issue of the couple’s wealth. Outside of Berea, a billboard featuring a giant photograph of McConnell and Chao is accompanied by the words “We’re rich. How y’all doin?”From the earliest days of McConnell’s political life, he has had questionable relationships with moneyed backers. His salary as county judge / executive was meagre, and, in an arrangement that troubled some in the community, a group of undisclosed Louisville business leaders quietly threw in extra pay, ostensibly for his giving speeches. David Ross Stevens, who briefly served as McConnell’s special assistant, told me, “It was like the big boys got together and gave him a pool of money.” Stevens said of McConnell, “He was the most shallow person in politics that I’d ever met. At our first staff meeting, McConnell said, ‘Does anyone have a project for me? I haven’t been on TV for eleven days.’ He was very clever, but it was all about ‘What’s this going to do for me?’ ” Stevens quit in disgust.Two years into McConnell’s tenure as county judge / executive, the Courier-Journal ran a story chronicling other turnover on his staff. Employees griped, anonymously, that McConnell was “extraordinarily selfish” and surrounded himself only with “yes men.” They also complained of being pressured to commit to donating their kidneys, because McConnell was chairing a National Kidney Foundation fund-raising drive. McConnell denied that his office had poor morale—and two staffers who defended him in the article continued to work with him for decades. In the Senate, he is known for cultivating a smart and loyal staff, and for maintaining a formidable network of political allies, in Washington and in Kentucky. James Carroll, the former Washington correspondent for the Courier-Journal, told me, “It’s a version of patronage—when you leave his office, he helps you in your career. Because of that loyalty, he has a vast network of eyes and ears. There are Mitch McConnell galaxies and solar systems.” One former Senate colleague of his, Chris Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, told me that McConnell is one of the only senators who also runs party politics back in his home state.As McConnell gained power, Louisville’s liberal élites, including the wealthy Bingham family, which owned the Courier-Journal, grew disenchanted. The paper had endorsed him as county judge / executive, and therefore felt some responsibility for having launched him. Runyon, the former editorial-page editor, said, “He managed to get our endorsement by being what we thought was a sincere reformer.” Runyon recalled that in 2006, as Barry Bingham, Jr., the paper’s publisher, lay dying, “he had a frank talk with me—he said, ‘You know, Keith, the worst mistake we ever made was endorsing Mitch McConnell.’ ”In 1984, McConnell ran for the Senate against the Democratic incumbent, Walter (Dee) Huddleston. McConnell later admitted that he’d begun planning his campaign the moment he’d been sworn in as county judge / executive. Nobody expected an unprepossessing, little-known local official to defeat Huddleston, but in the final weeks of the campaign McConnell surged to an upset victory, thanks, in large part, to a television ad created by Roger Ailes, the Nixon media adviser who later became the mastermind behind Fox News. Ailes was helped by Larry McCarthy, a virtuoso of negative campaign ads who later made the racially charged Willie Horton ad, attacking the 1988 Democratic candidate for President, Michael Dukakis. The McConnell ad depicted a pack of bloodhounds frantically hunting for Huddleston, ostensibly because he’d missed so many Senate votes while off giving paid speeches. It was funny, but Huddleston’s attendance record, ninety-four per cent, wasn’t out of the ordinary, and his speeches violated no Senate rules. Yet, as McCarthy proudly told the Washington Post, “It was like tossing a match on a pool of gasoline.” That year, McConnell was the only Republican who defeated an incumbent Democratic senator. Two years after criticizing Huddleston’s outside speaking fees, McConnell went on a lucrative eleven-day speaking tour of the West Coast. (McConnell’s spokesman says, “The Leader never missed a vote.”)In 1990, Ailes helped McConnell paint his Democratic challenger, Harvey Sloane, as a dangerous drug addict. Television ads showed images of pill containers as a narrator warned of Sloane’s reliance on “powerful,” “mood-altering” “depressants” that had been prescribed “without a legal permit.” Sloane, an Ivy League-educated doctor whom McConnell mocked as “a wimp from the East,” had gone to Kentucky through a federal program that provides medical services to the rural poor, and went on to become Louisville’s mayor. During the Senate campaign, Sloane, who had postponed a hip replacement until after the election, renewed a prescription for sleeping pills although his license had expired. It was a real lapse in judgment, but he didn’t have a drug problem. Sloane said of McConnell’s attack, “It was craven. He’s just a conniving guy. He’s the Machiavelli of the twenty-first century.” McConnell himself has summarized his approach to campaigns simply: “If they throw a stone at you, you drop a boulder on them.”ADVERTISEMENTTelevision airtime and top media consultants aren’t cheap. McConnell’s Senate campaigns further convinced him that his old op-ed opposing political money was wrongheaded. “I never would have been able to win my race if there had been a limit on the amount of money I could raise and spend,” he writes in his autobiography. Larry Forgy, a Kentucky Republican who fell out with McConnell, said that this was certainly true. “He knows without a definite advantage in money, he’s not going anywhere in politics,” Forgy said, in “The Cynic,” Alec MacGillis’s deeply researched 2014 biography of McConnell. “Politics in small Southern states requires a certain amount of showmanship, and he just didn’t have the ability to do that.”Most politicians find fund-raising odious, but Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, who served a dozen years with McConnell, told MacGillis that fund-raising was “a joy to him,” adding, “He gets a twinkle in his eye and his step quickens. I mean, he loves it.” McConnell’s donors have found themselves rewarded. Kelly Craft, the wife of Joe Craft, one of McConnell’s major backers—a coal magnate and the president of Alliance Resource Partners—currently serves as Ambassador to the U.N., after serving earlier in the Trump Administration as Ambassador to Canada. The U.N. appointment, especially, drew criticism, because her only expertise was fund-raising. A Kentuckian acquainted with the Crafts noted that the U.N. seat was once filled by such titans as Adlai Stevenson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. “It’s just incredible,” he says.According to “60 Minutes,” McConnell and Chao helped another coal company skirt responsibility for one of the biggest environmental disasters in U.S. history. In 2000, Jack Spadaro, an engineer for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, began conducting an investigation in Martin County, Kentucky, after a slurry pond owned by Massey Energy burst open, releasing three hundred million gallons of lavalike coal waste that killed more than a million fish and contaminated the water systems of nearly thirty thousand people. Spadaro and his team were working on a report that documented eight apparent violations of the law, which could have led to charges of criminal negligence and cost Massey hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. But, that November, George W. Bush was elected President, and he soon named Chao his Labor Secretary, giving her authority over the Mine Safety and Health Administration. She chose McConnell’s former chief of staff, Steven Law, as her chief of staff. Spadaro told me, “Law had his finger in everything, and was truly running the Labor Department. He was Mitch’s guy.” The day Bush was sworn in, Spadaro was ordered to halt his investigation. Before the Labor Department issued any fines, Massey made a hundred-thousand-dollar donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. McConnell himself had run the unit, which raises funds for Senate campaigns, between 1997 and 2000.Massey ended up paying only fifty-six hundred dollars in federal fines. Law went on to run a cluster of outside money groups, including the Senate Leadership Fund, One Nation, American Crossroads, and Crossroads GPS, which have collectively given millions of dollars to the Senate campaigns of McConnell and other Republicans.A spokesman for Chao says that the department levied many more fines on coal mines during her tenure, and that “she was always concerned about coal miners’ jobs as well as their health and safety.” But Spadaro told me he has no doubt that McConnell “made sure the report was essentially suppressed.” He noted, “Massey gave a lot of money to McConnell over the years. McConnell’s very bright. He took the money and, in return, protected the coal industry. He’s truly the most corrupt politician in the U.S.” Records show that, between 1990 and 2010, McConnell was the recipient of the second-largest amount of federal campaign donations from people and pacs associated with Massey. And when McConnell ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee it took in five hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars from the coal industry.Nina McCoy, a retired teacher who lives in Martin County, told me, “Our own senator’s wife basically shut down the investigation. Our community from then on knew all those people protected the coal companies instead of us.”According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, in 2002, Bob Murray, the C.E.O. of another coal company, Murray Energy, shouted down a Mine Safety and Health Administration inspector in a meeting by observing, “Mitch McConnell calls me one of the five finest men in America, and the last I checked he was sleeping with your boss.” Both Murray and McConnell disputed the report, which was based on interviews and notes from the meeting. Records showed that Murray and his company’s pac had donated repeatedly to McConnell’s campaigns.Two decades since the Massey slurry-pond disaster, the coal industry has collapsed, barely employing five thousand people statewide, but the region’s water remains tainted. McConnell takes credit for recently delivering several million dollars in federal funds to the area for water-infrastructure improvements, but William Brandon Halcomb, a property manager who lives there, told me that the situation is still “horrible.” Shortly before we spoke, there had been no water for three weeks. He keeps a bucket tied to a bridge, which he lowers into the creek below when he needs water to flush a toilet. He must drive to another county to buy clean water. “You get a gallon, heat it on the stove, and take a trucker’s bath,” he said. “A wash-off is all you can do.” As covid-19 spreads, the health hazards posed to Americans who can’t reliably wash their hands are obvious.Martin County is overwhelmingly Republican and pro-Trump, and many residents see no connection between their problems and Washington. Gary Ball, the editor of the Mountain Citizen, a local newspaper, told me, “It’s not McConnell’s fault that our water is in bad shape.” Ball, a former coal miner who strongly backs Trump, blames local Democratic officials for “years of mismanagement.” Cara Stewart, the chief of staff for the Kentucky House Democrats, unsurprisingly sees it differently. “Why does Kentucky not have clean, reliable water?” she said. “McConnell could help, but he’s in bed with the companies that are causing the problems.”As a backbench senator, McConnell used his fund-raising talents to rise in the Party’s leadership—a path laid out by Lyndon Johnson. Robert A. Caro, the author of a magisterial four-volume biography of Johnson, told me that, “in a stroke of genius,” Johnson, as a Democratic junior congressman, “realizes he has no power, but he has something no other congressman has—the oilmen and big contractors in Texas who need favors in Washington.” By establishing control over the distribution of the donors’ money, Johnson acquired immense power over his peers. McConnell was no fan of L.B.J., however. He has described his Presidential vote for Johnson as the one he regrets most, because he so deplored Johnson’s expansion of government to fight the war on poverty—an effort launched in Martin County. In his memoir, McConnell argues that “poverty won,” proving “Washington’s overconfidence in its own ability to systematically solve complex social problems.” (Having just passed the largest public-spending program in American history, McConnell and other Republicans are scrambling to justify the about-face, with some calling the new programs “restitution” rather than welfare.)According to Keith Runyon, McConnell was focussed on his political survival from the moment he arrived in Washington. He recalls that, the morning after McConnell was first sworn in to the Senate, McConnell told him that he would be moving to the right from then on, to keep getting reëlected. McConnell has denied saying so, but Runyon told me, “He is a flat-out liar.” Another acquaintance who has known McConnell for years said that, “to the extent that he’s conversational, he wore his ambition to become Majority Leader on his sleeve.”McConnell envied better-known colleagues who were chased down the corridors by news reporters. He wanted to be like them, he later told Carl Hulse, a Times correspondent, who interviewed McConnell for his book “Confirmation Bias,” about fights over Supreme Court nominees. The way McConnell ended up making his name was decidedly unglamorous: blocking campaign-finance reform. Even he derided the subject as rivalling “static cling as an issue most Americans care about.” Dull as campaign financing was, it was vitally important to his peers, and to democracy. Few members wanted to risk appearing corrupt, and so they were grateful to McConnell for fighting one reform after the next—while claiming that it was purely about defending the First Amendment. According to MacGillis, behind closed doors McConnell admitted to his Senate colleagues that undoing the reforms was “in the best interest of Republicans.” Armed with funding from such billionaire conservatives as the DeVos family, McConnell helped take the quest to kill restraints on spending all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2010, his side won: the Citizens United decision opened the way for corporations, big donors, and secretive nonprofits to pour unlimited and often untraceable cash into elections.Cartoon by Liana Finck“McConnell loves money, and abhors any controls on it,” Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, a group that supports campaign-finance reform, said. “Money is the central theme of his career. And, if you want to control Congress, the best way is to control the money.”Between 1984, when McConnell was first elected to the Senate, and today, the amount of money spent on federal campaigns has increased at least sixfold, excluding outside spending, more and more of which comes from very rich donors. Influence-peddling has grown from a grubby, shameful business into a multibillion-dollar, high-paying industry. McConnell has led the way in empowering those private interests, and in aligning the Republican Party with them. His staff embodied “the revolving door,” as they went from working for one of America’s poorest states to lobbying for America’s richest corporations, while growing rich themselves and helping fund McConnell’s campaigns. Money from the coal industry, tobacco companies, Big Pharma, Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, and many other interests flowed into Republican coffers while McConnell blocked federal actions that those interests opposed: climate-change legislation, affordable health care, gun control, and efforts to curb economic inequality.McConnell, like L.B.J., used fund-raising to help allies and punish enemies. “What he’s done behind the scenes is apply the thing that speaks louder in Washington, D.C., than anything else—money,” Wilson, the former Republican consultant, said. “Suddenly, Susan Collins gets a bridge in Maine. Lisa Murkowski suddenly gets a harbor. Oh, what a coincidence!” McConnell has a brilliant grasp of his caucus members’ needs, and he helps them protect their seats with tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations and federal grants, some of which come through Chao’s Department of Transportation. (A department spokesman says that there is no political linkage, and that every state gets some money.) McConnell also lets his caucus members take the spotlight, and, when he can, he allows them to skip votes that will be unpopular with their constituents. In private, McConnell can be bitingly funny, as well as sentimental—he has been known to tear up over an aide’s departure—but he is shrewdly guarded, reportedly subscribing to the maxim “You can’t get in trouble for what you don’t say.” He takes care to cover his tracks, putting private notes in his pocket rather than tossing them into Senate wastebaskets. And he protects his allies. In 2013, McConnell’s lieutenants—who are known as Team Mitch—established a policy of blackballing anyone who works against an incumbent member of his caucus. Recently, in a Georgia Senate race, consultants working for the Republican congressman Doug Collins were warned that they would be frozen out for helping him challenge Kelly Loeffler, the incumbent, who is McConnell’s choice in the primary, despite recent accusations against her of insider trading. (Loeffler denies wrongdoing.) Insubordination can result in what a former Trump White House official calls the Death Penalty: the President is told that the miscreant will not be confirmed by the Senate for any Administration job.

The region is mostly inhabited by a numerically preponderant ethnic group called Meo who are reported to have embraced Islam during the reign of Tughlaq in fourteenth century AD, and subsequently during Aurangzeb’s time in seventeenth century. Earlier, they were Kshatriyas who traced their origins to Hinduism.The region, having cultural continuity with regions in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, is marked by deep-seated cultural practices, primitiveness and high illiteracy. Despite its proximity with Delhi, it is beset with entrenched backwardness, unemployment and large scale malnutrition. The region’s 1.2 million population is served by only two leading regional government hospitals located at Nalhar and Mandikheda. Education is also in a mess as most government schools lack basic amenities such as functional toilets and potable water, are unable to provide quality education and fail miserably when it comes to retention of children in schools as half of them tend to drop out before they finish elementary education. The schools also have inadequate number of teachers leading to poor learning outcomes and migration of children to private schools.The Meo community is opposed to female education as they are driven by vested interests and some semi-educated maulvis. Their rigid attitude to female education is reflected in the findings of the recent census. The 2011 census, conducted by Directorate of Census Operations in Haryana, put the female literary to a dismal 36.90 per cent whereas it was a mere 23.90 percent in census of 2001. Mewat also has a skewed sex ratio as it has only 907 females per 1000 males.Though attitudes are changing slowly towards female education as there are a growing number of progressive minds who are willing to educate girls but they find it difficult due to lack of resources like transportation and fee in case they want to join thriving private schools in the region. They also grapple with non-availability of female teachers in the schools and lack of awareness regarding menstruation and sanitary napkins. Lack of availability of sanitary napkins across entire rural India is a great cause of concern and it forces around twenty five percent girl children to drop out before they finish elementary education. This is also a great worry across the entire rural region of Haryana. These are issues which are keeping Mewat in constant backwardness and excluded.The Influence of Tableeghi Jamaat: Mewat is completely under the control of Tableeghi Jamaat. It is a movement which was initiated in Mewat by Maulvi Ilyas in 1927. According to Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, Tableeghi Jamaat (TJ) stems from the Deobandi brand of the Hanafi Sunni School of jurisprudence. Deobandi is the most commonly practised form of Islam in South Asia, and TJ is but a small sub-sect of the larger Deobandi community. TJ was designed to be an apolitical, pietistic organisation that sends missionaries across the globe on missions intended to bring wayward Muslims back to more orthodox practices of Islam. It operates in 150 countries and has an estimated 70 million to 80 million active followers, making it the largest Muslim movement in the world. Its annual gatherings in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh reportedly bring together the largest congregations of Muslims in the world outside of the Hajj. The group’s stated mission is to work at a grassroots level, reaching out to Muslims across the social and economic spectrum. According to Jenny Taylor, the group relies on unorthodox stories of mythical heroes, their other-worldliness and pietism, their veneration for the founder and his family, and their reutilisation of certain select works (like Fazail-e Amal and some selected ahadees) and practices like chilla – a 40-day preaching tour all are obliged to undertake annually – has led one scholar to conclude that they function like a Sufi order.What’s wrong with this group, when it comes to Mewat, is the way leaders of this sect are often seen encouraging people to leave their homes and families for the sake of Allah or, as they put it, in the path of Allah, and making engrossing speeches on Iman (the belief in Allah and faith in Islamic rituals, holy books and destiny etc.) and leaving or never touching upon issues which are very much relevant in contemporary times such as quality education, female education, awareness regarding their rights and entitlements as a citizen of this country, and issues related to health, unemployment of Muslim youths, infighting between two sects or two groups of Muslims, rights of daughters in the wealth of their fathers, dowry and other important issues. Hence the Jamaat harps upon a few aspects of life, overlooking majority of them. It does not preach against the evils of smoking as majority of Mewat’s smoke bidi and huhhah. It does not allow women to join men in the prayers of Eid whereas women are free to go and shop in markets. It does not allow small villages in Mewat to organise Friday prayers, insisting on classical Islam’s practice of Friday prayers only in large mosques. It allows sacrifices carried out in dawn before the Eid-ul-Azha prayers.It does not urge on Muslims towards education. It does not egg on female literacy. It does not call people for Islamic way of nikah (marriage). It does not pay heed to increasing cases of infighting among Meos, their involvement in petty crimes, their bribing of police officials, their implicating of their fellow brethren in crimes they never committed out of hatred and jealousy.The prominent Deobandi cleric and scholar Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi (1885-1944) launched Tablighi Jamaat in 1927 in Mewat, India, not far from Delhi. From its inception, the extremist attitudes that characterize Deobandism permeated Tablighi philosophy. Ilyas's followers were intolerant of other Muslims and especially Shi'ites, let alone adherents of other faiths. Indeed, part of Ilyas's impetus for founding Tablighi Jamaat was to counter the inroads being made by Hindu missionaries. They rejected modernity as antithetical to Islam, excluded women, and preached that Islam must subsume all other religions.[7] The creed grew in importance after Pakistani military dictator Zia ul-Haq encouraged Deobandis to Islamize Pakistan.The Tablighi Jamaat canon is bare-boned. Apart from the Qu'ran, the only literature Tablighis are required to read are the Tablighi Nisab, seven essays penned by a companion of Ilyas in the 1920s. Tablighi Jamaat is not a monolith: one subsection believes they should pursue jihad through conscience (jihad bin nafs) while a more radical wing advocates jihad through the sword (jihad bin saif).[8] But, in practice, all Tablighis preach a creed that is hardly distinguishable from the radical Wahhabi-Salafi jihadist ideology that so many terrorists share.Part of the reason why the Tablighi Jamaat leadership can maintain such strict secrecy is its dynastic flavor. All Tablighi Jamaat leaders since Ilyas have been related to him by either blood or marriage. Upon Ilyas' 1944 death, his son, Maulana Muhammad Yusuf (1917-65), assumed leadership of the movement, dramatically expanding its reach and influence. Following the partition of India, Tablighi Jamaat spread rapidly in the new Muslim nation of Pakistan. Yusuf and his successor, Inamul Hassan (1965-95), transformed Tablighi Jamaat into a truly transnational movement with a renewed emphasis targeting conversion of non-Muslims, a mission the movement continues to the present day.While few details are known about the group's structure, at the top sits the emir who, according to some observers, presides over a shura (council), which plays an advisory role. Further down are individual country organizations. By the late 1960s, Tablighi Jamaat had not only established itself in Western Europe and North America but even claimed adherents in countries like Japan, which has no significant Muslim population.The movement's rapid penetration into non-Muslim regions began in the 1970s and coincides with the establishment of a synergistic relationship between Saudi Wahhabis and South Asian Deobandis. While Wahhabis are dismissive of other Islamic schools, they single out Tablighi Jamaat for praise, even if they disagree with some of its practices, such as willingness to pray in mosques housing graves. The late Sheikh 'Abd al 'Aziz ibn Baz, perhaps the most influential Wahhabi cleric in the late twentieth century, recognized the Tablighis good work and encouraged his Wahhabi brethren to go on missions with them so that they can "guide and advise them."[9] A practical result of this cooperation has been large-scale Saudi financing of Tablighi Jamaat. While Tablighi Jamaat in theory requires its missionaries to cover their own expenses during their trips, in practice, Saudi money subsidizes transportation costs for thousands of poor missionaries. While Tablighi Jamaat's financial activities are shrouded in secrecy, there is no doubt that some of the vast sums spent by Saudi organizations such as the World Muslim League on proselytism benefit Tablighi Jamaat. As early as 1978, the World Muslim League subsidized the building of the Tablighi mosque in Dewsbury, England, which has since become the headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat in all of Europe.[10] Wahhabi sources have paid Tablighi missionaries in Africa salaries higher than the European Union pays teachers in Zanzibar.[11] In both Western Europe and the United States, Tablighis operate interchangeably out of Deobandi and Wahhabi controlled mosques and Islamic centers.The West's misreading of Tablighi Jamaat actions and motives has serious implications for the war on terrorism. Tablighi Jamaat has always adopted an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam, but in the past two decades, it has radicalized to the point where it is now a driving force of Islamic extremism and a major recruiting agency for terrorist causes worldwide. For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Perhaps 80 percent of the Islamist extremists in France come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the "antechamber of fundamentalism."[12] U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly adopting the same attitude. "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States," the deputy chief of the FBI's international terrorism section said in 2003, "and we have found that Al-Qaeda used them for recruiting now and in the past."[13]Recruitment methods for young jihadists are almost identical. After joining Tablighi Jamaat groups at a local mosque or Islamic center and doing a few local dawa (proselytism) missions, Tablighi officials invite star recruits to the Tablighi center in Raiwind, Pakistan, for four months of additional missionary training. Representatives of terrorist organizations approach the students at the Raiwind center and invite them to undertake military training.[14] Most agree to do so.Tablighi Jamaat has long been directly involved in the sponsorship of terrorist groups. Pakistani and Indian observers believe, for instance, that Tablighi Jamaat was instrumental in founding Harakat ul-Mujahideen. Founded at Raiwind in 1980, almost all of the Harakat ul-Mujahideen's original members were Tablighis. Famous for the December 1998 hijacking of an Air India passenger jet and the May 8, 2002 murder of a busload of French engineers in Karachi, Harakat members make no secret of their ties. "The two organizations together make up a truly international network of genuine jihadi Muslims," one senior Harakat ul-Mujahideen official said.[15] More than 6,000 Tablighis have trained in Harakat ul-Mujahideen camps. Many fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and readily joined Al-Qaeda after the Taliban defeated Afghanistan's anti-Soviet mujahideen.[16]Another violent Tablighi Jamaat spin-off is the Harakat ul-Jihad-i Islami.[17] Founded in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, this group has been active not only in the disputed Indian provinces of Jammu and Kashmir but also in the state of Gujarat, where Tablighi Jamaat extremists have taken over perhaps 80 percent of the mosques previously run by the moderate Barelvi Muslims.[18] The Tablighi movement is also very active in northern Africa where it became one of the four groups that founded the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria. Moroccan authorities are currently prosecuting sixty members of the Moroccan Tablighi offshoot Dawa wa Tabligh in connection with the May 16, 2003 terrorist attack on a Casablanca synagogue.[19] Dutch police are investigating links between the Moroccan cells and the November 2, 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.[20]There are many other cases of individual Tablighis committing acts of terrorism. French Tablighi members, for example, have helped organize and execute attacks not only in Paris but also at the Hotel Asni in Marrakech in 1994.[21] Kazakh authorities expelled a number of Tablighi missionaries because they had been organizing networks advancing "extremist propaganda and recruitment."[22] Indian investigators suspect influential Tablighi leader, Maulana Umarji, and a group of his followers in the February 27, 2002 fire bombing of a train carrying Hindu nationalists in Gujarat, India. The incident sparked a wave of pogroms victimizing both Muslims and Hindus.[23] Moroccan authorities sentenced Yusef Fikri, a Tablighi member and leader of the Moroccan terrorist organization At-Takfir wal-Hijrah, to death for his role in masterminding the May 2003 Casablanca terrorist bombings that claimed more than forty lives.[24]Tablighi Jamaat has also facilitated other terrorists' missions. The group has provided logistical support and helped procure travel documents. Many take advantage of Tablighi Jamaat's benign reputation. Moroccan authorities say that leaflets circulated by the terrorist group Al-Salafiyah al-Jihadiyah urged their members to join Islamic organizations that operate openly, such as Tablighi Jamaat, in order "to hide their identity on the one hand and influence these groups and their policies on the other."[25] In a similar vein, a Pakistani jihadi website commented that Tablighi Jamaat organizational structures can be easily adopted to jihad activities.[26] The Philippine government has accused Tablighi Jamaat, which has an 11,000-member presence in the country, of serving both as a conduit of Saudi money to the Islamic terrorists in the south and as a cover for Pakistani jihad volunteers.[27]There is also evidence that Tablighi Jamaat directly recruits for terrorist organizations. As early as the 1980s, the movement sponsored military training for 900 recruits annually in Pakistan and Algeria while, in 1999, Uzbek authorities accused Tablighi Jamaat of sending 400 Uzbeks to terrorist training camps.[28] The West is not immune. British counterterrorism authorities estimate that at least 2,000 British nationals had gone to Pakistan for jihad training by 1998, and the French secret services report that between 80 and 100 French nationals fought for Al-Qaeda.[29]Within the United States, the cases of American Taliban John Lindh, the "Lackawanna Six," and the Oregon cell that conspired to bomb a synagogue and sought to link up with Al-Qaeda,[30] all involve Tablighi missionaries.[31] Other indicted terrorists, such as "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, and Lyman Harris, who sought to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge, were all members of Tablighi Jamaat at one time or another.[32] According to Robert Blitzer, head of the FBI's first Islamic counterterrorism unit, between 1,000 and 2,000 Americans left to join the jihad in the 1990s alone.[33] Pakistani intelligence sources report that 400 American Tablighi recruits received training in Pakistani or Afghan terrorist camps since 1989.[34]The Tablighi Jamaat has made inroads among two very different segments of the American Muslim population. Because many American Muslims are immigrants, and a large subsection of these are from South Asia, Deobandi influences have been able to penetrate deeply. Many Tablighi Jamaat missionaries speak Urdu as a first language and so can communicate easily with American Muslims of South Asian origin. The Tablighi headquarters in the United States for the past decade appears to be in the Al-Falah mosque in Queens, New York. Its missionaries—predominantly from South Asia—regularly visit Sunni mosques and Islamic centers across the country.[35] The willingness of Saudi-controlled front organizations and charities, such as the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), the Haramain Foundation, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and others, to spend large amounts of money to co-opt the religious establishment has helped catalyze recruitment. As a result Wahhabi and Deobandi influence dominate American Islam.[36]This trend is apparent in the activities of Tanzeem-e Islami. Founded by long-term Tablighi member and passionate Taliban supporter, Israr Ahmed, Tanzeem-e Islami flooded American Muslim organizations with communications accusing Israel of complicity in the 9/11 terror attacks.[37] A frequent featured speaker at Islamic conferences and events in the United States, Ahmed engages in incendiary rhetoric urging his audiences to prepare for "the final showdown between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world, which has been captured by the Jews."[38] Unfortunately, his conspiracy theories have begun to take hold among growing segments of the American Muslim community. For example, Siraj Wahhaj, among the best known African-American Muslim converts and the first Muslim cleric to lead prayers in the U.S. Congress, is also on record accusing the FBI and the CIA of being the "real terrorists." He has expressed his support for the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and advocating the demise of American democracy.[39]Tablighi Jamaat has appealed to African American Muslims for other reasons. Founded by Elijah Mohammed in the early 1930s, the Nation of Islam was essentially a charismatic African American separatist organization which had little to do with normative Islam. Many Nation of Islam members found attractive both the Tablighi Jamaat's anti-state separatist message and its description of American society as racist, decadent, and oppressive. Seeing such fertile ground, Tablighi and Wahhabi missionaries targeted the African American community with great success. One Tablighi sympathizer explained,The umma [Muslim community] must remember that winning over the black Muslims is not only a religious obligation but also a selfish necessity. The votes of the black Muslims can give the immigrant Muslims the political clout they need at every stage to protect their vital interests. Likewise, outside Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Pakistan need to mobilize their effort, money, and missionary skills to expand and consolidate the black Muslim community in the USA, not only for religious reasons, but also as a farsighted investment in the black Muslims' immense potential as a credible lobby for Muslim causes, such as Palestine, Bosnia, or Kashmir—offsetting, at least partially, the venal influence of the powerful India-Israel lobby.[40]Not only foreign Tablighis but also the movement's sympathizers within the United States enunciate this goal. The president of the Islamic Research Foundation in Louisville, Kentucky, a strong advocate of Tablighi missionary work, for instance, insists that "if all the Afro-American brothers and sisters become Muslims, we can change the political landscape of America" and "make U.S. foreign policy pro-Islamic and Muslim friendly."[41] As a result of Tablighi and Wahhabi proselytizing, African Americans comprise between 30 and 40 percent of the American Muslim community, and perhaps 85 percent of all American Muslim converts. Much of this success is due to a successful proselytizing drive in the penitentiary system. Prison officials say that by the mid-1990s, between 10 and 20 percent of the nation's 1.5 million inmates identified themselves as Muslims. Some 30,000 African Americans convert to Islam in prison every year.[42]The American political system tolerates all views so long as they adhere to the rule of law. Unfortunately, Tablighi Jamaat missionaries may be encouraging African American recruits to break the law. Harkat ul-Mujahideen has boasted of training dozens of African American jihadists in its military camps. There is evidence that African American jihadists have died in both Afghanistan and Kashmir.[43]SOURCES:[1] Graham Fuller, "The Future of Political Islam," Foreign Affairs, Mar.-Apr., 2002, p. 49.[2] Barbara Metcalf, "Traditionalist Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis and Talibs," Social Service Research Council, Nov. 1, 2004.[3] Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), May 15, 2002.[4] B. Raman, "Nawaz in a Whirlpool," South Asia Analysis Group, Oct. 10, 1999.[5] The News (Lahore), Feb. 13, 1995.[6] Marc Gaborieau, "Transnational Islamic Movements: Tablighi Jamaat in Politics," ISIM Newsletter (International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World), July 1999, p. 21.[7] Dietrich Reetz, "Keeping Busy on the Path of Allah: The Self-Organization (intizam) of Tablighi Jamaat," in Daniela Bredi, ed., Islam in Contemporary South Asia (Rome: Oriente Moderno, 2004), pp. 295-305.[8] B. Raman, "Dagestan: Focus on Pakistan's Tablighi Jamaat," South Asia Analysis Group, Sept. 15, 1999.[9] "Fatwa of Shaykh 'Abdul-'Azeez ibn Baaz regarding the Jamaa'ah at-Tableegh," Fatwa-Online | eFatwa – Islaamic Legal Rulings, Safar 11, 1414 (July 31, 1993).[10] Financial Times, Apr. 12, 1982.[11] Associated Press, Feb. 22, 2004.[12] Le Monde (Paris), Jan. 25, 2002.[13] The New York Times, July 14, 2003.[14] U.S. News and World Report, June 10, 2002.[15] Raman, "Dagestan: Focus on Pakistan's Tablighi Jamaat."[16] Ibid.[17] The News, Feb. 13, 1995, cited in ibid.[18] Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, Mar. 16-29, 2003.[19] Financial Times, Aug. 6, 2003.[20] The New York Times, Nov. 25, 2004.[21] Le Monde, Sept. 26, 2001.[22] Kazakhstan Today News Service, June 13, 2003.[23] India Today (New Delhi), Feb. 24, 2003.[24] BBC News, July 12, 2003.[25] Asharq al-Awsat (London), May 25, 2003.[26] Mufti Khubaib Sahib, "Advantageous Structure for the Jihaad Organisations," 2600 News, Nov. 16, 2004.[27] Manila Times, Oct. 12, 2001.[28] Surya Gangadharan, "Exploring Jihad: The Case of Algeria," Strategic Affairs (New Delhi), Feb. 1, 2001.[29] Ori Golan, "On the Day the Black Flag of Islam will be Flying over Downing Street," The Jerusalem Post, June 26, 2003; Le Parisien, Dec. 26, 2001.[30] The Oregonian (Portland), Oct. 11, 2002.[31] The New York Times, July 14, 2003.[32] Jessica Stern, "The Protean Enemy," Foreign Affairs, July/Aug. 2003.[33] U.S. News and World Report, June 10, 2002.[34] Ibid.[35] The New York Times, July 14, 2003.[36] Daniel Pipes, Militant Islam Reaches America (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003),[37] The Independent, Oct. 1, 2001.[38] Sept. 11, 1995 ISNA convention, cited in Raman, "Dagestan: Focus on Pakistan's Tablighi Jamaat."[39] The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2003.[40] Dawn (Karachi), Jan. 12, 1996.[41] Ibrahim B. Syed, "Juneteenth," Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc., Louisville, Ky., n.d.[42] Religion News Service, Jan. 23, 1996.[43] U.S. News and World Report, June 10, 2002.[44] Ibid.[45] Jonathan Dowd-Gailey, "Islamism's Campus Club: The Muslim Students Association," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2004, pp. 63-72.[46] "Great Leaders of Last 100 Years," The Message International Online (Jamaica, N.Y.), Dec. 22, 2004.[47] The Message International, Sept. 1989, p. 6.[48] The Washington Post, May 29, 2003.[49] "About ICNA," Islamic Circle of North America, Dec. 22, 2004.[50] Ibid.[51] Aminah Mohammad-Arif, "Ilyas et Mawdudi au Pays des Yankees: La Tablighi Jamaat et la Jamaat Islami aux Etats-Unis," Archive des Sciences Sociales des Religions, Jan.-Mar. 2002.

Long post warning. If you expand the post, you will be scrolling for a while.If you believe you have found the truth, you stop looking for it. Nothing will ever change your mind until you think the following thoughts:I might be wrong about the things I believe, no matter how stronglySomeone else might know things I do notI should check and see if what they say is true before I dismiss itSomeone who disagrees with me does not necessarily think I am stupid, or evil, or incapable of understanding their point.Maybe I should not think they are stupid, or evil, or that they don’t understand what I believe, before hearing them out.What follows is a very long and detailed explanation, from a former Conservative Republican who is now a liberal, what liberalism means and why it works, to any conservatives out there with an open mind. Grab a snack and a drink and settle in. This could be fun. You are free to walk away at any time. Google anything you think I am incorrect about. Stick to government data and respected news sources, not blogs and advocacy sites (Breitbart), pure media outlets that don’t do their own reporting (Drudge) or have a strong right wing bias, or a strong bias of any kind (Fox News).Questioner asked: “Instead of arguing liberalism over conservatism, why don't liberals leave the country for Canada and prove that liberalism works better?”Answer:I did you one better, I moved to Norway. Even more liberal than Canada. Still a US citizen born and raised, and I can still vote and will be doing so in 2018 and 2020.So let’s define liberalism as I and most liberals would define it.Liberalism is not far left extremism nor is it authoritarian extremism, nor is it anarchy, nor is it far right extremism, the latter two I am sure my political opponents would concede, and the former two I can prove simply by pointing to the much further to the left political doctrines auch as Anarcho-communism, Socialism, Communism, and much more authoritarian doctrines of, for example, authoritarianism itself, Nationalism, Fundamentalism, Communism, Fascism, Totalitarianism… etc.In short, I am saying that liberalism is the middle of the compass. It’s a balance of left and right economic ideas, meaning, mixed economies are liberal or close to it. And a balance of the rights of the state versus the rights of the individual. For example, people would agree the state has the right to tax its citizens and enforce its laws, and people would agree that individuals have rights the state cannot take away without due process, and some rights are inalienable even if you commit a crime, like your right to an attorney and the presumption of innocence.Liberalism is the center of the left-right scale and the authoritarian (top) - libertarian (bottom) scale.See diagram.Now, which countries are the most liberal, by such a scale?In other words, not extreme left, not extreme right, not totalitarian or fundamentalist states, not anarchy. Which states are the most balanced?Consult this chart.Let’s check out how these countries are doing, in terms of the murder rate, for example. The murder rate is an obvious indicator of a failed government, as its citizens are reduced to butchering each other over drugs, food, or factionalism.The Most Liberal Countries: (Green)Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia, Switzerland, Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Portugal, Germany, Latvia, Australia.The Most Illiberal Countries: (Red)Yemen, Mali, Iran, Pakistan, Chad, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Swaziland, Ethiopia, Nepal, Angola, Bangladesh, Kuwait, Liberia.I would also like you to pay close attention to the following countries:Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, Yemen, Russia, Venezuela, Brazil, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, USA (Red). Japan, Italy, Greece (Blue).Consult the charts below.Source:List of countries by intentional homicide rateInformation gathered by:United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(EDIT: UPDATE- another year has gone by, and check for yourself, the USA is even lower on the list than it was before. It’s gotten worse.)As you can see, most of the most liberal countries on Earth (in green, my highlighting added) are at the very top of the international rankings in terms of murder rate. The obvious outliers are Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which are nations that are part of the former Soviet Union, and are still heavily influenced by neighboring Russia. They now have liberal policies, but it will take some time for those policies to have full effect, and there is an active campaign to try to flip those countries back into the Russian sphere of influence. But hey, no excuses. Let’s call those failures of liberalism even if they are not, in truth. We care about results. The average of those three countries is about where the USA is at, and the USA is a mix of liberal and conservative ideas.But man, those green countries are dominating the chart. Liberals seem to know what they’re doing. Not only are these countries low on the crime rankings, but they are also high in the freedom and democracy indexes, and they have a relatively high wealth and GDP per capita ratings. So they are free, economically powerful, and safe nations.Well done, liberalism!Okay, now let’s look at some of the other countries I wanted to highlight.First of all, let’s look at the least free and least liberal nations on Earth.China has a relatively good ranking on the murder chart, but it is also a closed, authoritarian regime, and I am not so sure we can trust its self-reported murder figures. But I don’t have any data except the actual data, so let’s suggest with a skeptical tone of voice that this may be accurate. What’s China’s trend? They were a communist regime, that was becoming more capitalist. That is a liberalizing trend. And they also, as recently as the previous regime, had a government that was trying to make China a more open and fair society. That trend is reversing as of the current government, which is basically closing up again and appointing a dictator for life. So we can expect China will become among the worst nations on Earth in the future. Still, for a while there, China was liberalizing. Would have been nice if they finished the job. Their current trend is not one we should emulate, as they are not democratic and suppress freedom.Saudi Arabia has a relatively good ranking on the murder chart, but it is a closed, authoritarian hyper-religious regime, and this isn’t taking into account how the state executes people for things like being gay or atheist. So this wildly undemocratic and authoritarian regime is not a role model. I suppose you could lower the murder rate through fear and intimidation, but should we trust the word of butchers? Is their murder rate actually this low? Even if it is, it’s not a role model for us.Kuwait is no better. It’s a very authoritarian regime. Nepal, Bangladesh are well down the list from here. Not countries to be emulated if liberals and conservatives alike want to have a free, fair, and prosperous democracy.Egypt is another hyper-religious authoritarian regime. Not only do they have unstable governments and politicians being imprisoned, but making jokes can get you thrown in jail. Not a country we should emulate. But this is a very traditionalist, extremely conservative society that is very opposed to liberalism. Should we be like them? Or perhaps like Lebanon?Iran is a Theocracy, and its government is extremely opposed to liberal values.Turkey is an authoritarian regime, busy imprisoning journalists and opposition leaders, and killing Kurds. Should we be like this country? It’s not very liberal.The USA, Kyrgyzstan, and Somalia have similar murder rates. Somalia is a failed state with a very weak and ineffective government. So if you wanted Anarchy, this is close to it. And Kyrgyzstan is a religious, autocratic regime that is not very free or liberal. If you want right wing government, authoritarian or nationalist government, or no government, look to these nations as examples. Should the USA be more like them, and less liberal? We have similar murder rates. Should we have similar democratic values and social policies? Do you like policies which put the USA on a ranking list below Kazakhstan? I don’t.Yemen is a failed state, embroiled in a civil war and infected with Al Qaeda’s allies, and the USA is involved and doing strikes in that nation. Certainly no liberal nation. Yemen also boasts nearly as many guns per capita as the USA. Good thing all those guns made them safe. Safe against a mad, corrupt regime, safe against the US military, safe against a civil war, safe from murder, safe from terrorism… oh wait. It did none of those things. A strong and liberal government would have stopped that, though.Ethiopia, Swaziland, Chad, Angola, Mali. Highly authoritarian governments, very very religious societies, extremely illiberal social policies, and not particularly free or prosperous. These places are a den of butchery. Should we be more like them? Should we make our government more authoritarian? Should we become more religious and more extreme? Should we shun liberalism and free and fair elections? Would that keep us safe?Pakistan. How many folks want the USA to be like Pakistan? Authoritarian and religious government, extremely illiberal policies. 1100 honor killings in the year 2015. Should we be more like them? Would we be protecting morality by shunning liberal values?Russia, a nation of sham elections, assassinating political opponents, executing gays and pretending they don’t exist, interfering with other nation’s elections, attacking peaceful neighbors and denying involvement, annexing other nations’ land, massive rates of corruption, and led by a military strongman who plans to rule indefinitely. Oh, and they just love Donald Trump. Russia and Israel the only two nations on earth which had a higher opinion of Donald Trump than Barack Obama, including the USA. Russia is a den of murder and crime. Definitely not liberal, right wing, and very authoritarian. They want Republicans in charge of the USA. Should we give them what they want? Should we be more like them?Brazil, a nation with far left politics, high rates of murder and corruption. Well, when half the political parties in your nation are communist or socialist, splintered fragments of far left policies, your nation becomes an example of why going much further to the left than liberalism is a bad idea.Venezuela, Honduras, and El Salvador. Nations which are highly corrupt, authoritarian, and extremely far to the left. As close to communism as you can get. Despite the rhetoric of conservatives in the USA, these nations are not liberal, and no liberals want to be like these nations.Instead, they want to govern like the nations I highlighted in green, which are actually liberal.Just like conservatives in the USA do not want to govern like Iran or Saudi Arabia, I would assume. So let’s not suggest each side wants to enact a far extreme and authoritarian version of their ideas, shall we?But here’s the score card for Illiberal, Authoritarian nations:MISSION FAILED.So yeah, I definitely think we should be more liberal.But I wasn’t done- let’s talk about a few curiosities on the list.Italy has many policies liberals support. It is a capitalist, mixed economy. But it also has some we don’t. It is a highly religious place, which might appeal to you if you’re a conservative Christian. But it has no state religion, which liberals support.There is no free college education and the tertiary education system is quite privatized. As a result, they lack prestigious schools for such an advanced country, and their education levels suffer as a result. Conservatives want policies just like this, and that’s why conservative states are the least educated and have the worst colleges. Compare with Norway, where college tuition is paid by the state, so everyone can go to college if they choose. Why not do a liberal approach?Italy has a universal healthcare system, ranked among the highest in the world. The providers are a mix of public and private, but the system is single payer and everyone is covered. It is a far superior system compared to the USA, and most especially, the system conservatives in the USA support. Compare with Norway, which has a nearly identical system, and likewise, far superior to the US system. Much cheaper, too. Liberals want us to be more like that.This is a massive economy and has a mixture of liberal and conservative values. I compare Italy directly to the USA.Previous prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is basically Donald Trump. They hired a rich, fraudulent, lying, corrupt, tax-dodging, womanizing, right wing media hound with a ton of legal problems and guess what happened? He was convicted of tax fraud and forced to resign. Italy survived the reign of Silvio Berlusconi, and the USA will survive Donald Trump.GreeceHere’s a nation that was struggling economically and conservatives in the USA like to pick on as an example of the failures of a welfare state.Well, the very low murder rate in Greece is precisely what the welfare state is intended to provide. That’s working perfectly. Yes, they have debt issues, so does the United States. This is an example of how even a mismanaged center-left country still doesn’t result in the nation turning into Detroit. The murder rate stays low, even when people are poor, because the government helps the poor not starve. That’s the point of it. Greece would be much, much worse without those social safety nets. And Greece has a very high standard of living, high incomes on average, and they fixed their debt crisis a few years ago, and became Europe’s fastest growing economy. Thanks, liberalism! You sure help out in a crisis, just like how Barack Obama and the Democrats and the central stimulus and the policy of not cutting taxes resulted in the USA pulling out of its economic collapse that began under the Bush administration.People remember Greece for the collapse, but they don’t remember how Greece pulled out of it… through liberal policies, not by cutting taxes for billionaires and cutting welfare benefits. Now they are strong. You forgot to check back in, didn’t you? Now Greece is a success story.JapanDespite its reputation due to anime and hentai and things like that, Japan is a very socially conservative, traditionalist nation.However, they have a mixed economy, a universal healthcare system, a progressive tax structure, and strong gun controls.So, even socially conservative people can do liberalism. And they do it well, nearly at the very top of the list, having one of the lowest murder rates imaginable, having a powerful and vibrant economy, and a hugely successful educational system.Japan is what social conservatives in the USA should aspire to, because it proves without a doubt that liberalism works, even alongside conservative values.Let liberals manage the economy and government, education system, and healthcare system, because we know how it works. It works way better than any Republican-controlled US state.Let’s take a closer look at some of these states, shall we?Australia.Liberal values: Gun controls, education, healthcare, welfare.Australia, home of strict gun controls after the Port Arthur massacre. And look at those low murder rates, which the USA should aspire to. Australia was a very gun having nation, with loose gun controls, before. This is what they look like afterward.So yeah, gun controls can work. You just don’t want to enact them, which is fine. How about the healthcare and education and welfare systems I support? Those are known to reduce crime and the murder rate as well.We could compromise! You keep your guns, but we get to govern our nation to greatness, and pull Kansas and Oklahoma and Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama out of the Republican nightmare they live in.Sound like a fair deal? No? Okay, then I’m going to enact gun controls if and when we get in power. Which is going to happen within the next few years, don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is why you should compromise. You might keep half the Senate in 2020 that way. Instead, there will be a Democratic wave.But I digress. Next?How about Canada.Liberal values: Some gun controls. Healthcare. Education. Welfare.I’ll give you three guesses which territories are the least liberal and the most rural, just by looking at this chart. The more populated and liberal parts of Canada have low murder rates, especially compared to the USA. Look at Quebec, for crying out loud.How about…The United States of America.Liberal, or Liberal/Swing StatesHawaii, Maryland, Vermont, California, Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, Rhode Island, Delaware, New Jersey, Oregon, Maine, New Mexico, Minnesota, Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, IowaSwing StatesMichigan, PennsylvaniaConservative/Swing StatesFlorida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio,Conservative StatesArizona, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, Montana, Indiana, Kansas, Alaska, Nebraska, South Dakota, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, North Dakota, West Virginia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Idaho, Wyoming.List of U.S. states by homicide rate - WikipediaSource: FBI Uniform Crime ReportsMurder rates by State:New Hampshire (Liberal Swing)Maine (Liberal State)Minnesota (Liberal Swing)Massachusetts (Liberal State)North Dakota (Conservative)Connecticut (Liberal State)Vermont (Liberal State)Iowa (Liberal Swing)Utah (Conservative)Hawaii (Liberal State)Nebraska (Conservative)Rhode Island (Liberal State)Washington (Liberal State)Oregon (Liberal State)Idaho (Conservative)South Dakota (Conservative)New York (Liberal State)Wyoming (Conservative)Montana (Conservative)Colorado (Liberal Swing)Kansas (Conservative)Wisconsin (Liberal Swing)New Jersey (Liberal State)West Virginia (Conservative)California (Liberal State) ———————Upper halfPennsylvania (Swing) —————————-Lower halfTexas (Conservative)Florida (Conservative Swing)Arizona (Conservative)Ohio (Conservative Swing)Virginia (Liberal Swing)Delaware (Liberal State)Kentucky (Conservative)Michigan (Swing)Oklahoma (Conservative)Georgia (Conservative)Indiana (Conservative)New Mexico (Liberal Swing)North Carolina (Conservative Swing)Alaska (Conservative)Arkansas (Conservative)Tennessee (Conservative)South Carolina (Conservative)Nevada (Conservative Swing)Maryland (Liberal State)Mississippi (Conservative)Illinois (Liberal State)Alabama (Conservative)Missouri (Conservative)Louisiana (Conservative)So I tell you what I see.The upper half of the list are 16 liberal and liberal/swing states out of 25. Congrats to the few well managed Republican states, at least in terms of managing crime. Although, economy and jobs-wise, education and healthcare, not so much. I’m talking about you, Kansas and West Virginia. But congrats on doing literally anything right!The lower half is home to a few of the worst managed liberal states, like Maryland, Illinois, and Delaware. Much of Illinois’ murder rate is in Chicago, where it’s quite easy to smuggle in guns despite the restrictive gun laws there, because neighboring Gary, Indiana is a haven for gun buyers. Indiana is home to some of the least restrictive gun laws in the entire country. So guns can be bought legally, and then transported into Chicago illegally, easily. The two cities literally border each other. Gun laws don’t work if they’re not uniform and enforceable. But let’s not blame it all on Indiana. Illinois is a den of corruption, and admittedly so. I don’t want to run the USA like Illinois. Maryland is home to Baltimore, and borders Washington DC. Both dens of crime and corruption. Delaware is pretty urban and tiny, and quite right wing for a Democratic state, one of America’s tax havens. So here are your three worst liberal states. Can’t win them all. Virginia and New Mexico are largely Republican states, with a few urban centers tipping the state Democratic. But we’ll count them.The lower half of the list is home to 19 Conservative or Republican-leaning Swing States, where there are few gun laws, poor educational systems, lousy healthcare systems, and state budgets are all jacked up. They are also net beneficiaries of Federal Tax dollars, whereas Democratic states are net contributors to the Federal Tax system. They spend more than they get back, to help prop up Republican states which can’t stand on their own two feet.Thanks, liberalism!My analysis of this suggests that, even in the USA, the more liberal you go, the better your state is, on average, with few major outliers, especially with regard to the violent crime and murder rates.But outside of the USA, the more liberal you go, even stronger is the correlation between liberalism and low murder rates.That’s just the beginning.Liberal states and liberal nations rock healthcare systems, worldwide, the most liberal and comprehensive universal healthcare systems are consistently the cheapest and most effective, covering everyone and extending human life spans and lowering infant mortality rates.Furthermore, liberal states have lower criminal recidivism rates. Norway has a rate of 1 in 5 criminals, with an overall crime rate about 10 times lower than the USA, for example, while the USA has a recidivism rate of 4 in 5 criminals, and millions of people incarcerated. So we’re just paying the prisons and the police to catch, not rehabilitate, and then release damaged prisoners who cannot function in a civil society. That’s tough on crime, three strikes laws, and the drug war for you. Doesn’t fix crime and doesn’t fix criminals. Whereas Norway’s liberal justice and rehabilitation system does lower crime, lower the murder rate, and rehabilitate criminals.Here are two short documentaries about the Nordic countries and the Norwegian prison system. Google the crime and murder rates of these countries, compare to the USA. Or scroll up, since I did the work for you.I’m not finished.Let’s talk about Democracy, authoritarianism, and free and fair elections.Gosh, look at this list which shows you where liberal nations rank on the Democracy index.Fully free and fair DemocraciesNorway (Liberal)Iceland (Liberal)Sweden (Liberal)New Zealand (Liberal)Denmark (Liberal)Ireland (Liberal)Canada (Liberal)Australia (Liberal)Finland (Liberal)Switzerland (Liberal)Netherlands (Liberal)Luxembourg (Liberal)Germany (Liberal)United Kingdom (Liberal)Austria (Liberal)Mauritius (Liberal)Malta (Liberal)Uruguay (Mixed)Spain (Liberal)Where is the United States in this list? I don’t see it. Might have something to do with our undemocratic and disproportionate Electoral college system, Gerrymandered congressional system, Broken Voter registration and ID law system, inability for certain residents and citizens to vote, corrupt campaign finance system, and two-party monopoly. Other nations don’t have nearly as broken a system as the USA does, and they’re all liberal.Nope, the USA is near the top of the list of Flawed Democracies. By the way, you can find all of the rest of the liberal nations in that same category as well. You’re not going to find too many in the Hybrid regimes or Authoritarian regimes list.In fact, precisely zero.Which is why I argue for liberalism.Liberalism is good for:Democracy and representative governmentLowering rates of corruptionCivil rights and protected rightsFairness toward minorities and immigrantsFewer nanny state restrictions on your private life, religious beliefs, sexuality, etc.Freedom from violent crime and murderFreedom from authoritarian governmentFreedom from corporate control over your life, such as shit wages, low or no benefits, your retirement fund being stolen by Wall Street crooks, not getting overtime or paid vacations or maternity leave, things like that.Freedom to get an education, and the ability to do so. Usually paid for by your taxes, which are not at all exorbitant.Freedom to see a doctor, and the right to the best healthcare systems in the world, paid for with single payer systems which are cheaper than multi payer systems. Better outcomes, and everyone is covered.Rehabilitating prisoners instead of executing them or putting them through a very expensive revolving door.Opposition political candidates are not being jailed or executed.Little girls not being raped, or killed by their own parents, or sold into slavery, or forced into child marriages or arranged marriages, or having their clitorises cut off, or forced to practice Sharia Law.Separating the church from the government, so you can believe or disbelieve in peace, and religious extremist beliefs do not become the lawLowering the number of unmarried pregnant women and single mothers by providing good sex education systems and allowing access to contraceptives. Which also lowers the rate of STDs.Economic prosperity, jobs, and rising wages and standards of living, and therefore the Middle Class. You remember how Greece turned around, and the USA turned around, thanks to liberal governments? Check out the history of Norway. Once one of the poorest nations in Europe, they formed a liberal democracy with a mixed economy and a strong welfare state and now they are one of the world leaders. Just like Sweden and Finland and Denmark, so no, it’s NOT simply a result of Norway having oil. It’s obviously a result of their politics. African nations are often resource rich and dirt poor and dens of authoritarianism and corruption, so you can’t simply say that Norway is only good because of oil. But I’ve heard that argument before, and it is quite wrong. The USA is a resource rich nation as well, the largest economy, with the most billionaires, so we should be able to keep up with little Norway. The fact that we can’t, is staggering.I’m not interested in debate, because it doesn’t change minds. Write your own answer if you disagree with me.The opposing advocate will struggle to take apart this mountain of data, and will typically simply deny its validity. I don’t have the patience for intellectual dishonesty, and they won’t be changing my mind again.However, I am indeed capable of changing my mind.I was a conservative Republican, and the Bush years convinced me otherwise. Moving to Norway has completely converted me, as well as the years of good governance under Barack Obama. Not to mention the Clinton years were pretty good as well.The national budget has been busted since Ronald Reagan began slashing taxes, and his term in office ended with unemployment right back where it was when he started. Short term and very temporary gains in jobs vanished, and were replaced with permanent budget deficits and stagnant wages.Clinton raised wages, the stock market, and lowered the number of homeless and jobless citizens. He almost balanced the budget completely.Bush wrecked the budget, fought 2 wars on a credit card and never paid for it, and continued deregulating the economy until it collapsed in 2008.Obama reduced the deficit every year, despite a Republican congress for 6 years trying to lower taxes. He resisted, and the job numbers went up, unemployment went down, the stock market more than doubled in value, and if not for the two wars Bush started and the tax cuts he enacted, the budget would have been completely balanced under Barack Obama. The Republicans saw to it that it didn’t happen, because they refused to pass a balanced budget.Now cut to the Trump era, where the stock prices this year have fluctuated wildly and are now down for the year, we’re starting a trade war with China, and Trump just added 10 trillion dollars to the budget debt over the next decade, passed by a Republican controlled House and Senate.So much for the party of fiscal responsibility.Meanwhile, in liberal Norway, home of universal healthcare and free education and super low crime rates, high employment rates, we have a balanced budget and a trillion dollars in savings, for a country of only 5 million people.Oh my.I thought Republicans knew how to manage an economy, and I was fucking wrong. I should have paid closer attention to Reagan and the Bushes, but I was a kid during two of those administrations. I learned what Republicanism means under George W. Bush, though, and Clinton, Obama, and most liberal US states and ALL liberal nations around the world have taught me that liberalism works, and everything that is not liberalism does not.Authoritarianism doesn’t work. Weak and ineffective decentralized governments don’t work. Far left nations don’t work. Far right nations don’t work. Theocracy doesn’t work. And Republicanism doesn’t work.Centrist, mixed economies work. Liberal Social Democracies work. Human rights and protected freedoms work. Civil libertarianism beats Authoritarianism. The punitive approach fails, and the rehabilitative approach succeeds. Secular states beat either religious fundamentalist governments, or the authoritarian and officially atheist Chinese government.Liberalism works.That’s what I know. Happy to share it with folks. Doubt it changes minds though.I am going to repeat myself here:If you believe you have found the truth, you stop looking for it.Nothing will ever change your mind until you think the following thoughts:I might be wrong about the things I believe, no matter how stronglySomeone else might know things I do notI should check and see if what they say is true before I dismiss itSomeone who disagrees with me does not necessarily think I am stupid, or evil, or incapable of understanding their point.Maybe I should not think they are stupid, or evil, or that they don’t understand what I believe, before hearing them out.If you can follow that, then you can arrive at better conclusions.Thank you for reading my presentation.