MWI Weekly 9.30.2022

"Hapcheongun_County_34" by KOREA.NET - Official page of the Republic of Korea is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This week: Hurricane Ian, climate change and flood insurance; Putin; fascism; spies in Iran; sharks on the run; and Korea.

Thanks to some valuable feedback on some naming confusion, we've rearranged the website a little. We're now using The Town Square, rather than Commentary, as the title of the Institute's primary blog. These newsletters will now appear in their own tab (called, simply enough, Modern Whig Weekly) in addition to being sent out via email every Friday.

We've also punched up the site a little to standardize the look of the pages and fixed a couple broken buttons. Apparently, some of the connections were cut in an upgrade.

While we were at it, we set almost all the buttons on the site to open in a new tab to make site navigation a little easier. If that proves to be too clunky it's simple enough to change it back, so any feedback is more than welcome.

All the other bells and whistles are done, at least for now. We still have a couple formatting issues to straighten out, but most of the site content has been updated, so the next phase is to go over it all once more in the light of our evolution and bring everything fully up to speed and current. None of the fundamentals will change; we just have to get some of the specifics in line with our most recent work.

Also, a clarification: Modern Whig Weekly will go out on the wires between 2 p.m. ET and close of business on Fridays, not necessarily right around 2 o'clock.

And that's about it on the housekeeping front. Let's talk about Ian.

A Sudden Turn for the Worst

As I write this, the worst hurricane of the season so far -- and we're still just in September -- is making its second landfall in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Much as with Tampa Bay in Florida, the storm seems to have taken a sudden turn to bypass Charleston, S.C., the most populated area in its path, sparing that city the worst of the flooding.

But for those just north on the coastline, just as with the residents of Naples and Ft. Myers, the water is coming to places where there is nothing to stop it. While the storm is considerably weaker than the monster which came roaring in from the Gulf of Mexico, it's still powerful enough at Category 1 to cause tremendous damage. We can only hope and pray.

We can also, hopefully, draw some conclusions. The first and most obvious is the fact our new climate reality has arrived -- and may even be ahead of schedule a little. Scientists warn us we can't attribute any single weather event to climate change, but there's no escaping the worsening conditions. Even a little bit of warming is proving to be catastrophic.

Which brings up the question of what to do about it. Over the long term, we need to take the challenge of climate change and turn it into an opportunity. In some ways, that's what the Green New Deal advocated by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is all about.

But their plan is not what most people want. While it's clear more and more people, and almost certainly a majority of Americans now, understand the situation, they're not willing to upend our way of life to address it. And that's unquestionably what many on the Left propose to do.

Which is, to say the least, unfortunate. If we're going to reach our goals -- and, scientists tell us, from a technical perspective there's no reason why we can't -- we're going to have to be both coolly rational and eminently reasonable. As much as progressives keep insisting their vision and their worldview is the way to go, a majority of Americans (including Democrats) keep saying no, and for very good reasons. We need better ideas.

In the meantime, for the residents of Florida, South Carolina and, in all likelihood, neighboring states, questions like the feasibility of nuclear development can wait. They have more immediate concerns -- which is, of course, the point. We are where we are now and have to take things as they are, now. We must live in the present even as we work toward the future.

And the present reality, in practical terms, is a challenging one for those who have taken the brunt of Hurricane Ian's wrath, and not just in terms of the physical loss and destruction. One of the most important issues, as always after a natural disaster, is insurance. And the insurance situation in Florida is a disaster all its own.

For one thing, most of the big insurance carriers have backed away from insuring properties in flood-prone areas in Florida over the last couple decades. For another, even when they do, flood insurance is separate from standard homeowner's insurance (something which many homeowners learn the hard way). It's mandatory for mortgage-backed properties, but not legally required for fully owned homes.

Those two factors in combination have resulted in a large percentage of properties without flood insurance or insured by smaller companies without the resources to cover all claims, or both. In the coming weeks and months, it's almost certainly going to take an intervention by the federal government to get those who have lost everything back on their feet.

But going forward, the economics of climate change and the more extreme weather events we're going to experience more frequently demand even more action. While it may be politically advantageous to fight the Culture War, it's also a waste of time, energy and attention better spent on taking the situation in hand and addressing pragmatic issues -- insurance reform for flood zones, permitting reform for building new energy infrastructure, etc.

In other words, it's a time for governance. We not only have a right to expect it; we have the authority to demand it. And we should.

Putin on the Blitz

You have to hand it to Vlad, he's nothing if not bold. Or desperate. In his latest move to try and salvage his failing invasion of Ukraine, he's upped the ante by annexing, through a comedically transparent referendum, the parts of Ukraine his forces currently occupy.

To make sure he's getting his point across, he's vowed to defend Russia's newly stolen territory by "any means necessary" while calling for peace talks and simultaneously shelling a humanitarian convoy, killing at least 25 civilians.

The man may not be consistent in his logic, but he's nothing if not consistent in his brutality.

The Ukrainians, as one would expect, are having none of it. Not only are they rejecting Putin's claims outright and refusing to even consider allowing his theft of their eastern provinces to stand; they're apparently about to deal him yet another defeat on the battlefield, this time at the city of Lyman in Luhansk, one of the referendum oblasts.

If they're successful (and by all accounts, the Russians in Lyman are nearly surrounded and cut off) yet another key shoulder of the Russian position would be lost, including a key railway juncture. Ukraine would then have the ability to challenge for control not only of Luhansk, but the province of Donetsk as well.

For our part, the Biden Administration recently authorized another tranche of military aid, and Congress has just passed a stopgap government funding bill which includes a $12.3 billion aid package, including funding for social services, to aid the Ukrainians. We've also slapped a new set of sanctions on Russia and expanded some existing ones. The European Union is about to follow suit, as well as imposing travel restrictions on Russian passport holders.

All told, it's a heavy weight for Putin's regime to carry. In many ways, they've been able to successfully circumvent many of the economic sanctions up to now, and they've continued to export oil at about their usual clip until fairly recently. But the economic picture is starting to darken considerably at last, the military picture is abysmal, and the domestic picture is at the very least beginning to show some shakiness as Putin's mobilization orders are carried out.

Whether all that adds up to ultimate defeat is still an open question. So is the durability of Putin himself, given the strain he's placing not only on his country, but (and this may be more important) the oligarchs around him.

Whatever the case may be, Western support for Ukraine must continue unabated. Not only is our military aid proving to be a bargain -- the Ukrainians have basically decimated Russia's best frontline ground units, essentially grounded Russia's air force and sunk one of the most prized surface ships in the Russian navy, all for a fraction of our GDP -- but our political position has only grown stronger.

For a while, liberal democracy looked to be on the run and the ideals Western Civilization was built on fading in the face of strongarm tactics. Now, it’s starting to look more and more like it's the other way around. We need to stick with it.

Cry for the Bad Man

One of the reasons we can't let up is staring us in the face, over and over and over again. For a multitude of reasons, the former president (no, this song is not about him, but kind of could be if only he were actually this cool) simply won't go away.

Yet, in the broader scheme of things, it's not really about him so much as what he represents: A departure from the most basic distinctions between fantasy and reality, fact and fiction, right and wrong. As founding member Hank Thayer points out on our Members Blog, what Trump represents is, in so many ways, a kind of erasure: Trump is Not a Fascist — He’s Worse — Modern Whig Institute

And what the entire right-wing project has become is an attempt to erase our most fundamental, classical liberal values. It's more than a little ironic the movement most closely aligned with that attempt took root in Rome, the very place where bureaucrats had taken the raw material of Greek philosophy and refined it into codes and laws and formal structures so many centuries ago.

In another Members Blog post, Daniel Nardini offers a personal reflection on his family history and how different things might have been had his grandfather stayed in Italy. It's worth considering, especially since we often think too much of grand movements and too little about how they affect everyday lives: Thank Goodness for My Grandfather — Modern Whig Institute

Daniel also knows from personal experience how things can go the other way. Around 30 years ago, he was living in a Taiwan which, at the time, was nothing like the free, prosperous democracy we know today. It's striking to read firsthand the contrast between life in Taiwan then and life there now, and even more striking when you consider how far they've come, and how fast: The Taiwan That Was — Modern Whig Institute

As we all know, Ukraine too has had its fair share of problems and growing pains over the last 30 years. But if the story from the other side of the world can be repeated there, and we can keep our heads and maintain our raucous, but stable, democratic republic here -- and we will -- all will be well. After all, it was never supposed to be easy. Or complete.

"The establishment of our new Government seemed to be the last great experiment for promoting human happiness by reasonable compact in civil society. It was to be, in the first instance, in a considerable degree a government of accommodation as well as a government of Laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by conciliation, much by firmness."
-- George Washington, Jan. 9, 1790

Odds and Ends

As usual, the animals in nature seem to have a better handle on their environment than we do. And that includes knowing when it's time to get out of dodge: Can animals feel hurricanes? Sharks are one example. | Popular Science (popsci.com)

One apparently didn't get the message, but it appears to be a juvenile. Figures.

Reuters published a rather stunning investigative report on the CIA's spycraft in Iran. All the usual caveats about misdirection and disinformation apply, but there seems to be no question there was some troubling sloppiness in the field:

How the CIA failed Iranian spies in its secret war with Tehran (reuters.com)

Finally, an astounding story of 13th Century craftmanship appeared in a Twitter thread this week. Not only is it amazing -- it's beautiful: Thread by @incunabula on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

And with that, I wish you a safe and fun weekend. As always, it's a pleasure to be at your service. See you next week.

Kevin J. Rogers is the executive director of the Modern Whig Institute. He can be reached at director@modernwhig.org. ___________________________________________________________

The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.