1. Your descriptions of Israel and Singapore are misleading. They are not as illiberal as you make them sound. They are definitely more liberal than most of the world including the beloved-by-globalists Ukraine. Their existence is not opposed by the globalists. Granted they are not like the US an…
1. Your descriptions of Israel and Singapore are misleading. They are not as illiberal as you make them sound. They are definitely more liberal than most of the world including the beloved-by-globalists Ukraine. Their existence is not opposed by the globalists. Granted they are not like the US and Western Europe. But no one else is except for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
2. It matters a lot exactly which "liberal globalists" you are looking at, and it also matters a lot if you are talking about support for embryo selection versus support for discussion of race differences. You conflate these two by just using the term "eugenics" (a term I would not use because it's too politically charged; see https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-i-oppose-eugenics by Richard). I can certainly imagine someone like Noah Smith endorsing embryo selection and saying that discussion of race differences is irrelevant because we will all be very smart in a few generations.
1. They are at most slight exaggerations. Your long post isn't really disputing this. Israel is a democratic society with gay vegan atheists. That hasn't stopped it from building settlements and many prominent politicians want to annex the West Bank either in whole or in part.
I have no trust in the Economist's rankings. They're obviously extremely biased. Compare only the states with right-populist governments in Eastern Europe. They rank Hungary as less democratic than Poland. Orbán has never tried to ban his political opponents in the way that Kaczyński attempted with his 'lex Tusk' before the last election, but Poland is far less defiant towards Washington.
I specified that Singapore is civic nationalist. It has relatively severe restrictions on press freedom for a 'democracy.' The elections are fixed through districting. The actual electoral process is theoretically 'free and fair' in itself, but the composition of parliament is mostly predetermined. The PAP wins sixty percent and 83 out of 93 seats. This is not comparable to Japan.
2. Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias are commentators on substack. They are not representative of the decision-making class of 'liberal' globalists. Will Stencil actually works for an NGO and is.
It's true that Israel has built settlements (though, most near the Green Line and not nearly enough to make a two-state solution impossible, see Shaul Arieli) and that many prominent politicians have at least talked about West Bank annexation, though few are really serious about it. The settlement lobby is really a special interest group. Israel won't resettle Gaza. It's an exaggeration to call Israel - which has offered a two-state solution based on the Clinton parameters several times https://thirdnarrative.org/israel-palestine-articles/palestinians-still-reject-clinton-parameters/ - an "expansionist state", though it has irredentist and expansionist elements, certainly, but they are not a majority. There's a reason why the Gaza withdrawal happened. And there's a reason even Netanyahu was willing to engage in two-state negotiations under Obama and Kerry, and objects to a Palestinian state based on security grounds and not on irredentist ones.
I am not super qualified to comment on Hungary versus Poland, but I'll say some things. I will note that the Polish populist government is gone. I think the criticism against Orban mostly stems from his attacks on the media and constitution, not from bans on political opponents. Orban is so secure he does not need to. In the US both parties talk about banning their political opponents from office. Trump said Crooked Hilary should be locked up, now the Dems say Trump should be thrown in prison. One could argue that if people talk about banning their political opponents, it's a sign of a healthy democracy because it means they have some viable opponents! Orban doesn't really. Anyway, The Economist does admit that Russia is more democratic than China, and has for many years. This is not what you would expect if it had the kind of bias that you are alleging.
Singapore has a first past the post system. In the last election the second and third place parties each won a bit over 10% of the vote each. It's not 60-40 or anything like that. There is no gerrymandering like in the US. So of course the PAP wins most of the seats. Many countries have first past the post which leads to very disparate outcomes that look different than public support. Would say Britain is not a democracy because of the 2015 election results? Heck, CGP Grey made a video about it calling it the worst election results in history! Yes, Singapore is certainly less of a liberal democracy than Japan, and everyone admits that, but as with Israel it's still not as illiberal as you are portraying it to be!
'Liberal' means many different things. I put scare quotes around 'liberal' globalists because they are generally not friendly to politically liberal norms like free speech.
Israel is certainly politically liberal. There is no contradiction between political liberalism, ethnonationalism and expansionism. Even leftist politicians like Yair Golan usually want to keep at least the settlement blocs, and the Clinton parameters included the Israeli annexation of land on the Arab side of the Green Line. So Israel is at least mildly expansionist. I am not saying this to criticise! I admire Israel for it.
The idea that Orbán has no real opponents in nonsense. He could very easily have lost the last election. The opposition decided to nominate a gaffe-prone Christian fundamentalist in a secular European country in hopes that he could draw conservative voters away from Fidesz. This backfired predictably.
Politically-motivated prosecutions are the sign of a lack of respect for democratic norms. They are the hallmark of banana republics. Had the 'lex Tusk' passed PiS could have banned anyone that they wanted from public office. Is that healthy for democracy?
It's not impressive that the Economist admits that Russia is more democratic than China. One would have to be extremely deranged in his Russophobia, far beyond even the likes of Timothy Snyder, to think that Russia is no more democratic than China.
Why play the fool? We both know that Britain isn't comparable to Singapore. The British results are distorted by FPTP, but it has competitive elections. The last Singaporean election ended with the PAP winning 60% of the vote and 83 out of 93 seats.
But all of this is rather irrelevant, because even America looks more and more like a hybrid state by the day now, and that isn't why 'liberal' globalists dislike Israel and Singapore. It's because they express different values from them. Note too my wording. 'Liberal' globalists tolerate these governments, far more than they tolerate Hungary or Russia. They will not cut them off from SWIFT, but they would still love to see regime change.
On Israel, yes, wanting to annex the large settlement blocs near the Green Line (they are still pretty small) is really just pragmatic but I guess it is mildly expansionist, even if indeed Yair Golan would promote or be open to equal land swaps (equal area but less population), Golan would have opposed the building of those settlements in the first place, and no one really cares so much about Israel annexing the blocs who doesn't object to Israel's existence in 1967. Annexing even a small territory because some people have settled on it is certainly a form of expansionism, however mild and benign and whatever mitigating circumstances there are.
On Hungary and Poland, as I said I was just giving my impressions, so I am not going to test that. On The Economist, it's not "impressive" because it's largely true but it is at least shows they are not completely deranged so that their rankings mean SOMETHING. The Economist is far superior to many other mainstream "globalist" left-leaning outlets. Heck, they partner with prediction markets and criticize woke-ism, and even ran articles sympathetic to hereditarianism. I agree that Britain is far more democratic and competitive than Singapore. But my point is that Singapore is not as authoritarian as undemocratic and is commonly portrayed.
Fair enough that at least a nontrivial number of "liberal" globalists want media suppression of stories like the Hunter Biden laptop, want to fine people for discussion of IQ differences as has happened in some European countries, and so on. And yes, these sort of people tolerate Israel and Singapore more than Hungary or Russia. Of course they are more mad about Russia than about Hungary, and justifiably so! But they have fueled a lot of nonsense that has provoked Russia and worsened US-Russia relations over the years, and helped to cause Putin to invade Ukraine in the first place. It's hard to speak about counterfactuals, and unlike Orban Putin is someone with some imperial designs who has assassinated opposition journalists, but it's quite possible that without this stupid talk of NATO expansion that Putin never would have invaded. And yes the "liberal" globalists still would rather install "liberal" globalist regimes everywhere including Israel and Singapore. For political reasons they like Ukraine more than many countries which are objectively more democratic. I say this as someone who is generally pro-Ukraine, probably more than you. Of course, it's stupid to call all of this stuff "liberal", since these authoritarian ideas are downright illiberal. I don't dispute any of that!
The tl;dr of the long post I just made is:
1. Your descriptions of Israel and Singapore are misleading. They are not as illiberal as you make them sound. They are definitely more liberal than most of the world including the beloved-by-globalists Ukraine. Their existence is not opposed by the globalists. Granted they are not like the US and Western Europe. But no one else is except for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
2. It matters a lot exactly which "liberal globalists" you are looking at, and it also matters a lot if you are talking about support for embryo selection versus support for discussion of race differences. You conflate these two by just using the term "eugenics" (a term I would not use because it's too politically charged; see https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why-i-oppose-eugenics by Richard). I can certainly imagine someone like Noah Smith endorsing embryo selection and saying that discussion of race differences is irrelevant because we will all be very smart in a few generations.
1. They are at most slight exaggerations. Your long post isn't really disputing this. Israel is a democratic society with gay vegan atheists. That hasn't stopped it from building settlements and many prominent politicians want to annex the West Bank either in whole or in part.
I have no trust in the Economist's rankings. They're obviously extremely biased. Compare only the states with right-populist governments in Eastern Europe. They rank Hungary as less democratic than Poland. Orbán has never tried to ban his political opponents in the way that Kaczyński attempted with his 'lex Tusk' before the last election, but Poland is far less defiant towards Washington.
I specified that Singapore is civic nationalist. It has relatively severe restrictions on press freedom for a 'democracy.' The elections are fixed through districting. The actual electoral process is theoretically 'free and fair' in itself, but the composition of parliament is mostly predetermined. The PAP wins sixty percent and 83 out of 93 seats. This is not comparable to Japan.
2. Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias are commentators on substack. They are not representative of the decision-making class of 'liberal' globalists. Will Stencil actually works for an NGO and is.
It's true that Israel has built settlements (though, most near the Green Line and not nearly enough to make a two-state solution impossible, see Shaul Arieli) and that many prominent politicians have at least talked about West Bank annexation, though few are really serious about it. The settlement lobby is really a special interest group. Israel won't resettle Gaza. It's an exaggeration to call Israel - which has offered a two-state solution based on the Clinton parameters several times https://thirdnarrative.org/israel-palestine-articles/palestinians-still-reject-clinton-parameters/ - an "expansionist state", though it has irredentist and expansionist elements, certainly, but they are not a majority. There's a reason why the Gaza withdrawal happened. And there's a reason even Netanyahu was willing to engage in two-state negotiations under Obama and Kerry, and objects to a Palestinian state based on security grounds and not on irredentist ones.
I am not super qualified to comment on Hungary versus Poland, but I'll say some things. I will note that the Polish populist government is gone. I think the criticism against Orban mostly stems from his attacks on the media and constitution, not from bans on political opponents. Orban is so secure he does not need to. In the US both parties talk about banning their political opponents from office. Trump said Crooked Hilary should be locked up, now the Dems say Trump should be thrown in prison. One could argue that if people talk about banning their political opponents, it's a sign of a healthy democracy because it means they have some viable opponents! Orban doesn't really. Anyway, The Economist does admit that Russia is more democratic than China, and has for many years. This is not what you would expect if it had the kind of bias that you are alleging.
Singapore has a first past the post system. In the last election the second and third place parties each won a bit over 10% of the vote each. It's not 60-40 or anything like that. There is no gerrymandering like in the US. So of course the PAP wins most of the seats. Many countries have first past the post which leads to very disparate outcomes that look different than public support. Would say Britain is not a democracy because of the 2015 election results? Heck, CGP Grey made a video about it calling it the worst election results in history! Yes, Singapore is certainly less of a liberal democracy than Japan, and everyone admits that, but as with Israel it's still not as illiberal as you are portraying it to be!
'Liberal' means many different things. I put scare quotes around 'liberal' globalists because they are generally not friendly to politically liberal norms like free speech.
Israel is certainly politically liberal. There is no contradiction between political liberalism, ethnonationalism and expansionism. Even leftist politicians like Yair Golan usually want to keep at least the settlement blocs, and the Clinton parameters included the Israeli annexation of land on the Arab side of the Green Line. So Israel is at least mildly expansionist. I am not saying this to criticise! I admire Israel for it.
The idea that Orbán has no real opponents in nonsense. He could very easily have lost the last election. The opposition decided to nominate a gaffe-prone Christian fundamentalist in a secular European country in hopes that he could draw conservative voters away from Fidesz. This backfired predictably.
Politically-motivated prosecutions are the sign of a lack of respect for democratic norms. They are the hallmark of banana republics. Had the 'lex Tusk' passed PiS could have banned anyone that they wanted from public office. Is that healthy for democracy?
It's not impressive that the Economist admits that Russia is more democratic than China. One would have to be extremely deranged in his Russophobia, far beyond even the likes of Timothy Snyder, to think that Russia is no more democratic than China.
Why play the fool? We both know that Britain isn't comparable to Singapore. The British results are distorted by FPTP, but it has competitive elections. The last Singaporean election ended with the PAP winning 60% of the vote and 83 out of 93 seats.
But all of this is rather irrelevant, because even America looks more and more like a hybrid state by the day now, and that isn't why 'liberal' globalists dislike Israel and Singapore. It's because they express different values from them. Note too my wording. 'Liberal' globalists tolerate these governments, far more than they tolerate Hungary or Russia. They will not cut them off from SWIFT, but they would still love to see regime change.
All of this is pretty fair.
On Israel, yes, wanting to annex the large settlement blocs near the Green Line (they are still pretty small) is really just pragmatic but I guess it is mildly expansionist, even if indeed Yair Golan would promote or be open to equal land swaps (equal area but less population), Golan would have opposed the building of those settlements in the first place, and no one really cares so much about Israel annexing the blocs who doesn't object to Israel's existence in 1967. Annexing even a small territory because some people have settled on it is certainly a form of expansionism, however mild and benign and whatever mitigating circumstances there are.
On Hungary and Poland, as I said I was just giving my impressions, so I am not going to test that. On The Economist, it's not "impressive" because it's largely true but it is at least shows they are not completely deranged so that their rankings mean SOMETHING. The Economist is far superior to many other mainstream "globalist" left-leaning outlets. Heck, they partner with prediction markets and criticize woke-ism, and even ran articles sympathetic to hereditarianism. I agree that Britain is far more democratic and competitive than Singapore. But my point is that Singapore is not as authoritarian as undemocratic and is commonly portrayed.
Fair enough that at least a nontrivial number of "liberal" globalists want media suppression of stories like the Hunter Biden laptop, want to fine people for discussion of IQ differences as has happened in some European countries, and so on. And yes, these sort of people tolerate Israel and Singapore more than Hungary or Russia. Of course they are more mad about Russia than about Hungary, and justifiably so! But they have fueled a lot of nonsense that has provoked Russia and worsened US-Russia relations over the years, and helped to cause Putin to invade Ukraine in the first place. It's hard to speak about counterfactuals, and unlike Orban Putin is someone with some imperial designs who has assassinated opposition journalists, but it's quite possible that without this stupid talk of NATO expansion that Putin never would have invaded. And yes the "liberal" globalists still would rather install "liberal" globalist regimes everywhere including Israel and Singapore. For political reasons they like Ukraine more than many countries which are objectively more democratic. I say this as someone who is generally pro-Ukraine, probably more than you. Of course, it's stupid to call all of this stuff "liberal", since these authoritarian ideas are downright illiberal. I don't dispute any of that!