“Policy has adverse consequences. If we send people to war, people will die. If we consign people to live in poverty, people will die. If we take away health insurance, people will die. It has become increasingly harder for the G.O.P. to justify these deaths with anything remotely resembling sensible policy, so now it seeks to take them out of the equation altogether.”

Ms. Chang offers a rebuttal to the conservative argument that it is inappropriate to cast the health care debate in terms of life or death. She says doing so is a “complete divorce from the policy itself.” And she goes on to point out that the majority of people crafting the bill and commenting on it in the media are distanced from its effects personally. Read more »

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• Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs:

“There are, surprisingly enough, a number of people who do not subscribe to the belief that democracy is good.”

Mr. Robinson finds thinkers across the political spectrum trying to use the era of Trump and global populism to make a fashionable argument against “too much democracy.” He notes that elites dismissing populism miss the point that they are the ruling political class being displaced and “the old cliché about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others remains as true as ever.” Read more »

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• Maha Hilal in Foreign Policy in Focus:

“I’m a U.S. citizen. I’m also Muslim. And the Supreme Court decision on the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban scares me.”

Dr. Hilal writes that the travel ban magnifies the “legitimate fear that one will either be targeted by state violence or become a target of societal violence.” She writes that being told to trust in the democratic process and courts system is a challenge for groups that have felt historically disenfranchised under what she calls “a long history of discriminatory, racist, and Islamophobic policies under several administrations.” Read more »