RICHARD HASS: The End of Asia’s Strategic Miracle?

Despite all of these tensions, Asia has remained largely at peace, partly because no country has wanted to jeopardize economic growth by initiating a conflict. This perspective is most clearly associated with Deng Xiaoping. In leading China’s process of economic “reform and opening-up” from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Deng explicitly emphasized the importance of a stable external environment to facilitate internal economic development. The reliance on regional trade ties to support growth and employment has provided yet another incentive to sustain peace.

But economics was probably not the only factor at play. Because most Asian countries are host to relatively homogenous societies with strong national identities, the chance of civil conflicts erupting and spilling over national borders is relatively low. Last but certainly not least, America’s strong military presence in Asia – which underpins its robust regional alliance system – has reduced the need for Asian countries to develop large military programs of their own, and has reinforced a status quo that discourages armed adventurism.

These factors have contributed to peace and stability in Asia, but they cannot be taken for granted. Indeed, they are now coming under increasing pressure – putting the strategic miracle that has facilitated Asia’s economic miracle in jeopardy.

How much of an economic liability does North Korea have to become before Beijing acts, or has President Xi Jinping turned his back on Xiaoping’s growth-first policy?

EVERYTHING AND MORE: That’s what you’ll find today in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

IN PLENTY OF TIME FOR YOUR HOLIDAY SHOPPING: A Quadcopter with sniper rifle or grenade launcher.

UK JUDENFREI: One in three British Jews consider leaving the UK fearing hate crime, poll finds.

And almost four in 10 say they hide their faith for fear of antisemitic attacks, a poll found.

The survey by YouGov shows that only 59 per cent of Britain’s 270,000 Jewish people feel welcome in the UK.

And three quarters believe the Labour Party harbours antisemites.

Since Jeremy Corbyn became leader two years ago he has had to fend off claims he is not doing enough to tackle discrimination.

Tom Wolfe’s “The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe,” seems appropriate here, but lately we’ve been having our own troubles.

SARAH HOYT: Remembering the Past.

Portugal was Roman, we studied the Romans. And we studied them as “our people.”

I can’t say we ever studied the Moorish invaders as our people. Mostly the Moors got accorded the respect of the THINGS they introduced to the peninsula. Almonds, pillows (almofadas) and other things starting with al.

We did study the crusaders who freed the peninsula as our people, among them the Earl Afonso who claimed the territory, and whose son became the first Portuguese king.

Reading about these people, usually in the biographies of more important people from other countries is eye opening. They too weren’t exactly as portrayed to us.

Weirdly, the Spanish kings that took over Portugal (legally by inheritance) and ruled it for six years we were taught to revile. I remember sitting in fourth grade while the teacher solemnly instructed us to deface the pictures of the Phillips in our school book.

But other than that, perhaps because we were taught so many successive waves who then became “our people” we were taught to accept history. History is what it is. You can’t change it by shouting it at it. You certainly can’t change it by toppling statues and renaming streets.

Compared to Europe, American history has barely started — and yet already there are those who would try to erase it.

Anyway, do read the whole thing.

DC MCALLISTER: Breathtaking Confederate Monument Hypocrisy at Duke University.

I hope you weren’t expecting anything else.

IT’S ON: Kamala Harris Will Be ‘Knocking on Doors in Iowa.’

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D.) said California Sen. Kamala Harris (D.) will be “knocking on doors in Iowa,” indicating Saturday he expects she will run for president.

Villaraigosa, who is running for Governor of California in 2018, was asked by MSNBC host Hugh Hewitt about Harris, a newly elected senator considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. Hewitt predicted she would be the nominee for the Democrats in 2020.

“Has she got a stake in this governor’s race?” Hewitt asked.

“Well, not yet,” Villaraigosa said. “I hope she will support my candidacy, but as you say, she is a great candidate. She’s going to be knocking on doors in Iowa, I expect. But in any case, I’m focused on this race, not the presidential race.”

An unaccomplished first-term Senator with nothing going for her but skin color, a telegenic personality, and a predictably progressive record? Nah, could never happen.

SARAH HOYT: So, about the last week…

Your occasional reminder that these are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.

SCOTT POWELL: Repealing ObamaCare Is The Key To Restoring Economic Growth.

BREAKING THE INTERNET: Alt-Tech Bad Boy Cody Wilson Explains Hatreon, an Alternative to Online Censorship.

BUT OF COURSE: Worse than Nazis? Gun Owners. “Don’t look [to] the ACLU for help if you plan to exercise both your First and Second Amendment rights.”

Never mind the fact that the Nazis were notorious gun-grabbers.

MICHAEL LEDEEN CONNECTS THE DOTS: North Korea Is No Rogue Nation.

FASTER? PLEASE! Propelled by an electrical current and traveling at speeds up to Mach 7.5, the US Navy’s Hyper Velocity Projectile can shoot out of a rail gun to destroy enemy ships, vehicles.

The Office of Naval Research is now bringing the electromagnetic rail gun out of the laboratory and into field demonstrations at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division’s new rail gun Rep-Rate Test Site at Terminal Range.

“Initial rep-rate fires (repetition rate of fires) of multi-shot salvos already have been successfully conducted at low muzzle energy. The next test sequence calls for safely increasing launch energy, firing rates and salvo size,” a statement from ONR says.

Railgun rep-rate testing will be at 20 megajoules by the end of the summer and at 32 megajoules by next year. To put this in perspective; one megajoule is the equivalent of a one-ton vehicle moving at 160 miles per hour, ONR information states.

That’s enough energy to give even a small projectile enough kinetic energy to ruin anyone’s whole day.

TOP SHELF: Want A $400K Grant To Watch Gay People Drink?

PAULA BOLYARD: Tech Companies Begin Blacklisting Alt-Right Sites, Purging Them from the Internet.

If this is the new norm, what’s the excuse for permitting continued access for hate and/or racist groups like La Raza, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa?

DEEP SPACE: From the edge of the solar system, Voyager probes are still talking to Australia after 40 years.

ROD DREHER: Trump Is More In Touch Than You Think.

• A strong majority (62 percent) of Americans favor leaving the Confederate statues standing as historical markers

• Overwhelming numbers of Republicans (86 percent) favor this, as do 61 percent of Independents

• The only group with a majority favoring removal (57 percent) are “Strong Democrats” — as opposed to “Soft Democrats,” who slightly favor keeping them (52 percent)

• When defined by political ideology, only Liberal/Very Liberal people muster a majority for taking statues down (57 percent). Among self-described Moderates, 67 percent favor leaving the statues standing. A whopping 81 percent of Conservative/Very Conservative people favor the statues staying in place

• Unsurprisingly, the Northeast is the region of the country most in favor of removing the statues — but even there, a majority (53 percent) backs leaving the statues standing

• Here’s a stunner: 44 percent of African-Americans polled believe in keeping the statues standing. Of Latinos, 65 percent believe the statues should remain

• Comfortable majorities — no less than 60 percent — in each age cohort support the statues
This is barely an issue with white Evangelicals, 85 percent of whom back the statues. Only nine percent favor removal, with the rest unsure

• On Trump’s response to Charlottesville, 52 percent believe it hasn’t been strong enough
Of that number, 52 percent of Independents believe Trump has fallen short; only 30 percent are satisfied

In recent years the American left has been at its most intolerant and its most shrill on losing issues. (Here’s a great example of that from this very morning.) And in recent months, even after what should have been a powerful learning moment last November, they have doubled down on self-defeat.

BAD ADVICE: College Tells Fat Students Not to Lose the Weight Because It Could Be ‘Dangerous.’

JIM TREACHER: Let’s Destroy All The Statues Of Dead White Guys, Including Abraham Lincoln.

Congratulations, America. You wanted mob rule because you’re angry about not getting President Grandma like you were promised? Now you’ve got it. Enjoy.

NBC Chicago:

An Abraham Lincoln was damaged and burned in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood late Wednesday, Ald. Ray Lopez said… The statue, a bust of Lincoln, was erected by Phil Bloomquist on Aug. 31, 1926.

It seems very strange to destroy a statue of Abraham Lincoln because you’re angry about Confederate monuments. But then, I didn’t go to Chicago schools.

Dead white guys deserve whatever they get, because reasons.

“LAY IT ON THE LINE”: Judge in tea party case orders IRS to disclose employee names, reasons.

Judge Reggie B. Walton also said the IRS must explain the reasons for the delays for 38 groups that are part of a lawsuit in the District of Columbia, where they are still looking for a full accounting of their treatment.

Judge Walton approved another round of limited discovery in the case and laid out six questions that the IRS must answer, including the employees’ names, why the groups were targeted and how the IRS has tried to prevent a repeat.

At a hearing earlier this week, Judge Walton said it was time to get everything on the table.

“Lay it on the line. Put it out there,” he told attorneys for the IRS, who are continuing to fight some tea party groups’ demands for full disclosure.

Meanwhile, tainted IRS chief John Koskinen is still on the job.

FLASHBACK: Finland Growing Restive Over Muslim ‘Migrants.’

Plus, Hot Mic has updates as they come in. You can start here.

BRUCE BAWER: Let’s Not Talk about Islam.

But let’s do talk about people who refuse to talk about Islam.

FASTER, PLEASE: Navy Hybrid Path to 355-Ship Fleet Could Only Take 10 to 15 Years.

The Navy could reach a 355-ship fleet by 2030 if it both extended the service life of most of its current ships and built more than two dozen new ships beyond current shipbuilding plans, two admirals said this week.

Neither approach is sufficient on its own – service life extension programs (SLEPs) help get the Navy there faster, and accelerating shipbuilding is needed to then keep the fleet at that larger size. But, speaking at the American Society of Naval Engineers’ annual Fleet Maintenance and Modernization Symposium, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) commander Vice Adm. Tom Moore and NAVSEA Deputy Commander for Surface Warfare (SEA 21)/Commander of Navy Regional Maintenance Centers Rear Adm. Jim Downey said the Navy is embracing a hybrid approach that would get the service to a 355-ship fleet in 10 to 15 years, compared to a 30-year timeline with new construction alone.

Thirty years is too long.

RICHARD HASEN: Speech in America is fast, cheap and out of control.

He says that like it’s a bad thing.

In the old days, just a handful of TV networks controlled the airwaves, and newspapers served as gatekeepers for news and opinion content. A big debate back in the 1980s and earlier was how to enable free expression for those who did not own or work for a media company and wanted to get a message out.

In 1995, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh wrote a remarkably prescient Yale Law Journal article looking ahead to the coming Internet era. In “Cheap Speech and What It Will Do,” Volokh foresaw the rise of streaming music and video services such as Spotify and Netflix, the emergence of handheld tablets for reading books, the demise of classified advertising in the newspaper business, and more generally how technology would usher in radical new opportunities for readers, viewers and listeners to custom design what they read, saw and heard, while at the same time undermining the power of intermediaries including publishers and bookstore owners.

To Volokh, these changes were exciting and democratizing. But 22 years later, the picture of what the cheap-speech boom has wrought seems considerably darker. No doubt the Internet has dramatically lowered the costs of obtaining information and spurred the creation and consumption of content from radically diverse sources. Anyone with an idea can now get it out on Facebook, Twitter or any number of other sites accessible to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. And cheap speech has been a boon to those fighting oppressive regimes around the world, as truthful messages and relevant information can spread despite government censorship efforts.

Less positively, cheap speech has undermined mediating and stabilizing institutions of American democracy, including newspapers and political parties, with negative social and political consequences.

Freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution; the power of information gatekeepers is not.

The Founders knew what they were doing.

THIS SEEMS PREMATURE: Art of the Deal Writer Says Trump Will Resign Before Year’s End.