Our Best Stuff From a Week We Got a Little Bigger

Putin’s mobilization, national conservatism’s threat to religious freedom, and more.

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Hello and happy Saturday. I apologize for not sending this out last week, but I was traveling back to the Ohio bureau from our first-ever staff retreat. The gathering was especially nice for me, since I usually see everyone only on video calls. It was also  full of surprises—and I’m not just talking about the hike we took that started out as a pleasant walk in the woods before we embarked on a 1,200-foot elevation gain over about a mile.

When I checked into my room, there was an itinerary for meetings and recreation, and also a guest list. As I perused it, one name in particular stood out. “Why,” I asked myself, “is Kevin Williamson at a Dispatch gathering?” Kevin has long been one of my favorite writers at National Review, and I was excited for the chance to meet him. And I had a hunch. (Hey, journalists tend to be bad at math but even I can put 2+2 together.) After I got settled and went to find others, I saw the boss. “So, Steve, do you have any surprise announcements while we’re here?”

And with that, the pirate skiff got a little more crowded. In fact, we really need a bigger boat. Kevin started this week, and so did Nick Catoggio (née Allahpundit), and I think I might need to either reformat this newsletter or at least change the headline to “Some of Our Best Stuff.” Both are prolific, and everything they have written already has been fantastic (yes, I am biased). Both wrote about why they joined us, and if you missed the posts, here is Kevin’s and here is Nick’s.

The Dispatch has been a labor of love since well before we hit “send” on the first Morning Dispatch in October 2019. We tell you this frequently (I hope not too often), but we really believe we are doing important work here. Our politics are a mess, and the state of conservative media is … uneven. We like to think that we can improve both. Adding Kevin and Nick to the lineup can only help on that front. I opted to summarize Nick’s piece on Russia’s mobilization below because it is so timely and offers great insight on Vladimir Putin’s very risky move, but I also recommend you read his first newsletter for us, which he headlined “Suckers and Fighters” and discusses the schism in the Republican Party between those who behave honorably and those who excuse dishonor if it’s in the service of acquiring power. 

Thank you as always for reading. We know you’ll enjoy our new additions, and we hope you don’t mind spending a little more time reading The Dispatch.

Monkey With a Hand Grenade

One of my favorite things about Nick is that he writes his own headlines. In this case, he’s borrowing a quote from a Ukrainian official to describe the danger that Vladimir Putin presents. As poorly as the war has gone for Russia, we can’t ignore the fact that it has nuclear weapons. Nick runs through all of the reasons that Putin’s new mobilization of 300,000 troops is likely to fail—“new troops will be unhappy troops,” he writes, so morale will be a problem. Plus, Russia has neither the time nor resources to train those troops properly. “The monkey with the hand grenade might be about to blow itself up. And Putin must know it, remembering how in Russia unpopular wars have a habit of inducing regime change. … And that’s what makes his decision to finally follow through [with mobilization] significant and ominous.”

Gas-Price Chatter Obscures the Real Issue 

We’re spending a lot of time talking about gasoline prices: It was a long summer of $5 a gallon (or higher) fill-ups, and then President Joe Biden started bragging when prices dipped for a couple months. But now they are creeping up again. As painful as that might be for Americans dealing with inflation elsewhere, Kevin argues that it’s not what we should be talking about. Instead we should be talking about the long-term stability and efficiency of the entire energy industry. “If U.S. refineries and wholesalers were cut off from … imports, it would not be cheap or easy—or quick—to replace them. That isn’t a case for energy autarky, but it is a case for encouraging the development of a more robust, diversified, and secure domestic energy industry, particularly when it comes to pipelines and other distribution modes—that ‘infrastructure’ that presidents are always talking about.”

National Conservatism Is a Direct Threat to Religious Freedom

David begins his Tuesday French Press by reminding readers the First Amendment not only protects free speech and religious liberty, but that it guards against compelled speech—institutions can’t be forced to support points of view that are at odds with their beliefs and social media companies don’t have to host speech that is dangerous or abhorrent. And then he details all the ways that the national conservatives are pretty much upside down on the First Amendment, trying to outlaw drag queen performances, placing restrictions on speech in private corporate diversity programs, and preventing censorship on social media. It’s not just wrong, he argues. It’s dangerous, and it’s bad for religious liberty. “The inevitable result of privileging ‘Christian’ expression and convictions is privileging the dominant Christian faction at the expense of others. And those in power consider those others not truly ‘Christian.’”

The McConnell-Thiel Standoff Over Blake Masters

Billionaire Peter Thiel poured $15 million to GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters’ primary campaign in Arizona, but he has since turned off the tap (though he is hosting a fundraiser for Masters). Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund PAC has pulled back, canceling half of its planned $16 million spend on Masters. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has raised $100 million but isn’t spending it to boost candidates—as Andrew notes, “Trump has shown little indication he particularly cares who controls the Senate next year.” So what happens if Masters loses to the well-funded Democratic incumbent, Mark Kelly? “MAGA Republicans are gearing up to blame someone should Masters fail to unseat Kelly. And, spoiler alert, it’s neither Thiel nor Trump. The Arizona Republican Party, which is chaired by MAGA firebrand Kelli Ward, sent an open letter to McConnell last week urging him to redouble his efforts to support Masters.”   

Tim Ryan’s Fox News Campaign Strategy 

Why is Democratic Senate nominee Tim Ryan running ads touting positive comments that Fox News hosts have made about him? Well, he’s running in Ohio, where Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 8 percentage points in 2020 and where there’s a Republican governor and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature. So he’s probably trying to obscure the fact that, as Audrey and Harvest note, “Ryan has voted with President Joe Biden 100 percent of the time.”  They write: “Aside from a few areas of agreement with Trump—and his decision to run against Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi for speaker in 2016—Ryan is nearly indistinguishable from the average congressional Democrat.” 

And now the best of the rest:

  • In the G-File, Jonah goes on a rampage against the practice of whataboutism—when people try to excuse bad behavior by someone (say, Donald Trump) by pointing out that someone else (say, Bill Clinton) did something worse. 

  • In an interview last weekend, President Biden said—for the fourth time—that the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of an attack by China. And—for the fourth time—aides later walked back the pledge. In Uphill, Haley talks to Democratic lawmakers who are getting a little exasperated with the president.

  • With reports that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini has been gravely ill, Charlotte looks at who might succeed him: current President Ebrahim Raisi or Khameini’s 53-year-old son Mojtaba.

  • Stirewalt makes the case that it’s ill-advised to treat Hispanic Americans as a political monolith. “Lumping people together not only numbs us to real political considerations, but makes us more inclined to withhold our patriotic filial love from one another.”

  • Climate change and political unrest are likely to create millions of refugees seeking new homes, mostly in the West. John Gustavsson notes that Western nations cannot possibly accept so many people and provide them with living standards comparable to their own citizens (and not doing so creates its own unrest). He points to a controversial arrangement that the U.K. recently made with Rwanda as a potential solution. 

  • On the pods:The gang discusses Russia’s mobilization and Putin feeling cornered on The Dispatch Podcast. David and Sarah continue their work on the Mar-a-Lago investigation beat on Advisory Opinions. On The Remnant, Jonah interviewed Nicholas Eberstadt about his new book about the problem of men leaving the workforce. And it’s a little more Russia on Good Faith, as David and Curtis Chang discuss the power of evil, and whether evil contains the seeds of its own destruction.

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Comments (35)
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  1. Rod Bell

    My gosh, Williamson is the score of the decade. Good job, Dispatch. I am not as familiar with Allahpundit, but I look forward to reading him as well.

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    Frank Lee

    The missing piece of the understanding here is one of captivity.

    If people are captives within a system and that system mandates compliance and participation then the content of that compliance and participation becomes a First Amendment rights challenge.

    If you are truly free to pursue alternatives, then you are not a captive and your freedom of speech, thought and association is not being fringed upon.

    Freedom is the state of being free from the control or domination of another or others.

    And children are a special circumstance as they are dependent on adults and are qualified captives until they are self-sufficient adults. There needs to be very strict parental oversight and approval of any content of any control or dominion over children.

    So the argument is captivity. Liberal Democrats would make the case that a small business baker must be forced to used his artistic abilities to make gay wedding cakes even though it conflicts with his beliefs and even though there are several other bakers available to the customers of gay wedding cakes and thus the customer is not captive to the targeting baker.

    Disney's adoption of wokeism and the demands for employees to adopt the ideology conflicts with First Amendment rights of the employees who are captive to their employer. The other argument is that Disney has captured significant unique market share and has become a de-facto component of American culture and the American way of life, and thus has captured a significant portion of the American consumer of its services and products. And as a media company with tremendous influence, it also has the power to indoctrinate customers into the ideology without their consent. This is also a 4th Amendment conflict. DeSantis's decision was not to penalize Disney for these misdeeds, but to remove a previous business advantage the state had provide them in consideration of the social and economic value that Disney would provide the state. With Disney adopting woke and forcing it on their captive employees and customers, the social value is eliminated and thus it is justified for the state to eliminate the business advantages. One can make the case that the economic benefits still exist, but there are many arguments against that considering the long-term implications for wokeism injected into American society.

    With respect to big tech... they have succeeded in capturing not only the majority of Americans, but much of the world. But with respect to American policy, like Disney, they have become a de-facto necessity for modern life. And with that achievement they are both richly rewarded, and have to accept a new level of social responsibility to run their business without harming the constitutional rights of employees and customers that have become captives of their business, services and products. And because they are frankly out of control and absolutely trampling on these rights, Section 230 protections should be removed. But before that can happen, the legislature need to revise the Section 230 language.

    Enacted in 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act helps protect online companies from liability arising from what is posted on their platforms. Section 230 provides immunity to internet companies in two ways:

    "1. A provider or user of an “interactive computer service” can’t be treated as the “publisher or speaker” of information provided by a third party. The law has a broad definition of “interactive computer service.” It includes almost any online platform that publishes third-party content."

    "2. Providers and users of interactive computer services can’t be liable for voluntarily taking down content if the provider believes in good faith that the information is obscene or otherwise objectionable."

    The problem here is that #2 is in direct conflict with #1. Because big tech is absolutely, by the use of its algorithms filtering content and "fact checking", censoring, shadow banning and de-platforming, is making decisions as to what content gets published to its customers. The language "provide believes in good faith that the information is obscene or otherwise objectionable" is what the attorneys of big tech and the Democrats leverage to justify opposition to their one-sided political advantage being filtered out.

    The legislation was either poorly written, or dimwitted Republicans failed to notice the WEF globalist Democrat political weapon inserted in the language.

    Americans are captive to these big tech platforms, products and services. That means that all of them must be made to comply with all protected rights for all people, and not just the privileged wealthy elites that run the Democrat party. And if the Federal government won't do its job to ensure these rights are protected, then state governors should have at them.

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    Victor Clairmont

    Thank you for the round up!

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    Mark Lange

    Great job Team Dispatch! Where did y'all find 1.2K elevation changes via hiking?

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    Derek M

    I love the direction The Dispatch is heading, especially with the addition of Nick and KDW. As always, another great weekly wrap-up. (Now...if you can just schedule one of those Dispatch meetups in London...)

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    Dave Conant - MO

    I'm not sure what the alternative is, but describing TD as "conservative" sets a standard that is far too high for the rest of that part of the industry and something that better describes the quality and range of opinion here might be appropriate. Very happy to see the new team members and looking forward to spending more time reading here.
    Great wrap-up, enjoy the rest of the weekend.

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  8. Gordon REID SAUNDERS

    This is sounding like another "who shot John" conversation. Of course I may be misinterpreting the implication, but , obviously, the Christian label should not be considered as permission to engage in some superiority or preferred position. The question remains as to whether these self righteous Christians themselves have created this incorrect standard of special privilege or whether some other entity is interpreting their actions as pseudo privileged position. What action caused the creation of
    special preferred/privileged?

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    J. Eric

    The Dispatch is both remarkable and beautiful.
    Thanks

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    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    I noticed the last TD was "out of range" for us Buckeyes, but it was near for David French. Probably to promote Aquaman or something.

    But, there are several TD subscribers here in Buckeye country so a shindig in SW ohio might work. Maybe in Cincy, and we could do a memorial toast to Harambe!

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      Rachael Larimore vertical-nib Author

      I support this idea 100 percent!

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