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Russian university student Yegor Zhukov,who recently confronted Kremlin repression, was jailed, and then released on a suspended sentence, declared in a recent interview with independent Russian television that he wants to be president of the Russian Federation.

Zhukov is famous for using the infamous Dont Tread On Me flag from the American Revolution during his Youtube videos promoting individual responsibility and libertarianism.

I want to be the president of the country, he said in anappearanceon the independent Dozhd television channel.

Your honor, the darker my future, the wider I smile toward it, he declared to the judge in his recent widely publicized trial, reported The Moscow Times.

Beyond continuing with the blog, he said, he plans to finish his university degree by next summer. Hes also going to host a talk show on the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station and write for Novaya Gazeta.

These are other ways I see to keep spreading my ideas, he said. Thats my goal right now: for the focus not to be on me, but on the ideas.

His ideas have raised eyebrows. Critics have pointed to his support of Jordan Peterson, a Canadian thinker who has beendescribedas a purveyor of fascist mysticism. They have also noted one video from January of this yeartitledFeminism Is Dangerous, in which Zhukov, seated behind a desk with a red Make America Great Again cap on it, tells his audience: Today the nutcases are lefties and particularly left-wing feminists.

It taught me that I need to carefully express my views, he said recently in response to criticism. At the end of the day, I want the same thing as Russian feminists. For transgender peoples rights to be respected, for same-sex marriage to be legal, for there to be a law against domestic violence. I just dont believe in classifying people according to collective identities, reported The Moscow Times.

Regarding his future, We are still figuring it all out, Zhukov said. The idea for now is to say: stay tuned.

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Released From Prison, Young Libertarian Russian Activist Sporting 'Don't Tread On Me' Flag Wants To Be Russia's President - Tsarizm

The U.K. election has delivered a huge victory to conservativesand to Tory leader Boris Johnsonand astounding losses to the Labour Party. The results mean much more than the Conservative Party continuing to control the U.K.'s governing bodies.

With at least 364 seats won, the Conservative Party has well surpassed the number required for a majority in Parliament. Prime Minster Boris Johnson "will now enjoy a comfortable majority to 'get Brexit done'in other words, to pass the withdrawal agreement that he negotiated with European Union leaders in October," notes The Economist.

"In truth, the election-night story was not so much that of a Tory surge but of a Labour slump," the magazine adds.

The Jeremy Corbynled Labour Party will see its parliamentary vote share drop eight points. It was the party's worst showing since 1935.

Labour's steepest drops came in areas where the Nigel Farageled Brexit Party did well. (But asThe Spectator notes, Farage's party did not "even come close to winning a single parliamentary seat.")

In any event, it looks like Brexit is on.

And with the chances of Scottish secession rising again, some say this could kick off the destruction of the United Kingdom itself.

The election also speaks to the rising power of combining left-leaning economic policy with conservative social views and immigration policies (so, you know, the worst of all words for free minds/markets/migration types).

Britain's third largest party, the Liberal Democrats, also "had a dreadful night," points outThe Economist. And yet

the Tories' mighty new coalition is sure to come under strain. With its mix of blue collars and red trousers, the new party is ideologically incoherent. The northern votes are merely on loan. To keep them Mr Johnson will have to give people what they wantwhich means infrastructure, spending on health and welfare, and a tight immigration policy. By contrast, the Tories' old supporters in the south believe that leaving the EU will unshackle Britain and usher in an era of freewheeling globalism. Mr Johnson will doubtless try to paper over the differences. However, whereas Mr Trump's new coalition in America has been helped along by a roaring economy, post-Brexit Britain is likely to stall.

Some say the results highlight how it's easier for right-leaning politicians and parties to embrace left-leaning policies than vice versa, though this idea has its skeptics:

"The British election results, like any election result, is the result of unique circumstances and multiple factors," suggests Jonathan Chait at Intelligencer. "It is also, however, a test of a widely articulated political theory that has important implications for American politics. That theory holds that Corbyn's populist left-wing platform is both necessary and sufficient in order to defeat the rising nationalist right. Corbyn's crushing defeat is a decisive refutation."

"Vaping policy" consumes White House.

A good piece from Jane Coaston on the new porn wars, with cameos by Katherine Mangu-Ward and myself:

For several decades now, movement conservatism has adhered to Andrew Breitbart's maxim that "politics is downstream of culture," arguing that rather than engage the forces of government to create change, conservatives should focus on changing popular culture instead. But some social conservatives are now arguing the very opposite.

Arguments in favor of the use of laws to change or improve human behavior hasn't been a characteristic of the post-2010 conservative movement that still bears the influence of the Tea Party and libertarian-leaning Republicans. In fact, Mangu-Ward told me that such arguments were, in her view, generally made by left-leaning politicians and thinkers. Referencing former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's efforts to ban large sodas, she said such rationales stem from "the idea that we should prohibit people from making bad choices," or in short, "make the bad thing illegal."

Catholic theocrat and New York Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari told Coaston that pornography is "degrading" and "Andrea Dworkin was right."

Go here to read the rest:
U.K. Election: Brexit Wins, Jeremy Corbyn Crashes - Reason

The 2020 Presidential Primary season is upon us and all signs point to high public enthusiasm https://news.gallup.com/poll/268136/high-enthusiasm-voting-heading-2020.aspx for this election cycle, compared to years past. The more enthusiastic people are about an election, the more likely they are to vote. If youre someone whos excited about participating in this upcoming Presidential Primary, theres some key things to remember to make the voting process as pain free as possible.

First: Register or check your voter registration status https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/ to make sure everything is up-to-date;

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Second: Presidential Primaries have some unique rules that only come up every 4 years;

Third: No Party Preference voters will be able to crossover and vote in somebut not allparty primaries without having to re-register.

I know what youre thinkingwhat the heck is a crossover and why does this sound so complicated? Good questions! Here are some answers that may help.

Whats up with the Presidential Primary rules? Political parties can choose to limit participation in their partys primary to only registered voters of that party. In other words, if youre a registered Democrat, you wouldnt be allowed to participate in the Republican primary. The same is true for any party that holds a Presidential Primary.

I registered as No Party Preference. Where does that leave me? You have options! You can re-register with a party preference or you may request a crossover ballot. If you do nothing, well send you a nonpartisan ballot. Youll see contests for everything except the Presidential Primary.

What do you mean by crossover ballot? Some parties allow No Party Preference voters to participate or crossover in their primaries. In March 2020, the American Independent Party, Democratic Party, and Libertarian Party will allow No Party Preference voters to crossover. If youre a No Party Preference voter and want to vote for candidates in one of those parties, then you will not have to re-register.

Why cant I get a crossover ballot for any party of my choosing? Political parties have the right to allow or disallow No Party Preference voters to participate in their primaries. If you want to vote for the candidates in the Green Party, Peace & Freedom Party, or Republican Party, then you must re-register and indicate your party preference.

How do I request a crossover ballot? If our records show that you are registered without a political party preference, we will send you a postcard about crossover voting. The postcard has instructions on how to request a crossover ballot. There will be other opportunities to make a request, but why not do it sooner than later?

Are there resources for me to learn more about the Presidential Primary and crossover voting? Yes! The California Secretary of State created a website, How to Vote for U.S. President, https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting-info/how-vote-president/ that will provide you with additional information. You can also contact us at the Nevada County Elections office at 530-265-1298. We look forward to serving you.

Natalie Adona is the Assistant Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters for Nevada County.

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Natalie Adona: 'Tis the seasonfor crossover voting? - YubaNet

The battle for 1989 was won by illiberal populism. Thats one thing we can say with certainty 30 years on from the fall of the iron curtain. In the narrative spun by Jarosaw Kaczyski, Viktor Orbn and their supporters, democratic transformation turned out to be a fraud, liberal democracy an illusion, and integration with the EU an upmarket form of foreign occupation. The illiberal populists, under the cover of such rhetoric, simultaneously dismantle the rule of law and independent institutions. Meanwhile, liberals seem devoid of ideas or initiative, agreeing only that somehow, it all went wrong.

This is not just about melancholy and misunderstanding. In a sense, post-communist countries became a testing ground after 1989. Both our families came from Warsaw and they struggled not only to survive the upheavals of that era, but to create better lives, if not for themselves, at least for their children. Individually, some succeeded, but it came at a high price. The revolutions of 1989 meant the almost overnight disintegration of entire ways of life. That had an immense impact, even if most people would not have wanted to hang on to their experience of pure socialism.

Todays populists tend to focus only on the downsides of what came after 1989. But how have they been so effective at imposing their interpretation of events, even now, 30 years on?

In the last year of the cold war, the west of our collective imagination was a place of hope Moscow we were more familiar with, and viewed with fear. Yet, contrary to the image often conveyed, the reaction in our countries to the end of communism was far from euphoric.

The promise of freedom and a better life lay on the distant horizon. Day to day, though, we experienced a poverty more humiliating than anything that had come before especially after seeing the west with our own eyes. It is a common mistake to think that illiberal politicians in post-communist countries are popular despite these countries successes. The contrary seems more plausible: their popularity is a consequence of the success.

At a time when populist leaders are in power in other parts of the world, including the US, it may be instructive to look at the causes of illiberal populism generally.

Our focus is on an aspect of human nature that is underexplored in political analysis: namely political emotion, and in particular, the feeling of loss.

It is astonishing to us to hear people in the US, the UK, France or Italy express views so familiar to us: Our jobs are being stolen, The world is changing too much, I dont recognise my country. This is where 1989 meets 2019 at least in the populists narratives. Their pessimistic interpretation of the fall of communism is mirrored in the current over-simplifications.

The year 1989 was one of those breakthrough moments in human history whose impact is felt in contradictory ways. As Charles Dickens wrote about 1789 in A Tale of Two Cities, it was the best of times and the worst of times. It was a spring of hope, and a winter of despair, it was indeed the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness.

The same duality was felt elsewhere. As well as the fall of communism, 1989 marked the beginning of an era of global change and acceleration. Quality of life and longevity improved, as revolutions were occurring in technology, communication, and social mobility. There was simultaneous gain and loss.

Central and eastern Europe has registered extraordinary economic growth on almost every parameter since the end of communism. But change, when it happens so swiftly and completely, can also involve great loss for the individual. We dont just mean the disappearance of jobs or bankruptcies. We mean something much deeper. A loss that relates to the micro-world of secure long-term relationships, identity and feelings of security, so important in the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and JS Mill.

In German, there is a word that captures this disruption: schleudern, which means to spin round and round as in a washing machine. In the social sense, our world spun repeatedly as we strived for a better future. This is the context in which we can see that illiberal populists are effective not because they buy voters, or manipulate negative emotions, such as fear or rage. Their skill is to recognise and empathise with feelings of loss when liberals tactlessly disregard or ridicule them.

And it is how we can explain the reactionary aspect of populism in eastern Europe, and beyond. Brexiters won with the slogan Take back control, and Donald Trump cut through with Make America great again. Kaczyski in Poland, Bjrn Hcke in Germany and Thierry Baudet in the Netherlands all talk about protecting the traditional values of their societies (usually without being specific about what this would mean).

Liberals often feel overwhelmed by this kind of politics. A peculiar defeatism surrounds the failure of liberal democracy to deliver. Liberals also fear that pandering to emotion plays the same game as populists. They prefer to calm feelings down or just steer clear of them.

Enemies of democracy have, of course, always manipulated feelings. Yet we believe that theres a key lesson from 1989 that liberalism can learn. We need a passionate defence of liberal democracy and the liberal order. We also need to embrace the feeling of loss and translate it into something positive and enriching, into a feeling about political community.

How could this be done? The collective sense of loss we have been describing is akin to the grief that follows the death of a loved one. In bereavement our first reaction is to look back, to dwell on the loss. Reactionary populisms concentration on the negative aspects of transformation might be compared with bereavement. As humans we know that after bereavement comes the recovery phase. And this means looking to the future and building networks of friends. It requires courage, hope and compassion especially for those who think so differently that they vote for populists.

This is what the liberalism of the future could mean. It could retell the story of 1989, while doing justice to this great and complex moment. Central and eastern Europe still has an important message for the world. It is the knowledge that the greatest successes of liberal democracy, including 1989, were enabled by passionate hope.

Karolina Wigura is a historian, political editor of the Polish weekly Kultural Liberalna and a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin

Jarosaw Kuisz is a historian, editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin

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Populists understand the power of human emotion. Europes liberals need to grasp it, too - The Guardian

A recurring theme of this election has been the battle for Labours leave-voting constituencies, the so-called red wall of seats running from north Wales to the Humber estuary the seats that Boris Johnsons Get Brexit done slogan is designed to win over. But despite being billed as the Brexit election, many of the key moments of the campaign have come back to economics: taxation, nationalisation, pensions and of course the NHS. This has clearly been a strategy by the Labour party to try to hold together its coalition of 2017 voters, who are broadly united on the economic aims of the party.

Keeping the conversation on the economy doesnt seem to have been as successful as it might have been, with recent polls and modelling suggesting that Labour is struggling to reach the 40% share of the vote it achieved in 2017. Since the move to support a confirmatory referendum, it seems to be more successfully recapturing remain voters who had flirted with the Liberal Democrats than those who voted leave and had variously been taken by the Conservatives, the Brexit party and non-voting. Is the economic message failing to cut through to voters or are they hearing it loud and clear but are, nonetheless, unconvinced?

The problem is not that there are too few leftwing voters in the electorate. The British Election Study (BES) measures these political positions using a series of attitudinal statements that include There is one law for the rich and one for the poor and Ordinary people get their fair share of the nations wealth. Since these questions were first asked at the 1992 election, the British public have been on average slightly leftwing. If people voted only on their economic values, we should have had a Labour government for the last two decades. In light of its absence, it clearly isnt just the economy, stupid.

The problem for Labour is two-fold. Voters do not cast their votes based on economic issues alone, and, more critically, voters on the left are divided on non-economic issues such as justice and immigration. The BES data measures responses to statements such as People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences and Young people dont have enough respect for traditional values. Peoples positions on this social dimension are statistically unrelated to their positions on the economic issues, or in the language of political science, these two sets of values cross-cut, rather than reinforce each other.

If we compare the BES results in elections 20 years apart, we see some fascinating cultural shifts. Taking only those voters whose responses place them on the economic left, we find that in 1997, it did not matter what social values they held, around 60% voted Labour. By 2017, this picture was very different. Among those economically leftwing respondents who held socially liberal values, almost 70% voted Labour; while among those who did not, less than 50% voted Labour, and more than a third voted Conservative. While this divergence may be part of a long-term restructuring of the vote that eventually leads to two camps reflecting a Brexit position, what is interesting is that this shift was visible in 2010, well before any Brexit realignment had begun.

This divide runs deeper than Brexit position alone, which explains why appearing more leave-leaning in leave-voting areas is insufficient for Labour to win back lost voters. Attitudes to migrants highlight the divisions that run through the potential Labour vote on the left. Asked whether they agreed that Immigrants increase crime rates in Britain, one in 10 of those on the economic left with socially liberal values agreed with the statement, while among those on the economic left with socially conservative values this was a little more than half. Meanwhile, more than half of the socially conservative group also agreed that The will of the majority should always prevail, even over the rights of minorities.

These newly salient divides among the voters on the economic left make it very difficult for Labour, whenever the conversation moves away from core economic issues. But it also makes it more difficult for the economic messages themselves to cut through to these voters. Manifesto promises can be popular in themselves, but still fail to move voters, if the party making them is not trusted to deliver. On the vital issues of trust and alienation, again we find a divide among the lefts socially liberal and socially conservative voters. Asked whether Politicians dont care what people like me think, around a third of the socially liberal cohort agreed, compared with seven in 10 of the socially conservative cohort. While 44% of the socially liberal left agreed that People like me have no say in what government does this was 75% of the socially conservative left.

There has been considerable talk of the politically homeless over the last two years, and several new parties have formed in an attempt to offer them shelter. Britains lost voters are often assumed to be mostly centrist on economics but socially liberal and pro-remain. The performance of parties aimed at winning over these voters perhaps suggests this diagnosis was wrong.

Instead, there seems to be a potential cohort of voters who are economically left-leaning, socially conservative, voted leave and have become increasingly detached from both the Labour party and politics more generally. In 2017, there is evidence to suggest that these voters were more likely to stay at home than before. In 2019, some of these voters may move across to the Conservative party; some will vote for the Brexit party, where they have that option; others may stay at home again. But the Labour party needs to hold on to those more socially conservative voters who were willing to stick with the party in 2017; the difficulty is that their economic messages fail to cut through to voters who believe that the party is no longer listening to people like them.

Paula Surridge is a senior lecturer at the University of Bristols school of sociology, politics and international studies

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The difficult truth for liberals: Labour must win back social conservatives - The Guardian