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Editors note: This piece will appear in the May 8 issue of The Weekly Standard.

Tony Smith, political science professor at Tufts, is a man on a mission. His mission: save Wilsonianism from its perversions by post-Cold War social scientists, military strategists like General David Petraeus, the RAND Corporationand especially the neocons and neoliberals of the Bush and Obama years. To do so, Smith spends half of Why Wilson Matters in an effort to rescue Wilson by giving his readers a more complete account of Woodrow Wilsons views of history and statecraft. The other half he devotes to an account of how this truer Wilsonianism has been left behind in favor of a more assertive, even imperialist, version reflected in the policies of the last two administrations.

As Smith somewhat backhandedly admits, his first task is complicated by the fact that Wilson never spelled out his grand strategy in a fully coherent manner. And indeed, even in Smiths retelling of Wilson, one is struck by the tensions and contradictions in Wilsons own evolving understanding of both political life and international affairs. In short, Woodrow Wilson is a hard man to pin down.

Nevertheless, from the confusing mass of Wilsons writings, speeches, and policies as our 28th president, Smith argues that Wilsons Wilsonianism can be seen as consisting of four interrelated elements: democracy promotion, open markets, collective security arrangements, and American leadership to push and pull the other three into some sort of consistent vision. But Smith also wants to qualify this far-reaching agenda with a significant addendum: Wilson possessed a Burkean and Darwinian sensibility that such matters cant be rushed. As he told a group of reporters in 1918, if a people dont want democracy, that is none of my business. That was the principle I acted on in dealing with Mexico after invading it in 1914.

Yet Wilsons evolutionary views were no less informed by his progressive sense of history: Monarchies, he believed, were increasingly a thing of the past, the spirit of the times was headed in democracys direction, and equally important, it is surely the manifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail. Smith calls George W. Bush far more assertive in this regardand surely Bush was assertive in setting an American goal of ending tyranny in the worldbut it was Wilson who said that upon becoming a great power, the task of the United States would be to teach the South American Republics to elect good men and to extend self-government to Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and asserted even more broadly, when properly directed, there is no people not fitted for self-government. And it was Wilson who, with the conclusion of World War I in mind and the League of Nations to defend, asserted: The goal is not only the destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere but also to redeem the world by giving it liberty and justice.

Putting aside the issue of how best to understand Woodrow Wilson for the moment, Tony Smiths real target, is his fellow academics who, through the promulgation of the democratic peace theory and the democratic transition theory, have (to his mind) offered up a jiffy-quick formula justifying a more activist use of power to expand the liberal international order. Its these concepts, combined with an expanded notion of the right to intervene where gross violations of human rights are occurring, that have fueled, he believes, such disastrous overreaches as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

Yet Smiths problem is that the democratic peace theory has proven to be quite strong: Liberal democracies dont go to war with each other. There might be some small exceptions that can be conjured up, but they are so much the exception to the rule that they actually confirm that it is in Americas (and its democratic allies) interest to promote the establishment of democratic regimes when it can. In addition, the old development maxim that liberal democracy could only take root in countries with specific economic and cultural preconditions has been put into question by the huge expansion of democratic states over the past centuryan expansion that has included countries of various economic levels, in every continent, and with diverse religious and cultural backgrounds, including Muslim. In short, politicians and policymakers looking at these trends had good reason to be optimistic.

Smith, whose Americas Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggles for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (1994) was very much in sync with this optimism, is now driven by his desire to disassociate his version of Wilsonianism or liberal internationalism from the interventionist policies of the Bush and Obama administrations. The problem, however, is that in none of the three casesAfghanistan, Iraq, or Libyawas military intervention done principally with an eye to democracy promotion. In the first two, regimes were toppled for reasons of national security and in the last, Libya, to prevent what was becoming a humanitarian disaster that (like the Balkans in the 1990s) held significant security implications for our European allies if not addressed.

Of course, in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and the international community have been interested in helping establish a form of representative government in each. The question Smith never asks, and which policymakers must confront, is this: Once a decision was made to remove Saddam Hussein and the Taliban from power, what form of government should have been put in place? Individuals can certainly argue about the initial decision for regime change, but can any democratic leader in this day and age argue that the policy to follow should be well replace that thug with our thug?

Nor can it be assumed, as Smith and a host of others do, that the effort to build stable democracies in such states is an impossible task. The United States certainly didnt come prepared to deal with a post-Saddam Iraq, and when it finally did begin to provide the kind of stability necessary to start the process in a serious fashion, the Obama team pulled the plug on that effort. Its an open question what Iraq might look like today if Washington had stayed the course. And while post-Qaddafi Libya is a bloody messone hardly helped by Barack Obamas post-Iraq, hands-off approach to his military interventionLibyas neighbor, Muslim Tunisia, continues to plug away at moving from autocratic rule to representative government.

If there is a central distinction to be made between Woodrow Wilsons vision of liberal internationalism and the views of those Smith takes aim at today, it lies in what place nation-state powerespecially American powerplays in that orders promotion and sustainment. Wilsons postwar vision centered on a League of Nations in which collective security would be animated by the common will of mankind [that] has been substituted for the particular purposes of individual states. But as internationalists like William Howard Taft and Elihu Root correctly complained, this left the league without an effective enforcement mechanism to address violations of the international order. It lacked the power that only states can bring.

In this respect, Smith is right to say that Wilsons Wilsonianism is different from that of many of the Wilsonians of todaybut not for the reasons he puts forward. Liberal internationalism must rely on the very exercise of national power that it hopes to moderate and direct. In turn, this means living for the foreseeable future with presidents and administrations who understand that the United States remains the indispensible nation, mistakes and all.

Gary Schmitt is co-director of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Safe for Democracy - American Enterprise Institute

Californias quest to tax itself into oblivion looks to be taking another great leap forward, with the state legislature approving a plan that will hike gas taxes by 12 cents a gallon. That will solidify the state's standing as one of the highest gas-taxers in the nation. Add requirements for "clean-burning" gas to existing taxes and Californians were already paying 67 cents a gallon more than the national average to fuel their cars.

The money raised by the new tax will supposedly go to road repairs, but count The Scrapbook skeptical. California is famous for playing a classic shell game. Step 1: Waste money on shiny, unnecessary projects (high-speed rail, anyone?). Step 2: Point to neglected but popular needs such as dilapidated roads, understaffed police departments, and underpaid teachers to justify tax increases. Step 3: Repeat.

Except that in the case of California's latest tax-hike, that standard strategy proved insufficient. Critics are now accusing Gov. Jerry Brown of buying reluctant votes. He succeeded in persuading key lawmakers to raise the gas tax by promising to fund infrastructure projects in their legislative districts. You know the whole process is unseemly when your governor is forced to explain to reporters the subtle nuances between legal and illegal bribery. Which is just what Brown did last week: "When somebody says, 'Here is $10,000, I want your vote,' you got bribery. It's illegal. When someone says, 'You know, I think this bill would be better if you included these projects or these ideas or these rules,' we listen, because that's democracy and that's openness and that is a compromise spirit that makes democracies work."

There you have it: backroom tax-hike horse-trading as the democratic virtue of "compromise spirit." Now you see why California is called the Golden Statethe state finds a way to get all the gold.

* * *

In not necessarily unrelated news, growing numbers of people are leaving California. According to an article in the Orange County Register by urban affairs experts Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox, a net 110,000 California residents "outmigrated" last year. The bulk of those fleeing were escaping the densely populated urban areasLos Angeles, The Scrapbook is looking at youwhere Gov. Moonbeam's style of left-wing rule is most entrenched. Even San Franciscothe playground of the leftist plutocrat classlost population to the tune of 12,000 in 2016.

Kotkin and Cox focus on the desire of families to find "affordable, less dense housing." Some have been moving within the state in search of less expensive towns to livemodestly priced Modesto, for instance. But compared with the number moving into California, far more are moving out of the state altogether. Many of them are going to places such as Florida and Texas. Not only is the housing more affordable, but it's clear that for all the double-talk of politicians such as Jerry Brown, people are quite capable of comparing state tax burdens.

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Becau$e That'$ Democracy, Baby - The Weekly Standard

New York Times

Election Tests Indonesian Democracy New York Times In the two decades since Indonesia ousted its last dictator, the country has evolved into a democracy based on tolerance and a moderate interpretation of Islam, an encouraging trend in a world where authoritarianism and religious extremism are on the rise. and more »

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Election Tests Indonesian Democracy - New York Times

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: In an interview with Reuters, President Donald Trump has warned there is a chance we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely. And then you have the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying that he might engage in direct talks with North Korea. Can you talk about what is happening right now?

REP. PETER WELCH: Well, what we see with President Trump is that he just flies offwhatever is in his head comes out of his mouth or comes out in the form of a tweet. When he is talking about, seriously talking about military action in North Korea, it is pretty reckless. Think about it. North Korea has artillery pieces. They have like 30,000 artillery pieces that are within 30 miles of Seoul. Seoul has millions of people living there, including almost 300,000 Americans. So any military action on our part is going to have massive retaliation.

So the military option is not realistic without this having us drawn into a conflagration and millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people possibly losing their lives. So thats a really bad situation, and I think the president should be just talking diplomacy, and not making a reckless threat of military action where it is going to be very damaging. A lot of people would lose their lives.

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Democratic Rep. Peter Welch Condemns Trump's "Reckless" Threats Toward North Korea - Democracy Now!

Police confront a protester against Donald Trump, Los Angeles, November 2016. Photograph: Ringo Chiu/AFP/Getty Images

In 1995, Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT technology specialist, celebrated the emergence of the Daily Me a digital news service tailored to each readers specific interests. With the Daily Me, he suggested, you would no longer rely on newspapers and magazines to curate what you saw, and you could bypass the television networks. Instead, you could design a communications package just for you, with topics and perspectives chosen in advance.

If anything, Negroponte understated what was on the horizon. Its now easy to create your own information cocoon, simply by selecting online stories and sources that interest and please you. Even if you dont, an algorithm might do it for you.

But lets hold the celebration. The Daily Me is an enemy of democracy. Representative government depends on shared experiences, common knowledge and a host of unanticipated, unchosen encounters. All too often, information cocoons become echo chambers, which make mutual understanding impossible and which promote dogmatism, polarisation and the fragmentation of society.

The simplest explanation for the dangers comes from an old finding in social science, which goes by the name of group polarisation. When like-minded people get together, and speak and listen only to one another, they usually end up thinking a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk.

If group members begin with a certain point of view on, say, immigration, climate change or international trade, their internal discussions will make them more extreme. The rise of the Daily Me helps to explain apparently intractable political divisions in the UK, the US, France and elsewhere. It also helps account for some of the most intense forms of political enmity, not excluding terrorism.

What can be done? A clue comes froman obscure US constitutional doctrine, where the supreme court has ruled that public streets and parks must be kept open to the public for expressive activity.

In the most prominent case, from 1939, the court stated: Wherever the title of streets and parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and time out of mind, have been used for the purposes of assembly, communicating thought between citizens, and discussing public questions. Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient times, been a part of the privileges, immunities, rights, and liberties of citizens.

This public forum doctrine, as it is called, is meant to serve three purposes. It increases the likelihood that citizens will encounter diverse points of view including serious complaints and concerns even if they did not choose that encounter. Some of those encounters will affect people, perhaps in enduring ways.

It also ensures that speakers can have access to a wide array of people who walk the streets and use the parks. If they stop and listen, they may well hear peoples arguments about such issues as inequality, education, taxes, pollution and crime; they will also learn about the nature and intensity of views held by their fellow citizens.

Increasingly, technology enables people to create their own communications universes

In addition, the public forum creates an opportunity for shared exposure to diverse speakers with diverse views and complaints. In a city or town, many people will be simultaneously exposed to the same views and complaints: they will see them together at the same time. Anyone who has been to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London an area where public speeches and debates have been encouraged since the mid-1800s, when protests and demonstrations took place in the park will understand the important role of public forums in a functioning democracy.

We should not, of course, idealise public forums. In the second half of the 20th century, the media television stations, radio stations, newspapers, magazines carried out all three functions. At their best, they broadened peoples horizons by exposing them to novel topics (a scientific discovery in Berlin, a health crisis in Nigeria) and perspectives (left or right) that could change their views, their days, even their lives.

To be sure, the media could also promote polarisation, especially when they had identifiable political profiles. But even if they did, they often aspired to take readers and viewers out of their comfort zone by trusting them to display two characteristics intensely prized by democracies: humility and curiosity.

Public streets and parks continue to matter, and the same is true for the traditional media. But increasingly, technology enables people to create their own communications universes, limited to topics and perspectives they find congenial. That may seem like freedom, but its a prison.

However, technology is producing escape routes. An iPhone app, Read Across the Aisle, allows people to see, in real time, whether their reading habits are skewing left or right. PolitEcho shows you the political biases of your friends and news feed on Facebook.

Traditional media can also combat polarisation. The New York Times has a new feature, Right and Left: Partisan Writing You Shouldnt Miss, with the aim of exposing people to political ideas from other publications. In a way, this promotes serendipity. It increases the likelihood that people will stumble upon something that challenges their convictions and will be able to understand, and learn from, people they might otherwise demonise.

For providers and consumers of information, and those working at the intersection of democracy and technology, we need far more creative thinking in this vein. The stakes are not low. Ultimately, democracy depends on it.

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Challenge everything you think democracy depends on it - The Guardian