#Biden’s silence on China’s Drug-Pushing and other commentary

From the right: Silence on China’s Drug-Pushing

“In the United States, a person dies from a drug overdose every five-and-a-half minutes,” frets John Mac Ghlionn at The American Conservative. Notably, “of the more than 100,000 drug-overdose deaths recorded in 2020, 64,178 involved synthetic opioids like fentanyl” — and, per the US-china Economic and Security Review Commission, China is the primary country of origin for illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances” in the United States. China could crack down on illegal drug production but lacks the “political will.” In November, President Biden mourned those who’ve died from drug overdoses, yet two days earlier, when “he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping,” he “failed to bring up China’s role in importing so much destruction and misery into the United States.”

Mideast watch: What ‘Peace’ Really Means

Much of the “expectation for peace between Arabs and Israelis,” particularly after the Abraham Accords, “amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking,” sighs Leon Hadar at Spectator World. “In the Muslim Middle East, what we in the West equate with ‘peace’ amounts to a truce or a[n] armistice,” though it could “evolve into a longer period of calm.” Israel can’t count on any “supposed Arab ‘ally’ to maintain its security.” Indeed, “most Arabs continue to regard the Israelis as a foreign entity that stole land from its original inhabitants, the Palestinian Arabs.” So “don’t expect the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians to end happily.” More likely, it will end “like the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, with Arabs and Jews separated behind high walls.”

Education beat: Schools Should Be Transparent

“Parents should be able to know what’s being taught to their children in the classroom,” declare James R. Copland, John Ketcham and Christoher F. Rufo at City Journal. Thus, the three have drafted “a template” for state legislatures that seek “to foster school transparency.” The plan balances “the needs for robust curricula and parents’ rights”; it doesn’t “attempt to define specific concepts” or “ban, restrict, or discourage any materials,” but rather simply tries to “provide parents with information about the curricula” and let “families, teachers, and schools negotiate disagreements.” True, there’s no easy “way to reconcile all competing perspectives.” But the answer isn’t “to hide from parents what’s being taught to their own children.” Schools need to “open their books and let parents see what’s inside.”

Feminist: Fauci’s Dangerous Narcissism

While lauding Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Trump-era service as “a voice for science and sanity in the face of the president’s bluster and incompetence,” Kat Rosenfeld at UnHerd fears he’s proved “ultimately unable to resist buying into his own hype.” Witness his claim on “Face the Nation” that his critics are “really criticizing science because I represent science.” This, notes Rosenfeld, exposes “a monumental hubris no matter how you slice it, a conviction that no criticism — whether it’s of him or his ideas — could ever be valid.” Worse, it feeds the growing idea that “science isn’t something we do, a method of systematic structure and study that separates fiction from fact and hypothesis from conclusion; it’s something you believe in, like Santa Claus or alien abduction.” In short, “We made science a civic religion, and we told Fauci he was the Pope. Unfortunately, he believed us.”

Urbanist: Don’t Nix Half a Housing Loaf

Killing an affordable-housing project on the grounds that it might also support gentrification is now “a feature of development regulations nationwide, particularly in affluent coastal cities,” grumbles Scott Beyer at Governing.com. Notably, “In New York City, several large developments have been resisted because they supposedly aren’t affordable enough.” Yet “when affordability mandates are too stringent, they can discourage development altogether. This seems intuitive, as developers cannot be expected to charge rents far below market rate when all their expenses remain at a market-rate level.” Demanding “100-percent-affordable” housing “is unrealistic” without “massive subsidies.” Keep it up, and “not much will be built.”

— Compiled by Adam Brodsky & Mark Cunningham