In The Federalist, Shawn Fleetwood expresses puzzlement that President Donald Trump has seemingly ditched his vow to begin cancelling and refusing visas for Chinese students due to their rampant spying and theft of intellectual property. Fleetwood frets that Trump may not share Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s view that they’re a profound threat to national security, and instead regards student visas as a mere bargaining chip for a trade deal.
Blueprint for Alberta?
Writing in Jewish World Review, Frederic Fransen reminds Americans of a key lesson from Revolutionary War-era pamphleteer Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. “The colonies need to declare independence,” Fransen summarizes Paine, “because so long as their goal was seen as reconciliation, foreign governments would consider the Americans as rebels and the conflict an internal affair.” But a unilateral declaration of independence, Fransen notes, instantly converts mere complaints from an aggrieved group into a negotiation between sovereign states.
