Standing for Social Justice: Critiquing APA’s Malpractice and Other Commentary

Tech beat: We Need To Stand for Something

“The current system in Silicon Valley leaves little room for capable and original thinkers whose principal motivation is something other than self-promotion,” observe Palantir’s Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska at Time. “Many of those in power” fear offending anyone and so “software companies with the capacity and, perhaps, duty to shape our geopolitics remain conspicuously silent.” That’s thanks to a culture of “administrators” that punishes “anything approaching moral courage and incentivizing its opposite” — a “thin and meager secular ideology that masquerades as thought.” Though “the dystopian future that Orwell” imagined may be near, “it is we, not our technical creations, who are to blame, for failing to encourage and enable the radical act of belief in something above and beyond, and external to, the self.”

Psychiatrist: APA’s Social-Justice Malpractice

“Gender-Affirming Psychiatric Care,” published by the American Psychiatric Association last fall, is “billed as a compendium of ‘best practices,’ ” yet “instead of providing even-handed analyses” within the “still-evolving topic” of gender-dysphoric youth, it treats the subject as “a settled matter,” fumes Sally Satel at Washington Monthly. Its “philosophy is that if a child or teen desires transitional steps,” then “physicians should proceed, taking the patient’s request on its face.” It mentions parents “only in the context of being unsupportive to their children’s desire to transition” and “omits well-established evidence” showing a majority of minors experience waning gender dysphoria. It’s troubling to see “social justice ideology” intruding in such a “high-stakes” area — and a “disservice to all patients whether or not they proceed with gender-affirming care.”

Conservative: ‘Buy American’ = National Security

In light of wars in Ukraine and Israel, “securing domestic production of war matériel and other goods requires that the United States decouple defense supply chains from China and scrap policies that benefit Beijing at our expense,” urges Stephen Miran in City Journal. Rather than “the ‘Bidenomics’ approach of subsidizing unprofitable sectors,” we need “to enact aggressive supply-side reforms that make producing in the U.S. much cheaper.” Free trade “should not extend to empowering and enriching one’s military opponents, let alone making us reliant upon them for our defense.” Rather than rely on allied nations to supply almost half of US defense goods, “America itself should produce a larger proportion of its own defense.” “With geopolitical tensions intensifying, reindustrialization is a national-security imperative.”

Senate watch: The GOP Generational Divide

In “the Senate vote for the $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan,” notes National Review’s Philip Klein, “the average age of Republican senators voting for the aid package was 69, while the average age of those voting against it was 58,” and “all six Republicans under 50 voted no.” Partly, it’s that “the idea of ‘no Ukraine aid without securing the border’ has become a popular position among the Republican base” and those who “seek longer careers are more worried about being on the other side of this issue.” Plus, “the younger generation is more resentful of the idea of falling in line with” Sen. Mitch McConnell and the leadership. Beware: “As older Republicans make way for a younger crop of politicians, the Senate is going to be a very different place.”

Democrat: A Bipartisan Fix for Organ Donation

Hail the bipartisan “work of four senators to strengthen the nation’s organ donation system,” cheers Jim Townsend at The Hill. “Despite the availability of healthy organs, around 6,000 Americans die each year while waiting for organ transplants.” But “in 2020, Sens. Ron Wyden, Chuck Grassley, Ben Cardin and Todd Young” flagged “that the organ donation system was failing, squandering thousands of life-saving transplant opportunities and billions of taxpayer dollars,” then produced “bipartisan legislation that was signed into law in September.” It’s “a reminder that addressing America’s challenges starts with asking open-ended questions, following the facts wherever they lead and responding with solutions that move us toward a more perfect union.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board