The following are preliminary notes for a talk I was invited to give at the Midwest Liberty Fest in Du Quoin, IL , 9th-11th inst. The meeting included a wider variety of views than might have been predicted; I think it testifies to the failure of the Republicans and Democrats to constrain political debate within [...]
The German election has been seriously misreported in the US — an accident I’m sure. The real story is the breakdown of support of the major parties, and it may presage what’s to happen in US politics. First, it’s been represented as a victory for the party of Angela Merkel (who’ll continue as chancellor), the [...]
Frank Rich has a disgusting piece in the NYT today, an attempt to establish the limits of allowable debate for Obama’s Great Decision on Afghanistan. What are the (only) alternatives? McChrystal or Biden. God help us. McChrystal — tens of thousands more US troops; Biden — air war against our real enemy in the region, [...]
William Pfaff, who’s been writing from Paris roughly since the German army left, has a piece in the International Herald Tribune (alias European edition of the NYT) “Presidents Need a War to Call Their Own — Now Obama Has His” . Pfaff is an ex-CIA employee and a long-time member of the Hudson Institute, which [...]
Canadian PM Stephen Harper has 42 minutes of face time with Barack Obama in Washington today. While Canadian institutions (notably healthcare) are being compared favorably with those of the US, quite rightly, here are some other things to remember:
The much-predicted demise of newspapers can’t happen too soon, so it seems to me, if we want a well-informed citizenry. It was a 19th-century gibe that “newspapers are half advertisements — and the rest lies between them.” But the lies can be subtle — and usually lie (sorry) in the unstated assumptions (unstated, they’re harder [...]
Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery Address to Joint Session of Congress Wednesday, September 9, 2009 Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States: I come before you tonight in a spirit of remorse — which, I find, requires more audacity than hope [...]
The Lincoln birthday celebrations seem to have included little attempt to learn from the past. Lincoln is celebrated — by few more than the current president, who insists upon a resemblance — but there’s little critique of the devastation over which Lincoln presided. The end of chattel slavery is taken to be a retrospective justification [...]
David Green writes to recommend “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” by Avi Shlaim in The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009. (“Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state’s legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating [...]
Perhaps it betrays my essentially reformist rather than revolutionary disposition to think that there is something wrong with what Eliot has Abp. Becket say in Murder in the Cathedral – The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. However much that may be a guide for oneself, [...]