Am. History & Culture
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Quote of the Day: Eliot Cohen
Other thoughtful Republicans (or former Republicans) are mulling over their own complicity in a party that was compromising its values for power. But equally, or more so, there has not been a full reckoning on the left. Particularly given the impending release of what is sure to be a gracefully written and elegiac memoir by
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Quote of the Day: Barack Obama
I recognize that there are those who believe that it’s time to discard the myth—that an examination of America’s past and an even cursory glance at today’s headlines show that this nation’s ideals have always been secondary to conquest and subjugation, a racial caste system and rapacious capitalism, and that to pretend otherwise is to
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David French’s America
In the end, the souls animating both the red hats and the honking cars want a restoration—they want things to go back to normal. In the end, they will all be disappointed. There’s no saving America’s soul. There's no restoring the soul. There's no fighting for the soul of America. There’s no uniting the souls
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Milton Friedman: Proto-Sociopath
But while economists still argue over Friedman’s theories, his hot take 50 years ago for nonspecialists — the Friedman doctrine — turned a capitalist truism (profits are essential) into a simple-minded, unhinged, socially destructive monomania (only profits matter). In “A Christmas Carol,” Scrooge is redeemed when he abandons his nasty profit-mad view of life —
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Rule of Law vs. Law and Order
Authoritarian nations come in many different stripes, but they all share a fundamental characteristic: The people who live in them are not allowed to freely choose their own leaders. This is why Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, in his speech announcing his vote to convict on the first article of impeachment, said that “corrupting
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Restoring Political Gravity
I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who said something along the lines that all life is high school. I think he meant that most people learn how the social world and its hierarchies work then and the patterns of behavior and attitudes that set in then, for most people, not all, last for the rest
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The Archetypal American Divide: Andrew Jackson v. John Quincy Adams
Although Andrew Jackson defended his own authority with resolute determination, he did not manifest a general respect for the authority of the law when it got in the way of the policies he chose to pursue. This character trait, already apparent in his military career, continued to manifest itself during his years in the White
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Drift toward Authoritarianism
I am sympathetic to those who think that liberal democracy is failing, was, in fact, always doomed to failure. After all it gave us Trump, who presently is at an all time high approval rating with Gallup at 46%. The U.S. had a flawed but good run for a good quarter millennium. But it's time
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The Mueller/Barr Report
So like everyone else, I’ve been obsessing about what is going on with the Mueller report. This column by David Leonhardt comes close (with a few interspersed objections) to my own take on this. Here are the last three paragraphs: Barr’s summary doesn’t answer why Russia went to such lengths to help Trump win, writes The Atlantic’s David