Politics & Current Affairs

“Americans have more to fear from the folly of establishments than from the paranoia such follies summon up.” Ross Douthat says our over-the-top politics represent symbolic protest.

“France’s ongoing deportation of [Romanian gypsies] has been making headlines around the globe. But Gitans—as they are known in France—have been living in the country for centuries.”

“We can’t afford to forget now that the single biggest legacy of the Iraq war at home was to codify the illusion that Americans can have it all at no cost,” says Frank Rich at The New York Times.

“Not every great metropolis is going to make a comeback. Planners consider some radical ways to embrace decline.” What will become of cities like Detroit and Cleveland?

“The U.S. military’s Central Command has proposed pumping as much as $1.2 billion over five years into building up Yemen’s security forces, a major investment in a shaky government.”

“Is it possible to reach peace in the Middle East? Israelis, Palestinians and negotiators from around the world—and the United States, in particular—are making another go at it.”

“The Iraqi population is suddenly mourning the departure of American troops, the once-hated occupiers, as fears of a civil war grow.” Spiegel reports on what is next for Iraq and its future.

“As the globe logs an unusually hot summer, Canada is boosting its presence in the warming and increasingly accessible Arctic.” The Wall Street Journal on emerging geopolitics.

Ross Douthat thought Glenn Beck’s star was fading but after attending his weekend rally is reconsidering. “It was a long festival of affirmation for middle-class white Christians.”

Richard Posner warns it’s not just Greece that risks seeing its government default on debt. The U.S. has dug itself in deep and also faces that possibility, he says.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki addresses the stoning of adulterers, the consequences of Western sanctions against Iran and the risk of a military strike.

As the waters recede, and the immediate crisis passes, the challenge will be to repair Pakistan’s infrastructure and catalyze its economic recovery, says the New Yorker.rn

The Telegraph says that after more than a decade of “virtually unfettered immigration”, the U.K. “is desperately overcrowded” and public concern is not xenophobia or racism.

Retired intelligence officer Paul R. Pillar says the U.S. should try harder to curb the export of terrorists — particularly homegrown ones — and terrorism from its own territory.

The Economist questions both the economic and moral justifications for the rising popularity of privately operated state and federal prisons. Contracting-out is not the same as privatization.

“Individuality, like civilization itself, is such a hard-won, fragile thing.” David Rieff says comradeship, while often healthy, can have terrible moral consequences in large groups.

“Let us by all means make the ‘Ground Zero’ debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well,” Hitchens says.

“To develop real knowledge in a discipline, students must master facts and construct opinions about them.” Jonathan Zimmerman explains why final exams are antiquated.

The New Yorker examines Churchill’s real legacy and finds he was a “Hamlet in reverse”, as well as the greatest modern instance of the romantic-conservative temperament in power.rn

Despite widespread skepticism over the ensuing renewal of peace talks between Israel and Palestine, The Economist says the negotiations are more promising than Bush’s attempts.

What is the relation between money and power? Will China use the profits of its growing economy for peaceful domestic purposes or to build a large military like the U.S. and U.K. did?

Can WikiLeak’s release of tens of thousands of secret documents accurately be called ‘a leak’, or is ‘gush’ more appropriate, or is that just silly? One author on the history of the political leak.

The governor of Indiana is ‘a likeable wonk’, says The Economist. This is one reason he might run for President. The other is that the GOP’s current prospective candidates are ‘nauseating’.

A history professor at Boston University says the Iraq War is far from over. “The war launched to achieve regime change in Baghdad metastasized into three wars.” None of which are over, he says.

Michael Kinsley at The Atlantic vents his frustration over political polls that entitle people to their often ludicrously incorrect opinions and ask questions fit only for experts.

From commercial airplanes whose exhaust trails are secret experiments in weather control to the New Jewish World Order behind the Federal Reserve, everyone is out to get the paranoid Right.

When cultural practices deny people equal access to rights such as education, physical and emotional well-being, we must cease to tolerate difference under the guise of multiculturalism.

Richard Pildes, professor of constitutional law at the NYU School of Law, says primary elections exacerbate political polarization. He thinks we should replace them with instant-runoff voting.

“Is the purpose of public education to nurse students or to teach them?” asks Brian Crosby, a twenty-year veteran high school English teacher and the founder of the American Education […]

Europe and North America may underestimate or trivialise its significance, but the emergence of an independent Latin America is helping reshape the global order.