Review of Marc Morris’s “The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England.” By Jim Cullen.

Review of Marc Morris’s The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England. By Jim Cullen. History News Network, July 19, 2013.

Book at Amazon.com.

92 Professors Go After Mitch Daniels Over Howard Zinn. By Ronald Radosh.

92 Professors Go After Mitch Daniels. By Ronald Radosh. History News Network, July 25, 2013. Also at Minding the Campus.

Why the Relentless Assault on Abortion in the United States? By Ruth Rosen.

Why the Relentless Assault on Abortion in the United States? By Ruth Rosen. History News Network, July 29, 2013. Also at openDemocracy.

Bayit Yehudi MK: Gov’t That Releases Prisoners, Will Uproot Settlements. By Lahav Harkov.

Bayit Yehudi MK: Gov’t that releases prisoners, will uproot settlements. By Lahav Harkov. Jerusalem Post, July 28, 2013.

Talks About Talks Set to Resume. By Walter Russell Mead.

Talks About Talks Set to Resume. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 29, 2013.

Mead:

With Israel’s cabinet having voted to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, the headlines this morning are particularly optimistic about prospects for Israeli-Palestinian talks. The NY Times: “Israel and Palestinians Set to Resume Peace Talks, U.S. Announces”. The Washington Post: “Peace talks set to begin after Israel agrees to free 104 Palestinian prisoners”.

 

These are all a little misleading: Israelis and Palesitinians aren’t yet ready for actual talks about peace. What has happened is that they have moved from indirect talks about talks about peace to direct talks about talks about peace.

 

We’ll see; neither side really thinks the negotiations will work, but neither side wants to get blamed for failure. That gives Secretary Kerry something to work with. Since this is about the only good news coming out of the Middle East these days, we will cherish it and hope for the best. The Times story in particular suggests that Martin Indyk will be named by Kerry to represent the United States at these talks (about talks). This is even more reason to be hopeful. Indyk is an experienced diplomat and is unlikely to get deeply involved unless he thinks there is a real chance for significant progress.

 

And even if Kerry can’t, as most observers still think, get real peace, there might still be some ways that more people on both sides could go about their daily business without interference or threat. Given the way things have been going for the past decade or so, that would be an achievement.

When History Is Not Helpful. By Mark Davis.

When History is Not Helpful. By Mark Davis. Townhall.com, July 26, 2013.

Soda, Pizza and the Destruction of America: The Muslim Student Association. By Aaron Klein.

Soda, Pizza and the Destruction of America. By Aaron Klein. WND, March 18, 2003.

An Online College Revolution Is Coming. By Danielle Allen.

An online college revolution is coming. By Danielle Allen. Washington Post, July 26, 2013. Also here.

The “Country Party” and the “Court Party.” By Ross Douthat.

Going for Bolingbroke. By Ross Douthat. New York Times, July 27, 2013.

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution. By Angelo M. Codevilla. The American Spectator, July/August 2010.

U.S. Meritocracy Has Given Way to Aristocracy. By Erick Erickson. NJBR, May 30, 2013. With related articles by Ben Domenech and Conor Friedersdorf.

The Libertarian Populist Agenda. By Ben Domenech. NJBR, June 6, 2013. With related articles.

The Beltway Burkeans vs. Heartland Populists. By Ben Domenech. NJBR, July 2, 2013. With related articles by Sean Trende and Conor Friedersdorf.

Paul Krugman’s Delusions About the GOP and Populism. By Robert Tracinski. NJBR, July 16, 2013. With related articles.

Fear of Rand Paul’s Rise. By Ben Domenech. NJBR, July 20, 2013.


Douthat:

BEFORE political movements can be understood by others, they need to understand themselves: what they want to be, what they actually are and how they might bridge the gap between aspiration and reality.

 

Today, the post-George W. Bush, post-Mitt Romney conservative movement is one-third of the way there. Among younger activists and rising politicians, the American right has a plausible theory of what its role in our politics ought to be, and how it might advance the common good. What it lacks, for now, is the self-awareness to see how it falls short of its own ideal, and the creativity necessary to transform its self-conception into victory, governance, results.

 

The theory goes something like this: American politics is no longer best understood in the left-right terms that defined 20th-century debates. Rather, our landscape looks more like a much earlier phase in democracy’s development, when the division that mattered was between outsiders and insiders, the “country party” and the “court party.”

These terms emerged in 18th-century Britain, during the rule of Sir Robert Walpole, the island kingdom’s first true prime minister. They were coined by his opponents, a circle led by Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, who were both conservative and populist at once: they regarded Walpole’s centralization of power as a kind of organized conspiracy, in which the realm’s political, business and military interests were colluding against the common good.

 

Bolingbroke is largely forgotten today, but his skepticism about the ways that money and power intertwine went on to influence the American Revolution and practically every populist movement in our nation’s history. And it’s his civic republican ideas, repurposed for a new era, that you hear in the rhetoric of new-guard Republican politicians like Rand Paul and Mike Lee, in right-wing critiques of our incestuous “ruling class,” and from pundits touting a “libertarian populism” instead.

 

Theirs is not just the usual conservative critique of big government, though that’s obviously part of it. It’s a more thoroughgoing attack on the way Americans are ruled today, encompassing Wall Street and corporate America, the media and the national-security state.

 

As theories go, it’s well suited to the times. The story of the last decade in American life is, indeed, a story of consolidation and self-dealing at the top. There really is a kind of “court party” in American politics, whose shared interests and assumptions — interventionist, corporatist, globalist — have stamped the last two presidencies and shaped just about every major piece of Obama-era legislation. There really is a disconnect between this elite’s priorities and those of the country as a whole. There really is a sense in which the ruling class — in Washington, especially — has grown fat at the expense of the nation it governs.

 

The problem for conservatives isn’t their critique of this court party and its works. Rather, it’s their failure to understand why many Americans can agree with this critique but still reject the Republican alternative.

 

They reject it for two reasons. First, while Republicans claim to oppose the ruling class on behalf of the country as a whole, they often seem to be representing an equally narrow set of interest groups — mostly elderly, rural (the G.O.P. is a “country party” in a far too literal sense) and well-off. A party that cuts food stamps while voting for farm subsidies or fixates on upper-bracket tax cuts while wages are stagnating isn’t actually offering a libertarian populist alternative to the court party’s corrupt bargains. It’s just offering a different, more Republican-friendly set of buy-offs.

 

Second, as much as Americans may distrust a cronyist liberalism, they prefer it to a conservatism that doesn’t seem interested in governing at all. This explains why Republicans could win the battle for public opinion on President Obama’s first-term agenda without persuading the public to actually vote him out of office. The sense that Obama was at least trying to solve problems, whereas the right offered only opposition, was powerful enough to overcome disappointment with the actual results.

 

Both of these problems dog the right’s populists today. There might indeed be a “libertarian populist” agenda that could help Republicans woo the middle class — but not if, as in Rand Paul’s budget proposals, its centerpiece is just another sweeping tax cut for the rich.

 

There might be a way to turn Obamacare’s unpopularity against Democrats in 2014 — but not if Republican populists shut down the government in a futile attempt to defund it.

 

To overthrow a flawed ruling class, it isn’t enough to know what’s gone wrong at the top. You need more self-knowledge, substance and strategic thinking than conservatives have displayed to date.

 

Here the historical record is instructive. The original “country party” critique of Robert Walpole’s government was powerful, resonant and intellectually influential.

 

But it still wasn’t politically successful. Instead, the era as a whole belonged to Walpole and his court — as this one, to date, belongs to Barack Obama.

The Return of Geopolitics. By Colin Dueck.

The Return of Geopolitics. By Colin Dueck. Real Clear World, July 27, 2013. Also at Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Pragmatic Compromises Will Never Yield the World We Seek. By Rabbi Michael Lerner.

Pragmatic Compromises Will Never Yield the World We Seek. By Rabbi Michael Lerner. Tikkun, Summer 2013.

A New American Dream for a New American Century. By Zachary Karabell.

A new American dream for a new American century. By Zachary Karabell. Reuters, July 26, 2013.

Karabell:

In a major speech this week on the economy, President Obama emphasized that while the United States has recovered substantial ground since the crisis of 2008-2009, wide swaths of the middle class still confront a challenging environment. Above all, the past years have eroded the 20th century dream of hard work translating into a better life.

 

As Obama explained, it used to be that “a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity. Whether you owned a company, or swept its floors, or worked anywhere in between, this country offered you a basic bargain — a sense that your hard work would be rewarded with fair wages and decent benefits, the chance to buy a home, to save for retirement, and most of all, a chance to hand down a better life for your kids. But over time, that engine began to stall.” What we are left with today is increased inequality, in wages and in opportunity.

 

The assumption is that this is unequivocally a bad thing. There have been countless stories about the “death of the American dream,” and Detroit’s bankruptcy last week was taken as one more proof. Yet lately the unquestioned assumption of a better future based on hard work has not served America well. If anything, today’s version of that dream has been the source of complacency rather than strength, and its passing may be necessary in order to pave the way for a constructive future.

 

But you wouldn’t know that from the president’s speech and from continued news stories and academic studies. The inequalities of opportunity were underscored by a recent study that was brought to national attention by the New York Times this week that showed wide variations in income mobility depending on what part of the United States you live in. Those who live in metropolitan areas, as well as those with more higher education and wealthier parents, have significantly more upward mobility than many in rural areas.

 

The wage stagnation for tens of millions of working Americans over the past decades combined with the financial crisis has been painful and even calamitous for millions. In truth, however, the middle class security that has now disappeared only existed for a very brief period after World War Two, when the United States accounted for half of global industrial output and achieved a level of relative prosperity and growth that was substantially higher than in any other country. Before the Great Depression and World War Two, there was no assumption in the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries that the future would be inherently better for one’s children.

 

As for income inequality, that is hardly a new issue. The presence of inequality in the past did not impede economic growth. After the American Revolution, income inequality began rising sharply along with economic growth. And it continued to rise well into the early 20th century, when more people became rich and even more people became mired in a level of poverty that does not exist today. Inequality then wasn’t a barrier to mobility. If anything, it might have been a spur. Seeing how the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age lived provoked both the reforms of the Progressive Era and the ambitions of millions of immigrants and citizens who wanted a better life and saw that one was possible.

 

Before the mid-20th century, the American dream was that if you worked hard you had the potential to craft a good life. You could be free from repressive government, and you could be able to watch your children do better via education and their own hard work. That potential was absent in other societies, and its presence — along with tens of millions of acres of unclaimed land — was what drew so many millions of immigrants.

 

In short, the equation of American economic success until the mid-20th century was not that if you worked hard you would have a stable material life. It was that if you worked hard, you could create such a life. The difference is not semantic; it is fundamental, and for Obama and many, many others, it has become blurred. The equation articulated by Obama and likely shared by a significant majority of Americans is that if you work hard, you should receive economic security and see the same for your children. The flip side of that theory is that if you don’t gain economic security, something is wrong with the system, and government has a responsibility to provide when that system fails.

The belief that something is a given simply by birthright is never a formula for long-term strength. Yet at some point in the last half of the 20th century, the American dream morphed from the promise that you could realize a comfortable life, to a promise that being American meant you would and should realize that. Hence the feeling, held by so many, that promises have been betrayed and the system is broken.

 

In truth, the passing of that false certainty is a positive. Urgency and uncertainty are not negatives, at least not inherently. They can provide the necessary fuel for ambition and for creativity and work. Urgency and uncertainty were the norm in the late 19th century and look what those produced in America: the very power and prosperity that catapulted the country to the center of the globe.

 

The United States, like many affluent nations, has reached a juncture where the model that succeeded is not likely to be the model that will succeed going forward. 19th century agricultural societies gave way to 20th century industrial ones, and 20th century industrial ones are giving way to 21st century service and idea economies. None of that happened without significant pain and disruption. Nor is our transition today without substantial pain for many.

 

Government can and should be active in providing basic security for those disrupted by these changes. But the contract that has now been broken did not actually serve America well. It served the post-war generation and their children, but it does not serve a United States now embedded in a world where other societies are providing the same potential that the United States did two centuries ago when that was extremely rare. 

What’s needed is a sense the United States is a place where dreams can be made manifest, not that it is a place where everyone will be safe and secure. America remains a place where hard work and ambition and creativity can translate into a good life. It is not a place where hard work and ambition are guaranteed to yield results. And if we want a vibrant, pulsing society in the 21st century, the passing of that version of the American dream is not something to be mourned. We’ve reached the end of complacency, and not a moment too soon.

 

 

An Honest History of Howard Zinn. By Gabriel Schoenfeld.

An Honest History of Howard Zinn. By Gabriel Schoenfeld. New York Daily News, July 26, 2013.

Ralph Peters on Obama’s Vietnam Comment.

Ralph Peters on Obama’s Vietnam Comment. Video. Ralph Peters and Oliver North with Shannon Bream. America Live. Fox News, July 26, 2013. YouTube.

The Seasoned and the Dead. By Tom Daams.

The Seasoned and the Dead. By Tom Daams. Photo Essay. Foreign Policy, July 23, 2013.

On the front lines with Syria’s war-hardened rebels.

Why Iraq Was America’s Best-Run War. By John Arquilla.

Why Iraq Was America’s Best-Run War. By John Arquilla. Foreign Policy, July 23, 2013.

But that doesn’t make it a model.

Death on the Nile. By Ned Parker.

Death on the Nile. By Ned Parker. Foreign Policy, July 25, 2013.

In a small Egyptian town, a corpse washes ashore. And then things get really ugly.

How the Muslim Brotherhood Lost Egypt. By Edmund Blair, Paul Taylor, and Tom Perry.

How the Muslim Brotherhood lost Egypt. By Edmund Blair, Paul Taylor, and Tom Perry. Reuters, July 25, 2013.

Blow By Blow of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Downfall in Egypt. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 27, 2013.

A Decade of Disorder for the Middle East. By Philip Stephens.

In the Middle East, a decade of war promises a decade of disorder. By Philip Stephens. Financial Times, July 25, 2013.

Arabs have concluded that if the US is quitting, they had better start fighting their own corners.

Jesus Was a Rebel and a Bandit. What Made Him Also the Christian Son of God? By Adam Kirsch.

Jesus Was a Rebel and a Bandit. What Made Him Also the Christian Son of God? By Adam Kirsch. Tablet, July 24, 2013.

The Morbid Reality of Arab Civil War. By Hisham Melhem.

The morbid reality of Arab civil war. By Hisham Melhem. Al Arabiya, July 25, 2013.

Melhem:

In the last few weeks and months I have engaged in a daily morning morbid ritual; reviewing the harvest of blood by compiling the number of victims of the Arab civil war raging in Syria and Iraq with its occasional visits to Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. The statistics are frightening: more than 5000 people a month are being killed in Syria. More than 450 people were killed this month in Iraq. In Egypt more than 150 people were killed in the political violence that followed the June 30 overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi. In Lebanon more than 50 people were killed last month.

 

In Iraq, Syria and Egypt a virulent, atavistic strain of terrorists in the mold of Al-Qaeda are waging a savage war on everything modern, civil and moderate.

 

In Syria state institutions are fraying, society is fragmenting and the continuation of the fighting means that Syria could reach a state of ‘soft partition’ where its sectarian and ethnic components will continue their existential struggle for a long time. In Iraq the security situation has relapsed to the previous hell of 2006 and 2007 and the country is slouching on the road to sectarian and ethnic partition. In Egypt large swaths of Sinai are not under the control of the government and the political and religious polarizations have reached unprecedented levels; with each group demonizing their opponents with astonishing zeal.

 

Arab cold war turns hot

 

In 1965 the distinguished academic Malcolm Kerr (born, raised and assassinated in Beirut) published a short classic study titled The Arab Cold War: Gamal Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals where he analyzed the state of inter-Arab relations in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s , particularly the interplay of political/ideological rivalries for the leadership of the Arab world between the camp of “progressive” Arab nationalists led by Egypt and the camp of conservative Arab monarchies led by Saudi Arabia and the personalities dominating that period, particularly that of president Nasser of Egypt. In subsequent editions Kerr carried the saga until Nasser’s death in 1970. This Arab cold war was a subtext of the wider cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

 

In this Arab cold war the competition was among states and it was waged on the political/ideological plain and was not based on sectarian or religious basis. Yet, there was a military dimension to this war where the competitors opted to fight each other by proxy in the limited hot conflicts that occurred in Lebanon, Jordan and particularly Yemen. The role of the major non-Arab regional players; Iran, Turkey and Israel in the Arab cold war was very limited. In the current bloody Arab civil war we see a more assertive Turkey and Iran competing vociferously to shape the future of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and even Egypt. There is a harsh geo-political reality that drives many Arabs into a state of denial: Eastern Arabs live in the shadow of their non-Arab neighbors.

 

In the various theaters of the Arab civil war of today, we see some Arab states in addition to Iran, Turkey (and occasionally Israel), along with radical Islamists, providing arms, material and men, and playing an active role in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts which have morphed recently into one civil war fought on a wider front including Lebanon. What makes this civil war especially dangerous and likely to rage for a long time, is the fact that it began in the wake of the Arab uprisings and after a tremendous and popular mobilization that did not exist before. In this new environment, populism, which is always worrisome, became more deadly when it was infected with the raw and primitive strain of sectarianism that almost demolished the political boundaries of the supposed sovereign states of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

 

The new Arab civil war has pushed the Arabs on the trail of a long journey into the night, where there is no dawn in sight. Some see this as the inevitable birth pangs of a new political order characteristics of transitional periods. There is no doubt that the best description of the complexities and pains of transitional periods was the one given by the brilliant Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Morbid indeed.

4,500 Year Old Settlement Uncovered in Egypt.

4,500 Year Old Settlement Uncovered in Egypt. The Archaeology News Network, July 25, 2013.

Why Egypt Matters. By Sallama Shaker.

Why Egypt Matters. By Sallama Shaker. Yale Global, July 25, 2013.

Containing the Fire in Syria. By Ryan Crocker.

Containing the Fire in Syria. By Ryan Crocker. Real Clear Politics, July 24, 2013. Also at Yale Global.

Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations: Déjà-vu All Over Again? By Adam Garfinkle.

Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations: Déjà-vu All Over Again? By Adam Garfinkle. The American Interest, July 25, 2013.

The value of Mideast “talks about talks.” By Michael Singh. Washington Post, July 23, 2013. Also here.

Kerry’s Peace Process: Smart Diplomacy or a Complete Hash of Things? By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, July 27, 2013.

What makes John Kerry think he can secure peace in Israel? By Aaron David Miller. Washington Post, July 25, 2013. Also find it here.