Phil Collins: One More Night (Official Video). philcollins, November 11, 2010. YouTube. From the album No Jacket Required. Atlantic Records, 1985.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Wasting the Golden Hour in America’s Iraq Meltdown. By James C. Clad.
Wasting the Golden Hour in America’s Iraq Meltdown. By James C. Clad. The National Interest, July/August 2013.
The Fallacy of Human Freedom. By Robert W. Merry.
The Fallacy of Human Freedom. By Robert W. Merry. The National Interest, July/August 2013. Review of The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths. By John Gray. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013, 288 pp.
If Only Our Foreign Enemies Were Republicans. By Victor Davis Hanson.
If Only Our Foreign Enemies Were Republicans. By Victor Davis Hanson. Works and Days. PJ Media, June 25, 2013.
The Next Intifada. By Paul R. Pillar.
The Next Intifada. By Paul R. Pillar. The National Interest, June 23, 2013.
NJ Mom Beaten By Home Invader In Front of 3-Year Old Daughter.
Nanny cam catches mom’s ruthless beating by home invader as daughter, 3, watches. Daily Mail, June 25, 2013. Video on YouTube.
Also at The Blaze.
Also at The Blaze.
Taiwan Parliament Erupts in Brawl.
Taiwan Parliament Erupts in Brawl. AFP. The Telegraph, June 25, 2013.
Brawl breaks out in Taiwan parliament in row over tax. BBC News, June 25, 2013.
Taiwan Parliament Brawl. Video. apvideonews, June 25, 2013. YouTube.
Brawl breaks out in Taiwan parliament in row over tax. BBC News, June 25, 2013.
Taiwan Parliament Brawl. Video. apvideonews, June 25, 2013. YouTube.
The Age of American Impotence. By Bret Stephens.
The Age of American Impotence. By Bret Stephens. Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2013.
John Bolton: The GOP’s Foreign Policy Candidate? By Jonathan S. Tobin.
John Bolton: The GOP’s Foreign Policy Candidate? By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, June 25, 2013.
Young and Isolated. By Jennifer M. Silva.
Young and Isolated. By Jennifer M. Silva. New York Times, June 22, 2013.
Google Is Not Impressed by Your Fancy Ivy League Credentials. By Walter Russell Mead.
Google Is Not Impressed by Your Fancy Ivy League Credentials. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, June 24, 2013.
In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal. By Adam Bryant. Interview with Laszlo Bock. New York Times, June 19, 2013.
Why Brainteasers Don’t Belong in Job Interviews. By Maria Konnikova. The New Yorker, June 25, 2013.
In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal. By Adam Bryant. Interview with Laszlo Bock. New York Times, June 19, 2013.
Why Brainteasers Don’t Belong in Job Interviews. By Maria Konnikova. The New Yorker, June 25, 2013.
America Can Take a Breather, And It Should. By Richard N. Haass.
America Can Take a Breather, And It Should. By Richard N. Haass. New York Times, June 22, 2013.
America Is a Failed State. By David Rothkopf.
Leaning Away. By David Rothkopf. Foreign Affairs, July/August 2013. Also here.
Maybe the real failed states are the ones that have the means to help other nations – but choose to retreat inward.
America’s supremacy is finished. Why don’t we understand this? By Sean Thomas. The Telegraph, June 24, 2013.
Rothkopf:
It is true that within each country’s borders, different views exist of the obligations of individual citizens to one another, of provinces and cities to their neighbors, of the large and small private entities in the polity – corporations, churches, and other institutions – to society as a whole. Some countries elevate and value community. Some serve the state to the detriment of individual people. And some, like the United States, celebrate individuality to a fault. At least some Americans do, seeing the responsibilities manifest in the actions, sinews, laws, and regulations of government as overreach, an encroachment.
Americans celebrate this independent spirit. Their market ideology is more Charles Darwin than Adam Smith, suggesting somehow that if we value the survival of the fittest, then the casualties of the weak are merely part of nature’s grand equation. Even those who don’t embrace the most extreme aspects of this frontier fuck-you-ism at home almost certainly do abroad. It is a great American tradition. From George Washington’s farewell admonition to avoid foreign entanglements to the isolationism that is by far America's greatest and longest-lasting international policy impulse – the same inclination that had only 17 percent of Americans in favor of getting involved in the war in Europe even as it raged in the middle of 1940 – the view of this great nation has more often than not been that the world’s problems are not its own.
Sure, Americans went off and fought two world wars. The United States has intervened throughout the past century in every corner of the globe and has put troops on every habitable continent at one time or another. But not only has it done so selectively – it has helped create international institutions that are only capable of doing so selectively. In the wake of World War II, the United States helped make an international system that had two main purposes: to create the illusion of having one and to help advance U.S. interests. The system’s institutions by design are weak, toothless, and possessed of only limited resources.
This approach has clearly failed. Today the greatest problems we face are almost universally the global calamities that demand strong international mechanisms and a global sense of community that do not exist and are anathema to the selfish spirit that was the great contribution of the Peace of Westphalia: global warming, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the cancer of failed and failing states that destabilize their neighbors, spreading refugees and unrest across borders.
Rothkopf is condemning the Jacksonian worldview, its division of the world into the folk community and the dark world outside. The sense of global community that a left liberal progressive internationalist like Rothkopf demands goes against everything Jacksonians believe to be true of the world and the realities of human nature. It is unlikely that this will change anytime soon.
Maybe the real failed states are the ones that have the means to help other nations – but choose to retreat inward.
America’s supremacy is finished. Why don’t we understand this? By Sean Thomas. The Telegraph, June 24, 2013.
Rothkopf:
It is true that within each country’s borders, different views exist of the obligations of individual citizens to one another, of provinces and cities to their neighbors, of the large and small private entities in the polity – corporations, churches, and other institutions – to society as a whole. Some countries elevate and value community. Some serve the state to the detriment of individual people. And some, like the United States, celebrate individuality to a fault. At least some Americans do, seeing the responsibilities manifest in the actions, sinews, laws, and regulations of government as overreach, an encroachment.
Americans celebrate this independent spirit. Their market ideology is more Charles Darwin than Adam Smith, suggesting somehow that if we value the survival of the fittest, then the casualties of the weak are merely part of nature’s grand equation. Even those who don’t embrace the most extreme aspects of this frontier fuck-you-ism at home almost certainly do abroad. It is a great American tradition. From George Washington’s farewell admonition to avoid foreign entanglements to the isolationism that is by far America's greatest and longest-lasting international policy impulse – the same inclination that had only 17 percent of Americans in favor of getting involved in the war in Europe even as it raged in the middle of 1940 – the view of this great nation has more often than not been that the world’s problems are not its own.
Sure, Americans went off and fought two world wars. The United States has intervened throughout the past century in every corner of the globe and has put troops on every habitable continent at one time or another. But not only has it done so selectively – it has helped create international institutions that are only capable of doing so selectively. In the wake of World War II, the United States helped make an international system that had two main purposes: to create the illusion of having one and to help advance U.S. interests. The system’s institutions by design are weak, toothless, and possessed of only limited resources.
This approach has clearly failed. Today the greatest problems we face are almost universally the global calamities that demand strong international mechanisms and a global sense of community that do not exist and are anathema to the selfish spirit that was the great contribution of the Peace of Westphalia: global warming, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the cancer of failed and failing states that destabilize their neighbors, spreading refugees and unrest across borders.
Rothkopf is condemning the Jacksonian worldview, its division of the world into the folk community and the dark world outside. The sense of global community that a left liberal progressive internationalist like Rothkopf demands goes against everything Jacksonians believe to be true of the world and the realities of human nature. It is unlikely that this will change anytime soon.
Melanie Phillips on Syria and Iran.
Melanie Phillips on Syria and Iran (BBC QT, June 20, 2013). Video. SuperLatvian, June 21, 2013. YouTube.
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