Article Archive
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My Country of Flickering Lights—Dispatches from the New South Africa
Marvels and Missed Opportunities
Climate of Here
Is a conservative climate consensus possible? If hard cases make bad law, soft science makes sensible politics even harder. The Climate Wars present legislators on both sides of the aisle with few certainties, among them that one side is prone to construe any human impact on climate as tantamount to Weather of Mass Destruction. It does so with Hollywood's full arsenal of special effects at it disposal, and makes its case using lines corny enough to make Captain Planet wince, yet the results seldom face scientific criticism. This stands in stark contrast with its token opposition, chosen for political reliability rather than scientific acumen, and scripted by conservative media often as scientifically impoverished as they are well funded. The result is that Republicans find themselves poorly armed and bizarrely outnumbered in the Climate Wars. The Right and the Left will clearly have two very different views of the world, but there can be no armistice in the Climate Wars until both sides acknowledge that, from the atmosphere's point of view, there can be, at most, one kind of physics. And it’s not the Discovery Institute’s. [Read More]
Springtime for Fascism
One of the stranger aspects of contemporary American “mainstream conservatism” is the obsession with “fascism,” a political philosophy one might have supposed was safely buried under the rubble of 1945 Europe. Neocons have, indeed, used "anti-fascism" to justify all manner of things. On his new "Liberal Fascism" blog, Jonah Goldberg has argued, “conservative dogma is the great bulwark against fascism or fascistic policies in part because it breaks the historic linkage between activist foreign policies abroad and totalitarian impulses at home.” In other words, invading foreign countries at will is now okay and definitely not “fascist”—as long as you still want to repeal the “death tax.” Goldberg and all the other budding “anti-fascists” on the right would do well to remember that Hitler is consigned to infamy not because of the Autobahn but because of his own “activist foreign policy,” [Read More]
The Impresario
William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) was many things, but centrally he was one of the great American journalists, whose historic achievement was the creation of National Review. Historians will look to his magazine when they seek to explain much that has happened to the America of our time. While his liberal contemporaries, such as Walter Lippman, explained and defended something that already existed, the reformist Progressive movement and the New Deal, Buckley brought into being something new, something that had no existence before—the modern conservative movement. As Boswell said at the end of his Life of Johnson, he has left a gap which nothing can fill up. [Read More]
The Revolution and the Republican Party
If the Paul movement can persevere and cohere—neither of which is certain—it can go beyond a cult of personality and be a beginning rather than an ending. The challenge that awaits the thousands of activists who have been inspired by Dr. Paul isn't to run and register under a new third party as the number of dedicated constitutionalists in Congress is reduced to zero. It is expanding the ranks of Ron Paul Republicans—and small-government supporters of all stripes—in a hostile political climate. That takes more than one man. It requires a real movement. [Read More]
Kosovo, Russia, and the Last Grasps of American Unipolarity
Kosovo is the latest irritant in what was already a deteriorating U.S.-Russia relationship. Disagreements over energy policy, Iran, a U.S. missile-defense system in central Europe, a further round of NATO expansion, as well as Russia’s own domestic political and economic evolution have all contributed to a growing chill in the air. Although few in Washington recognize it, the Kosovo affair might also represent the twilight of the U.S. worldview of the 1990s—the so-called "unipolar moment." Dealing with its aftermath, especially in the U.S.-Russia relationship, will test whether American politicians and policymakers are prepared to adapt to the realities of a much more multipolar 21st century. So far, the jury is out. [Read More]
The U.S. Constitution is Not Democratic—and Why That’s a Good Thing
Sanford Levinson is very upset. As he sees it in his new book, the United States' founding document is clearly lacking and needs to be updated for the 21st century. What are the principles this new national Constitution is supposed to further? They include achieving “a more perfect union” and “promoting the general welfare." Also fundamental are equality and democracy. But in all this, Levinson is blind to the fact that the "undemocratic" aspects of the Constitution are indispensable in securing liberty and promoting good governance. [Read More]
East of the Sun, West of the Moon
Here is good news. For any of you out there nostalgic for the lovable extra terrestrial, NASA is beaming out songs into deep space trying to lure anything that might be out there to our shores. The bad news is that scientists warn that transmitting songs could put the earth at risk of an alien attack--If some terrestrial hears the lyrics of a rapper, or listens to the boring tunes of the Beatles, our goose is cooked. Here's a suggestion that just might could save life on earth. Recall immediately the signals and begin sending out the following: Mozart and Beethoven symphonies and piano sonata, a deluge of jazz--Louis Armstrong, Duke Wellington, Fats Waller, Charley Parker--and if some of the aliens are racists and don't like African-American music, we hit them with grace, sophistication, and wit à la Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, and Lorenz Hart. [Read More]
Putin Beyond the Propaganda
The United States’ recognition of Kosovo has been accompanied by some familiar attacks on Vladimir Putin. According to his critics, the Russian president seeks the Finlandization of Europe and is a grave threat to America. In opposing Russia, Putin's neoconservative and neoliberal enemies have been willing to support the birth of an Islamic state in the newly minted Kosovo and even shelve the war of terror to back Chechen rebels through organizations such as the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. But beyond the propaganda, Putin's real crime is that he has refused to play by the rules of globalization. In fact, he has done something remarkably, indeed, unheard of in most Western countries—he has sought to enact policies that truly are in Russia's interest. Instead of demonizing Putin, a saner course of action for the U.S. would be to extend the olive branch to Russia and recognize her as a nation of the greater West—a transnational cultural body of which we, too, are a part (or should hope to be.) [Read More]