Vladimir Putin has become a global menace. There is an irrefutable link between his decision to train and arm Ukrainian separatists with heavy weapons and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.”
As its title suggests, “Firing Back” is about settling scores. Among its targets: “evil” Democrats, “biased” media and “spineless” Republicans who joined the chorus of condemnation his quote engendered, unwilling to stand up for an “unapologetic conservative.”
It’s just a hunch, but if the Israelis wanted to wipe out as many Palestinians as possible, never mind commit genocide, they probably wouldn’t issue warnings to Gazans (by phone and leaflet) to get out of harm’s way.
Some parents wanted the book banned from schools, thus unintentionally re-asking the book’s central question: How comprehensively should children (and other humans) be protected from risk and pain?
We’ve been hearing for years from CEOs that American corporations are suffering under a larger tax burden than their foreign competitors. This is mostly rubbish.
Immediate deportation is exactly what happens to illegal immigrants, children or otherwise, from Mexico and Canada. By what moral logic should there be a Central American exception?
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The malleability of the court’s logic suggests these rulings are based less in law than in the personal beliefs of the men on the tribunal. One gets the sense they chose the desired result first, then back-filled whatever “reasoning” would get them there.
One of my biggest complaints about contemporary conservatism is that it has lost sight of the importance of storytelling. Conservatives refuse to celebrate, or even notice, how much of the popular culture is on their side. Sure, Hollywood is generally very liberal, but America isn’t.
Lina is one of 2.8 million Syrian refugees who have fled the country since fighting broke out in 2011. Hers is one of 145,000 refugee households — a quarter of the total — headed by a lone woman. A United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report released this week details the miseries that have befallen these women.
Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called for the impeachment of President Barack Obama on the theory that his border policies are “the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘no mas.’”
The deeper problem is the Supreme Court’s obliviousness to the growing imbalance of economic power between corporations and real people. By giving companies the right to not offer employees contraceptive services otherwise mandated by law, the court ignored the rights of employees to receive those services.
Dynamic social and economic change, concern for the middle class, poisonous politics, bad policies, flawed leaders — they were all there two centuries ago, just as now. History’s lesson is that the political system remains a permanent work in progress. It can never be taken for granted. Failure is always an option.
Liberals tend to equate patriotism with the government. President Obama was supposed to usher in a glorious new era of European-style big government. He’s failed, though alas not entirely. But in the attempt he aroused a populist movement — the tea parties — full of people who wore their traditional patriotism on their sleeves and tricorner hats.
America could have been declared independent from Britain without all men being declared equal. The various “injuries and usurpations” relating to the traditional rights of Englishmen would have been enough. But something more ambitious and universal got planted.
The story behind the story is that America is in an era of rising inequality, with a few at the top doing fabulously well, but others are on a downward economic escalator.
Charles Krauthammer: It was a welcome constitutional lesson in restraint, noted The Wall Street Journal. One would think that an administration so chastened might reconsider its determination to shift regulation of the nation’s power generation to Washington through new CO2 rules under the Clean Air Act.
By their nature, many innovations are disruptive. The Internet is, of course, Exhibit One. It has remade the music industry, is threatening “brick and mortar” stores, is changing how we talk to each other (Facebook, Twitter) and is transforming the news business.
