The fundamental division in American politics is between those who take their bearings from the individual’s right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of freedom and those whose fundamental value is the right of the majority to have its way in making rules about which specified liberties shall be respected.
If America’s distributional game continues to create a few big winners and many who consider themselves losers by comparison, the losers will try to stop the game — not out of envy but out of a deep-seated sense of unfairness and a fear of unchecked power and privilege. Then we all lose.
The left is in a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping it altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The word for that attitude is totalitarian.
Please, for the love of Cronkite: Give us a break from the missing plane. Yes, we all wonder what happened to it. Yes, our hearts go out to the families seeking resolution. But really, CNN — enough. Put your hands up and step away from the story.
In selecting Stephen Colbert to replace David Letterman as host of the “Late Show,” CBS has waged war on America’s heartland — or so proclaims that Palm Beach font of heartland mirth, Rush Limbaugh. Don’t you believe it, heartlanders.
More than three years have passed since the war in Syria began. Since then, the human suffering has been incalculable. Other aspects of the conflict, however, can be measured, and the statistics are not only grim, they are ominous.
If all you have is a hammer,” the old saying goes, “everything looks like a nail.” Left unsaid is the fact that the real problem isn’t the possession of a hammer, but the certitude that all you need is the hammer. In other words, it’s a failure of the imagination — which is a kind of arrogance — that’s really to blame.
Through his conspicuous regret of U.S. inaction in Rwanda, former President Bill Clinton has affirmed a norm: Those who fail to act in the face of genocide are harshly judged, even by themselves. In fact, policy choices in such matters are generally complex, as in Syria and the Central African Republic today.
The Goldwater Institute, the fertile frontal lobe of the conservative movement’s brain, would use the Constitution’s Article V to move the nation back toward the limited government the Constitution’s Framers thought their document guaranteed.
In the short term, McCutcheon v. FEC may make it easier for today’s robber barons to take over American politics. But by inviting them to corrupt our democracy so brazenly, it may also fuel a popular backlash leading to a new era of reform.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s crowning piece of diplomatic futility is his frantic effort to salvage the Arab-Israeli negotiations he launched, also against all odds and sentient advice. He’s made 12 trips to the region, aiming to produce a final Middle East peace within nine months.
On issues where it should take the lead, where it should make noise and news, challenging the status quo, marching in the streets, actively advocating for human dignity, the great body of Christendom always seems to bring up the rear, arriving decades late to the place the rest of the nation has already reached.
Perhaps the biggest irony is that the young people President Barack Obama had in stitches at the University of Michigan are being forced to pay too much for health insurance in order to subsidize health care for others. In other words, they’re laughing at the pickle, but the joke is really on them.
Yes, it was bad when right-wingers called Barack Obama un-American, but Obama is the most powerful man in the world and the rabble is just that. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid owes Charles and David Koch — and the American people — an apology for calling the libertarian billionaires un-American.
The U.S. Senate, a venerable institution that Democrats control and Republicans covet, has lately been something of a circus. Since the U.S. Senate is America’s pinnacle of institutional self-regard — “the world’s greatest deliberative body” — its reputation has always had a long way to tumble.
It makes sense to consider two factors: historical significance and legal ability.
A candidacy by Florida’s former governor would be desirable.
The only way to stop this is through concerted political action. Yet the only large-scale political action we’re witnessing is that of Charles and David Koch and their billionaire imitators.
President Barack Obama seems unable to fathom them. Asked whether he’d misjudged Russia, whether it really is our greatest geopolitical foe, Obama disdainfully replied that Russia is nothing but “a regional power” acting “out of weakness.”
There is nothing wrong with religious conscience, with saying there are things that, as a matter of faith, you will not do. But companies like Hobby Lobby do not get to make such decisions for everybody else.
I have no problem with journalistic skepticism or the search for ulterior motives. I just object to the idea that only Republicans might have them.
The past couple of weeks have marked a turning point in American ugliness.
Pope Francis has combined traditional moral teachings with a scandalous belief that people are ultimately more important than rules.
There are limits to American power, which must be factored into policy choices. But a predisposition to passivity has costs — to American interests, to nervous friends and allies, and to the victims of ongoing atrocities. And these should be factored in as well.
Barack Obama evidently harbors the surreal hope that Vladimir Putin will continue to help the United States regarding Syria and Iran. Continue? Putin’s client in Damascus, Bashar Assad, is winning his civil war. And regarding attempts to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Putin’s helpfulness, if not fictitious, has been ineffective.
