Before he appeared at his first solo news conference of 2022, President Joe Biden knew he had a communications problem he had to deal with. Namely, how to get off the defensive. How to avoid spending his time with the …
Month: January 2022
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Biden Should Declare NATO Membership Closed
In 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv by occupying Crimea, President Barack Obama did nothing.
When Putin aided secessionists in the Donbass in seizing Luhansk and Donetsk, once …
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Biden: Bull Connor’s GOP Imperils Democracy
“The next few days … will mark a turning point in this nation’s history,” said President Joe Biden in his Atlanta speech to reframe the debate in Congress on voting rights legislation and the filibuster.
He went on: “Will we …
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Why the Left Cannot Let Go of Jan. 6
“Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now.” That was the headline over the editorial of 1,000 words in The New York Times of Sunday last. On first read, I thought the Times was conceding its obsession and describing its mission. For …
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Russia Is Not the Great Rival; China Is
While all facts are true, not all facts are relevant. And what are the relevant facts in this crisis where 100,000 Russian troops are now stationed along the Ukrainian border?
Fact one: There is not now and never has been …
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Books in Brief: January 2022
Should We Stay or Should We Go: A Novel, by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins; 288 pp., $26.99). Who but the clinically insane would complain about the extended life expectancies in the Western world? We now expect modern science will teleport
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Democracy, Real and Imagined
Revisionist-historian and anarchist anthropologist David Graeber insisted in a book he co-wrote before his death last year that agriculture was to blame for the sorry state of humanity. According to the departed scholar, hunter-gatherers lived happily in bands until agriculture …
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The Political Hijacking of Science
by Andrew Jewett
Harvard University Press
368 pp., $41.00
I came of age intellectually during the academic science wars of the 1990s. I was just beginning my dissertation when
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Equality’s Third Wave
Equality is a fussy concept. Outside the realm of the legal system, which demands that law be applied the same way regardless of sex, race, or religion, the area of equality’s application has always been controversial. Essential questions remain unanswered:
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Waukesha Massacre Undermined the Charlottesville Myth
The sound of screams replaced the music as a red Ford Escape slammed into the crowd, killing six people and wounding more than 60 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Nov. 21. Amid the bloodbath that evening were dead and dying victims…
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The Tyranny of Violence
Much has been said and written about the growing divide in American society between left and right, including in the pages of this magazine. But there is another growing divide in this country that is arguably more urgent, one that
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The Strange Origin of the Word ‘Nazi’
It is commonly assumed that the word “Nazi” is the contraction of Adolf Hitler’s political party, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), or the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. But if that were true, then why did the Nazis hate being …
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The Making of a Gay Saint
The U.S. Navy launched a new ship, an oiler christened the USNS Harvey Milk, on Nov. 6, 2021, at Naval Base San Diego, home port of the Pacific Fleet. Younger readers of this magazine may be forgiven if the
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Fundamentalism on the Left
by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro
Princeton University Press
336 pp., $29.95
Fundamentalism has long been considered a religious phenomenon, a narrowmindedness that only afflicts Bible-thumping extremists. Yet fundamentalist
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