Reject the surveillance state
Overreaction to terrorism is the true threat TERRORISTS ARE likely to strike again in the United States. Innocent people will be maimed and killed. Afterward there may be another attack, and another one after that. The shooters or bombers will run the gamut, from disoriented misfits to coldly efficient fanatics. All would join the toast that […]
Jason Rezaian and the crackdown on journalism
My friend Jason Rezaian is in an Iranian prison, and I think about him every day. It’s bad enough that he has been locked away for months without trial. Worse is that he has been caught up in this nightmare simply because he practiced journalism. That makes him one of many victims in an escalating […]
Terrorism in Paris, Sydney the legacy of colonial blunders
“A LOT of the problems we are having to deal with now,” the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said a decade ago, “are a consequence of our colonial past.” That was a classic piece of diplomatic understatement. Wars in the Middle East, and their recent spillover in Sydney, Ottawa, and Paris, are the legacy of reckless colonial blunders. They teach us that although outside powers may be able to control faraway lands for a long time, the final reckoning is often tragic.
Would history’s heroes be effective today?
LAMENTING THE poor quality of political leadership is a cliché in the United States. We complain endlessly about the mediocrity of our governing class, and envy generations that were lucky enough to live under more inspiring leaders. In fact, however, we neither want nor need heroic, larger-than-life leaders like the ones our grandparents revered. Our […]
