Putinism and the ‘Battle of Regimes’
I think we are just beginning to see the distinctive foreign policy failure of the Obama era. It’s not the emergence of a new Islamist threat. Yes, President Bush had beaten back the Islamists in a...
View ArticleHow Russian Culture Enables Vladimir Putin’s Global Aggression
Over the last six years, we have seen what an emboldened Vladimir Putin is willing to do with his military forces. In the George W. Bush years, Putin shrewdly played the ally. But at the end of the...
View ArticleWhat Netanyahu Gets Wrong About Toppling Dictators
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to an audience at the American Enterprise Institute last week and my colleague at The Federalist, Ben Domenech, picked up on a very interesting exchange between...
View ArticleThe Uncanny Parallels Between Donald Trump And FDR
Imagine a U.S. president who is bombastic, egotistical, and just a little racist. He worries opening the borders will mean an influx of undesirables. He implements capricious executive orders, and...
View ArticleBill Nye Epitomizes The Left’s Authority Complex
Feminist journalist Jill Filipovic recently made a hilariously un-self-aware comment on Twitter. One advantage the left has over the right is we don’t value bowing to authority. But I see a kind of...
View ArticleWhy Contempt Feeds Trump
As Donald Trump rolls on, we analysts lag behind. While we still struggle to come to grips with who he is and how he could be, to say nothing of our relationship to the Trump phenomenon and Trump...
View ArticleHow U.S. Attorneys General Are Like Chinese Censors
Since 2012, when President Xi Jinping came to power, China has been cracking down on what little free speech the nation has recently enjoyed. Notable examples include harrassing foreign nonprofits—a...
View ArticleWhy The Conservative Admiration Of Putin Is Dangerous
Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin’s “strength” and “great control over his country.” So naturally, conservative supporters like Hugh Hewitt, Dinesh Dsouza, and many others, felt compelled to praise...
View ArticleObama’s Obamacare Speech Proves He’s As Authoritarian As Donald Trump
In Miami on Thursday afternoon, President Obama gave a speech ostensibly updating the American people on the status of his health-care law. But beneath the wonky explanations lay several dark—one might...
View ArticleAfter This Jordanian Criticized ISIS, He Was Thrown In Jail, Then Murdered
The centrality of Islam in Middle East politics can be seen in laws and opinion polls, but that data fails to capture just how entwined Islam and state really are and the destructive effects that...
View ArticleThis Liberal Philosopher Proves The Left Loves Authoritarianism
November marks the anniversary of the publication of Herbert Croly’s seminal book, “The Promise of American Life,” in 1909. The book has been republished and reprinted countless times over the decades,...
View ArticleWhy The American Right Needs To Become Liberal Again
If you spend enough time living in a foreign country, you learn to choose your words carefully, even when speaking English. Over time, Westerners have colloquialized a number of words that have fallen...
View ArticleAfter Donald Trump’s Election, The New Yorker Suddenly Cares About...
What does it take for The New Yorker to start sounding like Robert Bork and Bill Bennett in the 1990s? Apparently, the election of Donald J. Trump. Many on the Left are now preaching moralistic sermons...
View ArticleLet’s Talk About Fascism Before It Becomes The Word Of The Year
As we move into the final weeks of 2016, Merriam-Webster is preparing to announce its Word of the Year, an honor bestowed on the word that attracted the most new look-ups in its online dictionary. The...
View ArticleTo Avoid A Dystopian Future, We Must Become Savage
Is Donald Trump the new Big Brother? That’s what everyone’s been asking, after Kellyanne Conway argued with NBC’s Chuck Todd about “alternative facts” after the inauguration. Journalists likened her...
View ArticleAuthoritarianism Is Not Confined To One Political Party
None of Barack Obama’s wrongdoings over the past eight years absolve Donald Trump of his in the coming eight. Period. If we want to get serious about the scourge of “norm breaking,” though, we can’t...
View ArticleWhy Both The Left And Right Are Political Hypocrites And What To Do About It
What results when a society abandons principles? I do not mean specific principles, I mean the very concept of a principle. Here are some examples. In the final months of the presidential campaign,...
View ArticleElection Results Likely To Accelerate Turkey’s Authoritarianism
On Monday, Turks went to the polls to deliver a “yes” vote for a referendum that gives sweeping powers to the office of the presidency and could keep the country’s burgeoning authoritarian leader,...
View ArticleNationalism Is Just Socialism Draped In A Flag
Few things frustrate a historian or political scientist more than to witness reprisals of debates that have been settled for decades, or even centuries. So anyone with a legitimate claim to those...
View ArticleThere Is No Political Tribe That Deserves Your Loyalty
If you ever wanted to understand the corrosive power of tribal loyalty, there are two new articles for you to read. The first is a Daily Beast article exploring the reinvention of Maxine Waters, a...
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