It feels like half the world is at war, with the other half deciding which war (and which side) they should join. Billions of people are suffering, and it's becoming easier to look around and have trouble finding anything to be thankful for. We live in an increasingly...
Some things haven't changed since 1883. In that year Yale University professor William Graham Sumner, the anti-imperialist laissez-faire liberal and pioneer of American sociology, noticed that "we are told every day that great social problems stand before us and...
Most political differences in America today aren’t a result of moral differences, or even policy opinions. Rather, they are generated by divergent media consumption. There’s a huge difference between those whose news comes primarily from the corporate Big Five...
I have spent decades trying to turn political dirt into philosophic gold. I have yet to discover the alchemist’s trick, but I still have fun with the dirt. I was born in Iowa and raised in the mountains of Virginia. Wheeling and dealing with old coins as a teenager...
For those that grew up in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, the explosion of Russophobia over the past decade likely came as something of a surprise. A brief survey of the history of Russophobia, however, reveals that the decade and a half after the end of the...
The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government in late November and early December 2024 occurred with stunning speed. There was little question that Joe Biden’s administration and several U.S. allies, especially Turkey, were pleased with the outcome. Washington...
The sudden collapse of the Syrian Arab Republic is one of the most inexplicable political events of the modern era. Though the regime was structurally unsound from over a decade of war and severe sanctions, by all accounts Bashar al'Assad's government had more or less...
President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly expressed concern that Iran could develop a nuclear bomb on his watch. In considering his options to prevent that, The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is considering airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Being...
