Roundup: Media's Take

Daniel Hannan: Why Europeans Can't Throw a Tea Party

[Mr. Hannan is a British Conservative member of the European Parliament and the author of "The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America," just out by HarperCollins.] Tea partiers don't get much positive press here in Europe. They are generally portrayed either as a gaggle of stump-toothed Appalachian mountain men or as a KKK lynch-mob. A typical column in Britain's Guardian newspaper last month described them as "a movement most of whose emergent stars woul

David Marquand: Neither Hayek or Lenin: The Suitability of Cameron's Conservatism

[David Marquand is former principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. Among his many books are The Unprincipled Society (1988)and Ramsay MacDonald (2nd edition, 1997).] The term 'Old Whig' was coined by Edmund Burke during the bitter disputes over the French Revolution that tore apart what was left of the Rockingham Whigs in the 1790s. Charles James Fox, the party leader, was enthusiastically for the French Revolution; Burke was passionately against. Burke called himself an 'old Whig' s

Christopher Boucek: Yemen ... Ten Years After the USS Cole Bombing

[Christopher Boucek is an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and editor of the book, Yemen on the Brink.] Ten years ago, a U.S. Navy destroyer was bombed while refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. The suicide attack killed seventeen American sailors and injured thirty-nine. Since the strike, the danger originating out of Yemen has only grown. While Osama bin Laden and other top U.S. targets continue to hide in Pakistan, al-Qaeda in Yemen is now even more da

Andrew Rawnsley: David Cameron's ambivalent relationship with the lady in blue

[Andrew Rawnsley is the The Observer's award-winning Chief Political Commentator as well as being a best-selling author and critically-acclaimed broadcaster.] David Cameron sometimes entertains visitors to Number 10 in a first-floor room which looks over Horse Guards towards St James's Park. For many years, it went by the bland name of the White Room; recently, it was retitled the Thatcher Room. A portrait of the blue lady has been hung on a wall. But you'd be wrong to think it was

Matthew Continetti: Avoiding the Austerity Trap

[Matthew Continetti is an associate editor at the Weekly Standard.] Republicans better sign up for yoga class between now and the start of the 112th Congress. They have a difficult balancing act ahead of them, and the performance will require incredible dexterity.... In the austerity trap, you lose tactical battles over spending while passing up strategic opportunities to promote economic growth. You mistake thrift for an end in itself, rather than a means to a prospero

Leon Hadar: No World Order

[Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.] Since the end of geostrategic competition between the U.S. and the (former) USSR, pundits have been proposing new conceptual frameworks for understanding the evolving global political and economic balance — or imbalance — of power. Indeed, for close to two decades, scholars have been debating the direction that the “parad

Davey D: Oakland's Hip-Hop Activism

[Davey D is a journalist and community activist from the Bay Area. He hosts the daily syndicated radio show Hard Knock Radio.] One of the hallmarks of Oakland, Calif, is its activism and politics and its longtime alignment with hip-hop culture. When I say "aligned," I'm not talking about a rapper doing a song where he spits a couple of cool verses with a socially relevant message. Don't get me wrong; that's important, too, but that's just surface stuff. Political involveme

Sally Kohn: Glenn Beck Says "Collective Salvation" is Anti-American -- Tell That to the Founding Fathers

[Sally Kohn is Founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab, a grassroots popular education organization.] Fox News television host Glenn Beck says the idea of “collective salvation” – that our fates are linked – is “dangerous to the Constitutional republic.” He argues that related notions of social justice, redistribution, and ending oppression are fundamentally anti-American, communist creeds. American’s Founding Fathers would disagree. They embraced collective r

Leon Hadar: No World Order

[Leon Hadar is a Cato Institute research fellow in foreign-policy studies and author, most recently, of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East.] Since the end of geostrategic competition between the U.S. and the (former) USSR, pundits have been proposing new conceptual frameworks for understanding the evolving global political and economic balance — or imbalance — of power. Indeed, for close to two decades, scholars have been debating the direction that the “parad

James Traub: How Lebanon Was Lost

[James Traub is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and author of, most recently, The Freedom Agenda. "Terms of Engagement," his column for ForeignPolicy.com, runs weekly.] Last month, Saad Hariri, the prime minister of Lebanon and the son of Rafik Hariri, the beloved former prime minister who was murdered five years ago in a massive car-bomb explosion, publicly recanted his allegation that high-level Syrian officials had ordered the killing. "During

Alice Fordham: Yemen ... wrong lesson from Iraq

[Alice Fordham is a middle-east specialist based in Iraq.] In late September, ministers and diplomats gathered in New York to discuss assistance for the Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen. Fighting the terrorist threat within this fragile state has become an urgent priority for America and its allies. But this time, bruised by mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are taking a rather different approach. In Iraq, instability was deemed a price worth paying for democracy; in Yemen,

Edward Luce: It is time for Obama to switch from hope to fear

[Edward Luce is the Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times, London.] Sarah Palin, America’s most high-profile conservative, attracted some opprobrium earlier this year when she posed the following rhetorical question to Barack Obama’s supporters: “How’s that hopey-changey thing working out for ya?” In addition to the sarcasm, opposing hope is rarely an advisable path to American hearts. Such traits may explain why Ms Palin got a 22 per cent approval rating in a

David R. Stokes: The Forgotten Lesson of 1964

[David R. Stokes is a minister, broadcaster, columnist, and author. His current project is a book entitled, Checkers—The Speech That Saved Nixon & Changed Politics at the Dawn of the Television Age. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.]For years, during campaign after campaign, moderate Republicans—in various shades of pastel—have preached a big-tent gospel, one that insisted on conservatives being good soldiers in support of the GOP.  And the record has shown that conservative minded Re

Patrick J. Buchanan: Food Stamp Nation

[Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder of the American Conservative magazine.] “The lessons of history … show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” These searing words about Depression-era welfare are from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1935 State of the Union Address. FDR feared

Wang Feng: China’s Population Destiny: The Looming Crisis

[Wang Feng is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Tsinghua Center for Public Policy. His books include Boundaries and Categories: Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China (Stanford University Press, 2007).]Observers of China’s rise, when assessing the implications for global peace and prosperity, have largely focused their attention on the country’s economy, on its energy and resour

Eugene Robinson: Why Won't the GOP Compete for African American Votes?

[Eugene Robinson is a columnist for the WaPo.] ...The history of the Republican Party's estrangement from African Americans is well known. In 1960, Richard Nixon won 32 percent of the black vote. In 1964, Barry Goldwater -- who had opposed the landmark Civil Rights Act -- received just 6 percent of the black vote. This dramatic shift made possible Nixon's "Southern strategy," which political strategist Kevin Phillips explained to the New York Times in 1970, using some arch

JoAnn Wypijewski: The Media's Odd Hysteria Over Masterbation

[JoAnn Wypijewski is a writer in New York.] Religion was never alone on the ramparts of sexual repression. Science, in the form of the New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal, contributed the above-cited opinion in 1850. In the same era, American hospitals began circumcising infants as a pre-emptive strike against future self-abuse. The procedure was no more prompted by hygiene than graham crackers or corn flakes were invented to relieve constipated geezers. Such bland high-fiber

Jay Bookman: Gingrich Cheats as a Historian, Too

[Jay Bookman is a columnist and blogger at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, specializing in foreign relations, environmental and technology-related issues and state and local politics.] Newt Gingrich the historian is not a man to be trusted. Much like Newt Gingrich the husband, I suppose. Yes, I know, Newt’s bona fide — he has a Ph.D in history from Tulane, and he taught in the field for a while at West Georgia College (now the University of West Georgia). But as a politician, G

James M. Fly and John Noonan: Iraq's Post-War Stability Is Crucial

[James M. Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, served in national security positions in the Bush administration. John Noonan is a policy adviser at the Foreign Policy Initiative.] Heading out on the election trail, the Senate left behind a critical piece of business that could affect national security and U.S. interests in the Middle East for decades to come. In August, the last U.S. combat forces left Iraq, leaving behind a liberated nation. A few

Daniel Larison: Has NATO Outlived Its Usefulness?

[Daniel Larison is a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Chicago, where he recently completed his dissertation on the sixth ecumenical council and the monothelete controversy. He is contributing editor at The American Conservative and writes a column for The Week online.] The goal of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization used to be, as its first secretary general, Lord Ismay, phrased it, "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Today, the only