Roundup: Media's Take

Steve Malanga: what Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber would think of America today

Manhattan Institute fellow Steve Malanga writing in the Institute's City Journal: The genius of America in the early nineteenth century, Tocqueville thought, was that it pursued "productive industry" without a descent into lethal materialism. Behind America's balancing act, the pioneering French social thinker noted, lay a common set of civic virtues that celebrated not merely hard work but also thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty—virtues that grew out o

Nicholas Kulish: While Europe Sleeps, Bosnia Seethes

[Nicholas Kulish is a journalist who reports for The New York Times as Berlin bureau chief as of August 2007. Previously, he was a member of the editorial board of the Times from September 2005 to the summer of 2007.] NEARLY 14 years after peace for Bosnia was hammered out in Ohio, the hills rising up around Sarajevo can still lead a visitor to uncomfortable thoughts about sightlines for snipers. As I stood there in person on a visit back in May wi

Robert Parry: Colin Powell and Lessons of My Lai

[Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.] In an Aug. 28 editorial, The New York Times applauded a belated “note of personal regret” from former Lt. William Calley for his role in the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968. But neither the Times nor any other leading U.S. news outlet has ever suggested that remorse might also be due from Colin Powell, who as a young Army major helped cover up the crime.

Truthout Editorial: Holocaust Still a Political Football

Matthew Rothschild and I both thought of Edward Said when we read about two Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council insisting that Gaza's schools should not teach the history of the Nazi Holocaust. Cleric Yunis al-Astal said this would be "marketing a lie" and a "war crime." Jamila al-Shanti commented, "Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage, and religio

NYT Editorial: Obama should listen to Biden on danger of increasing military involvement in Afghanistan

The president should listen to Joe Biden. Mr. Biden has been a voice of reason, warning the administration of the dangers of increasing our military involvement in Afghanistan. President Obama has not been inclined to heed his advice, which is worse than a shame. It’s tragic. Watching the American escalation of the war in Afghanistan is like watching helplessly as someone you love climbs into a car while intoxicated and drives off toward a busy highway. No good can come

Christian Science Monitor Editorial: The history behind opposition to Obama's speech to students

Why the uproar over President Obama’s plan to deliver a televised back-to-school speech to US students? Part of the opposition surely is due to political opposition to Obama himself. But there is another, deeper factor that also may be at work: the historic conservative antipathy in the US to a federal role in education. Look at it this way: Many people in Texas and Florida (and other conservative states and areas) might well object to anybody from Washington addressing their kids a

Ruben Navarrette Jr.: Get real about Afghanistan

[Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist and a regular contributor to CNN.com.] As someone who often takes a conservative stance on issues, I once again find myself in the curious position of defending President Obama to disillusioned critics within his own liberal base. And once again, I'm glad to do it. This time, it's Afghanistan. In one of the most complicated corners of the world, Obama -- and his military commanders -- are pursuing a troop build-

Telegraph Editorial: We still need peace, but the world has changed

This is a season of anniversaries. This week we commemorated the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War. This autumn, we are marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism, symbolised above all by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Both historic moments have much to teach us about the political landscape of the 21st century: about why the developed world is peaceful, about how we go about keeping it peaceful – but, also, about the frightening instab

Anatol Lieven: A Cool-Headed Look at 1939

[Anatol Lieven is a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation. He is currently working on a book about Pakistan.] In the Polish-Russian dispute over what happened in 1939, rival myth-making is being driven by domestic political calculations on both sides. Polish right-wing politicians including the present president have used the memory of 1939 and the alleged continuity of Soviet and Russian policy to whip up

Andrew Klavan: Romanticon: Wordsworth's corpus reflects the growth of a conservative's mind.

[Andrew Klavan is a City Journal contributing editor and the author of such best-selling novels as Don’t Say a Word and Empire of Lies. His latest book is The Last Thing I Remember.] It’s something of a parlor game among the commentariat to compare one era with another. Every time America’s power ebbs, the pundits conjure the fall of the Roman Empire—and every time America’s power increases, they fear it’s the collapse of the Roman Republic. Each new war must be either Vietnam again

WSJ Editorial: The Michigan Example, How government investment in business failed to create jobs

A central belief in Washington and most state capitals nowadays is that government should "invest" in certain businesses—"clean tech," say, or manufacturing—to drive job creation. We hope it all turns out better than it has in Michigan. For the past 14 years, Lansing politicians have offered $3.3 billion in tax credits through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and spent another $1.6 billion in outlays to create and retain jobs. The subsidies have rang

Dan Senor and Peter Wehner: Afghanistan Is Not 'Obama's War'

[Mr. Senor is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. They both served as officials in the administration of George W. Bush.] In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan war around the Obama administration’s neck. Washington, he wrote, should “keep faith

Alex Koppelman: Glenn Beck exposes Obama's Communist art scheme

Dear liberal CommunoFascist President Obama: I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the jig is up. Your plans for revolution in the U.S. have been exposed. Glenn Beck found the secret codes you managed to hide in artwork in Rockefeller Center that was created 30 years before you were born a world away, and on his Fox News show Wednesday night, he told the world about them. He even managed to connect you to every New World Order conspiracy theorist's favorite villains, the

Economist Editorial: Mr Putin regrets

It is hard to imagine modern Germany haggling with Poland about opening wartime archives, let alone over who started the war. With Russia, it is different. Vladimir Putin’s visit to Gdansk, where a ceremony this week marked the first shots of the second world war in September 1939, was both a step forward and a depressing sign of continuing difficulties. Polish officials struggled to stay polite before the Russian prime minister’s arrival. In June the Russian defence ministry websit

Anna Borshchevskaya: Putin The Historian

[Anna Borshchevskaya is a research assistant at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics.] On Aug. 31, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published an open letter in which, for the first time, he condemned as immoral the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that divided much of Eastern Europe into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence. But despite this significant and surprising departure from Russia's old policies, rather than signal a new era of conciliation seven decades

Ali Aujali : Why Libya Welcomed Megrahi

[Mr. Aujali is the Libyan ambassador to Washington.] When Abdel Baset al-Megrahi landed in Tripoli following his release from Scotland last week, the world saw a single event in two very different ways. Through the prism of the Western media, Americans saw a terrorist being given a hero's welcome by a country eager to celebrate mass murder. Libyans saw a dying man—believed to be innocent by his countrymen and many others world-wide—being embraced by his family. The mis

Dan Senor & Peter Wehner: Afghanistan Is Not 'Obama's War'

[Mr. Senor is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. They both served as officials in the administration of George W. Bush.] In his column for the Washington Post on Tuesday, the influential conservative George Will provided intellectual fodder for the campaign among some Republicans to hang the Afghanistan war around the Obama administration's neck. Washington, he wrote, should "keep f

Paul Krugman: How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

I. MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivie

Jean Edward Smith: Roosevelt: The Great Divider

[Jean Edward Smith, a professor at Marshall University, is the author of “F.D.R.”] PRESIDENT OBAMA’S apparent readiness to backtrack on the public insurance option in his health care package is not just a concession to his political opponents — this fixation on securing bipartisan support for health care reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead. This was not true of Franklin Roosevelt and the Dem

Tom Schaller: Actually, the Senate Is Far Less Nepotistic Today

The hiring of Jenna Bush Hager by NBC's"Today" show to be an education correspondent smacks of non-meritocratic promotion, and has Salon's Glenn Greenwald suitably fired up. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, Greenwald imagines this scenario:They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain