Roundup: Media's Take

Michael Knox Beran: The Psycho — and Us

[Michael Knox Beran is a contributing editor of City Journal and the author, most recently, of Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life.] If the past is any warrant for the future, the story of Jared Loughner will soon be transmuted into television crime drama, in a “ripped from the headlines” episode of one of those now numerous shows that deal largely with psychos and the detectives who try to catch them. That so much of our entertainment sho

Parag Khanna: Breaking Up Is Good to Do

[Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. This article is adapted from his new book, How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance.] This year will almost certainly see the birth of a new country named Southern Sudan. It might also witness the creation of an independent Palestine, as Palestinian leaders push for unilateral recognition of their national sovereignty within their country's 1967 borders. And within a couple of years, a so

Blair Lindsay: Arizona Shooting Pundits are Wrong: Heated Political Speech Isn't the Problem -- It's the Solution

[Blair Lindsay, a former criminal prosecutor, is a high school teacher and coach.] ...To suggest that words – angry or otherwise – need to be controlled and curtailed shows a remarkable ignorance of the history of tyranny and the history of freedom. Indeed, critics of “angry rhetoric” have it backward: Charged political speech in America isn’t the problem – it’s the solution. Raucous political discussion and debate is a hallmark of a functioning and healthy democracy. It is a safety

Bill Clinton: Oklahoma Bombing Memorial Speech

In the wake of the tragedy in Tucson, it is worth revisiting Bill Clinton's speech in response to the Oklahoma City bombing:

Michael Young: Mideast Must Stop Blaming Imperial Past

[Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.] Although the referendum on the future of south Sudan is attracting more headlines in the Arab world, civil unrest in Tunisia and Algeria, communal recrimination in Egypt following a recent bomb attack against a Coptic church, multiple crises in Yemen, and political confusion in Lebanon, as well as a host of lesser tribulations, tell a larger story. More and more, the Arab state seems incapable of managing effec

Max Blumenthal: A nation against Islam ... America's new crusade

[Max Blumenthal is a journalist whose work is published in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the Nation, the Huffington Post, Salon, and other publications. He is author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (Basic/Nation Books, 2009).] As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, hysteria about Muslims in American life has gripped the country. With it has come an outburst of arson attacks on mosques, campaigns to stop their construction, and the

Pete Hegseth and Wade Zirkle: A Fifth Star for David Petraeus

[Messrs. Hegseth and Zirkle are directors at Vets for Freedom. Mr. Hegseth served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division and will deploy to Afghanistan in 2011. Mr. Zirkle served two deployments to Iraq as a Marine infantry officer and is a recipient of the Purple Heart.] On a cold December evening in 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his staff and resigned his command of the Continental Army. One hundred ninety three years later,

Steve Richards: The banks debate in Britain has a 1970s parallel

[Steve Richards became The Independent’s chief political commentator in 2000.] The determined resilience of bankers seeking millions in undeserved bonuses has a tiny echo with the actions of militant union leaders in the 1970s. The more revealing parallel is the response of different governments to the two enduring crises, or rather their feeble paralysis in the face of daunting and new developments that challenge all they had come to believe. Conservative and Labour ministers were

Matthew Fuhrmann: Would a Nuclear-Armed Iran Really Be That Dangerous?

[Matthew Fuhrmann is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Todd S. Sechser is an assistant professor of politics at the University of Virginia.] ...A close look at the history of the nuclear age shows that countries with nuclear weapons are neither more likely to make coercive threats nor more likely to succeed in blackmailing their adversaries. Nuclear powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union certainly made numerous threats after they a

Martin Sandbu: Aristotle – the banker’s best friend

[Martin Sandbu is the FT’s economics leader writer. His book Just Business: Arguments in Business Ethics has just been published by Prentice Hall.] Aristotle took a dim view of business. Sometimes, of course, business people give  the impression of being equally unconcerned with Aristotle’s main concern: living a good life. Just witness the grilling Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, received this week from UK legislators angry at his bank’s bonuses. Yet today’s cor

Aaron Bady: Invented Communities in Africa and America

[Aaron Bady is a Ph.D. student in African literature in UC Berkeley’s English Department. As the author of the Zunguzungu blog, he writes about literature, film, the" crisis" in higher education and a wide range of issues ranging from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to Joseph Conrad’s"Heart of Darkness," the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke and journalistic muckraking.] In Garry Wills’

Derek Thompson: A Brief Visual History of U.S. Taxes

[Derek Thompson is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, business, and technology. Derek has also written for BusinessWeek, Slate and The Daily Beast.] Tax reform might be The Issue of 2011. Or, like most years, it might linger on the sidelines of the national debate, but never press its way into the limelight. Either way, the Senate Finance Committee is hearing the case for tax reform today -- and who better to hear from first than the head of the Jo

Michael Lind: The Five Worldviews That Define American Politics

[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."] Does it often seem that many American politicians and pundits are talking past each other? That is because they really are. The frustrating nature of public debate arises in large part from the fact that Americans do not share a single worldview. A worldview is a

Al Sharpton: In MLK's honor, let's strive for dialogue that's passionate but not poisonous

[The writer is president of National Action Network, a civil rights organization.] The senseless violence in Arizona this past weekend left all of us stunned, but this devastating act hit home for me more than most. I have been a victim of violence that could have cost my life, and I have been involved in controversies that led to violence in which my words were distorted and misused. As we try to understand the steps that led to the horrors in Tucson, it is not lost on

Stephen Kinzer: America and the rise of middle powers

[Stephen Kinzer is a former New York Times reporter and the author of Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2006) and Reset Middle East: Old Friends and New Alliances: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey,Iran (2011).] The dramatic rise of Turkey in the councils of world power was one of the main geopolitical developments of 2010. Iran's emergence as a serious regional power was another. They are harbingers of what will be one of the main trends of global power

Andrew C. McCarthy: A Horrid Crime, a Dishonest Debate

[Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.] On June 5, 1968, a deranged 25-year-old Jordanian named Sirhan Sirhan slithered through a crowd toward Sen. Robert Kennedy as the Democratic presidential candidate basked in the glow of his California presidential primary triumph. Sirhan shot and killed Kennedy, wounding several others. The ensuing investigation showed t

Richard Cohen: America, Armed and Dangerous

[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the WaPo.] I had a teacher in college who used to ask, Who discovered America? He would offer some choices. They were Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus or the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. The answer he wanted was the three ships with which eventually someone would have discovered the New World and without which everyone would have remained in Spain. It is no different with the tragedy in Tucson. Hate speech and madness were part of the

Dana Milbank: For Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, a McKinley Moment?

[Dana Milbank is a columnist for the WaPo.] If any good can come of the horror in Tucson, it will be that this becomes a McKinley moment for Sarah Palin and her chief spokesman, Glenn Beck. One hundred and ten years ago, during another low point in the nation's political discourse, newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst - who was angling for a presidential run in 1904 - published a pair of columns fantasizing about violence against President William McKinley.

Michael Gerson: Is Arizona Shooting an Empty Search for Meaning?

[Michael Gerson is a columnist for the WaPo.] When President John Kennedy visited Dallas in November 1963, he was greeted by a full-page newspaper ad accusing him of being a communist fellow traveler. To his wife he observed, "Oh, you know, we're headed into nut country today." The city, according to historian William Manchester, was a "mecca" for "the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry societies." In the hours following Kennedy's

George F. Will: The Charlatans' Response to the Tucson Tragedy

[George F. Will is a columnist for the WaPo.] ...[I]magine a continuum from the rampages at Columbine and Virginia Tech - the results of individuals' insanities - to the assassinations of Lincoln and the Kennedy brothers, which were clearly connected to the politics of John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, respectively. The two other presidential assassinations also had political colorations. On July 2, 1881, after four months in office, President Jame