Article of the Day

Was Democracy Just A Moment?

Written on January 25th, 2008 | Trackback URI |

The Article: Was Democracy Just A Moment?, part of Robert Kaplan’s collection of essay’s from The Coming Anarchy.

The Text: In the fourth century A.D. Christianity’s conquest of Europe and the Mediterranean world gave rise to the belief that a peaceful era in world politics was at hand, now that a consensus had formed around an ideology that stressed the sanctity of the individual. But Christianity was, of course, not static. It kept evolving, into rites, sects, and “heresies” that were in turn influenced by the geography and cultures of the places where it took root. Meanwhile, the church founded by Saint Peter became a ritualistic and hierarchical organization guilty of long periods of violence and bigotry. This is to say nothing of the evils perpetrated by the Orthodox churches in the East. Christianity made the world not more peaceful or, in practice, more moral but only more complex. Democracy, which is now overtaking the world as Christianity once did, may do the same.

How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet

Written on January 22nd, 2008 | Trackback URI |

The Article: A 1994 Atlantic article by Robert Kaplan entitled The Coming Anarchy. Weaving together elements of a world facing new demons, including environmental scarcity, renewed ethnic and tribal divisions, and the failures of the modern nation state, Kaplan writes a prosaic yet troubling outlook on the post Cold War political atlas. Many of his predictions have borne fruit, including his insights on the destabilization of Pakistan and the rise and entrenchment of the Islamic movement. A revistation of the Coming Anarchy provides one with relevant and timely perspectives on a world increasingly dominated by the stark divisions between the have’s and have not’s and the battle over scarce resources.

Ohhh, so THIS is why they hate us!

Written on December 4th, 2007 | Trackback URI |

The Article: US Weapons at War by the Arms Trade Resource Center. And here I was, thinking that they hated our freedoms.

The Text: A new report by the New York-based World Policy Institute finds that a majority of U.S. arms sales to the developing world go to regimes defined as undemocratic by our own State Department. Furthermore, U.S.-supplied arms are involved in a majority of the world’s active conflicts.

“Billions of U.S. arms sales to Afghanistan in the 1980s ended up empowering Islamic fundamentalist fighters across the globe,” notes report co-author William D. Hartung. “Our current policy of arming unstable regimes could have similarly disastrous consequences, with U.S.-supplied weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, insurgents, or hostile governments.”

The Original Political Vision: Sex, Art and Transformation

Written on December 1st, 2007 | Trackback URI |

The Article: From the Guardian, comes The Original Political Vision: Sex, Art and Transformation by Terry Eagleton, detailing the vision of William Blake and that of Gordon Brown.

The Text: One reason Gordon Brown gave for not holding an election was to have time to roll out his vision. It is not a meaning of the word that Britain’s greatest revolutionary poet would have recognised; William Blake, born 250 years ago today, had what George Bush Sr called “the vision thing” in the way other people have headaches or fits of laughter. At four he glimpsed God’s head at the window, at eight a tree shimmering with angels. For Blake, being a visionary meant seeing beyond a version of politics centred chiefly on parliament. “House of Commons and House of Lords seem to me to be fools,” he wrote. “They seem to me to be something other than human life.”

Mmmm yah, suck it.

Written on November 15th, 2007 | Trackback URI |

The Article: This Is The Point In The Blow Job Where I Have To Be Careful What I Say.

The Text: Ordinarily, I am a candid, even verbose individual, but this is a particularly sensitive time for me, so I will try to remain brief. We have reached a juncture at which I, the recipient of this mind-blowing oral sex, must make some kind of statement that is both timely and appropriate. Unfortunately I am uncertain how to proceed.

Clearly, I don’t want this blow job to stop.

Voices in the Wilderness

Written on November 5th, 2007 | Trackback URI |

The Article: Voices in the Wilderness, a multi-author article published by the National Interest on the Mearsheimer and Walt book on the Israel Lobby.

The Text: When the “The Israel Lobby” first appeared as an article in the London Review of Books, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt instantly became the targets of a barrage of unjustified and vicious personal attacks. Such influential pundits as Martin Peretz, Eliot Cohen and Alan Dershowitz—Walt’s colleague at Harvard—casually charged the pair with anti-Semitism, the nuclear option in any political debate. Under the circumstances, it was difficult not to feel respect for Mearsheimer and Walt’s courage and disgust with the assault on them, sentiments I expressed on the pages of The National Interest.

NYTimes Opinion

Written on October 14th, 2007 | Trackback URI |

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

Has The Bell Tolled?

Written on October 5th, 2007 | Trackback URI |

Is this the first blow to a unified Republican Party? Is a split coming down the line, and if it is, will the Democrats have a similar fracture?

The Text:

REPORTS have surfaced in the press about a meeting that occurred last Saturday in Salt Lake City involving more than 50 pro-family leaders. The purpose of the gathering was to discuss our response if both the Democratic and Republican Parties nominate standard-bearers who are supportive of abortion. Although I was neither the convener nor the moderator of the meeting, I’d like to offer several brief clarifications about its outcome and implications.