It comes early in an African American life. Before “Pomp and Circumstance” is played. Before the corsage and the limousine ride. Before final exam, favorite teacher and science project. Before first kiss. Before any of that, someone has appraised you — millions of someones who have never met nor even seen you. And they have […]

In July, senior government officials in Taiwan and the U.S. warned that communist China was aggressively threatening Taiwan’s independence. U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper contended Beijing had taken its intimidation “to a new level.” China’s 1995-1996 “missile drizzle” operation, sometimes called the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, set a high bar for aggressive threats to […]

Trump supporters have been sending me short messages asking, “How is your 401(k) doing?” They are making three assumptions. 1. That the stocks in my retirement account are doing well. 2. That I’m happy about it. 3. And that I have President Donald Trump to thank for my good fortune. Assumptions one and two are […]

If you watched last week’s virtual Democratic convention, you heard about an America with which you might not be familiar. Speaker after speaker portrayed America as a failing nation full of misery, poverty and angst that only they can make better. On his radio program last week, Rush Limbaugh reminded listeners what the fight for […]

The number of Republicans speaking at the Democratic National Convention had progressives on edge. They shouldn’t have fretted. Even if a handful of estranged Republicans are along for the ride, the left is steadily moving the Democratic Party in its direction. Would progressives prefer winning the optics at a virtual convention, or the substance over […]

“If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?” Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the civil rights movement, drops that question like a bomb on Page 352 of “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,” the new book by Isabel Wilkerson, herself also a winner of Joseph Pulitzer’s […]

In a new book about her grandfather, Dwight D, Eisenhower, titled “How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions,” Susan Eisenhower writes admiringly about Ike’s pursuit of what she calls “the middle way.” In a decision that still infects elements of the Republican Party today, Susan Eisenhower says Ike’s pursuit of compromise and centrism […]