WASHINGTON — A political crisis is usually preceded by an intellectual and moral crisis. Dominant ideas that once seemed to hang together lose their hold when they are exposed as contradictory and incoherent. Similarly, moral claims made on behalf of a worldview can, gradually or suddenly, come to be seen as empty. Demoralization comes before […]
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Fighting in Mali rates international attention
For most Americans, the battle in Mali with militant Islamist terrorists is an obscure and peripheral sideshow in the Global War on Terror. However, the U.N. peacekeepers and French troops deployed there know the Mali sideshow is most deadly. StrategyPage.com recently reported that Mali is now the most physically dangerous U.N. peacekeeping mission, exceeding the […]
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Trumpism wouldn’t disappear even if he did
On Saturday, someone tried to kill Donald Trump. You may not have heard about it. The story didn’t get much play, the attempt wasn’t well planned and the candidate was never in jeopardy. Still the fact remains that authorities arrested one Michael Steven Sandford, 19, after he allegedly tried to grab a gun from the […]
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New gun laws won’t stop lawbreakers
Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., recently disclosed that a congressional investigation has found at least 72 employees of the Department of Homeland Security listed on the U.S. terrorist watch list. In other news, President Obama used a memorial service for the victims of the Orlando massacre to advocate for more gun control laws. Anyone else see […]
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Heroism is a matter of choice
My heroes are not necessarily people of great ability but ones who did what I think I could not. Two contemporary men fall into that category. The first is the late Muhammad Ali, maybe the greatest fighter of all time, and the second is John McCain. Now, from the grave, Ali reprimands McCain. Both Ali […]
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Americans’ work ethic alive and well
WASHINGTON — We Americans have a confused and contradictory relationship with vacation. In theory; we love it; in practice, we often dread it. So much expectation is heaped on a few weeks of free time that disappointment, if not inevitable, is common. Worse, our escape from the job and daily routine fills us with anxiety […]
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Obama hasn’t kept U.S. safe from terrorism
President Barack Obama desperately wanted to be a peacetime president, yet is ending his second term with Islamic terror attacks looming larger than at any time since 9/11. The tide of war isn’t receding, as he famously contended in a speech on the Afghan drawdown in 2011; it is lapping onto our shores. The left […]
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Trump and the GOP’s Jurassic Park
WASHINGTON — The American people know extremism when they see it. This is very unfortunate for Donald Trump. And it is a nightmare for Republican leaders who see more clearly every day how his candidacy has become a trap: They desperately want to free themselves from the moral wreckage Trump leaves behind but are stuck […]
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New standard needed for surveillance of terrorists
The FBI had the Orlando gunman under watch — twice — and, after much consideration, decided to stop following him. Was this a mistake? Obviously, tragically so. But in this massive lost opportunity to prevent a slaughter dwells a positive sign for our ability to stop future attacks. Law enforcement at least had its eye […]
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Trump will run as himself, of course
WASHINGTON — When in his 1964 GOP acceptance speech Barry Goldwater declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” a reporter sitting near journalist/historian Theodore White famously exclaimed: “My God, he’s going to run as Barry Goldwater!” Six weeks into Donald Trump’s general election campaign, Republicans are discovering that he indeed intends […]