You might not know it, but the country lost a great man the other day, the kind of man that Americans say they want to see more of in Washington. His name was Donald C. Alexander, though any friend or acquaintance called him Don. He was Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service from May 1973 …
Something is stirring in the world’s most populous nation, and it could eventually mark a watershed event in the march for human rights. That something is called “Charter 08,” a manifesto that more than 300 Chinese scholars, writers and activists issued online in December, that more than 8,000 Chinese of all vocations have since signed, …
Continue reading “China’s Human Rights Movement Could Soon Test Obama”
A controversial Dutch parliamentarian faces trial for violating hate speech laws in a case that presents a huge new threat to Western norms of free speech, free debate and critical inquiry. On January 21, the Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordered the criminal prosecution of Geert Wilders, who produced the 2008 film Fitna which argues that …
Continue reading “Dutch Debacle: Orwell Lives in Geert Wilders Free Speech Case”
No two names are more closely associated with misguided economic policy than Sen. Reed Smoot and Rep. Willis C. Hawley, authors of the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which helped convert a deep downturn into the Great Depression. Raising tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods, the law prompted other nations to retaliate against …
The world‟s all-too-predictable condemnation of Israel over its military operation in Gaza begs an ironic question: Beyond the heated rhetoric, who really cares for the people of Gaza? Who, that is, seeks to protect human life within this narrow strip of land and to build the economy and civil society that will ensure a bright …
Continue reading “Who Cares for the Gazans? How About Israel?”
The global reaction to Israel’s attack on Hamas got me thinking about how, if we could travel back in time, the world of 2009 might have viewed some of history’s most consequential military confrontations For instance, in August 1940, several months into Nazi Germany’s relentless raids over London, the British found an opportunity to respond. …
‘What then is the American, this new man?’ J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur asked in his Letters to an American Farmer in 1782 before describing the distinctly American character that was emerging on the eastern seaboard of a new world. Fast forward 226 years, substitute ‘Barack Obama’ for ‘the American,’ and you have the …
Continue reading “Letter from Washington / Searching for Barack”