The Soul of the Nation is the Constitution on September 8, 2022President Joe Biden faces what he calls two possibly existential conflicts. The first is the struggle between autocracy and democracy. The second was declared last week in Philadelphia: the fight for the soul of the nation against Trump “MAGA Republicans.” This column disagrees that the great struggle is between democracy and autocracy. The crucial question […]
Will America Survive This Decade? on August 29, 2022America has had some close calls. After the Revolution and well into the 19th century, while protected by two oceans, America remained vulnerable to outside interlopers from Europe. The British burned Congress and the White House in the War of 1812 and a war with British Canada loomed. The Civil War could have partitioned America […]
Is it Amnesia or Ignorance that Reigns in America? on August 22, 2022This week marked the first anniversary of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is hard to overstate the calamity that ensued in a country in which nearly 3,000 Americans died and possibly nearly a trillion dollars were spent in trying to impose democracy where it never could work. In the prior week, FBI agents conducted a […]
Can the Least Popular, Oldest President in History Still Win? on August 15, 2022Despite some recent successes, President Joe Biden’s popularity ratings remain at all-time lows for any White House. Can Biden survive and reverse this condition as past presidents have? Or is recovery impossible for a soon-to-be eighty-year-old president? Jack Kennedy survived the Bay of Pigs fiasco. While LBJ did not recover from Vietnam and Richard Nixon […]
Dangerous Coexistence at Home and Abroad on August 8, 2022How best to define the state of America at home and abroad other than bad? For the first time since 1861, about half of America believes a civil war is likely. At no time in America’s history has the last and current president and Congress all been held in such contempt and low regard reinforcing […]
America on Fire on August 1, 2022Make no mistake: America is on fire, literally and figuratively. Forest fires rage on the West coast some uncontrollably. Temperatures soar above 100 degrees F and not only here. And perhaps most dangerously, America’s political temperature has reached the boiling point. For the first time since polls began, never have the former and current president […]
Putin’s Brain II on July 25, 2022Two of America’s greatest failings, certainly regarding post-World War II foreign policy, have been profound shortcomings in knowledge and understanding of events and circumstances in which the US has engaged, particularly with force. The great Chinese philosopher of war, Sun Tzu, rightly observed that knowing the enemy was vital to success. From Vietnam to Afghanistan […]
When Muddling Through No Longer Works on July 18, 2022Consider this image of America’s ship of state as a magnificently huge vessel hurtling at great speed into uncharted waters whose rudders are locked and whose powerful engines cannot be stopped or reversed despite all the commands being issued by her captain, trapped on the bridge, to alter course. Excessive imagery? Perhaps? But the rudders […]
When Government Becomes Disruptive on July 13, 2022Four days ago, America celebrated July 4th and its Declaration of Independence that proclaimed “Whenever government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new government.” If Thomas Jefferson were re-writing that document today, beyond broadening “all men” to “all people,” one of the changes […]
Why Operation Barbarossa Exposes America’s Defence Strategy as a Ticking Time Bomb? on July 4, 2022Warning: Those who start two front wars lose. 81 years ago this month, after overrunning Western Europe, on June 22, 1941, Adolph Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa-the invasion of the Soviet Union-embarking on a two-front war. He, like Napoleon 125 years earlier, lost and the Third Reich was destroyed. Before publicly releasing its new National Security […]