Wikimedia Commons
Slaughterhouse-Five at 50
A Triumphant Failure

There’s nothing intelligent to say about a massacre, wrote Kurt Vonnegut of his book about the firebombing of Dresden. So why are we still reading it a half-century later?

Technology and Liberal Democracy
The New Face of Tyranny

If there is one thing that human beings cannot resist, it is the temptation to busy themselves with the lives of others.

Eugene Delacroix, “Tiger and Snake” (1862)
Red in Tooth and Claw
The Law of Nature and the Love of Self

How self-love and an ethic of struggle came to set the tone of life in the “progressive” West.

Marc Chagall, “The Praying Jew” (1923)
Anti-Semitism in America
Why It Won’t Happen Here

Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are not the harbingers of anti-Semitism, Made in U.S.A. The Jewish-American love affair is neither fleeting nor one-sided. It is rooted in the American creed—since 1654.

The Long March West
Will China Drive a Wedge Between the US and Europe?

Beijing’s financial and military inroads into Europe are calling into question America’s traditional assumptions about Transatlantic cooperation.

Balance of Power
The Taiwan Relations Act at 40: It’s Time to Deepen Ties

The geostrategic rationale for keeping Taiwan at arms’ length no longer applies. We need to revisit the TRA not just in terms of security, but across economics, politics, and society as well.

“Jeff. Sees the Elephant” (Public Domain)
Endangered Species
The End of the New Deal Era—and the Coming Realignment

American politics is in crisis because our parties have grown stale. The great debate of the 20th century is over, and the next realignment is coming. Will the Dems and GOP survive?

Volodymyr Zelensky as Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko in Servant of the People
Political Revenge
A Ukrainian Oligarch Waits in the Wings

A look at the oligarch behind comedian Volodymyr Zelensky’s surprise bid for the presidency of Ukraine—and the feud with Petro Poroshenko that started it all.

Benjamin West, “The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise”
The Case for Modesty
The Virtue in Shame

The movement to destroy sexual shame comes with a social cost.

Of Speech
The Rise of Unfreedom in the West

Our tradition of free debate, the sine qua non of democratic life, is increasingly under attack in academia, the media, and politics.

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