Now that the three groups of explanation for American political dysfunction have been laid out and their mutual connections sketched (in parts one, two and three), we can begin to discuss programmatic solutions for our problems. The ten proposals below represent “torque points” in American politics—places where positive change would resonate throughout our political culture. […]

It’s too late in the 2012 campaign season for an October surprise. But it isn’t too late for an early November surprise. With President Obama apparently now behind in the projected popular vote (although who knows with these polls?), what are the chances that he will order a strike in the next day or two, […]

A reasonably sentient reader might think that between globalization/automation causes and our political/institutional dysfunction, there is nothing left to account for in order to explain what’s wrong with the United States these days. That would be wrong. In my view, more of the variance that explains our parlous present circumstances lies in this third group […]

It’s been a while since I addressed specifically Middle Eastern issues in this space, but of course that does not mean nothing is going on there worth commenting upon. If anything, too much is going on.In addition to the standard frustrations of the bloodletting in Syria, the fragility of the new Iraq, the even greater […]

A few years ago Lynne Truss published a book called Talk to the Hand. Coming on the heels of her smash hit, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, this book was intended as an educated rant about the appalling rudeness of contemporary Western cultures. In the course of her rant she necessarily struggled with the reasons for […]

Those who point to the dysfunction of our political institutions generally raise several distinct but interwoven phenomena. The first is the increased role of ideology in American politics. Both parties have become far fonder, if not necessarily more adept, at abstract thinking, for better or, usually, for worse. Ideological polarization between the two major parties […]

Editor’s Note: Following is the first in a series of posts analyzing the sources of American political dysfunction and proposing a programmatic response to those problems.Some months ago my colleague here at The American Interest, Walter Russell Mead, wrote a series of intellectually high-end blog posts analyzing the collapse of what he called the “blue […]

About six weeks from election day, Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remark has taken center stage in an election campaign heretofore bereft of a whole lot of pizazz (the antics of the long since departed Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann aside). As is by now well known, Romney’s remark divided the nation between the “takers” and […]

My friend Nancy Okail, who’s written for us here on these pages, has penned a must-read essay over at Freedom House. Titled “‘Muslim Rage’ and the Politics of Distraction in Egypt”, it’s as good a summary as any as to what’s really behind the recent anti-American violence in Egypt. Hint: it’s not really about that execrable […]

More blood has been spilled, American and other, in Benghazi, Cairo, Tunis and elsewhere in the so-called Arab and Muslim “worlds” in recent days. (I say so-called because, as others have pointed out, to speak off-handedly, especially to Americans, of an “Arab world” or a “Muslim world” is to dangerously conflate nations and societies whose […]