Should We Really Feel So Sorry for Greece?
Feeling sorry for all people and nations who suffer greatly doesn't mean you should consider them helpless victims of unfair right-wing economic policies. More »
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Robert Wright is the author of, most recently, the New York Times bestseller The Evolution of God and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is a former writer and editor at The Atlantic. More
Wright is also a fellow at the New America Foundation and editor in chief of Bloggingheads.tv. His other books include Nonzero, which was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book in 2000 and included on Fortune magazine's list of the top 75 business books of all-time. Wright's best-selling book The Moral Animal was selected as one of the ten best books of 1994 by The New York Times Book Review.Wright has contributed to The Atlantic for more than 20 years. He has also contributed to a number of the country's other leading magazines and newspapers, including: The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Time, and Slate, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. He is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism and his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Feeling sorry for all people and nations who suffer greatly doesn't mean you should consider them helpless victims of unfair right-wing economic policies. More »
My wife (who, by the way, is not the woman pictured on the right) spends a certain amount of time explaining to friends that they've just embarrassed themselves online. Only last week she emailed a friend and respected journalist--let's call him John Smith--to tell him that on her Facebook news feed, below the headline "Kim Kardashian Denies Naked Kitchen Photo" (which was accompanied by the photo on the right), it said "John Smith read this article." … More »
In 1989, Gay marriage seemed like a radical idea. How important magazine story got people talking. More »
The toppled six-term Indiana senator's remarks after his defeat in yesterday's Republican primary are interestingly asymmetrical. More »
I don't know what's more unsettling--the demagogic rant delivered here by Golden Dawn Party leader Nikolaos Nichaloliakos, or the part before the rant, when his advance team intimidates journalists into standing as he enters the room. In any event, the Greeks had better get used to this kind of spectacle, because Golden Dawn will, after yesterday's election, have a presence in parliament. I have a couple of thoughts below the video player. The good news is… More »
In a Washington Times op-ed, Rep. Joe Walsh, a Tea Party Republican from Illinois, unveils his new plan for solving the Israel-Palestine problem: 1) Make the occupied territories part of Israel; 2) Give Palestinians who live in those territories "limited voting power" in the new, bigger Israel that they'll have suddenly become residents of. (Walsh doesn't define his euphemism, but no doubt the idea is that… More »
It looks like Chen Gaungcheng isn't going to be an albatross around President Obama's neck after all. If indeed Chen and his family wind up coming to America, the oomph will go out of the Chen-based narrative Mitt Romney has been developing: Obama administration sends blind guy to gulag lest he get in the way of Hillary Clinton's Beijing photo ops. Still, it's true that in handling the Chen case the Obama… More »
How exactly did the case morph so quickly from diplomatic triumph to campaign disaster? More »
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng has had his share of political frustration over the past few years, but at the moment he's one of the most powerful people in the world. More »
In the wake of the controversy over last week's 60 Minutes episode on Palestinian Christians, the Israeli website 972 today runs an illuminating post by a Palestinian Christian, Philip Farah. More »
Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post has come up with a reason for America to intervene in Syria: because only America can. More »
With the exception of true psychopaths, people who are demonized almost always turn out to be surprisingly human. More »
Peter Bergen, writing in the Sunday New York Times, makes the case that Barack Obama has been a very hawkish president--that he's less the "negotiator in chief," as stereotype would have it, than the "warrior in chief." More »
Here's a reminder for wealthy Christians who oppose President Obama's proposed "Buffett rule," which would impose a minimum 30 percent tax on people making over a million dollars a year: Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." I realize Jesus doesn't here mention increasing any marginal tax rates. Indeed, conservative Christians have a point when they… More »
Biden warns that Romney would take us "back to a foreign policy that would have America go it alone, shout to the world you're either with us or against us." More »
A nice rant by Glenn Loury, an economist at Brown University, in conversation with John McWhorter of Columbia More »
Analyzing Time and Foreign Policy's controversial covers More »
Wouldn't it be more scandalous if the women those agents slept with weren't prostitutes? More »
Last night's 60 Minutes segment about the plight of Christians in the West Bank has gotten a lot of attention, in part because of the attempt by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren to intervene with CBS brass while the segment was being put together. More »
Isn't there something else you should be doing now? Didn't you click on the link that led to this post because you were trying to avoid doing something more productive, and more arduous, than clicking on a link? Don't you have a procrastination problem? Help is available! Not from me, God knows. Asking me to help you quit procrastinating is like seeking anger management counseling from Mel Gibson. But Charles Duhigg, New York… More »
