Will America Lead?

With the just concluded meeting of President Obama with Chinese President Hu /Jintao, it’s worth thinking about the costs, and requirements of leadership.

Paul Kennedy, in his monumental Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, examined military conflict over the past five centuries. He demonstrated that national power was rooted in and preceded by the growth of the economy.

Gun control – because it’s necessary and proper

If winning is the only thing, there is no democracy. If winning is by murder and intimidation, there is only Darfur, Iraq, the Congo, what was once Yugoslavia, and scores of other killing fields around the globe.

The Threat to American Democracy

I’m angry and I’m not going to mince words. I fear for our republic.

Most Americans have little awareness of the violence in our past. But murder has been a feature of American politics since the Civil War, often making elections meaningless. Mass slaughter of Republicans after the Civil War allowed Southern Democrats to retake the South, by eliminating and terrorizing the opposition. Even the U.S. Supreme Court chose to look aside and let the South have its new “peculiar institution,”: substituting a reign of terror for legal slavery.

Federalism and Health Care Reform

It seems appropriate at the beginning of this new year to talk about the new healthcare legislation.