Roundup: Media's Take

Nicholas D. Kristof: Health Care Opponents are on the Wrong Side of History

[Nicholas D. Kristof is a columnist for the New York Times.] First, a question: When in American history did life expectancy improve the most? Was it the late 1800s, when anesthesia made surgery easier and far more common? Was it the 1930s, when antibacterial medicines became available? Or recent decades, when CAT scans and heart bypasses proliferated? The correct answer is: none of the above. While data differ and the statistics aren’t fully reliable, a go

Michael B. Oren: For Israel and America, a Disagreement, Not a Crisis

[Michael B. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.] Israel and America enjoy a deep and multi-layered friendship, but even the closest allies can sometimes disagree. Such a disagreement began last week during Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to Israel, when a mid-level official in the Interior Ministry announced an interim planning phase in the expansion of Ramat Shlomo, a northern Jerusalem neighborhood. While this discord was unfortunate, it was not a historic low po

Gregory Rodriguez: The White Anxiety Crisis

[Gregory Rodriguez is the author of Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America/] Two competing narratives dominate our debate about the ongoing ethnic and demographic transformation of America. The first holds that non-European immigrants — O.K., let's be honest, Mexicans — will rip apart the nation's social fabric. The second has it that the diversity of younger generations of Americans will inevitably lead to a more integrated,

Andres Martinez: The Next American Century

[Andres Martinez is the director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program at the New America Foundation.] In 1941, prior to the U.S.'s entry into World War II, the co-founder of this magazine, Henry Luce, penned an essay in LIFE that exhorted "unhappy" Americans, "[distracted] with lifeless arguments about isolationism," to "create the first great American century" — the first, mind you, not the last. We are now entering the second decade of what will

Ellen Ratner: What Would Nixon Do On Health Care?

[Ellen Ratner is Washington bureau chief for Talk Radio News Service and a Fox News contributor.] No one thought that President Nixon was a liberal in fact I spent much of my youthful years demonizing him and remember exactly where I was the day he resigned. I was cheering. However, like most of us humans, Nixon was a mixed bag. A crook perhaps but a brilliant one who had some very good legislation and visions for America. One of these visions was his healt

Jonah Goldberg: The Truth About the Tea Party

[Jonah Goldberg writes a column for the LA Times.] If you read the Op-Ed pages these days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the GOP and the conservative movement have been taken over by know-nothing mobs, anti-intellectual demagogues and pitchfork-wielding bigots. There's no omnibus label for this argument, but it's a giveaway that a person subscribes to it if he or she describes the "tea party" movement as "tea baggers," an awfully telling bit of condescensio

Thomas Cahill: How the Irish Saved Literacy

Why should we celebrate the Irish? No doubt, several reasons could be proffered. But for me one answer stands out. Long, long ago the Irish pulled off a remarkable feat: They saved the books of the Western world and left them as gifts for all humanity.... The glories of Christianity — particularly its books — fascinated the Irish. They came to love the Roman alphabet that Patrick and his successors taught them, as well the precious illuminated manuscripts that he presen

Robert Kagan: Allies everywhere feeling snubbed by President Obama

[Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.] The contretemps between President Obama and Israel needs to be seen in a broader global context. The president who ran against "unilateralism" in the 2008 campaign has worse relations overall with American allies than George W. Bush did in his second term. Israelis shouldn't feel that they have been singled out. In Britain, people are ta

Roger Hardy: Islamism ... why the west gets it wrong

[Roger Hardy has been a Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst with the BBC World Service for the last 25 years.] "The west is ill at ease with Islam", a BBC colleague remarked, long before 9/11. "Even communism was more familiar." Communism, after all, came from within the western intellectual tradition. Islam, in contrast, is alien as well as threatening. Our mistake is to see Islam as monolithic. We think of the Saudi brand as the norm – as if cu

Jeffrey Gettleman: Why Africa's Wars are Never-Ending

[Jeffrey Gettleman is East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times.] There is a very simple reason why some of Africa's bloodiest, most brutal wars never seem to end: They are not really wars. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The combatants don't have much of an ideology; they don't have clear goals. They couldn't care less about taking over capitals or major cities -- in fact, they prefer the deep bush, where it is far easier to commit crimes. Today's rebels seem

Mitchell Bard: Israeli Attack on Iraqi Reactor Offers History Lesson for Obama

[Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and has been published in academic journals, magazines, and major newspapers.] The Obama Administration is blustering that more drastic sanctions will be imposed on Iran if it does not stop enriching uranium, but Russia and China have undermined the threat by saying they will not suppo

Michael Barone: Tea Party Brings Energy, Change and Tumult to GOP

[Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com.] ...In terms of the [tea party's] immediate effect on conventional politics and their potential for continued influence, I think the tea partiers bear an uncanny resemblance to the antiwar activists in the Vietnam War period. Like the tea partiers, the antiwar folk did not start off affiliated with one politic

Robert Rector: Losing the War on Poverty

[Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.] Today marks the 46th anniversary of the War on Poverty. On March 16, 1964, Pres. Lyndon Johnson announced a new government mobilization that he claimed would yield “total victory” against poverty in the United States. Johnson promised his “war” would be an “investment” that would “return its cost manifold to the entire economy.” The War on Poverty sparked an astonishing growth in what is called “mea

Ross Terrill: How Not to Gain China's Respect

[Ross Terrill, associate in research at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, is the author of The New Chinese Empire and several books published in Chinese in the PRC.] The excellent obituaries for Alexander Haig showed his many facets—four-star general, crisis manager at the White House, national security deputy to Henry Kissinger, commander of NATO, charming though prickly secretary of state—but left out his revealing collision with Beijing’s “bite your friend” syndrome

Michael Lind: Bring It On, Ayn Rand Geeks

[Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation.] A new right is being born, following the death of the older conservative movement. Fortunately for the left, the next American right is dominated by libertarians like Ron Paul and Paul Ryan, who worship at the shrine of Ayn Rand. Why is this great news for progressives? The American conservative movement enjoyed its successes only after William F. Buckley Jr. expelled Rand and her follo

Mike Davis: Labor War in the Mojave

[Mike Davis is the author of In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire (Haymarket Books, 2008) and Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (Verso, 2007). He is currently working on a book about cities, poverty, and global change.] The biggest hole in California, with the exception of the current state budget, is Rio Tinto's huge open-pit mine at the town of Boron, near Edwards Air Force Base, eighty miles northeast of Los Angeles. Seen from Google Earth, it i

Richard Lourie: Russia, A Country Without Icons

[Richard Lourie is author of “The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin” and “Sakharov: A Biography.”] In the past, Russia always had a strong sense of identity, often centered around images. When Vladimir I of Kiev baptized Kievan Rus in 988, the pagan idols were whipped, burned and hurled into the river. The Bolsheviks were iconoclasts too, turning churches into warehouses and using icons for flooring in banyas. But the end of Soviet Russia was different from the end of paga

Anne Applebaum: Between the U.S. and Britain, an ideological parting

[Anne Applebaum is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on foreign affairs.] "Two nations, divided by a common language" is how somebody once described Britain and America. "Two nations, divided by a common politics" is another way to put it. Ever since the days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the political fortunes of the United States and Britain have tracked and reflected one another in odd ways. For many years they moved in tandem: The harmonious

Bret Stephens: The Israeli Settlements Aren't the Problem

[Bret Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] I once got an angry letter from Baruch Goldstein's father. Goldstein, remember, was an Israeli settler who in 1994 entered the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers. A decade later, I wrote a column for the Jerusalem Post in which I described Goldstein as personifying Israel's lunatic extreme. The father insisted that his son deserved to be celebrated as a hero. I

Kevin R. Kosar: Have National Education Standards Arrived?

[Kevin R. Kosar is a researcher and writer in Washington, DC. He is the author of Failing Grades: The Federal Politics of Education Standards. His writings have appeared in scholarly and professional journals, and in popular media. He received his PhD in politics from NYU.] Skimming the news, one might get the impression that the United States now has national education standards. “National School Standards, at Last,” smiled a March 14 New York Times editorial head. Al