Roundup: Media's Take

Jeremy Sharon: Israel's Historic Roots Are Real

[Jeremy Sharon is a researcher and writer based in Jerusalem.] Speeches and comments made by Binyamin Netanyahu of late have been rather heavy on their biblical and historical references. In his speech at Bar-Ilan University last June, he declared: "The connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel has lasted for more than 3,500 years ... This is the land of our forefathers." And in an interview with talkshow host Charlie Rose in September, he mentioned a sig

Fouad Ajami: Another Step Forward for Iraq

[Mr. Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2007).] Forgive Vice President Joe Biden the audacity of claiming last month on CNN's "Larry King Live" that Iraq is destined to be "one of the great achievements of this administration." The larger point he made—that a representative government is taking h

Stanley Kutler: The System Works, Even if These Bozos Don’t

[Stanley Kutler is the author The Wars of Watergate (Norton), Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (Free Press), The American Inquisition: Cold War Political Trials (Hill & Wang), and numerous other books and articles.] Politics are paralyzed. The minority party is motivated by a desire to have the president of the United States fail, while the squishy majority is in disarray, drawing into question its capacity to govern. Congressional leadership of both parties is inept and inef

Daniel Korski: America and Europe are Partners in Decline

[Daniel Korski is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.] It's anti-Europe season again in the United States. Once the season opens (usually in the second year of a presidential term, when the White House most needs a scapegoat), cabinet officials and analysts start taking their shots: "Europeans don't pitch in. They don't fight enough." Andrew Bacevich's article, "Let Europe Be Europe," is just the latest example. His a

Patsy McGarry: How Ireland Lost Its Faith

[Patsy McGarry is the religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times.] There was a time when Irish Catholics might have been delighted to see the pope lavishing attention on their bishops. On Feb. 15 and 16, however, when Ireland's bishops were at the Vatican to discuss an ongoing child sex abuse scandal, Catholics back home were furious. Catholics were already upset about Pope Benedict's refusal to apologize to the thousands of abuse victims in Ireland or even hint that he wou

Roger Cohen: Greece, Europe and Alexander Hamilton

[Roger Cohen is a columnist for the New York Times.] ...When the euro entered circulation in 2002, the notion was that the shared currency would propel the European Union toward greater political alignment. It hasn’t happened. On the contrary, resentments have grown, performances diverged. Germany is not keen to throw good money after bad to save debt-ridden Greece. More than two centuries ago, the newborn United States faced a similar crisis of integration. With the Co

David Brooks: Norway's Legendary Toughness is Why They Win Gold Medals

[David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times.] The United States, a nation of 300 million, won nine gold medals this year in the Winter Olympics. Norway, a nation of 4.7 million, also won nine. This was no anomaly. Over the years, Norwegians have won more gold medals in Winter Games, and more Winter Olympics medals over all, than people from any other nation. There must be many reasons for Norway’s excellence, but some of them are probably embedded in the story

Jeffrey Rosen: Just How Radical is the Chief Justice?

[Jeffrey Rosen is the legal affairs editor of The New Republic.] Last month, the Supreme Court handed down its most polarizing decision since Bush v. Gore. The 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission called into question decades of federal campaign finance law and Supreme Court precedents by finding that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend as much money as they want on election campaigns, as long as they don’t consult the candidates. It was precis

Michael Lind: Why Republicans Want Gridlock

[Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation.] Why is the Republican Party insisting on gridlock in Washington? Why is the Republican minority in California blocking necessary change? The Beltway pundits who attribute everything to electoral cycle gamesmanship do not understand the deeper cause of this scorched-earth policy: demographic decline. Having lost much of the white professional class to the Democrats (perhaps temporarily),

Bret Stephens: How Milton Friedman Saved Chile

[Bret Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs, which runs every Tuesday in the U.S. and is also published in the European and Asian editions of the paper.] Milton Friedman has been dead for more than three years. But his spirit was surely hovering protectively over Chile in the early morning hours of Saturday. Thanks largely to him, the country has endured a tragedy that elsewhere would have been an apocalypse.... It's not by chan

John Dietrich: Man's Need for Apocalyptic Thinking

[John Dietrich is a freelance writer and the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (Algora Publishing).] Global warming is far from the first apocalyptic prediction, or even the first based on computer models. The belief that the world is coming to an end appears to be a universal concept based on an innate psychic need. All major religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism -- have a version of the end of the world. While the ma

Jennifer Rubin: Going After Joe Lieberman

[Jennifer Rubin is COMMENTARY’s contributing editor. Her last article for the magazine was “Why Jews Hate Palin” (January). She blogs daily on our website at www.commentarymagazine.com.] Both political parties wrestle with an inherent tension: balancing the desire for ideological coherence with the need to build a broad-based coalition that can win elections and form a governing majority. Although the mainstream media focus almost obse

Henry D. Fetter: Are U.S. Olympic Medals a Harbinger of Decline?

[Henry D. Fetter is a lawyer and writer whose work has appeared in the Journal of Sport History, The Public Interest, and the Times Literary Supplement.] As the 2010 Winter Olympic Games drew to a close, the United States found itself leading , at least according to the most widely used tabulations, the overall medals table for the first time since 1932. But anyone tempted to invest that success with a significance that transcends the ski slope, the ice rink, or the half-pipe might

Richard Haass: Failed States Are Causing Global Instability

[Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.] Even if the March 7 elections in Iraq come off without a voter boycott or major violence, forming a new government is likely to take months of hard work. Making it function will be even more difficult. Once the most powerful country in the Arab world, Iraq is now anything but. True, even an ardent opponent of the war would have t

Robert Barnes: Gun Case Presents Quandary for Supreme Court Justices

[Robert Barnes is a staff writer for the Washington Post.] As a member of the Junior ROTC, teenager Antonin Scalia toted his rifle on the subway ride back and forth to Queens. As a hunter, he speaks lyrically of stalking wild turkeys. And as a justice, he may have reached the pinnacle of his more than two decades on the Supreme Court when he wrote the majority opinion that said the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own a firearm. But when the justices o

Purim and the End of "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

[Aaron Zelinsky is Articles Editor, 'Yale Law Journal'] Tonight marks the start of the Jewish holiday of Purim. Jews around the world will read the Book of Esther, chronicling the traditional story of the Jewish people's salvation from destruction over two millennia ago. The Purim story has a special resonance this year: The Book of Esther marks civilization's first recorded repudiation of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT). In the Book of Esther, the

Joseph B. Margolick: We Need Another Speech Like Lincoln's at Cooper Union

Today, Feb. 27, is the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's speech at Cooper Union in New York City, which the eminent Lincoln historian Harold Holzer has called the speech that made him president. Why was his address that night so successful, and what does it mean for us today, including for President Obama? The answer is, a lot. On Feb. 27, 1860, the nation was in mortal crisis. A crucial issue of the day was whether the Federal government could forbid the extension of slavery i

Damon Linker: Taking Exception to "American Exceptionalism"

[Damon Linker is a Senior Writing Fellow in the Center for Critical Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. He also blogs about religion, culture, and politics for The New Republic.] Every now and then a piece of writing captures the mood of the moment and the essence of an ideology so completely that it warrants special attention. This is certainly the case with “An Exceptional Debate: The Obama Administration’s Assault on American Identity,” an essay (and cover story) by Richar

Carlo Strenger: Talking-Cure Diplomacy in the Middle East

[Carlo Strenger, the chairman of the clinical graduate psychology program at Tel Aviv University, is the author of “The Designed Self.”] LAST month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton caused a stir with remarks that at first glance seemed a restatement of the obvious — namely, that the 1967 borders between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, along with some land swaps, should be the focus of peace negotiations. In fact, since 1993, when the Oslo agreements were signed, the solutio

Jonathan Rauch: It's George Wallace's GOP Now (But Not in a Racist Way)

[Jonathan Rauch is a columnist for the National Journal.] The history of the modern Republican Party in one sentence: Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got into an argument and George Wallace won. OK, footnotes are required. The most important is that racism, a central factor in Wallace's career, is marginal in today's Republican Party. In fact, if there is anything Republicans like about President Obama, it is the racial breakthrough that his election represents.