Roundup: Media's Take

Michael Lind: America in the Age of Primitivism

[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."] Is the 21st century a Dark Age, compared to the 20th? Is the culture of modernity and enlightenment slipping away, in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world? Is this really an age of neo-primitivism and superstition? These questions can’t be dismissed by pointing to

Josef Joffe: Why Tunisia Isn’t a Tipping Point for the Arab World

[Josef Joffe is publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit.] How to explain the Tunisian revolution? By consulting Samuel Huntington—not the Huntington of Clash of Civilizations fame, but the author of The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, published in 1991. His model is too complex to be laid out here in all of its subtleties. But the basic message, to borrow from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, is: “It’s the economy, stupid!” We should also add education

John B. Judis: Why The Republicans Are Unlike Any Political Party America Has Ever Seen

[John B. Judis has been writing for The New Republic since 1984 and has been a senior editor since 1994.] In 1960, the political scientist Clinton Rossiter began his classic text, Parties and Politics in America, with the following memorable words: “No America without democracy, no democracy without politics, no parties without compromise and moderation.” Rossiter saw U.S. parties as “creatures of compromise, coalitions of interest in which principle is muted and often even silenced

Robert C. Lieberman: Why the Rich Are Getting Richer

[Robert C. Lieberman is Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs at Columbia University and the author of Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State.] The U.S. economy appears to be coming apart at the seams. Unemployment remains at nearly ten percent, the highest level in almost 30 years; foreclosures have forced millions of Americans out of their homes; and real incomes have fallen faster and further than at any time since the Great Depression. Many of t

Joel Kotkin: The Rise of the Tribes

[Joel Kotkin is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London. He is author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 and Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the Global Economy.] When Chinese President Hu Jintao comes to Washington this week, there aren't likely to be many surprises: Hu and Barack Obama will probably keep their conversation to a fairly regulated script,

Chris Matthews: What Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill Could Teach Washington Today

[Chris Matthews hosts "Hardball"on MSNBC and "The Chris Matthews Show." He was a senior aide to House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. from 1981 through 1987.] A vigorous debate over the role of government is always at the heart of our democracy. Since the shootings in Arizona, however, many have said that our partisan ferocity is unhealthy. So it seems like a good time to reflect on Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill. It would serve us well

Michael J. Green: Hu and the Communiqués

[Michael J. Green is a senior adviser and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University.] In the lead-up to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit with President Barack Obama, two past architects of America’s China policy have called for the creation of a new intellectual framework to stabilize the increasingly perilous U.S.-China relationship. Writing in the New York Times The on January 2(“How to Stay

Gordon G. Chang: How Would Reagan Handle China?

[Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China.] Zbigniew Brzezinski has high hopes for President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington this week. Writing in the New York Times — often a showcase for hyperbole — President Carter’s national-security adviser terms the January 19 summit “the most important top-level United States–Chinese encounter since Deng Xiaoping’s historic trip more than 30 years ago.” Why is the meeting so consequential? Relations bet

William C. Inboden: Why Obama Should Think of MLK During Hu's Visit

[William C. Inboden is a Contributing Editor at Foreign Policy magazine.] Most years during the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend, I re-read a few of his sermons, as a way of reflecting on his legacy. This year, I read a passage in one of those sermons that seems especially timely: "Christianity insists that man is an end because he is a child of God, made in God's image. Man is more than a producing animal guided by economic forces; he is a being of spirit, cro

Jonah Goldberg: America's paranoid China syndrome

[Jonah Goldberg is an American conservative syndicated columnist and author.] Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit this week has rekindled the familiar debate over American "decline." Our sole-superpower moment is over, we're told, and the 21st century will prove so much tougher than the 20th. I'm just not sure what all the fuss is about. Perhaps one source of confusion is this whole sole-superpower business. It's true that from the early 199

Richard D Wolff: The myth of 'American exceptionalism' implodes

[Richard D Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008.] One aspect of "American exceptionalism" was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the middle and poor, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citi

Francis Fukuyama: US democracy has little to teach China

[The writer is a fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His latest book, The Origins of Political Order, will be published in the spring.] The first decade of the 21-century has seen a dramatic reversal of fortune in the relative prestige of different political and economic models. Ten years ago, on the eve of the puncturing of the dotcom bubble, the US held the high ground. Its democracy was widely emulated, if not always loved; its

Jay Cost: A Majority—If You Can Keep It

[Jay Cost is a WEEKLY STANDARD staff writer.] The 112th House of Representatives, which convened for the first time last week, is in many respects a historic one. The Republican majority of 242 representatives is larger than any the party enjoyed from 1994 to 2006. Of course, the Republican Revolution of 1994 broke 40 years of Democratic control of the House, but even the GOP’s brief majority of 1952-54, built on Dwight Eisenhower’s coattails, reached just 221 seats. One has to go a

Michael Barone: After the Horror, Inspiration

[Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examine.] In his superb speech in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday evening, Pres. Barack Obama did great service to the nation. He put to rest the libel that political incivility is responsible for the Tucson shootings. He did so with three words that he added to the written text: “It did not.” And he lifted the spirits not only of the inappropriately boisterous audience in the McKale Center, but of people across Am

Steve Kornacki: Jesse Helms and MLK

[Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor.] The national holiday commemorating Martin Luther King that we celebrate today comes with a bitter irony: Its creation nearly three decades ago was instrumental in rescuing and extending the career of one of the most notorious race-baiters in modern American politics. It was the fall of 1983 and Jesse Helms seemed destined for political extinction. The staunchly conservative senator was due to stand for reelection the following ye

Joseph A. Bosco: What Obama should tell China's President Hu: No, you can't

[Joseph A. Bosco served in the office of the secretary of defense as China country desk officer and previously taught graduate seminars on China-US relations at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is now a national security consultant.] It is time for an honest reckoning with China. That’s what President Obama should tell President Hu Jintao when he visits the US next week. For 30 years, far from “containing” China, the United States an

Robert J. Samuelson: The Shadow of the '60s

[Robert J. Samuelson is a columnist for the WaPo.] We are, it's said, living through the most wrenching period since the end of World War II. Unemployment has exceeded 9 percent for 20 months, and it's unclear when it will decisively decline. Americans' faith in the future has been shaken; a recent Gallup poll finds that only one in seven thinks it "very likely" that today's children will "have a better life than their parents." The feelings and facts are genuine, but the

Michael J. Green and Daniel M. Kliman: What the U.S. and Other Democracies Must Make Clear to China

[Michael J. Green is a senior adviser and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an associate professor at Georgetown University. Daniel M. Kliman, a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security, is writing a book on rising powers.] When Chinese President Hu Jintao visits Washington this week, there will be lots of ruffles and flourishes. Both governments will refer to the "positive, cooperative and comprehensive" relationship th

John McWhorter: English Will Remain the World's Language

[McWhorter is a William Simon Fellow at Columbia University and a contributing editor at The New Republic.] The data would seem to be in: China is poised to become the world’s economic leader within the next few decades. But there are those under the impression that this will mean a sea change in the world’s linguistic terrain as well. Certainly, any human being who seeks education, influence, or power should be learning Mandarin, right? Wrong. The world’s de facto inte

Ted Galen Carpenter: Winners and Losers Regarding Iraq

[Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of eight books on international affairs, including Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America.] If one were keeping a scorecard of the geopolitical competition to influence the destiny of post-Saddam Iraq, the identity of the winners and losers is becoming rather clear. And the outcome is not very pleasant. The two big losers are S