Roundup: Media's Take

Roger Kaplan: How Not to Promote Freedom in Africa

[Roger Kaplan is a writer in Washington, D.C.] In a peculiar way, the fall of Zine Ben Ali, sole master of Tunisia for a quarter century, exposes the bankruptcy of a centerpiece of America's foreign policy, namely, our declared support for democracy. Two inspiring victories for liberty this month, in Sudan and Tunisia, were achieved with no help from America's multi-million dollar democracy industry; one might say despite it. In other countries, ranging from Algeria to

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

[Robert J. Samuelson is a weekly columnist for The Post, writing on political, economic and social issues.] period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received . . . in the superlative degree of comparison only." - Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities" 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 un

Mona Eltahawy: Tunisia ... the first Arab revolution

[Mona Eltahawy is a writer and lecturer on Arab issues. She writes for Qatar's Al Arab, Israel's The Jerusalem Report, Metro Canada, the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune.] Every 23 July for the past 58 years Egypt, my country of birth, has celebrated its "July revolution" that overthrew King Farouk and ended the monarchy and British occupation once and for all. It was no revolution: it was a coup staged by young army officers. And so it has

Clarence B Jones: Has Martin Luther King's dream come true?

[Clarence B Jones is scholar in residence at the Martin Luther King Jr Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. He served as speechwriter and counsel to Rev Martin Luther King Jr. His new book, co-authored with Stuart Connelly, is Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech That Transformed a Nation (2011).] In 1963, I had a contentious meeting with Robert Kennedy. In defending the civil rights achievements of his brother John and the Justice Department during his ten

Rami Khouri: Tunisia heralds a long battle for Arab reform

[The writer is a syndicated columnist and director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.] Last week’s dramatic overthrow of the Tunisian regime headed by former President Zein el-Abedeen Ben Ali will not provoke immediate street revolutions across the Arab world. While it will almost certainly inspire renewed agitation for change in many sectors of Arab society, it will also trigger pre-emptive moves for contai

Michael Knox Beran: The Psycho — and Us

[Michael Knox Beran is a contributing editor of City Journal and the author, most recently, of Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life.] If the past is any warrant for the future, the story of Jared Loughner will soon be transmuted into television crime drama, in a “ripped from the headlines” episode of one of those now numerous shows that deal largely with psychos and the detectives who try to catch them. That so much of our entertainment sho

Richard A. Posner: Why Originalism Is So Popular

[Richard A. Posner is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.] When members of the House read aloud the Constitution at the start of the legislative session last week, the event was widely regarded as a political stunt. Commentators mocked the House GOP for squabbling over the procedure for reading the text and for skipping passages that had been superseded by amendment—although it’s not clear what’s

Parag Khanna: Breaking Up Is Good to Do

[Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. This article is adapted from his new book, How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance.] This year will almost certainly see the birth of a new country named Southern Sudan. It might also witness the creation of an independent Palestine, as Palestinian leaders push for unilateral recognition of their national sovereignty within their country's 1967 borders. And within a couple of years, a so

Blair Lindsay: Arizona Shooting Pundits are Wrong: Heated Political Speech Isn't the Problem -- It's the Solution

[Blair Lindsay, a former criminal prosecutor, is a high school teacher and coach.] ...To suggest that words – angry or otherwise – need to be controlled and curtailed shows a remarkable ignorance of the history of tyranny and the history of freedom. Indeed, critics of “angry rhetoric” have it backward: Charged political speech in America isn’t the problem – it’s the solution. Raucous political discussion and debate is a hallmark of a functioning and healthy democracy. It is a safety

James Fallows: The Cloudy Logic of 'Political' Shootings

[James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. A 25-year veteran of the magazine and former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, he is also an instrument-rated pilot and a onetime program designer at Microsoft.] After this horrible news from Tucson.... ... let me amplify something I said half-coherently in a live conversation with Guy Raz on All Things Considered a little while ago. My intended point was: Shootings of political figures are by defini

Jeffrey Rosen: If Scalia Had His Way

[Jeffrey Rosen is a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic.] ...How would America change if the Scalia originalist vision — embraced by many Tea Party members — were enacted by the Supreme Court? Justice Scalia believes that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the original understanding of its 18th- and 19th-century framers and ratifiers. That, he has stressed in recent speeches, would change our constitutional u

Bill Clinton: Oklahoma Bombing Memorial Speech

In the wake of the tragedy in Tucson, it is worth revisiting Bill Clinton's speech in response to the Oklahoma City bombing:

Matthew Fuhrmann: Would a Nuclear-Armed Iran Really Be That Dangerous?

[Matthew Fuhrmann is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Todd S. Sechser is an assistant professor of politics at the University of Virginia.] ...A close look at the history of the nuclear age shows that countries with nuclear weapons are neither more likely to make coercive threats nor more likely to succeed in blackmailing their adversaries. Nuclear powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union certainly made numerous threats after they a

Michael Young: Mideast Must Stop Blaming Imperial Past

[Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.] Although the referendum on the future of south Sudan is attracting more headlines in the Arab world, civil unrest in Tunisia and Algeria, communal recrimination in Egypt following a recent bomb attack against a Coptic church, multiple crises in Yemen, and political confusion in Lebanon, as well as a host of lesser tribulations, tell a larger story. More and more, the Arab state seems incapable of managing effec

Max Blumenthal: A nation against Islam ... America's new crusade

[Max Blumenthal is a journalist whose work is published in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the Nation, the Huffington Post, Salon, and other publications. He is author of Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (Basic/Nation Books, 2009).] As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, hysteria about Muslims in American life has gripped the country. With it has come an outburst of arson attacks on mosques, campaigns to stop their construction, and the

Pete Hegseth and Wade Zirkle: A Fifth Star for David Petraeus

[Messrs. Hegseth and Zirkle are directors at Vets for Freedom. Mr. Hegseth served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division and will deploy to Afghanistan in 2011. Mr. Zirkle served two deployments to Iraq as a Marine infantry officer and is a recipient of the Purple Heart.] On a cold December evening in 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan, Gen. George Washington bade farewell to his staff and resigned his command of the Continental Army. One hundred ninety three years later,

Steve Richards: The banks debate in Britain has a 1970s parallel

[Steve Richards became The Independent’s chief political commentator in 2000.] The determined resilience of bankers seeking millions in undeserved bonuses has a tiny echo with the actions of militant union leaders in the 1970s. The more revealing parallel is the response of different governments to the two enduring crises, or rather their feeble paralysis in the face of daunting and new developments that challenge all they had come to believe. Conservative and Labour ministers were

Martin Sandbu: Aristotle – the banker’s best friend

[Martin Sandbu is the FT’s economics leader writer. His book Just Business: Arguments in Business Ethics has just been published by Prentice Hall.] Aristotle took a dim view of business. Sometimes, of course, business people give  the impression of being equally unconcerned with Aristotle’s main concern: living a good life. Just witness the grilling Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, received this week from UK legislators angry at his bank’s bonuses. Yet today’s cor

Derek Thompson: A Brief Visual History of U.S. Taxes

[Derek Thompson is an associate editor at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, business, and technology. Derek has also written for BusinessWeek, Slate and The Daily Beast.] Tax reform might be The Issue of 2011. Or, like most years, it might linger on the sidelines of the national debate, but never press its way into the limelight. Either way, the Senate Finance Committee is hearing the case for tax reform today -- and who better to hear from first than the head of the Jo

Aaron Bady: Invented Communities in Africa and America

[Aaron Bady is a Ph.D. student in African literature in UC Berkeley’s English Department. As the author of the Zunguzungu blog, he writes about literature, film, the" crisis" in higher education and a wide range of issues ranging from Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to Joseph Conrad’s"Heart of Darkness," the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke and journalistic muckraking.] In Garry Wills’