If you’re not a frequent reader of this blog, and, if you’re at all normal, you most assuredly are not, you’re probably not aware that I make sort of a point of ignoring a lot of the big stories of the day, figuring that a lot of, you know, important people will be commenting on…
Search Results for: Brexit
Remember Brexit? It still sucks
Remember Brexit? Remember all that “Smash the Bastardly Brussels Bureaucracy” bullshit that was floating around just a few months ago, hyped by everyone from George Will to Jill Stein? Well, now the chickens are coming home to roost, reports Politico’s Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli. It seems that trying to bail out of the global economy isn’t…
Brexit, Part 2: What is to be done?
The impact of Brexit continues to roil and rumble. Paul Krugman say’s it’s not that big a deal—well, not unless you live in the UK itself, where “it looks all too likely that the vote will both empower the worst elements in British political life and lead to the breakup of the UK itself.” So,…
Alan Vanneman’s absolutely unique take on Brexit
That’s right: Other sites sell you candy pills, but here’s the real dope.1 Plenty of people2 are having a high old time praising the Brexit vote as an uprising of the “people” against the pointy-heads, ignoring the fact that the vote also polarized the old against the young, and the “Celtic Fringe”—Scotland and Northern Ireland—against…
Yeah, I flunked Econ 101! What’s your point?
As a matter of fact, I I didn’t flunk Econ 101, because I never took it! So what? To quote Mel Brooks, I’m an old man and I’ve got a right to talk. And, to quote another old man, Richard Nixon, “I am not an intellectual, but I do read books!” Well, I do and…
I wonder if Daniel Drezner even knows what “pessimism” means
Well, I certainly do. I mean, I wonder about a lot of things, and one of the things I wonder about is Dan’s article in the WashPost from a month or two back, which he called “The most pessimistic article I have read in 2021”, a “depressing read” (says Dan) found in a recent issue…
Roy Jenkins was part of the solution, and part of the problem. Was that part of the problem?
Roy Jenkins had a fascinating life. Born in 1920 in Abersychan, a mining community in Wales, he came from a strongly “Labour” family—his father, Arthur Jenkins, was a leading official in the Union of Mineworkers, eventually becoming a member of Parliament. Jenkins himself was elected to Parliament at the age of 28, working his way…
The Billiard Ball Causality of Francis Fukuyama, Together With Other Considerations
I have recently finished reading Francis Fukuyama’s excellent book, Identity The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, published back in 2018, trying to explain why the world isn’t behaving the way Francis and I think it ought, and not doing a bad job of it at all. I’ve written round and about Dr….
Twilight of Democracy: Anne Applebaum’s front-row seat to disaster
I have already written with great approval of Anne Applebaum’s recent article for the Atlantic, History Will Judge the Complicit, while snickering at Ramesh Ponnuru’s anguished protest—for surely the dude protested too much—that he was totally not—repeat not—“complicit”. He’s just friends with people who, it so happens, are complicit”.1 Which is like a totally different…
Are we having fun yet? Why living at the end of history has become the living end
When I went to first grade, I learned to print my name and hide under my desk in case of a nuclear blast. When I went to the movies, I saw news reels of U.S. above-ground atomic weapons tests in Nevada. (Nobody worried about fallout then.) In 1968, my parents could stand on their front…