In one way, Robert Kagan’s recent “long-form” (7,000 words) essay in the Washington Post, “The strongmen strike back”, is an honest, intelligent examination of the rise of illiberalism in the modern world, a phenomenon as incontestable as it is dispiriting. In another way, Bob’s latest and longest is a bit of a con job, and…
Search Results for: Brexit
The dollar still sound as a dollar, studies show
If you search on the Internet for “Why the dollar will never collapse” or, conversely, “Why the dollar will collapse”, well, you’ll get a lot of hits. What you won’t find, unfortunately, is a piece I read in Bloomberg several weeks ago explaining, well, why the almighty dollar remains so goddamned almighty, and which I…
Imagine how rich we would be if we didn’t pay taxes!
Well, it would be cool, wouldn’t it? How about if we just stayed home from work and did whatever we wanted? Our employers would be totally screwed! Yeah, and what if we bought a car on time and then didn’t make any payments! A Beemer for free? Yeah, I’d take that deal! That sort of…
A World of Struggle at Harvard Law
(Author’s Note: The following is a sprawling takedown of David Kennedy’s A World of Struggle, a book that clearly got my goat.) Pankaj Mishra is the author of several fascinating books, including From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and his new one Age of Anger, which I am struggling to get…
Yo, Paleoliberals! You can’t go home again! (not really)
David Ignatius reports that Charles Peters, long-time editor of the Washington Monthly and, not incidentally, one-time mentor/editor to David, has the solution to the Democrats’ electoral woes, presented in his new book We Do Our Part. In writing the book, Charlie gets in line behind paleolibs Thomas “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Frank and Michael…
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald Trump
On November 9, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte engineered a coup that made him First Consul and ended republican government in France. By the date of the Republican calendar then in effect in France, the date was 18 Brumaire in the year VIII.1 In 1852, Karl Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, commemorating in contempt…
Finger-Pointing in the Dark: The Rout of Neo-Liberalism
It is, appropriately enough, gray and wet in Washington, DC this morning. Brilliant sunshine would be almost more irony than one could bear. Brexit was a stunner. Compared to Donald Trump, it was a popgun. It’s become overwhelmingly clear that the real cost of the Great Recession was not the cost of fighting our way…
Globalism lays an egg. Why?
As unprecedentedly awful as America’s politics are right now, in one way, we’re perfectly normal, because we’re just like everyone else. The monumental disarray of our Republican and Democratic parties is perfectly mirrored in the UK by the Conservatives and Laborites. Donald Trump and Boris Johnson could be twins. The specter haunting Europe these days…
Paul and the Europeans
Paul Krugman has explained, several times that he is a very reluctant, though thoroughly convinced anti-Brexit kind of guy. Why so reluctant? Because of the “sad reality” that the EU has become: “The so-called European project began more than 60 years ago, and for many years it was a tremendous force for good. It didn’t…