The ongoing debate about the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” is a test for the real foundations of our country, and the maturity of our political debate. This issue has the danger of sliding further into political immaturity at best, and ugly xenophobia and discrimination at its worst. But it also has the opportunity for us […]

A study by a group led by one Dr. Darrell Francis of Britain’s National Heart and Lung Institute recently made headlines with its recommendation that fast-food joints hand out cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins to any patron who wants them, free of charge. Popping a statin with one’s Whopper and shake, the study’s authors claim, […]

“The GWOT is dead, long live the COFKATGWOT,” Walter Russell Mead likes to joke. It’s spot-on damning, really—a hamfisted rebranding could not change the essence of two wars well underway as President Obama took the reins of power. It was an early PR mistake by an Administration eager to distance itself from its predecessor, a […]

As the midterm elections approach, the political topic on everyone’s tongue is jobs. The discussion in the popular press, such as it is, takes several forms. Lately, the most common question one hears is how come the economy in general seems to be recovering from the recession but the unemployment rate is still so stubbornly […]

We have in The American Interest an ongoing project called “Nation-Building in America” and infrastructure renewal is a subject I have been trying to get covered now for some time, so far to no avail. The reason for my difficulties is my standard of adequacy: I don’t want an essay just telling my readers how […]

The last time Spain faced the Netherlands in a really big match they were wearing cuirasses and carrying swords. Nobody will be killed at Sunday’s World Cup match, but the Dutch will sing the same anthem—Het Wilhelmus—that they sang in 1573 at the siege of Haarlem and in 1577 when the Prince of Orange’s forces […]

The sudden deaths of a British Princess and a Polish President don’t have much in common, but the reactions to them do.

There’s plenty of hubris to be found on both sides of the Atlantic.

Europe’s strength lies in its diversity of history and of geography, but its weakness lies there as well.

Since 1976, when the Supreme Court decided the seminal case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Justices have been locked in what both sides see as a Manichean struggle over the constitutionality of campaign finance regulation. On one side are those Justices who view the world of politics as fraught with corruption and undue access for […]