Print media is under siege in France, too—but with a Gallic twist.

Little things can indeed mean a lot in China’s challenge to U.S.
preeminence in the Pacific.

A conversation with Bernard Schwartz and William A. Galston on
options for financing U.S. infrastructure renewal.

Who is killing the public unions?Some people, like the tens of thousands of protesters in Madison and the tens of millions of Americans who agree with them, believe that the villains are scheming corporate interests, Fox News, Tea Party ‘fanatics’ and opportunistically populist politicians like Scott Walker.Many of their opponents agree that the right is […]

Let England Shake By P.J. Harvey As you look back over the past decade of popular music, the thing that stands out is how introspective and self-obsessed much of it has been. Given the significance of the events that transpired in the 2000s—from the attacks of 9/11, to an unprecedented two simultaneous foreign wars waged […]

It has been an eerie experience rereading Thucydides while watching governments totter across the Arab world.  In some ways, nothing has changed in 2500 years; revolution was an important part of Thucydides’ world and changes in government in Greek city states would cause those cities to shift from a pro-Athens to a pro-Sparta orientation.The revolutionary […]

There were two stories about the military chaplaincy in the February 8, 2011 issue of The Christian Century.  The first dealt with the disproportional representation of Evangelicals among chaplains today—33%, while the number of soldiers belonging to Evangelical churches is 3%. This situation is unlikely to change. 87% of individuals seeking to be chaplains in […]

Is America in a race to the bottom, or are we going through what the Austrian born economist Joseph Schumpeter would call a process of “creative destruction”?As readers over thirty will remember, Ronald Reagan used to tell the story of two boys: a pessimist and an optimist.  A psychologist put the pessimistic boy in a […]

[Published in the IHT under the headline “The Tea Party and US Foreign Policy”]The rise of the Tea Party movement has been the most controversial and dramatic development in U.S. politics in many years. Supporters have hailed it as a return to core American values; opponents have seen it as a racist, reactionary and ultimately […]

OK, now things are finally starting to get interesting in the Middle East. Tunisia was noteworthy, but not critical. Egypt has been very dramatic, though wildly misinterpreted by most observers in the United States. Jordan is still more or less stable, but is in fact more portentous a stake in some ways than Egypt. But […]