Archive | Commentary RSS feed for this section

The High Road of Hope and Prosperity

Commentary by , June 20, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. Did Monticello Just Evict Thomas Jefferson? Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, has just completed a restoration of the house’s outbuildings and slave quarters. The way the New York Times describes it, this is being used as an excuse to evict Jefferson from his own house. The […]

Comments are closed

The Thatcher Line

Commentary by , June 15, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Thatcher Line It is totally in keeping with the tone of the current political debate that the news that is actually most important is the least discussed. Here is what’s really important: we’re careening headlong past the Thatcher Line, the point at which the government runs […]

Comments are closed

“Why Can’t We Hate?”

Commentary by , June 11, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Geopolitics of Resentment Donald Trump’s so-called “populism” is a euphemism for a politics that is primarily about venting your resentment, sticking a finger in somebody’s eye without really caring about any other consequences. Consider Trump’s handling of the latest G-7 Summit, which is supposed to be […]

Comments are closed

IT-Backed Authoritarianism

Commentary by , June 8, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. “IT-Backed Authoritarianism” If you want to know where Google’s social-engineering aspirations are headed, you don’t need to look to the future. Look to China’s “social credit system,” a merger of Western-style financial credit scores with a more nebulous and politicized measure of a citizen’s orderliness—and political loyalty. […]

Comments are closed

The Spies Who Came Back to the Cold

Commentary by , June 2, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Right to Try The best part of the Trump administration, underneath the overhanging existential dread, is the push for deregulation. A lot of this has been done through executive action, which is of limited value because it can be undone by the next president (something Barack […]

Comments are closed

Generic Democratic Candidate

Commentary by , May 28, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Gods of the Copybook Headings In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: […]

Comments are closed

Weaponized Classical Music

Commentary by , May 21, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. I’m Sorry, Dave, I’m Afraid I Can’t Let You Do That A while back, I warned that big Silicon Valley companies like Google depend on an implicit social contract in which we agree to let them have access to a bunch of our data, but with the […]

Comments are closed

Workingmen and Reformers

Commentary by , May 10, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. Fighting the Last Election The Republican Party just got through a difficult party primary day in which there were several local candidates who seemed like they might win by adopting a Trumpian style, but who had severe weaknesses as general election candidates. The chief of these was […]

Comments are closed

Escape from Utopia

Commentary by , May 3, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today Here is your latest update, for subscribers only, recommending five stories that are worth catching. 1. “We’ve Always Known They Were Lying” So it turns out that Iran was lying the whole time when it made a deal with the Obama administration about its nuclear weapons program. I […]

Comments are closed

Just “Imagine,” or Trust But Verify?

Commentary by , April 30, 2018

Five Things You Need to Read Today Here is your latest update, for subscribers only, recommending five stories that are worth catching. 1. Just “Imagine”–or Trust But Verify? So is this peace overture from North Korea for real? Well, maybe. But probably not. North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Un has visited South Korea–in itself a first–and […]

Comments are closed