By Oliver DeMille For decades the Middle East has posed many challenges to American presidents. It seems every U.S. president wants to make history by helping negotiate a lasting peace in this difficult region. Few people feel a lot of optimism about this, however. Palestinians argue that they are a people under siege, a nation under … [Read more...]
The Tyrant Next Door
November 5, 2010 by Leave a Comment
What makes a community a great place to live? The answer will vary from person to person but most of us would agree on qualities like cleanliness, order and low crime. Notably missing from those terms we use to describe a livable community is the word “freedom." In fact, occasionally the concept of freedom is found to be somewhat at odds … [Read more...]
The Reality Behind the 2010 Election: It’s the Economy
October 29, 2010 by 1 Comment
The economy is struggling, and it is driving the election. As so many have said since the Clinton campaign made it popular in the 1990s, “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” And many Americans believe the economy will continue to decline. If it does, the Obama Administration has very few tools to respond. The White House has based its entire economic … [Read more...]
O Canada: Lessons From Our Northern Neighbor
October 25, 2010 by 1 Comment
Two words that haven’t shown up together very much since the 2008 economic meltdown are "austerity" and "Canada." That’s quite an accomplishment for our neighbor to the North. Austerity has been paired with Greece, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and France in just the past 18 months. Austerity means having your economy controlled and run by … [Read more...]
Islam on Trial
October 11, 2010 by 2 Comments
A recent (ahem) debate on a forum I'm involved with started out as a discussion on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" -- a textbook example of Joseph Goebbel's "repeat a lie often enough" dictum -- but quickly deteriorated into what amounted to a trial of the Islamic faith. I claim no expertise on the subject of Islam, but I've encountered … [Read more...]
What if Elections Can’t Fix Washington?
October 7, 2010 by 3 Comments
“Clearly there was only one escape for them—into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was possible.” —George Orwell Orwell was speaking of the national leaders during Britain’s decline, but his words certainly could apply to the United States today. Independents rose as a … [Read more...]
Aggression Doesn’t Change Anything
October 6, 2010 by 7 Comments
This op-ed in the New York Times has me worried. Editorialist Frank Rich argues that our political dialogue has become more radical. The biggest reason why, he says, is panic about "a new era of cultural and demographic change." He points to cases of protesters carrying weapons or shouting incendiary phrases at political rallies. He … [Read more...]
Conditioning Us for the Next War
September 30, 2010 by 2 Comments
Just this morning I received an e-mail from a friend breathlessly warning of the dangers of impending Sharia law in America. The e-mail contained a series of photos of an Iranian boy whose arm was being crushed beneath a car's tire for the crime of stealing. Why aren't we bombing them already? Wow. I guess everything we've heard … [Read more...]
Is Government Broken? Part 1
September 27, 2010 by 2 Comments
This is part 1 of a 3-part article. Subsequent segments will be published daily. Is our government broken? More and more people think so. The current presidential administration makes periodic claims that we are in an economic recovery, but at the same time growth is still slowing and unemployment figures stay around ten percent. With … [Read more...]
The Victim Juggernaut
September 23, 2010 by 4 Comments
The way some people use the term “mainstream media,” you would think it has only four letters. The opposite of this MSM is, of course, the underground, iconoclastic, revolutionary side-stream media that is struggling to make its voice heard above the roar of the mighty river that is the mainstream. The demonization of the mainstream media … [Read more...]
