We should not have needed the likes of Robert Conquest to describe and awaken us to the horrors of the Soviet Union. We should not have needed him to tell us that Joseph Stalin was a monster. We should not have needed him to tell us that the monstrousness of Stalin was the direct and …
Vladimir Putin’s Dangerous Thoughts
The president of Russia happens to think that the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 was not so bad, and possibly, fine and dandy. Of course, it ought to go without saying that he could not be more wrong in this assessment: 2014 will be remembered as a year in which Eastern Europe suffered one of its …
Kudos to Eugene Volokh and the Volokh Conspiracy
He and they are the subjects of a properly admiring profile, one that describes very accurately the scope of the Conspiracy's influence: Last week, when the Supreme Court heard arguments over whether religiously owned corporations like Hobby Lobby should be exempt from providing contraception coverage to their employees, the government’s reply brief cited dozens of cases and …
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Quote of the Day
Another lesson of Mr. Sestanovich's book is that diplomatic engagement with U.S. enemies is a fool's errand unless it's aimed at achieving a deeper strategic purpose. Take Ronald Reagan's personal diplomacy with Mikhail Gorbachev. Progressives today point to that diplomacy to defend their own concessions to U.S. adversaries. But such thinking, Mr. Sestanovich suggests, misses …
Quote of the Day
[George] Kennan was right to think he had an artist’s temperament at war with a foreign service officer’s ambition. He was twenty-six years in the service of the United States in Riga, Vienna, Prague, Lisbon, and Moscow, where he set up the first US embassy when US–Soviet diplomatic relations were established in 1933. He was in …
More on Pete Seeger
Presumably, we are meant to think well of someone who left behind this legacy: Along with countless other sensible people, I have often bristled at the mindless deification of Pete Seeger, the nonagenarian folk singer who died yesterday at age 94. I have no doubt that Seeger was a lovely man (a mutual friend, who became …
Pejman Yousefzadeh 