June 2023
Constitutional Changes
The United States has enjoyed a prolonged democracy thanks to divided rule: three equal institutions: Administration, Congress, and Supreme Court. Each of these institutions have problematic periods in our history, but rarely at the same time. Today, all three need considerable reform if our government is to continue to be a beacon to the world.
Presidency.
The election system for president is suffering from a poorly performing Primary Election system. Our first pre more...
Bigotry?s Sloppy Language
When I hear "Power to the people," I really want to know who "the people" are. This is the sloppiness of references because it implies the people, journalists, intellectuals, Jews, Chinese, Blacks, elites, are all one thing. One does not have to live to a great age to know that there is no "all" of any category that is just one thing.
The most common hate mongers today talk about hating "elites." What kind of elites? Are very rich people elite? Would you include prize fighters or more...
The most common hate mongers today talk about hating "elites." What kind of elites? Are very rich people elite? Would you include prize fighters or more...
July 2022
Critical Race Theory Conspiracy
The Republican "Base," the followers of Donald Trump, are scornful of "elites," by which they mean educated. Elites once included the rich and powerful, but these categories don?t bother the true believers as much as the "intellectuals."
Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the product of scholar-advocates in the 1970s and 1980s at university level, who were interested in exploring how law and other forms of public policy could secure and protect civil rights, yet simultaneously more...
Putin?s War Playbook
April 22, 2022
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian
Putin?s background was as a KGB spy, not a military expert. He uses war as a blunt cudgel, not what modern military professionals would do. His war decisions are a direct demonstration of his character. He gambles shrewdly, takes risks, and is never constrained by empathy or conscience. It has worked for him so far.
Mainstream media often invite both active and retired military officers to guide us through more...
Laina Farhat-Holzman
Pajaronian
Putin?s background was as a KGB spy, not a military expert. He uses war as a blunt cudgel, not what modern military professionals would do. His war decisions are a direct demonstration of his character. He gambles shrewdly, takes risks, and is never constrained by empathy or conscience. It has worked for him so far.
Mainstream media often invite both active and retired military officers to guide us through more...
Reliable Sources: How Do You Know That? (Part 2)
With a few exceptions, (such as the sunrise appears in the east, the earth is a globe, and the moon has predictable cycle), we cannot know that something is undeniable. Almost all other reliable facts are conditional. Truth depends upon honest witnesses, experienced observers, or professionally trained and peer reviewed expertise. The following list has served me well as a historian and commentator.
Science.
Western science is a process that changes as new information comes more...
Science.
Western science is a process that changes as new information comes more...
Reliable Sources: How Do You Know That? (Part 1)
Last week, we discussed a danger to Democracy: a flood of disinformation. Disinformation is not misinformation (not getting it right): it is deliberate lying. Whoopy Goldberg was misinformed when she said the Holocaust was a religious, not racial issue, and that Jews are White. However, the Nazis considered it a racial issue. They didn?t care if a Jew was practicing their religion or not; they believed in "blood" identity, and were willing to trace Jewish origins for several generations. more...
Separating Truth from Lies
One of the most dangerous things facing representative government is that there must be a common acceptance of what is real. Intelligent people think, seek accurate information, and have good character. They expect good character in their representatives, which is the basis for trust. Without trust in our institutons and governments, democracy cannot survive.
We are already on the cusp of what is called "illiberal democracy," characterized by widespread distrust in govern more...
Putin the Angry
Putin is a fascinating man. He is enjoying what he appears most hungry for: attention. Russia experts suggest motives and intentions that seem to explain his actions and the world watches anxiously. The Russian people, however, are only given a diet of lying Russian media, almost all controlled today by the leader of their pretend republic.
A dictator?s playbook does not permit scrutiny, criticism, or contradiction, therefore the press cannot carry out its mandate in libe more...
November 2021
Steve Bannon: Anarchist Operative
Last week, this column explored Vladimir Putin?s role in destabilizing democracies. We have our own home-grown anarchist: Steve Bannon, who has gleefully fomented chaos both here and in Europe.
Anarchy cannot get far because its very structure relies on no rules: selfishness does not organize. When the goal is to destroy governments, there is nothing to replace one order with another. Devoted anarchists have always fantasized about a brave new world that will emerge after more...
Vladimir Putin Again
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War ended with the United States the winner. Pundits worried about the world with just one superpower, but for a time our model of representative government and free market economics inspired much of the world to give it a try.
Russia emerged naked from its collapse, most of its former captive empire declaring independence. But it didn?t take long for the Russians to re-take its Central Asian colonies by placing Soviet-trained authoritaria more...
Russia emerged naked from its collapse, most of its former captive empire declaring independence. But it didn?t take long for the Russians to re-take its Central Asian colonies by placing Soviet-trained authoritaria more...
The Fate of Tyrants
Our news media have a short attention span. Otherwise savvy commentators talk about Trump?s future run for president in 2024. A lot can happen in the next three years that they didn?t see coming.
Former president Trump today wears a perpetual scowl, bitterly denying that he lost the 2020 election. His life-long practice of blaming his own failures on the cheating of his adversaries isn?t working, despite lying about "thousands of fake ballots." But his gullible cult worshippers c more...
Former president Trump today wears a perpetual scowl, bitterly denying that he lost the 2020 election. His life-long practice of blaming his own failures on the cheating of his adversaries isn?t working, despite lying about "thousands of fake ballots." But his gullible cult worshippers c more...
April 2020
Saving Our Republic
In my last column: "Too Much Democracy," the question was raised that we were designed to be a republic, not a democracy, and now do we have too much democracy? The danger facing the survival of our liberal democracy (rule of law, private property, government of honorable and competent representatives and office holders) is facing divisions we have not experienced since the 1930s and 1850s.
Our founding fathers assumed that those holding office would have limited tenure a more...
November 2019
The Paranoid Style in History
Paranoia is a psychological ailment in which a person believes that everyone is out to get him. Many paranoids believe that there are hidden enemiesburied deeply in society (deep state) who are responsible for their own miseries. They believe that the elites (the educated and/or the wealthy) deliberately keep the poor and miserable from thriving.
The latter category are not psychologically afflicted, but are rather victims of manipulators who play upon the "unfairness" of those i more...
The latter category are not psychologically afflicted, but are rather victims of manipulators who play upon the "unfairness" of those i more...
August 2019
Sticks and Stones: Words Matter
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." This saying was aimed at children, to arm them against verbal bullies. It is also linked to our First Amendment, freedom of speech, even when people to say things that we hate, but protect their right to say them.
Such freedom, however, ends with speech that can endanger life: falsely crying "fire" in a crowded theater, or urging riot in the public square. "Let?s go kill the?.aristocrats" during the Fr more...
Rogues? Gallery for Impeachment
Retired Admiral William McRaven, a man of sterling character, has been making the rounds of interviews to talk about his book, Sea Stories. He has said that the greatest danger that America faces is not the attacks of Russia or China, but the rhetoric of President Trump. Presidents, he said, will come and go, but our institutions remain, the bulwark of our democracy.
From President Thomas Jefferson until now (except for Nixon), presidents have supported the free press as e more...
The Mueller Report Summaries, Part 1
There has been so much anxious anticipation of what the Mueller Report would tell us?at least anticipation of people who care about rule of law. I suspect the number of people who cared would be about the same as those voters who care about foreign policy: ten percent in peaceful times, and 20 percent in times of danger.
I am one of that caring group, and have been since my childhood during World War II, when my father followed events with pins on a world map in our kitche more...
The Function of Impeachments
One of our country?s most distinguished magazines, The Atlantic Monthly, founded in 1857, was non-partisan, dedicated to impartial liberty, and to wage war against despotism in every form. They so rarely weighed in on presidents that they counted only three times: Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, and Hillary Clinton.
Their endorsement of Clinton was not support of her as much as it was alarm over Donald Trump, whom they saw as "spectacularly unfit for office." "His affect more...
November 2018
Attacks on the Press are now global.
Throughout history, the legitimacy of rulers had nothing to do with behavior, but with bloodline or conquest. Kings and emperors ruled, sometimes with the guidance of counselors, but more often with no overt opposition. There was opposition, of course, but clandestine, coming from rivals for the throne or (rarely) from public outrage.
We must consult folk tales to glimpse how ordinary people might have felt about their rulers. Many tales talk about evil rulers, wh more...
August 2018
The Assault on Truth
Human beings sometimes lie. How much they deliberately tell an untruth varies according to the nature of their society. Oppressive countries are so punitive that people need to lie to survive. However, if a society is to function at all, there needs to be a set body of facts that are recognized as real. We are living at a time that such agreement on facts is being challenged from all sides, not just from our unusual president, who has recently told veterans at a rally "don?t believe what you see more...
Thirteen Russians Indicted for Election Meddling
For several years now, we have heard about Information Warfare, a new way of fighting enemy countries. This method is as much of an "equalizer" as was the invention of firearms in the late middle age, which gave even a weak man lethality equivalent to a talented swordsman. Keen observers have always warned us that great new inventions can have terrible consequences. Although it is wonderful to have information so available to everyone, regardless of power and wealth, it is not wo more...
October 2016
Discrediting Wikileaks is Overdue!
On October 17, no doubt under US pressure, the Ecuador Embassy housing Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, cut off his Internet access. About time!
Wikileaks has many supporters in the left-wing of our country and, of course, among the salivating press. This organization began as a righteous outing of political misdeeds by giving whistle blowers an opportunity to condemn what they considered commercial or government secrets. Who doesn?t admire a whistle blower, someone m more...
January 2015
Whose Fault Are the French Jihadi Murders?
After a horror such as the French-born Muslim assassinations of the editors and cartoonists of a national humor magazine who "insulted" Islam, everyone asks: whose fault was this? Were the French intelligence sources inadequate? Did the sarcastic humor of the French journal provoke sensitive Muslims? Were the killers not sufficiently loved by their mothers? The only question not overtly asked was: "Is there something about Islam that promotes murderous rage?" Even without asking this, Mu more...
May 2012
Should the New York Security Police Be Called Off?
Several reporters have received the Pulitzer Prize for journalism for their investigation of the New York Police Department “spying” on Muslim communities. These reporters claim Muslims are being “unfairly profiled” and their privacy violated. Should we make the police stop their spying? Do we want no profiling at all, in the name of “fairness?”
The first duty of all government is to protect people from violence and criminal activity. Most of us, even those champions more...
The first duty of all government is to protect people from violence and criminal activity. Most of us, even those champions more...
August 2011
All the News That’s Fit To Print?
We treasure our freedom of speech, which is the very first amendment in our constitution. We consider the press to be an arm of our democracy, with its primary responsibility to be the watchdog over government power and its possible abuse. When investigative journalism works as it should, we all benefit from governance in which officials cannot get away with corruption for long. Not all get caught, but enough do to serve as a warning to the rest.
Look at Afghanistan, where the gov more...
Look at Afghanistan, where the gov more...