How Regime Change Breeds Demagogues
In 1989, citizens rose up and tore down the Berlin Wall. As the people toppled statues of Communist leaders in cities across Eastern Europe and rallied in their central squares, world leaders declared...
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The Universe According to Hilma af Klint
In January 1906, Hilma af Klint was offered an unusual commission. For years, the Swedish artist had been meeting with four female friends to pray, meditate, and hold séances, in which they attempted...
View ArticleThe Trudeau Scandal Happens All the Time in America
The most acute political scandal in North America—the one with the greatest chance of toppling a head of state anytime soon—is occurring not in the United States, but Canada. Prime Minister Justin...
View ArticleWhy France Is Losing the War on Anti-Semitism
In the first weeks of 2019, French authorities discovered 96 tombs desecrated in a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, the word “juden” scrawled across a bagel shop in Paris, and swastikas marring a...
View ArticleThe Branding of Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo loved hot pink lipstick, the color of crushed hibiscus blossoms, of flor de Jamaica, of bougainvillea vines crawling over stucco walls. Her chosen shade, at least later in her life, was...
View ArticleThe Weak Case for Packing the Supreme Court
The Trump era is giving Democrats a bruising lesson in the distribution of American political power. Thanks to the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandering, Republicans have enjoyed outsized...
View ArticleThe Coalition of Despots for Regime Change in Venezuela
In the early 1970s, a handful of Sandinistas were in the mountains of Nicaragua fighting to overthrow the 40-year U.S.-backed, brutal dictatorship of the Somoza family. When a powerful volcanic...
View ArticleCan American Foreign Policy Be Greened?
In the 1977 novel Edith’s Diary, by the great crime writer Patricia Highsmith, Edith is the mother of a dipsomaniacal good-for-nothing who records in her diary not the truth about her son but, instead,...
View ArticleThe Netherlands’ Burgeoning Free Speech Problem
In 2014, Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch far-right populist Party for Freedom (PVV), asked a roomful of supporters a very on-brand question: “Although actually I’m not allowed to say this … Do you...
View ArticleThe Republicans Are Deficit Hypocrites. The Democrats Should Be, Too.
Barack Obama is dumbfounded. The Republicans harangued him for eight straight years over the federal budget deficit. Now, under President Trump, the deficit is skyrocketing—with nary a peep from the...
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Why Animal Rights Is the Next Frontier for the Left
Last December, the Twitter account for the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) set off a full-fledged media furor. The tweet in question set out to enumerate the...
View ArticlePaul Manafort Did Not Deserve to Die in Prison
Paul Manafort, once the chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, will spend the next seven and a half years of his life in prison, barring early release or a pardon by the president. After being...
View ArticleBeyond Hard Time
On Wednesday, two decisions came down that both have serious implications for the criminal justice system in America. But the reactions to them couldn’t have been more different. Opponents of overly...
View ArticleThe Dying Howls of British Politics
In the movies, shapeshifters such as werewolves, witches, and demons show their true form when fatally wounded. This week Brexit, 33 months since conception and only a fortnight before its due date,...
View ArticleClimate Change Is This Generation’s Vietnam War
Every year, the world’s elite gather like the Illuminati in the Swiss chalet town of Davos for the World Economic Forum, where they discuss how to solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Often that...
View ArticleThe Amnesia of the U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment
“Donald Trump is undermining the rules-based international order.” The Economist’s headline last summer summarized a common refrain within America’s foreign policy establishment. Trump “wants to undo...
View ArticleThe Profound Emptiness of Beto O’Rourke
After months spent teasing his supporters and the political media, Beto O’Rourke surprised absolutely no one Thursday when he officially announced his candidacy for president. “We are truly now more...
View ArticleCourt-Packing Is Not a Threat to American Democracy. It’s Constitutional.
America’s founders probably would not have been surprised by former Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement last week that if he were president—though he’s not running—and the Democrats controlled...
View ArticleWhite Nationalism Is an International Threat
On Friday, a gunman stormed a pair of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, showering worshippers with gunfire, and livestreaming the country’s deadliest mass killing since 1943. “I was able to hear...
View ArticleThe Longer History of the Christchurch Attacks
On Friday, an Australian white supremacist committed a monstrous act of violence against Muslim worshippers in New Zealand. The attack, which he livestreamed, was steeped in the kind of global...
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