Month: October 2000

‘THE PATRIOT’ While Mel Gibson’s recent film still remains in the public mind, it might be good to look at a few issues it raises. The first is the "kids with guns!" problem so dear to a number of reviewers. All I can say to this is that young men probably matured earlier in the … Continue reading “Was There ‘Revolution’ in the American Revolution?”

The election of Vojislav Kostunica as the new president of the Yugoslav federation will undoubtedly present the citizens and political elites of Yugoslavia with an opportunity to re-conceptualize and re-articulate the political relations that define the current common state between Serbia and Montenegro. Concurrently, the new president will be confronted with many difficult obstacles in … Continue reading “Serbia and the Grand American Strategy”

This is being written before this week’s presidential debate, but I suspect it is not high-risk prognostication to suggest that the major-party candidates will sidestep this opportunity determinedly, if not necessarily with agility. Events in the Middle East over the past several weeks could open up the possibility of a thoroughgoing discussion of the unnecessary … Continue reading “Another Missed Opportunity?”

The most striking thing about the current violence in the Middle East is the manic meddling by various elements of the "international community," that floating craps game of diplomats, bureaucrats and experts who consider themselves the avatars of good sense and acceptable international behavior. Whether it’s President Clinton frantically working the phones as if this … Continue reading “Imperial Meddling in Jerusalem”

CONVENTIONAL HISTORIANS AND POLITICAL DISCONTENT Historians often view calamitous periods in human history through too many lenses. Take an imaginary happy kingdom, Ozarkia, ruled over by a hereditary monarch, Clinton Jefferson Williams. Here is a ruler with little interest in public affairs but an abiding interest in private ones. He allows his officials to terrorize … Continue reading “Rebels Against State-Building: The General Crisis of the 17th Century”

Nobody wants to acknowledge the possibility that the current violence in Jerusalem is not so much an anomaly as something like the release of pent-up hostilities on both sides that have been papered over – that there are simply too many unresolved hostilities between Palestinians and Israelis to make talks of a "peace process" anything … Continue reading “Sad Triumph of Reality”