The Price of Empire

One can understand the shock, the horror, the unbelief as the war most Americans didn't know was going on or didn't choose to acknowledge came home in such a brutal, deadly fashion in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon. This was obviously a coordinated attack, carried...

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When Will We Learn?

The terrorist attacks against America comprise a horrible tragedy. But they shouldn't be a surprise. It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth – that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda. But sanity was a prior casualty: it was the loss...

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Cheating as a Way of Life

Four students and I were helping Professor Gan clean his backyard. We were probably the first group to do so in the last 50 years. All day we threw old, rotten wood and ancient bricks into a dumpster and smoked cigarettes to regain strength whenever we could. Midway...

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TERROR

The World Trade Center – monument of the New York business community, towering over downtown Manhattan like twin silver phalli pointed at heaven – is but a pile of smoldering rubble. Crashing down along with this symbol of capitalism, modernity, and...

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WAR BY PROXY

I wrote a column subtitled, "How do we know what's going on in Macedonia?," which concluded that I would have to go there myself to find out. But that is really far too general a question for just one short visit, so I'll have to narrow it a bit, and get down to the...

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Disband NATO

More than ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO forces, as always led by the Americans, are dancing more than the "Texas Two-Step" in their role of self definition and sought after justification, on the world stage. NATO's image is that of a crippled man...

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STANDING UP FOR MACEDONIA

Saturday is "National Day" in Macedonia, the tenth anniversary of its founding – just in time to mark the dissolution of that beleaguered nation. NATO's latest conquest is putting up as much resistance as it can muster, but, at this late date, that doesn't seem...

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War on X … When the Metaphor Becomes Too Real

Beyond the day-to-day news out of Palestine or Macedonia, Sudan or Indonesia, a question keeps nagging at some of us. Why is it that politicians, and particularly American politicians, seem so compliant and lackadaisical about the ramifications of endorsing war as a...

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WHEELER’S PROGRESS

Author's note: This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the recent Rockford Institute conference on "The American Midwest." It is relevant, here, as a lesson in how modern progressives (who have lost their ideological bearings to such an extent that they are now...

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