When archaeologists unearth the relics of the American Century, the space race will be our Holy Grail. Space was our New World. In 1962, when John F. Kennedy declared “we choose to go to the moon,” he encouraged every American to look up to the stars and summon the spirit of Columbus staring across the Atlantic. During the Apollo program every American taxpayer became a deckhand on the voyage to the moon. It was a journey that created the world we now live in, spawning GPS systems, plastics, alloy metals, cordless power tools and cancer detecting CAT scans (more)
Last week’s bipartisan health care summit was fascinating. It was the second time in as many months that the President ran a veritable session of parliament—in America. (more)
For 20th century Americans, the road trip was an essential right of passage. In the priceless years before cell phones, the road trip meant spending unreachable hours out on the open highway, pointing your headlights west and chasing a sunset at 60 mph. It allowed young Americans to learn about themselves and the country they were destined to inherit. Nothing quite summoned the spirit of the pioneers like getting behind the wheel of a Buick Electra and tracing their footsteps through the golden cornfields of Nebraska and on into the embrace of the Rocky Mountains. (more)
We give too much attention to a rehearsed world, one in which newsworthy events amount to little more than staged press conferences. Yet every now and then it happens: Someone pushes through the crowd and demands an explanation. When it happens, it’s priceless. The best within us resides upon those unscripted moments. (more)
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran began enriching uranium to a higher level on Tuesday over the vociferous objections of the U.S. and its allies who fear the process could eventually be used to give the Islamic republic nuclear weapons. (more)
Abstract: In the real world, as opposed to what French President Nicolas Sarkozy calls President Barack Obama’s "virtual world," America faces the reality of Iran’s intransigence and aggressiveness; China’s headlong pursuit of its own national, regional, and global interests; Russia’s determination to regain its Near Abroad; the Arab states’ refusal to accept any kind of a reasonable settlement of the kind that Israel has already offered under several governments; Syria’s designs on Lebanon; and Hugo Chávez’s designs on the weaker countries in Latin America. President Obama’s foreign policy agenda of gradual American retreat will have inexorable consequences: When erstwhile allies see the American umbrella being withdrawn, they will have to accommodate themselves to those from whom we were protecting them. If Obama proves impervious to empirical evidence and experience, all these accommodations, the weakening of alliances, the strengthening of centers of adversarial power in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas, and elsewhere will continue until we are awakened by some cataclysm. (more)























