Sublime
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AS WASHINGTON CONTEMPLATED the postwar world and wondered how to make America happy, free, and powerful, he was uniquely well positioned to affect the outcome. Adams, Jay, and Franklin were off on diplomatic assignment in Europe, while Hamilton and Madison were too junior to assume leadership roles. Washington had eliminated or outlived his militar
... See moreRon Chernow • Washington
In the post-war period, much of the non-communist world was opened up to US domination by tactics of this sort. This became the method of choice to fight off the threat of communist insurgencies and revolution, entailing an anti-democratic (and even more emphatically anti-populist and anti-socialist/communist) strategy on the part of the US that pu
... See moreDavid Harvey • A Brief History of Neoliberalism
The core problem of the next sociopolitical cycle will be demographic. I pointed this out in The Next 100 Years when I wrote that one of the central problems was the decline in birth rates and the extension of life expectancy.
George Friedman • The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
As Real America breaks down the ossified libertarianism of Free America, Just America assaults the complacent meritocracy of Smart America. It does the hard, essential thing that the other three narratives avoid, that white Americans have avoided throughout our history. It forces us to see the straight line that runs from slavery and segregation to
... See moreGeorge Packer • Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO
Ben Horowitz • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Reopening the American Mind
The 1824 election came down to a contest between a member of the English elite, John Quincy Adams, and a member of the Scots-Irish lower class, Andrew Jackson.
George Friedman • The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond
Where to intervene? Where to bring democracy? Where to nation-build? I propose a single criterion: where it counts. Call it democratic realism. And this is its axiom: We will support democracy everywhere, but we will commit blood and treasure only in places where there is a strategic necessity—meaning, places central to the larger war against the e
... See moreCharles Krauthammer • Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics
Had the siege of Bataan pitted Japan against the United States, it would have been dramatic enough. But three-quarters of MacArthur’s men there were Filipino. The siege thus layered political questions atop military ones. Would the Filipinos fight for their empire? And would their empire fight for them? Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated his position
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