Sublime
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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
... See moreCharles Krauthammer • Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics
One of the most robust findings in criminology is that increasing the severity of punishment has little deterrent effect. People simply aren’t as sensitive to the potential costs of crime as the rational-choice model predicts they should be, and so efforts to reduce it by cracking down have failed to justify the immense fiscal and social costs of
... See moreBen Horowitz • The Architecture of Tomorrow: An Interview With Ben Horowitz
Europe, as noted earlier, has in a short span of time gone from being the most predictable and stable region—one where history seemed to have truly ended (as suggested in an influential essay published in 1989 by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama)—to something dramatically different. Democracy, prosperity, and peace all seemed
... See moreRichard Haass • The World
socialist politician Julius Tandler, who understood that these kinds of early-life investments were a way of avoiding criminalization later. He memorably declared, “He who builds children palaces tears down prison walls.” It wasn’t paradise. These were years