Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie promoted and even committed violent acts against the Apartheid regime. Earlier this year , I summarized Tom Lodge’s review of Stephen Ellis’s External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960-1990 , which maintains that Mandela was part of a small group of . . . . Continue Reading »
Timothy Snyder ponders the future of Ukraine . There aren’t many good results. The protests can’t force the issue, since there is no election on the horizon. An attempted no confidence vote has failed. It’s not clear that the police and military will be able to keep the protests . . . . Continue Reading »
R. R. Reno thinks that Francis is best described as a “populist .” In another in a series of carefully balanced essays on the Pope, Reno assesses the pluses and minuses of populist papalism. Reno says that he finds Francis’s “generalizations” about capitalism and the . . . . Continue Reading »
George Weigel characterizes Pope Francis a “revolutionary,” but insists that he is not a revolutionary in the ways most observers have suggested. Weigel writes, “The pope is passionately concerned about the poor, and he knows that poverty in the 21st century takes many forms. It . . . . Continue Reading »
The Economist contrasts the Chinese response to the Philippine typhoon with the American one: “The initial response from China was niggardlya mere $100,000. It was hard not to see this as a slap on the wrist for the Philippines temerity in standing up to China over disputed shoals in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Charles Krauthammer isn’t the only one who says the fiasco of Obamacare threatens liberal social policy. Franklin Foer thinks so too. In sounding the alarm in TNR , Foer gives this forthright precis of liberal faith in the transformative power of the state: “Back when Woodrow Wilson was . . . . Continue Reading »
The Supreme Court has two culture-war cases on its menu this term. At the NYRB , David Cole sums up several of them. Greece v. Galloway addresses the question of “whether government-sponsored religious speech violates the Establishment Clause.” Cole elaborates: “That test, which . . . . Continue Reading »
Malise Ruthven reviews Akbar Ahmed’s The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam at the NYRB . One of the key themes of the book is that the US has mistaken the identity of its opponents by treating them as ideologues rather than as . . . . Continue Reading »
Even after extensive research, Carrie Rosefsky Wickham hasn’t quite cracked Egypt’s secretive Muslim Brotherhood . But the TLS reviewer gives enough to leave us worried. The Brotherhood’s emphasis on the status and dignity of Muslims alone was a break with Egyptian . . . . Continue Reading »
A couple of days ago, Rusty Reno offered one of the most astute analyses of the Pope’s recent comments on gay marriage, abortion, and contraception. Reno said that the comments were in themselves innocuous, but the fact that Francis expresses himself in the rhetoric of progressivism creates . . . . Continue Reading »
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