ArcaMax

The philosopher Nigel Warburton shrugged: "Users of slippery slope arguments should take skiing lessons -- you really can choose to stop." But slippery slopes are a thing precisely because people often choose to keep cruising along until they smash into Sonny Bono's tree.

Critics from both parties describe Donald Trump's behavior and policies...Read more

My mom had an uncanny ability to size up current events and accurately predict their long-term effects. Fifty years ago, I sat in my mom's colonial dining room and watched the fall of Saigon on her black-and-white TV with two folds of aluminum foil dangling from the rabbit ears. America was not riding high. A year earlier, gas rationing went ...Read more

Wars end. Bombs remain. In December 2020, the crew of an English fishing boat was pulling in a string of crab pots 22 miles northeast of Cromer, a town in Norfolk, England, when they noticed a tug on the main line. An explosion blew the Galwad-Y-Mor into the air, injuring five crew members, one of whom lost an eye. The cause was a bomb dropped...Read more

People worry about generative artificial intelligence.

Some are afraid it will put them out of work. Others think AI could become too autonomous, like the drones programmed to select their own targets. It will almost certainly accelerate the spread and power of government surveillance. Deepfakes are already being used in efforts to impact ...Read more

France's shocking surrender to Nazi Germany in June 1940 left citizens stunned and unsure how to resist the German occupation and Vichy's collaborationist regime. Distrust was everywhere -- few knew whom to confide in without risking betrayal. Prewar political parties, blamed for the defeat, lay discredited; the French Communist Party, later a ...Read more

Is anti-Zionism antisemitism? Before Hamas attacked Israel, American voters had not arrived at a consensus. They hadn't thought much about it. Asked whether the two terms were synonymous, 62% of respondents to a Brookings Institution poll taken seven months earlier said they didn't know. Fifteen percent replied yes, and 21% said no.

For the ...Read more

American popular culture, ever promoting the myth that we live in the land of the free and the brave, wants us to believe that we stand up to bullying. Even if bravery is in short supply at times, like during McCarthyism, someone like attorney Joseph Welch ultimately comes to the rescue. Breaking the spell, the First Amendment hero stands strong...Read more

In high school, when we studied the separation of powers, I asked my civics teacher: "What happens if the executive branch ignores the judiciary?" He didn't have much of an answer.

It has happened before. One famous case was Andrew Jackson's refusal to enforce a Supreme Court ruling overturning Georgia's seizure of Cherokee lands. "(Chief ...Read more

Echoing other analysts, New York Times opinion columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote: "What happened in the Oval Office on (Feb. 28) ... was something that had never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country: In a major war in Europe, our president clearly sided with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, ...Read more

Donald Trump's interest in rapprochement with Russia and his annoyance with Ukraine, embodied by last week's Oval Office shouting match, has corporate pundits and politicians freaking out. Trump's former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Trump's dressing down of Volodymyr Zelenskyy made him "ashamed for my nation" -- something he's ...Read more

For this essay, let's not debate the pros and cons of our new old president. Detailing specific reasons that many Americans are upset with/scared of/annoyed by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party would be a distraction from a point that desperately needs to be made. Suffice it to say, millions of people are angry, disappointed and ...Read more

As Democrats continue to deconstruct the root causes of their recent defeat and attempt to regroup for next year's midterm elections, they might want to consider a new factor in American politics: the seductive power of a movement compared to a boring old party.

On the surface, the 60th American presidential election was the usual two-way ...Read more

When I was young, I knew a lot about old people. Especially about old people I knew personally: members of my family, my mother's contemporaneous older friends, teachers, clients on my paper route.

It wasn't a choice. When I was young, no one asked whether I was interested in events that significantly preceded my birth. They just talked. My mom...Read more