ArcaMax

They may or may not have been playing the song "The World Turned Upside Down" when Lord Charles Cornwallis's troops surrendered to Gen. George Washington at Yorktown in 1781, but there's good reason to sing it now.

Progressives tell us that it is a violation of "democracy" to allow state legislators and governors elected by voters to decide how...Read more

The congressional redistricting wars are mostly over. Much of the hoopla surrounding it is proving overheated.

Before looking at this cycle's results, a primer on the subject is in order.

The first and most important point is that the requirement that districts have equal populations seriously limits the effects of partisan redistricting. That...Read more

In recent weeks, I've noted how, as COVID-19 mask mandates fall by the wayside, the nation has been moving away from what now seems excessive risk aversion. And I've described the National Bureau of Economic Research paper assessing how the costs of the lockdowns have exceeded the benefits.

As one might expect, the damage has not been ...Read more

People talk about culture war politics as if it were a recent development -- a novelty, an exception to a historic rule that American politics is mostly about economics (who gets how much) and only occasionally gets sidetracked into culture (what people should or shouldn't be allowed to do).

In my view, that gets things backwards. Culture war ...Read more

What were the benefits and costs of the COVID-19 restrictions implemented over the last two years? It's a good time to ask that question, especially now that the masks are coming off and the lockdowns are canceled.

One useful scorecard comes from the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research, in the form of a paper by three market-...Read more

It feels like we're turning a corner.

Since the beginning of the calendar year, a lot of things have changed. More importantly, a lot of minds have changed as well. The world and the nation don't look like they used to, and don't seem likely to again any time soon.

Consider the masks. On New Year's Day, 30% of people in 11 states and the ...Read more

"The language people speak in the corridors of power is not economics or politics. It is history." So says former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, quoted in a column on Ukraine by historian Niall Ferguson.

Thus Democratic insiders and sympathetic journalists liked to describe President Joe Biden as another Franklin Roosevelt, even though ...Read more

"Who rules the Heartland rules the World Island. Who rules the World Island commands the world." So wrote the geography professor and occasional member of Parliament Halford Mackinder in his 1919 book "Democratic Ideals and Reality."

Mackinder's Heartland was vaguely defined to include the Eurasian landmass from central Europe eastward across ...Read more

It turns out that we live in a nationalist world. That's one of the lessons people are learning from the surprise early results of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

This is certainly not a welcome development for Davos Man -- for the leaders of great international agencies, financial institutions and corporations that gather in Switzerland in January or...Read more

It's been a week since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Kyiv, and even Kharkiv, 20 miles from the Russian border, remain under Ukrainian control. Contrary to many predictions, Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces have fallen short of their goals so far, but there can be no certainty about the outcome in Ukraine -- or Russia.

What is ...Read more

For those trying to keep up with the fast-moving events in Ukraine, it may be helpful to consider some lessons of history. Mistakes made in the past week, added onto developments covering the last two or three centuries, have left the United States and its European allies -- in particular the largest of them, Germany -- unable to prevent ...Read more

Itinerant policy journalist Ezra Klein, now with the New York Times, has highlighted something interesting about the Biden Democrats' now-defunct Build Back Better package -- something beyond its huge cost (trillions) and its failure to get majority support in the Democratic Congress, just like the single-payer health care bill that recently ...Read more