If the complexities of international relations could be squeezed allegorically into a high school drama, Syria would be represented by that awkward, depressed nerdy kid that everyone else shuns.
As a dabbler of history, I’d like to dedicate this column to Charlie Sheen — the cocaine-overdosing, prostitute-juggling, hotel room-wrecking and rehab-hopping star of “Two and a Half Men” — for, if only by accident, setting a precedent in the history of our public sphere.
The Tucson shootings in Arizona unleashed a media firestorm over the putative political motivations of the shooter, Jared Loughner. Progressives labeled him a far-right, anti-government Tea Partier, blaming Sarah Palin’s “crosshair maps” and invocations of the Second Amendment during the 2010 campaign season. Without missing a beat, conservatives accused liberals of intellectual dishonesty and mudslinging, unearthing the history of far-left political violence from the Weathermen to the Black Panthers as counter-examples to the stereotype that conservative rhetoric — and more importantly, conservatism — breeds violence.
The phrase “Network Neutrality” is, like most political parlance, ambiguous. To examine the concept comprehensively is beyond the scope of this article, so instead I’ll focus only on the recent mandate voted in by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that is associated with this term.
Old habits die hard. A recent poll revealed that 4 in 10 Americans believe in some variant of creationism, 38 percent in “theistic evolution” — that is, evolution guided by God — and 16 percent in evolution tout court. The expected, incredulous reaction of the average reader of this article is as follows: “Really? In 2010?” But the charts show that this is the lowest occurrence of belief in creationism in decades, and progress — if this is progress to you — comes at its own pace.
Modernity is full of “crises.” “Economic crisis,” “midlife crisis,” and even “environmental crisis” are just some of the terms thrown around so often nowadays...
No, I’m not referring to abstaining from sex before marriage, but the public decision of abstaining from voting.
Across the political spectrum, public figures of...
