Tag: President Ronald Reagan
Condoleezza Rice’s Lost September 11 Speech
William Safire wrote in the introduction to his classic compendium Lend Me Your Ears that “what makes a draft speech a real speech is the speaking of it.” But I’ve found that some of the most interesting speeches written were never delivered at all. I spent years collecting examples of the words that went unspoken because events intervened, or a leader had a change of heart, or history took a sudden turn.
Last year, shortly after leaving my role
America Is Ceding the Seas to Its Enemies
Very few Americans—or, for that matter, very few people on the planet—can remember a time when freedom of the seas was in question. But for most of human history, there was no such guarantee. Pirates, predatory states, and the fleets of great powers did as they pleased. The current reality, which dates only to the end of World War II, makes possible the commercial shipping that handles more than 80 percent of all global trade by volume—oil and
Radio Atlantic: This Is Not Your Parents’ Cold War
During the Cold War, NATO had nightmares of hundreds of thousands of Moscow’s troops pouring across international borders and igniting a major ground war with a democracy in Europe. Western governments feared that such a move by the Kremlin would lead to escalation—first to a world war and perhaps even to a nuclear conflict.
That was then; this is now.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is nearly a year old, and the Ukrainians are holding on. The Russians, so far, not
The Supreme Court Is Kicking God Back Into School
Religious conservatives have been fighting for years to get prayer back into America’s schools, and this year, the Supreme Court gave them what they wanted. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the six conservative justices affirmed a coach’s right to offer a prayer after a football game.
But what is really astonishing is that this decision will over time prove to be less monumental than the Court’s other big religion decision this term. In Maine’s Carson v. Makin, the Court
No, Ann Coulter, I Am Not Responsible for the ‘Great Replacement’ Theory
Ann Coulter, in so many words, thinks that I am responsible for the mass shooting in Buffalo in mid-May.
Not me alone. After the shooting, Coulter wrote a column dismissing the idea that Republican politicians and commentators had popularized the “Great Replacement” theory, a conspiracy theory that the young, white Buffalo shooter cited as a motivation before killing 10 people at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Instead, Coulter argued that the theory had been popularized by political
What Does Infrastructure Mean? – The Atlantic
On March 31, President Joe Biden unveiled a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that he lauded as “a once-in-a-generation investment.” The package recalled the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s and the public investments in the space race in the ’60s. However, this program is distinguished from those earlier ones not only by its price tag but in its unprecedented scope. Over the past three months, as Congress has debated Biden’s plan, three key questions have emerged: