P. J. Sullivan What is the most urgent problem facing our planet? Our country? Is it warfare? Nuclear proliferation? Oil depletion? Hunger? Epidemics? Air and water pollution? Degradation of our food? Soaring housing costs? Global climate change? Species extinctions? Deforestation? All of these are important, but what is it that they all have in common?…
W.J. Astore There’s a new bear in the woods and his name is Vladimir Putin. Remember that Reagan campaign ad from 1984 that showed a menacing, obviously Soviet, bear patrolling the woods, with ominous music in the background? Fast-forward thirty years and a bare-chested Putin is that new bear, marauding in the Crimea and threatening…
By Todd Miller. Introduction by William Astore. About twenty years ago, I received emails from a conservative friend that depicted an ongoing invasion of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California by a flood of Mexican immigrants hellbent on reversing the outcome of the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. I laughed at the time at the…
W.J. Astore Eleven years after my freshman essay on the Vietnam War in 1982, I found myself at Oxford in a Strategic Studies Seminar. For that seminar, I wrote the following paper on People’s War and Vietnam. Based on deeper reading and more reflection than my freshman essay, I concluded that the Vietnam War had…
W.J. Astore Much like my father, I can be a pack rat. Going through old files, I found a “blue book” exam that I took as a college freshman in 1982. The essay question I had to answer was whether the U.S. could have won the Vietnam War. Recall that in 1975, South Vietnam had…
Michael Murry The government of the United States still demands that all American males between the ages of 18 and 24 register for military conscription – i.e., the Draft – even though that same government maintains that no such system of military conscription any longer exists. To enforce this Draft Registration, various penalties accrue to…
W.J. Astore What will West Point graduates do without wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Don’t worry! There are a lot more threats listed on the classroom chalkboard. The New York Times this morning has an interesting article on this year’s West Point graduates. With the end of the war in Iraq (at least for us)…
W.J. Astore Did Jesus have a wife? Or, if not a wife, did his mention of “wife” symbolize a greater role for women as disciples? I’ve always wondered about the proudly patriarchal Catholic church and its marginalization of women. WWJD? Would would Jesus do about a church that is so male-dominated? So proud of its…
Michael Murry “Never trust your interpreter. He’s the one selling your secrets to your competition.” So said a Chinese business acquaintance I met while employed for six months in the People’s Republic of China during the fall and winter of 1994-95. I worked for a Thai-Chinese company that installed bowling centers at airports and amusement…
W.J. Astore When Hannah Arendt, the famous German-American political philosopher, criticized American involvement in the Vietnam War, she said that our foreign policy “experts” fell prey to using excessive means to achieve minor aims in a region of marginal interest to the United States. You could say the same of most of America’s foreign interventions…
The Contrary Perspective 