David and Jeanne Heidler If you’re looking for strange juxtapositions, you had a whopper this weekend. On January 16, 1919, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. In case you’re a bit fuzzy on the amendment numbers, that was the one prohibiting the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage…
W.J. Astore When I was a kid, I was a stamp collector. My dad, in contrast, saved old coins. He was not a collector; he didn’t file them away in special folders. He just tossed old silver coins into a cigar box. My favorite coin of his was also the oldest one he had: a…
W.J. Astore My wife and I watched the president’s speech last night. Overall, it was a solid, even praiseworthy, performance. First, we had to get past the NBC pre-speech fear-mongering. Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, the NBC commentators, were talking about how afraid Americans were, hinting that we all feared our holiday parties would be…
Alex Dunn. Introduction by b. traven. Alex Dunn is one of TCP’s EU correspondents. An English ex-pat living in Luxembourg gives us a view of this disturbing massacre in Paris. I am sure that Alex’s view from Europe is as concerned as some of our views that the wrong lesson will be learned by politicians…
W.J. Astore Ever since the attacks of 9/11/2001, the United States has actively celebrated martial virtue. We’ve portrayed our troops as heroes. Presidents have celebrated them as the best led and best trained and most effective military in all of human history. To question the wisdom of such hagiographic portrayals is to be dismissed as…
A recent article by John Pilger in the British Guardian speaks of a silent military coup that has effectively gained control of American policymaking. It features the following alarmist passage: In 2008, while his liberal devotees dried their eyes, Obama accepted the entire Pentagon of his predecessor, George Bush: its wars and war crimes. As the constitution is replaced…
We celebrate July 4th with a lot of hoopla. Flag-waving parades. Backyard barbecues with beer and laughter. Fireworks. Good times. We celebrate the creation of a new country, a new ideal, in 1776. It was a country that rejected hereditary aristocracies, that called for equal rights for (most) men, that endeavored to create a new…
Today’s title is from James Madison, architect of our Constitution. Madison famously wrote against the perils of forever war. In other words, he wrote about the perils we face today in our ongoing, seemingly unending, war on terror. Here is what Madison warned us about: Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps,…
b. traven On a trip to Berlin my son and I spent some of our time looking into the crannies that elude most visitors. In Europe I have researched how some countries memorialize (if at all) their resistance to fascist occupation during World War II. The French Resistance Museum is a disgrace! It’s poorly lit,…
The Contrary Perspective 