HeyJaredA Democracy, If You Can Keep It
Instead of whining about the crisis of democracy, I explore real solutions to it.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 11
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- Sep 28, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
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On First Looking Up From Caro’s Moses (opens the original)
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I have just finished The Power Broker. This was a mistake on my part; I should have read it well before I wrote my first biography ten years ago. Perhaps biographers should be required to read it before practicing the art.I won’t say that The Power Broker is the greatest biography ever written. First, I haven’t read enough of them to know, and second, Caro’s book can’t readily be compared to works like Boswell’s Life of Johnson or Stefan Zweig’s (unfinished) biography of Balzac–works by one geni
We Must. We Can’t. We Will (opens the original)
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The war in Iran is the most stupid of all the wars America has fought in my lifetime–the most unnecessary, the most rash and the least likely to achieve any of the objectives set for it. For that reason, the war looks like an historical aberration, a uniquely thoughtless enterprise conducted by a uniquely thoughtless president. But if we look back at those other wars, above all at Vietnam and Iraq, we’ll see a larger pattern into which Trump’s misadventure falls. Last week I wrote about the 1991
Can America Fight A Non-Stupid War? (opens the original)
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It is now safe to say, after almost seven months, that the Iran war deserves a place alongside Vietnam and Iraq as calamitous miscalculations that did terrible harm to the world and to America’s standing in it. A cottage industry has already sprung up among foreign policy scholars to tabulate the costs. The war has put an end to the American imperium in the Middle East (though perhaps to the region’s ultimate benefit). It has <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-iran-war-benef
Who Were We In The Age of Terror? (opens the original)
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A few weeks back I was cleaning out the bookshelves in my office to see what books I could unload. When I came to the War on Terror section, assembled when I had taught a class on the subject fifteen years ago, I pulled out half or so of the volumes. I hadn’t looked at them in years, and didn’t anticipate doing so again.The Age of Terror is over–not because terrorism itself has faded away but because, twenty-five years after 9/11, it no longer occupies the central place in our psychic lives that
America Won’t Buy Socialism (opens the original)
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With the primary season having drawn almost to an end, members of the Democratic Socialists of America can point to some evidence that America–at least very particular parts of America– is prepared to embrace a socialist candidate. DSA member Angie Nixon defeated a mainstream candidate by a startling margin to become the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida. DSA candidates won Congressional primaries in Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania and New York. But socialist Francesca Hong went down to
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