Clik here to view.
The Broken Check and Balance
Only a country with as much going for it as the United States—scale, resources, location, historic openness to energy and ambition and change—could withstand a national governing structure as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On the Many Connotations of ‘Tribalism’
A classic book on tribalism.A few hours ago I posted an item arguing that today’s GOP leaders, notably Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Paul Ryan in the House, had essentially abdicated their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘The Parable of the Tribes’
From the 1990s, and still relevantYesterday I argued that certain Republican congressional leaders were behaving in a “tribal” (as opposed to constitutional) manner, in declining to apply normal...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Scorn for Tribalism Is an American Tradition’
Let’s take another whack at whether the right word to describe the tribal divisions now on display in Congress is in fact tribalism, or whether some other term would do better. The first entry in this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Nation of Tribes, and Members of the Tribe
On Spiegelgracht, in Amsterdam, yesterday.A few days ago I argued that sins-of-omission by Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans in the House, and Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why the AR-15 Is So Lethal
Americans who know nothing else about firearms are all too familiar with the name AR-15. It’s the semi-automatic weapon that murderers have used in many of the most notorious and highest-casualty gun...
View ArticleClik here to view.
'The Animal Instincts at the Heart of Human Nature'
In the run-up to this week’s election results in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere, I ran a series of items on how to think of “tribal”-style loyalties in American politics, and whether that was the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Nature of the AR-15
Back in the early 1980s, I described the origins of the AR-15 rifle, and its military counterpart the M-16, in an Atlantic article called “A Bureaucratic Horror Story” and a book called National...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why the AR-15 Was Never Meant to be in Civilians' Hands
Decades ago I wrote in the Atlanticabout the creation of the AR-15, which was the predecessor of the military’s M-16 combat rifle and which now is the weapon most often used in U.S. mass gun murders....
View ArticleClik here to view.
More on the Military and Civilian History of the AR-15
This past Tuesday Dean Winslow, a medical doctor and retired Air Force colonel who had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as a flight surgeon, appeared before the Senate Armed Services committee. It was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Historic Gift of Pristine Land to Inspire Tech's Elite
Good news for the environment comes from California today, and from a part of the state very near the hillsides that have suffered the economic and environmental devastation of the recent wildfires. A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Can Non-Billionaires Make a Difference in Conservation? An Example From Europe
Late last week, I mentioned a historically large conservation gift, worth $165 million and coming from one of America’s successful tech-industry families, that will preserve more than 24,000 acres of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Private-Public Partnership for Conservation: Examples From Oregon, Hawaii,...
Yesterday I mentioned a land-conservation scheme in Europe that a Swiss farmer was helping publicize. This followed news of a major donation of coastal land in California to The Nature Conservancy, for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Conservation in Nebraska: 'Our Hope Is For People to Think of This as Not...
In announcing a $165 million gift for preservation of coastal land in California, the tech-industry Dangermond family said that they were trying to set an example for other rich people like themselves....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Innovations in Conservation, From the East Coast to the West and in Between
This continues our weeklong series on steps that individuals—both the hugely wealthy and those of ordinary means—and communities of any size in every part of the world, can take to protect the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It's Been an Open Secret All Along
Three months ago, when Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of TheNew York Times unloaded their first big report about Harvey Weinstein’s pattern of sexual aggressiveness and abuse, the depth of detail made...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On the 'Open Secret'
Yesterday I argued that Michael Wolff’s revelations about Donald Trump, in his new book Fire and Fury, constituted an “open secret,” in the sense that term had been used after the revelations of sexual...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves
I’ve never met or interviewed Donald Trump, though like most of the world I feel amply exposed to his outlooks and styles of expression. So I can’t say whether, in person, he somehow conveys the edge,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Defense of Trump as Possessing a Certain Kind of Genius
Yesterday I noted one unusual aspect of Donald Trump’s tweeted claims that he was “like, really smart” and a “genius.” Namely, that people whom the world recognizes as being in those categories...
View ArticleClik here to view.
'Let's Roll the Dice. What Could Go Wrong?'
It’s less than a week since Michael Wolff said in Fire and Fury that all—“100 percent”—of those who worked with Donald Trump thought him unfit for duties of the office. Then Trump himself replied, via...
View Article